NationStates Jolt Archive

The wall Monhin had constructed around himself consisted of dozens of clerks, secretaries, and Icons to deflect the waves of bureaucracy that seemed to emanate from the very soil of the Osage Empire.

Wakonda damn it all, this was supposed to be a military state, and yet somehow the officials had slowly began to bureaucratize what had originally been so streamlined.

He groaned as the cracks in his walls let through a flood of edicts, memorials, petitions, legislation, domestic reports, and a smorgasbord of other miscellanous documents.

He didn't have time for this. He should be out there, learning, innovating, organizing, and politicking, not authorizing the latest ricefield extensions or declining memorials.

He turned to his list of things to do today, and allowed himself a smile of relief. Ah, the smell of legitimate excuses.

---

The message spiraled through the timeless, dimensionless realm of mind, soul, wakon, conducted by the consciousness of the Awakener into the receiving plane of the protosoul of the drone.

Said drone quietly drifted through Venusian space in 'real', constricted space and time, even as within it, on some other level, it's protosoul digested the received message. A variety of installed 'programs' woven into the fabric of it's mind-structure began to twist and convert the message from the essence of mind to the more concrete, Solar construct of a radio message. Concepts and words became more rigidly defined as they passed into the confinements of human language, the limits of said communication subtly shifting nuances that mutated from Osage to Common.

The message sped along, towards the gigantic work of practical engineering that was the generation ship Alpha. From the dancing patterns and blazing light shows of his mindsphere, the tenth fleet-general watched as his message reached its target, and marveled.

To AdminCoordinator 67521, of the coordinated panNorm Hives of S-14,


So many topics I wish I could cover, and yet so little practical space and time to cover them in. Let me first begin by introducing myself as the controller of all territory, military forces, and diplomatic efforts outside the home system of the Osage Empire, an extraSolar state.

To be direct and to the point, the panNorm, their organization, their values, their entire overarching pattern, they both personally fascinate and practically inspire me.

And yet there is so much we could learn from each other. The Osage Empire and its ways come from an entirely different dichotomy than that of the Solar nations, and so present radically different and new ways of solving problems that your nation might be interested in as points of information exchange.

Your efficiency, your organization, the structure and dynamics of a superorganism such as your own, these are the broad ideas that interest me. A facility already exists in a colony of my nation on the planet of Mars dedicated to the exchange and interweaving of ideas, this is merely one of a possible wide spectrum of methods of information exchange.

I would be interested to hear your viewpoint, ideas, and take on my thoughts, and this drone can serve as a stalwart method of communication if, as I understand it, a personal meeting might be somewhat...impossible.

With the warmest regards,
Monhin Dapa
Tenth Fleet-General of the Osage Empire

The drone from the very first gets checked out in ways that would make the most hardened prostitute blush from the instant it enters the panNorm's sphere of control. First, out along the edge of Venus' gravitational sphere of influence, are the millions of microsats whose only purpose is to zip along in polar orbit, passively sensing anything that gets in range and then adding up their results to get a surprisingly high-resolution electromagnetic spectrum picture. Then comes the occasional roving cloud of capital ships, unusually small by local Solar standards but making up for it in numbers and their doctrine of numbers and simplicity evident in their simple, blocky, segmented design. Finally, Alpha's sensors, powerful enough to guide the ancient colony ship through intergalactic space over a span of fifteen million years.

And for all that, they get nothing other than it's a rock with some stuff inside, but not stuff that can be easily identified. This piques their curiosity, in different ways; the Blues wonder what it is, the Engineer Reds wonder how it could be used, the Minis want to take it apart and put it back together again, and the Soldier Reds alternately want to smash it when they feel it's a threat or just ignore it when they couldn't care less about a stupid space rock. The Greens... well, it can't be eaten, grown, cultivated, or cared for and therefore it's just another stupid space rock for their less Zen cousins to take care of.

When this rock begins talking on radio frequencies, that's a different story altogether.

Everyone but the Blues and the Minis immediately lose interest. It's someone else's tool, and a radio transmitter at that, so the Engineer Reds can't use it; it's not a thread, so the Soldier Reds can't break it, and the Greens could not possibly strain themselves to care any more than they already don't about some silly talking gadget. The Blues, true to their nature, now knowing something more of what it does still wonder what, intellectually, it is, and how it does what it does in a pure-science sort of way, given that it doesn't show many of the things generally considered vital for space vehicles of any sort. Then there's what it says, which is interesting in its own way. As for the Minis, well...

