A Tempest Double

The Warden Arrives

What is life?

This bizarre biological brew.

While an oddity in the cosmos--is it really significant?

Smart individuals with expensive degrees and white coats would purport, Life merely consists of a germ on a cooling rock ball orbiting an insignificant star in the backwater galaxy.

An assessment that Zet, the Arc Warden, would find most agreeable. To the warden these bio signatures on this planet further complicates the mess that drew him light years away from home to this inconsequential part of the universe.

Yet, protocol required corporeal assessment.

Hurtling through space at relativistic speeds, aboard a spacecraft consisting of a massive ice shell with a neutronium core. The neutronium harvested from a collapse star, with each cubic inch weighing a million tons generating local gravitational fields capable of holding together the mass through interstellar travel. The icy shell serves the dual purpose of shield and fuel.

Once a massive ship that had once started off the size of a star diminished to a small moon.

The trail of micro ice crystals leading back to his home system. A home he was reluctant to leave but no small emergency had arisen.

The conservation of momentum. Nothing moves forward without something moving back. In all the universe this is true. Zet keenly understood this for he was the embodiment of it. While Order and Chaos received the majority of attention little was paid to the third child of the rivalry. The Balance. Rationality and logic.

Through synaptic neural connectivity Zet became the ship; just as easily as he became a copy of his original self. As the ship came within the local heliosphere's gravitational trap, no additional impetus was necessary.

Approaching the 3rd rock from the star, scanners revealed that the containment vessel had fractured. Engaging in the delicate dance of spheres in the solar system, the craft fell in orbit around the planet Gaia.

The prison was broken. The elements of Radiant and Dire escaped the Mad moon. Spreading disharmony once more.

Zet exited his craft in orbit and fell to earth. Gliding down to a single point of firelight in the dark expanse below. The fire belonging to an old shepherd guarding his sheep through the long cold night.

"Welcome my friend, come warm yourself by the fire." A old voice called out the greeting as Zet approached

"You would call me a friend?" Most unusual considering Arc Warden's eldritch appearance.

"Always happy for some company so long you don't harm my sheep." The shepherd's green eyes dance with the flames and embers of the fire set before him.

"Were I to destroy this world?"

"How?"

"Change the arc of declination of your star's orbit 3.14 radians towards a super massive black hole at the center of this galaxy. Reconstituting all matter through a singularity several million years from now."

"Hmmm sounds like then you have time for a drink." The shepherd offered a small silver flask.

Zet's final report was increasingly overdue.

But it could wait, the long tedious trip instilled demand for some distilled alcohol. He guzzled down the contents of the flask and collapsed down next to the fire. The flow of code through freshly sanitized circuitry highlighting how long he had existed in this entangled form.

"This survival of satiation to merely satisfy the requirements of the body and mind. In opposition to your own inevitable end. Seem quite bothersome?" Zet inquires.