Cryptex Memitim

Appearance:

The Cryptex Memitim is a 90 kg cylinder that is four feet tall, and twenty inches in diameter. The outer casing adds another 10 kg in weight and is made of a deeply worn silvery metal. The Cryptex itself is also made of silvery metal, but has a tumbler system set into the surface and requires a 108 symbol code to open. Each of the 108 dials has thirty-seven symbols to choose from, and it is in the Imbrian's late dynastic alphabet.

History:

The Cryptex Memitim was in one of the first caches of Imbrian relics discovered on the Moon. Many of the other relics were little more than pottery shards and burnt bones by most accounts. The Cryptex and several other records like the Neam Octillio and Emigre Codex were also recovered in the same general area. These objects were returned to Earth and were the subject of intense scientific scrutiny, a project fostered by the now redacted original M12, the twelve nations that had collaborated on the Lunar expeditions. That organization would later be recognized as the Glassenheim Foundation. The silvery cylinder was intriguing because it was obviously a massive protective housing and the fact that it had an eight-digit tumbler lock, with the thirty-seven digit Imbrian alphabet drove cryptologists and scientists bonkers.

It took just shy of two centuries for the lock to be deciphered.

Putting the wrong combination end sometimes caused the entire lock to reset, changing the scroll of text across the surface of the container. This proved challenging because it was correctly assumed that the case was asking authentication questions, and after so many failed attempts it would change the question. Extensive notes were kept, and there was a good deal of frustration because the lock was manual, it had to be done by hand. The Foundation couldn't just hook an AISC up to it to attack it until the lock opened.

The Sednan Key

The secret super cruiser Oumuamua, on a generational cruise to find the heliopause and work out very long-range missions made a startling discovery on the dwarf planet/rogue comet Sedna, two still living Imbrians. It took almost two years with a training AISC working with the two, Nala and Shades, to decipher the basics of Imbrian and for them to learn enough English to communicate. This would prove a massive boon for the Foundation, as the two were a treasure trove of information, even if they were cryogenically frozen criminals. They taught the Foundation basic and intermediary Imbrian, and a very basic understanding of Dynastic Imbrian.

It's a Doom Lock. Whatever is inside this is very serious. Its probably not a weapon, if it was a weapon it would be ... smaller.

Smaller?

Smaller, yes. It probably wouldn't work either. The array is gone, and proper weapons had their mechanisms hidden in the array so when they were activated, the array would send the pieces, they would blesh, and then the weapon would activate.

Blesh?

There isn't a word in this bastard language to wrap around the concept. The array held a weapon in pieces, in different non-spaces. When it was time, all the pieces would come out of non-space, together, and would become one.

Multiple co-location in simultaneous harmony.

That is the least emphatic but most accurate method of describing it, yes.

Nala correctly answered the cipher on the cylinder and after two centuries, excitement turned to despair as the Cryptex Memitim was revealed, it's gleaming not quite gold and silver surface gleamed like an alien keyboard. Solving the first entry cipher had taken twenty-one decades and was only finally accomplished by finding two human beings who had been on ice for over ten thousand years.

To use your own crude terms, you are shit out of luck.

What do you mean?

The Memitim cipher, this part here. This is written in High Imbrian, Dynastic. I could barely read Dynastic before I was imprisoned, and this looks a little different, some of the letters aren't the same. I guess this was made after I was put on ice.

So you can't read it?

I can read some, but I think the problem here is that this question, this question is some sort of personal question. Like whoever set these, it would have to be them again to open it.

Like the Imbrian Dynast who sealed it would have to be found, like you were, to open this thing?

Very unlikely, I've seen Imbria, there are no Dynasts left after that desolation. Your best hope is that the soul of the dynast reincarnates and somehow ends up looking at this because they might know the answer.

Imbrians believed in reincarnation?