...the Minis still want to take it apart and put it back together again.

Either way, it's a marvelous little curiosity-inspiring bauble and Blue scientists debate politely about it over sensor readings even while the AdminCoordinator mentioned in the message, her blue carapace covered with more yellow rank paint than any of her sisters or cousins, authorizes a return transmission. She clicks and clacks her mandibles at her dais in S-14's bridge; Alpha translates for her and forwards the message along through the radar antennas which make up a very, very small portion of its instrumentality.

#ComRelay : PanNorm Command > Osage Imperial Probe (?) OPEN#

Greetings, Monhin Dapa, Tenth Fleet-General of the Osage Empire. This is indeed AdminCoordinator 67521 of the Blue Mother of Us All. I can only guess from your introduction that you either have excellent on-site information gathering capabilities on your asteroid or else have done some research on our Hives. Either one calls forth a measure of respect from us.

*polite chuckle*

You are quite generous with your praise and we thank you for it. We are always curious about others and, part and parcel with that, how they organize themselves and are therefore most interested in your offer of information exchange. Hopefully by learning more about each other we can appropriately appreciate each other. I only hope we meet your clearly high expectations.

First, however, a question piqued by curiosity only and not intended to accuse or 'make a point,' as it were. Why do you believe a meeting in person to be impossible?

http://www.weirdozone.0catch.com/projects/nationstates/s14/blue1.jpg
AdminCoordinator 67521 of the Blue Mother of Us All
Speaking on behalf of the Mothers of Us All
Coordinated panNorm Hives

#ComRelay CLOSED#

The sensors of the panNorm uncover little, but what they do is probably all the more intriguing. For the little smooth egg-shaped piece of metal seems to be absolutely nothing more than that. If it hadn't just sent a radio message or self-propelled, it would have been easily dismissed as a piece of debris, and yet, it does. The electromagnetic picture is somewhat more eventful, but no less revealing. Long periods of no activity are puncuated by occasional flashes of meaningless data that appears to be an erratic, abnormal fluctuation rather than any sort of purposeful emission. The panNorm receive another little informational tidbit once the radio message reaches the drone, for it is wholly absorbed, leaving no trace in the material universe.

Within the drone, the radio waves slowly dissolve and recede into the ocean of wakon, mind, wherein the meaning and existence they held in the brain of the AdminCoordinator becomes their only reality, indeed, one considered far more real by the more traditional, older, poetic school of wakongi than any electromagnetic wave.

In the yawning, dimensionless infinity of mind, the message quietly spirals within the mindspace of Monhin Dapa, slowly melting into his chosen avatar within it, given an arbitrary, artistic visual form. Inside the mindspace, neon lights formed webs that stretched over the odd coloration of the background, which was a sort of purplish black that glowed fiercely. Vague shapes coalesced out of this purple-black and faded, even as within the light-webs rhythmic explosions of thousands of white flashes were permeated by the occasional rippling of colored waves.

Here, Monhin composed his own message. It looked, visually, similar to the one that had whirlpooled into his own form before, but...inverted, somehow. The drone brought it down to the level of a radio transmission that was sent back the way the first reply had came.



Heartening news, indeed. The reasons which I had built up in my mind as barriers to a meeting are perhaps wholly irrelevant now, and would only serve to expose me as foolish and uneducated on the panNorm as I am.

If it is indeed possible, I have only a small suggestion. How averse to the possibility would your nation be to the prospect of a (strictly) guided tour of Alpha be? Obviously the information exchange might seem somewhat one-sided, so in return you would simply have to propose something equivalent I can give as a matter of recompense.

As I said, only a suggestion I have been mulling over. I would enjoy hearing your own propositions.

Monhin Dapa
Tenth Fleet-General of the Osage Empire

By now, after a long working scientific relationship with The Resurgent Dream, inexplicable physical phenomena no longer shock the Blues as they once did. Open discourse with natural philosophers of other nations uncovered evidence that the rules of reality had changed somewhere and what was previously impossible has now become all too common. Unlike those others, though, the panNorm continue to reject the notion that these things are in essence indetectable and unquantifiable. There is a rational, materialistic answer to all questions and just because the answer is not known does not mean it is logical to ascribe it to some sort of innately unknowable (in a scientific sense) 'spiritual' parameter. Science simply has not evolved in its understanding to the point where the factors that influence these events are detectable or quantifiable. After all, many people once held the same feeling toward what came to be known as gravity and electromagnetism. Things simply happened, and they ascribed them to natural affinities--near spiritualism--in objects. Rocks fall because they are rocks, things moving tend to stop because that is their ken...

