Cleaning Up After The Ancients - Chapter 156

Chapter 156 - Ancestor's Lament

Stepping up to the main control console, Eventus wasn't even remotely surprised when a hologram flickered to life in front of the crystalline pillar.

The tan dark haired woman that appeared was familiar to Eventus from his recent trek to the Antarctic outpost, though her holographic appearance had a number of clear suggestions that she was under heavy stress that had been absent from those recordings.

"Whoever you may be, know that I am Cyla Urbanus, last of the Alterans within this galaxy."

"Already knew that." Eventus muttered under his breath.

"I leave this message as record of the great atrocity committed by my people against the former denizens of this galaxy."

Looking down at the console, Eventus let out a sigh of annoyance. "And of course you froze the controls till the message finishes playing."

"Understand though it was an atrocity without choice, for the only other options available to us so much were worse."

That made Eventus perk up slightly, as he'd never read anything in this people's history files about final options other than the complete cleansing they had gone with for finally dealing with the plague.

Cyla shook her head, letting out an utterly defeated sigh. "Forgive me, an explanation without context is no true explanation at all. So I will start from the beginning."

"We are not from your galaxy, we arrived here fleeing an intractable enemy of our own making who we hoped would consider the distance between us enough of an obstacle that no further actions would be needed. Unfortunately we were wrong, after millions of solar cycles they discovered us here, and without warning or demand deployed a bio-weapon of great complexity against our people."

"Our entire civilization bent its technological prowess towards discovering a way to cure this bio-weapon. Yet sadly it was all to no avail, for our enemies had predicted that and turned the passage of time itself into their bio-weapon's greatest strength."

Eventus nodded, as that was the absolute truth of the Ori plague. The longer it persisted the more it evolved and grew in capability. Which was why the key to stopping it was to crush it completely before it could take root.

"So in our desperation we opened the gates to that which should have been forbidden. We broke time itself, and from that shattering searched the myriad of born possibilities for a way to save ourselves."

"Well that's new." Eventus murmured, idly wondering if that had been in any way connected to the time-loop device.

"And it was from those possibilities that three paths forward presented themselves. In the first, we locked ourselves away in our city ships, waiting for the bio-weapon to burn itself out." She inhaled before releasing it with a shuddering breath. "It was successful, to an extent. The farthest edges of the myriad possibilities showed the bio-weapon would eventually evolve to a point where its danger changed from a micro level to a macro one. At which point our survivors would flood out of their redoubts and burn the macro form of the bio-weapon from the galaxy."

At least that answered the question of why his people hadn't kept samples of the plague around for testing purposes.

"The second possibility had us change life in the galaxy so completely that the bio-weapon could no longer find purchase in the forms that lived here. And while parting with our birth forms was a great loss, life in the galaxy would continue to thrive as the bio-weapon faded away."

"And this is where the but comes in." Eventus predicted, idly wondering if they were talking about silicon, hydrogen, or plasma based life.

"Unfortunately both of those possibilities died, for our great enemy was not content to assume our destruction. Always did they send their agents to scour the galaxy for any chance of our survival, and then finding it the true war would begin."

That made Eventus frown, given what he knew of the Ori's forces now, even with his people's numbers depleted by the plague it should have been relatively easy for them to win a direct conflict. The only possibility he could think of off hand was that that had been before the Ori ascended. As their capabilities then could have been distinctly more impressive than what they handed out to their servants.

"The myriad of possibilities we birthed could not extend more than a few solar cycles into the war." The hologram continued without pause. "But that was enough to know that victory was far from certain, so in our fear we discarded those options for the third in which no fight ever occurred."

Her whole body seemed to slump in on itself. "So those who could be allowed to do so fled from the galaxy. While those left behind prepared what contingencies they could for any distant possible future in which the war still occurred. And then when all was ready, I utilized the facility you're standing in to wipe the galaxy clean of any life that could harbor the bio-weapon or draw our enemies attention."

"So many worlds untouched by the bio-weapon that had their potential cut short because of our fear." She gave a sad shake of her head. "So many species that might in time have evolved to become more prematurely ended." Her look turned bitter. "But at least this may stand as remembrance where I cannot."

With that the hologram vanished, leaving Eventus to stare at the crystalline pillar for several seconds before shaking his head. "Yeah, okay, I can see why they didn't include all that in the history files."

Because that was a species wide level of ancestral shame just waiting to manifest itself over what had probably been the only real choice to make out of the three available. And worse, it would have made it likely that someone would have tried to check in on those other quantum realities. Which could have led to exactly what they had been trying to prevent by cleansing the galaxy if the Ori had actually won in that version of events.

Pursing his lips together in consideration, he took a moment to copy the message and other system logs onto one of the consoles removable data crystals before grabbing it and moving on to the reason he had come here in the place.

It took him a little over two hours to install all the various programing redirects into the facility's geothermal power systems. A lengthier process then he would have liked, but unfortunately unavoidable given the archiac systems he was working with. After which he shut everything down, left the room behind, and began climbing the many stairs back to the surface.

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Author's Notes: The realities of history can often differ from what is officially recorded, but well, can you really say the choice to do so was wrong?