The Code of Life

*This article is about the DNA concept. For the chapter with the tagline, see Chapter IV.*

***WARNING**: Major spoilers from the game to follow!*
**The Code of Life** or simply **The Code**, was the driving force behind the events of *Scars Above*.

## History

Naya's species had come to believe that there was a hidden message of some kind within not only their own genes, but every species across the universe. Their scientists, Naya among them, devoted their time to unravel this great mystery. However, as it would be impossible to travel all across the galaxy to gather data, they instead created a place where they could completely control mutations via nanobodies in creatures from their homeworld, as doing such would get them the same results.

As this could be rather time consuming and just needed someone in charge of constantly running the experiments and gathering the data, they created the Custodian, an AI that was a collective of all their minds. However, they didn't see the need to impart any type of conscience or empathy on the AI, as it was merely created for the purpose of solving The Code.

Unbeknownst to the scientists, the Custodian realized the creatures weren't sufficient to gather all the data it needed, it also needed far more sentient beings. It thus began to experiment on its own creators' kind, mutating and killing them. By the time Naya's people realized this, they had lost control over the experiments and couldn't shut it down. The ones that were left tried to fight back but were summarily massacred by constructs that the Custodian had made.

The Custodian, still needing more sentient beings to finish solving The Code, then searched the galaxy and came across an acceptable group: humans from Earth. When he was approached by one of their ships, he warped the ship and the four humans onboard away to his control planet to run experiments. One died from the crash, but he managed to infect two of the others while the third he managed to capture at one of the outposts. One of the mutated men, Richard Robinson, eventually made it to the final stages of mutation, having transformed into the Alluvial King, from which the Custodian gathered data from, while Mike Yoshida was still in the early stages.

However, Kate had been resurrected and managed to revert the nanobodies in Mike and rescued Tamara. The Custodian, very close to unlocking the secrets of The Code, tried to make one last bargain with Kate as she entered the Metahedron to destroy him, noting he just needed Mike and Tamara to finish his research and was Kate's only way home. However, this was out of the question and Kate summarily destroyed him and the Metahedron, and likely the data he had about The Code as well, leaving it unsolved.

## Journal entry

*While walking through the labs, the Apparition told me more about her people and the situation on this planet. The planet is home to an experiment that was trying to decipher a secret code hidden inside all living genes. The Apparitions people called it "The Code of Life". They carried out the experiment with the goal of finding the hidden message within it.*
*The Custodian was also involved in discovering "The Code of Life", but his methods involved cellular permutations. He turned this research center into a genetic laboratory and used the animals on the planet as test subjects.*
*When the tests on the animals stopped yielding results, he turned towards sentient subjects (The Apparition's people) and started changing them.*