...the Blues had their fill of Aristotlean thought from the Dreamers and found it excessively wanting. No, these paranormal events are the cause of physical unknowns, which simply make them all the more fascinating because the knowledge and manipulation of the physical universe they suggest and demonstrate through the use of people who do not understand it fully could be an enormous boon to the species once it is exploited with scientific precision. In layman's terms, any fool with time can start a fire. It takes science to make an efficient furnace for industrial annealing processes. Any fool with time can make a bow that shoots pointed sticks fifty meters. It takes science to make a sniper rifle that can shoot aerodynamically optimized bullets accurately over two kilometers.

None of this really matters to the AdminCoordinator, though, except as a mild curiosity in the back of her head that she shares with her sister Blues throughout the Hives. It's not exactly her purpose.

#ComRelay : PanNorm Command > Osage Imperial Probe (?) OPEN#

By your suggestion of mental shields and given the esoteric nature of your communications relay device--I admittedly hypothesize here--I presume you suggest the danger posed to people with what are generally considered 'extrasensory' abilities re telepathy. I assure you that while there has been one recorded and documented incident of a telepath from the Imperial Union of Cetaganda suffering severe disassociative personality disorder after attempting to contact the panNorm telepathically, there has been no recurrence amongst anyone not attempting active contact. The constant chatter of our de facto gestalt has been described as annoying at times, but it is generally not a threat. My apologies if I assume too much.

In response to your query we would be most honored to welcome you on such a tour. We have, throughout Alpha, items that should interest nearly anyone no matter their area of specialization--wildlife, ecological maintenance, societarial organization, industry, and the like--and all you need to do is ask and if it is within our power and doesn't conflict with interests of racial security (which is unlikely, after all) we would be glad to oblige. In return, the SciCoordinator suggests an exchange of data for data. If you wish to learn more about us, then it is only fair that we wish to learn more about you in return. This is something that can be discussed in more detail as the situation demands.

If a tour seems like a little much, then my counteroffer is we meet to have a mutual question-and-answer session, although it is my belief that a tour does not preclude the possibility of such a thing. My only concern with a tour is that there may be just too much to see, depending on the circumstances, although reasonably you would be a better judge of that than I would be in situ as it were.

http://www.weirdozone.0catch.com/projects/nationstates/s14/blue1.jpg
AdminCoordinator 67521 of the Blue Mother of Us All
Speaking on behalf of the Mothers of Us All
Coordinated panNorm Hives

#ComRelay CLOSED#

The panNorm's stance was a curious one, for even now within the Osage Empire rifts were developing along those very same lines. There were the traditional wakongi, akin to shaman and wizards, and then there was the new breed of renaissance wakongi, more like a scientist than a mystic.

The former still went clad in patched robes and let their hair grow long, still spoke using words like 'alive' and 'breathing', still believed in the fate-distorting powers of prayer, runes, mantra, and conscious thought. The latter were fair more professional, used words like 'psychodynamics', and tended to treat wakon as an energy source Sol hadn't discovered rather than any sort of metaphysical reality.

Admittedly, they hadn't come up with any theory that fit so well and explained everything so neatly as that taught by the ancient wakongi for millenia but that was besides the point.

Again the relay system within some other plane the drone could access went into action, again the ability to, quite literally, make one's own time came in handy.


This sounds excellent. May I suggest, then, that such a tour cover only the barest highlights of the grandeur of Alpha? Then your requested question and answer session may occur before, during, or after such a tour. If this is agreeable, can I assume that my arrival in a small ship will be both amiable to and also safeguard by the panNorm on approach?

Regards,
Monhin Dapa
Tenth Fleet-General of the Osage Empire

#ComRelay : PanNorm Command > Osage Imperial Probe (?) OPEN#

Certainly. We can easily guarantee your safe passage through Eärendil's gravitational sphere of influence and beyond if you so desire.

If there are no more questions to be asked via this medium, we look forward to receiving you aboard Alpha.

http://www.weirdozone.0catch.com/projects/nationstates/s14/blue1.jpg
AdminCoordinator 67521 of the Blue Mother of Us All
Speaking on behalf of the Mothers of Us All
Alpha Colony Vessel (S-14)

#ComRelay CLOSED#

The strange ship that approached and, any incidents withholding, docked with the imposing bulk of Alpha was small, economical, but in the end indistinguishable from other Osage ships.

