The Litany of the Loading Screen
An archaeological incident aboard the God-Engine Invictus Obscura
A recovered entertainment archive from ancient Terra is mistaken for a military record, a religious text, and possibly evidence of an extinct xenos invasion. The Princeps would like everyone to stop making the situation worse.
The Litany of the Loading Screen
Moderati Veyra had learned, over seventy-three years of service aboard the Warlord Titan Invictus Obscura, that there were certain tones of silence.
There was the silence before plasma ignition.
The silence after a reactor warning.
The silence when a Tech-Priest said, “That should not have happened.”
And then there was the particular silence that settled over the command deck when an ancient Terran human looked directly through a twenty-three-thousand-year-old recording and announced that someone was finally awake.
Nobody moved.
The Princeps narrowed her eyes.
“Moderati.”
“Yes, Princeps?”
“Why did it know?”
Veyra swallowed.
“I do not believe it did.”
On the central hololith, a crude wooden cart continued to roll through a snowy forest.
The recording quality was appalling.
Primitive polygons. Primitive light simulation. Primitive skeletal animation.
The sort of thing even a servo-skull would have been embarrassed to render.
A bound human across from the viewpoint began speaking about civil war.
The Princeps leaned forward.
“Imperials.”
“Yes, Princeps.”
“Rebels.”
“Yes.”
“Executions.”
“Yes.”
The Princeps slowly turned toward Veyra.
“Ancient Terra.”
“According to the data-seal.”
“And you are certain this recording predates the Imperium?”
“By several millennia.”
The Princeps looked back at the hololith.
Another prisoner complained bitterly about the Imperial authorities.
The Princeps’ expression became deeply suspicious.
“Convenient.”
The recovered device had been found inside a sealed transit station beneath what the Explorator fleet believed had once been northern Europe.
It had survived because history occasionally possessed a sense of humor.
The machine itself was unimpressive.
Black casing.
Cracked polymer.
A faded corporate mark.
One cooling fan contained a layer of fossilized dust thick enough that Magos Tertian had requested permission to classify it as sedimentary rock.
The storage device, however, still functioned.
Barely.
Which meant the Adeptus Mechanicus immediately declared it sacred.
For three days, twelve Tech-Priests argued over how to access it.
For another two, they argued about whether accessing it would constitute an act of technological desecration.
Then an Enginseer named Pollux plugged it into an adapter.
The machine started.
Pollux was immediately promoted.
The archive contained thousands of hours of visual records.
Some showed warfare.
Some showed agriculture.
Some showed humans constructing settlements.
Some showed a silent figure wandering through forests collecting flowers for no obvious military purpose.
And an alarming number involved wheels of cheese.
Magos Tertian had requested that the cheese records be isolated for further study.
Nobody knew why.
The cart reached a settlement.
A dragon appeared.
The command deck erupted.
“Pause!”
The image froze.
Every sensorium officer leaned forward.
Magos Tertian’s mechadendrites lifted like startled serpents.
The Princeps pointed.
“Xenos.”
Veyra hesitated.
“Possibly.”
“Winged.”
“Yes.”
“Fire-breathing.”
“Yes.”
“Native Terran megafauna?”
“There is no supporting zoological record.”
Tertian emitted a burst of binharic static.
“That is because the records were purged.”
Everyone looked at him.
The Magos rotated three ocular lenses.
“It is the most reasonable explanation.”
“It is absolutely not,” said Veyra.
The Princeps ignored both of them.
“Resume.”
The dragon attacked.
Humans scattered.
Structures burned.
The viewpoint character escaped beneath the fortress.
For several minutes, the bridge crew watched in fascination.
Then the viewpoint stopped.
Turned around.
Walked back.
Picked up a wooden bowl.
The Princeps frowned.
“Why?”
Nobody answered.
The viewpoint collected another bowl.
Then a bucket.
Then seven cabbages.
Then a human skull.
Magos Tertian began recording furiously.
“Logistical doctrine.”
Veyra stared at him.
“They are stealing kitchenware.”
“We cannot assume the purpose of ancient military equipment.”
“It is a bowl.”
“A bowl to you.”
Three hours later, the situation had deteriorated considerably.
The archive’s original owner had apparently believed in exhaustive documentation.
There were records labeled:
SKYRIM PLAYTHROUGH 184
SKYRIM NEW CHARACTER LOL
SKYRIM STEALTH ARCHER AGAIN
SKYRIM MODDED DO NOT ASK
The Princeps had developed theories.
None were helpful.
“The individual repeatedly dies,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And then returns.”
“Yes.”
“In the same location.”
“Yes.”
“With knowledge of the events that killed them.”
Veyra closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
The Princeps leaned back in her command throne.
“Temporal resurrection.”
“No.”
“Chronological recursion.”
“No.”
“Warp intervention.”
“Princeps—”
“Then explain it.”
“It is entertainment.”
The Princeps stared at her.
Veyra immediately regretted saying it.
Magos Tertian turned all five ocular lenses toward her.
“Entertainment.”
“Yes.”
“The ancient Terrans simulated death.”
“Yes.”
“For amusement.”
“Apparently.”
“And repeated the same events until achieving a preferred outcome.”
“Yes.”
Silence.
Tertian whispered something in binharic.
Veyra’s implant translated it.
Disturbingly plausible.
The archive advanced.
