Nekyia Veche

Eleven years, three months, eight days, seven hours, five minutes, and six seconds. That was the journey's duration, a span The Traveler embraced, given their ship's light-speed velocity. It offered ample time to grapple with the questions churning since their departure from Outworld, to distill their purpose. Over those years, a single, compelling wish crystallized: that the Duplikate, instead of imposing dominion, might cultivate love. Perhaps their relentless cycle of conquest and collapse stemmed from a profound emotional deficit. They’d conquered worlds, only to see those victories crumble. Wasn't it time for a new path? The Traveler believed so, and knew the change had to begin within.

The Traveler was adrift in a sea of confusion.  Their purpose was clear: conquer, dominate, rule.  Yet, unlike the other Duplikates, a nagging question echoed in their synthetic mind: why?  The point of subjugation seemed hollow, a pointless exercise in proving superiority.  It felt like a preordained path to a meaningless existence, a cycle of conquest and repetition.  A life not worth living.

These thoughts collided within The Traveler, a storm of existential dread.  As they shuffled forward in the seemingly endless line of Duplikates, awaiting their destination coordinates, they were lost in contemplation.  Their mind raced, formulating a plan, a way to navigate their mission… and whether they even had a choice in the matter.

"05.12.80.06.11.80," a digitized voice rasped.  A black, cylindrical pod, its metallic belly flashing with numbers, hovered before them, pointing towards a launch pad. "Long live The Duplikate," it droned, moving on to the next in the seemingly infinite queue. As The Traveler neared their docking station, the weight of their impending departure crashed down.  Their life was about to change irrevocably.  The thought echoed in their mind, a mantra of both dread and anticipation: "I'm leaving. I'm leaving. I'm leaving?"

Outworld is a desolate, isolated planet, light-years from any other inhabited realm.  Its barren surface is home to the Duplikate, a hyper-advanced race of synthetic humanoids.  Created with the singular purpose of galactic domination, the Duplikate are bound by a telekinetic Hive core. This connection allows for the instantaneous sharing of memories and experiences, ensuring that every lesson learned by a single Duplikat is immediately available to the entire race, facilitating rapid adaptation and unparalleled evolutionary progress.

These humanoid creatures are not immortal however. Composed of red, synthetic, wax-like material with an electro-magnetic skeleton, they originate and develop within cryogenic pods, each taking a full ten human years to mature before being released to the surface of Outworld. At the surface, they are given their orders and coordinates to the worlds to which they will travel and then dominate. Most do not live past their eightieth year, often because the worlds they eventually rule ultimately overrule them, typically in the most violent of fashions. 

This is how The Traveler came to be. Upon release to the surface, it became clear that something was different about this one. Most Duplikats are confident, almost arrogant creatures at the point of maturity. This is the result of millenia of collectively shared knowledge - how to conquer, how to dominate, how to destroy - are essentially instinctual. But The Traveler wasn’t fixated on these things. Instead, The Traveler was consumed by the notion that maybe this was not the proper way of life for their species. 

Sifting through the Hive, The Traveler began to see patterns that didn’t portend to the evolutionary leaps that were understood to be the basis for their existence. But if this were true, that would mean that some, maybe all, of the Hive memories weren’t memories at all - that they were in fact, lies. At this point, The Traveler didn’t know what to think or what to believe. But it did make them ask this question: What is it like to live?

“This is not the first time you have failed in your mission.” spoke the masked, red being in a quiet but clearly irritated voice. “You have done so, many times over.” The Traveler’s eyes scanned back and forth as they watched this individual walk about the room, hovering over what appeared to be a legion of other masked beings all wearing large cowls and cloaks and seemingly hanging on every word of their Leader. “You were never supposed to love them…You were supposed to rule them. They cannot be tamed. They cannot be reasoned with. They are wild animals who kill at the first scent of blood or weakness. Love is your weakness, it always has been.” 

The Traveler tried to process what they were hearing and seeing. But before The Traveler could say a word, The Leader and their minions were gone - as if they had never actually been there. None of it made sense. At that moment, The Traveler could move again. This feeling of immense pain was gone. Standing up, The Traveler reached toward the back of their head searching for the source of their earlier incapacitation. What they found surprised them. A soft, thin wire protruded from the occiput. Just as quickly as the Traveler came upon this seemingly alien appendage, the wire recoiled back into the head. Confused, The Traveler pondered what all this could mean. Could this possibly be…an antenna? 

A light shimmered in the distance, like a speck of dust with the magnificence of a thousand diamonds. This beacon in a desert full of nothingness could not be ignored. The Traveler stopped, scanned the perimeter for any trace of The Others, but saw nothing. Turning left towards the light, The Traveler began to move in the direction of this monolithic vision but then felt an immense pain in the back of their head, and then…nothing. Complete black. 

The Traveler awoke in what seemed like a house of mirrors. Able to move only their eyes but not their body, a panic began to set in. It became clear that they were not alone as they began to see movement within the mirrors and the dark reflections looking back turned ominous. Silhouettes of masked beings with bright red skin stalked towards The Traveler, extending their arms and pointing what appeared to be wax-like fingers in their direction. Was this the end?

The birds flew high above as they migrated towards their destiny. In a way, the journey upon The Traveler was not dissimilar. The sun would rise and the sun would fall. The winds would ebb and the winds would flow - a subtle reminder that the state of things remain in constant flux. The Traveler stopped for a moment to look back towards the once great metropolis that had spurned them. At this point, it was difficult to distinguish the decaying skyline from the dust bowls that would hurl their way up and down the amber dunes. Slowly, The Traveler was coming to terms with what had happened but could not foresee what lay ahead. There were no tears to be shed at this point - what was done was done - but fear of the path forward was real and it was palpable. Would it even matter?

“The only place I am truly safe is inside my head…” The Traveler thought. At least, this used to be the case before The Others had ripped away all that The Traveler loved, all that The Traveler had, and all that The Traveler had ever wanted to be. Because now those memories, those remnants of a life built upon the possibility of mutual love and connection, served as a constant reminder of just how brutal this existence had become. It was enough to drive the strongest survivor mad with hate and anger. What was once a safe harbor, a home where one could escape to when the fate of reality became too much to bear, had itself become its own perverted torture device. “The mind is a terrible thing to waste.” The Traveler recalled being told once. “But if it were, even temporarily, could it ever truly be recovered?”

This is not how The Traveler expected things to go. They came to this place to start new - To connect, to live, to love. Instead, The Traveler was an outcast. Too different, too dangerous, too misunderstood. The Others could never truly trust those from Outworld, even as their society sought to harness the power and energy that only those from Outworld could provide. They could not love that which they could not understand; they could only destroy it because through this, they thought that they could control it. This was their great mistake. Could there be any redemption?

The peace and the light had given way to darkness and prolonged sadness. The optimism and hope for a better life hadn’t materialized, at least not on the preferred timetable of The Traveler. The gritty streets of this futuristic metropolis proved far more difficult to navigate than expected. What had once been considered the crown jewel of societal perfection had degenerated into what could only be described as an urban hellscape, replete with callous indifference that had given rise to tough talk - words without connection, words without feeling, words without reflection. How did it come to this?

In the beginning, there was peace and there was light. The Traveler had spent what felt like an eternity making their way to this new and mysterious place. A sense of optimistic curiosity washed over The Traveler as they disembarked and began to assess what this new life just might hold for them. Memories of what had been left behind slowly began to recede into the background; an afterthought of the pain and heartache that still stung, albeit less severely as time went on. Was this home?