#elemental tribes

First they went to their original teacher. The Great Beings had once conquered the Dream Eater to gain their genius. Perhaps they could extract the truth from the Dream Eater about . . .

Annona laughed loud and long at their question. And in her impossible eyes, the Great Beings saw fear.

So they returned to their workshop and kept up the research, no wiser than before. As the Great Beings delved deeper into this this new thread of reality they discovered that it just grew more complicated and frustrating. It was indescribable and unjustifiable, it contradicted itself constantly. And no matter how maddening it became, it was impossible to look away from, because it always seemed to be posing the question: what is your . . .

But they made no progress. Even as their obsession deepened, the Great Beings could not find even a scrap of sense or consistency that wasn’t torn down by the very next discovery.  Not even the laws of randomness applied. The truth that they knew must be there always felt like it was just out of reach. Many abandoned the subject in disgust, returning to the safety of technological innovation.

And in the northern frost, up sprung the pool.

The Great Beings knew immediately that something had happened. The world just felt different when they woke up one day. But it took them a few days to receive word from the source. An abnormal seismic event that had the Element Lords of Ice and Earth acting strangely. Whispers circulating among the tribes.

They got a sample as quickly as they could. It was . . .

It seemed that this new substance was a physical distillation of the very same law of reality they had been studying. Which was impossible. But the Great Beings had found themselves growing disturbingly used to the impossible. As they continued to experiment with the substance, their thoughts became preoccupied with the same irrationality. They tried to put it out of mind. Fundamental properties of the universe weren’t sentient. They didn’t intentionally manifest as pseudo-matter and place themselves so as to taunt living beings.

Did they?

Word spread quickly among the tribes. Everyone knew about the mysterious pool in the north. Everyone had heard or, if they were unlucky, seen what happened to those who touched the surface. They knew of the monstrous transformations, the rending flesh and splintering bone that reshaped itself like clay, the increasingly strange and metallic screams that ring to this day in the ears of the witnesses who heard them. And those were the lucky ones, the cases where the pool’s effects could be understood by the mortal mind. Some who had touched it were just gone without a trace.

Yes, everyone on Spherus Magna knew about the pool.

And it pulled them.

People of every tribe, some hundreds of miles away, would be plagued by the uneasy thought of its existence at all times of the day. Agori would wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, the image of the pool’s shimmering surface burned into their mind’s eye even if they had never seen it before. Like an oil slick on the fabric of reality. They would stand at their windows and look at the starry sky, and grip the windowsill so hard their fingers bled to stop themselves from walking away towards the northern horizon.

Come, whispered the pool, don’t you want to see what’s in store? I am here for you and only you. Come to me. Take the dive. Accept your . . .

Ask a Magnan today why the Core War was fought, and they will tell you it was over power. “The pool in the north held a substance that could be turned into a weapon,” they will say. “The Element Lords coveted it. They wanted to use it to conquer each other.”

Such is the legend they tell to save themselves from the memory of a truth they can’t understand. No one truly knows why the Core War started, but deep in their hearts they know it was never really about power. It was about the pull.

As the war raged outside their fortresses, the Great Beings continued their research. No longer did they find joy in the work of discovery; all that was left was the all-consuming need to understand. Gradually, day by day, experiment by painful, dangerous, experiment, they began to unlock the secrets of the pool’s contents. They named it. They stabilized it. They purified it. They changed its state. They made things out of it.

They made life out of it.

The ultimate creation, the only thing that had eluded the Great Beings for all of their lives. From the darkness they had dubbed “protodermis” emerged a light of a kind they had never seen before.

A strange light. A light they feared. They named it Ignika.

And when one of their number touched it and was cursed, and then driven insane, they asked him why. “Why did you touch it when you knew it was dangerous? You knew its effects could not be predicted.”

The mad one laughed long and loud at the question. “Well, it had to be done!“ he said. “It had to! I had to! It was my . . .”

They locked him in a tower so they wouldn’t have to hear him anymore.

Impossibilities remained, but the Great Beings had found a hope to cling to. Maybe they didn’t understand the substance, but they could control it. And what better way to exercise their control over it than to build with it? With the new properties they had discovered in protodermis, they would make their greatest creation yet. A machine to fly into the stars and explore, to discover the meaning of its own substance. To discover the truth. And then, once it had found the truth, to bring it back to them. And then, finally, they would know. Finally, they would understand . . .

The Great Machine was large. Larger than the Great Beings expected it to be. Its very foundations stretched to the sky. Within them lay miles of passageways, tons of wires and gears, endless machinery that blotted out the sun. It felt as if the rapidly growing framework warped space around it, to make the pitch black tunnels within spiral on into an endless maze of shadows, larger than the frame that encased it (larger than the planet itself?). Once an Agori made a break for foundations and disappeared into them before the  worker drones could stop him. No one knows why. Perhaps he felt pulled to them. He didn’t come back out. Reports that the drones had detected voices coming from within the maze were ignored.

The Great Beings went one day to their architect slave. Artahka, the maker of the Great Machine. Together, they observed the components he had designed as they were lowered down, down, miles down into the depths of the Machine to be put into place. Artahka smiled. He was proud.

Then the Great Beings asked him what a part’s purpose was.

He looked confused. “I don’t know,” he said, as if it should be obvious that he wouldn’t. “My mask shows me what must be made, and I have the drones make it.” He smiled again. “It is all in the course of . . .”

Oh, how the Great Beings howled at the sound of that.

Oh, how they punished the architect slave for the mere mention of the word. For the first and last time in his life, Artahka knew pain.

He wept, for he did not understand. “Why?” he cried. “Why do you hurt me when I only do what you made me to do?” The Great Beings did not listen.

As the Core War raged around them and the world fell to pieces, they pushed forward.  The machine began to take on a shape at once familiar and strange. The Great Beings hadn’t intended to build it in their own image. As it grew ever larger, they grew less and less sure of why they did what they did. Why build islands? Why simulate soil and weather? Why create domes arched like the sky? It didn’t matter, they were sure this was what they must do.

Every resource they had, every hour of their days, every last scrap of their passion and their sanity, they threw into the construction of the Machine powered by the contents of the pool. It was their final victory against the Great Impossibility, they told themselves. “Look what we have built from that which confounded us!” they said. “Look how we have dissected it, determined its properties, bent it to our whim! With this, we have conquered! With this, we control . . .”

And so they built a living altar to their hated god.

And when Velika, The Riddler, stole away and secretly planted a seed in the minds of their worker drones, even though he knew he would not like the results, he could not tell you why he did it. (Well, it had to be done, he thought to himself. It had to. I had to.)

And when the Machine was launched, the Great Beings dragged themselves back to their decrepit fortresses and vaults, locking themselves away to wait out the apocalypse they had been unable to prepare for. They could not remember or explain why they had done everything they had done over the past year. They were no longer even sure if the Machine would even do what they had made it for. But they knew there was nothing left for them to do now. Only wait.

And when the matoran opened their eyes for the first time onto the universe, they were confused and frightened. And they turned to the Great Machine, and they gave it a new name. And they asked it, “What are we to do? How are we to live? Give us principles to guide us.”

And Mata Nui thought.

And Mata Nui spoke.

UNITY

DUTY