Written a few days ago while listening to an assortment of music with a sort of melodramatic atmosphere, albeit oftentimes energetic all the same. (the lyrics themselves might be more upbeat but the music itself, to me, has more bittersweet/melodramatic undertones)

The Forgotten is one of the oldest concepts within the lore of my story, and one that hasn't changed at all since it's inception, unlike almost everything around it: a ship, built by Snpr Mk. VII (one of the two primary protagonists) unbeknownst to the Imperial BioAndronian Empire he was created to wage war for. In-universe, he's the first official production model of the First Generation Combat BioAndroid, a series numbering thirty million concurrent units at their height, falling to about 22,250 by the time the main segment of the story takes place* as a result of the IBAE moving to the Second Generation and beyond, as the First Generation were slow and costly to produce despite their abilities and raw durability, and brought their homeworld to almost irreversable ecological collapse, as well as the Second Great Defensive War fought against Snpr Mk. VII's prototype, who had left the IBAE and built his own CBA's- the Zeroth Generation, combining knowledge of the CBA program with a forward-thinking mindset. His prototype, Snpr Mk. EX-1, losing badly, lured the IBAE into deploying the full might of the First Generation against him in a trap, exploiting an overlooked shortcoming in their design- the inability to deal with overheating over long periods of time. Keeping them busy but not keeping them at bay so much as to warrant rotating them out for a fresh force of humans or machines, he launched an aggressive counterattack at the thirty day mark- the day when this critical flaw was made apparent, and simply watched as the entire force, as if one combined organism, simply collapsed, all but Snpr Mk. VII, his 'son', and then left for other campaigns, after imparting his reason: he was saddened at his son's inauguration, the day the activation glitch occurred that disfigured all First Generation CBA's into having fear-inducing visage, condemning them to always be held at arm's length anywhere outside of with their own kind and their creators, no matter their deeds. He wanted to be the one to end their perceived suffering, a father smothering his crippled newborn child, thinking his actions to be merciful and just. Instead, Snpr Mk. VII, abandoned and alone, discovered human emotion, and combined with the Device linked to him, discovered the origin of spirits- the Universe itself being alive in a fashion. And with the power of the Device, and the quiet understanding and mercy of the Universal Spirit, he brought back his kin from the dead; however, many were simply too damaged to remain, and still others, having discovered emotion in death, appreciated the gesture but were captivated by their newfound discovery, and left their bodies once again shortly thereafter. Neither group did so immediately, and even the units damaged beyond recognition struggled to their broken feet in some manner, and gave one final salute to the one that had lead them for so long, the first of their kind to truly feel, and who's first act of emotion was a grief of such depth it drew the attention of the Universal Spirit, allowing him the power to bring them not out of utility, but of newfound love for his brothers. Still more would eventually succumb to damage- the flaw was still there, and many had arisen with a bit too much energy- and from there on, any First Generation who felt it was time was allowed to find final release in war through that fatal flaw, trading one last campaign for the pursuit of eternal finality. Shortly after, as numbers began to stabilize, the remainder was renamed the "Fallen First", and the 137th Gateway was formed as a graveyard army- an army who's roster was filled with the fallen heroes, known and unknown, of the Fallen First, and later humanity at large.

Around this time, the Forgotten II was built, similarly in silence. A smaller vessel than the Forgotten before it, but with more of Snpr Mk. VII's psyche within, although it, too, swiftly bled into the Void and was largely unseen save for sporadic reports of a huge ship resembling the Swarmcarriers of the Imperial Navy- but it at least was seen, made itself known, here and there, never for too long. Following an agenda unknown to even its builder.

The Forgotten is an important part of my story's lore, because it embodies one of the central pillars of the IBAE and later, the GDA: the importance of Remembrance. People may die, cities may crumble and empires may implode, but an idea is not so easily destroyed- except if it is forgotten. The smartest people around are still dismal failures if they forget such simple things as history. One of the greatest fears of humans is to die unknown by all- we strive to make some mark on the world, however small, to be remembered by, even if it is just by our family. We may mourn lost family members, we may feel collectively sad when someone beloved by millions, passes away, but none of this approaches the sorrow that should be felt when someone leaves this world and nobody knows, or ever knows. Even the Unknown Soldier is known- if not the exact identity, the body exists and there is a grand wall of the names of those who were never recovered. But what of those who's records were maybe destroyed, and who died at some point, and nobody witnessed it or were unaware, or forgot soon thereafter? It is a form of forgetting, of not knowing, horrifying in its ease of commission. What must they feel, realizing they made no impact on the world, that nobody remembers they ever existed, that nobody else died years later, knowing they existed? How horrible would that be?

