Solar Communes
06-08-2008, 07:23
The Cygnus constellation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cygnus_constellation_map.png), one of the regions with some of the brightest stars in the Segment Solar. Among them, a truly alien civilization thrived. Fifth planet to the massive Deneb white star, a nameless planet which given name was a string of magnetic vibrations, the language of a unique species, born from its own environment, which many species would consider hostile. A cold, distant planet of oceans of methane and nearly without atmosphere, with a barren surface.
Yet, in the depths of its oceans, dozens of xenopolitical entities existed. They were not exactly countries, for a comparison could not be drawn. Underwater constructions intermingled with the basin, twisted monoliths and strange infrastructure covered expanses of what were perhaps cities, yet those were devoid of sentient life, serving only as the home of strange constructs of flesh and metal which maintained the same running.
Their cities were purely industrial, and yet mobile, where ingenious machines and constructions could slowly crawl through the bottom of the ocean, to accompany an entirely nomad population of strange sea life. Perhaps this was the greatest difference, for the borders of their different "States" continually shifted and were virtually undefined.
Their life cycle was somewhat close to that of an earthly jellyfish, except for something completely illogical for an human mindset. They were born into an sterile adult form, and reverse grew into polyps capable of reproduction. After that, the polyps would again transform into adult form and continue an endless cycle of natural immortality, with the memories and experiences of each life cycle lost as a new cycle came. The scarcity of light has gave them to develop other senses, among them the capability of organically sensing magnetism, which has developed into their primary communication faculty, and even into their permanent one, as different patterns of stored magnetic charges are their manner of "writing". Their manner of reasoning, the manner their intelligence functioned would certainly fool an human into thinking they were not sapient, and completely different worlds have created a massive barrier for communications. Without eyes, ears, voice or writing, they would have no obvious manner to communicate, although that would matter little for certain reasons.
In one of the many "States" of these aliens, a pair of them in their intermediary life stages, swimming through the depths of the sea, heard as the other sent his "voice" of magnetic waves, in what consisted into a sort of strange discussion, which best translation could be given as:
"After years of research, I have gathered solid scientific evidences that neither Yellow nor Red stars could sustain planets capable of breeding the necessary environmental conditions for the natural occurrence of life. That yellow star with three gas giants and likely a large quantity of planets thirty-eight and half light years away is completely devoid of any life."
The other alien resonated further magnetic language from his organism in rebuttal:
"Have you not seen the photomagnetic emanations from it? Do not tell me they are just solar flares. They seem to be intentional and to shift direction in a too ordered manner. I am sure there is a civilization in that yellow star. Just because we are not used to see non-methane breathing life forms which exist and survive at completely different temperatures than us, it does not mean they do not exist."
"Our scholars have sent transmissions for years to that star, and we never got any answer back. If there was a sentient lifeform there, it would have contacted us. I am absolutely sure that we are alone. Do you know how many planets like ours were discovered? None, the probability of a planet suitable for life to exist is infinitesimal. We should redirect our work to more mundane matters. Planetary defense is a silly concept and waste of our efforts" the alien replied back.
They were completely wrong.
--------------------
Since the time their space defense programs were canceled due to a considered lack of practicality, forty-five years have passed. A time in which they were blinded to the reality. Their magnetic resonance sensing has brought different sensing technologies and blocked them from developing any type of optical device. All their space detection grid could be bypassed if an object lacked any significant magnetism, and thus, they were completely unaware of the behemoth that was approaching their planet. One could say it was just another large asteroid with an unusual format, if it was not perfectly covered in ice. It was a frozen, teardrop shaped object, moving into a stable vector at a constant velocity, yet, it was still light seconds away from its destination.
It was only a shell, for an entire stellar colonization effort. Deneb was decades ago identified as a promising solar system among countless of planet-less and lifeless stars with little economic value by a probe, to be colonized only after thousands of years of expansion and developing of the home system at the slow pace they were used to. Inhabitable planets were a rarity, and certainly, Deneb V would likely be passed as a lifeless husk, if not for one reason.
Amidst enough infrastructure to provide the needs of such intensive effort, there was it, the fully automated astrogation deck taking its stare from the lenses of a extremely thick layer of ice. It took its time to sky search the entire sphere of spatial horizon an hour ago, and came with the unwelcome results to all interest among the inner holdings of the mothership.
It was long gone the time that a spacecraft needed more than seven humans to be crewed. Even the dreadnought was merely a larger collection of drones, and perhaps that contributed to ease the tension. Inside of what was the largest, central piece of the ice-filled envoy, Giraud was the first one to sigh when the system transmitted the discoveries in the usual, clear but emotionless and androgynous voice expected from a text-to-speech system.
