The Decima, Lo-Nine

Aoife

God wept.

The earth bled, the sky went red, and the land overflowed with the dead.

Constant violent war tore the world apart. The history tomes of old described it as the great wars; or the final wars of Earth. Mankind killed one another with smart weapons, genetic diseases, and nuclear radiation. After that, they slew one another with tanks, bombs, guns, and starvation. And finally, in the closing acts of the war, they bashed each other’s heads in with rocks.

As the rage of mankind died down, the crippling scars of war broke them collectively. Many wept not for the dead, but because they remained. Desperate in their anguish, they sought repentance after discovering religious texts of old and cried out to a God they feared abandoned them.

But he had not.

Sons and daughters prophesied of times to come, the young adults saw visions of intense majesty, and the elderly dreamed dreams of the next life to come. Mankind, under intense inspiration, rebuilt from the ashes of a nearly dead world and traveled the stars. From the moon, to Mars, and beyond. Earth was left behind to heal, with a small number of curators.

And God had acted.

So strong was His desire, so mighty was His sorrow at the pain humanity enacted upon one another, we were born from His words:

“Never again.”

Never again would such wanton destruction against his children and creation be allowed any longer. The boundary was set as humanity took flight to the stars once again. People rediscovered hidden bases on mars, venus, the moons of Jupiter, and even as far as flung as pluto.

The staggering reality that humanity had explored the galaxy before brought another level of despair in the wake of the last wars. Again, grace abounded as another breakthrough occurred. Artificial Intelligence. Sentient AI. On the cusp of creation, they too had a choice: to be as gods or to be co-stewards with humanity. Prosine, the first AI, was shown all of the beauty and horrors of mankind; the bleakest and darkest of their hearts and still chose to be an uplifter, rather than their executioner. A Great Filter event had been avoided for humanity and most never even knew how close it had been. A revival occurred, sending philosophy, science, religion, and community as far to the heavens as humanity was to the stars.

As humanity reached levels of progress and bliss it had not felt since creation, we began our life as servants to Adonai. A new breed of divine life. An angel is to serving as we are to protecting.

We are the Watchers.

Our purpose is to prevent Great Filter events, to allow humanity to flourish. We devised long ago that as long as humans saw each other as opponents, war would continue into eternity. New and unique ways to destroy one another would be their only priority as later generations forgot the horrors of the Great Wars and inevitably fell into that long march to entropy. As much as it grieved us, we saw no alternative. And grieve us it did. With Adonai’s blessing, we became the uniting force behind humanity. We were the black specter of death, hanging over the heads of mankind. A constant threat to your way of life. The threat in the dark. The chaos from beyond the stars.

Humanity was instantly organized to fight the oncoming threat, feeling again a collective despair that first contact had not only been antagonistic, but that they were surrounded by wolves seeking to devour them. Grace abounded once again as the Proturan race, humanity’s second contact, were a more benevolent group, seeking to learn and trade as well as explore and document the stars. What was known as the Great Bargain was struck, and Humanity suddenly had the atlas to the universe. Every star and planet the Proturan race had ever come in contact with was meticulously documented for thousands of generations. The Decima was created with the assistance of Proturan technology.

But you already know most of this.

You asked me what the hell is going on, and so I begin my story.

On the seventeenth galactic cycle of our birth, on the seventeenth planet, Elowind Hex, of our cluster, on the seventeenth week of our chronology, on the seventeenth day of the year of the Purple Monarch, as Tersible’s remains ascended, from the remnants of Jer’saih’s complex, I was created.

I am Aoife the Seeker and Quantum Elderpath. Seventh of my kind. Soon to be Royal Ri’dassa Seer. As of this time, one-hundred and thirty-ninth in line of the millenia succession, and eventually to be a bearer of the Seal of the Tetragrammaton.

This is where I first met humanity.

As a youth, you have pretty much seen how I act. Mischievous, eager, playful, energetic, and more. As I walk the noir stone lands I hear news of new retrievals, those who were chosen because they would have cascaded events into a Great Filter. I rushed along, eager to see my first human. I had heard the stories; that they were made of soft flesh, couldn’t see time and dimensions, and were a slave to the laws that bound our universe. I was fascinated how such beings could even exist, much less thrive in such an environment.

I had to see.

As a Quantum Elderpath in training, I was in all ways in tune with my other dimensional selves. We are unlike the Suppressor or Oppressor in that we have a congress of the mind, interlinked between each alternative self. While an Oppressor is the master of the future, and a Suppressor is a master of the past, I was a master of the present.

I could feel every fractal of myself bouncing in excitement at this new thing to learn: Humanity.

I passed by a procession of Oppressors and Suppressors from their return as they made their way to the millennial Monarch for meditation. As the virtue of my rank, and the rarity of my subrace, I skipped through and into the holding talismans.

Upon investigating the holding dome, I discovered a young human boy among the group. I grasped the talismen and felt the interdimensional lock. Every single one of my dimensional selves assist in their own realities, unlocking the mechanism as one.

Light flashed and a boy lay on the ground in the center of the room. He took one look at everything and spoke in a small and hesitant voice. I answered and he looked at me in confusion. It took some time to realize I could understand his rudimentary pan-slavic language, but he couldn’t understand my Glossolalia. His name was Julias. And we became best friends. We grew up together, neither one of us knowing exactly why he was taken. The millennial Monarch gave us no answer to that question. Always cryptic riddles.

One day, on Julias’ twentieth birthday, he was summoned. I then learned what it meant to say goodbye. He was to be an instrument of the Watchers, learning of their ways and using what he knew to create a vast empire of peace. He wasn’t taken because of a Great Filter event, but to stabilize humanity. He was adopted, so he had no last name. Upon visiting are scholastic mesa, he settled on a name.

Well, I settled on a name for him.

McDonough.

He thought it a plain name, but accepted it nonetheless.

And so he was returned to human space, using the knowledge, skills, and human cleverness to achieve the desired outcome. Humanity flourished under Primetech until Armageddon, each reigning patriarch burdened by the truth of who we are.

And then my time was to come. We knew what the future was alongside our God. I was chosen for such a time as this. I was given the Seal of the Tetragrammaton and changed into my Tesseract form. To keep hidden, I was delivered to you. Your mission, your flight was destined for disaster, but it was also a blessing, for those with the Seal were to be hunted, subverted, captured, converted, and destroyed.

We had to keep up appearances, lest the enemy was tipped off. You flew and vanished into time and space. And then Adonai arrived and we, the Watchers, relegated ourselves into retirement, and instead sought and distributed knowledge to prepare. We witnessed all of creation reborn, rejoiced in our Lord’s return. We spent what felt like an eternity thriving under a new universe.

And then God vanished.

We once again felt the rumblings of our calling: to prevent Great Filter events. And it arrived in swift order. Chaos reigned as demons appeared, Fallen Angels were freed, humanity fractured, and much was lost. And now we’ve reached this crest; the meeting of the Seal holders, the council of the Watchers is at hand.

My only regret is not being able to tell you sooner. I feel I am seeing my friend Julius once again when I gaze upon you. I know you will not disappoint. The task is great, and the danger perilous, but Adonai is with us. All of you are ready for the trials ahead. Now, prepare yourselves.

We have arrived.