MAG 135: Dark Matter

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Statement of Manuela Dominguez regarding her unconventional religious beliefs and their intersection with her project aboard the space station Daedalus.

## Statement

To begin her statement, Manuela Dominguez asks Gertrude to pass a message along to Elias. A message from Maxwell Rayner offering a chance to abandon The Eye and surrender to The Dark. Manuela offers her story to convince them of her sincerity.

Manuela's parents were very religious and believed in Christ. For a long time, she hoped that her parents were right. Her parents were spiteful people that used their faith to hurt others and hated anything they deemed as "unnatural", which usually consisted of things that fell along the lines of their jealousies and pride and things that they did not understand. Manuela found herself crossing this line early in life, but strangely the thing that her parents were most against was her pursuit in a scientific career. She broke away with them as soon as she could and only came back when they were dying to tell them of her own church, so they might die with the fear of darkness.

Manuela's scientific studies in physics led her towards dark matter and dark energy, although her own theology was undeveloped. Her work then was a betrayal of her principles to the dark, as she was doing the work of the light by revealing what was hidden.

She then met Maxwell Rayner, who told her more about the Dark. They began to work together and to worship in his church, The People's Church of the Divine Host. He spoke to her about prophecy, of the movement of the heavens and the killing of the sun. Using her scientific knowledge, she was to create a black sun, a new center point around which a universe of the purest darkness could turn. Scientifically, it was nonsense, but that was not important. To create the black sun, she would need the deepest of darkness. When she told Maxwell that, he said it was impossible, but she insisted and he started working on The Daedalus. He somehow convinced the Lukas Family and the Fairchilds to help finance the project. Manuela does not know if the families were working on rituals of their own or simply pushing the boundaries of their fears. Either way, her other two astronauts on The Daedalus were patsies, sent up there to suffer.

Manuela does not exactly know how the planning for The Daedalus was done, but it had to be done by one of Maxwell and Manuela's, as the fact that there were four people onboard would not escape anyone's notice. There were three astronauts and one unlucky nyctophobe sealed in a lightless, silence box. The nyctophobe was simply a battery for Manuela to draw upon for her experiments. One of the astronauts, Chilcott, was sealed away. Manuela's experiments continued largely uninterrupted and she continued pushing the boundaries of light, darkness, and fear.

In the end, Manuela succeeded and had a tiny, terrible sun of the pitchest black. By that time, her fellow astronauts had succumbed to their assigned tortures and she had no difficulty securing the black star. The three of them returned to Earth. The final experiment left her battery, the nyctophobe, in such a state that no amount of soundproofing could dampen the screams, so he was disposed of.

Manuela explains to Gertrude that that was all she had come to say, to let her know that they had succeeded and to make an offer to Elias on behalf of Maxwell. There is an element of provocation as well, that even without Darvish, they will still be victorious. Manuela challenges Gertrude, saying that she would love nothing more than to see her destroyed by the radiance of the dark sun. She invites Gertrude to do her worst or to prostrate herself and Elias before the Forever Blind, and perhaps they will be spared.

## Post-Statement

John finds this concerning but seeing as the sun is still there, he assumes they failed, unless they are still waiting to attempt the ritual, although that is not the kind of statement you give four years in advance. The time frames of the rituals seem variable. When John tries to think about it, he only sees darkness, which is unhelpful but expected. He plans to keep digging, as it does not seem like Gertrude had a plan for this ritual. He hopes that he is just being overcautious and the ritual is long dealt with.

The coffin is gone, given to Artefact Storage with very specific instructions to keep it locked away. John wonders if it is the right thing to do, with all of the other people trapped in there, but he decides that he cannot think about it and he cannot save everyone.

John does not like interacting with the rest of the Institute anymore, as they give him weird looks and he does not know what they heard, although they have heard something and they cannot wait until they do not have to talk to him anymore. Everyone is just trying their best to live one day at a time, but John cannot afford to do that. He needs a plan, but he does not even know what he is trying to achieve, and no one wants to tell him.

Basira Hussain visits Elias Bouchard in prison, demanding to know why the leads he had previously given her all turned out to be dead ends, causing her to waste three weeks searching for a non-existent way to rescue Daisy. Elias admits it was a wild goose chase designed to get Basira out of the way so that John would be able to enter and escape from The Buried without Basira stopping him. Elias explains he needed to force John to rely on his powers as the Archivist, since he will need to gain greater control over his powers for what is to come. Elias's plan was a success, and John is now the only person in history to have ever successfully found his way out of the Buried.

Basira asks why Elias needs John to get stronger, since Elias cannot perform The Eye's ritual from behind bars. Elias explains that he has detected increased activity from Ny-Ålesund, which he suspects is preparation for a desperate attempt by the People's Church of the Divine Host to conduct The Dark's ritual, The Extinguished Sun despite Maxwell Rayner's recent demise. Elias then admits to phoning in the tip-off that led to the police raid that killed Rayner. Since Elias cannot spy on The Dark and has very little information about the ritual to go on, he needs John to become strong enough to stop the ritual. While Elias only cares about the stopping the ritual to make way for his own eventual attempt at a ritual, he points out that the rest of the world is counting on John to stop the world from being plunged into darkness. Basira takes the information and leaves.

## Continuity

* **Related Entity:** The Dark
* The other astronauts on the Space Station Daedalus gave their statements about their experiences in MAG 57: Personal Space and MAG 106: A Matter Of Perspective.
* Manuela gives a live statement in MAG 143: Heart of Darkness.
* Manuela mentions not needing to tell Gertrude about Jan Kilbride's gullibility, alluding to how she used him in her ritual-stopping plots (MAG 129).
* Manuela mentions "the loss of Darvish": referring to Vardhan Darvish, a fellow Dark avatar who Julia Montauk & Trevor Herbert killed in MAG 109: Nightfall.
* "The final death of Maxwell Rayner" that Elias mentions was seen in MAG 73: Police Lights.
	+ Basira noted during the episode that it was a mystery who could have phoned in the tip to the police; Elias here reveals that it was him.