Contents
3.9 DARKNESS
Overview
The Shrouded narrator resumes routine, then intercepts the Stranger’s returning “child,” realizing it is merely a segment. After dismantling the segment’s body, the Shrouded watches the Stranger reclaim its kernel and depart. Following intense internal debate, the Shrouded commits a convoy of segments and an ambassador to shadow and preserve the Stranger, even as purpose blurs with distance.
Summary
The Shrouded narrator’s domain settles back into routine while the Stranger lingers aloft, broadcasting its mournful signal. When a broadcasting “child” returns, the Shrouded realizes it is not offspring but a dispatched segment of the Stranger, akin to a foraging party sent to complete a task and come back.
The Shrouded races to the segment and reaches it before the Stranger, studying its structure to destruction. The Stranger arrives, disregards the dismantled outer body that so intrigued the Shrouded, and retrieves only the hard kernel the Shrouded could not open. Compelled by some inherited direction, the Stranger then prepares to move on.
The Shrouded weighs choices: allow the Stranger to pass, destroy and study it further, or send escorts to learn from it without ruining it. Fragmentary memories warn against overzealous dissection and suggest prior, similar contact and the value of sending parts to accompany it and record knowledge for return or inscription by an Otherlike.
After internal deliberations across its distributed mind, the Shrouded decides to shadow the Stranger. It extends a chain of itself to the edge of its domain and beyond, dispatching a convoy with an ambassador carrying a written message for any encountered Otherlike. As the convoy separates from the greater self, complex motivations fade, but a simple mission remains: follow the Stranger, preserve it, and learn.
Who Appears
- The Shrouded narratorDistributed host intelligence; intercepts and dissects the Stranger’s segment, debates options, and dispatches a convoy and ambassador to follow.
- The StrangerAlien visitor in the Shrouded’s domain; retrieves its segment’s kernel and resumes moving toward a compelling direction.
- The Segment (the Stranger’s ‘child’)A dispatched unit broadcasting loudly; dismantled by the Shrouded, leaving a hard kernel the Stranger later reclaims.
- Otherlike mindsNeighbor intelligences; potential recipients of the Shrouded’s ambassador’s inscribed account.