CEV:Terminals/The Silent Cartographer

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MONITOR REPORT: FIRST SUMMIT
[alpha site]
04-343

Oh, what an exciting occasion! According to protocol, today marks the first scheduled status update from the other installations.

Of course, I am tempering my excitement with a reminder that we are still [bereft] of [Alexandria before the fire], and so we must utilize wormhole-based superluminal communications, for which the [bandwidth latency] of the sheer amount of shared data is especially cumbersome.

There are faster methods of course. At the height of the ecumene, we could communicate practically instantaneously across vast interstellar distances through [wavespace]—a narrow field within the eleven dimensions of slipspace. A system of relay nodes and [lithos] facilities helped to perpetuate the quantum repository across our settled regions in this galaxy, connecting the millions of weorlds inhabited by my makers.

However, outside of [emergency response] scenarios, protocol strictly forbids our exploitation of slipspace in order to [foment] a maximum healing period for [reconciliation debt].

All faster-than-light systems create a build-up of causality violations which, left unchecked, may become a corrosive force with cataclysmic consequences. Space-time anomalies, [dimensional blending],, starships entering slipspace and never reemerging... not to mention the risk of future civilizations forever being bound to their natal systems.

For millions of years the Forerunner ecumene had to [budget] for [reconciliation debt]. It was the only way to keep our interstellar civilization from [shatterpoint], and we were fortunate to have discovered its effects relatively early in our history. That led to the creation of life-sustaining personal armor and advanced temporal stasis chambers to ensure that lives could be prolonged for immensely long journeys across space.

Time. We had so much of it to share... now they are gone, and time is all I have left.

And so, the form of our communications will be quite an interesting adjustment. Even simple conversations may take place over hundreds, if not thousands of years to come.

I wonder how my fellow monitors have been faring in their duties. Are their installations posing any unique challenges? What developments might have transpired in their regions of space? We took so many precautions to ensure the safeguarding of our rings, but there is no way we could account for every permutation of random cosmic phenomena.

I regret that my own status update thus far will be... uneventful. I am alone. I have kept this installation running at [optimal capacity], and no notable incidents have yet occurred to be worthy of recounting.

Alas, as I visit the [projection systems], I find that there is not yet any activity from the other monitors.

I have seen to all other tasks mandated by the [Ecumene Council] that I had scheduled for today.

I shall wait.

Perhaps I should reexamine the mechanics of [reconciliation debt] to see how I can further optimize Installation 04's systems and responses to aid in the [sustained healing process]. It has been some time since I last--

Oh.

Oh my.

A message, at last!