The Archivist

When our shuttle landed on the floating pad that had been prepared for us near the anomaly, I was woefully unprepared for how thick the ocean air would be when the door opened. Usually, there was more time to adjust to the climate of a new planet. With locus travel within the Tapestry, everything went much faster, for unfamiliar planets we get inoculations on arrival, then spend a few days to a few weeks in quarantine in order to limit our exposure and transmission of pathogens. And it is generally standard practice to slowly acclimate anima to the new climatology while in quarantine. Arriving by ship, we had plenty of time to receive what information we needed to synthesize all immunizations necessary and had already been quarantined long enough to protect the colonists, so we get the pleasure of the shock of thick humid air after so much time in the dryness of a ship.

My first view upon stepping outside of the shuttle was equally remarkable as it was unremarkable. A vast still ocean spanned to the horizon under a cloudless but hazy cyan sky. I walked around the ship to the opposite side of the landing platform to find a half dozen landing pads surrounding a central hub. It was utilitarian like any Ceph construction is. They use a lot more contours and curves in their design than human architecture does, but essentially no embellishments. It had a much broader feel inside than the footprint would suggest. The space held a receiving area with a clear view in all directions through hyaline walls. A central lift with no physical controls or indicators drew a circle on the floor. To those unfamiliar, it would easily be mistaken for an empty room.

I took a few deep breaths and looked out of the windows on the far side of the room. We had been traveling for years to arrive here. It is the way of things for the Archivists. We live a life guided by the unveiling of newfound antiquities. The discovery of novel ruins. The whispers of ancient creeds. Wherever unknown knowledge of the past is held, that is where we are dispatched. It is solitary work unless you are a student, or a patron I suppose as well. Fortunately, I haven’t been given that... privilege. For the rest of us in the middle, we travel alone. We have a dispatch of assistants, robotic mostly. And whatever crew is flying in the direction that has been chartered for us for the duration of the journey. But only ever one of the discipline. One who records the archive while traveling alone between the worlds of the Tapestry.

This world is outside of our network. Most of our work is done on the known worlds. Derelict colonies long abandoned. Artifacts that crop up in unexpected locales. Novel stories that hold threads of truth. All of these carry our Order. Much of the history of the Tapestry is known. Some is forgotten or misremembered. Even less is truly destroyed. We work to preserve the details that weave together the fabric of history. We do this out of apish curiosity. We do this so that we can learn from our past. We do it so that we may create a more informed future. But there has always been discussion, in the millennia that our order has existed traveling among the Tapestry. The question is what to do when we encounter something truly strange. Something more alien than the bird-folk Lorka who delivered me. Would we add it to the archive? If it is so truly alien, how does it fit into the millennia of interwoven threads of the Anima of the Tapestry? Can it fit? If it is so alien, would it even hold relevance to us? Could we even understand it? Many say that it is absolutely relevant to us, that we are kin with all life in the universe, it is proven by the nature of our sisters, brothers, and others across the Tapestry. Their opponents would argue that it isn’t relevant to the Anima. If we haven’t experienced a history that is not ours, we can’t know the lessons within. I would say the questions themselves are irrelevant. We can’t know how to answer these questions until we see what it is that we are asking the question of. How can we see if it fits into the archive unless try to categorize it? I suspect that is why I was chosen for this assignment. I wasn’t carrying any sort of presumptuousness and could work objectively. At least that is how the elder council probably saw it. I will never know, I was simply delivered my new assignment by another Archivist who was sent to Serkai to take over my work with the ancient, damaged Locus there.

I stepped into the circle and the lift began to lower automatically, sensing my motivation. I saw the crew of the landing shuttle enter the hub as I lowered into the floor. They looked around hoping for some refreshments or a place to sit, and found little in the way of amenities. In the least, a simple broad view would do wonders for their aerial minds. And after unloading my dispatch of aids and equipment, they would be free to explore the terrestrial city and be on their way.

The planet we are on is technically a moon, one of many that orbit the beta class gas giant Sinturon 3. The settlers have named it Cortaxa. They consist of a mix of Tapestry species. The moon being primarily ocean surfaced drew a predominance of the aquatic Cephs, who make up around seventy percent of the settlers’ population. I am hoping that they will be more hospitable to guests than their natural reclusive tendencies on established worlds.

