“Essence users are not warriors,” Cal-com said pithily.
Paul glanced at him. “That’s exactly what I’m feeling.”
“And you fear the non-warriors being able to defeat you, thus making warriors obsolete unless you play the Essence game on their terms.”
“Don’t we have to?”
“So you’ve lost your main nemesis, who essentially taught you everything by trying to kill you using advanced technology, psionics, and techniques that were wasted on their darkside empire. You learned them, turned them to the lightside, became superior warriors despite the impossibility of it, and now your warrior status is superseded, potentially, by a bunch of lazy, fat living batteries that do nothing more than donate some Essence every day for a million years.”
“You’ve been hanging out with me so much you’re picking up some of my vocabulary tendencies. You’re losing your polish.”
“Am I wrong?”
“I can’t change the universe,” Paul said defeatedly. “I feel that it should be different, but I can’t find anything I’m missing.”
“The game isn’t what you originally believed it to be.”
“Essence ruined everything,” Paul admitted. “And yet it has given us the ability to survive the Hadarak. It’s not optional, and we can’t turn it off in our enemies. We’ve been forced to play their game or become irrelevant on the galactic level.”
“Why can’t you forge a superior path?”
“I’m trying. We all are. We have been. We can’t find one.”
“And you fear one doesn’t exist.”
“Yes.”
“I brought you here to show you that the galaxy can take care of itself now. Even those outside your empire. You’ve succeeded enough you can let them continue the crusade, despite you always being a little better at it than them. But all of this can be destroyed by an enemy they cannot fight if you and the others do not keep advancing. You can help these people a little by being personally involved in actions that millions of Star Force personnel can accomplish. Or you can potentially save them all by growing stronger than future threats before they get here. You have to stop being Archons and become the Vanguard. You’ve been doing both your entire life, but now you’ve got others to handle the Archon duties. You need to specialize and take on the challenge of Essence sucking. Either make it your own, or find a way to surpass it.”
Paul’s eyes narrowed as he looked into the Voku’s blue visor that shielded his three tiny eyes. “Surpass it? Do you know something that I don’t?”
“Unlikely. But I recognize that you know something that I don’t. Your misgivings about Essence are obviously coming from some sense that I do not possess. You know something. You just can’t articulate it. There is an imbalance. That much is clear. Warriors will always be superior. If they are not, then there is not something wrong with the universe. There is something wrong with your perception of it.”
“Or our belief in warrior supremacy was wrong.”
“You would not have survived the V’kit’no’sat war if it was not true.”
That one comment seemed to settle Paul a bit. “Where do I start to track this down?”
“Go back and verify everything, looking for a variance. And to do that, you have to become ‘small’ before you can become ‘large’ again.”
“How am I doing so far?”
“Crude progress. You have forgotten how to relax.”
Paul sighed. “Any suggestions?”
“You must become vulnerable in a situation where there is no threat while amongst threats.”
Paul thought back to his high school days. “Like skinny dipping in the high school pool when the lights are out but the janitor is in the next room and could hear you if you got too noisy or if he just randomly chose to come out the side door?”
“I have not heard you tell that story before.”
“Didn’t happen to me, but I was told about a group of seniors doing it and it stuck with me.”
“Why were senior citizens in your school?”
Paul smiled. “Old Earth terms were conflicting at times. ‘Seniors’ meant our eldest class of students within the school. Not the eldest people in our civilization.”
“Were these seniors male or female?”
“Female. Cheerleaders actually.”
“And they were sexually desirable?”
“The most so in the school.”
“I am amazed how you Archons have risen above the base sexual desires and yet you still prioritize much on it, including memories.”
“When you’re not fully developed, even lazy seniors seem like the hottest thing in the universe. It’s a matter of perspective.”
“And now no one is more fit than you, so no females are as desirable?”
“Not even close. Those memories cannot be approached now.”
“So you cling to them because they give you a false grasp of the superior?”
“It was an accurate assessment at the time. I’ve just outgrown them by eons.”
“But you wish you had such superiors again?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Then you do not crave mating, socializing, or peerdom. You are drawn to superiority. To leveling up. And the people on this planet are the opposite of this. You have lost your target lock on the superior and do not know how to find it again.”
“Any suggestions?”
“Not yet, but I’m working on it. Are you hungry?”
Paul laughed. “Actually I am. Odd, considering we haven’t done more than walk.”
“Come then. Food is essential and not a divergence from the path of the warrior. Pursuing it is therefore on the proper path, if only for a few steps.”
“Food it is then,” Paul said, pulling his hood back over his face as Cal-com did the same. “Lead on, and try to find something that won’t make us both puke. What we passed earlier was not promising…”
8
April 17, 154930
Solar System (Home One Kingdom)
Earth
Taryn-047 stood in an isolation chamber inside
