30-04-2001 11:57									#1
	Can you guess what cause this interlude? Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

#INTERLUDE27
#xs 500
#caption Epilogue
^ Now that you are part of the vast matrix of the Planetmind, you spend your time
wandering from thought nexus to thought nexus, despairing that $ALIENLEADER5 merged
with the Planetmind and became its dominant personality.
^ You just can't let it go.
^ Everywhere you move, the Usurper's dominant personality has imprinted itself.
Everywhere you look, there are human souls adrift, trapped in a master personality
that is completely alien to all of you.
^ This is the cost of losing. Not death, but an eternity living in someone else's
dream, constantly assaulted by sounds and images that are not your own.
^ You catch a thread of thought, a tiny sliver of energy in the vast new
Planetmind. The thought is small but fills you with longing...Earth. It is a thought
of Earth, the old Earth left behind, with its green forests and blue oceans regenerating
after Armageddon.
^ You quickly realize that $ALIENLEADER5 is reaching out to nearby planets, trying to
expand its domain. It is sending some of the Usurper sub-personalities from the matrix
to Earth, to colonize it.
^ There is only a moment to decide, and a moment is all it takes. You piggyback on a
particularly dense alien personality, riding it silently into the mind of the colony
ship. You feel the ship closing down, the personalities settling into synthetic bodies
for the journey. You remain in the dark, shrouding yourself in silence, squeezing into
the farthest corner of one body's thought matrix.
^ If the alien intelligence detects you, you will be sentenced to a far worse fate
than wandering the Undermind, but it doesn't matter. Here is a second chance, and a
possible redemption.
^ A return home.

	30-04-2001 12:02									#2
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

#INTERLUDE18
#xs 500
#caption Epilogue
^ The cold-sleep unit finally cycles open and you stretch muscles rusty from
decades of computer-managed disuse. But they are young muscles, shockingly young,
and it will be a pleasure to beat them back into shape. Orbital insertion
begins and you tingle with the excitement of your new mission and with the joy
of having returned to human form. Yes, you left a copy of your personality among the
Planetmind's giant matrix, but this copy, this human being $NAME1 now waking to
lead the first Seed mission, this is the only self now immediate to you and therefore
the only real you. You are flesh again, and so quite mortal, and for this too you
rejoice.
^ You despaired when Planet invited $NAME5 to join its dominant self, and
for a decade or more you moped about the bizarre virtual reality of the Undermind
with no coherent purpose, a lost spirit unable to die. But when the Seed missions
began, the Voice/Planet personality herself sought you out in the abyss and convinced
you to accept command of the {Prodigal Son}.
^ "Earth$NAME3, you are unfulfilled here and I have need of you. In ages to come
I shall have need of allies, sister Minds, if I am to keep the flame of conscious
thought from guttering out as the universe contracts or else expands to dust. Take
with you the gift of life, the seeds of all our species. Spread them to the stars,
across the galaxies, creating new civilizations, new minds, and enlisting the aid
of any you encounter. Go forth, Earth$NAME3. Go forth and multiply."
^ The maneuver at last complete, the safety shutters retract from the viewport
and you behold a sight lost to human eyes for over $NUM3 centuries. Deep blues, swirling
whites, the azure tint of a rich oxygen atmosphere. Inviting browns and greens of
continents basking in the sun, a few scattered impact craters the only visible signs of
a war now buried in the aeons. Third planet. Earth. Home.


Could this be a possible way to take SMAC 2?

	30-04-2001 13:42									#3
	Support Apolyton

I've never had these played, but I think the Prima guide says the second one is when someone else transcends, which makes sense. By analogy, I would say the first one is if the Usurpers transcend.