originally posted in:The Ashen Conflux
Greetings, my fellow Guardians and Thanatonauts; I am Pokeylop, Exo Sunsinger. In light of the threats we have faced in the last year-- from Oryx and his Taken to the newfound threat of Devil Splicers-- I can understand the lack of opportunity for us to practice our craft and interpret our visions. But, for now, the storm of the Darkness has passed, and the worlds beyond the Veil wait for no-one; I, among several other Thanatonauts, have begun to seek visions once again. This was my first, experienced shortly after defeating the Archon Prime Aksis. For the first time, I have seen a vision from my own viewpoint, not as an omnipotent outsider. This also appears to be a vision of the past, pre-collapse. I seek your collective guidance in understanding its meaning.
As the blinding light of the Veil fades, I find myself in a small, cubic room. The ceiling and each of the four walls are a dull blue color, glinting with each flash of the slow white strobe above us. There are no windows, and the air is exasperatingly still, leading me to believe I must be underground. The floor is patterned with tessellated shapes-- squares, rhombuses and trapeziums-- in a way that is oddly familiar. I notice, as I look down to observe the geometric floor, that my hands were not the glossy blue color I expected. They are silver and unpolished, even rusting in my elbow joints, as if they had not been used for many years. In fact, I don't look or feel like myself at all; my body looks primitive and mechanical, as if it were centuries old, and I don't feel like I'm truly in control of my own body. Before I can ponder the feeling further, I am suddenly walking forward, compelled by an unknown force, my eyes fixed on the sole object in the otherwise bare and boring room: a piece of technology I have never seen before. A hollow ring of chromed metal levitating above its base, with thin strands of metal pointing towards the center from its circumference. Atop the ring lies a control panel and, at eye level, a pair of goggles attached to the ring and panel through a thick steel cable. I try desperately to resist my movement towards this object, but in vain; it dawned on me that I had absolutely no control over my body in this vision. I begin speaking in Russian-- despite not knowing a word of the language today-- as I near the panel, although this was not through my own will; whoever, or whatever, was controlling my body spoke through me. It said,
"Commencing test #37 of The Device; ring speed set to 60000 RPM, ignition radiation frequency at 1 Terra-Hertz, and active matrix capacitors from (917,64,0) to (1037,300,120)"
Being a member of the Future War Cult, I understood this immediately with equal parts terror and excitement; I was about to use the fabled Device to view the future! Yet, through my studies of the mechanics and configuration of the Device, I realized that it was not a very distant future; in fact, I was viewing what was about to happen one minute from now, in another underground complex only a few kilometers from this one. I put on the goggles and, once again, someone speaks Russian through me.
"Rotation activated, emitting ignition radiation in 3... 2... 1... Ignition!"
Instantly, I feel a searing heat come from the device as the ring begins to spin, imperceptibly quickly. The space at the center of the ring glows a deep red, but the color soon shifts smoothly to orange, then yellow and, finally, white. The display in the goggles switches on, flashing a bright light into my ocular sensors, followed by static. After a few seconds, the image stabilizes.
Through the goggles, I saw a room similar to the one in which I stood, but it is darker, and much bigger. The room is almost completely dark, except for a red glow emanating from an object in the center of the room. As my sensors readjust to the lack of light, the object’s form becomes clear: a black octahedron with a split in its middle through which the red light seeped out. It appears to be suspended in mid-air, connected only to a narrow set of stairs leading to a closed door above the middle of the object; at the bottom of the stairs, a doorway in the middle of the octahedron opens. For a moment, nothing happens. Then, suddenly, a swarm of red particles floods out of the doorway, writhing and floating like a cloud of pestilence. In the glow of the particles, the rest of the room is illuminates; red and black tendrils-- almost like sinews of flesh-- hold the octahedron in place above the chasm below it, each tendril studded irregularly with smaller black octahedrons. The particles fly around the room for a few seconds before swiftly flooding back through the doorway, into the shape in the center; the door shuts behind the cloud, sealing it within their prison.
The goggles’ display switches off, and I remove them. The voice speaks through me once more:
“Any new constructs? Repair to the existing ones? Anything at all?” A disembodied voice rings through the room, its Russian more disjointed and machine-like. Rasputin.
“More tendrils were formed, each more structurally sound than the previously created ones. However, the walls of the chamber have suffered extensive damage; another test will not be possible until repairs are made and the chamber is fortified further with Titanium-Tungsten alloys”
“Dammit”, I reply, “What hope do we have of using SIVA in populated areas when it desecrates unpopulated ones?”
“It is ready. It has learned to seek perfection of everything. The walls were not strong enough, so it destroyed them.” Rasputin’s response is cold and calculated, as if he believes it was the right thing to do.
“How is this ‘perfect’? How is destruction of anything moral?”
“Both ‘perfect’ and ‘moral’ are very relative terms, Zarin…”
My vision ended abruptly at this point; apparently I had remained dead for several days, and my Ghost had been unable to revive me before that point. I implore you all to comment on my vision, and to submit your own when you find time. Ave Luminae, Guardians.
English
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Upon considering my vision further, I have drawn a few conclusions, and now seek to ask several more questions as to SIVA's origins: It is clear that this vision sheds some light on the birth of SIVA and the initial experiments in SITE 6. Perhaps the reason for using the Device-- and hence the collaboration between Clovis Bray and Maya Sundaresh’s team-- was because SIVA was simply too unstable to be observable at close proximity; this also provided Sundaresh a chance to test and understand the configuration of the Device. But Rasputin’s reactions to the SIVA test are questionable at best; even in its current form, Rasputin has done nothing to aid us against the threat of SIVA and the Splicers. Does he seek to protect his invention? Or is he incapable of containing the current strain of SIVA? Is Rasputin truly our ally? Remembering that this is a vision of a vision through the Device, we must also question whether I have witnessed an event in our timeline, or that of a parallel one. Did Rasputin aid the development of SIVA in our version of reality? There are odd similarities between the design and appearance of the two-- particularly with regard to the Outbreak Prime weapon obtained from the SIVA engine at SITE 6-- and even their respective emblems are quite similar, as if SIVA was modeled upon Rasputin's facilities and design. But is this evidence compelling enough to draw a link between the two? I pose these questions to you, Guardians. Let me know your thoughts.