The embattled wanderer, weary from myriad campaigns,
finding himself still intact - to his own astonishment -
careening along a fogbanked edge in a desolate realm,
sought sanctuary in the gutted remains of
an abandonded control tower.
A lonely edifice on the outer edges of a forgotten hell;
a temporary shelter, once a vital hub of sentient fare,
now a relic to an ancient world whose boundaries were lost
amid the enveloping fog. If the tower could speak,
it would endlessly repeat
like a warning beacon:
"Do Not Come Here..."
Climbing the hollow shaft along cables and lifts no more, the
wanderer forced an entrance to the control room, and exhausted
collapsed in a chair to sleep an eternity and dream past wars.
An age transpired, release a bitter hope, fraught peril a woven
web - spider wisdom: a mind nudging flicker caught in the corner
of his sleep fed eye. A green geometry of light and line matrix
announcing a faint degree of life in the machine of the still
functional tower.
A lightship traversing the darkness had veered ever so slightly
off course and entered the event horizon of the fogbanked edge.
Invisible to naked eye, the singularity at ship's core did activate
the tower's soul.
The wanderer gazed at the 3D screen and mused wistfully over
the voiceprint patterns of introscope design and was momentarily
touched by the craft's impression upon the hidden circuitry
relayed by the phosphorous green glow.
Reflecting on his weariness and own lost sojourns, the wanderer,
being one slow to learn the deeper lessons and methodical when
predisposed, considered an act of unconditional love in a
meaningless zone.
A chance rotation brought the wanderer to this spot to act
as random guardian and messenger at the gate of a particular
entrance to a circle of the abyss not meant for certain ships
of a greater potential and destiny.
Insignificant in precise parameters but still a functional
act by the solitary control tower and its chance inhabitant,
an ever so subtle course correction was transmitted to the
hidden lightship invisible in fogbanked stellar darkness.
One external computer speaking to another external computer;
a transmission of nearly conscious bits was thus relayed.
The wanderer's error was in letting the ship's ambient imprint
play its green light magic upon his wounded heart, better left
impartial to such musings of random sentience coursing through
another realm. Veteran though, he managed his own course
correction in a timely fashion despite the familiar recoil effect
of which he knew so well within himself and learned to endure.
Disengaging the beacon, he completed the act, disconnected the
machines and restored his own endless dream amid the tower and
the fog.
Destiny is character is destiny, and nothing plays a part.
