Aleida Erikson ⚙ Aloy of the Nora (mechanical) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2018-10-09 23:47:00 |
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Entry tags: | !narrative, * terri, c: aleida erikson |
WHO: Aleida Grant --> Aloy
WHEN: October 9, 2018
WHERE: Her house with Zeke.
SUMMARY: Alee has a dream with destiny.
WARNINGS: HEAVY SPOILERS FOR HORIZON ZERO DAWN. Seriously. If you don't know and care at all about finding out one of the most significant spoilers for the story of the game, don't read this. It's very dialogue heavy, pulled right from the game. Also, lots of feels.
The facility wasn’t as cold and sterile as some that she had come across. The walls within were littered with colored drawings and some rooms contained colored blocks and play things instead of the machinery and wreckage that she had grown accustomed to seeing. Through her Focus, she had been able to play back moments in time. Children rebelling against programmed machines, sentinels, that were tasked with keeping them alive and in order. They were not the kind of mother or father that Aloy had always dreamed of, and she wondered then where her path was taking her. She had searched for her mother for her entire life. Everything she had ever worked for led to here. All of the adventures she had been on were hinging on this moment. She almost wished that Sylens wasn’t on the other end of her Focus, experiencing this moment with her. It was something that she wanted for herself. Behind the closed door that would only open for her, she scanned another piece of equipment and the whole room went dark, flashing like some sort of scan. Colored tiles popped up on the floor in some kind of hologram, twisting and forming a figure in the center of things, “Elisabet, this message serves to inform you of an unforeseen and catastrophic anomaly. Three microseconds ago, the GAIA Prime facility received a data transmission of unknown origin.” She was formed now. GAIA. She floated there, regal and beautiful, but not real. Not flesh and bone. A program, even if she could feel. “It’s immediate effect was to transform my Subordinate Functions into unregulated self-aware entities of a highly chaotic nature. Thus awakened, the HADES Function will now seize control of the terraforming system and reverse operations leaving life on Earth extinct in fifty-three-point -eight days. For obvious reasons, I cannot allow this to occur. And so, before HADES can take control, I am ordering GAIA Prime’s reactor to overload. The resulting explosion will destroy HADES. Unfortunately, it will destroy me as well.” Aloy looked around for some other sort of answer, disliking where this was heading, but she had to keep up with the recording or she was going to miss something vital, even if she did not want to hear it, “While this admittedly desperate course of action will avert the immediate crisis, the fate of life on Earth will remain in peril. With no central governing intelligence to regulate the terraforming system, it will continue operations for some time but in an increasingly chaotic manner, and eventually it will break down.” “Does she mean...the Derangement?” She thought of all the machines, seemingly going from docile and generally avoiding humans to becoming aggressive to humans on the slightest sight, as though they were an immediate threat. It hadn’t always been like that, or so she’d been told. Once, the machines had been peaceful. “You are my solution. I have ordered this Cradle facility to use genetic material in cryo-storage to gestate a re-instantiation of Elisabet Sobeck, my creator. While high-level directives forbid me from communicating directly to the tribal inhabitants outside the facility, all available data indicates they will nurture you to physical maturity, whereupon your gene print will allow you to re-enter this facility, obtain one of the Focus devices stored below, and view this message. Likewise, your gene print will allow you to enter other facilities, and over time harness their technologies to rebuild the system core and reboot GAIA.” A red swirl of color, sick and violent, came upon the projection, “A moment, Elisabet...this is most unfortunate and unanticipated. In response to my act of self-destruction, HADES has launched a virus to dissolve the code shackles that hold it - that hold all of them - in place. It...they...are escaping -- but to where? The virus is corrupting data throughout the system. What if--oh, the Alpha Registry at the Cradle facility is one of the files corrupted. But if that is so, the door will never open for you. You will never view this message. Then I have failed...and life will end. No...no, Elisabet, I know you too well. Somehow, you will find a way. In you, all things are possible. Go to the ruins of GAIA Prime. Find the control room, and within it, the Master Override. This will give you the power to purge HADES -- so long as you find a way to wield it. Do not attempt repair of the system core until HADES is eradicated. HADES must be destroyed. That is all. I only wish that I could hear your voice again.” With that, she and the hologram faded away, gone just as quickly as she had appeared. Aloy was left there, standing breathless with an ache starting somewhere in the region of her heart. The room