ii. audio. after dark. both courts.

[vrykolakas]

[If anything, the Brucolac's voice sounds worse than ever, painfully scratchy and distinctly weary. The reception isn't perfect; he's sitting in the garden of the fortress at Redgate, where the lockets work, but the blood granite is still causing some interference.]

What languages do you speak? And what language would you say I'm speaking right now?

Comments

[notavirtue]

[Javik had a very special way of answering questions without actually answering them.]

If you have been to the Station, you will find them there. They are machines, programmed to perform certain tasks to aid us. Specific computers are tasked to understand spoken and written language, and translate it to another language. Variances in dialect and tone make them unreliable.

You must be from a very primitive place to not know this.

[vrykolakas]

Ah, you mean constructs.

[S...ort of. He's thinking about his world's equivalent of robots, but yes, said robots do involve computers, albeit not in so many words.]

I know them. Knew them. These days, New Crobuzon, one of the biggest cities of my world, spits them out of its factories and uses them when they're running dry on prisoner-slaves. I heard they all came down with some mechanical pox, though. A thinking disease. Had to be dismantled. That was half a world away and spare change; what happens in that over-urban shitpile doesn't concern me. But if its citizens are less primitive than we foreign drifters who have never laid hand on a modern construct...

[There's a strain of humour in his voice, somehow managing to be both grim and merry. His words taper off into a low hiss.]

That's a dead-end study. Comparing notes on relative civilisation. I come from a place as brutal and as stupid as any other. What about you?

[notavirtue]

I mean computers. It is rare to hear of a civilization that outlives its machine creations.

[He'd like very much to know what that thinking disease was, though he doubted this man would have much information. It was probably a virus, which would be utterly useless against the Reapers. Still, something to file away for later.]

Where I am from, galactic civilization flourishes until the Reapers strike it down and harvest the populations of every colonized world. They are relentless machines, ancient and efficient. Once they have scoured the galaxy of the space faring races, they retreat to dark space and wait fifty thousand years to continue the next cycle.

[It's great, you should come visit.]

[vrykolakas]

[A long, thoughtful silence. Then:]

Why?

[notavirtue]

If we knew the answer, then I believe we would have the power to break the cycle. Since we do not, the Reapers continue their harvests relatively unopposed.

[They'd been getting so close, too, with Leviathan and finishing the Crucible, but... it was always too little, too late. And then he'd been kidnapped by imps.]

[vrykolakas]

Mm. We all have our mad gods. [No we...don't, what the fuck is wrong with your worldview.] I wish you well in it, should it ever become relevant to you again.

Space faring. [It's not quite a question, he's just turning the words over in his mouth. He gets the idea of star ships, has heard stories of them in his own world and stories here from others; they rather fascinate him now that he's discovered that to certain people here, they're no mere vague myth-history.]

[notavirtue]

[The Reapers had been revered as gods to some species... though they killed them just the same. He made no reply to the well wishes. That war was always relevant to him, no matter how far removed he was from it.]

Yes. Something largely unheard of on this world.

[vrykolakas]

[He pauses a moment, and then asks:]

Have you heard of the dreadnought Athena or any of its allied arcships?

[notavirtue]

[The word sounded familiar, but only just. Aethyta, Athame - one was an asari, the other was a prothean worshiped as an asari goddess. Neither were dreadnoughts.]

I have not. I do not believe there are any 'arcships' in the known fleets.

[vrykolakas]

Mm, no, I suppose it was a long shot.

Tell me, what is like to feel the stellar depths all about you?

[notavirtue]

[People always asked him that expecting some sort of poetic, grandiose answer. Maybe if he hadn't spent his life as a soldier, he'd come up with something better.]

It is as cold as it is dark.

[vrykolakas]

[The Brucolac—an aged pessimist, salt-stiff and soaked in too much history despite his youthful face, who appreciates that answer—sucks in air with a noise like a snake's rattle. There is the muted clicking of fingernails against tabletop.]

Yes, of course it is. And the ancient machines chase you.

You'd go back, wouldn't you?

[notavirtue]

Yes. I have one purpose in life, and it is denied me here.

[Half a year in the drabwurld hadn't dulled his senses or distracted him from his goal. It would be insult if that happened, after spending fifty thousand years in stasis before being able to continue.]