KactusPunch
Crown Sage
MarshalSolgriev
SkyeOfStars
princess
ZerothLegacy Territory
Inner Boundary
Senur System
Planet Nualia
Marozi and Hokkaido entered the darkened rotunda by themselves. The Legacy was restless and the other heads were actually busy running their sectors, while all but one of the Command heads were absent from the Senur system. The actual practice of the sector heads communing with the Censors within the Straylight Rotunda was a strategic, traditional practice. For the Ennedi, whose lives were measured in a matter of only one point three million moments, the practice of physically traveling to the site to meet the Censors in person represented an enormous investiture. For many Ennedi, visiting the Rotunda was their final, dying act. The practice was enforced in order to serve as a Momentary mark of importance; to signify what crises had been most serious in gravity within the annuals of history. Unofficially, the practice also served to remind the sector heads that the Legacy of the Ennedi species had no masters.
The interior of the Rotunda was a darkened chamber with walls of tiled ammolite; carved channels carrying streams of vaporized mercury carrying a light charge to produce spectacularly illuminated, multicolored murals. The imagery was highly compact and detailed, small and nearly indistinguishable amongst the myriad of similar images surrounding it - the Ennedi compound eye, being near-sighted and detail oriented, made better sense of highly clustered and compact visual stimuli than more conventionally impressive overarching murals. In the center of the chamber three Glutted Ennedi, their bodies partially petrified from inactivity, lay locked into structural circuit-chambers of a similar nature to those used by starship pilots. The three Censors had never once left this chamber, and neither had many generations of their predecessors - each lineage of Censors native to the Rotunda emerged and died in almost exactly the same spot, all glutting within less than one-hundred and thirty-thousand moments. With their open media hardwired into the coenocyte circuit-based matrix that formed the worldwide information grid, the Censors were as close to being omniscient as was possible without existing as Quantum A.I.
Their state of being rendered their already analytically-prone Ennedi psychology highly mechanical in nature. Savants formed of living stone, the Censors occupied an almost reverent position within Ennedi culture - they were everywhere, always watching, always gathering data and analyzing society as a whole. The guardians of the Ennedi Legacy, preserving what was proper and efficient, identifying and mandating the removal of any source of conflict.
The moment would have been much more humbling had one of the Censors not been dead by the time Marozi and and Hokkaido reached the edge of their pit. A tell-tale line of dissolved tissue along their anterior ridge told that the Censor had died of senescence at least a hundred-thousand moments prior. The remaining two Censors, unmoving and uncaring of the absence of one of their number (they would be replaced in time), engaged the two sector heads without any ceremony. An unseen holographic generator began to project Ennedi signage into the air above the pit, conveying the words of the circuit-bound overseers.
~Analysis of the anomalous displacement of the Legacy has returned no extant data beyond the Outer Rim. Sensor data reveals multiple faster-than-light nucleating wavefronts of birefringent spacetime which eclipse the totality of the Legacy in effect of zero elapsed moments. Determination of anomaly as naturally occurring ecological/ontological catastrophe. Disconnected Legacy naval forces determined to be displaced within new spacetime region at random relative coordinates and thereby irrelevant. Disconnected indigent forces determined to be displaced within new spacetime region at random relative coordinates and thereby irrelevant. Torpor pods containing FI patterning were deployed one million, two hundred-nine thousand, six-hundred moments prior to now to identify and examine local areas of concern.
~Demographical dialectics and trends reveal multiple widespread maladaptive aberrant memetic pathogens amongst Ennedi species to be transmitted through disruption of Legacy operations by aberrant integrated indigents.
~All current foreign integration policies are annulled. All integrated and unaccounted for indigents are to be immediately sterilized.~
Marozi and Hokkaido turned and left the Rotunda. The damage had been done - there was no means of appealing any Annulment issued by the Censors. All that one could do was clean up in the wake. Once outside, they off-handedly signed to one another with their maxillae as they shuffled towards their awaiting shuttles.
"This is the first I have heard about FI being sent beyond Legacy boundaries to explore the new Universe." Hokkaido signed, the jittering waive of their maxillae indicating both suspicion and apprehension.
"I am similarly situationed." Marozi replied, their signage smooth and neutral.
"I see." The conversation ended there. It was little surprise that one of the Heads of the Societal Sector, powerful though they were, had not heard of the deployment. It was much more suspicious that a head of the Industrial Sector had not been informed - too suspicious to be taken entirely at limb-value. The best course of action would be neither to intrude too far into schemes unaware, nor to blindly follow along. The Sectors got along not by trusting one another, but simply by not working at cross-purposes. Whatever agenda the Industrial Sector heads were pursuing, any ensuing damage would be duly handled by the Censors. Trying to get wrapped up in it would just exacerbate the damage - if there was any. The Sectors were not known to communicate with one another freely beyond pure business and logistical matters; if the Industrial Sector had not issued any official statements they probably had a good reason for doing so. Or at least insufficient reason to issue an official statement. Perhaps they were waiting to see what would come of the Torpor probings.