"Xenu spacecraft detected close to Deneb V orbit. Pattern analysis indicates likelihood of late third millennium equivalent technology. Counted fifty missile buses and twenty-five battleships. High intensity magnetic emissions detected. Passive detection maintained."
The man was one of the oldest veterans of the Eternal War, a man with a chronological age close to three thousand of years, but who spent likely nineteen twentieths of such time in cryonics. He was one who has only experienced the fight of man against man, a fight where the utmost care to avoid casualties of innocents was held, where no matter the cost, planets were to be taken mostly intact and unharmed by nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, where major moral dilemmas came as they had to make their way through human shields of mind-controlled men, women and children. It was a much harsher war due to such ethical and moral considerations, and perhaps the reason why it lasted so much.
Of course, that was only because such worlds were inhabited by humans like them. Now it was different, for him, to take down that three quarter of a hundred of spacecrafts and annihilate the unsuitable planet they were close to was as morally objectionable as swatting a fly. After all, there was a reason Earth had only one sentient species, and risking the threat to outgrow them so close to their core stars was out of their plans. War was the only choice. All that remained was to decide on the fate of the planet. It was perhaps ironic how the annihilation of an entire ecosystem would be chosen by democratic means among libertarians and anarchists. One could argue about non-organics, but they were only pseudo-intelligences.
"I vote for annihilating that planet with a controlled singularity. It is unlikely to possess anything valuable for our species, and it will also allow us to easily defeat all of them in a single blow, preventing the loss of our colonization effort to Deneb III." said Giraud
"I agree that the planet should be destroyed, but a singularity is an overkill. A single black hole missile costs the same than two thousands of fusion missiles, I suggest a fusion wipe-out. It will obliterate anything, and the planet potential mineral resources won't be sucked by a singularity. We can handle those seventy-five spacecrafts, and without any infrastructure, they will only drift into oblivion." suggested Nadia, the only woman in the crew and the co-pilot.
"I agree with Nadia, singularity missiles were developed to counter numerically superior forces and extra-dimensional threats. Those Xenu cannot be underestimated, but they seem to be blind to our presence. Perhaps they have a serious biological deficiency." complemented Ferdinand, the system operator.
Of the four maintenance crew personell, three agreed with Giraud's opinion and one with Nadia's. The primary reason behind it was the use of the expression post-scarcity, proving once again that buzzwords are excellent instruments to reinforce opinions if properly used.
It was a quick work later on. With almost anything capable of emitting magnetism turned down, soon, like a round of ice sheet tore by a fishermen with a saw, a smaller object flew from the inners of the frozen teardrop, leaving a gash into one of its corners which eventually became covered again. A meteorite-like trail came from the kilometers long missile which flew towards the planet.
Giraud yawned. It would take two weeks for the missile to reach the planet of the clueless Xenu scourge. All that they could do is to stay alert, and hope that it would work. Although large, the missile was more than able of accelerating ten times faster than Earth's gravity, a truly doomsday, man-made artifact, sought to annihilate yet another perceived threat to the human race, like a fly.
-------------------------
When they have finally detected it, time was over. It already touched the atmosphere and was decelerating at twenty thousand meters from the surface, preparing for its mechanism to activate: a particle accelerator buried inside the kamikaze, self-sufficient spacecraft.
In two days, an entire planet was consumed by an astronomical singularity as it slowly diminished due to Hawking radiation, and a democratically approved mass murder was fulfilled. However, unlike they hoped for, the Xenu fleet did not fall to the unstoppable gravity of the weakening black hole. They simply attempted to retreat to deep space with their limited fuel and life support supplies, aware that they stood no chance, for apparently, those beings were not idiotic in their intellectual capability to go into the heroic dumb act of a last stand. The utility of such retreat, however, was questionable.
The teardrop hollowed as multiple spacecrafts hid inside it burst to the outside. All of them were also covered in ice, but smaller in diameter and length. Half a dozen of battleships, twenty-four cruisers and a single dreadnought. emerged from the massive carrier.
Multiple salvos of hundreds of fireships hailed towards the fleeing alien fleet while the human forces, slowly spreading out through many kilometers away from each other, chased them. It was an obvious fact: they could not accelerate faster than an unmanned kamikaze kinetic strike spacecraft for both physiological and technological reasons. Of course, with no knowledge on the efficiency of the fusion drives of the Xenu, it was impossible to estimate whether the fireships would catch them before running out of fuel, but regardless, they had no future or chance of survival.
