I despaired for two days and wallowed in self pity. I started to understand and feel the great guilt and pain that my teacher shared with his eyes and now I knew why he was reluctant to discuss much of what was transpiring.
This is a very mad, mad world and the names constantly change, but they are always after the same thing, their own destruction. Only, they don't believe they will be the cause of it, only they are trying to thwart others who would do the same. Peacekeepers.
I read the entire tome and was restless with what it shared. Much of it was disjointed and random thoughts of the past. Nothing significant, except for the concern and fear of awakening the computer brain. It was to be mankind's greatest achievement to create a new sentient life form. They were successful in creating some partially sentient machines and some continue to persist and live deep beneath the oceans.
Like the devil beetles, there exist the great metal whales and leviathans who prowl the deep and perpetually cleanse the poisoned and toxic sea floor. Their existence once a myth until the day Edgar hurled the devil beetles into the sea and we watched as they were chased out from the depths by the equally mammoth metal behemoths. Their immense bodies curled in long tendrils at least a mile long in all directions and they moved with such immense speed.
Deep beneath the oceans and closer to the earth crust were huge automated factories and foundries that sustain and replenish their number. They are operated by giant machines and humanoid robots at such crushing depths no conventional means could travel there. And hidden within the Pacific foundries was mankind's greatest monument, a space ship. It rivaled the size of any behemoth and the Arctic vault and sat primed and fully stocked, waiting to travel to the distant stars. Equally amazing, after a few years the space ship is scrapped by the machines and rebuilt anew. There is enough material and capacity to build a near limitless supply of these star ships.
The devil beetles however were designed and programmed to never allow any of those ships to depart. And the great wars of ideology of past were sparked when some of mankind attempted to leave and were shot down. The skies turned red and engulfed in flames as a never ending attrition of ships were blown to pieces in the hopes a sufficient number could elude the ever increasing barrage of flying spears of the devil beetles. None escaped.
A thought struck me that whoever trapped themselves in the Arctic vault may have attempted to stop the devil beetles from destroying the escaping ships. And Edgar must have known this somehow when he had me lock away the only means to control them. I closed the book at that thought and gave it to Jamie-Lynn.
She shared my sentiment and marveled at my ability to discern things. The sisters were preparing to free mankind from this hellish prison. They almost had everything they needed and she gave me one final parting kiss in the same way Ninya did the same when I handed her the control unit before we blew up the tunnels.
I felt my work was done and Jamie-Lynn nodded that there was little else she could think was needed from me. She said to marvel and enjoy my free time, to go to the fish markets, to the countryside, even the Capital and coastal provincial. She could not promise me that there would not be yet another great war and the crack of the devil beetles once more.
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