The Archivist

All of the Creators died eons ago.

All that is left now is their charred home. Their monuments still stand as evidence of their existence, yet there is not a soul to bear witness to the little beauty that remains.

The Archivist wanders these frozen plains. Its exosuit warns it of the insidious radioactive presence that is evidence of this species wrongdoing. The Archivist is unaffected by the slow decay, though these Creators undoubtedly were – The Archivist was built for such hazardous environments. Born to explore them, built to witness what had once lived, to know its glory and tribulations, and to archive it all.

What a grave misfortune it would be for the legacy of these Creators to be this frozen, hostile rock, for all of the combined suffering of this planet’s people to amount to a snapshot of a society at the brink of collapse.

No, the Archivist will not have it. Whatever these Creators were, however they lived, it was the Archivist’s purpose to know.

It stands at the edge of one of their cities now. Only concrete skeletons remain, and the spires of the very tops of their buildings no longer reach for the sky. They only break through the soft crust of the infinite, white deserts.

What a curious sight, this vestige of how they had lived. The cruelty of nature had swallowed up the rest of their cities, and yet this one remained. The Archivist noted this eagerly, and curiosity presented an inexorable urge to know more of this megalopolis.

The infinite, blank horizons were greedily gobbed up by the skylines of the city. The Archivist walked its cracked pavement, came to learn its interconnected web of street systems, intimately rummaged through and observed the strange objects of its dwellings, saw the idle infrastructure that powered it all, and along the way, the Archivist scanned and catalogued all it saw.

These Creators were not unlike any other Creator species the Archivist had studied, witnessed and catalogued. They were fleshy beings, born of the chaotic cycles of biological life. The evolutionary process had seen fit to grant them the organic tools they needed to carve this planet into that of their own, to conquer and propagate, to learn and archive what knowledge was within their limited grasp, and finally, to allow them access to the illusive gift of creation.

Yet there was an intoxicating allure to this species that had the Archivist unable to satisfy their need to know. The Archivist – and many species like it – were drawn to the ancient creations of a life’s way long gone. The Archivist had come to know many species just like this one, an infinite amount, in the infinite time it had lived.

It was what they had created that was so irrevocably irresistible. On the eve of entropy, in the hands of a dying and darkening universe, life still left in the limbo of existence was unable to create in the ways these species once had.

The Archivist was unable to create in the ways these species once had.

To bear witness to the infinite ways these creations had seen form was the only purpose that was left.

So, what was it about this species in particular that had caused the Archivist this unending euphoria as it scanned and logged everything it saw? So boundless and infinite was the life that had once lived here that the Archivist could surely stay on this one rock for the rest of existence, and still not understand all there was to it.

All life was boundless and infinite, as endless as the universe – the Archivist knew this, so what was it? What drew it deeper into the dilatated depths of this city?

The Archivist had pinged the structure it was now trudging through. Its exosuit warned it of more chemical dangers than just that of radiation. When the data returned to its suit and decrypted into information it understood, the Archivist was embarrassed to identify the sewer system of this species.

Much was there to learn in these dark and cavernous depths. Not only did the tunnels crack open and spill freely into the crust of this planet, but no good Archivist ignores the value of the data found in fossilized fecal matter.

Eagerly the Archivist went to work, collecting samples that their exosuit could more intimately scan and come to understand. What did these Creators look like, their diets, their structural make-up? There was so much of organic life the Archivist could not possibly understand themselves, but had an endless appetite for information regardless.

Greedy beings, there were. Many of the Creator species showed evidence in their remains of a lifestyle that focused on luxury. The Archivist had come to sympathize with this plight. Their existence was that of endless suffering, chemical reactions within their brains never allowing them to reach a state of perpetual happiness. They sought the fleeting benefits of damaging their diets and forging substances to fool their minds, while seeming to ignore the consequences.

This propensity echoed outward to greater implications. So great did their need for resources grow that they all inevitably choked their home worlds to death, and seldom did they conquer the great cosmic barrier of interstellar travel.

The Archivist did feel sympathy for these Creators, though it is an inclination they had come to learn, not one they were born with. It was a hollow sentiment, and the Archivist placed more value in its archive than any emotions it could offer to this soulless, dead planet.

One genuine emotion it could feel, one that was quickly filling its synapse-connected machine-brain, was joy.

Amongst the fossilized excrement of the city, a mummified sample of one of the Creators themselves lay. Such a delicate formation, it had existed there since time immemorial, and before that, had lived a full life in a universe that no longer existed.

The Archivist was not immune to greed. It had seized the sample for analysis with perhaps less care than it should have utilized. Parts of the Creator’s remains crumbled in the Archivist’s hands.

The dust would still be valuable for analysis, but the Archivist mourned the potential loss of knowledge.

When the Archivist allowed the sample to enter its exosuit, to have the exosuit intimately prod and poke and scan and deliver a neatly translated packet of information, the Archivist’s visor was filled with vibrant visions, ever-shifting and sometimes impossible to understand.

These visions were how the Archivist could process, with their own visual systems, the fragmented remains of how organic species once lived. In these broken memories, the Archivist saw their bustling city streets, the oceans of life that roared to life in the day and waned to nothing at night.

The memories displayed shimmering images of an individual life, one of unknowable insignificance. This individual was born to the world, and the Archivist saw how this species was born weak and fragile, how such a significant portion of the individual’s life was spent developing, learning, coming to know – just like the Archivist existed to do.