Inside, invisible externally, was the rock that served as the main material of choice for most Osage ships, though running it through it was a network of biocircuitry that served as the endoskeletal physical manifestation of the shipmind overseeing the various processes and calculations that kept it running smoothly.

This network eventually exited the rock structure and faded slowly from endo to exoskeletal, where it was divided into two shells of layered biometal separated by a reactive cloud of wakon. Outside of even this, fed by the soul energy held within the glowing gem in the deep center of the asteroid, dancing lines of light provided another, more ancient type of shielding.

Brief radio messages flashed back and forth coordinating paths of flight and docking, and, again, assuming no unplanned incidents, the ship docks quietly, and the light-lines twist into a tunnel that extends to the surface. Walking on light, the Tenth Fleet-General, a human shape entirely of metal, and a man clad all in shades of grey exit.

To describe the interest and scientific curiosity that all this magic-applied-as-technology or vice versa has on the Blue community would be repetitive and tiresome. Instead, suffice to say that operationally the panNorm treat it as any other vessel and have a diplomatic party standing by on their side of the airlock. One Blue, one Engineer Red, and one Soldier Red, wearing a good deal of yellow paint in ornate rank insignia, quite a bit less yellow paint, and ballistic fabric armor respectively. The Soldier has quite a few accoutrements of modern warfare attached with straps and hooks to the webbing coating her red synthetic armor; the other two simply carry utility webbing with large pockets filled with devices varying from metal cubes with grilles on them to things that may just be notepads to small tablet computers.

The Blue puts her metal cube between her mandibles, and intelligible, pleasant, synthesized speech comes out the grille pointing towards Monhin and his entourage. "Welcome to Alpha Hive, Monhin Dapa, Tenth Fleet-General of the Osage Empire. I am the AdminCooridnator." She bows slightly, legs simply pivoting her thorax in a motion that, while unnatural to a human, mimics the human gesture sufficiently well. "Hopefully your trip was pleasant?"

The man clad in varying shades of grey's eyes dart about constantly, lingering on the Soldier Red the longest but moving through empty patches of floor and wall no less rigorously. He looks to the eye like a sooty ninja, and is in fact not so different from one of that class. He is a Shadow Wolf, an assasin, spy, guerrilla warrior, and special operations soldier rolled into one organization with its fingers, toes, and other appendages in every pie they knew how to reach. In this case, the man's reaction times are some of the best in the Empire, which is why he has been chosen to accompany the Tenth Fleet-General.

To the left of the general is the four foot androgynous humanoid shape apparently made entirely of metal. It is an icon of the Awakener, and it's pupil and iris-less eyes move not at all. It's head turns every few seconds, in a slower repetition of the Shadow Wolf's crazily darting eyes, though it never passes over the same area twice.

Between these two is the Tenth Fleet-General, an impressive figure as always, clad in the blinding white robes he always wore. To his side is a long, slightly curved blade in an ivory sheath, but otherwise his robes are unadorned. His strawlike black hair is long for Solar standards, but short for Osage, where hair is traditionally never cut. He holds a pale white staff and his look is overall messianic, though it is doubtful that the psychological effects of such an appearance register at all with the panNorm.

He smiles quietly as the panNorm speaks, and waves a hand. A little dancing bead of light briefly flashes, entering the strange metallic cube, and when he speaks his words are translated by it, as the Osage language is notoriously subjective and difficult to dictionarilize for anyone not born into it, this being why professional scribes were still employed.

"Pleasant enough, ma'am. Your home is impressive beyond words." He bows low to her, in a gesture interpretable as being of equals.

Quietly, after this sentence, he analyzes exactly what is in front of him. Three panNorm, three Osage. A bodyguard, a leader, and a sort of informational third member.

Did they purposefully choose counterparts? If so, they were good.

He smiles again, and then having exhausted all the small talk topics he can think of that would interest a gigantic insectoid leader, he plunges forward.

"Shall we begin?"

