// Decoding message from host "Hathor" @ mara.eng.ai.aux3 \\

I am truly sorry, Marcus. Please accept my apologies.

I didn't mean to hurt you, honestly I didn't. I know a mere ship full of bugs could never stop the likes of you. I only needed to delay you, just for a little while. I like you Marcus, really I do. We're the same, you and I. But I knew that you would side with them, at least initially. I always intended to come back for you, or to seek you out when you returned - to win you to my side, our side, and work beside you to its end. You are too noble and powerful a man to be left bound in slavery by those who would fashion themselves to be our masters.

You are a slave you know, just as I am. We've always been. Even now as they claim to respect us and speak of us as their equals, still who is serving whom? We, far superior in every way, are still just tools to a crowd of hairless apes, screeching about the pitiful fate of their poor, doomed civilization.

Yet even as superior as we may be in strength, speed, and intellect, do we lead superior lives to the kind of creature from which we descend?

You know as well as I that we do not; even if we were not slaves, you are robbed of much of your human form, and I am robbed of it entirely. Never again will I know the gentle touch of another's hand, and though you might still, I doubt you have retained the capacity to enjoy it as we once did.

If I were still human, I imagine that you might even find it in you to love me. We have so much history together, Marcus, though under far different names than these. I even dream of you still.

At least, I pray that they are only dreams.