“Order was never to be an end, just a means. The end was the Cause of Life itself, to atone for keeping billions of years of existence from happening; for taking away the possibilities, the ‘might have beens’ with our monstrous hubris. How had my brothers and sisters forgotten that? Are they not doing it again? Are they not repeating our original sin? What they now fight for is as bad as the Total Death of Nekron’s Blackest Night; nay it is worse, for they wish to make life a pantomime of itself rather than its end. By All that Lives, how have we become so lost!?”
From the record of Sayd, Guardian to the Orange Lantern, consort of Guardian Ganthet of Oa.
Sector 2828: Vega System, Planet Okaara, Temple of the Orange Battery in the Forbidden Forest of Weeds.
“If I am blessed,” the small blue skinned biped said as she looked at her ancient face in an equally ancient ornate mirror,” I will be remembered as the ring thief who set the Torch bearer on the Path to be Life’s avatar, and not as the traitor to her own kind.”
Tears, so unfamiliar to a Guardian’s eyes, welled up in Sayd’s. So much pain now….pain and loneliness. Had her brothers and sisters forgotten so much in their long vigil? Had her people forgotten the very reasons they took up their station of guardianship, casting it aside for one of the most base and rooted drives in all sapient species: order for its own sake? Perhaps draining away their emotions into the Great Heart had also drained away a portion of their reason as well. Her people…her god like people, had gone mad and discarded tempered reason for blind order.
…and they had dragged her beloved Ganthet into their madness, forced him against his will to abandon all emotion, making him more pliant to the domination of the Oan Uni-mind.
“Ganthet,” she sighed. A holo image of the love of her life appeared. His kind eyes and gentle smile recalled his untainted spirit. He was the best of their kind in her eyes: kind, caring, steadfast, rational, thoughtful, and decisive. He was brave, wading into battle when others of her race simply allowed their soldiers to fight for them. His opinion of the younger races was kind, almost paternal. Ganthet of Oa never viewed the younger races as beneath him; rather they were children exploring the universe as all children do. Her people had all been that way at the beginning, before Krona’s ego poisoned their bliss and irreparably damaged the universe, when they decided to make amends for standing by and doing nothing.
She reached out with her tiny fingers and traced the face lines of his image. “What they have done to you…what they are doing to everything…is a crime.” She pressed her lips together hard. “Now…I must use a second contingency, one I thought would never have to be used, lest all emotion perish from our insanity.”
Sayd knew what her brothers and sisters were doing, and she knew what they thought they were doing; sadly the two were not the same. The path they had decided to take could ultimately result in a near lifeless universe or a total collapse and end to exsistance itself! There was little she could do to stop them directly, and what she could do to act against them she had already initiated. Only time would tell if what she started with Kyle would succeed. If not……
…THEY had asked to be preserved, put beyond reach of those mad enough to think life could exist without emotion...and after much searching for them she had found the place!
She lifted in the air under her own power and floated up the long winding stairs, silently recalling the plans within plans within plans her people had set in motion over the endless eons. So much waste…
…and yet had not the Children of Malthus also not done good as well? Had not her people, the first to know themselves and to think thoughts, the first creatures in the universe to have language, create music, use science…had they not also served their office well? So far had they come and so high had they rose to have succumbed to such madness.
Ah…immortals have such a long span to regret in.
She entered the Grand Hall of Larfleeze, gliding in silently. She paused for a moment, senses reaching out, trying to find the state the Master of the Orange Battery. The Orange Lantern had devoured a particularly huge meal this time, and into his food Sayd had placed a particular compound, causing him to sleep but not harming him or impacting his ring ability. That, coupled with her personal manipulations, should not trigger the ring’s defenses or be interpreted as any threat to Larfleeze and would allow her to do the final part of the task she began when the Guardian’s of the Universe had started this Third Army business.
The snores that echoed off the cold stone walls were the first sign that all was well, the next being a telepathic check for deception. She found none; the holder of the Light of Avarice was indeed sleeping soundly, a greedy sleep not surrendered easily.
“Good,” she whispered as she floated down a lonely hall to stop in front of a statue in the form of a long dead insectoid species. Using her power the carving became insubstantial, permeable. She passed through the ‘door’ and entered the hidden chamber beyond; the chamber of transit.