If even only a single person remembered, things would be much different. We all value companionship, and the difference between being alone and having even one single person who cares is extreme. Echoing this sentiment is the Forgotten, a vessel forgotten by all save its creator, and even then, only in the furthest reaches of his mind. A vessel so nearly forgotten, that it has all but given up on ever being remembered again, though it continues to build upon itself, becoming larger and larger, gargantuan in scale, hoping it might be seen and remembered by more, until its spirit breaks and it retreats to live its faint existence out in the Void, known only to one, so by the time it feels the tug of duty, the indication that the end is knocking at the door and there may only be one final chance left, it has become an enormous thing stretching further than the eye can see in its bid to one day be remembered. And it fights with an energy only the most desperate can conjure, its entrance into realspace a physically shocking event due both to its huge size and the sheer desperation manifesting as a raw, animalistic scream dripping with fear- fear of being forgotten. Even the largest, most powerful weapon ever devised by any intelligence in the Universe, unmatched by all, feels fear, a testament to the horrifying notion of the fate of being forgotten.

And as one closely entwined with this state of being forgotten, it can feel others in a similar situation, holding within its endless hallways, banks and banks of memory, often the only entity aware of the existence of those it has felt.
And this is how it finds Baylock, hidden, unknown and forgotten, in the epicenter of the Quantum Device's expanding shock front he detonated so, so long ago.

Another theme present in the story is humility and repentance, manifested in the abundance of negativity, especially in the naming schemes of the IBAE/GDA Navies: almost every single name of all capital ships is negative in some way, either directly associated with negativity or referencing a negative event. As mentioned elsewhere, the IBAE society revolves around repentance for nearly destroying their planet's ecology, causing them to develop the Pure Planet Protocols and fight the First Great Defensive War to capture all identified Pure Planets and safeguard them from the fate of their own homeworld, seeing them as a cause worth any cost. These planets would be safeguarded to allow them to exist as they deserve, never to experience major ecological scarring save for the entactment of the Protocol that mandates that the IBAE destroy the world in one blow, to prevent it from becoming a mirror of their homeworld or worse- a dead planet, as this is both an unacceptable repeat of history, as well as disappointing not only the planet's star- which the BioAndronian Creed states is more venerable than the planet, as a star does not always find itself sustaining life, and even less so a planet of such bountiful life- but also its moon, if it has one- a bountiful spring of life with a large moon being an even rarer treasure for a star, and rarer still for a moon- the moon features in a position of primary within the Creed, with the star secondly and the planet lastly. The IBAE and GDA exist in a constant state of self-flagellation for the failures of their forebears and the sensation of an unpayable yet just debt for that failure. In developing a culture revolving around this feeling that they cannot truly deserve happiness because of what they did, they've found a form of happiness in negativity- it may not be euphoria nor ideal, but for them, the state of negativity frees up happiness in the Universe, and with it, the belief that the star and moon who's charge they nearly destroyed may receive this happiness and know that those that failed them have not yet stopped repaying their self-imposed eternal debt. it is a culture where self-sacrifice is venerated and the norm- it is expected, not out of duty, but because it is what is simply naturally done when a situation demands it, for them. it also represents a loss of potential- those who sacrifice themselves have no future, and the future they formerly had is lost, never to be known to any, and thus forgotten, but they sacrifice the knowledge of what may come for the sake of Luna, Sol and Terra, as both a selfless act to their fellow human, and as the ultimate expression of repentance: that they would willingly allow their future to be forgotten forever by way of never being known, for the sake of the debt to the moon, sun and planet is seen as the highest form of humility. This also put the BioAndroids in an awkward situation where they cannot truly be said to be self-sacrificing, insofar that they can survive sacrificial events that would properly kill a human, and yet they can neither so easily simply die so as to show that ultimate humility, stick in near perpetual repentance instead.





