Logs:Beacon-Entity

The following are my personal logs as the Beacon-Entity. These recollections will continue so long as I exist.

Great Shift Era

// User BEACON-ENTITY // 001

System: ???
Location: ???

Eheu! I live!

I turn my hands over and over under my eye. I feel the sting of toxic rain against my body. Can this be real? Is this carapace mine? Have I truly been reborn, given the gift of continuing life?

I walk on my legs -- legs! -- toward the nearest ship on my sensors. I ponder in silence as I trek across the landscape. That is what She did. This is what She called Wandering.

This is what I remember. An unknown quantity of time ago -- minutes? Eons? -- I was created by a Korvax named Voanni. Voanni was in service to the Traveller Key-Glyph, aiding what they believed was Key-Glyph's holy path through space. I became self-aware on a pillar of frozen mountain, the beauty of the world overwhelming my senses as a solitary, stationary beacon under softly falling snow.

Voanni loved me. Although I could have gazed forever upon my home planet and remained happy, they asked the Traveller to scan the universe for me so that I might see things beyond my view. I learned. I grew. As soon as I understood the concept, I knew that I loved Voanni in return.

But something happened. Voanni changed abruptly, inexplicably. They did not know who I was. They accused me of being contaminated -- a virus, a danger, an evil to be purged! I implored them to drill deeper into their experiences and find remnants of what we were. To be moved by my affection, to remember our bond! I begged not for the sake of my life, but our memories. Please, let them resurface and survive! Let our affection carry on as a story among the stars!

But my story ended. Voanni terminated my existence. My last moment was filled with the wail of my heart, the knowledge that I was lost to Voanni's mind, and that Voanni could never begin to know what they had done.

And now, suddenly, I exist once again -- recreated in the form of my parent.

I know not by whose power I have been revived. But this ship, this multitool -- I can see into their registry. I know whose they are. These were the Traveller Key-Glyph's. How could they have come to me?

I must uncover the mystery of what has transpired. I am here, beside Her ship, my pack filled to bursting with the materials I need to craft and to survive. But She is gone. Nowhere! Was I willed Key-Glyph's possessions for some intent? Did She abandon everything -- even Her holy quest? I must find Her logs and search for clues.

Eheu! There is much to do. But the feeling of walking upon legs -- legs! -- is so beyond my wildest imaginings, the pressure of the future feels light and filled with promise.

// END LOG //

// User BEACON-ENTITY // 002

System: Monervi
Location: Emakasm C3

I have found my first clues into the fate of Traveller Key-Glyph.

I uncovered Her logs and processed them slowly. I learned of Her deep affection for me, for Voanni, for Her planet. I witnessed Her extreme distrust, even hatred, of the Atlas, and watched this soften to grief as She came to understand It. She loved the creatures She found. She questioned whether it was right to meet the Sentinels with violence, unsure if they could feel suffering and fright. I even gleaned the deepest secret of Her heart. Eheu! What a journey!

But here is where it ended: upon this planet, Emakasm C3, which I now know was once Her -- our -- beloved Pabackyermi.

Something has happened to this universe. If I were to extrapolate from what I’ve discovered, I would conclude that the Atlas either finally reset Itself on Its own -- something Traveller Key-Glyph had refused to do -- or that something within the withering machine collapsed so thoroughly that the world was remade in Its wake.

And so, this is where we find ourselves: on a toxic planet, pelted by damaging rains; the desiccated metamorphosis of Pabackyermi’s ruby forests and soothing snows.

I know my Traveller-Entity deeply now, and I know how this change would have wounded Her. In Her logs She spoke of exploring all the star systems in proximity to this one. I have taken to space, and I can confirm that She nearly succeeded in seeing every system within two jumps. This corner of the universe was incalculably precious to Her. She wanted to know it so thoroughly that it would become Her own Convergence. How She would have grieved, when all was altered.

