Justin Kemppainen - The Legend of Ivan

Nothing more could be gained, and much could be lost. Too many individuals would have accosted me for being what I am, and any delay risked discovery of the murder. As I crossed into the market again, the stink of dubious cooking and personal odors again pressing all around, I realized I’d not be able to return. This didn’t bother me much.

Minerva slipped out of the dock without trouble. The mammoth destroyer looming outside, the only witness to the destruction of a world, provided no indication that it cared about my presence.

Departed, safe from the threat of discovery, I had time to consider everything. Barely forty-five minutes on the station, it seemed a lifetime wrapped in a whirlwind instant. As Minerva set her course, a general direction of elsewhere , I carefully peeled back layers of her memory.

Playing a few in particular, I watched her plotting and her intended defense mechanism against Archivists. She expected, knew, she would encounter others, but she had a target in mind.

Cain.

It appeared word of my narrow escape passed through a number of ears, and Archivist Cain’s weakness appeared to be laid bare. As yet another of the denizens in search of Ivan, Dana calculated a probability of meeting him and prepared for it with a brilliant, original, but untested plan.

Her system was marvelous, elegant. It didn’t matter what happened to her body and initial brain tissue. She utilized her memories and a framework, a virus almost, containing the edges of her personality. To an individual such as Cain, whose approach to everything seemed to be a mindless battering into submission and a love of brutality, her mental architecture would sweep through him without a second thought.

In a quiet victory, Dana had hoped to take control of the most potent physical embodiment of an Archivist, absorbing all of the information he collected over the years as well as the weaponry.

Unfortunately, her test was against me, long conditioned to extract myself from the lost depths of memory and data. She may have been able to best Cain or any other Archivist, but meeting me cost her dearly.

Or perhaps not: I allowed myself to wonder on the prospect. Perhaps her intent was far beyond what I could detect. Perhaps she slipped in a subtle programming, distracting me with both the mental duel and the data-swarm. Perhaps her mind was now a part of my own, a deep and delicate mingling of personality and experience, or further perhaps such a thing would come to fruition once I inevitably integrated all of her memories. Though I didn’t feel any different, I suspected our personalities, including the deep-seated hunger for information, were not far removed from each other.

In addition, I wondered if the escaped portion was still hiding in the recesses of her or my programming. I didn’t believe there was enough of her left to cause any further trouble, and I’d triple checked and layered protection over my important systems. Even if she had full processing power and wasn’t just a ghost of code, she’d have been hard-pressed to break through it without me realizing.

In any case, more pressing concerns were present, and I more carefully reviewed other portions of her memories. The first time around, while she held me drowning within them, didn’t provide as thorough an analysis as I wanted.

I saw again the destruction of Atropos Garden, a terrible, silent, and rapid disintegration of the world and its denizens. The ship, the one that fled, seemed about the right size and shape. Connecting it to Ivan remained conjecture, but it bore a similarity to Hanatar’s description of the fighter. I enhanced, angled, zoomed, and attempted every measure of visual scrutiny on the vessel. It may have been wishful thinking, but I believed I saw lettering on the side: OLGA.

Another file, one I missed initially, was the distress call recording she stole from the databanks of the Cassander. Most of it remained a pile of static and garbled mash. I watched a frightened woman fade in and out, her words lost.

All but one.

Her face and expression of fright became all-too clear for one moment, one word. Nothing else to suggest the how and why of the terrible occurrence, nothing at all about escapees or last testaments. Her voice, filled with endless despair, cried out before the very end in a single moment of clarity.

"Ivan!"

This was it. The connecting piece, an innocuous phrase that created a universe of fame and myth for Afanasi Sergeyevich Lukyanov: the man called Ivan. The final word spoken by a dying woman connected with an unidentified, fleeing vessel.

No context, no suggestion of responsibility upon his shoulders. The scream could have been an apology or a woman calling out the name of her lover as easily as a curse at the one responsible. The number of possible, subtle meanings was infinite.

But rumor had a mind of its own. This tiny iota of truth, one word of Ivan’s involvement, spun out of control and exploded with falsehood and possibility. His legacy became galactic property, and very few would ever know or believe the real truth.

One thing was even more obvious. I realized this as I sat, safe for the time being within Minerva. Myself, Dana, Cain. Archivists, experts of data collection, all searching for the same man, the same answer.

They who employed us weren’t looking for simple stories, no matter how amazing they were. They wanted to know the truth behind the Garden. Daedra-Tech, Seryia Hakar, the government, whoever else was involved wanted to know how an entire world was reduced to a mass of disconnected debris. Ivan was the only one with knowledge yet unaccounted for in the incident, and clearly they believed he knew something.

I wished I could spend more time, days and weeks, absorbing and integrating the memories of Archivist Dana without any distraction, but events were accelerating. I wasn’t the only one looking for Ivan, and my already potent curiosity was driven into near madness at the prospects.

Assignment: Seeking information regarding the truth and whereabouts of Ivan.

Location: Marxis Station

Report: Intended meeting with captain [Josef Onnels] of planetary distress [Atropos Garden] call respondent vessel [Cassander]. Necessary information obtained from fellow Archivist [Dana — now deceased].

Probability : n/a

Summary: Encounter with Archivist Dana fulfilled all needs for information regarding the incident at Atropos Garden. Discovered source of Ivan mythos in one clear word of the distress signal. Potent, unknown technology involved in full planetary destruction.

*Addendum: Archivist Dana retained significant data unrelated to Ivan search but likely of prominent interest, including a subjugation protocol inside security intrusion devices. May be useful in future encounters if intricacies can be discovered.

**Second Addendum: Ivan issues now seem to be of great interest by multiple parties; will have to accelerate process and disinclude leads with low probable utility.

Archivist Dana’s memories held a treasure trove of data, but her Ivan tracking thus far had proven to be limited. Her source of information led her almost immediately to the Cassander and the cataclysm of Atropos Garden. Rather than a methodical gathering, she leapt right to the foundation of his fame as though the event could tell her everything about him, including current location.

However, it seemed she held in her mind other leads. Her intent was to follow his progress from the pinnacle moment onward, not bothering to discover his prior actions and persona. I thought it a glib approach, as I sought to develop a rudimentary profile for his behavior and motivation, bringing forth an understanding that would all but guarantee success in finding him.