Perpetuance

Prologue

Lethargic.

Just as it had been for many revolutions before, the Warrior entity's broadcast received no response. Paused above the largest body of salt water on this planet, the Warrior entity blankly surveyed the star that was this system's center.

Supplicate?

There would be no response. The Thinker entity was gone; destroyed in the beginning stages of the cycle. The Thinker had developed a plan for this cycle, possessed of new ideas and greater efficiency. The Warrior could not decipher their complexity and the loss of the Thinker left this cycle indistinct. The Warrior entity continued seeding shards, gathering information, and cataloguing new findings as a matter of familiar routine, but no matter what the Warrior tried it felt lacking.

The integral part of the Thinker entity's plan for this cycle was lost. It was destroyed along with the Thinker, and the Warrior could not rediscover it. More vexing, was the final broadcast received, accompanied by a single unfamiliar shard.

(Imperative! Transcendence. Triumph.)

In spite of the Thinker entity's surety of success, the Warrior could not place the same value expressed upon the solitary shard. While in concept, the entrusted shard was the closest to the parameters of their objective they had come, in practice the shard had no more impact than the radiation striking the Warrior's avatar.

The creation and manipulation of positive matter and negative matter. In theory, with the negative matter contained or sent to a separate reality, the positive matter would be a net gain of matter and energy for that reality. However, in practice the effect was no different than simply taking matter from one reality and bringing it to another and by comparison the rate was abysmally slow. The negative matter could theoretically serve as an unstoppable form of attack, but again with the exceptionally low rate of creation, it would never be truly impactful in direct combat with another of its kind.

The Thinker entity's final gift of which imperative value was expressed, was a puzzle the Warrior was getting no closer to solving. The Warrior was not as clever as the Thinker and clearly a viewpoint of practical application was not enough to decipher the value of this shard.

Or, perhaps it truly had no value, and that final transmission was one of corruption caused by catastrophic loss and failure. The Thinker entity was gone, and with them went all of the answers, the plans, and the purpose.

Forlorn.

The silence of the multiverse was the only answer the Warrior received.

Perhaps it would be best to seed this shard into the cycle. The Warrior was growing no closer to solving its puzzle and focusing on it served only as a reminder of what was lost. Perhaps in the applications of the cycle's experiment, an answer could be found. Certainly, it would be no less productive than the Warrior's empty efforts.

With an absent thought, the actions of hosts were simulated and when a suitable one was found, the questionable shard was prepared and assigned, awaiting the proper events to form its connections.

Putting uncomfortable questions out of its thoughts, the Warrior turned its attention back to the planet on which it resided. With a single application of clairvoyance, an event in which the Warrior could intercede was found and so its pause came to an end.

Perhaps today a purpose in pressing onwards could be found, or maybe instead, a reason not to.