The ~SIVA Crisis

Perfection Complex,

Old Russia, Earth

I stand alone, in my Perfection Complex.

I had done it. I had seized SIVA for myself, but at what cost? To what end will my madness take me?

Paledon is dead.

Karbil is dead.

Pathernax fled.

I am alive, right here, swimming in my prize.

My thinking is clear now in ways it never was before. My mind has changed ever since I gave SIVA a directive to enhance my capabilities, my combat methods, and even physique. I feel stronger. Like I could take over the entire Cosmodrome. And yet…it is not my mind, but another consciousness that is different from my own, as if my mind was consumed and I am nothing but a mere machine now—alluded with a directive I must carry out.

I feel there is a choice to be made and yet I have no choices in mind. The choice was already made for me.

As I stand, SIVA mites swarming around me, protecting me from harm, I sat alone, thinking.

Paledon is gone because of me. My one true love, the one who trusted in me to do good.

Was it really worth it? A seize of power to ~consume, enhance, and replicate? Was Paledon’s life less valuable to me then this? And what do I have to show by it? Potential godhood that I may rise up and turn against those who I fought with and for?

I twitched, not on my own accord, as I paced around, near a dead Aksis.

My Ghost is he…consumed too. Albeit alive, just different. Robust.

Even now as I tell my story…I am more along the line of stream of consciousness.

I am not myself but rather something else.

I never once thought a power so awesome could be possible. Now I know why the Fallen were using SIVA, why Aksis fought like hell to keep this place.

I know of SIVA’s flaws. What to correct. So challengers are always defeated. Must always be perfect.

Directive! Directive! Directive!

I settle down.

I situate myself on the threshold Aksis once took and made it my own.

I had SIVA create a mantle, a throne for me to occupy as I plotted what to do with my new fortune.

But, even though I am of another consciousness, I channelled my focus and thought about Paledon and what I had done to him. Blinding him into believing that I wanted to good by wiping out SIVA, but, in the end, really wanted it for myself. His death was…unfortunate.

I miss him.

He was mine. The one person who believed me. Trusted me. Only to die for my sins and lust for power. But it was too late because I was already consumed with SIVA. It changed me. I had to deceive him. I had to exploit his love for me and use it as a vehicle to boaster my motive for getting what I desired.

“I am so sorry, Paledon! I never meant for any of this to happen. I regret it. I wish I could take back everything, fix everything I had done wrong. I wish I could just cuddle up to you in bed, right before we sleep…but none of that is possible now, though. It never will be.This wasn’t something I wanted to do, I swear!”

My head pounded with the fury of a volcanic eruption, as SIVA directed me to think of its consciousness, not mine.

I wasn’t alone. I had SIVA. Better than Paledon!

I fought back, valiantly.

“No! Paledon was better than you, SIVA! Go away!”

No possible. SIVA is already in me, strengthening me. Doing what I commanded for it to do.

Paledon was the only person who believed in me. His love for me was true and unwavering. Unchanging.

I could reanimate his body with SIVA. Bring him back to life!

I could see him again.

But at what cost? He wouldn’t be the same, instead warped and unyielding. No longer would he be the same person I fell in love with or the person who held me gently as I had my nightmares after coming in contact with this darkness…The dark part of me is waiting for me to embrace it—to fulfill it.

Life requires death and death requires life. All of it is an unending circle of life, something purposeful,. It has value. The expenditure of countless generations, long before my Ghost found me in the Jungles of Venus (in case you forgot), slouching blindly toward uncertain ends—each step forward a mere accident of chance. But this…this was different. Paledon died for me. He died for my cause, what I sought, but was it all really worth writing his death in history? Or should I have considered him to be a nobler ruler of the machines too?

He and I could’ve been rulers.

I stand up and paced around, gathering my thoughts together.

They were thoughts I no longer wanted to endure.

Now as I stand alone, between unwavering power and a guilty consciousness (and another that is not if my own) I began to grow dormant, much like the SIVA clusters that taught me so much about this wonderful yet harrowing pledge that are the nanomites.

I look.

I don’t want it anymore!

I want Paledon!

I feel the darkness rise inside me as I processed the thought, the denial of that which is powering me to potential immortality, while being forged in Light.

In the back of my mind, the mind that is actually mine, I can feel more than hear a soft, lilting whisper as it calls my name in a hiss much like a snake. It’s faint, but still sounds like an alarm bell inside me. I try to shut my eyes again, but they won’t stay closed for more than a minute or two, no thanks to the SIVA controlling the very instinct of the mind. There’s no sleep inside them for me to curl up and nestle into the voice that is echoing in my head; and there is certainly no comforting thoughts that listen to emotion or reaction; only reason and logic since machines can’t feel emotion.

There’s nothing, except heightened awareness of that thing with me in the room, hat dark part. As I shut my eyes, that whisper intensifies.

I am a lone Guardian now, corrupted by the dark ways of SIVA. But I feel great! As if I wasn’t corrupt or warped.

Before I know it, my eyes open again, intently finding some spot on the wall: A SIVA symbol painted on the wall, more than likely by the Fallen. It’s a lovely symbol, really. A sign of power. A sign of strength. A sign of influence.

I remember the first time I encountered SIVA, back on the mountaintops with Sepiks Prime. Paledon was so great back then! The burly Titan that I got to know (more of) and love…that day when he told me to take the plunge and just go out to fight with my Light…then later on when I opened up to him about how I felt and then he opened about how he felt…oh the memories! They are too much to bear!

Once, what we had was nothing more than a normal friendship, something platonic, that was bound by being fused together in a fireteam, only for it to rise up into something grand and formidable, something built off love and happiness. Then it was hone, as it always had been. My pat life never happened. Because my consciousness says it never happened and therefore that has to be true. I could never have had that life. I’m alone. I always have been, and you’re never going to have someone to share your life with.

Once, out of the darkness within me, I pictured a land where there was no more war between Light and Dark, a place where Paledon and I could call our home and live happily, without fear of what might strike us. I saw a path leading to a viny temple, somewhere in the Jungles of Venus. I could feel a bell ringing there, even if it didn’t sound in my ears. The Traveler and Sun rose over the temple, and the light jutted off the massive window to our bedroom; the scene just became a part of a memory I never had. Will never have. I could never climb the steps of that temple, leading to the doorway where Paledon would be standing in the doorway. Waiting for me.

All the hopes and dreams I once had were nothing more than agency now.