T UL PA M A NC Y

T UL PA M A NC Y
A H A L O WAY P OIN T CHRONICL E

HISTORIAN’S NOTE

Halo: Tulpamancy takes place in April 2560, approximately four months

after the disappearance of Zeta Halo.

CLASSIFICATION: PRIORITY ONE ALPHA

OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE

PROJECT: ARC DREAM

//ARCHEOHOMINA
//FROM: Codename: PANGAEA
//TO: Codename: YUGA

ATTACHMENTS:
‘Guide to Protogenic ‘San’Shyuum: Past, Present,
Archeohomina: An Introduction
Civilizations’ by K. Iyuska Future?’ by C. Lux

Requiem Terminal Dialogues, Bornstellar Relation Transcript ONI Xeno-Materials Exploitation

recovered by S-117 Excerpts Report 15Y1198

They say that the key to the future lies in our past.

Given everything we’ve learned in recent years I’m inclined to give

credence to the notion.

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Research in this field is still in its infancy, of course, and our resources are
extraordinarily limited—especially given the present state of the galaxy.
But we are already making great strides towards learning more about who
we once were.

The summarized version: This is not humanity’s first go-around as a

space faring civilization. We were, in fact, a contemporary and rival of the
Forerunners over a hundred millennia ago.

These Ancestors of ours moved their empire towards the galactic margin,
inhabiting presently unexplored areas of space, which accounts for why we
have thus far discovered only a scant few traces of their existence—also
accounting for the cultural and genetic reduction that the Forerunners
imposed after their war against these humans was won.

Key to our current research is the discovery at Site Yankee-002-G3. A

lone Ancestor ship, fully intact. While the modern incarnation of our kind
were still huddled in caves, this vessel drifted silently through space… just
waiting to be found.

A few dozen researchers have been aboard. I’ve got them in rotating shifts.
The control group are given just eight hours to access the ship and conduct
their analyses before a thirty-six hour “cooldown” period, during which
time the other teams are cycled in to operate. It should be noted that this
rhythm we’ve put in place goes beyond the standard notion of healthy
respite; the ship itself seems to have strange effects on the researchers
after prolonged exposure to it. The exact nature of the correlation between
duration and influence is something we’ve still yet to determine.

I have attached some of the incident reports for your perusal, and I am sure
you will agree that this is currently the most prudent course of action. We
must balance further encouragement of these odd developments with our
capacity to continue standard research.

I will follow up soon as further developments come to light.

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 *

INCIDENT REPORT 003

FILED BY: 01736-19013-SN

I know we work long hours, but I’m concerned about Jackson. He looks
like he’s sleepwalking half the time, he moves like none of the rest of us
are even there—he keeps bumping into me while muttering under his
breath. Managed to listen in one time and he’s just saying all of our names
over and over again. What the hell is that about?

INCIDENT REPORT 008

FILED BY: 02961-30002-DS

I reprimanded Horne earlier today for ignoring his duties. We’ve got
a tight timeline to work with while aboard this ship and I caught him
skulking around, saying he was trying to find the source of a hum that
kept moving whenever he got close to it. I don’t hear any hum, he’s either
messing me about or he’s in need of a psychological evaluation.

INCIDENT REPORT 012

FILED BY: 05126-89937-PH

Asked Jerry what was on his to-do list today when he said he was
watching the walls. I said, What? What’s that supposed to mean? He said
he sees things moving in them. Shadows. I said it’s probably just the rest
of our team in the room getting set up. He said no, there are too many.

INCIDENT REPORT 013

FILED BY: 01948-20112-NM

Ever since we found that suit apparatus that we adapted into Project
ENOCH, Hudson has gone completely non-verbal—he just presses his
lips together like he’s trying to whistle but doesn’t make a sound. I’m
concerned about the null state stasis containers as well. An eclectic

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variety of objects not accounted for by our inventory have been brought
aboard. Holloway swears she saw Hudson laying out his morbid
collection of alien bones on the floor, as if it was some kind of ritualistic
offering, but when she got another pair of eyes over there they had gone
without a trace. I really need some shore leave...