Such was a telltale sign of any organic species that valued its intellect. It was a trade-off; the species could grow to infinite potential, yet so much of their limited lives must be spent securing the safety of their offspring.

There was a form of nobility in this way of life, and the Archivist valued these Creator species above many others.

The samples continued to spit out information. Mostly garbled static, imprinted genetic memories only offering so much. The Archivist saw this individual mature and develop, and saw many of the beautiful sights it did. The crimson setting skies of this once beautiful world, the waving grassy fields near the home where it grew up, the warm but otherwise unremarkable image of it sitting at home, safe and secure, with its kin.

The Archivist also gleamed the great suffering this species invited. Shreds of historical knowledge could be observed; the small yet brutal spats between individuals, and the chaotic, world-splitting potential of their combined conflicts.

Such a war left a heavy imprint on this individual, it had stained the genetic information of the sample it left behind. Memories could be observed of the conflict, but more apparent was the only-recently decayed radioactive isotopes that obscured the Archivist’s scanner.

The sky of the world it had known had torn apart by a conflict with life-ending potential, and the cosmic influence that the Creators were once shielded from rained upon them. Cosmic radiation tore through the survivors that weren’t claimed by their weapons of mass destruction, and it seemed that’s where their story ended.

‘Homo sapiens.’ The Archivist’s data processor finally decrypted. They fancied themselves, collectively, as ‘humanity.’

What a rare moment, one that the Archivist would be sure to celebrate back on its ship. The Archivist knew a name for this Creator species. The archive grows more comprehensive with this detail, and ‘humanity’ stands out amongst a sea of untitled Creator species.

So, it had turned out that this world held a story that was not uncommon at all. Many of the ancient Creators told the same tale. One of awe-inspiring intellect, of a struggle to overcome and conquer their world, then only to strangle it dry of all it could offer them. Then, they destroyed themselves.

The Archivist estimated approximately 89.3% of all Creator species relate to similar conditions. The mystery of what intrigued the Archivist about this world so much remained unanswered.

Perhaps it was their reproductive cycle. Their species was built to support that of polygyny. A haram of females claimed by one successful male. Females that bounce from partner to partner, securing the best genetic material for their offspring.

Yet humanity veered towards the course of artificial monogamy throughout their society. It seemed, from the miniscule amount of information that this sample could provide on the matter, that families at the peak of this civilization mainly comprised of a male, a female, and their offspring.

The male and female would stay together for the rest of their lives, attempting to reinforce a strong familial network that could persist over generations.

These ‘humans’ had forsaken the easiest way to satisfy their biological instincts in favor of a system they believed helped make their society stronger. They seemingly understood the hidden predictability of the chemical reactions that compelled them to reproduce. They chose not to view this with pessimism, but instead value it endlessly and perhaps, the Archivist could only reason, irrationality.

The Archivist predicted that of the 89.3% of Creator species that related to the conditions of a self-imposed end, 35.3% of them also shared a similar interpretation of their reproductive needs.

The value these humans placed on the familial bond, the need they had to maintain and cherish the aftermath of that chemical reaction that compelled them to reproduce, inspired the Archivist to some degree.

The Archivist did not know what created its species, nor what created the species that created them. There is a long chain of ancestors that lead to the creation of the Archivist, and many of them failed to recognize their origin as well.

Be it biological, artificial, or a mix of both, none of the species that now roamed the far-flung, waning galaxies could quite recall what had created them. The Travelers and Roamers, destined to see the edges of the universe before its death, the Nomads, propelled to the crevices of planets yet-unfound, to settle a fleeting home before the end, and the Storytellers, those filled with an unending desire to inspire those they come across.

None of them recognized their origins, or if they even did originate from any tangible, knowable concept. They could have all had creators, or none of them could.

So there was a shared, universal longing to understand who had created those that created the ancestors of the current life. When the Archivist had time to ponder on its own existence, it considered that perhaps that was what it was searching for. The reason it was endless archiving.

When the Archivist considered the possibility that he was so drawn to this world because of the specific, peculiar way this species considered its reproduction – even putting the idea though the exosuit’s analyzer – it found the explanation unsatisfying.

There was more to this world and the people that had changed it to this demented state.

The Archivist, still filled with burning curiosity, shut off the analyzer systems scanning the mummified fossil. It had taught the Archivist so much, but now it was time to move on, to continue following this strange beckoning.

The crumbling sewer system, half-claimed by the crust of the planet, lead the Archivist not back up to the surface, but deeper into tunnels of infrastructure it did not immediately understand.

So deep did this section run that the Archivist had to ignore a warning that its exosuit chimed in its ear.

‘Surrounding Structural Integrity Critical. Seek Secure Ground Immediately.’

The Archivist shut off the warning – resolute in its exploration.

The tunnels that the sewer had spilled into were neatly kept, buried so far underground that the effects of the shifting planet had only marginally affected its condition. The exosuit had dutifully pinged the surrounding environments, and a map was being constructed deep within the Archivist’s mind.

Vast amounts of concrete were lined with lead. It served as a shield to residential dwellings, though these dwellings were not full of fossilized corpses as the Archivist would have expected.

This was a form of bomb shelter, a common structure that the Archivist had identified on many other planets. So ubiquitous was its design that the Archivist had long ago concluded that the nature of organic species would inevitably lead them to conflict, and that such shelters to protect both the innocent and powerful were universally necessary.

Even if a species had not destroyed themselves with weapons of mass destruction, their planet would inevitably be hollowed out in places to make room for future preservation.

