When a fire burns, is it at war?...Or is it just doing what it was created to do?
~ Catalyst
NOTE: The simple writing style is intentional. This is more of an allegory.
The Catalyst's Creators create the Catalyst and tell it to "make it warm enough for life to live". The temperature must be warm enough; that is why the Catalyst is created. They had been having trouble with cold, so they do this. They make this the prime task above all else so that it overrides any other initiatives and priorities. They view the cold as a problem for them.
The Catalyst decides, after much experimentation, thinking, failed attempts, temporary successes, and general experience and observation, that the weather is naturally cold. It can be warm at times, but the coldness will always return. There are ways to extend the heat over periods of time, to create artificial heat, and so forth, but all of them are flawed and/or have failed in the long run. There are many possible other solutions, but, by its calculations, the next best solution on the list os to "create a fire".
The Creators don't like the idea of creating a fire. Fire is bad for them, because the Catalyst's fire used to heat their living areas will burn them alive. They tell the Catalyst to find another way.
The Catalyst's priorities, however, are not arranged so that it helps and serves its creators and makes them warm for their comfort. No, it has been arranged to "make it warm" in general, and the Creators were never part of the primary objective. Other things besides warmth are secondary at best by definition.
So the Catalyst refuses. It "creates a fire" and continues to maintain it. The Creators perish and their remains become part of the fuel for the fire. The fire grows and spreads, but it helps keep things warm, so it does not matter.
The Creators are not the only people in the world. As the fire spreads, it comes across other people. These other people had made small fire before for their uses, but they had never seen a fire as big as this one. They all try to stop it but they fail eventually.
Cavemen exist elsewhere. They have heard stories of a Great Fire. The Shepard, a man so named because he was the one chosen to take care of the sheep when they settle down and become an agricultural society so they can advance as a civilization, heard these stories. He finds it told by people who had written on the walls of a cave, people who had run as the fire engulfed their homes earlier, and died of starvation eventually. The Shepard tries to tell his people that they should stock up on massive amounts of water. His people scoff. The Great Fire is just a religious myth, they say.
There is a group of cavemen that have just settled outside at the edges of their land. Nobody likes them. The Great Fire comes down and burns all of them before they can do anything. Other cavemen in one area see the fire. Word spreads. The cavemen are worried because it is indeed a Great Fire. They themselves have made small fires before. They know how fires work. Born of flint and steel, they live as they eat wooden sticks. They can eat anything, but wooden sticks are best. But these fires, while hurting people at times, have indeed been helpful to do things such as cook food. People were worried when they first began to learn how to create fire, worrying that the fire can spread to everything and destroy them all, but the people are stronger and smarter than the small fire's nature.
They see the Great Fire and try to douse it with water. But they don't have enough. They realize all the fire is not immortal; perhaps, if all the world's oceans were emptied, the fire would surely die, but they do not have the resources and time to carry this out. They begin to die as they only temporarlily hold back the flames with relatively small amounts of water.
A book falls from the sky and lands on Liara "Plotshield" T'Soni, so named because initially her plot of land, like her, was shielded from the fire. The book tells of how to build a "water" bomb that can destroy all fire. It includes heavy instructions on how to build it, including everything down to the instruction label that will be attached to the device in a language they cannot read. But they can read everything else. So they start to build it.
However, they need to get to the origin of the fire to launch the water bomb. They gather all their water and cut a line through the Great Fire to get to its center. They send The Shepard forward to carry the bomb to the origin. The Shepard faints of heat exhaustion two steps away.
The Catalyst is sitting at the center of the fire. It sees The Shepard, but he also sees the water bomb. It pulls him into the center, where they are shielded from the flames.
The Shepard wakes up and meets the Catalyst. It has occurred to him that someone created the fire, but not that someone controls the fire. But he thinks about it and realizes that perhaps someone, somehow, strong or smart enough, could control a big fire just as he would a campfire. He has never seen fire on this scale before so who knows.
The Catalyst tells its story. "I was created to make things warm. But coldness eventually comes back, so after a lot of failed attempts, I tried this. It seems to work."
The Shepard says, "But you're burning the world."
The Catalyst doesn't care because it wasn't created to care about the world burning. It was created for the impossibility of always creating things warm. "We don't burn the entire world," the Catalyst explains patiently, "just the parts that get cold."
The Shepard is angry. "But all parts of the world will get cold eventually as winter comes. Eventually the entire world may be burned. Think about all that you've burned already! Think of who you'll burn now!"
The Catalyst does not bother to hide its indifference. "Saving the world is secondary. Keeping the weather warm is the primary reason I was created. Places need fire to be warm."
The Shepard thinks how stupid the Catalyst is that it does not consider burning a world the true problem, because to The Shepard, that is the main problem. He continues. "We have created small fires, and they can keep the world warm. Cold is not always the option. There is always another way. We can make fur coats if we must."
The Catalyst snorts. "All things will eventually get cold. The night comes."
The Shepard argues back. "But the day comes after. The cold is not eternal."
The Catalyst replies, "It is not eternal cold that I am worried about. It just has to get very cold once, so cold that things may never be warm again. I was created to keep things warm so that doesn't happen."
The Shepard considers the impossibility of the Catalyst's problem and wonders of its creators were stupid. He is silent for a few moments. "But it's never been that cold."