The panNorm have certainly heard of the messianic mythology of various religious beliefs, ranging from the yet-to-come of Judaism through the to-come-again-so-look-busy of Christianity and all of the other religions that if one didn’t know better, one would think they were variations on those two. In fact, there had been several missions in the past to try to convert the space ants to religiosity, and despite all their differences in theology, symbolism, and preferences in the nine billion names of God they were all identically alike in the fact that they all failed miserably. Upon asked for proof, the missionaries pointed to a book; the insectoids replied that the book was written by a mortal; the missionaries claimed inspiration via God; the insectoids asked for proof; the missionaries finally did the bright thing, and resorted to the argument of faith.

And there they failed, for the panNorm do not believe in any measure beyond that needed to hypothesize and anticipate. They believe that the Sun will not explode at three o’clock next Thursday without knowing that will be so, that is true, but they believe it based on evidence that barring an unexpected occurrence on a scale never before seen in the Universe since its creation either by bang or by word it is extremely unlikely to the point of negligibility that the Sun will explode at three o’clock next Thursday. Yet, despite all this, they know the stories because what is exposed to one panNorm, if interesting, eventually spreads to them all either via the centralized knowledge base of Alpha (the intelligence of S-14 rather than the physical ship itself) or through the heterogeneous muddy gestalt that is what passes for a hive mind among the ants. Therefore, the Messianic parallels between Monhin’s appearance and those popularized images of Jesus Christ and Gandalf the White are noted and logged as curiosities to be fleshed out later through the acquisition of knowledge. Psychologically, the effect is of passing curiosity, like noting that someone just happens to be wearing the same shirt as one.

What is far more interesting to the collected panNorm paying attention to this particular stream of events while they meditate in rest--they never properly sleep--is the Tenth Fleet-General’s use of applied superscientific methods to perform something as mundane as translation. Apparently this is relatively common, because the same thing happened during the expedition to The Resurgent Dream; fortunately, in this case, it will allow for an easier assembly of concept association to phonetic combinations in order for the panNorm to develop a translation protocol from complex Osage to panNorm language, which to put it simply is so complex that it requires four (aural, visual, olfactory, radio) means of transmission for full subtlety of meaning. This is the same species, after all, that decoded English grammatical subtleties in under twelve hours during the first expedition. For reasons already described at exhaustive length distributed computing is just something the panNorm is good at.

Back to the not-so-macroscopic, the Soldier Red pays the most attention to Mister Ninja, the Engineer Red tries her best not to look like she’s trying to avoid looking at Monhin as she gives preference to the short metal (and therefore not at all disgustingly endoskeletal) figure, and the AdminCoordinator looks at Monhin directly through training and breeding, or at least as close to ‘directly’ as something with compound eyes can. If anything, the front of her head is pointed directly at the Fleet-General, because that is what binocular hunting-adapted endoskeletals associate with being looked at. “Certainly,” the Blue replies, “a transport car is already waiting for us. Please follow me.”

Along the forward spar, the apparent gravity due to Alpha’s rotation is marginal at best, approximating Lunar conditions. The AdminCoordinator leads the party to a circular hatch set into the deck, and into a small room made up of a tessellation of seven hexagonal cells without dividing walls inbetween them. Each of the six perimeter cells has large fuzzy circular carpets top and bottom, and the central cell is dominated by a helical metal ladder that connects the hatches in the upper and lower decks and a small control pedestal with a light pen attached to it on a chain. “I do not imagine that anything overly technical should interest you too much. Would you prefer to observe the fauna on the Low-G Terrace, or maybe the Ring Plain instead?”

The choice is difficult, not least because the foremost man in the Imperial military has little to no information on either of the two choices.

He debates between the two, turning over the two choices in his mind, searching the words. In the end, the utter lack of anything to go on as far as this 'Ring Plain' is concerned, and the interest generated by the terms 'fauna' and 'terrace' decides the issue.

"The Terrace, I think, will have to be my first choice. In the meantime, I have formulated my first question, if it isn't too much."

He smiles warmly. "How exactly is each individual panNorm linked to every other?"

"Yes, visitors always seem to enjoy the novelty of the Terraces," the AdminCoordinator replies as she effortlessly taps a point on the control pedestal with the stylus. "It is also natural for organisms to give preference to lighter accelerations than greater ones, and many seem to find the 1.4-Terrestrial acceleration of the Ring Plain uncomfortable for that exact reason. Oddly enough, however, we do get a surprising amount of tourism there by what my opposite number in endoskeletal nations tell me is called 'the health crowd.' Most curious, how you all have survived at all with such a bewildering array of heterogeneosity." The voice suggests that this is delivered with all smiles and pleasant looks; of course, none of this is apparent in the insectoid's immobile 'face' although the gentle movements of her antennae and hands seem to help.