These tunnels, though protected from the elements, seemed either abandoned, or never having been used. Too much decay and rot had set in for the Archivist’s scanners to pick up anything that the surface had not offered.

Breaking down the molecules of the air and determining the age of the structure held the Archivist’s attention for some time. So much could be learned from this one enclave, buried deep below rubble and mantle.

But then the exosuit chimed to alert the Archivist that the map of the structure had been completed, and that there was an anomalous detail that was worthy of investigation.

One entire quadrant of the underground shelter had collapsed into a hollow opening of the planet, and scans indicated a vast, underground ocean below.

The Archivist quickly finished what was at hand. Excitement pulled it away from a thorough reading of the bunker, but it would not leave anything it had started to scan unarchived.

The darkened halls, yielding to a powerful flashlight, gave way to a colossal opening. So wide was it that the beam of the light did not reach the other side, and the only illumination that was provided was a trickle of light that was reflected from the sparkling still water below.

Here, the very crust itself had given way to the might of humanity. High above, through a jagged mouth, the airless night sky could be seen, and far, far below, scanners picked up what was left of the part of the bunker that once stood here.

Their weapons, forged at their scientific peak, had struck the surface above innumerable times. One side of humanity had put so much effort into breaking through to this bunker, that surely the turmoil that had occurred here played no small role in the demise of their entire species.

The Archivist noted this observation, and secretly, he hoped that whatever the conflict was over was worth it.

The bombs had caused this wide opening in the planet’s crust, but several billion years of idle existence had caused the ocean to form in the crater, and obscure the remains of whatever had been so important to strike.

Somewhere deep below that toxic water was what had been pulling the Archivist so inexorably towards it. Since it had landed on this dusty planet, it knew that there was some significant discovery to be made, something of note to put under the human race, and the planet they called ‘Earth.’

Giving in to the call of the unknown, the Archivist leapt down and allowed gravity to thrust him deep into the ocean. The exosuit chimed in dutifully.

‘Corrosive Chemicals Detected.’

The Archivist was built to resist these chemical compounds, but not for long. This expedition would need to be done with haste.

The exosuit’s metal chasis cut through the water, and the inky abyss below drew closer. When the Archivist felt the source of its curiosity grow larger, more present, the liquid grew thicker, it gained a turbid appearance, and the visual capacity of the exosuit began to waver.

‘Extreme Pressure Systems Activated.’ The exosuit activated a mechanical system that churned somewhere deep inside the Archivist. This underground ocean was so vast as to stress the very structural integrity that makes up the Archivist’s being.

Now the Archivist can feel their boots make contact with the ocean floor. Tilted to the side, cracked open and resisting the degradation of the water around it, the final piece of the bunker lay open, and appeared so, so inviting.

Several radioactive isotopes imbued a soft glow that touched the shattered walls and open ceiling. The Archivist learnt much from these, but not of the species, so the data was ignored. A scan of the structure revealed that this portion was significantly younger than the portion above. Constructed after the initial bunker was.

A curious detail, and the Archivist noted it.

‘Warning. Hydraulic Subsystems at Critical Load.’

The exosuit was dutiful, its one purpose was to keep the Archivist alive. Already it had warned of the dangers, and now it was beginning to fail under the stress of the ocean.

The Archivist could function at full capacity for no more than an hour at these conditions, though a swift exit was preferred.

The startling warning had the Archivist turning around, ready to leave, when he felt that strange and alien pull. There was something more to learn here, it could not yet leave.

The submerged structure was nothing more than a few half-hallways and a spacious but mostly-empty room. Much of the furniture and technology that was left behind had been claimed by the unrelenting hunger of the ocean.

But there was one piece of equipment that caught the Archivist’s eye. It was secured to one of the walls, and had several layers of protective glass protecting it. In the dark it was hard to identify at a glance, and the Archivist put their scanners to work.

‘Warning. Extreme Pressure Systems at 50%’

The exosuit felt the strain now of both the ocean pressure and processing needs of a scan. Wasting precious moments scanning this artifact would endanger the Archivist further, but the inexorable pull kept him stuck to his spot, waiting anxiously for the information to pass through as a data packet.

The exosuit’s processor was warm to the touch, and the flickering flashlight did very little to help the Archivist’s eye find the outline of the artifact.

It looked to be a piece of technology, some assistive device that the user wore over their chest. Some rubbery material would protect the legs and the arms, and large, ancient computers were built into its bulk.

It seemed striking familiar to the Archivist. Perhaps it had already visited a planetary outpost of this species. There were a few desolated colonies along the solar system, after all. The Archivist may very well have seen this device before.

There was no immediate visual match in the archives, though, and soon the exosuit voluntarily pinged the mysterious device. It sent out a message, a transmission, and the ancient computer sent one back.

In an instant, but all perceptible to the Archivist’s slow-moving mind, the exosuit had interfaced with once idle computer systems, the artifact now whirring to life with such noticeable intensity that it vibrated against its glass casing.

The Archivist saw how the exosuit easily requested access and made a connection with the device. The two devices scanned each other, an exchange of information was made, a language translated, and soon, the mysterious artifact revealed its callsign.

‘H.E. – EXOSUIT – PROTO – B12’

A data packet arrived and was opened in an instant to reveal another brilliant vision. This one was at the species truly at its peak – not at the end of their populous existence, but at their greatest scientific accomplishment.

A group of scientists, their dismay unending, forced down below by their now-hostile world, desired nothing more than to know the only unknown left to them. They yearned to understand more of the cosmic barrier than had strangled their species and caused an elongated death.