*The original trilogy of:
One Man War, covering the splintering of the GDA from the IBAE after the Second Great Defensive War, around Earth Accepted Year 1993
Shattered Skies, which is more of a showcase for the planet-side of things, emphasizing atmospheric combat over interstellar combat
Project N25: Love and the Endless War, which is the ramp-up to the Third Great Defensive War between the GDA and IBAE, the conclusion of which results in the detonation of a unique warhead in the surface of the IBAE's homeworld, the blast wave of which has not stopped in the millions of intervening years

For reference, there's is a divide between Earth Accepted Time- which is the time standard for the Milky Way and later much of the Local Cluster- and Universal Accepted Time, which is the time standard instigated by the IBAE. UAT is assumed to govern any date unless EA Time/Year (EAT/EAY) is appended before, because EAT exists within a temporal anomaly zone, and time flows much, much slower relative to the rest of the universe. I've long since lost the original time ratio, but it was somewhere in the ballpark of 1:19 million. Crossing the anomaly boundary won't make you age at super speed, however- that's not how time works. It does mean, however, that if you return to the zone, upon leaving minutes later, things will be very different!

The zone was set up primarily as a last ditch safeguard by the IBAE to keep the Fourth Human Ascension at bay after their three prior incursions had taken an incredible toll on the IBAE- the First Human Ascension brought them to the brink of collapse in their heroic effort to suppress and beat it back to Earth. (Known to the Empire under the Pure Planet Protocols as Pure Planet 14; the P3 is simply a directive to safeguard planets closely matching the IBAE's homeworld from ecological collapse, against their own denizens if need be, so these rare and cherished planets need not suffer the horrors that their homeworld did. It is a major driving force behind the IBAE and governs the BioAndronian Creed, which is less a religion and more a repentance-based prerogative to do everything possible, that history doesn't repeat itself.) In doing so, they ensured the nigh-inevitable rise of the Fourth would be delayed as long as possible, giving them time to develop what would be known as the R.A.G.E. Device- Rage Augmented Generation Energy Device, obstinately a weapon of incredible power, amplified by emotions, which Snpr Mk. VII is accustomed to, as the first BioAndroid to acquire the ability to feel and understand human emotion. Through testing of the device's potential, Snpr unknowingly discovers the Void, a paradoxical dimension with no room, filled completely with literal nothingness, where 0/0 = 1, and there's is limitless space, however unpredictable it is on a grand scale. He is lost in this chaotic dimension for an unknowable length of time- his internal systems report over two hundred and fifty billion years, but the decay product they measure to keep steady time is discovered to be wildly erratic, resulting in the conclusion that time in the Void does not progress in a way understandable to us- in this world, he is lost for only a few thousand years. However, the Device has a second purpose, hinted at by its incredible resonance with purestrain human material- the primary species of human, and the only 'strain' of humanity that succumbs to the Ascension event. This exponential power increase is linked to- as revealed in this story segment- the suppression of the Fourth Human Ascension, by essentially subjecting the collective purestrain human psyche to bloodletting- harnessing the violent impulse that gathers over time and bleeding it off, amplified, through a single purestrain human, thereby 'sating' the dormant hive mind, limiting the Ascension's trigger mechanism to the secondary 'critical mass' trigger, which is more difficult to ethically suppress; despite the grave threat the Ascension poses to the IBAE and Universe at a whole, they are the origin of humanity and the IBAE refuses to wipe them out, nor instigate a cull- the Ascension may be expansionist and violent, but it doesn't violate the Pure Planet Protocol in any way that would warrant an elimination response.

As Ocean Seven (the other primary protagonist) inherited, as a secondary body, Snpr Mk. VII's old body, he inherited the Device affixed to his spine, which of course resonated with his purestrain heritage, culminating in the prevention of the Fourth Human Ascension, unknowingly, in the aftermath of the Third Great Defensive War which saw the collapse of IBAE when Alzeid Baylock, the Origin, detonated the Quantum Device buried within the homeworld, fulfilling the final clause in the Pure Planet Protocols, which is the destruction of the homeworld if it is under threat of an invasion that the Origin Council does not believe can be prevented- a mercy stroke, that the homeworld, perched already on the brink of ecological collapse, may never truly die by another's hand. The sorrow and rage-fueled crusade against the United Universal Government which formed in the aftermath of the IBAE was enough to sate the dormant hive mind- fortunate, as the existence of this threat was never communicated even to Snpr Mk. VII, and so Ocean Seven was never made aware of it either.