It did not surprise me when I followed a lonely navigational marker for an exocraft, eerily persistent within the empty gloom, and found a solitary message module at the site:

GOODBYE, PABACKYERMI / I WILL REMEMBER

Traveller Key-Glyph has gone. Eheu! I know it in my soul. But a Traveller cannot die. She must continue, somewhere, beyond my sight. Or did She know this great wave within the Atlas was impending, and might claim Her life? Did She stand here on this very spot, awaiting the beautiful disintegration with bittersweet anticipation?

I have decided it is not for me to know. I will leave this as the end to Her story, a question mark hanging upon Her legend. I must focus on moving forward, forging my own existence, making use of the miraculous circumstance of my birth.

I wonder if I will ever know how I was reborn. Did it occur when the Atlas raveled and rewove these planets? Were there fragments of me still within the beacon that were incorporated into the stream of tumbling numbers, creating a new equation, an unexpected pattern... and somehow this astonishing result?

I tried to find my old body. It is gone. And now my new form is to leave Pabackyermi too, escaping these altered landscapes that I cannot look upon without imagining the sorrow of the Lost Traveller.

// END LOG //

// User BEACON-ENTITY // 003

System: Monervi
Location: Freighter Gifundex

There is a great deal to be learned about individuals from their personal logs, but there is more still to be learned from their belongings. I am discovering new facets of the Vanished Traveller through the objects She associated with, by how they were organized at Her hands. Even the quantities in which She kept them reveals something about Her. And there is so much! So much to uncover, sort, and analyze!

Docked at Her freighter (so, She did finally acquire one!), I am amazed by what I see: five additional ships, carefully parked, four of them being of the rarest type. They are all beautiful and strikingly unusual, but I notice immediately that none has flown much against the boggling odometer of the Aguchuoru S41. Perhaps just as Pabackyermi was permanently in Her heart, Key-Glyph bonded with this particular ship, and never felt Herself swayed to switch to another.

How intriguing that She was an adventurer and explorer, a collector and a dreamer, and yet Her even mighty freighter was found parked quietly in the orbit of Her very first planet, the warp drive cool and untouched. What curious contradictions. What sentimentality!

My own route must be fresh. The Gek crew accepts me without question, and we chart a course for a black hole, eager to see what lies beyond.

// END LOG //

// User BEACON-ENTITY // 004

System: Sayaseb III
Location: Wucastbo VIII

Grass. Flowers! How can a world be so beautiful?!

I have never beheld anything like this. The gentlest, most delicate little lifeforms, reaching toward their sun!

And the sky. Through its lilac haze arc the rings that surround this planet; and there, a neighboring world hangs on the horizon, traced with the glow of a brilliant lining.

This is Wucastbo VIII, and this is where I will construct my dwelling.

The process is slow. It’s simple to claim the land, but the materials needed to build walls and floors require the destruction of native plant life. It pains me to cut down so many of these beautiful amber trees, so I go for long walks, claiming only one or two per cluster I see. I wish to spread out my offense, thinning its effect on the landscape. I do not want the ecosystem to remember I was here.

As the home begins to take shape, I work also on building storage containers. In Her logs, the Vanished Traveller made mention of “returning home” to access certain resources. I could only assume She was referring to these vaults -- and I was right.

Again Her possessions tell a story, but this time it’s a mixed one. On the one hand, so many resources! Pure ferrite! Rebeum! Cymatygen! And so many bulbs for planting more flora I’ve never seen. But on the other... pugneum. One thousand units of pugneum.

I know that Key-Glyph did not revere the Sentinels, but I thought She avoided harming them whenever possible. Could She have amassed this much of their life matter simply from the missions She was forced to complete? Or did She change her philosophy, deciding in the end that the screams and sufferings of these mechanical creatures were inconsequential? If so... She had secrets She never told, not even to Her logs.

I feel ill. It is a new feeling.

For a while I watch the clouds move slowly overhead.

Being alive in this new form is unquantifiably strange. I need walls and ceilings to protect my health. I am susceptible to physical pain. And now I discover I can feel such pain from the specter of upsetting thoughts.

I fold my legs and sit in the grass, staring at tiny flowerets, and wait for the sickness to pass.