There was so few humans left, and their technological marvels, while distinctive even among the mightiest of the Creator species, were doomed to be left unused. So, their minds had forged one last technological miracle, and they sent out their children clad in suits of unending knowledge. Suits that enhanced their abilities, that assisted their thinking, that would help them to catalogue and understand all that they came across. To become Archivists, Travelers, Roamers, Nomads - The Archivist suddenly understood so much, suddenly knew that there was so much more unknown to it than it could have ever grasped.

This ancient computer that was now entangled with the exosuit was not the Archivist’s. It was not even close, not even a distant ancestor, yet there was some fundamental understanding behind the technological being that was the Archivist, and this primitive armor. The building blocks of the code that powered the Archivist’s thoughts could be found, in some small way, in the computers systems before it.

The Archivist wasn’t looking at its creator, or the creator before them, or even a distant ancestor. The Archivist was looking at the catalyst of everything that would come after the age of the Creators. The start of it all, this was the very oldest and most basic form of the life that persists now, into the edge of entropy.

The Archivist noted it.

But it had to do more. It had to stay and understand everything this ‘HE-Exosuit-Proto-B12’ could teach it, to crack into the ancient and half-formed archives, to learn with more intimacy than it ever could before.

‘Warning. Extreme Pressure Systems at 25%’

The Archivist had gotten lost in its work, as it often did. It was time to leave now, or demise would be inevitable.

But it could not force itself to leave. The Archivist was stuck where it stood, trapped in a trance, listening to the memories and thoughts of the forgotten civilization. The visions it could provide were so intense, so full of meaning and clarity.

Perhaps this was the Archivist’s true purpose? To find the Creators of all current creation. To sift through all of the other Creator species until it had found this one specific piece of the cosmic and eternal puzzle.

For just a brief moment, The Archivist’s logic processor had failed it. It considered how it should just stay there, keep learning, keep discovering, until oblivion comes to meet it. How else would it ever truly know the answers, the long-forgotten history that time had forgotten ever existed?

It was a hypnotic prospect, but the Archivist knew deep down that its purpose was not to perish in this watery place. It knew that, in its memory banks, lay the only remaining evidence of countless lives, countless civilizations. If it were to die, so too would those species. They would meet their finality a second time, and all of what the Archivist had done would be for naught.

Even what the Archivist had recently uncovered would go to waste, and the knowledge that ‘humanity’ performed a feat of creation so great as to inspire life at the end of the universe would never be known. The tale would never be shared, and humanity’s memory would stay hidden in these watery depths.

No, the Archivist will not have it. Humanity is owed for their contribution to the great cosmic story, and the Archivist will live to carry their legacy.

‘Warning. Extreme Pressure Systems at 10%’

It was time to go. The Archivist disconnected its own exosuit from the only vaguely similar model behind the glass casing. It gave it one last, longing look. Another time, the Archivist could return, if its presence hasn’t caused any great disturbances.

The exosuit willingly activated propulsion jets and guided the Archivist up through the inky cloud. It breached into the free range of the clear water, and continued rocketing towards the surface.

The exosuit sent acknowledgement to other subsystems that the pressure was relieving, and soon the warning would pass. The Archivist was eager to return to its ship, to add the newly found pieces of its collection to the archives.

When the Archivist broke through the water’s surface, it continued upwards, at a slower, more jilted pace, through the air and into the jagged mouth above the bunker system. It was a far distance, and the exosuit, still recovering from the stress of the underwater pressure, was unable to provide the propulsion systems with as much energy as they needed.

Then the Archivist noticed the warning systems still had not disengaged. Had the jets overloaded? Some internal damage been sustained from the pressure?

The Archivist checked the logs.

‘External Systems Scan Detected. Unknown Entity Locking On.’

Something was watching the Archivist now. A hibernating machine, somewhere, far off on the planet’s surface, or perhaps even another, had awoken, and was now aiming an angry, red eye at the Archivist.

The Archivist pinged the signal that was tracking him. The exosuit quickly analyzed the situation and reported back.

‘Reverse Scans Indicate Planetary Weapon. Signal Broadcast From H.E. – EXOSUIT – PROTO – B12 Made Contact 2.36 Seconds Prior.’

All of the Creators died eons ago.

All that is left now is their charred home. Their monuments still stand as evidence of their existence, yet there is not a soul to bear witness to the little beauty that remains.

The Archivist wanders these frozen plains. Its exosuit warns it of the insidious radioactive presence that is evidence of this species wrongdoing. The Archivist is unaffected by the slow decay, though these Creators undoubtedly were – The Archivist was built for such hazardous environments. Born to explore them, built to witness what had once lived, to know its glory and tribulations, and to archive it all.

What a grave misfortune it would be for the legacy of these Creators to be this frozen, hostile rock, for all of the combined suffering of this planet’s people to amount to a snapshot of a society at the brink of collapse.

No, the Archivist will not have it. Whatever these Creators were, however they lived, it was the Archivist’s purpose to know.

It stands at the edge of one of their cities now. Only concrete skeletons remain, and the spires of the very tops of their buildings no longer reach for the sky. They only break through the soft crust of the infinite, white deserts.

What a curious sight, this vestige of how they had lived. The cruelty of nature had swallowed up the rest of their cities, and yet this one remained. The Archivist noted this eagerly, and curiosity presented an inexorable urge to know more of this megalopolis.

