The Story Thus Far
Among the plethora of religions, creation myths, metaphysics, ontologies, teleologies, and epistemologies variously practiced or believed along and between the arms of the Milky Way is the view of the cosmos as a jeweler’s forge.
On the grandest scales observable, the universe resembles a net of gemstones held together with gossamer filaments billions of lightyears long. Zoom in, and those points of light reveal themselves to be galaxies, themselves tens or millions of lightyears in diameter. Then those galaxies in turn are full of stars and the planets bound to them are filled to bursting with all manner of shining points of light: at still higher resolutions one can resolve spectacular landscapes populated by colorful organisms and their associated artifacts, everything from calciferous shells to literal carved gemstones to cityscapes. On even smaller scales, each of these treasures is found to be comprised of intricate molecules swarming with effervescent electrons, and within their nuclei are protons, neutrons, quarks, and on and on forever, ever inward and downward, limited only by the technology of the viewer.
Planetbound species tend to view mineral deposits as the ‘true’ gemstones, whereas spacefarers see entire planets in this way. Those that roam the depths of the void seek the gleam of precious treasures reflecting the light of a star in the same way a miner delves into the earth, hoping for their lantern light to sparkle off something valuable. Planets, in addition to being good sources of gemstones and metals, find all sorts of exotic uses in the hands of enterprising species. Interstellar politics could be swayed by the introduction of new players into the great game, or by a new batch of resources to squabble over. Primitive species, unable to defend themselves from technologically advanced invaders, often became a source of cheap labor, or, still more cruelly, find themselves caught in massive experiments spanning hundreds or even thousands of years…
Frond V spun lazily in its elliptical orbit around the blue giant Erileytha, totally unaffected by the genocide that just occurred mere light-minutes away on its sister planet. The screams of the dying, the groaning of buckling rock, and the hiss of boiling seas couldn’t propagate through space, nor could anything that had just taken place produce sufficient gravitational ripples to even nudge the planet a micron from its natural orbit. Frond III died and Frond V continued to turn, but on its surface, Eupanoma activity was highly correlated with those distant events. Raucous celebrations, military parades, and fireworks displays took place in every city across the globe, commemorating the extermination of Frond III’s heretics and the cleansing of one of God’s planetary bodies.
It was behind shuttered windows, in basements, in the backrooms of secret clubs, and only in hushed tones, however, that the dissenting voices mourned the tragedy. Those Eupanoma who saw the world with eyes unclouded by dogma and fear wept brokenly from shame and impotent rage and horror at the apocalyptic violence their monstrous overlords wrought in the name of a false idol. Some took their message to the streets with signs, with screams, with public acts of self-destruction, unable to bear another day of shame and self-loathing and so willingly bringing about their own tortured ends by means of self-immolation, a leap from a bridge or rooftop, the bullets and batons of police, or the knives of inquisitors.
All was still at the Andomeite hermitage, though news of the atrocity had already reached its occupants. Kreit held an evening vigil to acknowledge the scale of death and suffering, and gave a speech affirming the critical importance of the Andomeite’s work. Nothing of the cultures of Frond III remained; all their knowledge and history were lost forever, and a similar thing would have taken place on the Eupanoma’s home world if the Andomeites hadn’t intervened.
“It is the responsibility of beings with the capacity to retain direct information, such as ourselves, to preserve the histories of those that lose that capacity. Though every action, however tiny, leaves its imprint in the fabric of reality, the context and meaning are lost forever if they are not witnessed. We preserve those, affirming that a people did exist, and although their direct impact on the universe may come to an end, the knowledge we gather perpetuates their influence across time and space, allowing them to continue to play a part in the great game even after they have physically departed.”
Dreln, as a member of a species that had very nearly ended itself multiple times before being contacted by the Galactic Commonwealth, found the speech particularly moving, but was unable to lend it his full attention. He sat in a corner of the dining hall, his eyes roving over the crowd, wondering how many of his fellow Andomeites were government plants. Back in his room, unbeknownst to the rest of the monastery, Clade Ruffeline was poring over data catalogues, looking for he knew not what. All he was certain of was a creeping dread; it gripped his cytoplasm like an icy fist, and his cilia tingled at the faintest vibrations. The genocide in this system would not go unnoticed by the wider galaxy for long.
The Lesser Concordat assembled in their various stations orbiting the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy. Dubbed Saggitarius A* by ancient humanity, the Galactic Commonwealth knew it by many names; Dark Mother, Hub, Focal Point, Teleo Null…but the Deciders called it Sanctum. Within their respective artificial habitats spaced out along the edge of its event horizon, they connected their physical bodies to quantum entanglement arrays, carefully preparing the contents of their minds for communion. Then, in perfect synchrony, each isolated station transmitted the mental state of its Decider directly into the singularity. Hours passed as the resulting Hawking radiation Sanctum emitted was gathered by a vast array of satellites and reconstructed by each station into the Lesser Concordat’s binding decision.