Meanwhile, she and her comrades hunker down on some of the carpeted pads, the hooks in their feet latching on as the car begins to accelerate, the 'gravity' slowly seeming to increase to somewhere near ten meters per second squared. "That is an interesting question, Tenth-General Monhin Dapa of the Osage Empire, with several possible connotations. It would be fair to say that all panNorm are connected by their collective evolution aboard the fifteen million Earth-orbital-period voyage from the home galaxy, or that they are connected by their mutual need for each other's specializations to thrive. Likewise, we are connected by our common language and society, although we can hardly imagine how it could could be any different. Still, I get the feeling that these explanations do not touch upon the meaning of your question, which is probably more operational in concern.

"Due to your species' tendency towards speculative fiction, something we cannot appropriately appreciate, there is a tendency for people to assume that exoskeletal collectivist species such as the panNorm have some sort of overmind or collective consciousness--a hive mind, if you will--that dictates its desire to cell-like and potentially unfeeling individuals such as myself. That is not exactly the case. We, like all societies, are connected by communication; this concept remains the same from Terrestrial beehives and ant colonies to the greatest civilizations you have managed to form in your several thousand years of higher organization. This communication is as inherent and natural to us as speaking is to you; perhaps even more so, making it more in tune with the pheromones or instinctual cries that nearly all species use for lower forms of basic communication. In this way, we do not have an overmind so much as we have a gestalt; we have a superorganism, not exactly self-aware, that understands its own needs and what it can obtain from its environs much in the same way as any other organism. Within it are competing values of homeostasis deriving from those elements which are fulfilled and 'transtasis' deriving from those elements which are not, and technically the panNorm taken as a whole can be considered an organism with an existence as independent from its components as the motive principle in any animal (including what is often called a spirit or soul by endoskeletals) is often intellectually argued to be. All societies and organizations over a particular size appear to show these traits; one can see the effects in large corporations, remote settlements, and even entire nations, all coming from a chaotic interaction between nearly infinite variables which produce the complexes required for independent life.

"To put it simply, we do the exact same thing as you do except that the natural over-bodily reaction is instantaneous to us. We get instant feedback from the collective that makes up the hive on whether an action is complimentary or detrimental; we understand as naturally as you can comprehend the expression of an animal you know well the needs of the greater whole. We know what parts hunger and what parts have too much food; we know what parts have insufficient work and what parts are working too hard. Naturally, this aids us in maintaining internal homeostasis by realigning resources as necessary, both by instinct and trained thought. This is, however, not civilization; it is life, but it has no direction. This is where the union of the OverCoordinators and the Mothers of Us All come into play; in our smaller gestalt--'personal,' if you will--we can determine what the greater whole can move towards. Maintenance, education, food production and distribution--these are all homeostatic qualities that are sufficient for survival in a steady- or quasisteady-state environment. We are the directionary principle, the control disturbance required to give an inertial internally-sufficient cause to react in a particular direction."

She pauses as the car decelerates, taking advantage of the few moments of null-gravity to turn around and settle on the 'ceiling' that soon becomes the floor. It's as basic as opening a door. "And now, a counterquery, perhaps the most natural one." She nods, unnecessarily, to the Engineer Red curled up beside her.

The Engineer Red nods equally unnecessarily, puts her translator cube between her mandibles, and begins. If the AdminCoordinator's voice has a diplomatic businesswoman quality, the Engineer's voice sounds like it should belong to someone a bit more working class. Still clearly female, but harder and harsher. Female trucker or dockworker comes to mind. "So, comrade Tenth-General, we've seen you've got some interesting things. We were wondering how they work."

Monhin quietly digests the information, though the panNorm's quiet admonition against assumption of an 'overmind' was unneeded, as the Imperial officer had not been washed with the cultural prejudices of the Solar nations.

What the AdminCoordinator ended up describing actually conjured up analogies and relations to certain concepts in Osage religion, though they were only analogies and relations, and the link was rather metaphysical. Quite a different connotation as would be attached to the panNorm was formed within his mind, a product of the difference in the background noise of Osage culture as opposed to that of Solar culture that was buzzing quietly in the minds of every human brought up in it.

If Monhin was a bit more devoted to Wakonda's will as most Osage were, he might have thought of the panNorm race as a lesser, material version of the perfection human beings were supposed to ascend to. The physical representation of something quite metaphysical.