Of course, it was a provable fact. The two greatest tricks the Dynasts accomplished were ensuring their reincarnated into their own family lines and perfecting immortality. If I were in your society, or Imbria followed your beliefs, I would have been executed many thousands of years ago and would have lived dozens of lives. Instead, I was held, in ice, my soul in bondage. My people are dead, my country is dead, and the thing I dreaded was so much worse than I would have dreamed. I long for death, and only knowing the cost of the bad death keeps me from doing it.

The Fate of the Imbrians

The Imbrian known as Shades served as a science officer/observer aboard the Oumuamua for six years. During that time, the man donated genetic material and was allowed to impregnate three women of his choosing (from a lineup of volunteers). After this, and contributing greatly to the understanding of Imbrian linguistics, basic arcanotechnology, and putting approximately three hundred children's stories to audio recording, Shades died in his sleep.

The Imbrian known as Nala served for six months, and then requested to be put back into cryostasis and to be returned to the Hellworld, where she would have access to more Imbrian relics and to be put in direct contact with the senior leadership of the Foundation. She remains frozen and in long-term storage on Iapetus, where once every thirty-three years she is thawed, given medical treatment, and undergoes a few months of physical therapy. It is now known that she was some sort of medical expert and was versed in some seriously high-level Imbrian bioscience or bioengineering. Her general observation was that after being on ice for a geological age, she could play time traveler the long way round until Human technology reached the point where her skill could really be put to good use.

What is in the Cryptex?

The Cryptex contains a solid state/crystalline data core. This in turn houses a vast amount of information and a Librarian sentience to curate it. This is a normal thing for Imbrian archives and the fact that the other recovered archives lacked this proves the level of destruction at the end of the Imbrian civilization.

The contents of Mimetim are at the current time moot. It hasn't been opened, and to this end, it doesn't matter what it contains, it cannot be accessed.

What is REALLY in the Cryptex

You very well know that I am not a huge fan of ambiguity for the purpose of being vague.

The serious layers of protection and encryption prove the Memitim contains something valuable, and it does. The Memitim is the master key of a high-ranking Imbrian dynast and contains a vast amount of incredibly important, valuable, and dangerous Imbrian technology.

Things of note in the Memitim:

Nucleosynthesis as a means of deliberately creating magnaspawn

Greater Nucleosynthesis as a means of deliberately creating teratomorphs and magnagogs

Anti-Nucleosynthesis as a means of creating anti-life weaponry aka stuff that causes amino acids to unravel and carbon-based lifeforms to slough apart.

Specs and instructions on how to build Caldera weapons

Specs and instructions on how to build Imbrian advanced weaponry including aerospace craft far beyond CE technology, and Imbrian warships and the naval grade weaponry they had. A modern built ship using Imbrian technologies and construction techniques would create a golden hulled vessel bristling with exotic beam weapons that would be evenly matched in fighting five to eight modern warships. At ten to one odds, the modern warships would lose half their number and unless scoring a killing hit, only force the Imbrian cruiser to retreat.

The functionality of the Nebiru Array, aka the Imbrian internet/teleportation/hyper storage system, and how to rebuild it without the master relay (long since reduced to its component atoms by a Caldera device 10,000 years ago).

Specs for Dynastic medical technology including proper alcazars, producing pure Amnion, phoenix engines, and Lazarus pits.

Advanced cloning technology

Advanced genome engineering

A large amount of Imbrian pornography

An equally large amount of Imbrian Cats on the moon media

The sum of Imbrian written media, all of its books, instrumental music, and records of its visual art media

Finally and perhaps the most dangerous of all, the Cryptex contains the entire code of the man who created it. If this code is inserted into a proper Phoenix Engine, it will regrow his body, and activate a soul beacon function. The device will wait until his soul returns to the body it has created, and then it will return the Immortal Dynast to life. For fans of definitive answers, the soul of the dynast endures, and at the current time occupies a child living in the brutal conditions of the Levant wastelands. If the cryptex were deciphered, the devices within built, and the body grown, when that child reached the end of their life, the soul of the Dynast would be returned to the engine and would awaken with memories of dozens of lifetimes, knowing the scope and span of human history just as he knew the scope and span of Imbrian history.

Earth would have a villain like none it has ever known before.