The discovery was found submerged in the ocean surrounding one of the few terrestrially inhabited landmasses of the colony. When the colonists first arrived they picked up anomalous signals when surveying for mining and construction sites. As they investigated the origin of the signals, they found structures consumed by the ever-shifting ocean floor. The aquatic Cephs took lead and began excavating and quickly realized that this structure was not a remnant of the Tapestry’s. Not of the current colonization or of some undocumented earlier expedition. The structures had been established for a very long time. Much longer than the Tapestry had formally existed in the least. The settlers soon sent word to the order, and I was dispatched.

It was a short ride down to the newly excavated seafloor. As I broke through the ceiling of the bubble I immediately had a sense of otherness. I could see much of the structure from above and the only word that I had to describe it to myself was alien. It had a gross structure not unlike an established Locus, but it felt more irregular. Or rather, the regularity was foreign, based on some other foundation. Maybe based on some other maths. Hard to pinpoint at a glance, but that was my initial feeling.

I had begun receiving messages and updates from the colony upon waking from stasis. Much had changed. Three hundred and some odd years will do that to a budding slice of civilization. The terrestrial Anima built a city, with an orbital lift and accompanying station. Their numbers grew immensely. The Cephs have maintained their secrecy. They have admitted to constructing two settlements. An aquatic one, typically spread out, leaving plenty of breathing room for their solitary minds. And an orbital one. Their numbers are unknown. It is generally a typically healthy growing colony with a self-sustaining economy. The Locus is growing as expected and they are near developing a tier 1 connection with a hub world. It feels like just a couple of weeks ago I was seeing messages from a ramshackle outland colony, and now I ride in on a tidal wave of civilization.

I was informed of the developments surrounding the discovery as well. The Cephs were able to excavate what they think to be the bulk of the installation. After some more preliminary data collection, they built a bubble around it. But after that news, nothing. The last entry was from decades ago and simply explains that a Researcher Clipt was assigned as the keeper of the site, to record anything of note for the Archivist, and to aid in whatever way possible upon their arrival. It is possible that they are keeping their research for me directly. Or perhaps something happened socially and the priority of watching an ancient ruin fell to the wayside.

I arrived at the bottom of the lift and found the anomaly about ten meters away. The construction was unlike anything I had seen in life or in the archive. It was no ruin, the pillars glowed noticeably in intricate patterns. They were reminiscent of circuitry but dynamic and elegant. Whatever it meant it was still running. It was confirmation of what I had already viewed in the few images and holos I had been provided with. What I hadn’t been ready for was the hue and gentle rippling of the light through the pattern. It was intangible. I still don’t have words to describe it. When I got closer, the light seemed interested in me. It concentrated around me as if it recognized my presence.

As I stared at the pillar from close range I found the physical structure was even more intricate than appeared at a glance or at a distance. I suspected it to be some form of metamaterial microstructure. I could almost see into it like it had some form of open lattice structure on an extremely miniature scale. While it was fascinating and complex, I couldn’t tell what the benefit of such a structure would be. While technically possible for a variety of advanced manufacturers across the Tapestry, materials this intricate were only used in small scale and highly advanced equipment with limited use. As far as I could tell, this whole installation, which spanned at least a hundred meters across was all constructed in the same way.

The more I observed it, the more organic it seemed. Not in chemistry, that seemed metallic, possibly mineral, maybe some synthetic components threaded in. But in the structure, it felt as if it had grown in that spot. I looked down at the ground surrounding the pillar, searching for a sign of what may be underneath. But all I found was a damp former seafloor. It abutted the pillar, which seemed to run into the ground with no intent on stopping any time soon, the grain running no differently from the rest of the vertical surfaces. I scratched my foot on the ground to dig away at the remaining sand and sediment, to find solid stone no more than two centimeters down. I had no way of knowing if the pillar was fused with the bedrock or not, but had full intention of performing more tests to find out. My eyes dragged all the way up the column. The top tapered off and the grain broke its linearity and lead to a jagged crystalline point.

I proceeded into the core of the structure. The pattern I could observe from the lift was even harder to recognize from the ground. It felt more like walking through a grove of trees. As I came closer to the center, some pillars merged overhead and made jagged gothic arches. Deeper in they connected further to form a lattice ceiling, which then threaded into more of a screen. Some light was still visible through it, but it was semi-opaque, mostly devoid of any recognizable openings.