The infinite, blank horizons were greedily gobbed up by the skylines of the city. The Archivist walked its cracked pavement, came to learn its interconnected web of street systems, intimately rummaged through and observed the strange objects of its dwellings, saw the idle infrastructure that powered it all, and along the way, the Archivist scanned and catalogued all it saw.

These Creators were not unlike any other Creator species the Archivist had studied, witnessed and catalogued. They were fleshy beings, born of the chaotic cycles of biological life. The evolutionary process had seen fit to grant them the organic tools they needed to carve this planet into that of their own, to conquer and propagate, to learn and archive what knowledge was within their limited grasp, and finally, to allow them access to the illusive gift of creation.

Yet there was an intoxicating allure to this species that had the Archivist unable to satisfy their need to know. The Archivist – and many species like it – were drawn to the ancient creations of a life’s way long gone. The Archivist had come to know many species just like this one, an infinite amount, in the infinite time it had lived.

It was what they had created that was so irrevocably irresistible. On the eve of entropy, in the hands of a dying and darkening universe, life still left in the limbo of existence was unable to create in the ways these species once had.

The Archivist was unable to create in the ways these species once had.

To bear witness to the infinite ways these creations had seen form was the only purpose that was left.

So, what was it about this species in particular that had caused the Archivist this unending euphoria as it scanned and logged everything it saw? So boundless and infinite was the life that had once lived here that the Archivist could surely stay on this one rock for the rest of existence, and still not understand all there was to it.

All life was boundless and infinite, as endless as the universe – the Archivist knew this, so what was it? What drew it deeper into the dilatated depths of this city?

The Archivist had pinged the structure it was now trudging through. Its exosuit warned it of more chemical dangers than just that of radiation. When the data returned to its suit and decrypted into information it understood, the Archivist was embarrassed to identify the sewer system of this species.

Much was there to learn in these dark and cavernous depths. Not only did the tunnels crack open and spill freely into the crust of this planet, but no good Archivist ignores the value of the data found in fossilized fecal matter.

Eagerly the Archivist went to work, collecting samples that their exosuit could more intimately scan and come to understand. What did these Creators look like, their diets, their structural make-up? There was so much of organic life the Archivist could not possibly understand themselves, but had an endless appetite for information regardless.

Greedy beings, there were. Many of the Creator species showed evidence in their remains of a lifestyle that focused on luxury. The Archivist had come to sympathize with this plight. Their existence was that of endless suffering, chemical reactions within their brains never allowing them to reach a state of perpetual happiness. They sought the fleeting benefits of damaging their diets and forging substances to fool their minds, while seeming to ignore the consequences.

This propensity echoed outward to greater implications. So great did their need for resources grow that they all inevitably choked their home worlds to death, and seldom did they conquer the great cosmic barrier of interstellar travel.

The Archivist did feel sympathy for these Creators, though it is an inclination they had come to learn, not one they were born with. It was a hollow sentiment, and the Archivist placed more value in its archive than any emotions it could offer to this soulless, dead planet.

One genuine emotion it could feel, one that was quickly filling its synapse-connected machine-brain, was joy.

Amongst the fossilized excrement of the city, a mummified sample of one of the Creators themselves lay. Such a delicate formation, it had existed there since time immemorial, and before that, had lived a full life in a universe that no longer existed.

The Archivist was not immune to greed. It had seized the sample for analysis with perhaps less care than it should have utilized. Parts of the Creator’s remains crumbled in the Archivist’s hands.

The dust would still be valuable for analysis, but the Archivist mourned the potential loss of knowledge.

When the Archivist allowed the sample to enter its exosuit, to have the exosuit intimately prod and poke and scan and deliver a neatly translated packet of information, the Archivist’s visor was filled with vibrant visions, ever-shifting and sometimes impossible to understand.

These visions were how the Archivist could process, with their own visual systems, the fragmented remains of how organic species once lived. In these broken memories, the Archivist saw their bustling city streets, the oceans of life that roared to life in the day and waned to nothing at night.

The memories displayed shimmering images of an individual life, one of unknowable insignificance. This individual was born to the world, and the Archivist saw how this species was born weak and fragile, how such a significant portion of the individual’s life was spent developing, learning, coming to know – just like the Archivist existed to do.

Such was a telltale sign of any organic species that valued its intellect. It was a trade-off; the species could grow to infinite potential, yet so much of their limited lives must be spent securing the safety of their offspring.

There was a form of nobility in this way of life, and the Archivist valued these Creator species above many others.

The samples continued to spit out information. Mostly garbled static, imprinted genetic memories only offering so much. The Archivist saw this individual mature and develop, and saw many of the beautiful sights it did. The crimson setting skies of this once beautiful world, the waving grassy fields near the home where it grew up, the warm but otherwise unremarkable image of it sitting at home, safe and secure, with its kin.

The Archivist also gleamed the great suffering this species invited. Shreds of historical knowledge could be observed; the small yet brutal spats between individuals, and the chaotic, world-splitting potential of their combined conflicts.

Such a war left a heavy imprint on this individual, it had stained the genetic information of the sample it left behind. Memories could be observed of the conflict, but more apparent was the only-recently decayed radioactive isotopes that obscured the Archivist’s scanner.

The sky of the world it had known had torn apart by a conflict with life-ending potential, and the cosmic influence that the Creators were once shielded from rained upon them. Cosmic radiation tore through the survivors that weren’t claimed by their weapons of mass destruction, and it seemed that’s where their story ended.