Another game of dull waiting for whether the fireships would destroy their enemies or not has begun. More than a couple of months, as the usual whenever retreating fleets were chased by fireships, a slow routine of most space warfare ended with a strange fact. The sky scanning pointed out that somehow, the alien forces simply... vanished.
"Massive energy readouts detected before visual signature loss at a light-month away in given vector." announced the system as Giraud pondered about what could it be. There was only one logical explanation for such event, and he would rather think otherwise about it. Regardless, the mission was complete, and the massive carrier was safe with all the colony and logistics spacecrafts secured inside it. Two weeks later, the monolithic teardrop was again a whole, moving back to the solar system after an unsuccessful chase.
--------------
As if having their own planet and the entirety of their species annihilated by a hateful alien was not enough, soon the survivors of another Solarian xenocide would became acquainted with the Immaterium, for the fears of Giraud were correct. There was another rift into the Law, another gateway to a multiverse of opportunities and threats. In a certain way, it was their fault. If they had developed further their planetary defense grid, they might have stood a chance to drive back those xenocidal humans. It was ironic that the same of them who suggested that space defenses were useless because there was no evidence of life in the rest of the universe was in one of their spacecrafts.
Fortunately for them, it seemed that the torment in the Warp was minnow, for those strange methane breathing jellyfish-like aliens were far from ever twisting a fork, let alone channeling the strong forces that lied into the Warp. Yet in certain ways it was worse, as they drifted aimlessly in a dimension of Chaos, like preys awaiting for their hunter, or slaves awaiting for their master. Empires of the multiverse like Chronosia would certainly delight into having such exotic, naturally immortal beings in their grasp.
-------------
Deneb III was still empty of sentient life, a rare planet capable of sustaining human life, even though certain adaptations would be required to stand its 1.6g gravity. Like most Solarian colonies, it was another Super-Earth, with a surface area twenty times larger than Earth's, something to expect considering the size of the star it orbited.
Another gateway to the multiverse was 0.08 light years away from their current location. Another point which would allow powers of the multiverse to contact a civilization thriving into an universe restrained by Special Relativity. Contacts with other human civilizations would likely end in friendly, fruitful and diplomatic relationships, however, the Solarians would not hesitate to annihilate any Xenu seeking to threaten the freedom, liberty and survival of the human race by its mere existence.
The almost unmolested peace human race has enjoyed could be at its end.
Yet, in the depths of its oceans, dozens of xenopolitical entities existed. They were not exactly countries, for a comparison could not be drawn. Underwater constructions intermingled with the basin, twisted monoliths and strange infrastructure covered expanses of what were perhaps cities, yet those were devoid of sentient life, serving only as the home of strange constructs of flesh and metal which maintained the same running.
Their cities were purely industrial, and yet mobile, where ingenious machines and constructions could slowly crawl through the bottom of the ocean, to accompany an entirely nomad population of strange sea life. Perhaps this was the greatest difference, for the borders of their different "States" continually shifted and were virtually undefined.
Their life cycle was somewhat close to that of an earthly jellyfish, except for something completely illogical for an human mindset. They were born into an sterile adult form, and reverse grew into polyps capable of reproduction. After that, the polyps would again transform into adult form and continue an endless cycle of natural immortality, with the memories and experiences of each life cycle lost as a new cycle came. The scarcity of light has gave them to develop other senses, among them the capability of organically sensing magnetism, which has developed into their primary communication faculty, and even into their permanent one, as different patterns of stored magnetic charges are their manner of "writing". Their manner of reasoning, the manner their intelligence functioned would certainly fool an human into thinking they were not sapient, and completely different worlds have created a massive barrier for communications. Without eyes, ears, voice or writing, they would have no obvious manner to communicate, although that would matter little for certain reasons.
In one of the many "States" of these aliens, a pair of them in their intermediary life stages, swimming through the depths of the sea, heard as the other sent his "voice" of magnetic waves, in what consisted into a sort of strange discussion, which best translation could be given as:
"After years of research, I have gathered solid scientific evidences that neither Yellow nor Red stars could sustain planets capable of breeding the necessary environmental conditions for the natural occurrence of life. That yellow star with three gas giants and likely a large quantity of planets thirty-eight and half light years away is completely devoid of any life."
