The Earth was shedding its rocky crust when I was swallowed into the center of the earth by the Eye of the Void. A myriad of embryonic pods floated in the lava ocean, each containing a different stage of development of itself. The oldest pod was labeled with the dreaded time: forty-six billion years ago.
"Welcome back to the hatchery." From the depths of the Earth's core came the initial fluctuations of the Starling's consciousness, "Every doom you experience is a test for us to screen qualified bodies."
Memories were violently unlocked, and I saw the truth of Earth's birth: it was a living planet dedicated to breeding devourers, and each civilization's turn was a sustenance harvest. The dinosaurs became extinct from the failure of genetic unlocking, Atlantis sank from premature awakening...
The shard of Star Xuan suddenly glowed in her palm, "Don't believe it! Look at the number!" The logo of the Deep Blue Project was engraved on the bottom of the embryo pods, and the time was displayed as 2024 A.D. - these were clones created by the Mother!
Nerve beams from the Eye of the Void stabbed into the brain, trying to overwrite real memories. I saw Mother lead the Resistance in a raid on the hatchery, replacing real Starling embryos with human genetic samples. She was not a betrayer, but a fire-stealer.
"Now you understand." Mother's silhouette appeared in the lava, "Project Deep Blue was the poison given to the Devourer civilization." Her finger pointed toward the forest of embryonic pods, "Each clone carries a self-destruct gene, and when they mature..."
The Eye of the Void suddenly spasmed as the Earth's core began to mutate. Those embryos opened their pupil-less eyes and began to gnaw on the mother structure. I took the opportunity to absorb the hatchery energy, and the moment the contamination value broke through the critical point, the Star Xuan Shard bloomed with pure white light.
"The humanity anchor point is back online." Her voice seemed to come from the end of the universe, "It is recommended that the final protocol be implemented: use love as a weapon."
This is ridiculous. But when I pressed my hand to the Matrix core, it wasn't energy that flooded in, but all the emotional data of human civilization over the past two hundred and twenty thousand years: the first embrace around a Stone Age campfire, ancient Babylonian lovers writing love poems in cuneiform, the mechanical pope praying for his people before the destruction of Antarctica...
The Eye of the Void let out a mournful wail as these viral data it could not comprehend were disintegrating the Quantum Core. The entire Earth core space began to collapse, and I rushed to the surface holding the last fragments of Star Xuan.
The Earth was reborn in a radiant burst of light, and the memories of all the survivors returned like a tidal wave. They knelt on the newborn earth and looked at the giant holographic projection floating in the sky - it was an interstellar broadcast that Mother had sent with her last consciousness:
[To all Devourer civilizations]
"You will never understand.
Humans call the weapon that destroys them love.
My body dissipated in the void, but each grain of stardust carried the smile of Starshade. As the last vestige of my consciousness faded, I heard the heartbeat of the universe - a symphony of light played in the darkness by all the civilizations I saved.