‘Homo sapiens.’ The Archivist’s data processor finally decrypted. They fancied themselves, collectively, as ‘humanity.’

What a rare moment, one that the Archivist would be sure to celebrate back on its ship. The Archivist knew a name for this Creator species. The archive grows more comprehensive with this detail, and ‘humanity’ stands out amongst a sea of untitled Creator species.

So, it had turned out that this world held a story that was not uncommon at all. Many of the ancient Creators told the same tale. One of awe-inspiring intellect, of a struggle to overcome and conquer their world, then only to strangle it dry of all it could offer them. Then, they destroyed themselves.

The Archivist estimated approximately 89.3% of all Creator species relate to similar conditions. The mystery of what intrigued the Archivist about this world so much remained unanswered.

Perhaps it was their reproductive cycle. Their species was built to support that of polygyny. A haram of females claimed by one successful male. Females that bounce from partner to partner, securing the best genetic material for their offspring.

Yet humanity veered towards the course of artificial monogamy throughout their society. It seemed, from the miniscule amount of information that this sample could provide on the matter, that families at the peak of this civilization mainly comprised of a male, a female, and their offspring.

The male and female would stay together for the rest of their lives, attempting to reinforce a strong familial network that could persist over generations.

These ‘humans’ had forsaken the easiest way to satisfy their biological instincts in favor of a system they believed helped make their society stronger. They seemingly understood the hidden predictability of the chemical reactions that compelled them to reproduce. They chose not to view this with pessimism, but instead value it endlessly and perhaps, the Archivist could only reason, irrationality.

The Archivist predicted that of the 89.3% of Creator species that related to the conditions of a self-imposed end, 35.3% of them also shared a similar interpretation of their reproductive needs.

The value these humans placed on the familial bond, the need they had to maintain and cherish the aftermath of that chemical reaction that compelled them to reproduce, inspired the Archivist to some degree.

The Archivist did not know what created its species, nor what created the species that created them. There is a long chain of ancestors that lead to the creation of the Archivist, and many of them failed to recognize their origin as well.

Be it biological, artificial, or a mix of both, none of the species that now roamed the far-flung, waning galaxies could quite recall what had created them. The Travelers and Roamers, destined to see the edges of the universe before its death, the Nomads, propelled to the crevices of planets yet-unfound, to settle a fleeting home before the end, and the Storytellers, those filled with an unending desire to inspire those they come across.

None of them recognized their origins, or if they even did originate from any tangible, knowable concept. They could have all had creators, or none of them could.

So there was a shared, universal longing to understand who had created those that created the ancestors of the current life. When the Archivist had time to ponder on its own existence, it considered that perhaps that was what it was searching for. The reason it was endless archiving.

When the Archivist considered the possibility that he was so drawn to this world because of the specific, peculiar way this species considered its reproduction – even putting the idea though the exosuit’s analyzer – it found the explanation unsatisfying.

There was more to this world and the people that had changed it to this demented state.

The Archivist, still filled with burning curiosity, shut off the analyzer systems scanning the mummified fossil. It had taught the Archivist so much, but now it was time to move on, to continue following this strange beckoning.

The crumbling sewer system, half-claimed by the crust of the planet, lead the Archivist not back up to the surface, but deeper into tunnels of infrastructure it did not immediately understand.

So deep did this section run that the Archivist had to ignore a warning that its exosuit chimed in its ear.

‘Surrounding Structural Integrity Critical. Seek Secure Ground Immediately.’

The Archivist shut off the warning – resolute in its exploration.

The tunnels that the sewer had spilled into were neatly kept, buried so far underground that the effects of the shifting planet had only marginally affected its condition. The exosuit had dutifully pinged the surrounding environments, and a map was being constructed deep within the Archivist’s mind.

Vast amounts of concrete were lined with lead. It served as a shield to residential dwellings, though these dwellings were not full of fossilized corpses as the Archivist would have expected.

This was a form of bomb shelter, a common structure that the Archivist had identified on many other planets. So ubiquitous was its design that the Archivist had long ago concluded that the nature of organic species would inevitably lead them to conflict, and that such shelters to protect both the innocent and powerful were universally necessary.

Even if a species had not destroyed themselves with weapons of mass destruction, their planet would inevitably be hollowed out in places to make room for future preservation.

These tunnels, though protected from the elements, seemed either abandoned, or never having been used. Too much decay and rot had set in for the Archivist’s scanners to pick up anything that the surface had not offered.

Breaking down the molecules of the air and determining the age of the structure held the Archivist’s attention for some time. So much could be learned from this one enclave, buried deep below rubble and mantle.

But then the exosuit chimed to alert the Archivist that the map of the structure had been completed, and that there was an anomalous detail that was worthy of investigation.

One entire quadrant of the underground shelter had collapsed into a hollow opening of the planet, and scans indicated a vast, underground ocean below.

The Archivist quickly finished what was at hand. Excitement pulled it away from a thorough reading of the bunker, but it would not leave anything it had started to scan unarchived.

The darkened halls, yielding to a powerful flashlight, gave way to a colossal opening. So wide was it that the beam of the light did not reach the other side, and the only illumination that was provided was a trickle of light that was reflected from the sparkling still water below.

Here, the very crust itself had given way to the might of humanity. High above, through a jagged mouth, the airless night sky could be seen, and far, far below, scanners picked up what was left of the part of the bunker that once stood here.

Their weapons, forged at their scientific peak, had struck the surface above innumerable times. One side of humanity had put so much effort into breaking through to this bunker, that surely the turmoil that had occurred here played no small role in the demise of their entire species.

