What follows on this page are scraps of knowledge from the sprawling records of the Shapers; they who would restore Humanity and prevent the infinite apocalypse. For the full introduction to the background setting of Omega Station, download this .rtf.
'The eye is drawn upwards, past spotless warm plastic, through thick panes of cultured diamond clear as the void, to that which dwells eternally in the centre of Alpha Station - the beginning of everything.'
'Clouds of newly born plasma, hotter than star-cores, reach out in streamers luminous with particle sleet. The Big Bang, captured moments after the expansion started, hangs overhead. Tiny irregularities will become the galactic superclusters of the future, forever paralysed in the sight of the Unmakers and of their servants.'
'And there, at the end of all things, the Shapers built a place, hung it against the vast accretion disc which was reality spiralling away. It was a cathedral and a fortress, and in truth it was a mausoleum. The tomb of Mankind, last resting place of the hopes and struggles of two million years - a tiny sliver of time lost in the span of creation - and one ended so abruptly, so cruelly.'
'They built a great folly; a gothic crypt pierced with buttress and spire, encrusted with gargoyles; Escher in stone, its vaults curved in many dimensions. From the cold halls within stained glass looked out on the frozen spectacle; the universe in death. And Humanity's old ghosts haunted their tomb. The temporal spirits of everyone who had ever been born roamed the carved passages. This was Omega Station.'
'In a chamber central to the edifice, set high between the carved angels and the stained glass, ticks The Clock. It is illuminated by cold light fleeing from the torn hearts of suns, tinted by the panes which form the faces of Humanity's dead past. The measured sound of its unfathomable workings interrupts all thought, never fading from the mind while the hall is occupied.'
'Across Time is its brother. Pale numerals turn over in utter silence, glowing green on black. Here the light is pervasive, soulless, outshining the birth of stars above. This Clock might go unnoticed, despite its size, for many screens shine around it, showing images of the gulfs of the future.'
'The two count perfectly in step.'
'They built a shell around Creation, there at the birth of it all. Plastic, steel and crystal were wedded for a Purpose, long before such materials were even possible. Perfect science.'
'At its centre is the Big Bang; the primal explosion frozen moments after it has begun, a cloud at temperatures that the universe will never reach again. Just outside the walls of Alpha Station a torrent of radiation stands, wavefronts locked, never to reach it. Inside great mechanisms run faultlessly, soullessly, monitoring the vast expanse of the future. For the most part the station is empty, occupied only by machines. But sometimes things walk its shining and insulated corridors. Some seem like men. Some do not.'
'They are the Unmade, and they are not human any more.'