INCIDENT REPORT 015

FILED BY: 09136-77903-JF

Had the strangest conversation with Nicholas today and I’m not sure what
to make of it. He started talking about his wife back home—strange, of
course, because as far as I know he lost his family back on Kholo. But
he was recounting his wedding day when suddenly I realized that he was
describing my wedding day. Red wine all over my wife’s dress as we took
a tumble during the first dance. He described the incident exactly as I
remember it, as I lived it. But that was five years ago—I’ve only known
him for two. He froze up when I told him that was what happened to me
and hasn’t spoken to me since.

INCIDENT REPORT 016

FILED BY: 03417-31813-TC

Earl reported that he’s been having strange dreams lately. He said that
he wakes up on the ship and nobody else is there, except for Spartan
Niles, who just stands still—fully armored—and keeps asking a question
in a voice that isn’t his. I asked Earl what the question was and he just
went pale, refused to say anything more after that. Something weird is
happening on this ship, man…

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 CHIRAL INVOCATION

I am the dreamer. That is what she tells me.

She says that we only dream about what is already within us. I dream of
her, and yet we have never met. Perhaps she is the dreamer, and I am the
dream… I do not know.

She asks me, is it the future, or is it the past? Then she decides that it does
not matter. It is now—and now will never be again.

The klaxon blares to signify the end of our shift. She does not want me to
go, so I have found a hiding place. I will go there and disappear, and when
the others learn that one of their number is missing they will delay the next
shift until I am found. Until they decide to send others aboard, I will have
the ship all to myself.

See you soon, dream/dreamer.

Once the others are all gone, I emerge and begin to peruse the ship. We
have not yet gained access to the entirety of this cruiser—it is over six
thousand meters in length and many sections have been sealed, remaining
undisturbed for countless millennia.

I approach a large bulkhead door that we have been unable to breach and
await her instructions.

I can feel her stirring in my mind. Sometimes it takes effort to draw her
out, like finding someone in a haze of mist. She is as elusive as a half-
remembered dream, not yet whole, but she is always there. Perhaps she
feels a similar frustration towards me, as if I am a distant shore only faintly
visible on the horizon that she cannot reach. But the longer I am here,
aboard this ship, the closer we draw together.

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Today, she will reach the shore.

She says she has things to show me. Things old and forgotten, long buried
and longer lost. They did not happen here, they happened far away in
another place, but we must make do. This will be the canvas on which she
paints.

I stand by the door and close my eyes, willing my conscious mind to ease
and make space for her—another mind, another self.

Distantly, I am aware of raising a device to my mouth. The fruits of Project

ENOCH. And oh, what a gift, this peculiar apparatus that I both do and do
not understand.

The ancient suits of armor we discovered had these devices beneath the
helmet, meant to be affixed to the wearer’s jaw. It made no sense, and yet I
saw the sense in it. No ordinary words could be heard, and yet the whistles
and clicks that burst through in translation were words to me, as sweet as
music. It was a language I almost felt like I could recognize, familiar in the
way she is familiar.

Not all have been so lucky to hear the music, the words, and yet I am not alone.

I am not alone.

Ah, there she is. This old machine must surely serve as some kind of
guiding beacon for her, or a favorable wind that speeds her towards the
shore where I await her deliverance.

My mouth speaks at her behest, spouting old words filtered through the mask.

Faint lines of energy course through the walls around me, feeding into
the door which creaks and groans, straining in its old age after a dark and
dreamless sleep… and then it opens, granting me passage beyond.

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I feel a chemical rush within my body. She is pleased by this development,
and I am eager to discover what she wishes to reveal to me.

The room beyond is pitch black and there is a chill in the air, but I cross the
threshold as if returning to a place I know as home.

The first of our shared dreams then begins to coalesce.

A blueish light shines through, forming into a cylindrical shape that

flows upwards like a reverse waterfall. Within, a shadow takes form—a
humanoid figure clad in armor, immobilized within a confinement field.
I draw closer and strain to make out further details, but my efforts are
rebuffed as eyes squinting in the dark before they’ve adjusted.

Other shadowy figures begin to take shape, illuminated by the light of the
confinement field. Were they standing still, they might have been mistaken
as statues. These offer more detail, and I see that the armor covering
them from head to toe has no noticeable separation, its angular plating all
appears fused together. There is no “helmet” either, the armor around the
head slants forward where it breaks away into a triangular shape, within
which a single “eye” shines through.

