Story Mass Effect: A Ghost In Paradise (Extended)

Title: A Ghost In Paradise
Author: Devlin Arduini
Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy
Note: I know it might be obscure to post an original story of the game on this site, even though I don't see a single ME fanfic to begin with, I just want to tell you all to give it a chance... because you just may like it PLEASE REVIEW


When they arrived, they darkened the sky of every world we had ever known. Purely evil beings of flesh and steel, our burning cities making them glow amber as they hover over our civilization, burning, killing. Their motives solely revolving around organic destruction; they are unstoppable. Toxic seas mire in nuclear winters while our entire culture, heritage, forthcomings and shortcomings bleed into them from crumbling ruins of extinguished life. Millions die in mere days, and for many days after, over decades. A systematic obliteration of an entire galaxy. It took but minutes to realize there was only one back door- the gateway to the holy land, Paradise. The product of thousands of generations, only there could the machinations be halted. And so the Exalted Ones and the Chosen embarked on an exodus in to the fabled holy ground, where they would end the galaxy-wide genocide with the ultimate super weapon. Knowing it was likely a one way trip, they were our heroes, the steadfast paragons of our disintegrated culture, our saviors from the unspeakable. But years pass, entire star systems go dark, and the ones that wipe their coordinate and star-chart data slowly starve to death. Many more years pass, despair, the final Dark Age of our kind before our extinction. Those of us who survive may only hope that it ends faster than it began. Still, we call out to them, we call- but we call to the sky, to the distant stars.
There is only darkness and the empty cry of the night wind to answer.
-An est. 89 million year old writing tablet, recovered by an asari recon team, rough translation, 1765 AD.


Prologue: The Painter, The Canvas, The Muse





<0900 Hours, somewhere above the garden world Callidora, 2177>


It was like being born a second time, free from memories and ideas,
people and places, and all the bonds that shackle us to ourselves.
A kaleidoscope of the senses that overwhelms and humbles from the outset, could it be
at last, I was facing the grit of reality for the first time all over again?

Could it be that I was alive?


* * * *


I wake to the steady hum of faraway engines vibrating through many floors, and all around me there is a lullaby of beeps- frantic but soothing, the chirping sounds echo off corners I cannot see. Within a room of darkness, the solemnity is given a cozy lambency by mounted bright panels and a broad window lets starlight pour in. A heavy cloudiness painfully centers itself in my mind. Before trying to even move, I fall back to meditative thought.

Staring out at the star-speckled void of outer space through the ceiling skylight, I find myself squinting in ironic realization.

I can't think of anything.

My name. Where I'm from. What happened before this- all bygone and cast aside. Every cherished memory I could have ever held close to me, not there anymore. It was as if I was just a living, breathing shell with no identity- no history.

And who does that make me?

I search and search, clawing my way through the corners of my mind. To the deep recesses where- I felt- many people should not even begin to see... but there is nothing.

Family? Friends? I knew not of my parents or theirs. Would I ever? Do they want me to live like that.. and who would even- there were too many questions, all tempting to devour me at once. I avoid panic by retreating into another fruitless meditation.. but all that remains is an unexplainable emptiness and the painful digging sensation of a mind with nothing to yearn for.

Despite the malcontented start, I begin to hone in on single thoughts, flashes of vision, vivid encounters that come and go quicker than the last. When there was nothing, all that remained was a deep ache that settles itself in my gut, but it feels like it came fr