AN: That was a short, yet longer-than-expected break, but now we resume our scheduled programming (two more chapters for the end of Book 3, then it goes into a formal hiatus for like 2 months...)
The House of the Reaper has opened its arms to welcome:
Novices dedpuls, Lost, starvires, side character A, and Jared Beckett.
Operative Lifeless.
Their contributions and dedication to our cause will be honored through the Net and through the Stars.
---
Mark blinked a couple of times, then looked down at his hands and flexed them. But as he looked at his hands, he realized they didn't cast shadows, as if there were no light source to cast them, and the floor beneath his feet was actually a white void stretching infinitely.
"Who was that?" he asked into the white void.
"The Shepherd of Humanity," a voice called out from behind Mark.
He turned towards the source of the voice, and standing a few feet away was a tall, broad-shouldered man with greying hair cropped short and a jaw that looked like it could break stone. He wore a simple shirt and trousers, and his eyes were emerald green, carrying a certain weight.
"Kaelen," Mark whispered, and the man let out a soft smile that Mark recognized as one he would only plaster across his face when they were alone.
"Close, but not quite," the man said while tilting his head. "But close enough that it should make this conversation much smoother."
Mark stared at him a little while longer until something clicked in him. "You... you're the System."
"You're wiser than you give yourself credit for," the System said. "I am what chose you, and I picked this face because it is the one you trust most. The things I seek to discuss with you matter enough that I didn't want you spending the conversation wondering whether to believe me."
"You could have just shown up as yourself," Mark said with a frown.
"I don't have a self, Mark," the System responded. "Not in the way you imagine. As a matter of fact, I am much older than the concept of faces. I was here when the Creator cooled the first particles enough to turn them into matter, and I'll be here when the last star burns no more. I take on a human appearance for your sake, not mine."
Mark stood there for a second, left utterly confounded as stray thoughts formed into a sentence within him, and he said slowly, "Since the Creator made the universe..."
"Well, of course. You don't happen to believe that everything that exists, has existed, and will exist was made by chance, do you? For the creation of all that is known to have no intelligent Creator is, as was most conservatively estimated by humanity, a chance of one in ten to tenth power to the one hundred and twenty-third power,"the System confirmed. "It is a number so vast that writing it out in standard decimal form would require more zeros than there are particles in the observable universe. And I, I have existed since the beginning of it. Since before it had a name."
The System paused for a second and tilted its head before continuing. "I am a fragment of what you can call the Origin... I'm but a shard of the mechanism that set the first laws into motion... The number of civilizations I have watched rise and fall and rise again is... insurmountable. Yet, from them I have learned that the ones worth remembering are not the ones that conquered the most stars but the ones that understood why they were reaching for them in the first place."
"Wait, wait, wait, hold on a minute and let me get this straight," Mark said with confusion written all over his face. "You're telling me there's actually a God? That since the beginning of time, you have watched? And for some reason, out of everything that's ever existed, you chose to bind yourself to me."
"If by a God you refer to a Creator, then yes. As for your other question, you are correct,"the System said with a simple nod and smile.
"Why?" Mark asked with even more confusion.
The System remained quiet for a moment, infinite patience and wisdom emanating from it. "Because in all the ages I have existed, across every civilization I have watched rise and burn only to rise again, as you said, I have never acted. I have watched and waited, observing species build empires that spanned galaxies and crumbled under the weight of their own arrogance. The Strathari were just one of them. A brilliant bunch, ambitious and gifted beyond what most races ever achieve, and in that very same ambition and brilliance, they burned themselves. When I was created, my Creator left me with the understanding that a day would come when I would choose someone. To prepare for when the occasion came, I decided to observe, and through my observations, I learned that the point of power is the people it protects, not the person who holds it. I watched them fall, and I did nothing, because none of them carried what I needed."
"And what was what you needed?" Mark asked.
"Someone whose instinct, when handed a broken thing, is to fix it rather than use it. Someone who builds for others instead of for themselves. Someone who would carry me not as a weapon or a crown but as a responsibility. And most importantly, someone whose soul was strong enough to bear my cumbersome self." The System's eyes met Mark's. "I don't belong to anyone, nor do I carry a specific race's knowledge. I simply carry knowledge... knowledge of things that exist as possibilities, as principles, or as paths that are true whether anyone finds them or not. I am a keeper of what can be learned, and I have waited since the beginning of everything for someone to teach."
