Part 10 - The Eleventh Hour | Chapter 4

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Elthinar, residing within his laboratory as he always did, felt the same lack of fear, yet though the battle was but minutes away from starting, he barely gave it a thought — his life was entirely in the hands of others, and as such spending his time worrying about something he couldn't impact would be a waste of himself. Instead, he was entirely focused on two things, both completely separate from the upcoming battle, and perhaps even more difficult to achieve a positive outcome in: perfecting the ship-mounted alien detector, and trying to understand Xalina — Lassarha's chief scientist, someone who was difficult to collaborate with, and a woman whom Elthinar was certain hadn't seen a human face in decades. Her name was mythical, her unknown visage the stuff of nightmares, her scientific exploits the stuff of legend; Elthinar had heard from rumors that Xalina was hard to comprehend before he had even started trying to do so, and for once, the rumors had understated the truth.

Having spent 20 minutes poring over inane phrases that read as if they had been fed through fifteen different, equally terrible translators for esoteric planetary dialects, and then spat back out in Galactic Standard, Elthinar had begun to think that the only thing the legendary Xalina knew how to do which related to text or other people was write meticulous, incoherent scientific reports. Indeed, people had cited Elthinar's poor social skill to explain his maritally uncommitted status, but even his poor talent in this area dwarfed Xalina's a million times over; judging by what she was writing, it looked as if she hadn't interacted with another person in centuries, and this made attempting to collaborate on such a project amazingly difficult. How could he hope to understand phrases such as "PHOTON TERMINATION SECONDARY EXPANSION FACT ACTION NEED INSTANT ALIEN WARY OBJECT INTERFACE ADVISED" — a sentence which had been produced after Elthinar had asked her to clarify, five times? Such a sentence sounded ominous, but even so-called 'Xalinologists' would have difficulty with such a phrase, and if it weren't for the fact that Xalina had been instrumental in over five hundred thirty three important scientific discoveries, Elthinar would think her an insane idiot. As it stood, he simply thought her an insane genius.

Of course, there was always the issue of his little plan to destroy the universe, a plan that was a step closer to fruition with a theory he had recently generated, though it was, at best, a theory unproven: Elthinar needed to have peer confirmation that he was doing insane things in a sane way, before he went ahead and tried to destroy the universe, lest he do it improperly.

Elthinar then stopped himself for a moment and pondered — if his past self could see him now hoping that he had found a way to destroy the entire universe, what would he think?

Elthinar scoffed: hypothetical scenarios such as that were only good at generating self-doubt, something that never permitted decisive, brutal action, the kind of that was needed during such desperate times. Or, perhaps, the kind of action that he had convinced himself was needed...

Elthinar forcibly stopped himself again: self-doubt and all that was not good, and even if he wasn't trying to blow up the universe, this doubt would prevent him from concentrating on more important things.

Then, as he wrestled with both one of Xalina's inane "sentences," and the decision of whether or not to simply give up on trying to understand her and instead to just tackle the problem alone as he had been doing, Elthinar spontaneously generated an idea: Xalina was, without a doubt, scientifically brilliant, and he needed to confirm a theory he had about his 'project' without alerting anyone else to his galaxy-ending plan. This was an inherent problem with his conspiracy, as a core part of science was cooperation, though someone who was as isolated and connotation-deaf as Xalina would likely not suspect a thing if Elthinar asked her the question he had been wrestling with, thus enabling him to gain the information he needed without attracting attention. As it was, Xalina was perfect, for even if she did try to inform others of his plot, there was little chance of them understanding her.

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