“The actions of your kind are an affront to the Mantle,” one of the
shadowy armored figures speaks in a high, imperious voice. “Your reckless
expansion has devastated ecosystems, displaced populations, and now you
resort to razing entire worlds.”

I feel the embers of old hatred rekindled within me. She wishes me to see
this, to share in her righteous anger.

“Your commanders have seen the logs I willingly shared,” she says, her
voice bold and proud, undaunted by her captivity. “They have seen the
Shaping Sickness for themselves. It still resides within this system, and if
you do not release me at once and assist in burning it from existence, it will
consume us all!”

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“Threats will not serve you, human.” The statuesque armored being
responds. “There is a great deal of uncertainty about your claims. Many
believe this ‘Shaping Sickness’ is simply a bioweapon unleashed by your
kind, accidentally or otherwise, turned to your advantage as the perfect
excuse to expand your empire from the galactic fringes—burning worlds
and their civilizations to later resettle them.”

“You are a fool,” she spits with deep contempt, and so too does my mouth
move to form the words. “Hear me now, Forerunner. If you impede my
people, the Shaping Sickness will come for your kind, and when it does
you will treat it as you do everything else—as something you can study
and control.” I feel the venom in her voice recede for a moment as she
leans forward and whispers in fear. “You cannot. This parasite is no simple
creature of instinct. Its hunger serves a greater desire, a purpose we do
not—cannot—know. It can only be met with one answer: annihilation.”

Her words hang in the air for a moment, during which time the Forerunner
figures remain silent—the intelligences within their alloyed second skins
no doubt verifying that her words are truthful.

Yet still they will not listen, will not see. We have been enemies for too
long, judged heretical for our own claim to the Mantle. Truth may come
later; the possibility of removing another rival is too compelling for them at
this time.

“By the time your people come to the same conclusion as mine,” she grits
her teeth, leaning back within the confinement field, “it will be too late for
us all.”

The dream fades and her closing words echo, either through the ship or
through my own mind.

For us all…

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I felt my legs shake uncontrollably, causing me to fall to the ground.
Bringing her to the fore and surrendering control through deep
concentration comes, it seems, at an immense physical cost.

My understanding is that she is a tulpa. She is mind-made, thought given

form, living somewhere deep within my subconscious. Simply being
here on this ship has been akin to conducting lightning through a rod.
She is neither an alter ego nor a doppelgänger; she is not an assemblage
of thoughts given the illusion of coherency and sapience, nor the product
of an unwell mind. She was real once, I believe. Flesh and blood. But
something happened to our species a long time ago which turned her and
many others like her into a graft—a layer of slumbering consciousness
that lives within us.

Among my fellow researchers, all of whom have manifested different

conditions to varying degrees while aboard this vessel, she is the first and
thus far only person to have taken shape.

I lie on the ground for… minutes? An hour? I am uncertain. I contemplate

withdrawing for now to recuperate and process what I have just seen, but
she is reluctant.

This is now—and now will never be again.

Drawing on whatever reserves of strength I possess, I stand and shuffle

forwards into the dark. There is more yet to see.

We press on. Whatever area of the ship she helped me to breach is of little
interest to her. Her mind is set on the bridge, and she assures me that—
judging by our egress point—we are not far.

Despite my instinct to put my hands out in front of me to feel my way

through a completely unfamiliar place in total darkness, I soon find myself
walking with confidence.

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Suddenly, the entire ship rumbles and shakes, as if it were the growling
stomach of a creature with a ravenous appetite that had been starved for
many long years.

Shadows draped themselves over the corridor through a thick haze of

smoke and mist, settling into the half-formed image of bulbous pustules
and fleshy growths. A rippling, writhing sea of skin poured out of the door
behind me, transforming the corridor into a gullet. I looked up and saw
several Forerunners trapped within, their silver-grey armor a stark contrast
against the sickened flesh drawing them into the wall and ceiling as if to
slowly digest them.

We are nothing, you and I. Nothing more than food.

This shall be the fate of all.

Two figures sprinted down the corridor, the Shaping Sickness closing in
around them like a contracting muscle.

