(6x04) The Magic of Antiquity: Part 2, Episode 1
Goran returns with Tatia and an imperial forensics crew to the ruins of the lab, but even after an extensive search fail to find any remains of Keius, or damage enough that no remains should be found – he, or his corpse at least, is simply missing. But given the onset of the war, discovering his fate is not considered a priority by the empire. Tatia must return to Ehrba for reassignment, but Goran is now on administrative leave as his colony is evacuated, and she asks him to please do anything he can to find out what happened to Keius. Goran obliges, and after following a long string of apparent hunches – in fact seeing and hearing flashes of Keius' visage and voice in the oddest of places – he finally locates him, still alive, on another remote colony world, and reports this news via the network to Tatia before investigating further.
As it turns out, Keius secretly fled here after dying and being resurrected by his nanites after the lab was bombed. In the process Keius has become one with Meij, the "spirit" of his family – a mind that resides within his nanite network, the likes of which all Ehrban have, but few are consciously aware of, and fewer still are able to commune with. Having merged entirely with this inherited personality, he hears the minds of others across the whole of the nanites' ansible web, as well as the voice of "Geiana", the cacaphony of inner voices of the entire Ehrba-descendant ecosystem. With subtle reprogramming of others' nanites – a feat he is now capable of accomplishing by will and proximity alone – he is also able to speak directly into the minds of others, as their own inner voices do; and through this connection he may exercise his newfound powers by proxy of such people. It was by this method that he arranged covert transport to this secluded world; and it was by his continuing links to those people that he was able to lead Goran here to find him.
Keius has spent his time here in meditation, communing with the life on this tiny colony, both Ehrban and wild, perfecting his newfound skills, listening to the roar and hiss of Geiana like the crashing of waves on the shore – and plotting a secret plan all the while. Now one with his ancestral spirit, he recalls the memories of his father Sovos as though they were his own, and realizes that all his life has been leading up to this plan. His very name, Keius, should have given it away: derived from gheieous, "possessing the quality of silence, stillness, clarity, or tranquility", his name is the literal antonym of Geiana. He was named of course by his father, who, during his life as an ascetic, became one with the Meij spirit, heard the voice of Geiana himself, and formulated a plan to bring tranquility at last to her stormy mind – a plan which he has been working toward, through Keius, for many years already, and which is now coming to its culmination.