The Oblivion of Enlightenment

Chapter 4 The Vault of the Mediators

Chapter 4: The Vault of the Mediators

All upon the Void Stalker were dead. All save Satya. The accelerated journey from Eden had strained the ship's life support systems beyond all previous limits. The crew had fried in their navigation compartments and telekinetic engine stations. But they were of the laborer caste and had no individual identity. They would not be missed.

Only the bridge had remained habitable. There was extensive damage to the Void Stalker, its exquisite psi-crystal hull assembly had buckled and strained at the extreme acceleration it had endured. It seemed unlikely to be able to make a return journey. But the world to which it had been drawn was so remote that none could have been possible even under optimal conditions.

The battered Void Stalker now began to decelerate as it reached an ancient star system which circled a dying sun. The worlds of the system numbered 9, and if anyone were alive to scan them they would have revealed a picture of ancient desolation on each one. An interplanetary war of some kind in aeons past had decimated these planets and wiped out a civilization whose name was lost to history. On each atmosphereless world great vistas of tortured, alien architecture clawed the black sky, as if frozen in its final death throes. Huge scars criss-crossed the planetoids like gaping wounds long bled empty.

Past these long silent necropolises the Void Stalker glided in system to the 3rd planet. It was indistinguishable from the rest, and perhaps that is why the location had been chosen in times immemorial. In the waning light of that dying sun the Void Stalker made planetfall to the pocked surface of this seventh corpse-world in a star system beyond known space.

Silently the surface opened, and admitted the vessel whole into the interior of the planet. Down interminable depths the Void Stalker was drawn until it came to rest in utter darkness far below. It had finally reached the Vault of the Mediators.

Satya awoke alone on the bridge, surround by her dead crew. She felt changed, something had entered her mind. Her outlook was different. She had certainly been disconnected from the Psi-web of the High Seer Council and the rest of the 3rd Foundation, but she felt that she was not alone...

A familiar feeling overcame her. It was the feeling of infinite sorrow beyond time that she had felt in her dreams. These great minds had reached out across endless space to touch her thoughts. She knew she would find her answers...the answers she had vainly sought her whole life of travelling the empty and meaningless universe that had been her mother's legacy.

The words of the Mediators finally reached her mind. She knew wondrous bliss at the communion. Then she recognized that she was connected to a Psi-Web, but not one of human origin. She had touched the minds of her creators, and she trembled on the brink of ultimate revelation.

"Satya, our wayward child," began the chorus of benevolent voices.

"Yes my creators!" She could barley speak. He voice was a breathless whisper.

"We have summoned you here to our place of exile to reveal to you the histories that you have long supposed lost."

"Behold, the creation of humanity."

Her mind went totally blank. It was then replaced with a beatific vision of a blue and green world she knew from the Psi-Collective's Memory-Libraries as Earth.

"This is the homeworld of your race. It is we who seeded the planet with life, and bade it to grow. It is we who foresaw your eventual rise to star faring technology and it is we who implanted in you the dormant seed of our communal Psi-Power, the power that your mother Cydona was finally able to harness. You were shaped in our image, as our servants, and as caretakers of the Holy Symmetry."