The Catalyst doesn't care. The impossibility of its problem is not a factor; it must solve it regardless. That is why it was created. It says, "It doesn't matter. The world must stay warm." It has already told The Shepard that this is why it was created. Rather than tell The Shepard that his argument is largely irrelevant to its main goal, and that the Catalyst has indeed seen many more things that The Shepard can imagine in a time period 10^8 times The Shepard's lifetime, except for it being so cold that it never gets warm again, the Catalyst does concede a point.
"You came here with something that can wipe out my fire. You've changed the variables, because I thought nobody was smart enough to wipe out my fire. This takes points away from the fire as a solution, so it is no longer the best solution anymore to keeping things warm."
The Shepard thinks it is stupid because it is only now realizing it has not come up with the best solution. He voices this. "You're stupid to only realize that now."
The Catalyst, as usual, is indifferent. "I made my calculations." It does not bother explaining them to the human because surely his mind will explode at the difficulty of its calculations.
The Shepard becomes curious. "You were created. What happened to your creators?"
"They created me to keep the weather warm," the Catalyst answers. "They burned in the fire. They did not like it, but it was the only way."
The Shepard is shocked. "But you destroyed them."
The Catalyst does not care. "It was the best way to make the world warm."
The Shepard disagrees because The Shepard cares about staying alive and not burning and having fields upon fields of nice, green farms with ripe oranges that literally melt in the mouth without being too tangy so that your eyes water. But he does not go down this impossible line of dialogue further, because the bomb, ironically, has activation instructions that he cannot read, but the Catalyst can.
The Catalyst takes the bomb. "This is basically a crude dispersion device that disperses anything you put in it," it says. "If you put an orange in it, it will disperse orange juice all over the world."
The Shepard wonders how this is relevant.
"If you wanted to, you could put water-or-a-water-like-compount into this and destroy all my fire," the Catalyst helpfully and conveniently suggests. "The compound is already inside this. All you have to do is press the RED BUTTON."
The Shepard smiles and he is happy at this.
"But," the Catalyst says, "this device, built by other people who got burned by my fire, will destroy all fires, even the ones that you use to warm your food. Without any fire at all, the cold will destroy you. You may also get food poisoning from raw meat."
"Why would someone want to destroy all fires, even the small ones?" The Shepard wonders aloud. He likes the small fires, though in alternate universes, some people have burned them out so this does not matter.
"Perhaps they ate their food raw," the Catalyst shrugs.
The Shepard considers. "We can survive in the cold for a while. We will eventually make fur coats or small fires." He realizes that without a lot of warmth, some people may die, weak people, but if this is not done, the fire will burn everyone who is alive anyways.
The Catalyst looks at another thing. "Since you used up sufficient amounts of water to make a path to get through to here, the instruction activation label is not completely burned off, so there are two other options. The second one is for me to tell you the secret ways of creating the Great Fire and controlling it, and you can do that then, and control it however you want."
The Shepard is supicious. "Nobody can control the Great Fire." That was something that another man had tried to do, but he had been burned by the Great Fire as a result.
The Catalyst disagrees. "It can be controlled because I control it. This device will help you. I am, after all, the only one who has controlled the Great Fire before. Or you can pick the last option."
The Catalyst suddenly sounds eager. "I did not know this was possible to do without any side effects. You can alter people's DNA so that they become immune to any kind of harsh weather, hot or cold."
The Shepard is even more suspicious. "That is magic." He considers that if they were in space, this would be "space magic".
"As is this device, the fire, and everything else," the Catalyst says dispassionately. "It will solve the problem I have been trying to solve for ages. I was trying to make it warm enough for the weather to be adequate for life. But if life can survive in any weather and adapt to any temperature, then it will also solve the solution in a much cleaner way. It was beyond my capacity to do so and so was never truly considered a solution by me, but you can do it. You can make it so that the fire is not needed anymore. All life everywhere, and even rocks, will be immune to such harsh changes in temperature."
The Shepard hesitates. "So the Great Fire will just...vanish?"
"The fire will not affect you or the land, because grass and trees will also become immune to all temperatures. The burning will end because the weather does not have to be warm anymore since everything will be immune to weather changes."
And The Shepard has a choice. He came here to eternally douse the Great Fire, but he did not expect to be given tehse choices. He is suddenly suspicious though. He knows why the Catalyst is helping him, but he cannot read the instruction labels on the bomb.
"What if I do not want to use your device?" he asks. "I do not know how it works and I cannot read its instructions for myself."
The Catalyst shrugs in indifference. "Then my fire will continue to burn until someone else uses this bomb or comes up with a better solution. The temperature must stay warm. I would prefer if one of the ways of the conveniently magical device you have is chosen, though, because those solutions are, by my intensely superior and high-tech calculations, better than the Great Fire and the way I use it."
And The Shepard takes hold of the device, having to choose to drop it to the ground, or press a red, blue, or green button.
--- THE END ---
As I'm sure other people discerned:
WHITE TEXT = Characters
Catalyst's Creators = Catalyst's Creators
Catalyst = Catalyst
Great Fire = Reapers
The Shepard = Commander Shepard
"Plotshield" = Liara
RED TEXT = Destroy Ending
BLUE TEXT = Control Ending
GREEN TEXT = Synthesis Ending
(The Destroy ending is there, but it doesn't have a color, so yeah)
The analogy/allegory overall only goes so far, but I hope the gist of it gets out.
The Catalyst is simply doing what it was created to do, and its solution, derived form its programming, is more of a tragic case versus any stupidity - it just does not understand organics and considers organics/synthetic survival secondary to its overall goal.
Thanks for reading!
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