The other alien resonated further magnetic language from his organism in rebuttal:
"Have you not seen the photomagnetic emanations from it? Do not tell me they are just solar flares. They seem to be intentional and to shift direction in a too ordered manner. I am sure there is a civilization in that yellow star. Just because we are not used to see non-methane breathing life forms which exist and survive at completely different temperatures than us, it does not mean they do not exist."
"Our scholars have sent transmissions for years to that star, and we never got any answer back. If there was a sentient lifeform there, it would have contacted us. I am absolutely sure that we are alone. Do you know how many planets like ours were discovered? None, the probability of a planet suitable for life to exist is infinitesimal. We should redirect our work to more mundane matters. Planetary defense is a silly concept and waste of our efforts" the alien replied back.
They were completely wrong.
--------------------
Since the time their space defense programs were canceled due to a considered lack of practicality, forty-five years have passed. A time in which they were blinded to the reality. Their magnetic resonance sensing has brought different sensing technologies and blocked them from developing any type of optical device. All their space detection grid could be bypassed if an object lacked any significant magnetism, and thus, they were completely unaware of the behemoth that was approaching their planet. One could say it was just another large asteroid with an unusual format, if it was not perfectly covered in ice. It was a frozen, teardrop shaped object, moving into a stable vector at a constant velocity, yet, it was still light seconds away from its destination.
It was only a shell, for an entire stellar colonization effort. Deneb was decades ago identified as a promising solar system among countless of planet-less and lifeless stars with little economic value by a probe, to be colonized only after thousands of years of expansion and developing of the home system at the slow pace they were used to. Inhabitable planets were a rarity, and certainly, Deneb V would likely be passed as a lifeless husk, if not for one reason.
Amidst enough infrastructure to provide the needs of such intensive effort, there was it, the fully automated astrogation deck taking its stare from the lenses of a extremely thick layer of ice. It took its time to sky search the entire sphere of spatial horizon an hour ago, and came with the unwelcome results to all interest among the inner holdings of the mothership.
It was long gone the time that a spacecraft needed more than seven humans to be crewed. Even the dreadnought was merely a larger collection of drones, and perhaps that contributed to ease the tension. Inside of what was the largest, central piece of the ice-filled envoy, Giraud was the first one to sigh when the system transmitted the discoveries in the usual, clear but emotionless and androgynous voice expected from a text-to-speech system.
"Xenu spacecraft detected close to Deneb V orbit. Pattern analysis indicates likelihood of late third millennium equivalent technology. Counted fifty missile buses and twenty-five battleships. High intensity magnetic emissions detected. Passive detection maintained."
The man was one of the oldest veterans of the Eternal War, a man with a chronological age close to three thousand of years, but who spent likely nineteen twentieths of such time in cryonics. He was one who has only experienced the fight of man against man, a fight where the utmost care to avoid casualties of innocents was held, where no matter the cost, planets were to be taken mostly intact and unharmed by nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction, where major moral dilemmas came as they had to make their way through human shields of mind-controlled men, women and children. It was a much harsher war due to such ethical and moral considerations, and perhaps the reason why it lasted so much.
Of course, that was only because such worlds were inhabited by humans like them. Now it was different, for him, to take down that three quarter of a hundred of spacecrafts and annihilate the unsuitable planet they were close to was as morally objectionable as swatting a fly. After all, there was a reason Earth had only one sentient species, and risking the threat to outgrow them so close to their core stars was out of their plans. War was the only choice. All that remained was to decide on the fate of the planet. It was perhaps ironic how the annihilation of an entire ecosystem would be chosen by democratic means among libertarians and anarchists. One could argue about non-organics, but they were only pseudo-intelligences.
"I vote for annihilating that planet with a controlled singularity. It is unlikely to possess anything valuable for our species, and it will also allow us to easily defeat all of them in a single blow, preventing the loss of our colonization effort to Deneb III." said Giraud
"I agree that the planet should be destroyed, but a singularity is an overkill. A single black hole missile costs the same than two thousands of fusion missiles, I suggest a fusion wipe-out. It will obliterate anything, and the planet potential mineral resources won't be sucked by a singularity. We can handle those seventy-five spacecrafts, and without any infrastructure, they will only drift into oblivion." suggested Nadia, the only woman in the crew and the co-pilot.
"I agree with Nadia, singularity missiles were developed to counter numerically superior forces and extra-dimensional threats. Those Xenu cannot be underestimated, but they seem to be blind to our presence. Perhaps they have a serious biological deficiency." complemented Ferdinand, the system operator.
Of the four maintenance crew personell, three agreed with Giraud's opinion and one with Nadia's. The primary reason behind it was the use of the expression post-scarcity, proving once again that buzzwords are excellent instruments to reinforce opinions if properly used.
