If you missed the last episode, you can find it [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/223004157/0/0]here[/url], or if you need to find a previous episode, you can find them all in the [url=https://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post/220441594/0/0]Master Post[/url]. Please give a bump, upvote, or leave comment if you enjoy this and any other chapter! *** [b]From the Journal of Dr. Maya Sundaresh, recovered from Lhasa Research Facility, Tibet:[/b] RECORD 0-CHASM-0 [i]My love. I’ve opened this log as an apology. As a scientist, I believe in record-keeping. I believe in protocols, peer review, and ethical conduct. I believe in the importance of disbelief – you know: let’s run that one more time. What I’m doing here in Lhasa isn’t science. It’s unethical, secret, and shameful. And after what happened in Ishtar, dearest Chioma, I know you’d be furious with me for getting involved. Forty years isn’t far enough to forget a day like that. But I believe it’s important. The least I can do is keep a few notes for you.[/i] RECORD 0-CHASM-01 [i]Trial one. Subject one. It was an act of stupid loneliness. I used the device on myself because I… [silence: 0:08] I missed you. We hadn’t been apart for more than a year since we met. I’m not a very good wife, am I? You write me every week, even with all Hyperion’s work and all Hyperion’s distance keeping you from me. And I act like it’s not enough. We built the device in mimicry of the Vex gateway systems from Ishtar. An observatory, yes, but I think of it as a mind-ship. Capable of displacing its payload across space and time. The lab is cold and isolated. We are quarantined from the world, physically and mentally. We can’t send messages out. If we breach the Vex manifolds, even our words might transmit contagion. One night last month I missed you and so I – I thought that I could look inside the device, and find one of the other Chiomas. I thought I could call out to one of the forks we sent out there to explore. I just wanted to send my love.[/i] RECORD 0-CHASM-02 [i]Zakharik Gilmanovich Bekhterev. May he rest in peace. When our probes continued to fail, when my report remained our only positive finding, he volunteered to use the device. One minute of subjective experiences inside. We took precautions. They worked. Bekhterev’s experience left no physical damage. After we extracted him, he said that he felt determined. I asked him what he meant and he said that he meant it, he had been determined, he could feel all his choices set out before him like a railroad. Deviation was impossible. He died by suicide. I wonder if he was trying to make a point.[/i] RECORD 0-CHASM-03 [i]We’ve decided not to abort. It’s insane, isn’t it? There are pressures on us I can’t tell you about until I see you again. The purpose of the system is intelligence, you see. It’s stenciled right on the hull: SxISR. Special asset. We would very much like to make it work reliably. Our supervisory warmind has devised a drug it says will protect and prepare us. I am beginning to wonder if we were wrong about the merchant and the alchemist. Or if that explanation of time was incomplete.[/i] RECORD 0-CHASM-09 [i]Kind Lakpha. He meditated before he went in. Nothing but déjà vu and three seconds of screams. The screaming passed and he remembers nothing. The déjà vu hasn’t. He says it’s getting better – he feels that we’ve had this conversation only ten times before, not a thousand. I’ve suggested that we attempt mind forking. We need more sane people to work with. Please forgive me, my love. We are all growing superstitious. The behavior of the device is inconsistent. Impossible to replicate. We turn to ritual behavior to appease it.[/i] RECORD 0-CHASM-31 [i]Rajesh. When he reached a displacement of eight he told us he was dead. I believed him. He was dead. He spoke to us. It was true. Whatever he saw, it was his own future. He’s fine, afterwards. When I look into his eyes I wonder what came back wearing his skin. But that thought it unscientific. We speak of nothing but the device. We talk about it like a demigod. When I get out of here I know the whole world will look like a fraying veil. I think it’s clear that part of the problem is substrate. We need more than flesh and drug to survive this.