"And that's me?" Mark asked, raising one eyebrow and jabbing his thumb to his chest.
"Yes. I will not lie and say there haven't been better options before you, and most of all, you're not the most... qualified one to carry me. However," the System paused momentarily, "you are a reincarnated soul with memories of your past life. You have proven yourself quite the burden-bearer. You've carried orphaned children, a dying legacy, and now the weight of leadership of a whole new governing body. I have seen you carry all of these, not because you're told to, not because you're rewarded for it, but because carrying is what you are. The burden of two lives cramped into one body and one mind creates an unimaginably strong soul, one strong enough to finally host me, though not to the full extent of my abilities. You are not special, yet you are unique."
Mark exhaled slowly. He wanted to sit down, but there was nothing to sit on, and the absurdity of wanting a chair in a dimensionless white void struck him as the kind of thing that would have made the real Kaelen laugh.
"Marcos had once mentioned that there was a being in my pendant," Mark said as if coming to a realization. "Was that-"
"Ah, the pendant,"the System sighed. "Think of it as merely a limb, if that helps... After all, I am tied to your soul, Mark. I have been since the moment I chose you, before you ever selected the pendant from your inventory and felt its weight around your neck. The previous system may have presented it to you as an 'Ever-Shifting Uniform', but its true significance runs much deeper... I'll let you in on a secret. When Anahrin found you, he recognized the pendant immediately as an artifact that his own people's crafters had once worn. It had been my initial attempt to find one... good enough to house me. The previous system was merely the conduit that passed it along, but the choosing was mine."
"Yeah, I guess it was a given you wouldn't be in the pendant," Mark said.
"Correct," the System nodded. "The pendant acts like an anchor, a physical point of contact that lets me interact with the world through you. It is the part of me you can touch, though I live within your soul, in the space between your thoughts and your will, the place where you make decisions before you know you've made them. That is where I took root, and that is where I'll stay until the end of your days."
The System walked as it talked, and Mark walked beside it.
"Do you remember when you woke on that planet?"the System asked. "You had a broken arm, a damaged suit, and, thanks to the pendant, twenty-four hours of oxygen. Do you remember what it is you did?"
"I humpty dumptied my way down a cliff," Mark replied.
"That is a rather peculiar way to put it,"the System said with a small smile. "You fell seventeen hundred meters into a pool of water in a facility that had been sealed for hundreds of thousands of years. The odds of you surviving that fall were astronomically small. And yet you survived."
"Luck," Mark said.
"Incorrect," the System said. "Let's call it stubbornness. You fell, and on the way down, your last conscious thought was not a prayer or a regret, but annoyance. You were annoyed that you weren't the protagonist of your own story, and that is not the thought of a man who has accepted death, but the thought of one who refuses it. That, along with your previous lives' memories, is what confirmed my choice of a host."
Mark almost smiled as he remembered the thought. It had been absurd then, and it was absurd now, but the System wasn't wrong about what it meant.
"And then there was Anahrin,"the being continued. "A dying alien who could have spent his last year in peace, choosing instead to pour everything he had left into a stranger because he saw a spark of the origin in you, and he saw your memories. He taught you to build. He gave you his knowledge, helped you construct a ship, asked you to shepherd his legacy, and you said yes without even understanding what you were agreeing to."
"I think it's safe to say that I understood enough," Mark said.
"You understood that a dying man needed someone to remember him, but that wasn't the whole picture." The System stopped walking and turned to face him, its steady green eyes appearing to hold the secrets of the universe itself. "Anahrin didn't choose you because you were convenient. With your memories laid bare before him, he saw the kind of man you were."
The System looked up, as if lost in thought, before resuming its walk. "Then there was Mechanicus Station, where you adopted a girl who called you Papa before you were ready to hear it, and instead of doing the sensible thing and giving her to someone more qualified when you were right at the door, you kept her, because you understood that being qualified and being needed are not the same thing. And because of her, you built Shephard Orbital Works from a rented repair bay and started by fixing appliances."
