With his message sent, Vreta could finally start trying to put the day’s events behind him. Through experience and a cool head, he had gotten out alive, and if he could help it, he was going to try to avoid entering the hellscape that was the Cradle again. What he had witnessed only cemented his views on Humanity’s exploitation of the Cradle. It was technology they did not understand, and they were foolish for intertwining it so deeply into their society. They were so desperate to try and push their technology forward that Outremer was now dependant on what could essentially be a time bomb. The creatures could not have come from anywhere but the Cradle itself, and no one, not even the Rothians, knew the true purpose of the Cradle. 

Now that he was out of danger, Vreta did have the opportunity to think in more depth about what he had witnessed. He wished he could have had access to his implants through it all, for a multitude of reasons, but mostly for the purpose of recordkeeping. With his implants, he could have recorded everything he saw so he could go back and view it again to catch anything he missed. Regardless, his neural implants now, at the very least, could save his memories as they were so they did not degrade any farther. 

Once again, Vreta found himself laying back on his couch, his  feet hanging partially off the side. Normally after such physical exertion, he would have worked up an appetite, but he supposed none of that exercise was truly real.  So, instead of a second dinner, he thought back on the details of his experience. Of particular interest to Vreta was his brief conversation with one of the creatures. The way he saw it, there were two likely possibilities for what they were: Human minds that had been corrupted in some way, or independent intelligences that came from within the Cradle. Or some combination of the two. The most striking evidence of the former was that the creature had used a face that the Human, Freyr, had recognized. Vreta distinctly remembered the creature claiming “They are mine” when she asked about her husband. However, Vreta also remembered a part of the conversation that would have been strange for just corrupted Humans. 

When it was just him and the creature, it spoke of recognizing Vreta. It would not make much sense for it to be speaking of him as an individual, since he hardly knew any Humans on this planet personally, so all that was left was for it to be speaking of him as a Rothian. The phrasing was strange, too. It spoke of him “crawling from the ocean to the rocks”, as he remembered it. The Cradle was a truly ancient supercomputer, and those words made it sound like its creators had watched the Rothian species itself evolve. Though, he did not want to make such rash assumptions just yet. There were other ways he could interpret the encounter. Perhaps this was some combination of an independent intelligence within the Cradle, and corrupted Human minds? Perhaps it had gone insane as a result?