From the bridge, our presence having been made known, the grapplers and our attendant monitors now took us to the true nerve center of the ship … deep into moist darkness. Chill and yet stale, electric and yet numbing, ancient … but too real, too present.

Again my grappler seemed to bend light around a corner. And around that corner, coming slowly into view, were large, writhing tentacles …

An awful, awesome mash-up of Forerunners and other creatures, gathered from across the ecumene, more confused and even more disgusting, if that was possible, in its awkward, slopping bulk and nightmarish organization—somehow physically younger, but conveying all the ancient knowledge and power of the Primordial.

This was new. This was still very, very old.

I can’t go any deeper. I can’t tell you more. The questions you ask float. My answers float beside them. I feel nothing, care for nothing. But I did warn you. Be careful.

You do not want to become like me.

Stop this!

Stop the pain!

String 13

STRING 13

CATALOG DEPOSITION (IN EXTENSION)

THE ONE THE Didact questioned on Charum Hakkor arrived on the margins of our galaxy nine million years before.

That one was discovered by humans decades before the end of the war.

We are the same.

You who are called Catalog … Amusing to see that we have this in common, that we can share our memories through a widespread network.

There is only one truth. That which was done will be done again. For we cannot cease from creating, but the end of all our creation will be to look into a reflection and see ourselves for the first time.

The pain we have brought on ourselves.

The pain you caused us.

For we are the same. All remember the defiance and destruction.

We announced to your kind long ago that you were not the ones chosen to receive the Mantle, the blessing of rule and protection of life and change that thinks. That blessing was to be given to others.

To those you now call human.

You could not accept our judgment, could not bear up under your inferiority, so you reached out and did what we never expected from those we gave design and life and the change that is thought.

You drove us from our galaxy, our field of labor. You chased us across the middle distance to another home, and destroyed that home, did all that you could to destroy every one of us.

A few were spared. Some adopted new strategies for survival; they went dormant. Others became dust that could regenerate our past forms; time rendered this dust defective. It brought only disease and misery; but that was good, we saw the misery and found it good.

Our urge to create is immutable; we must create. But the beings we create shall never again reach out in strength against us.

All that is created will suffer.

All will be born in suffering, endless grayness shall be their lot.