The whole structure pulsed and breathed that sickly teal light pattern. It began to scratch at the back of my thoughts. First, in the back of my head, occipital lobes getting overloaded. But then it spread. It overtook me. A grating, gnawing feeling like shards of ice and sand pouring across my brain. The light began to make sense to me. It guided me closer and closer to the focus of the structure, directly in the center. There was a small flat outcropping. It stood thirty centimeters off the ground, the flat top laced with an even more intricate web of the light. I stepped onto it and blacked out.

When I opened my eyes all I saw was white and felt a sharp pain. A migraine, not atypical for me, but I hadn’t had one in a long time. Not since coming into my own amongst the Order. I kept my eyes closed, but could hear a methodical chattering shuffle echoing around me. And in my head, I could hear… humming. I was in the presence of a Ceph. Presumably, Researcher Clipt had found me.

Yes, it’s me, welcome to… well I am not really sure where we’ve ended up, but don’t worry we can go back just as easily.

Telepathy was something that always felt a bit jarring when you hadn’t experienced it for a while. The cephs learned long ago how to communicate with the rest of the Anima mind-to-mind. Along with the Ceph’s familiar tentacles reaching into my mind, there was something else there. Something truly alien. It felt similar to what I felt before blacking out. A gnawing cold grit streamed through my scalp.

Yes, I feel that too. It isn’t me if you need reassurance. I believe it to be the anomaly. Much more advanced than it appears to be. You might call it magic.

The cephs liked to poke fun at the terrestrial concept of magic, they were never believers. An intrinsically utilitarian species, they grew from a place of primordial self gene editing, so they never developed a sense of spiritualism or a maker. That isn’t to say they don’t believe some intangible things can happen, but they stand by the idea that everything can be explained. This isn’t to say the other species who have a history of magical thinking don’t believe the same thing, it really is just wordplay, but for the Cephs the sense of the fantastical that we perceive when thinking about magic as opposed to science makes them think of us as simpletons who can’t break free of our stone age roots. And of course, as the coarse solitary creatures they are, they always insist on pointing this out.

I don’t mean anything by it, if you weren’t intelligent you wouldn’t have been sent to archive these findings.

They pick up almost everything running through our conscious minds. With individuals who are so abrasive, I am sure it has led to more than a few misunderstandings.

As the bloom of awakening wore down, the first thing I noticed was that the space was significantly brighter. We were no longer in a supplementally lit underwater worksite. There was sky directly opposite the lattice above us and daylight flooding in between the columns around the periphery of the central room. The columns looked the same in construction. The arrangement felt slightly different. If these are grown, it may follow an organic structuring, adapting to the location it is established. The structure appeared to be a form of travel Locus.

Yes, that was my first thought as well. They look similar in structure. And while they are lifeless, no drya, no fae, no anima-like entities at all, they still took us from there to here. So the function is the same.

But where is here, where have we been transported to, what is this place? And where are the Anima who inhabit it? If this structure is evolved why would it have a need to transport Anima to other worlds? There must have been Anima who created it, or engineered it or grew alongside it like us. If they are gone, how does the structure continue to function? Did they destroy themselves? Did they encounter something else out in the cosmos, that did them that kindness? Who were these Anima?

Come, come. There is much to show you, and little time before dusk. It gets very cold here at night, so we must head back before then, but we can come again in twenty standard hours from that point. Let’s give you a brief introduction.

Clipt led me out of the locus structure and onto a desolate plain. Or rather a large flat developed area that went on for hundreds of meters without any vertical structures. The ground all appeared to be similar material to the pillars of the anomaly, I could now tell that the pillars grew out of a substrate that spanned great distances across the ground. If there were any seams I had not yet recognized one. There were occasional openings in the ground structure. Their arrangement followed the same radial non-pattern as the pillars of the locus. It was unfamiliar but not altogether entropic. What looked like long-dead soil, and possibly the remains of plant matter filled the voids in the ground. Everything a silver-gray. The structures, the soil, the sky. The only break in it was the undulating sickly teal light that pulsed underfoot, but against the heliotrope daylight cascading down on us it was faint in our immediate area and invisible beyond that if it was there at all.

I believe it is there as far as the eye can see, I placed some cameras and even stayed as long as my envirosuit could sustain one night. The rippling reminded me of bioluminescent dinoflagellate blooms floating on the waves of oceans. You might find it beautiful. Come, this way.

