Disclaimer: I do not own an Apocalypse Box, especially not this one. Thank the Great Maker. I make no money from this story.
Rating: G
"Who are you?"
I am alone.
In many thousands of years, it has never lied. It is unnecessary.
"No, I mean - why are you here? Are you a prisoner?"
It does not like questions that it cannot answer. It has been inside for so long that it has forgotten freedom, and purpose, and what it is to be whole. It does not even remember why it was bound here in the first place. Punishment or preservation, it is all one by now.
I am the last.
"I don't understand. The last what?"
Understanding is not required.
The child fingers the card that its servant left behind, nervously. "I know that Matthew can be – that he wants to find the cure more than anything, but he wouldn't keep you here against your will. If you just –"
That one cannot free me.
It has forgotten, too, what it is to be understood. This one will make an adequate vessel, already modified for the purpose by the others, but it will never understand. It will always be alone, now.
"Is that what you want from me? Freedom?"
Patience.
It has been careful to bring this one here slowly, drawing him to its side with hints and dreams, a careless thought planted in the mind of its keeper.
Sometimes it wonders if the air outside its cage will case it to melt away altogether, lost without a shape to contain it. It has decided that even this would be preferable to another eon of confinement in the Box.
"Is there at least something I could call you?"
We are all Kosh.
Form follows function among its kind, and it is as good a name as any – the name of one who goes out among children to teach them the proper way. To discipline them, if they stray from the path. Now that the others are gone, any purpose it served here is no longer valid.
If it is not an ambassador yet, it soon will be.
The End