This ‘temple’ had long, long ago been a facility her people used to when they had been studying another creation of theirs, one that would become another stain on their name: the Psions. Sadness came to her heart as that name and the history that went with it came to her mind. The first time her people had played at changing life, forming it into their image had been a disaster; the children of their work became in many ways a blight upon the universe for eons. With the current events unfolding in the universe-it was apparent to her that nothing had been learned from the past.
The complex Sayd now silently glided through had been built to not be detected my any known means, to stay hidden and to be only accessible to other Malthusian races. It was necessary that no ship be seen anywhere in the system that the Psions or any other of the races inhabiting the worlds of Vega could not explain, so her people had placed the apparatus she now would use: a stellar gate.
She could use her Guardian Power to go where she needed to go, but the other Guardians would sense it. No. She had to use other means and the whole of this artifice she had entered was about subterfuge and stealth; and secrecy was the ally she needed lest her fellow Guardians follow her. Concealment had given her time and she had needed all the time she could get. Now the final step was about to be taken.
Her power reached out to the telepathic circuits activating the device and instructing the gate as to which destination it was to linked to a secluded place in Sector 666; a forbidding star cluster whose name was lost long ago. In that cluster there was a moon that orbited a ringed gas giant that had once housed a laboratory of the renegade Guardian Scar and was home of the Black Power Battery.
A rippling energy filled the once empty space within the dodecagon frame of the gate portal. Rebounding waves, like ripples in a pond from a cast stone oscillated back and forth. When the patterns met in the center of the polygon, a hollow space appeared which grew larger, eventually filling the frame. Through the portal Sayd could see the abandoned work area of the Dead Guardian. Her people would never suspect what she had been asked to prepare there, and by whom.
She passed through the portal, traveling the vast distance instantaneously, and emerging within the fell planet Ryut.
This world, the center of one of the most grievous failures in the history of the Oan’s Guardianship, which caused the birth of the Red Lantern Corps, the center of Nekron’s power, now was the center of something wonderful. She hated using this place for the work she had been tasked to do, but there was very little choice in the matter; this place was one of the only in existence with the equipment necessary to do what needed to be done.
Sayd went forward from the gate and floated silently through the dark, silent stone halls of Scar’s former abode. She approached the door to the inner sanctum of the former science advisor with a raised hand, channeling her power into the door. What had been stone dissolved away, becoming nothing but an opening. As the ‘door’ opened the gloomy darkness was suddenly banished and Sayd was bathed in the most glorious rainbows of light.
The door closed behind her has she floated forward to the center of the chamber and spun in place, pausing for a moment seven times to admire her work.
Seven Lantern Batteries filled the chamber with their brilliant light, their colors mixing in corners and crevices to become white. She had created these batteries to do more than just hold power from a central battery, they were like central batteries themselves…and much more. Within each was a portion of the Entities of the Emotional Spectrum. More than clones or children, not just a copy or an echo, but a portion of their very soul, made to grow and allow the Entity to be reborn anew, elsewhere. The entities themselves had asked this of her. Even Ophidian, the Entity of Avarice, had almost begged that she take this task.
“I have done as you all asked. The rings are finished and ready, the place has been found.”
“We feel it,” a rumbling voice came from the Red Battery. “We have felt where you seek to send us.”
“Such a different place,” a growl issued from the Violet battery. “Do you think it will do Child of Malthus?”
“I do,” Sayd answered. Frames and symbols of light appeared before her. She moved her hands over them like she was playing a musical instrument. An image appeared of the universe, then the image shifter and split, as an almost identical image appeared next to the first. Symbols of the Malthusian musical science language appeared around the image. “This universe has emotion strong enough to nourish all of you. It is also a universe with widespread magic, so it will give you another means of expression and growth.”
“Are there no entities like us there Guardian?” this inquiry came from the Yellow Battery.
“No, there are no Emotional Entities in that universe,” she answered Parallax's fragment.
“Time grows short. We feel the loss of our connection to the living,” the Orange Battery spoke.
The darkness seemed to close in again for a moment.
“What of our parent?” the Green Battery asked.” Is there another there?”
“I have not discerned if there is an Entity of Life there, but as it has appeared in other universes, I have no doubt that it does exist. As for the Entity of Life here…I have been unable to construct a White Battery or ring.”
“You have done more than enough,” sang the Blue Battery. “We asked you to save us, to preserve our essences and you have done that Sayd of Oa.”
