How I learned to stop worrying and love the Rocket.

By The Archangel Viloyer

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Chapter 1: A Brief Fable

A young apprentice one time sought his Master in agony.

"Master, I am deeply troubled."

The Master smiled knowingly.

"Master, as you know, war is being waged in my homeland."

The Master nodded.

"The Empire is bent on conquering my people. I feel I must come to their aid, but I am so horribly confused, for all you have taught me tells me violence is wicked."

The Master thought of a while, and stood up. He led his student to the monastery's vault, where he produced an ancient sword, the magnificent result of an ancient master's patience and labor.

"Take this weapon, train with it for two weeks."

The apprentice obeyed. At the end of his training, his Master arranged a passing band of mercenaries to accept his apprentice in their ranks, as they were going to fight in the conflict.

After a while, the apprentice had ties of friendship with his new friends, ties that were strengthened into brotherhood after their first battle, and more followed, leading them very close to the apprentice's hometown.

As they marched in, the apprentice was troubled to see it in ruins. His fellows were joyous nonetheless, and he felt happy about them, but he couldn't understand.

"So much destruction… are you happy because the war is over?"

"Yes, the Empire will now pay us."

And the apprentice, it is said, was Enlightened.

Chapter 2: Origin

I hope the story above did not reduce your interest in knowing about me and my people. I recall my name as Viloyer, and I belong to the people once called the Dht'n'k'lz - or those of us who still exist.

We can be considered the universe's firstborn children. We began existing naturally, the result of replicating chemical units following a negentropic vector, as t3h Buddha would put it. We had luck, a statistically improbable planetary disposition which allowed our ascension in the young universe. We proceeded, as young races do, to expand to fill all available space.

And after one million years, we had done a mighty fine job. But age fostered some measure of wisdom.

Chapter 3: The Enemy

The Heropass, that which you do not see as an entity but as the Flow of Time, …

Please do not take this as literal truth, but as a model thereof.

Again: The Heropass was divided by the Most Holy Sun Absolute so that there could be existence. It can be abstracted as a poisoned seed, abortive existence, and this separation was extracting the poison from the seed. Without poison, it blossomed into the Tree of Life, the pattern behind all of the infinitude of universes born for the Love of the Supreme Being.

The poison remained, Eçaraia.

Oblivion, Eradication, these words provide more or less accurate translations of the name of the Enemy. It exists as other from Destruction, which is a necessary, merciful part of existence. It exists as other from the Void, for it, too, has a place in the scheme of things. Eçaraia is the Zeroth Sephiroth.

What it seeks can be described as: to-make-things-have-never-existed.

After we had collectively reached a million years of age, we could perceive the horror of its nature.

Chapter 4: Rally

We began crafting weapons with our Sacred Science. Once we realized that as long as it existed, Eçaraia had infinite eternities to achieve its goal, and that then all would be lost for everyone - ever - anywhere - forever, we felt it as our job to battle it, to avert it, to destroy it somehow.

It took heed of our aim. Heed was taken. Eçaraia doesn't exist, it forgets, as in, it rains. But dht'n'k'lzmorphizing it appears helpful for our purposes.

It spared a universe in exchange for troops. Soon, the Mi-Go were at our gates.

We warred for another million years.

Chapter 5: Outcome

Have you ever wondered why, save a handful of exceptions, there exists life only in two galaxies of the whole universe?

Scorched Earth Protocol.

We held an universe-full of Mi-Go at bay for as long as we could, as our weapon-making skills had reached incomprehensibly high levels of perfection - we say it proudly: equaled in no other universe.

They were almost wiping us out, of course.

And we cut them off. Like an infected limb, we stopped the flow of Telluric Waves from Sol to all but these two galaxies. Life became impossible outside - no self-aware being could exist, except for the slow, lumbering self-telluric-sustaining Mi-Go Mega-Ships. We had bought these galaxies a lot of time.

Chapter 6: Cosmic Debris

The choked telluric waves, the waves that make the software of causality, the software for the universe's hardware, began collapsing, acquiring physical existence. Our time was running short; once they had condensed into their ultimate forms - elves and dragons - our supply of energy would end, and we wouldn't be able to complete our last weapon, the all-pervading ashtra.

Some of our people began sacrificing themselves, that the energy they had in them could be harnessed for our last artifacts.

Chapter 7: Rocket

The Rocket was named jokingly. It was not a weapon, but an instrument of release. It was dialysis for a universe's essence. We had split the three Aspects of Existence: Generation, Order, Destruction. Each was light-heartedly personified and stored into a plush animal - for no good reason, but we thought they were cute. A gosling, a lobster and a reindeer.

By reuniting them, and by reuniting the collapsed telluric waveforms, you could cleanse the essence of Existence of Eçaraia forever. No-one would ever have to fear the retroactive destruction of existence - the setting of our Most Holy Sun Absolute.

A universe would be created, and its existence would be True. And in its truthfulness, all the others could validate their own. We'd give the multiverse a core, an anchor, and then it would be impossible to wipe away into Oblivion.

Chapter 8: Blackout

We ran out of power. We could no longer complete our goal immediately. A series of compromises were undertaken, in order to amass Virtue Chi, the energy from the Conscious Efforts and Voluntary Sufferings of sentient beings. When enough had been gathered in the universe's spiritual dimension, a King would rise and complete the process. We provided him with an army - the shapeshifter 'genes' we seeded in several planets. My personal dearest creation, #14, would guide him.

We had little energy left. A dozen of the trillions we once numbered remained. We built a planet, and went in exile into the Scorched Zone, fed by our own self-sustaining telluric essences. We didn't want to witness what we knew would unfold. There were two possible outcomes, and the good one was immeasurably unlikely - but by leaving, we created randomness, a chaotic ripple in predestination that could change the odds in the right direction.

Epilogue

T3h Buddha came to us after uncountable millennia. He told us of All and Everything, for that is what he knows. He comforted us.

Greyface, he said, the time-traveler that became one of us for a long while, had become Eçaraia's instrument of suppressing our effort and condemning all to inevitable Oblivion, rending Existence thoroughly null. But Greyface was cunning, his fellow chess-player. Just as the great Anaxerretibes could pull a fast one on the very rules of the Cosmos, the one you call Moebius has in him enough to surprise even an inexorable force permeating Existence...

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