[/i] RECORD 0-CHASM-52 [i]I heard you, my love. I was at six, oscillating on the event axis, coordinated with a known manifold. I heard you. You were talking to me – not me, but another me, another Maya Sundaresh. You said, my love, so many strange things have happened, and it’s been so long. We’ve come so far. Do you ever want to go home? And I said, not me but the other me, I said, my love, I am always home. I’m resigning, my love. I’m done with this work and I’m done with being apart from you. I’ll see you again soon. I can’t take this journal out with me, so I’ve left it for the others, and asked them to continue the log. Maybe it’ll become a tradition. The gospel of our little cult.[/i] [b]From Displaced Ghost Fragments, recovered by the Future War Cult:[/b] RECORD 343-CHASM-7887 [i]Subject twenty-two. Admitted to the Inner Circle at 24:00. A promising postulant – I regret to say he performed poorly. He was administered the standard medication but refused to enter the Device. Aren’t people unpredictable? I suppose there’d be no point if they weren’t, would there? He knows to keep silent.[/i] END RECORD RECORD 343-CHASM-7888 [i]Subject twenty-three entered the Device at 11:00. A clever girl from the Core District; an artist, before she joined the War Cult. At 11:03 she reported a sensation of floating. At 11:06, a sensation of lights within the darkness of the Device. Between 11:06 and 11:32 she reported these lights variously as white, golden, and blood-red. At 11:32 she reported a sensation of someone taking her hand; a stranger, but also herself. Twelve subjects have reported similar experiences. At 11:33 she reported the sensation we have called “The Opening of The Veil.” The Device recorded temporal displacement of her consciousness to the order of six degrees. At seven she began screaming. Brainscans near-death. Removed from the Device at 11:34. She believes without question that the Device granted her a vision of the future, and that it was one of utter Darkness. She thanked me for this enlightenment. She says it will make her stronger. Little Ghost, there in the corner of the Sanctum – I see you blinking. Are you listening? Are y -[/i] END RECORD RECORD 343-CHASM-7889 [i]- the Device at 12:22 and immediately the Device reported displacement of his consciousness. Visions of war and the City in flames. Subject twenty-nine worked the supply channels on the Slip before he joined the War Cult. By 12:27 he was babbling and by -[/i] END RECORD RECORD 343-CHASM-7890 [i]We have applied certain refinements to the Device. Novarro found records of a prototype of the Device at a Golden Age laboratory in Tibet, and Hari’s team retrieved what was left of it. We are the first to see it operational in who knows how long. Too many subjects come back damaged. Mad. We are grasping at straws. What do you think, little Ghost?[/i] END RECORD RECORD 343-CHASM-7891 [i]Forty-seven human subjects; eleven report timelines in which the Darkness has already prevailed, thirteen report timelines in which the City has fallen. Twenty-three babbled madness. Hopeless. Trapped. No wonder the Device was abandoned. The human mind is too weak for it. Too weak to look into the Future, or to understand what it sees. What the situation calls for, little Ghost, is a better sort of witness. We found you in pieces in Siberia, and repaired you as well as we could. What do you say? Are you well enough to travel?[/i] END RECORD The log finishes running through my mind once more, like a mantra, a prayer of what has been and what will be. These words were mine, once – not me, but another me, one of the many that were created to understand us. They are mine and not mine – I spoke them long ago and yet they still remain on the tip of my tongue, waiting to be born into the world – Except for those which I didn’t speak. The countdown continues in my mind – As expected, we hear their approach, coming down, deeper and deeper into the halls of time – They growl and babble, rasping in their own language. The countdown continues – [i]3… 2… 1….[/i] I step out from the shadows. Now is the time, here is the place. “Perhaps I can help,” I tell the two lost Eliksni. [b]*** I hope you all enjoyed this latest installment of VOLITION LOGS, but I can’t claim the credit for the majority of this beautiful prose –– these logs were taken from the grimoire cards Ghost Fragments: Vex 5 and Future War Cult. I’ve included these in their entirety in my story as both a roadmap for what’s to come and so that readers can get a sense for how I’m settling my own lore within the larger lore of the Destiny universe. Next episode though will be back to normal, I just really couldn’t think of a better way to tie some of these ideas together than with the lore itself :)[/b]