The Last Stand

There was no need for shovels or drilling lasers this time around. Head Scientist … and the archaeology team simply walked into the alien ruin.

The site is very old - more than a thousand years, but fairly well kept. It appears to be some kind of staging area, built for a specific purpose. There are several laboratories and large storage hangars.

The team have found a digital archive server. It's offline, but appears fairly intact. Hopefully it will fill in the blanks regarding our lost Benefactors.

The science team managed to get the alien digital archives up and running. They exclusively contained arbitrary logs, which require some liberal interpretation.

The phrase 'Mind-Wipe Initiative' occurs frequently throughout the logs, and it appears to have been the specific focus of research at this location. Apparently the Benefactors developed the technology by which they could manipulate the effectiveness of mental faculties, but how or for what purpose remains unknown.

The archaeology team on … has found another ancient digital archive. This too consisted mostly of logs, but there was one journal entry of particular interest:

'The ship has taken off. We know they'll succeed, but there was no sense of hope or high spirits as they left. We know that the mission and the work we've done here are wrong... Despicable.

But the alternative... The alternative is worse.'

That is one of the last entries found at the ancient facility. Not much of a closure, but at least plenty of technological discoveries were made.

Clearing out the storage areas, one of the workers found a small device of unknown origin. It was brought to … and turned out to be a recording device. It was badly damaged, but a small snippet of dialog was saved:

'...houldn't be forgotten - someone has to come clean and speak up for them. History may endure, but my conscience cannot.'

A string of data first discarded as noise was investigated further. It turned out to be encrypted coordinates.