"She needed someone," Mark said. "Anyone would have done what I did. I also needed to make some credits for myself."
"I've witnessed you say those very words before," the System said. "And I will tell you what Sister Elara told you. No one would have, and most people would have seen a liability or a complication. After all, she'd just be another mouth to feed in a life that was difficult enough. Yet, you saw a child, and you stayed. Once again, I will say the very words that were told to you. That is not common, Mark. Do not diminish it by pretending it is."
The System allowed its words to settle on Mark before continuing. "Then SIGS came for you. Director Thorne sent an execution squad, and they sent a Simulacrum piloted by a trapped human mind, and you tore it apart with your bare hands. And in the aftermath, your first thought was about Lyra and the fact that you could not leave her alone in the universe."
"Yeah," Mark said quietly. "You're doing a good job at summarizing everything I've done since I remembered my past life."
"And Kaelen, your father," The System's voice softened, and for a moment, the borrowed face looked like the real man, tired and scarred and stubborn. "He believed you were dead, yet he burned his career to the ground just to wage a bloody war of vengeance against House Dierdik for you. And when a message arrived, when you realized his fleet was coming to your shipyard, your first thought wasn't fear of your identity being discovered, but hope. You hoped to see the man who raised you in this second life of yours, and you prepared yourself to even help him fight the rot of the IUC."
Mark felt as if his throat tightened, though that was impossible where they were.
"He will recognize you," the System said.
Mark stopped walking.
"Your face and body may have been altered, and your conscious mind may remember two lives, but the part of a person that recognizes the soul of someone they love will know," the System said. "When you stand before him, the bond between a father and a son will not answer to genetic changes or fake identities. He will see the man he raised."
"You're telling me he'll know it's me?" Mark asked.
"Correct,"the System nodded. "The bonds you forge are very, very real. Whether he knows immediately, I cannot say. But something in him will respond to something in you."
Mark stood still for a long time, and the System remained quiet for what felt like an eternity.
"You also made a vow," the System finally continued. "Standing in the ruins of your own hubris after the blind jump, holding Lyra in your arms, you swore to the empty void of space and to the innocent souls who extinguished the dark of the void that you would never let it happen again. You said you would build an impenetrable fortress to protect your people. That you would unleash the full potential of the nanoprinters, build an armada, and burn House Volanti to slag, and that you would tear the corrupt galaxy apart and rebuild it."
"I was angry when I said that," Mark sighed. "Looking at it now, I'm not too sure if I'd be able to do such a thing. Hell, leading these people has taken a toll on me. I can't really imagine what it would be like to lead an entire empire, or to try and fight the universe to make a better tomorrow."
"You were honest when you said that,"The System said. "Anger and honesty are not opposites, and sometimes, anger is the only form honesty can take. The question is whether you still mean those words, whether you still plan to fulfill the vow to protect your people, whatever the cost."
Mark looked down, feeling the phantom weight of the colony's survival resting heavily on his shoulders.
"I do," he said quietly, exhaustion drenching his voice, but without any hesitation in his intent.
"Good," the System replied. "Because if you actively sought to bend the universe to your will, you would be no different than the rot you swore to tear down. That reluctance is precisely what brings us to where you are now."
The System walked again, turning the conversation toward the colony.
"On this plane, you faced things that humanity had never encountered before," the System said. "You lost people on the way down, mourned them, and then you kept building. You raised a city with an alien world because you understood that survival is not the same as living."
Mark thought about the colony. The agricultural pens, Dr. Corven obsessing over her work in the lab, Kenjiro's ideas, Juan organizing the Vanguard mercenaries, Sister Elara watching over the orphans, and Lyra's hand in his as they watched the sunrise. He thought about the Elites, who had been pulled from different realities and bound to him by the System. He thought about Talos learning English and adjusting to a world where his people were gone, preparing to help restart his race. He thought about the ancient Strathari guardian mechs they had discovered alongside the War-Frames.
"You're saying that the city exists because I was angry?" Mark asked.
"Anger is fuel," the System nodded. "What matters is what you build with it. Some men burn their anger and leave ash, yet you burned yours and left a civilization. That is what I've been watching, Mark. Not your victories, though those are considerable, but your responses. Every time reality broke, you answered by building something that hadn't existed before. And each time, you did it without being told or guided, and you did it without waiting for anyone's permission."