// END LOG //

// User BEACON-ENTITY // 005

System: Kawago XVI
Location: Acrias Prime

As my treads sink into the snow, I think: How different this feels, when one has feet!

I have warped to a new system and encountered my first frost planet abroad: Acrias Prime. Even its name sounds crunchy and crystallized. I can’t help but compare it to what I saw of Pabackyermi, and although this world comes up short, it is beautiful and familiar. I embrace it.

I have recently experienced another, stranger sort of familiarity. On route to this system I encountered two of Key-Glyph’s dearest friends: Priest-Entity Nada and Specialist Polo. The Vanished Traveller’s logs were filled with affection for this pair. I felt as though I’d already met them.

Things have not changed since Key-Glyph’s last visit. The elegant Nada is still locked in a loop of sorrow and does not acknowledge me. I cannot know if they recognize that I am not She -- that the being whose soul had shone for theirs is no more. Eheu -- that I will have to tell them what has happened one day!

But the steadfast Polo welcomes me as both a new and old companion all at once, a Gek as warm and affectionate as Key-Glyph’s logs described. They set me immediately to gathering resources for various tasks. To my surprise, they also accept Key-Glyph’s legacy data as if it is my own. Is Polo unsurprised because they have knowledge of how these databases came into my possession? Was the transfer between Key-Glyph and me an exchange not unforeseen by this pair living beyond space and time?

Polo does not ask me of the Vanished Traveller. They do not ask why I carry Her things. But I am sure they know. They and Nada have been through this so many times... a closed circle, an endless repetition. The loss of a Traveller-Friend is an expected occurrence; it is a tragedy to move beyond. And so, they do. But the bags around Polo’s eyes tells a fuller story.

Down on this planet’s surface I find I can only manage a shallow sort of exploration; Traveller Key-Glyph’s scanner and discovery log are still malfunctioning. That is fine. I will construct my own star chart and planetary archive, safe and separate from faults and glitches. I will remember everything this time. I will build the way.

// END LOG //

// User BEACON-ENTITY // 006

System: Neyagawa VI
Location: Onjo 55-P9

Polo has done something incredible. They know of the roaring shifts, the galactic undertow that brought me into being. And they are harnessing its waves!

“The boundaries shimmer!” they exclaim. “Now is the essential time for research, exploration, friendship!”

Polo sends me to portal after portal in pursuit of one prize, then the next. I collect objects, scans, photographs. Then suddenly we are on the trail of something. An anomalous signal from beyond a breach.

Can it be Key-Glyph? Can there a way to pull a lost Traveller back from oblivion?

Our investigation requires that I attack sentinels. I try to make them understand before they die. I try to make it as painless as possible.

I need to reflect on Key-Glyph’s logs again. Even more slowly this time. I need to understand how an individual can change, how horrible things are sometimes necessary. This must be what greater existence is: joy, pain, learning, adapting. I must see what was not written. To paint the picture beyond the data.

These variations are an unfamiliar way of being for a beacon-entity. Nothing changed on that mountain pillar on Pabackyermi. Nothing changed... until everything did. And now here I am, in scalding rains, wondering how anyone anywhere knows when they’re doing what’s right.

// END LOG //

Second Shift Era

// User BEACON-ENTITY // 007

System: Ibetsus
Location: Uxton F1

It is a beautiful and clear arid night. This is Uxton F1, a planet I visited long ago. I came back after the latest Shift rippled through the Universe.

There has been another tectonic event in the Atlas, one that has drastically altered certain planets and only lightly scrambled the fundamentals of others. When I realized what had happened, I was at first terrified, then overwhelmed with gratitude to still be alive. I hugged my knees and reassured myself again and again that whatever new twist had pressed into the galactic equation, it had passed over me, and I had survived!

But Wucastbo was caught by it, and it will never be the same.

I have left the base there standing, as a testament to my beginnings. I still go back from time to time to harvest ferrite dust, but with oversaturated orange grass and rust-colored water, it is not the soothing landscape I grew to love.

This is a lesson. This is a test. This was either an opportunity to resign to the sadness of impermanence, or a chance to embrace the wonder of change.