Either way, their prearranged plan of action was now in motion. Even the dullest amongst the Ennedi could have foretold that the Censors were going to default on most if not all of the Foreign Integration Policies. The revolts were the source of the recent uptrend in aberrant behavior.
What most Ennedi would not have realized was that the Sectors government had a responsibility to save as many indigent alien lives as possible. Most Ennedi spent their lives unfulfilled, thinking that just because they had the privilege of being fully glutted that they were amongst the most gifted intellectuals in the universe - treading along doing whatever menial task or labor had been assigned to their lineage from bygone generations prior. If told flat-out that every indigent had to be sterilized, the overall Ennedi populace would not have cared one iota. They simply accepted the 'fact' that the Ennedi Legacy was morally and strategically entitled to pursue whatever agenda was deemed necessary, due to cultural indoctrination and mood-altering diets. Ignoring the foundation from which the entire Legacy's presumed authority sprung:
The Ennedi, as a species, were morally and ethically superior to all other forms of organic life. They were destined to rule, because they were best suited for the task. If others disagreed, they were automatically the inferior party and therefore aberrant, only fit for prompt removal. Thus facilitating the ideal state, wherein the Ennedi benevolently ruled an interstellar empire composed of countless indigent alien species who otherwise would never have known peace or prosperity to the degree seen within the Legacy. Preparing those species for their newfound existence required death and war because of their active and malevolent opposition of their eventual, fated, eternity of paradise under the benevolent and wise rule of the Legacy.
That was the premise upon which FI initiated all forms of diplomacy. That was the premise upon every war waged. That was the premise upon which all of Ennedi society had been maintained for hundreds of years. The Censors did not care about ideals and abstract strategic goals - they saw only numbers and statistical data and internal policy conflicts. Savants within living stone - omniscient, but ignorant.
In the end, Hakkaido doubted any of the indigents revolting beyond the core and hub worlds could be saved. They would be sterilized, as the Censors demanded. The indigents in the hub worlds though, undergoing integration - they could be saved, and the premise upon which the Legacy was built could be preserved.
Hakkaido was overwhelmed with a sense of internal gratification. Internally, they knew that the only reason they were so pleased with themself was due to the very cultural indoctrination and mood-altering diet which they had helped design, implement, and maintain - but self-perpetuity was very nearly the whole point. They had contributed to the greater whole that was the Legacy, and soon they would leave it - better than when they had joined it. Their offspring would do the same, as would their offspring. For one immaculate moment, Hakkaido could see all of eternity lay out before them - the Legacy, perfection across time, ever-improving, all-devouring. A self-perpetuating shadow of reality itself.
Legacy Territory
Outer Boundary
Dark Space
Legacy Starbase 'Century Manifold.'
Amarok waited patiently for The Nothing After Death.
Patience was not a common Ennedi characteristic. They had so little time to start with, any waste of it, however small, was akin to a small existential crisis. As it happened though, naval warfare waged in a Galactic theater had spans of time as long as several hundred thousand moments where one was expected to do nothing but wait. As one of the Sector Heads of Legacy Command and Command-in-Chief of the Legacy Armada, Amarok had spent most of their life waiting, as most of their tactical and strategic decisions had been made almost instantly, and carried out just as quickly. The prospect of being forced to sit still while the biological clock wound down to the final toll before The Nothing After Death was one they were used to.
Amarok was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of awe. A quality not quite as unfamiliar to the Ennedi as patience, but usually only experienced once. Fully glutted Enedi tended to find awesome sights uninteresting. Seeing a planet from space for the first time. Standing at the edge of a ravine. Surveying a massive alien fleet on long range scanners. Trailing near the corona of a star. All of the Ennedi as one though, shared the common experience of awe in the last moments of life. It was therefore fitting that the word for Awe in Ennuic was the same for Solace and Terror simultaneously.
The display before Amarok flashed to life as they received a message from C&C.
The Censors have annulled all policies relating to interaction and integration of indigents. Social Sector Head Hakkaido has issued a number of hole policies drafted in accordance with prior agreements.
The Legacy Endures.
Amarok made a number of faint, light gestures with their maxillae as they began to issue orders via their circuit. Things had seemingly gone according to plan. With their final act, they would usher in a new era for the Ennedi Legacy. He briefly wondered how the Censors and Arbitration would react, when they discovered the duplicity. When they discovered the true occupants of the Torpor Probes that had been sent out. When they figured out that Amarok was Aberrant.
Amarok, being a fully glutted Ennedi who was In On It - It being the premise upon which the entire Legacy was maintained - had never really believed in The Nothing After Death. Not in any serious capacity. Just as their vision began to fade though, they thought they glimpsed something. A figure, an entity. Nothing within everything, space within spaces, void between all. It beckoned with the promise of blind eternities and the cessation of potential.
Having now experienced The Nothing After Death from the threshold at the end of life, Amarok came to the conclusion that death was immensely overrated. Then they died.
Elsewhere, within the depths of Subspace, several vessels had already journeyed more than halfway to their intended destinations. Soon, a new Era would begin.