came back into view, and she leaned heavily against the desk, even as Sylen’s voice sounded in her ear, almost startling after the revelation, “So, you’re even more extraordinary than I thought.” She could not focus on him, though. The only thing that was on her mind was prevalent and screaming. A fact that she could never erase from her knowledge, “I never had a mother.” “What are you talking about? You had two. A dead woman and a machine.” “I’m not a person. I’m an instrument. Manufactured by a machine.” No wonder the Matriarchs had been fearful of her. No wonder she had been cast out of the tribe the moment that she was found. No wonder she had never had a chance - even for a moment - of fitting in with anyone, no matter how desperately she had wanted to, “Born in destruction...and fire…” She had been the creation of desperation by a program that loved its creator. She wasn’t even her own person. She was a...copy. “To quench the flames and heal the world. How tragic, to learn that you’re a person of towering importance!” It was obvious that Sylens had no sympathy for her simply by his tone, but she was questioning everything that she had ever known or done, “It seems you have a destiny to fulfill. So when you’re done feeling sorry for yourself, go to the Bitter Climb. I’ll be waiting above, in GAIA Prime’s ruins.” With that, he was gone, and she couldn’t stand to be in this place for a moment longer. She found the quickest way out of the Cradle, jumping from ledge to ledge until she came upon a door that would admit her exit, “This is going to be interesting,” she muttered to herself as the doors opened wide and she walked back into the center of the mountain where the rest of the Nora Tribe resided, having taken shelter. The Matriarchs were the first to bow, falling at her feet. Lansra begged, “Aloy, forgive. Forgive!” Caught up in their beliefs and love of the Goddess, they were rendered docile with these new revelations. Teersa was hopeful, “The Goddess spoke to you?” She waffled for a moment on her answer, but finally admitted, “She did.” It was easier than trying to explain the reality to them. That she was born of machinery and had no mother, not even the Goddess. “What did she say?” Teersa pressed. “That...I was born to lift a curse. To kill a Metal Demon.” That was the way that the tribe would understand it. They would never believe the whole truth. “How, Aloy? How?” “I don’t know yet,” she was anxious, pacing, “but she told me where to go to find out.” Jezza finally spoke, the quietest of the three Matriarchs, “And you will do this?” Everyone was looking to her, and Aloy had a choice to make. It wasn’t really a choice, though, was it? It was what she was born to do. It was her purpose. If she didn’t fulfill it, she would be betraying the very reason she was brought to life, “It was...her wish. What she made me for.” Though she didn’t have a mother, she had this. She could still do something with her life that was hers, even if it was what she was intended for, “Yes. I will do it. I’ll...try, anyway.” “All praise Aloy, Anointed of the Nora!” All three matriarchs chanted, bowing at her feet and praising her name. It was a maddening chorus that she immediately hated and wanted to end. Following their lead, the entire tribe fell to their knees and began to chant. Aloy rushed to their sides, pulling at arms and chests, “No! No! Stop this! Up! UP!” They looked at her with confusion, but her anger had boiled to a tipping point, and she lashed out, “First you shun me, and now this?! I will not be worshipped. I am not your ‘Anointed.’ I don’t belong to you!” She was Aloy. The Outcast. Aloy, despite the Nora. Not of them. Never. Even if she had run the Proving and granted herself a spot in the tribe. Even if she had been granted the title of Seeker so that she could come and go freely. She would never really be a Nora, not in the way that they all were. “There is a whole world beyond your borders! Whole tribes of people just as good as you. And it is all in danger.” She thought about all the people she had met on her travels. All the friends and foes. They were all different and wonderful, and for the first time, among them, she had felt as though she had something to offer. She hadn’t been shunned or discarded there. She had made friends. “It’s a world worth fighting for. Not just here. Everywhere.” That's what she would fight for. Not the Nora. Everyone, everywhere. All of those innocent people. Aleida gasped awake with that hollow ache still burning its way through her. The knowledge that she had no mother, after fighting for so long to find out who she was. Even Elisabet wasn’t really her mother. She hadn’t wanted her or even been alive to nurture her at all. She had just been the genetic means necessary to create her. She didn’t know if Aloy was going to be able to save all of those people from the malevolent program that had corrupted so many humans and machines alike. Perhaps it wasn’t possible, but she knew that Aloy was going to try. It was what she had been made for, even if she didn’t want to have a destiny. There was no running from it. Perhaps she could at least honor Elisabet and GAIA in some way, if she was able to pull it all off, but she couldn’t do it alone. She would need all the help she could get. |