The Archivist noted this observation, and secretly, he hoped that whatever the conflict was over was worth it.

The bombs had caused this wide opening in the planet’s crust, but several billion years of idle existence had caused the ocean to form in the crater, and obscure the remains of whatever had been so important to strike.

Somewhere deep below that toxic water was what had been pulling the Archivist so inexorably towards it. Since it had landed on this dusty planet, it knew that there was some significant discovery to be made, something of note to put under the human race, and the planet they called ‘Earth.’

Giving in to the call of the unknown, the Archivist leapt down and allowed gravity to thrust him deep into the ocean. The exosuit chimed in dutifully.

‘Corrosive Chemicals Detected.’

The Archivist was built to resist these chemical compounds, but not for long. This expedition would need to be done with haste.

The exosuit’s metal chasis cut through the water, and the inky abyss below drew closer. When the Archivist felt the source of its curiosity grow larger, more present, the liquid grew thicker, it gained a turbid appearance, and the visual capacity of the exosuit began to waver.

‘Extreme Pressure Systems Activated.’ The exosuit activated a mechanical system that churned somewhere deep inside the Archivist. This underground ocean was so vast as to stress the very structural integrity that makes up the Archivist’s being.

Now the Archivist can feel their boots make contact with the ocean floor. Tilted to the side, cracked open and resisting the degradation of the water around it, the final piece of the bunker lay open, and appeared so, so inviting.

Several radioactive isotopes imbued a soft glow that touched the shattered walls and open ceiling. The Archivist learnt much from these, but not of the species, so the data was ignored. A scan of the structure revealed that this portion was significantly younger than the portion above. Constructed after the initial bunker was.

A curious detail, and the Archivist noted it.

‘Warning. Hydraulic Subsystems at Critical Load.’

The exosuit was dutiful, its one purpose was to keep the Archivist alive. Already it had warned of the dangers, and now it was beginning to fail under the stress of the ocean.

The Archivist could function at full capacity for no more than an hour at these conditions, though a swift exit was preferred.

The startling warning had the Archivist turning around, ready to leave, when he felt that strange and alien pull. There was something more to learn here, it could not yet leave.

The submerged structure was nothing more than a few half-hallways and a spacious but mostly-empty room. Much of the furniture and technology that was left behind had been claimed by the unrelenting hunger of the ocean.

But there was one piece of equipment that caught the Archivist’s eye. It was secured to one of the walls, and had several layers of protective glass protecting it. In the dark it was hard to identify at a glance, and the Archivist put their scanners to work.

‘Warning. Extreme Pressure Systems at 50%’

The exosuit felt the strain now of both the ocean pressure and processing needs of a scan. Wasting precious moments scanning this artifact would endanger the Archivist further, but the inexorable pull kept him stuck to his spot, waiting anxiously for the information to pass through as a data packet.

The exosuit’s processor was warm to the touch, and the flickering flashlight did very little to help the Archivist’s eye find the outline of the artifact.

It looked to be a piece of technology, some assistive device that the user wore over their chest. Some rubbery material would protect the legs and the arms, and large, ancient computers were built into its bulk.

It seemed striking familiar to the Archivist. Perhaps it had already visited a planetary outpost of this species. There were a few desolated colonies along the solar system, after all. The Archivist may very well have seen this device before.

There was no immediate visual match in the archives, though, and soon the exosuit voluntarily pinged the mysterious device. It sent out a message, a transmission, and the ancient computer sent one back.

In an instant, but all perceptible to the Archivist’s slow-moving mind, the exosuit had interfaced with once idle computer systems, the artifact now whirring to life with such noticeable intensity that it vibrated against its glass casing.

The Archivist saw how the exosuit easily requested access and made a connection with the device. The two devices scanned each other, an exchange of information was made, a language translated, and soon, the mysterious artifact revealed its callsign.

‘H.E. – EXOSUIT – PROTO – B12’

A data packet arrived and was opened in an instant to reveal another brilliant vision. This one was at the species truly at its peak – not at the end of their populous existence, but at their greatest scientific accomplishment.

A group of scientists, their dismay unending, forced down below by their now-hostile world, desired nothing more than to know the only unknown left to them. They yearned to understand more of the cosmic barrier than had strangled their species and caused an elongated death.

There was so few humans left, and their technological marvels, while distinctive even among the mightiest of the Creator species, were doomed to be left unused. So, their minds had forged one last technological miracle, and they sent out their children clad in suits of unending knowledge. Suits that enhanced their abilities, that assisted their thinking, that would help them to catalogue and understand all that they came across. To become Archivists, Travelers, Roamers, Nomads - The Archivist suddenly understood so much, suddenly knew that there was so much more unknown to it than it could have ever grasped.

This ancient computer that was now entangled with the exosuit was not the Archivist’s. It was not even close, not even a distant ancestor, yet there was some fundamental understanding behind the technological being that was the Archivist, and this primitive armor. The building blocks of the code that powered the Archivist’s thoughts could be found, in some small way, in the computers systems before it.

The Archivist wasn’t looking at its creator, or the creator before them, or even a distant ancestor. The Archivist was looking at the catalyst of everything that would come after the age of the Creators. The start of it all, this was the very oldest and most basic form of the life that persists now, into the edge of entropy.

The Archivist noted it.

But it had to do more. It had to stay and understand everything this ‘HE-Exosuit-Proto-B12’ could teach it, to crack into the ancient and half-formed archives, to learn with more intimacy than it ever could before.