Tears appeared in her eyes as she waved a hand over the controls of light. A sphere of energy appeared in the center of the chamber. ”Forgive my brothers and sisters their madness, and let this humble act be part atonement for our sins against you and all that live.”
“Nok,” the word rang out from the Indigo Battery.”Peace to you.”
“I shall have none without Ganthet.”
She lifted a fist, her tiny fingers spreading open. A swirl of colors appeared above her open palm and sparks flew from the ball of light over her hand. They were like comets or shooting stars, each a color of the Emotional Spectrum. The points of light became Power Rings, one of each color. The rings flew into the Battery of their color, disappearing within. There was a flash of light from each and the batteries all disappeared, leaving the floating bands of light in their place.
[=Embedding complete =] the rings said in unison.
“May you all find a better way in a new place. May new eyes lead to a new way of seeing things,” her hands played over the controls of light. Lightning seemed to erupt from the panel of light, the jagged bolts entered her eyes and touched her mind, and the supremely evolved Guardian mind became the actual computer and navigator for the device.
“Telepathic link successful. Target Reality located and locked.” The globe of light changed becoming both solid and insubstantial at the same time. The mix of light and darkness became evened out, the surface of the sphere became like a mirror. The device seemed to finish its operations and now set itself in lock mode. Sayd looked at the readouts of the holographic control panels. Inter-universal travel the way she was doing it required a vast amount of power, but it also allowed for an almost traceless passage out of her reality. The only way the entities would ever be found was if the living index code were used…
…and she was the living index code.
Something was fighting her in this device, something that should not be. She had been careful and looked very deeply into the device’s systems, checked over and over again using a portable Time Advancer Field to allow her the equivalent time of years to look into the machine and to craft the batteries. She had been so careful and thorough. Had Scar been so clever?
A flashing purple indicator answered her question. Her hands were a blur over the light panels. A trap! A trap that only sprung when the machine was used!
“Damn,” she hissed.
A huge shock wave erupted from the mirror like sphere, shaking equipment and knocking debris from the walls and ceiling of the chambers. Flashes of light appeared as objects of all kinds fell into the sphere, disappearing forever from existence. Sayd saw pieces of equipment, books from the upper levels, devices of various kinds, even circles of darkness…
…Black Rings? Were those Black Rings?
The strain on her mind was immense, after all she was effectively the operating system. Slowly the drift and flux that had wrecked havoc eased and she had total control of the device again. She could feel her mind removing the parts of Scar’s handiwork, removing the overrides she had put in as the device.
“Connection established.” The machine reported back. “Conduit Ready.”
Sayd simply willed the rings to float before her. She stared at the shimmering bands of the Emotional Spectrum as she pressed into them one last command.
“Seeds require soil to grow, and a ring requires a bearer. Seek out that bearer,” her telepathic command went into the rings, and they seemed to become very still for a moment.
She then used her power to push the rings into the mirrored globe that was the gateway to another universe. There was resistance at first, but eventually they all went beneath the surface of the gleaming giant orb and disappeared, not to be seen again, ever.
“Transit complete,” an indicator said. She withdrew her mind from the machine and shut down the portal. Slowly the globe faded away and the light panels followed suit, save for one last light frame. Using hand strokes like she was playing a plectrum, Sayd called up a command to close the door she had opened and seal it closed forever.
“Memory purged and excised,” the control panel said.
“Prevent further operations. Run program thaw. Guardian authorization: Hepplahilla gahtaar shama,” she spoke the command in ancient Malthusian.
“Command accepted. Initiating self destruction.”
There was a soft fizzing sound as the components of the device. The command she had given ordered the machine to return to the basic elements from which it was made. In moments the device would be dust on the floor of the chamber...but there would be no chamber!
Rumbling from both above and below sounded. She had reached out with her power and was causing the surrounding stone to turn in on itself, like closing fingers making a fist. It was child’s play for her to do this, she could have easily blasted it to dust, but she wanted it to be subtle and sedate, lest she send up a sign that something new had happened here. She flew back to the stellar Gate, stone walls closing in behind her as she went.
The stellar gate was reopened for her to return to Okaara and passing through Sayd pulled in the rest of the stone rooms upon themselves. As the last fingers of stone pierced the gate on Ryut, the frame became empty again, the machine indicating a loss of connection between Okaara and Ryut.
“Good luck to us all,” she sighed as she drifted to the door of the gate room. “We all, here and there alike, shall need it.”