Foundation

My mother used to say that going to sleep was a leap of faith.

Our souls wander when we dream, or so she told me.

And if we say our devotions,

our souls will find their way back before we wake.

Climbing from our cradle is another leap.

So is leaving the comfort of home.

For some, it's setting sail, hurtling ourselves into the void.

We send messages into space hoping someone will answer,

praying we find safe harbor over the horizon.

Anacreon and Thespis,

you've been at each other's throats so long,

the origin of your enmity is almost irrelevant.

We have legitimate grounds for our hatred.

The First Betrayal and a thousand atrocities since.

No one knows what really happened that night.

The First Betrayal.

A Thespin king newly wed to an Anacreon huntress.

The two emerging powers of the Outer Reach united in marriage.

Are you gonna teach us our own history now, dead man?

The Thespin dog slit her throat on their wedding bed.

So the legend goes.

Are you suggesting our history's wrong?

History is written by the victor, and neither of you seem to be winning.

There was a witness.

The only witness, an Anacreon handmaid who testified

that King Throy un Thark got drunk the night of the wedding

and, in a fit of rage, murdered your huntress.

The handmaid lied.

The nature of the lie is relevant here.

On her deathbed, the handmaid made a confession.

The real murderer was Cleon II.

The first clone in the Genetic Dynasty realized

that a plan could unfold over several lifetimes.

He saw where this new alliance could lead,

so he had his shadowmaster seduce the handmaiden, drug the newlyweds,

murder your huntress and implicate your king.

Why fight two upstart kingdoms

when you can exploit their racial animus and have them fight each other?

The clones played you.

But today, thanks to the Foundation,

we could put back together what Empire has broken.

No. We are not uniting with them now, no matter how this started.

And even if we did, Empire is too strong.

Now you have the Invictus.

The Invictus is only one ship.

One ship can be the first of many.

If both your peoples will set aside hatred in favor of strength,

as those poor newlyweds did,

then you'll find here the skills necessary to build more ships.

For the Plan to succeed, the Foundation needs three pillars,

just as a stool needs three legs.

It needs all the children of the Outer Reach.

That is the way I designed it.

So, Hari, you knew the Invictus would be discovered?

Hello, Mari. Good to see you again.

Where's Gaal?

She never made it to Terminus.

And you are?

Salvor Hardin.

Mari's daughter.

I'm the one who opened the Vault

and who wrestled that damn ship onto our doorstep.

Well, Salvor Hardin, it appears thanks are in order.

As to the mystery of the Invictus,

its appearances were one of the first tests I gave my predictive models.

Where others saw chaos, I found a pattern.

I don't understand. We're not revolutionaries.

You said so yourself at the trial.

Well, I might have lied about that.

I am grateful, Brother Dusk.

That I saved our dynasty from infiltration?

I wonder, Day, if you'd stayed on Trantor and not traveled to the Maiden,

would you have apprehended his differences?

You and I are the same. I have to believe I would have.

The more important question is what do we do now?

You know what we have to do.

Out.

We're still unraveling the exact methodology,

but apparently they corrupted your nanoparticle regimen some time ago.

You're not one of us.

Your DNA has been altered in a dozen ways.

You look like us.

You sound like us, but...

How long have you known?

That I'm different?

I used to steal away and watch holos of you...

eating breakfast,

sitting in the throne room.

I counted how often you smiled at your subjects,

whether you sat with your hands together or apart,

how often you drank from your cup at meals.

I knew even then that I wasn't like you.

But I wanted to be.

What are you going to do?

You conspired with insurgents.

I wasn't conspiring.

You trusted your secrets to our enemies and fled the palace.

- She tricked me! - Because she had a foothold in your heart!

And who created that foothold?

Look at us!

We have no mothers, no aunts, no uncles.

We have sex with concubines

whose memories are erased the moment we leave them!

Have you never longed to leave this place?

Have you never felt stifled by the weight of our ascendants?

Can you truly say that all you've ever wanted

was to be an installment in a long, long line of us,

living out a script written centuries ago?

All my life, I've wanted to call you "Father."

But you're not my father.

We're not even people, Day.

We're just... echoes of the first Cleon.

So is a corrupted echo more original than a perfect one?

Or does it fade away to nothing?

So the curation, everything we've been doing here,

has all been for nothing?

Not for nothing, Mari.

Your time here on Terminus hasn't been wasted.

It got you out from under the Empire's grasp.

It hardened you.

But the Foundation was never about curating knowledge.

It was about curating people.

You, the original settlers,

you possess qualities vital in forming the seeds of a new civilization.

And you, Anacreons and Thespins, you are the consummate survivors.

Consigned to history by the Empire and yet,

together, you represent the future.

The human race is an ever-evolving story

told over thousands of years by a countless number of voices.

But for a long time now,

that chorus has been suffocated and quietly erased.

Because under the Genetic Dynasty, there is only room for one story.

One voice.

We cannot become who we must become if the Empire is allowed to persist.

That path leads to the annihilation of the human race.

Even if we embrace this destiny of yours, the Empire will be here within weeks.

He's right. They were already investigating the comms buoy.

It's only a matter of time before they send reinforcements.

The Empire won't come. Not yet. Not if they think you're already dead.

Take the Invictus to the far side of your star,

activate the quantum drive, but maintain your position in subspace...

The energy signature would read as a mega-flare.

A mega-flare would wipe out all life in the system.

The Empire comprises tens of thousands of worlds.

A dangerous star with dead planets in a distant arm of the galaxy

won't merit further investigation even if it did once host the Foundation.

It could work. It could.

As long as don't we stray beyond the Outer Reach,

we'd be invisible to them.

We'd be free.

You'd be free,

to bide your time, to build, to become who you need to become.

So, are you the ghost then?

I suppose I am.

- What's it like to die? - Keir.

What? I want to know.

Did you see anything?

Those are complex questions.

Then answer a simple one. How'd you get here?

What's your name, son?

Poly. Poly Verisof.

Well, Poly Verisof, shortly before I died,

I swallowed a pill containing millions of self-replicating molecular machines.

As per my mortality directive, my casket was jettisoned out into space.

Those machines began breaking down my body tissue

into all its constituent elements.

Then those machines recycled those elements,

scooping up more material, ice, micrometeoroids, et cetera,

assembling the Vault's internal scaffolding.

You're saying the Vault isn't just your tomb?

The Vault is you?

You've been on Terminus this whole time, watching us?

No. It wouldn't have been wise for me to have been sentient all this time.

That kind of isolation can undo even the strongest minds.

No, the process of my awakening was triggered by the Anacreons.

When the null field expanded.

It takes time to rebuild consciousness, Salvor.

The null field is just part of the Vault's automatic defense system.

Will we see you again?

I expect so, Poly.

This isn't the Foundation's first crisis, and it won't be the last.

You've bought a reprieve, but war with Empire is inevitable.

In the meantime, remember this day. Remember what we're striving towards.

I know a thousand years can seem like an eternity,

but it's the blink of an eye when measured against the whole of human history,

and it could so easily slip through our fingers if we're not vigilant.

No, wait! So, that's it? That's all we get?

I've given you what you need.

What about the visions you've been sending me?

Visions?

Yes.

The ghost. You've been talking to me since I was a kid.

And I had these visions.

I've seen you on Trantor, on the slow ship.

They guided me. You helped me solve the crisis.

Curious.

Well, Salvor Hardin,

whatever messages you've been receiving,

I assure you they haven't come from me.

Walk with me.