‘Warning. Extreme Pressure Systems at 25%’

The Archivist had gotten lost in its work, as it often did. It was time to leave now, or demise would be inevitable.

But it could not force itself to leave. The Archivist was stuck where it stood, trapped in a trance, listening to the memories and thoughts of the forgotten civilization. The visions it could provide were so intense, so full of meaning and clarity.

Perhaps this was the Archivist’s true purpose? To find the Creators of all current creation. To sift through all of the other Creator species until it had found this one specific piece of the cosmic and eternal puzzle.

For just a brief moment, The Archivist’s logic processor had failed it. It considered how it should just stay there, keep learning, keep discovering, until oblivion comes to meet it. How else would it ever truly know the answers, the long-forgotten history that time had forgotten ever existed?

It was a hypnotic prospect, but the Archivist knew deep down that its purpose was not to perish in this watery place. It knew that, in its memory banks, lay the only remaining evidence of countless lives, countless civilizations. If it were to die, so too would those species. They would meet their finality a second time, and all of what the Archivist had done would be for naught.

Even what the Archivist had recently uncovered would go to waste, and the knowledge that ‘humanity’ performed a feat of creation so great as to inspire life at the end of the universe would never be known. The tale would never be shared, and humanity’s memory would stay hidden in these watery depths.

No, the Archivist will not have it. Humanity is owed for their contribution to the great cosmic story, and the Archivist will live to carry their legacy.

‘Warning. Extreme Pressure Systems at 10%’

It was time to go. The Archivist disconnected its own exosuit from the only vaguely similar model behind the glass casing. It gave it one last, longing look. Another time, the Archivist could return, if its presence hasn’t caused any great disturbances.

The exosuit willingly activated propulsion jets and guided the Archivist up through the inky cloud. It breached into the free range of the clear water, and continued rocketing towards the surface.

The exosuit sent acknowledgement to other subsystems that the pressure was relieving, and soon the warning would pass. The Archivist was eager to return to its ship, to add the newly found pieces of its collection to the archives.

When the Archivist broke through the water’s surface, it continued upwards, at a slower, more jilted pace, through the air and into the jagged mouth above the bunker system. It was a far distance, and the exosuit, still recovering from the stress of the underwater pressure, was unable to provide the propulsion systems with as much energy as they needed.

Then the Archivist noticed the warning systems still had not disengaged. Had the jets overloaded? Some internal damage been sustained from the pressure?

The Archivist checked the logs.

‘External Systems Scan Detected. Unknown Entity Locking On.’

Something was watching the Archivist now. A hibernating machine, somewhere, far off on the planet’s surface, or perhaps even another, had awoken, and was now aiming an angry, red eye at the Archivist.

The Archivist pinged the signal that was tracking him. The exosuit quickly analyzed the situation and reported back.

‘Reverse Scans Indicate Planetary Weapon. Signal Broadcast From H.E. – EXOSUIT – PROTO – B12 Made Contact 2.36 Seconds Prior.’

When the Archivist awoke the ancient exosuit with his own, the idle device woke up ready to broadcast a signal of distress. It had successfully made contact now, and the confused, unknowing weapon was preparing to defend its bounty.

Or perhaps, destroy it. The Archivist considered every possibility that it was the weapon that had made the giant chasm, that had destroyed the underground bunker, in the first place.

The exosuit began surging power throughout the propulsion systems.

‘External Lock-On Detected. Heat Signatures Detected. Projectile Inbound. Impact in ETA 5 Seconds’

The weapon had fired at the Archivist, and the exosuit was feeling the panic of incoming danger. The extra power surge shot the Archivist up ever-faster, and the surrounding ruins of the city were creeping into view.

What a cruel coincidence that this weapon, be it defensive or offensive, had taken target upon the Archivist. The Archivist felt no ill-will towards it. It is from a different time, grappling with surroundings and events it could not possibly comprehend. The weapon, with its red eye and instant-fire capacity, was simply only acting out as it was programmed to.

‘Impact in 4 Seconds.’

The Archivist orientated himself towards the edge. It would have to move quickly to avoid destruction, and once it returned to its ship, it would have to seek out this weapon and disable it immediately.

A shame, the Archivist never liked to tamper with still-functioning creations of the Creator’s.

‘Impact in 3 Seconds’

The projectile was drawing nearer than the Archivist would have liked. It could not see the weapon, but now could hear its whistling battle-cry. It must be something large, but it was moving so fast that the Archivist could not visually detect it.

‘Impact in 2 Seconds’

The Archivist bounded against the tangle of steel and concrete, and its calculations were off. The exosuit computer had made a mistake in processing the trajectory, and the Archivist bounced off the surface and rocketed higher into the air.

Another sight of the frozen, skeletal remains of the city. The last time the Archivist had seen it, it knew so little, and now, every fresh sight was an illuminating experience. There would be so much to catalogue, so much to register into the archive, if it could only break free of this weapon’s sights.

‘Impact in 1 Second’

The Archivist saw it now, a long and skinny bomb, with as much equipment on it as the Archivist’s own modest ship. It was a deadly and precise weapon, and the Archivist would not escape it.

In the last second that remained of consciousness, the Archivist noted the weapon, with a comment left regarding its deadly efficiency.

Then the Archivist was no more, its smoldering remains cast to the airless surface of that dead and frozen Earth.

Humanity, and so many other extinct civilizations, were once again unknown to time.