Lonely Paths

The Researcher

The Researcher is late and yet she does not hurry. As she walks across the boulevard, all those who recognise her, move out of her way respectfully. When she enters her workplace in an underground building, she sees indicators lighting up across her desk. Each indicator is a Quartet's contact alert. Almost bored, she walks to her work station and begins her day.

As she opens each of her assigned Quartet's messages, she perfunctorily glances at them and sends the messages along with the coded data of their findings to the databanks all around her. Only a few interest her and she spends a fraction of time studying them before moving on to the next. She finally comes to the message from a particular Quartet she has been expecting from.

She sits at her work station and puts on a headgear and plugs it into the computer. All of the Monitors doings and her thoughts come flooding into the Researcher's mind. As she sifts through Earth's discovery and its history and finally through the Monitor's and her colleagues' thoughts, she feels as if she should warn them. But she does not. That is not her job. She instructs her computer to pass on a message to The Archivist closest to her.

Unknown to the Monitor, her Adjuvant doesn't just increase her ability to communicate with others. It also links up her mind to her ship's computer which in turn sends the collected thoughts to the Researcher with every message. So, the Researcher is privy to even the minutest turn of thoughts of the Monitor and through her, those of her colleagues. This safety backup is never revealed to the Quartet.

But the Researcher doesn't feel guilty about any of this. It is necessary. Just like every parent looking into their child's future doesn't feel guilty even though it is forbidden. Just like how the Caretakers look into the future of the community to see if anyone will disturb the fabric they have woven with care.

Looking at the Monitor's thoughts on how the governing bodies have imposed laws against anyone seeing the futures of their species, the Researcher feels amused. Those laws were created for a specific reason – the same reason she doesn't care if she comes in late for work, because it doesn't matter. Nothing does.

When the first beings looked into their future, they saw that they would never make contact with anyone who would be able to communicate with them. Even though some have chalked this up to not having enough beings seeing collectively, most knew they must be right. With every generation, their ability to perceive the future clearly is declining. They have managed to destroy their home planet necessitating migration to two different planets orbiting the same star. And every Researcher knows that theirs is a lost cause.

They have been cursed with an extraordinary power. They could see Time. But they cannot move through the Time Tunnel. Whoever deigned to bestow this ability on them had played a cruel joke. They were restricted to being mere spectators who yearned to be part of the bigger game. They could not go back in time and change events. They could not move forward and intervene.

So, when their ancestors had seen their fate, they did not want to live in a universe that had robbed them of hope. They had taken their own lives. That was the biggest culling their civilization had seen – a voluntary, self-imposed one. Only one had lived long enough to impart what they'd learned to those they now called Archivists.

The Space Exploration Program, the training, the formation of the Quartets, all had been the orchestration of the Archivists. Only they retained every glimpse of the far futures of the two planets. Bereft of hope, they kept the knowledge from the masses to save them, so that they would have something to live for. Travelling across stars, and making way for other species to survive was their way of contributing to the universe, a way of making sure they will not be forgotten. Some said it was a prayer to appease some higher beings who might take pity on them and give them the ability to move through time. But the Researcher knows that it was a hope not even the Archivists entertained anymore.