Chthon

Epilog:

Yes—we let him go.

We allow Aton to revisit life.

He was dead when he came to us,

His culture says.

But he was unfinished.

And we require him—complete.

We give him to our half-sane minion, Bedside,

And wait for his return.

Aton, Aton—did you search for evil?

Did you desert your father in his hour of need, to pursue a fond illusion?

Did you forsake honest love for incestuous passion?

Did you betray your fellows into decimation?

Did you finally bargain with hell itself, which you symbolized as Chthon?

You have been condemned:

Not by your father

Not by your first or second love

Not by your fellows

Not by Chthon.

Where is the evil for which you search?

How can you tell it from yourself?

How can you condemn yourself

For being what you are?

We had thought to salvage the good of your culture’s philosophy

And destroy the evil of its being;

But we find them near of kin.

We had thought to recruit an envoy of extermination

To cleanse our galaxy of life.

But that envoy brings us LOE

And mocks our intellect with ethical conception.

(All we had seen before was your unsane element.)

How can we know life’s destiny from ours?

Are we not near of kin in our quest for completion?

How can we condemn you

For sharing our ideal

In your inverted terms?

And thus we must accept you with your woman;

We must banish the chill from the shell,

And learn that in our mercy

Is our own nova.

For as we study the chill we discover a thing of wonder:

Not natural

Not inimical

Not accidental

But an agitation planted within our galaxy,

Whose side-effects on life are unintentional:

A signal.

A message to every intellect with strength to comprehend:

We are not alone in the universe.

The god-intellects are waiting for our reply.