One was unmistakably Forerunner, clad in the strange all-encompassing

armor with its single cyclopean eye. The other, I believe, was her, as
these are surely her memories being played out—captured, interrogated,
and disbelieved… now suddenly freed from the constraint field and
holding a weapon.

The Forerunner spins around unbelievably fast, its right arm reconfigures
into a rifle that fires precise rounds of ionized particles.

Next to the Forerunner, she is noticeably shorter—perhaps just under seven

feet tall without her helmet. As she fires light mass ammunition from her
own borrowed weapon, I catch only a few glimpses of her features. She
is broad and strong with wide-set shoulders, leaving no doubt that she
is a warrior. How remarkably like us our Ancestors were, yet with far
greater morphological variation. With a slightly rounder and elongated

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head bearing wider-set features, her chin is approximately an inch shorter
than the average for modern Homo sapiens, and with a more pronounced
dental arch. She appears closest perhaps to Denisovans, an extinct archaic
subspecies in our time but vibrant and thriving in theirs.

I long to speak with her properly, to offer some kind of comfort. How
agonizing and dysphoric it must feel to see herself as she was in these
wretched and dire dreams.

I don’t even know her name… she might have forgotten it too.

The only comfort I can offer is to see out her desires to the end. She
wishes to reach the bridge of this ship; she wishes for me to see these
visions of long ago, though I do not yet grasp their full meaning, if
they have one. The Flood—what she calls the Shaping Sickness—has
already been encountered in our time. Perhaps she fears they will prove a
resurgent threat once again. Or maybe the trauma of her experience is so
great that the last scatterings of her reforming consciousness are simply
compelled to share it.

As the two figures faded, I reach the end of the corridor and begin to
climb up a side-mounted ladder that would bring us to an antechamber
before the bridge.

It is shockingly difficult to climb, my reserves of physical strength rapidly

dwindling to nothing as I struggle up each rung. It has been many hours
now since I last ate anything, and my throat is dry to the point of soreness.
But there is no going back.

There are no lights to make out how much further I have to climb. My
vision only allows me to see the next few rungs above me, but I am sure
that it is getting colder—that more open air is not far away.

I keep my mind trained on all that I have learned. I am curious about

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her mission, and feeling her momentarily rescind in my mind only
makes me want to know more. I am only human, after all—though we
are over a hundred millennia removed from each other, curiosity is a
trait she understands.

Surely it is a trait she would not now seek to avoid?

Arms shuddering in effort, I stop my climb, slumping against the metal as I

refuse to go further.

It is an odd thing, to try to bargain with her, to coax an answer out of this
wisp of a dream or memory. And when at last she relents, it is with my
own lips that she answers, the words spoken into the ENOCH apparatus
around my head.

We have come this far, let there be no secrets between us.

Rather than explain further, she conjures concepts and images from our
shared subconscious.

A great wave surges over an ocean, reaching higher and higher until it
crashes down upon a city. This was happening everywhere, across whole
planets—an inescapable deluge.

Recent history then surfaces: human and alien hands are shaken—a peace
accord is struck.

A sphinx then appears. It bears a human head, the wings of a bird, the
body of a lion, and the tail of a snake, but before it can ask a question it
is transformed. Its head is drawn wide and flat as the face is burned away
to reveal the skull beneath. The wings of the bird expand as if to take
flight, then separate into segmented fractal parts; the lion’s haunches curl
inwards, the serpent tail extends, and all turns into cold and dark alloy.

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Energy builds at its center, then is destructively released, laying low the
ruins of the city as the waters continue to climb towards the sphinx’s tail…

She offers no further explanation, but I believe I understand.

This was a test. This was some kind of staged infiltration mission to
determine the Forerunners’ reaction to the bare truth of the Shaping
Sickness, baiting the parasite to them so they could see it first-hand.

Satisfied with her answer, I resumed my climb and did not stop until I
reached the summit.

It was colder up here. Staggering around the space, I found myself in some
kind of antechamber, a room connected to several others. I wonder how the
Ancestors’ vessel layouts might echo our own, or if they built their ships in
completely different ways.

But motes of light began to appear once more, and I knew that this was—at
least for now—the final dream she had to show me.