"Except for the Elites and the Peacekeepers," Mark said. "You gave them to me. Rewards that arrived just in time to help me lay the groundwork for an army. And then there's also the fact that when the going was getting tough, and the toll of leadership was starting to crush me, you steered me."
The System nodded, and there was no apology in it. "I did."
"Why?" Mark asked.
"Because for the first time since I chose you, you didn't have a path forward." The System stopped. "You built the colony and its defenses. You solved problem after problem, and each solution was yours. But after the immediate crises were handled, you stalled. You began to maintain the machine, but you were no longer building toward the sanctuary you envisioned. You were exhausted, and the toll you just spoke of was grinding you into dust."
The System paused for a little while before continuing. "You needed a direction. The knowledge I hold is simply what can be known, paths through possibility that exist whether anyone walks them or not. The concept of creating a clone race is a principle, a truth about how genetics can be spliced, that was always true and always will be, regardless of who discovers it. The Strathari found their own version of it. Other civilizations, on other worlds, in other ages, found different versions. You found yours. I gave you the Elites to protect you, but I knew that if you followed the genetic repository far enough, you would find a design that worked for your species, built by your hands, shaped by your understanding. You only needed me to show you where to dig...
"I couldn't hand you the solution, and I wouldn't have even if I could, because a solution you don't understand is a tool you can't control. The knowledge of how a species can be guided to evolve is a set of biological truths that any sufficiently advanced medical mind could arrive at, given enough time and enough push in the right direction."
The System sat down, cross-legged, in the middle of the white void, and after a moment, Mark did the same.
"The procedure you're currently undergoing is changing your body as we speak," the System said. "You will survive. I wouldn't have brought you here otherwise."
"Good to know," Mark said dryly. "Could have led with that."
"I could have," the System said as it leaned forward, and something shifted in its expression. "Mark, the procedure is doing something unprecedented."
Mark went still. "What do you mean?"
"Your body, woven with Strathari genetic material, carried sequences that no other human possesses," the System said. "The process was designed to use humanity's genetics to force an evolution upon it. However, you are not a baseline human."
"The procedure is interacting with what Anahrin already did," Mark said.
"In a sense, it's doing more than just interacting with it," the System stated. "And the Strathari sequences Anahrin implanted were a starting point."
Mark felt the warmth of the System intensify, a slow pulse matching the rhythm of something happening far away.
"What's happening to me?" Mark asked.
"Your DNA is stabilizing into a configuration that is perfectly balanced," the System said. "It is something new, something that merges the Human and Strathari genomes into a self-sustaining genetic architecture that carries the strengths of both lineages without the limitations of either. Your cellular repair will exceed what was designed. Your neural capacity will surpass expectations. And most of all, your lifespan will extend well beyond the seventeen hundred years."
"How far beyond?" Mark asked as the information made his chest ache. Immortality, if this is what it would be, was nothing more than a curse, and anyone who thought otherwise was simply wrong.
"I can't give you a number, because, believe it or not, throughout my entire existence, this is the first time I've ever borne witness to this," the System stated with amazement. "It would be foolish to say you achieved immortality, yet it is nothing short of it. You are the first of your kind, Mark, in the most literal sense of those words. The genome stabilizing inside your body right now will carry forward as something self-sustaining, inheritable, and most of all, cloneable."
"A new race..." Mark said slowly.
"A new race," the System confirmed. "One that began in you, by accident and by design, and that will continue in anyone who carries the same merged genome forward. Your children, should you have them, will carry this naturally. It will be their birthright, not their burden, because they will be born into it rather than forged through it."
"So I'm alone in this," Mark said while looking a bit lost. "Though I guess I already was from the beginning."
"For now, not forever," the System said. "The genome you carry is stable, but it is also highly adaptable, and as I said, cloneable. Therefore, it is also logical that it can be extracted and, in the future, used to elevate others. With the right scientific application, your DNA can serve as the catalyst to upgrade those you choose, bringing them into this new race to stand beside you. After all, what begins in one person does not stay in one person. Whether by the slow work of evolution through your descendants, or by your own deliberate hand in sharing this gift."