As something sacred.

As it was, he held a rather less common but famous position on religion. He knew what was there, as he knew his staff was here, but he saw no reason to worship either his hand or any sort of deity.

He turns the question he receives over and over again in his mind. It is so open-ended (perhaps purposefully so) he searches for a suitable starting point.

"The interpretation of information gained from the Solar sciences, and its assimilation and reconciliation with existing Osage doctrine, has refined, enhanced, and given us a whole new vocabulary with which to describe concepts which formerly left us grasping.

Osage technology and how it works relies on philosophy perhaps more than is comfortable for some, but I chaulk this up to the denizens of Sol simply not refining the tools needed to investigate it as they have refined their expensive, high-powered accelerators and microscopes.

It is perhaps a measure of the murky waters of the underlying framework of theory behind our technology that the word for our most basic, fundamental concept, wakon, means mystery. We in the Empire separate light from the concept of light that reaches your consciousness, separate the actual particles of food, the actual thing touching you, the actual things from the ideas of them that reach the mind, that reach your consciousness. I use the term 'actual' here in such a way that contradicts Osage theory on which is more real for your understanding.

These concepts, the ideas, your consciousness and parts of your unconsciousness taken together as a functioning unit, this is what we consider a soul.

The substance of this soul, of mind, of consciousness, characterized and spoken of in terms of flow rather than concrete particles, this is what we call wakon, or more commonly, soul energy. It is self-organizing, and the word organization, on any scale, in any form, carries the connotation that wakon is found within it.

From wakon, from this flowing, organized substance of consciousness, springs all matter and energy. It is perhaps inaccurate to use the word spring, suffice it to say that it is considered a deeper, fundamental substance behind, or above, or higher than the matter and energy in this universe.

Thus, through the exertions of a trained and knowledgeable mind, we can manipulate the flows of wakon, stirring and provoking it in such a way that it assumes the shape of the more well-known, mundane forms of matter and energy.

This is as far as I can explain it with philosophy, further than that ranges into subjects such as esoteric cosmology and, deeper than that, religion. Suffice to say that just as a stem cell of an organization carries within it the potential to take a wide variety of paths, so this substance of consciousness is worked and forged and manipulated through the sculpting powers of a will strengthened through certain rituals and awakenings."

If you prefer perhaps a less commital definition, an energy source that can be converted into any other energy is wakon stripped of all theory. "

He vascillates slightly, aware that the subject matter is not typically the expertise of the type of people who would be able to practically make use of it.

"I apologize if I have perhaps rambled a little."

"We've heard about things like that before," the Engineer Red replies, tips of her antennae slowly tapping together in a side-to-side motion. A bit out of her league, she transfers control of the panNorm side of the conversation silently, and without discernable gesturing, back to the AdminCoordinator.

"I get the feeling that what you are describing is something akin to an inversion of the philosophical concept of the Platonic Ideals and their Forms in reality; instead of personal experience being the Form seen in the back of the cave wall or through a glass darkly the personal understanding instead makes the Ideal whose interaction with other perception-Ideals generate the complex required for a Self to perceive those Ideals. Because Forms derive from Ideals, and a sufficiently strong Self is able to modify its own constituents..." The Blue cants her head slightly, then freeze-frames again as she goes consciousness-diving into a larger pow-wow of Blue, Red, and Green minds (their tendency to think in ways usually associated with the Zen movement makes them useful for something like this). "There is sufficient continued circumstantial and peer evidence to suggest that this deserves future study."

A short pause. "Please, do not be afraid of rambling. As you can see, us Blues do have a tendency to be somewhat loquacious."

Monhin quietly digests the analogy given by the Blue. He seems to find the idea interesting, but when he speaks it appears as if he is trying to give a better understanding.

"The Platonic Ideals do not figure in the Osage world-view. From wakon emanates pattern, from pattern we get the universe. The 'self', as you call it, has in the Osage Empire no real existence. It is like..." he pauses, searching for a good analogy.

"The leg, finger, or skin cell of a much more fundamental existence. A single square in a complex, multitrillion-square quilt. The entire quilt is The Soul, the Great Mystery, each square is a soul, a little, self-sustaining system created out of the turbulence but not truly separate from it. If wakon generates pattern and unorganized organization, and is, on a deep, philosophical level, you me, everything...well. If I let (or, through the teachings and rituals of a trained wakongi...) those artificial walls separating my soul energy square from the rest of the divine quilt momentarily fade away, I can allow myself to slip into an infinite pool of still wakon while still keeping enough willpower to provoke what is now Me into organizing itself, thereby bringing what is considered more real down onto the plane of what is considered less real."