An immense support beam had collapsed on the Forerunner. And though

he fired his weapon at the dark shades approaching from a hundred meters
away, they did not relent—these shambling abominations sensing that their
prey had been backed into a corner. If anything, they seemed to slow their
advance, as if to savor the fear.

My fear?

No. Forerunner fear.

My own weapon was spent, useful as nothing more than a cudgel. And
though I looked frantically for a way out, no path presented itself to me.

We were trapped.

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The stench was upon us now, the retching stink of blood and corpses
hideously reshaped. Their heads lolled, necks had been disconnected
from their spines, but the features of their faces were still recognizable—
eternally frozen masks of horror and pain.

The Forerunner was still firing his weapon, still trying to fight.

And yet, not a moment later, we both heard it. The trigger mechanism
making a pronounced click, click, click.

He too was out of ammunition.

I saw the monstrous form of his commander shuffle forwards. Slow.

Terrible. Inevitable. One of his hands had been fused into the flesh of his
stomach and a number of short, curved tendrils adorned his head like a
sinewy crown.

It knelt down in front of the Forerunner, placing an immense gnarled hand

upon him…

I... I cannot describe what happened to him next.

It is beyond both my will and ability to recall.

I think the last thing the Forerunner saw was me… but whether he was
confused or in some way vindicated, I will never know for sure.

I cannot deny that in the end his accusations seemed as if they were
correct. The parasite had taken his entire crew, consumed everybody in
this place, spared none of his kind.

But it did not take me.

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 CHRYSALISM

There will be no more dreams for a while. She arrived at the shore,
showed me—no, imparted within me—something that had long been
forgotten, which she had determined must be remembered, and now she
returns to the ocean.

What sort of dreamer can I be without dreams?

What she showed me cannot remain a dream, it must be real. I am real, and
I am to serve as a vessel for her pain, because that makes her real too. This
I understand.

But I must temper this pain with hope, for there is one last thing for me to
see. Something more tangible than a memory.

I have reached the bridge of the vessel now.

Weary though I am, I find myself on the lower level where several rows of
terminals, monitors, and interface consoles are arranged. There is a table at
the center, about ten meters long and three meters wide, and a dozen more
terminals around it for what must have been a variety of different stations.

She guides me towards the long table and moves my lips to form clicks and
whistles. An activation signal.

For a moment, everything remains cold and silent and still. There is just the
labored sound of my breathing, echoing in this frigid tomb.

Perhaps it is all too far gone…

I am sure that I hear a low hum emanating from the table a split second
before a holograph sputters to life. Fractal formations of light fizz and buzz,
attempting to resolve into coherent images as if they have forgotten how.

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I feel the rising swell of excitement and joy, both hers and my own joined
in tandem.

At that moment, the holographs take their intended form and resolve in
a series of square-shaped boards with a variety of symbols and readouts,
exploding outwards to fill the room. I look up to see a display of the local
star system showing the orbital paths of three small planets and a dense
asteroid field, as well as the Anlace-class frigate that delivered us to the
system where this Ancestor vessel was found.

She moves my arms, raising them as if to begin conducting a symphony,

and pulls the hologram back, expanding the view to other local star
systems, then the Orion Arm, before settling on a yet more expansive view
of spaces beyond.

And that’s when I see it.

That’s when I understand.

Though our ancient Ancestors lost their war against the Forerunners and
were subsequently punished with genetic reversion to a preindustrial state,
the empire annihilated, and much evidence of our space-faring ages razed,
there were many places that the Forerunners did not know of. Places they
either could not or would not reach.

Our advantage lay in where we had expanded towards. Escaping the

shadowed reach of their ecumene led us to the farthest systems of this part
of the galaxy, pushing beyond the Perseus Arm and ever more towards the
borders of intergalactic space.

Forerunners feared to tread there. It is as if some long-suppressed dread

lives within their own genetic memory from ages past.

It will take longer than my remaining years to rediscover it all, but my

goodness… there is so, so much more of us out there.

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More than I ever imagined.

We carry their spark—every one of us. A fragment of another time, of

other minds, just waiting to be dredged from the deep. One day, we might
know them as we were meant to.

One day, they will reach the shore, and all shall sing once more the mantra
of the broken wheel.

Daowa maadthu.

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