It was a quick work later on. With almost anything capable of emitting magnetism turned down, soon, like a round of ice sheet tore by a fishermen with a saw, a smaller object flew from the inners of the frozen teardrop, leaving a gash into one of its corners which eventually became covered again. A meteorite-like trail came from the kilometers long missile which flew towards the planet.
Giraud yawned. It would take two weeks for the missile to reach the planet of the clueless Xenu scourge. All that they could do is to stay alert, and hope that it would work. Although large, the missile was more than able of accelerating ten times faster than Earth's gravity, a truly doomsday, man-made artifact, sought to annihilate yet another perceived threat to the human race, like a fly.
-------------------------
When they have finally detected it, time was over. It already touched the atmosphere and was decelerating at twenty thousand meters from the surface, preparing for its mechanism to activate: a particle accelerator buried inside the kamikaze, self-sufficient spacecraft.
In two days, an entire planet was consumed by an astronomical singularity as it slowly diminished due to Hawking radiation, and a democratically approved mass murder was fulfilled. However, unlike they hoped for, the Xenu fleet did not fall to the unstoppable gravity of the weakening black hole. They simply attempted to retreat to deep space with their limited fuel and life support supplies, aware that they stood no chance, for apparently, those beings were not idiotic in their intellectual capability to go into the heroic dumb act of a last stand. The utility of such retreat, however, was questionable.
The teardrop hollowed as multiple spacecrafts hid inside it burst to the outside. All of them were also covered in ice, but smaller in diameter and length. Half a dozen of battleships, twenty-four cruisers and a single dreadnought. emerged from the massive carrier.
Multiple salvos of hundreds of fireships hailed towards the fleeing alien fleet while the human forces, slowly spreading out through many kilometers away from each other, chased them. It was an obvious fact: they could not accelerate faster than an unmanned kamikaze kinetic strike spacecraft for both physiological and technological reasons. Of course, with no knowledge on the efficiency of the fusion drives of the Xenu, it was impossible to estimate whether the fireships would catch them before running out of fuel, but regardless, they had no future or chance of survival.
Another game of dull waiting for whether the fireships would destroy their enemies or not has begun. More than a couple of months, as the usual whenever retreating fleets were chased by fireships, a slow routine of most space warfare ended with a strange fact. The sky scanning pointed out that somehow, the alien forces simply... vanished.
"Massive energy readouts detected before visual signature loss at a light-month away in given vector." announced the system as Giraud pondered about what could it be. There was only one logical explanation for such event, and he would rather think otherwise about it. Regardless, the mission was complete, and the massive carrier was safe with all the colony and logistics spacecrafts secured inside it. Two weeks later, the monolithic teardrop was again a whole, moving back to the solar system after an unsuccessful chase.
--------------
As if having their own planet and the entirety of their species annihilated by a hateful alien was not enough, soon the survivors of another Solarian xenocide would became acquainted with the Immaterium, for the fears of Giraud were correct. There was another rift into the Law, another gateway to a multiverse of opportunities and threats. In a certain way, it was their fault. If they had developed further their planetary defense grid, they might have stood a chance to drive back those xenocidal humans. It was ironic that the same of them who suggested that space defenses were useless because there was no evidence of life in the rest of the universe was in one of their spacecrafts.
Fortunately for them, it seemed that the torment in the Warp was minnow, for those strange methane breathing jellyfish-like aliens were far from ever twisting a fork, let alone channeling the strong forces that lied into the Warp. Yet in certain ways it was worse, as they drifted aimlessly in a dimension of Chaos, like preys awaiting for their hunter, or slaves awaiting for their master. Empires of the multiverse like Chronosia would certainly delight into having such exotic, naturally immortal beings in their grasp.
-------------
Deneb III was still empty of sentient life, a rare planet capable of sustaining human life, even though certain adaptations would be required to stand its 1.6g gravity. Like most Solarian colonies, it was another Super-Earth, with a surface area twenty times larger than Earth's, something to expect considering the size of the star it orbited.
Another gateway to the multiverse was 0.08 light years away from their current location. Another point which would allow powers of the multiverse to contact a civilization thriving into an universe restrained by Special Relativity. Contacts with other human civilizations would likely end in friendly, fruitful and diplomatic relationships, however, the Solarians would not hesitate to annihilate any Xenu seeking to threaten the freedom, liberty and survival of the human race by its mere existence.
The almost unmolested peace human race has enjoyed could be at its end.