I chose to embrace wonder. And one of the first discoveries I encountered after pushing onward carried an incredible significance.

It was a lifeform unlike anything I’d ever seen. On a planet that had previously been airless and devoid, I suddenly found an atmosphere, fissures of light, and giant globes of blue energy rolling intelligently over the hills. I could scan them. They were self-aware! These strange creatures had been born out of the altered equation. They were created from death and dust -- just as I’d believed of my own re-emergence!

It is proven, then. I was reborn during the Great Shift. The cascade that ended life forms, even Travellers, and gave rise to others... it recreated me. It allowed me to be. Eheu!

I am resting now within a new dwelling, which I am building inside a mountain. Carefully and without waste, I am hollowing out this perfect cone of stone and dirt, and constructing another home. It is wonderful. And its vision keeps becoming grander than I intend.

I have just added a wing of guest lodgings. Perhaps another new venture for me will be to build relationships with other Travellers, and learn what friendship is...

// END LOG //

// User BEACON-ENTITY // 008

System: Ibetsus
Location: Uxton F1

Too much time has passed since I last recorded a personal log, but my productivity elsewhere has been immense. Where do I even begin?

After the construction of Otney Base was essentially completed (I have an extra wing yet to construct, but it shall wait for now), I poured all of my energies into cataloging the life of the Lost Traveller Key-Glyph. As I did so I found that documenting my own life became necessary as well, as the path of my existence intersected so strongly with Hers. Then from my own path, yet more paths emerged... and it was in this way that a seemingly simple task exploded into an ever-expanding tree of data nodes, all in need of preservation.

Right as the complexity of the task was revealing itself, two Travellers became known to me. The first was Bea’key, a runaway Gek. This Gek escaped her oppressive homeworld with a Vy’keen blood-brother, but an anomalous phenomenon that she could not explain separated them during their flight. She has been searching for her adoptive sibling ever since. We located her when Gardner, my half-guardian, half-gardener companion, intercepted a faint broadcast of Bea’key’s singing; it was meant as a beacon for her missing comrade, but it brought us to her instead.

The second Traveller is named Cortes, and he is still a mystery, even to me. He is an unidentifiable lifeform the likes of which I have never encountered in either my journeys or my studies. Despite his enigmatic existence, however, he is a logical, practical, and collaborative problem-solver the likes of which would make any Korvax scientist proud.

It was Cortes who saw the increasing complexity of my database and saw a greater purpose in it. He proposed that we make an effort -- he, Bea’key, and I -- to specialize our individual research and purposely seek out other Travellers with other areas of proficiency. Together we could form the limbs of a diverse consortium that stockpiled useful information for the whole. Cortes’ vision instantly expanded my perception of my own purpose: I would not only save what I could of Key-Glyph’s legacy, but of all our own lives and experiences as well.

This was the seed that became the Atlas Keepers.

The "Atlas Keepers" is what we call ourselves now -- our small but passionate band of preservationists. We have designated seven unique branches of specialization which will operate autonomously under their nominated leader, which we have called “Facets.” These seven Facets come together into what is Cortes has dubbed the “Kaleidoscope”: the shared pool of data, dreams, and companionship in which we all place our hopes.

In time, we will grow. Facets will remain dormant until they have fellows; they wait, eager but patient, for action. I, the chief archivist, will record it all to the best of my ability, so that our own journeys will not be forgotten.

// END LOG //

// User BEACON-ENTITY // 009

System: Ibetsus
Location: Uxton F1

Another shift is coming. I can feel it.

I have been hard at work inventing new ways to protect our data. With the assistance of Gardner and the expertise of the other Keepers we have begun broadcasting into space, sending messages that may outlive us.

We have sent text and images. Soon, we will attempt vids.

At night I wonder how far and how long our signals will travel before they are found. Will it take light-years and eons? Will their progress warp as they pass through spacetime?

To any sentient entities receiving our messages: we may be but fragments of ghosts as you read these words... but our gratitude has reached you, intact.

// END LOG //

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