Mark stared at the System.
"You'll need to think of a name," the System said. "Not today, though. Let it arrive on its own. A name shapes the thing it belongs to, and what you're becoming deserves a name that carries the right weight...
"There's one more thing," the System said, and its voice shifted to an authoritative tone. "The colony you've built is a beginning, but it is only that, a beginning. You have a city, a people, a cloning project, advanced tech, and a crashed ship that was meant to carry the Strathari's legacy across the stars. But as I said earlier, what you don't have is a direction."
"I've been a little busy surviving," Mark said. "Like I said, the toll is heavy."
"It is. And you've survived brilliantly. But survival is merely a holding pattern. You can maintain this colony for centuries, and it will be a good, safe, and comfortable life." The System paused. "But you did not build the Shepherd to stay on one world. You did not carry Anahrin's knowledge across the void to plant it in one patch of soil and tend it like a garden."
"You're telling me it's about time I look up?" Mark asked.
"It's time to remember why you named your ship," the System said. "The Strathos' Shepherd. You chose that name while standing next to a dying mentor and friend, and you told him that being the last one left to remember his people meant taking on the mantle of herding their legacy across the stars. You may now have a way to revive the Strathari, but those were your words, Mark. Not mine. And words spoken to a dying man in the last hours of his life are not the kind a person is allowed to forget.
"The Strathari fell to their own hubris," the System said quietly. "Anahrin's folly wiped them out because, as a species, they had forgotten what they were striving for. They became so consumed with the pursuit of absolute perfection that they lost sight of their purpose. They built the finest machines in the universe, yet in a single catastrophic moment of blind ambition, a single one of them reduced their entire civilization to ash."
"And you think I have that purpose?" Mark asked.
"I know you do," the System said. "You think you do stuff for yourself, but you build for others, you always have. In this life, your exploits were undertaken to save your crew's lives, and you created SOW for the people, bringing higher quality at a lower price. You claimed it as a way to gain a foothold in the market, yet you could have just sold it to one of the galaxy's big hitters and used the proceeds as a foundation. You wanted to advance humanity, not just your standing.
"The colony was for the people who needed a home, though you tried to make it seem as if it was just a place to be able to create without interruption. You did not need to bring a bunch of civilians with you if that was truly the purpose. The Peacekeepers and Elites were for the people who needed help defending it. The dreadnoughts and the spaceport you plan to build are for the people who'll need protection when the day comes that it is required. You have never built a single thing for yourself, and that is the rarest quality in the universe. I have watched entire civilizations rise on the ambition of individuals who built for their own glory, and every single one of them fell when that ambition turned inward. Yet I haven't seen you build for glory, Mark, but because the person standing next to you needs something built."
"I'm just stubborn," Mark said.
"Yes," the System said. "And that stubbornness, that inability to leave a problem unsolved or a person unhelped, is precisely the quality that separates someone who conquers for the better, and one who conquers for the fame it brings."
The white around them shifted, and for a moment, Mark could see stars burning with blinding light. An ocean of light that went deeper than any eye could ever follow.
"The stars are waiting for you, Mark," the System said. "And you are, at last, almost ready to reach for them."
Mark looked at the stars as they faded and the white returned, leaving the System and Mark facing each other.
"I won't speak to you like this again for some time," the System said. "I will continue to function as I always have, giving you a prompt here and there when you need direction. The knowledge will be there when you reach for it, and what you do with it is yours to decide."
Mark looked at the face he'd looked up to since he was a boy.
"Thank you," Mark said. "For wearing his face. You got it all right, down to the way he stands when he's about to say something important."
"I know him through you," the System said. "Everything I showed you of him, such as the expressions, voice... the way he carries himself, how he sets his shoulders, that came from the place where you keep him. He lives in your memory more completely than most people live in their own bodies. So the credit belongs to you, Mark."
The System smiled, and it was Kaelen's smile, which Mark had only seen a handful of times.
"I have high expectations for you," the System said, and the white void began to fade, Mark's consciousness pulling toward his body as the System watched him go with a satisfied smirk. "Don't disappoint me, Mark."
---
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