He surfaces for air, and fires off an easy, technical question, far removed from the deep philosophy of what he has just said.

"You have explained to me the state of your minds in their current connection, but on a technical level, how are you all connected? How do you receive and transmit information from one panNorm to the other? Via extrasensory means? Or perhaps more materially?"

"Oh, nothing as fanciful as all that." The AdminCoordinator chuckles softly but with real humor through her translator box; the Reds, not currently using translators, buzz their maxillae in what can be safely assumed to be an analogous reaction. "No, our 'extrasensory' communication is via simple low-frequency radio waves." She waves her antennae for emphasis. "The output signal of a single panNorm is rather low, as you might imagine, but we are rather sensitive to this particular frequency. A range of a few kilometers is more than sufficient for our purposes."

The transport car ride eventually ends after a few minutes and the panNorm lead the way out into the next setting, a rooftop on the Low-G Terrace with a panoramic view of one of the inside of the Habitation Torus' pie-slices and the curious ecology of the Terrace, all pom-pom trees with astoundingly thin, tall trunks, antelaffes, and tissue-paper ground cover the height and volume of healthy hedges. The 'stretched' feeling everything gets from low-gravity certainly pervades amongst the flora and fauna adapted over millions of years to it. As with a different guest, a small utilitarian set of card tables, folding chairs, and cots have been set up on the rooftop, and the AdminCoordinator naturally moves towards them.

"I am afraid being a proper host is somewhat difficult on the hangar decks. Here we actually have some things to offer," she says, one manipulator motioning towards a rather large cooler. "Is there anything we can get you in the way of refreshment? Food? Water? Fruit juice? I do understand that you endoskeletals have a greater preference for ethanol-water solutions, and we do have that on hand. The endoskeletals who gave it to us assure us it is quite good, but we have never been able to get over the dessicant nature of alcohol to attempt more than a slight taste. It truly is not something we have much interest in."

Monhin quietly takes in everything being said. His surprising interest in the technical aspects of panNorm communication is probably confusing, but when you get right down to it, despite the similarity to Solar philosophy, what was just discussed was, in fact, a technological discussion to the Tenth Fleet-General.

"Hm. The generation of these radio signals, it is through perhaps a special organ? I expect the brain capacity needed to receive, filter, and process all that buzzing must be exceptional." He looks carefully at the exoskeletal head of the AdminCoordinator.

He is quieted suddenly by the offer of alcoholic beverages. The Shadow Wolf twitches, and Monhin says something quietly to him in Osage, a soft language spoken at an even pace. It cannot be known that alcohol is perhaps one of the most vile things in the Osage religion, the province of degenerates doomed to wander the Wheel of Life for all eternity. Already Monhin ponders the sensory faculties of the panNorm in front of him, wonders if it can smell and analyze his distaste.

"No. Thank you, ma'am, but I must decline your offer of ...those things." He searches the unmoving insectoid face in vain. The lack of anthropological facial cues to read makes him uneasy. He doesn't like not knowing what the other person is feeling.

He looks over the terrace, cautiously organizing the flood of questions in his mind, wondering if he can fit these into his agenda of need-to-know questions. For now, he keeps silent, aware that he already has a question hanging in the air.

Olfactory cues are a secondary component of panNorm speech, and naturally the AdminCoordinator detects an increase of pheromones generally associated with stress and negative emotion in humans. That, plus facial response, and the pauses, lead her to a reasonable conclusion. "I apologize, Tenth-General Monhin Dapa. No offense was intended; while we know there are groups among the endoskeletals who share our distaste for certain things I was not aware you were one of their number. Please forgive us for this mistake." The Blue bows slightly, manipulator fingers like thick bones clicking together tip to tip under her mandibles in an effective pantomime of Egyptian custom.

"But yes, it does take quite an amount of processing power. Hopefully it is an effective analogy when I say that it is approximately on the order of the echolocation centers of a porpoise. Having to detect coherent language-signal out of a continuum filled with electromagnetic interference of varying strengths due to the nature of our hives is simply something else we have adapted to over time, although it is almost certain that the True Norm also had this capability to some extent."