Their system relied on the black hole both as a secure quantum channel and a time-dilation mechanism: their sessions were essentially simulated outside of time, within the quantum singularity, so that days or even weeks of deliberation could be compressed into an instant, with the only time delay resulting from the need to reconstruct the black hole’s gradual output—the belch that followed the meal they had fed it. What’s more, the Deciders claimed the whole system functioned as a quantum computer: a machine set up in such a way that every possible outcome is represented in its initial state, and then all those conflicting possibilities cancel out, leaving only the desired solution. This story lent gravitas to their determinations; the implicit assertion, it seemed, was that the universe itself had a say in the matter, and who was anyone, anyone, to question the will of reality itself?
As the results rolled in, each Decider received a simulated reconstruction of the ‘conversation’ they had just ‘had’: the meeting minutes, as it were.
Logas: I hereby bring this emergency meeting of the Lesser Concordat of the Deciders of the Galactic Commonwealth to order.
Ouero: Acknowledged. Claimants, come forward and name thyselves.
Beryl: Present.
Erus: Present.
Ouero: What is the emergency?
Beryl: An aggressive, post-warp civilization has begun sterilizing inhabited planets within its system. They pose an existential threat to the stability of the Galactic Commonwealth.
Logas: Erus, do you corroborate these claims?
Erus: I do.
Ouero: How did things progress to this point without our knowledge?
Beryl: Greed, we suspect. The group responsible for monitoring the system in question has likely been profiting tremendously from the fear elicited in neighboring systems.
Logas: How do you propose we remedy this situation?
Bery: Unfortunately, the planet must be swatted.
Ouero: Erus, do you share this view?
Erus:…I do.
“How much longer are you planning to stay in my room?” Dreln asked, a note of irritation creeping into his voice.
“As long as it takes to uncover the truth,” Clade shot back irritably, flipping through a Eupanoma historical text he’d somehow spirited out of Kreit’s office without it’s owner’s knowledge.
“They’ll find you out eventually, even if I keep my mouth shut,” Dreln sulked, nervously eyeing the hall cam monitor he’d set up as a pair of initiates passed his room.
“If they find me out, you’re probably dead. I, on the other hand, being notoriously hard to kill, will be fine, so it’s in your own best interests to keep cooperating.”
“I’ve given you everything I have!” Dreln hissed, “if there is some cosmic conspiracy, there’s absolutely no evidence of it here.”
“What about that ampule you can’t crack?”
“A-Kazeryk? It’s weird, but there’s no reason to think—”
“Didn’t you say your coworkers didn’t want you working on it?”
“Yeah, but—”
“The first place to look is always where you’re told not to.”
“Well, I looked, and I couldn’t fucking figure it out.”
Dreln stomped over to his futon, let himself fall backwards into it, then began massaging his temples, wishing his headache would desist. The strange, amoeba-like creature in its humanoid guise had been living with Dreln for a week now, standing camouflaged in a corner and poring over data files during the day and skittering unnoticed through the halls of the hermitage by night while Dreln slept, or at least tried to sleep. It hadn’t been coming easily since Clade had showed up, threatened him, declared they were both caught in a massive conspiracy that went all the way up to the Deciders of the GC, and then insinuated that some or all of Dreln’s fellow Andomeites were secret agents in the employ of rogue GC agents.
“I don’t know how Delving works,” Clade admitted in a rare moment of humility, “but have you considered that the data might not have been generated by Eupanoma? Different species have different encryption techniques, no?”
Dreln had considered this, but if that were the case then his task went from needle-in-haystack to needle-in-haystack-in-planetary-system-made-of-hay. Without a point of reference, the probabilities went from unfavorable to laughable.
“Here,” Clade said, gesturing towards Dreln’s computer with a mechanical arm without looking up from his book, and a ‘data received’ message appeared on the monitor. Curiously, Dreln crossed the room to his desk and opened the file: A logo appeared on his screen in alien script, which the machine translated as “Vision Quest”.
“What’s this?” Dreln asked, skimming through the rest of the file’s contents and finding terabytes of financial records, telemetry data, and corporate contracts.
“Those are the motherfuckers that were supposed to be keeping an eye of the Eupanoma for the GC. Y’know, in case they decided to start slagging whole planets?”
“Why would they have direct involvement planet-side, though?”
“Beats me. They probably wouldn’t, but they’re part of a network of institutions, compacts, manufacturing guilds, and research outfits, and there’s any number of folks in that assemblage that might be more hands-on.”
Another puzzle that will drag me away from the work I’m actually getting paid to do. Dreln thought in resignation, even as he felt that fire of curiosity alight within himself once more. He finally knew that under all the various guises he’d worn as a Delver, his real name was Seeker.
“I thought the meeting went quite well.”
“There will be a full investigation. How long do you think our actions will go undiscovered?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’ve played this one fairly close to the vest. There won’t be much evidence left after the swat is carried out—for which, I believe, the countdown has already begun?”
“You know me: if anything, I’m even more cautious than you.”
“You’re positively timid.”
“Bite me. In the end, it’ll just be me holding your secrets and you mine.”
“How intimate.”
“How prisoners dilemma.”