Clipt led me across the great promenade to one of the closest buildings. The air felt synthetic, like on a ship without a biosphere to cleanse the air. The taste of a mechemically refreshed atmosphere may vary, but it was always distinct from the air produced by a symphony of plants and animals. The chemical words of the trees and undergrowth wafting through softens the composition of fresh air. Even the smell of rot can have a sickly sweetness in the underbrush of a lush forest. The smell of life in perpetuity. We crossed a threshold out of the promenade, it was roughly circular and marked at the edges by a gentle upwards slope toward the buildings. They were much more vast than they seemed at a distance. They towered dozens of meters in the sky before us. The structures maintained continuity from the anomaly and the ground, the building growing up out of the surface in intricate and lifelike structures. A complete lack of familiarity and context made it impossible to tell if the structures were purely for utility or if they were rich with embellishments. We walked in through an immense vaulted doorway that slid open with our proximity.

Inside, Clipt led me through a great hall. A starship could easily have been housed inside. Much larger than anything I had previously encountered. While it didn’t have the regular lines of construction that I am accustomed to, it did have a regularity to it, like standing in an ancient grove of Drya that had bent themselves to the aid of some Anima’s needs. The light was blocked by the tight lattices above, but the fused trunks of the walls each throbbed with the sickly teal light, filling the room. I could feel that itch in the back of my skull creeping into my consciousness as we progressed deeper into the building.

We walked to an opening in the left wall about three-quarters of the way back. Inside there were a series of half pillars, spaced out evenly with a natural pattern. Clipt stepped next to one of the pillars and ran a tentacle up the side.

Come, this one I have found most enlightening. There is much here for you to learn. But this one may answer some of your most pressing queries. Step up and place a limb on it.

I walked to the pillar and placed a hand on the top. That gnawing at the back of my skull broke free and flooded through my psyche. My vision blurred. A hum grew in my head. Then a vision began to take shape in my mind’s eye. An unfamiliar Anima took shape. It was insect-like overall with the body segmented in a similar way, but softer. Four legs and two arms. Its hands had three fingers, each with four segments. The face was… irregular. Three eyes, two of which were front-side set, and one in the top-center. The mouth was not completely unlike a human mouth, but smaller. No nose to speak of, but organs to the sides of the mouth which may have been breathing orifices, or sensory. No ears either. A fan-like crest with holes in it crossed from one side of the head to the other, starting just above and behind the eyes.

It stood, static for a few moments before it began to speak without its mouth moving.

We are the Kunskia, of Talakun, and believe we have made a grave error. We hope this message will fall into our archives as a pointless concern. We have begun an experiment of the grandest scale we have ever attempted. We have spent millions of cycles building components of a vast machine derived from the same geometry as the Projectors. We have harvested whole star systems for raw material to build these components and brought them all back to this, our home system. Our star has been in decline and we have been preparing for the coming end. Many among us felt that the only way that we could save ourselves was to transport our whole people to a new system that has much life left in it. And thus began our great project. A system-sized Projector able to send Talakun and all of our lesser worlds to a new home. We record this message now because we are on the precipice of ignition and some among us have reason to believe that a machine of this sort on this scale may have a different outcome. The maths have made some assumptions. And the miscalculations may be fatal to Talakun, or worse to the whole system. Following this recording will be an analysis of the outcomes. May the ancients decree me a fool.

The strange creature twisted and raised its head. It had an air of solemnity to it. Then disappeared. And a series of analytics appeared. The machine fired as intended, but as the Animus in the recording feared, it had a different outcome than intended. The planet was not transported to a new system. When the Projector came to full power, instead of the planet disappearing and reappearing in another system as intended, the stars opposite revealing themselves. The beam focus hit the planet, and it rapidly decayed into a black cloud obscuring everything that ought to be shining through like a black hole. Readings showed that the gravity remained the same, and the volume of space did as well. It just went dark. No analytics could explain it. And as soon as there wasn’t a Talakun visible. There seemingly wasn’t a Kunskia to research the analytics further. The system marked that all psychic links to the billions of Kunskia across all of their worlds, in this system and others, immediately and unwaveringly ceased. Additionally, all biological environment systems immediately reached a point of critical failure as a result of the predominant lifeforms dying, and synthetic atmospheres were established by the remaining technological systems. The experiment succeeded in erasing the planet from existence, and seemingly all of its progeny as well. I looked Clipt in the eye, shocked and uncertain how to process this information.

I think it is a good thing we learned to leave our home behind.