433: Life As We Knew It

Ziggurat #348

Lamont literally reeled from the implications of what they were hearing, taking a few steps in no direction in particular as he tried to process it. If the tower's signal indeed passed through the Solar System as the apparition was suggesting, then it would have been present for the totality of mankind's existence. Could it be that they had, in fact, not arrived here by chance? That there was something larger at work?

Nurturer Omega…

"You said before," Lamont snapped, turning again toward the apparition, "that you didn't yet know why she had left when you built the tower. Yet. Does that mean that you know now?"

"We believe that we do," the specter agreed. It paused for a long moment and then said: "We believe that even her awesome forbearance reached its limit. She had given us all we needed. Peace, stability, plenty and purpose. And yet, we persisted in being only what we were. Buying and selling, marrying and being given in marriage, dying and being born again. An endless procession throughout the ages, self-consumed in the troubles of the flesh. She waited as long as she could, and when she could bear it no longer, she left."

"Waited for what?" Constance asked.

"For us to outgrow our veil of flesh and join her among the stars!" The specter exclaimed. "When she left, we proved her point. How quickly we fell into barbarism without her guiding hand! But now we know. Now we understand. Now we have shown ourselves ready."

"The bodies!" Lamont recalled, snapping his fingers. "That's why you killed all those poor damned people."

"After we built the tower, the time eventually came that we, the attendants, could no longer maintain our physical bodies. So we shed them, joining ourselves with the tower so that we could keep the faith alive as long as necessary. Generations came and went, with each of the faithful being added to the chorus when their own time had come. But then we realized that it wasn't enough; we had missed the point. By maintaining life as we knew it in the tower, we were only prolonging the situation with which she had become exasperated. When you build a playpen for your child, you do not expect them to remain in it forever. Finally, we began to understand her frustration. We saw generation after generation pass before us in this place, and each new generation was more self-absorbed than the last. Something had to be done."

"And something was," Lamont mumbled, appalled.

"For an eon, she had made a place in this universe where we could live and grow," the specter concluded. "But we were meant to grow out of it. To become like her."

Constance, visibly agitated, had walked halfway from where they stood toward the nearly invisible edge of the level. Now she paced back, her eyes flashing at the apparition. "You poor fools. You got it all wrong."

"How dare you?" Lamont's doppelganger retorted. "Who are you to question the wisdom of the ages?"

"It's not me questioning you," Constance replied, gazing icily not at the eyes of the apparition, but at the dark sphere floating inside it. "It's her. I speak for the Nurturer Omega."