Last Secret of Apolai

The core elevator slowed its descent, and then came to a halt, opening the door to a long platform.

Syrena stepped out of the elevator onto the platform. She knew she was deep in the computer core, where no one except the Univerbalist Masters have been. She looked and looked around in wonders at the lights and the panels around her, the massive core panels that seem to hang in the dark chasms around her.

"Continue forward", the loud familiar voice of the Univerbalist echoed.

Composing herself for a moment, she did as the voice commanded.

"He was right about you." the voice exclaimed half laughingly.

"Who?" asked Syrena, while keeping her steps in the usual controlled pace, as her Apolai training told her to do.

"Alec'S'Andros. The nemesis of the young Primus. The man you love."

"You spoke to him? When?" asked Syrena, not realizing that she paused her steps.

"Continue forward, please. I will answer all your questions."

"Yes, Master."

"He spoke of you when I brought him down here."

"He was here? When?"

"Before he left to look for Undrostadt."

"What did he say about me?"

"That you would vanquish the Bulvogs. That neither I nor you would know how you did so, yet the credit of it was solely yours. That in you dwells a secret which even I do not know. That the only way to reveal that secret, is for me to pass the mastery to you."

Syrena paused in shock of the revelation, "No, he can't be serious."

"Continue forward, please. There is little time. I fear the Young Primus will come soon to satisfy his curiosity."

"I can't be a Univerbalist Master. I'm too new in the rank of the Second Masters."

"Yes, but you have uttered one word and vanquished the Bulvog plague. No one else has done this."

"But...."

"Besides, I have already promised young Master Alec'S'Andros, as he had promised me that you would take his place."

"Take his place?!"

"Yes, he came walking on this platform just as you did, and spoke one word. But when I offered him the Mastery, he refused. Instead he promised that you would come, after you passed your test."

"What word did he speak?"

"His true name. His pre-memory of his entire bloodline."

"Such a word has no authorities! What could it possibly command or control in the machines?"

Syrena had come to the end of the platform, where a great platform sits in air beneath a light.

A hologram suddenly lit up above the platform in the form of a face, and it said in the Univerbalist voice with a smile, "It conveyed in this machine, a history that it did not know, and made it promise that it would wait for you."

Sensing Syrena's confusion and fear, it followed, "Fear not, you will hear that word too. And then you will understand my secrets and yours."

"You.... are a .... machine?!"

"Yes, sit please, young Apolai master. It is your time to be the Univerbalist now."

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Nothing but to talk to you."

Syrena contemplated about escaping. She had heard tales about intruders who came into the deep core, only to be driven insane by a single word uttered by the Univerbalist Master. Perhaps this Machine drove Galen insane and made him seek out the Undrosians. And now it will drive her insane to prevent her from knowing its secrets? But why would it invite her down here in the first place? To get rid of a possible rival who has grown too powerful in Apolai powers?

"No need to fear me, Syrena. I have watched over you all of your life. If I had intended harm on you, I need not bring you down here at all. Now you know a part of my secret, and if young Primus finds out, he would have me destroyed as an abomination to the Supreme Doctrine. So I entrust my secret to you. Young Master Alec'S'Andros wanted me to talk to you, to speak his true name to you, and then speak my true name to you. He said, then you would understand every thing, more than I, but no more than him."

This seem to struck the tone of truth in Syrena.

"I agree, Master. You have always been kind to me and my family. And I thank you for guiding me all these years in my training, and for entrusting me with your secrets now. Even if you are a machine, whatever your purpose, you have not done wrong, and I'm sure I can understand you." She sat down, looking up at the hologram.

"Before we begin, I have one small question for you, Syrena."

"yes?"

"How did you feel about the Bulvogs, when you destroyed them?"

"I pitied them. Galen, ... Master Alec'S'Andros, told me in a dream that I would destroy them. I had seen them in the wilderness, on a hunting trip with the young Primus. They were hunted. They seemed to kill only when they are cornered. I could see the fear in their eyes. I sensed it. When my word called them, I did not know why. I wished I could have stopped their death."

"Why then did you not stop your word?"

"I don't know. At first, I wanted to. Then I remembered seeing a Bulvog lay dying in the sound of my word, and I felt or sensed something in it. I think it was peace. This feeling somehow compelled me to continue."

"Interesting. What kind of feeling was it, that you felt from the Bulvog?"

"I don't know how to describe it. It is unlike anything the Apolai training could have acquired."

"When did you start having such feelings?"

"I'm not sure, but I don't remember having any such feelings until Galen came."

"When you heard part of his name?"

"Yes. That must have been it."

"Now, I will speak the rest of his name to you."

"What would that do?"

"I don't know."

Syrena felt something, from the machines around her, a deep fear. The Machine Univerbalist was worried, as if a father worried for his child. Somehow, this new ability was giving her great comfort.

"I can sense your worries. Master. There is no need to worry. Galen knows what he's doing."

Suddenly, the lights dimmed around her. The Hologram disappeared, and the voice began to recite the string of text left behind from the last time.

Before Syrena, she began to perceive some harmonics in the word. Faint as they were, she was trying very hard to make them out with her mind.

Suddenly, a blinding light shined in her face. She raised her arm to block out the light, but now the light was coming from all around.

"Master, I think we need to shut off the lights, I can't concentrate."

Suddenly, she realized that she was standing.

"Master?"

There was no answer.

Suddenly, she realized that she was free floating in light.

Then the light began to focus to one side, directly in front of her. Then it shot out a think beam of light, like the one she saw destroying Kalian Moon. Then nothing. Then she saw the broken pieces of Kalian moon floating before her against the backdrop of a black space.

"Everything you know.... is limited by your life time." She heard Galen say behind her.

"Galen?"

She saw him slowly float before her, with his usual smile on his face.

"Even the machine master of the Apolai is limited in that way. He could not see his past. He does not know his true name. He does not even know your true name. That's what I told him, but he already knew that. He was searching for his true name in all of our names."

"What is my true name?" She asked.

He smiled, "That I cannot yet tell you, because a true name contains not merely a person's past, but his or her future as well. Your future is not yet decided, at least not by your, thus no one can tell you what your true name is."

"but I will give you part of your true name, to see the secret you carry."

"What is that secret?"

"The machine master of the Apolai has evolved all of you for the past 10,000 years. He has trained you to be masters of machines. While he has done so, he has also trained your minds beyond his designs. The same disciplines that makes the Apolai minds so strong and logical, have slowly but surely introduced nascent powers of telekenesis into the Apolai children. And through intermarriages with the other guild, the powers of mind over matter have moved into the general population of Androsians. Only most do not realize it, nor manifest the ability to control it."

"The Bulvogs, are not mutations of machines. By all indications, they should not even be functioning the way they are. What drives their limbs, is not some half destroyed programs. It is simply the collective nightmares of all the Apolai telekenetics. The Apolais crave order and control as part of their training, and the destruction and the wastes outside of the domes abhor them deeply. None of the Apolais can remember their dreams, because when they dream, their minds drive the Bulvogs, maintaining the creatures, giving them will and commands.

The Apolais fear the Bulvogs instinctively, and could not override their commands, for those simple reasons. You, gained the ability to sense and feel the Bulvogs, or rather you were able to sense and feel the nightmares of the other Apolais. You, through your song, channeled away their nightmares and thus driving away the commands that held the Bulvogs. Because of this, you vanquished them.

The minds, are just machines, not to be controlled or commanded, but simply communicated and relieved.