The ancient human climbed a mountain.
At its summit stood robed figures who possessed a peculiar acoustic weapon.
The Princeps became interested again.
“Replay that.”
The figure shouted.
The landscape shook.
“Again.”
The figure shouted.
A man flew backward down a staircase.
The Princeps sat very still.
“Moderati.”
“No.”
“I have not asked anything.”
“You are going to ask whether the Collegia Titanica can weaponize yelling.”
The Princeps considered this.
“Can it?”
“No.”
Magos Tertian raised one mechanical finger.
“Technically—”
“No.”
By the sixth hour, the command deck had divided into factions.
The Princeps believed the archive described a forgotten Terran war against reptilian xenos.
Magos Tertian believed it was an encoded technological scripture.
The Sensori Primus believed it was some form of officer-training simulation.
Two junior Enginseers believed it was exactly what Veyra said it was and had begun quietly placing bets on how long everyone else would take to realize this.
Then they discovered the modifications.
A new record loaded.
The sky was different.
The trees were different.
There were unfamiliar weapons.
The viewpoint character was dressed as something resembling a pre-Imperial cartoon animal.
The Princeps slowly turned toward Veyra.
“Explain.”
Veyra stared at the screen.
“I cannot.”
A gigantic locomotive fell from the sky.
It struck a dragon.
The dragon exploded.
The command deck became completely silent.
Magos Tertian’s mechadendrites trembled.
“What,” he whispered, “was the tactical purpose of the locomotive?”
“There wasn't one.”
“It was deployed from orbit.”
“It was not.”
“We witnessed it.”
“This is modified entertainment software.”
“Modified by whom?”
“Ordinary people.”
“Civilians possessed the ability to rewrite simulated reality?”
“Yes.”
The Magos was silent for nearly ten seconds.
“This civilization was more dangerous than the records suggest.”
Then they found the streaming archive.
Not a simulation.
A recording of a human operating the simulation.
Eight thousand hours.
The same individual.
Almost no speech.
No visible face.
No identifying information.
Just endless wandering.
Forests.
Ruins.
Dragons.
Caves.
Inventory screens.
Occasional periods where nothing happened because the ancient human had apparently left the machine running while going somewhere else.
The Princeps watched five uninterrupted minutes of the character standing inside a shop.
“Is the operator dead?”
“No.”
“Wounded?”
“No.”
“Under attack?”
“No.”
“Then why are they not moving?”
“Possibly food.”
The Princeps stared at the frozen figure.
“An entire ancient communications network preserved this?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Veyra shrugged.
The Princeps looked genuinely offended.
Another hour passed.
The player entered a home.
Dozens of cheese wheels filled the room.
Magos Tertian made a noise.
Veyra immediately pointed at him.
“No.”
“I said nothing.”
“You were about to.”
“The recurrence is statistically significant.”
“It is cheese.”
“Precisely.”
“There is no cheese doctrine.”
“We cannot know that.”
The player added another cheese wheel to the pile.
Tertian leaned closer.
“Observe.”
“No.”
“Categorized storage.”
“They threw it on the floor.”
“Centralized supply.”
“It rolled under a chair.”
“Redundant allocation.”
“It is cheese.”
The Princeps raised one hand.
“Moderati.”
Veyra sighed.
“Yes?”
“I am assigning you responsibility for determining the strategic significance of the cheese.”
Veyra stared at her commanding officer.
“You cannot be serious.”
The Princeps smiled.
She almost never smiled.
That was how Veyra knew she was doomed.
The investigation continued for eleven days.
A formal report was eventually transmitted to the Explorator command vessel.
It contained nine hundred and twelve pages.
The opening classification read:
RECOVERED TERRAN CULTURAL-MILITARY SIMULATION
PROVISIONAL THREAT INDEX: INDETERMINATE
NOTABLE FEATURES:
TEMPORAL RECURSION
VOCAL KINETIC WEAPONRY
DRACONIC XENOFAUNA
CIVIL CONFLICT
UNRESTRICTED THEFT OF HOUSEHOLD OBJECTS
CHEESE
The report was reviewed by three Magi.
One requested clarification.
The second requested the complete archive.
The third quietly installed the recovered software onto an isolated cogitator.
Six months later, Magos Dominus Calveris had accumulated four thousand hours of recorded activity.
His official research logs described the work as:
ONGOING ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF PRE-IMPERIAL TERRAN SOCIETY.
Nobody questioned why his reconstructed Terran society now contained twenty-seven additional species, three hundred new settlements, photorealistic weather, a functioning economy, and something called a Thomas the Tank Engine Dragon Replacement Package.
Nobody except Moderati Veyra.
Veyra knew.
Veyra had known from the beginning.
But when the Invictus Obscura deployed three years later against a Tyranid bio-titan, the Princeps opened a private vox channel.
“Moderati.”
“Yes, Princeps?”
“Play the ancient battle hymn.”
Veyra sighed.
Somewhere deep within the command cogitators, a recovered audio file began.
The Titan took its first step.
Its plasma reactor thundered.
Weapons the size of buildings rotated toward the enemy.
The Princeps smiled inside the manifold.
“Today,” she said, “we test the shouting.”
Veyra closed her eyes.
Twenty-three thousand years of human civilization had led inexorably to this moment.
And somewhere, impossibly, she suspected an ancient Terran was laughing.