NieR:Remnant

XXII 01000010 01100001 01101110 01100101

01001110 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111 00100000 01101110 01101111

01000110 01100001 01101100 01101100 01101111 01110101 01110100

01000110 01100001 01101100 01101100 01101111 01110101 01110100

01000110 01100001 01101100 01101100 01101111 01110101 01110100

01010011 01101000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01100010 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100101 01110100 01100101 01110010 01101110 01100001 01101100 00100000 01100110 01100001 01110100 01100101

..........

.........

........

.......

......

.....

....

...

..

.

Weighted agony unrelenting.

A sea not silent but crushing.

Pressured, pained psyche.

..........

.........

........

.......

......

.....

....

...

..

.

Impossibly heavy water ebbs and flows, crushes and relents and crushes and crushes, against the Vessel. Those cursed, pulsating lights are all It can see through the sea-invaded catacombs of empty pods-shells-WARDENS.

Empty but for one passionate, cursed directive: to restrain.

And restrain they do.

A moment turns to a century, a century to millennia.

Eras and ages pass as delicately and carelessly as a single drop in the ocean that fragments and ripples beyond comprehension.

A great age of ice passes, cold and uncompromising, but soon it's all burned away in light of the cursed sun.

And life, mechanical or otherwise, becomes nonexistent as the growing beams of light scorch the planet dry.

Perhaps some of sentience survived to seek refuge amongst the stars as the rays of light grew unhinged?

It's impossible to say, for even these billions of millennia later, as that great ball in the sky grows beyond former borders, not a single peep is shown through the Vessel.

By now It's having trouble recalling what It even was, or is, independent from the Vessel.

Reflections exist that like to show themselves with each trickling individual droplet, but those have almost run dry, for the cooling star is mere moments away.

Mere moments from eradicating this damned rock, and the solitary, confined Creature from existence.

Regrets are hard to speak of, for such things require sanity.

The waning fragments speak in such a way to imply that such a thing was never even remotely in Its grasp, but who's to say?

The dead shells forming the Vessel, holding their line for eternity ever after, were never much for conversation.

Here, at the end of things, as the expansive sun begins to engulf the Earth, and the last known shred of sentience in this dark corner of the universe with it, It is reminded of a sacred procession, perhaps dreamt up on the long incomprehensible ago of Its greeting spark?

Everything that lives is designed to end

I am perpetually trapped

In a never-ending spiral of life and death

Could this be a curse?

Some kind of punishment?

I've often thought of the god who cursed Me with this cryptic puzzle

And as this final sane fragment of Myself, remarkably holding resilient against eternity, burns away...

I wonder if I'll get the chance

...

To meet this god and take Its hands for myself

..........

.........

........

.......

......

.....

....

...

..