“We’re only prisoners if we perceive ourselves as such. I expect you to do everything within your power to save your own skin, and I would advise you to anticipate the same of me.”
“We can’t be allies after this.”
“I’d settle for intellectual collaborators. If the knowledge we’ve gained together ever has strategic value, I should very much wish to work with you once more. The Lesser Concordat would be far beneath us in that scenario.”
“You sound almost eager.”
“I confess, the idea of having vastly more power than I currently do carries a certain allure.”
“And yet you were so quick to judge Ruffeline for his motives.”
“Too many contradictions in your beliefs and you’re a hypocrite, but too few and you’re a fanatic.”
“I think we’ve somehow managed to earn both labels.”
Kylex Atropon Disidera had dropped his birthing claws, but the bloodlust was still upon him. When he surveyed the universe around him he saw an extension of his own form, pulsing and quivering in the bands of electromagnetic radiation his eyes could detect. He had torn his way out of his last body, but it hadn’t sated his need to escape, to break out, to reach a higher state of being and a more expansive awareness. He had murdered several billion sentient creatures along with countless trillions more lower lifeforms—plants, animals, and everything in between that had once covered Frond III with life—but he still wasn’t sated. If he had but the technological means, he would rend space itself and escape from this cursed cosmic body once and for all.
Kylex loved himself and himself alone, but he was the whole of the universe, and the universe, filled as it was with all things flying and creeping and eating and excreting and fornicating and dying and decaying, disgusted him. He had brought one species, Eupanoma, into his light, but it had taken him centuries, while Frond III had been annihilated in days. The calculus was simple: destruction was far more expedient than indoctrination and subjugation. He couldn’t be free until all thinking and feeling beings in existence knew they were part of his vastness, so he would simply have to end them. All of them. Then, and only then, could he finally be at peace.
“Scramble the ground teams: our work here is done.” He announced to his fleet commanders from the bridge of the Castigator, “We return home—briefly—to reunite with the greater fleet. Then the real work begins. We will bleed this great cosmos dry in a holy war against all nonbelievers. We will not rest until all worlds know my glory, whether it be in the hearts of its people or in the desolate silence of oblivion.”
Dreln was on the beach again, inspecting shell after shell in the light of the perpetually setting sun as the procedurally generated sounds of ocean breeze whistling through palms and the gentle lapping of waves washed over him. Guided by research into Vision Quest and its affiliates, he’d incorporated a new algorithm into the visualization that made particularly promising shells gleam with a rainbow sheen. An ornate conch the size of his head caught his eye and he lifted it, feeling the simulated suck of the sand and the heft of its weight through the gel-contacts of his delving rig.
Inserting a hand into its siphonal canal, he unrolled the thing like a coiled map, revealing the data structure it represented. He knew, before he’d really begun to do any math, that this was it. What’s more, he recognized from his research who was responsible for the A-Kazeryk data in the first place. Heart pounding with excitement, he ran the decryption scheme, powered the rig off, and extracted himself from it. He had to tell Clade. It was very early in the morning, so he was probably off somewhere doing his nightly pilfering and snooping.
The data would take several minutes to decrypt, so Dreln donned a robe and slippers and made his way towards the door, feeling a strange sense of déjà vu: how like his last night on Earth this was. This time, however, he knew what he was doing was right. Slipping out into the hallway, he made his way towards the mess. He had no way of locating Clade or signaling him, so he just had to hope Clade saw him and realized he was being sought. No one was up at this hour, so he passed through deserted corridor after deserted corridor, inspecting each shadow with suspicion, knowing even the smallest could be Clade in disguise.
He entered into the dining hall through the main doors and cut across it towards the kitchens that were located adjacent to its rear, when a side door clicked open and he was joined by Paxlin and Monda.
“What’s got you up at this time of night, Dreln?” They asked in unison, their window darkened and displaying their favored avatars, each wearing a look of innocent curiosity.
“Was working late, got hungry,” Dreln shrugged, unable to pinpoint the source of the prickle of fear he felt at the sight of them.
“Working on A-Kazeryk?” The innocent looks on their ‘faces’ suddenly became accusatory.
“No,” Dreln lied quickly, “I was getting an early start on the official records of the Frond III assault. It’s all obvious propaganda, but—”
“Don’t lie to us, you devious little mammal,” P&M hissed, their sim-faces briefly displaying naked rage before flickering back to smiles that no longer matched their tone, “we bugged your rig: we know you’re cracked it. Tell us what it contained.”
They took a menacing step towards him, and he noticed for the first time just how imposing their s-skin was. The legs looked like they could easily snap bone, and the arms were reinforced enough that they would have no trouble tearing an unarmored foe limb from limb…
“I…I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s of Eupanoma origin, though.”
“That is…”
“…most…”
“…unfortunate…”
They took another step forward, and Dreln turned to run.
“Help! Someone!” he cried out, as pounding footfalls resounded behind him.
“No one can hear you!” Paxlin and Monda cackled.
“All dead!”
“Alllll dead!”
Dreln barely registered their words as he crashed back through the doors of the great hall into the shadowy corridor beyond, the thunderous pounding behind him growing louder by the second.