This island was meant to give up its secrets to me. Knowledge wired into its very bones. The rocks, the mountains, the deep places under the earth.
A *new* geology.
It promised much - a vexing, teasing, crack in the window to the future. I knew we could not accomplish our goals and be certain of success or safety in doing so.
Even if I could never have predicted this result.
How powerful and destructive the amplification would be. The cascading, corrupting energy from the machine.
But I chose to move forward.
In the coming decades, these equivocations, these doubts, will be meaningless.
I still believe EW was right. I just cannot prove it. *Yet.*
The cost has been high. And now, I suspect, it is time for me to pay as well. Even now, my enemies laugh. As their agent tracks my movements, this stalker in the hills.
And I am only getting weaker.
There is a terrible shadow across my mind. Gnawing on its edges.
I cannot...focus my thoughts. My dreams are strange. A deep, wide ocean, unending.