Inner Boundary
Senur System
Planet Nualia
Marozi and Hokkaido entered the darkened rotunda by themselves. The Legacy was restless and the other heads were actually busy running their sectors, while all but one of the Command heads were absent from the Senur system. The actual practice of the sector heads communing with the Censors within the Straylight Rotunda was a strategic, traditional practice. For the Ennedi, whose lives were measured in a matter of only one point three million moments, the practice of physically traveling to the site to meet the Censors in person represented an enormous investiture. For many Ennedi, visiting the Rotunda was their final, dying act. The practice was enforced in order to serve as a Momentary mark of importance; to signify what crises had been most serious in gravity within the annuals of history. Unofficially, the practice also served to remind the sector heads that the Legacy of the Ennedi species had no masters.
The interior of the Rotunda was a darkened chamber with walls of tiled ammolite; carved channels carrying streams of vaporized mercury carrying a light charge to produce spectacularly illuminated, multicolored murals. The imagery was highly compact and detailed, small and nearly indistinguishable amongst the myriad of similar images surrounding it - the Ennedi compound eye, being near-sighted and detail oriented, made better sense of highly clustered and compact visual stimuli than more conventionally impressive overarching murals. In the center of the chamber three Glutted Ennedi, their bodies partially petrified from inactivity, lay locked into structural circuit-chambers of a similar nature to those used by starship pilots. The three Censors had never once left this chamber, and neither had many generations of their predecessors - each lineage of Censors native to the Rotunda emerged and died in almost exactly the same spot, all glutting within less than one-hundred and thirty-thousand moments. With their open media hardwired into the coenocyte circuit-based matrix that formed the worldwide information grid, the Censors were as close to being omniscient as was possible without existing as Quantum A.I.
Their state of being rendered their already analytically-prone Ennedi psychology highly mechanical in nature. Savants formed of living stone, the Censors occupied an almost reverent position within Ennedi culture - they were everywhere, always watching, always gathering data and analyzing society as a whole. The guardians of the Ennedi Legacy, preserving what was proper and efficient, identifying and mandating the removal of any source of conflict.
The moment would have been much more humbling had one of the Censors not been dead by the time Marozi and and Hokkaido reached the edge of their pit. A tell-tale line of dissolved tissue along their anterior ridge told that the Censor had died of senescence at least a hundred-thousand moments prior. The remaining two Censors, unmoving and uncaring of the absence of one of their number (they would be replaced in time), engaged the two sector heads without any ceremony. An unseen holographic generator began to project Ennedi signage into the air above the pit, conveying the words of the circuit-bound overseers.
~Analysis of the anomalous displacement of the Legacy has returned no extant data beyond the Outer Rim. Sensor data reveals multiple faster-than-light nucleating wavefronts of birefringent spacetime which eclipse the totality of the Legacy in effect of zero elapsed moments. Determination of anomaly as naturally occurring ecological/ontological catastrophe. Disconnected Legacy naval forces determined to be displaced within new spacetime region at random relative coordinates and thereby irrelevant. Disconnected indigent forces determined to be displaced within new spacetime region at random relative coordinates and thereby irrelevant. Torpor pods containing FI patterning were deployed one million, two hundred-nine thousand, six-hundred moments prior to now to identify and examine local areas of concern.
~Demographical dialectics and trends reveal multiple widespread maladaptive aberrant memetic pathogens amongst Ennedi species to be transmitted through disruption of Legacy operations by aberrant integrated indigents.
~All current foreign integration policies are annulled. All integrated and unaccounted for indigents are to be immediately sterilized.~
Marozi and Hokkaido turned and left the Rotunda. The damage had been done - there was no means of appealing any Annulment issued by the Censors. All that one could do was clean up in the wake. Once outside, they off-handedly signed to one another with their maxillae as they shuffled towards their awaiting shuttles.
"This is the first I have heard about FI being sent beyond Legacy boundaries to explore the new Universe." Hokkaido signed, the jittering waive of their maxillae indicating both suspicion and apprehension.
"I am similarly situationed." Marozi replied, their signage smooth and neutral.
"I see." The conversation ended there. It was little surprise that one of the Heads of the Societal Sector, powerful though they were, had not heard of the deployment. It was much more suspicious that a head of the Industrial Sector had not been informed - too suspicious to be taken entirely at limb-value. The best course of action would be neither to intrude too far into schemes unaware, nor to blindly follow along. The Sectors got along not by trusting one another, but simply by not working at cross-purposes. Whatever agenda the Industrial Sector heads were pursuing, any ensuing damage would be duly handled by the Censors. Trying to get wrapped up in it would just exacerbate the damage - if there was any. The Sectors were not known to communicate with one another freely beyond pure business and logistical matters; if the Industrial Sector had not issued any official statements they probably had a good reason for doing so. Or at least insufficient reason to issue an official statement. Perhaps they were waiting to see what would come of the Torpor probings.
Either way, their prearranged plan of action was now in motion. Even the dullest amongst the Ennedi could have foretold that the Censors were going to default on most if not all of the Foreign Integration Policies. The revolts were the source of the recent uptrend in aberrant behavior.
What most Ennedi would not have realized was that the Sectors government had a responsibility to save as many indigent alien lives as possible. Most Ennedi spent their lives unfulfilled, thinking that just because they had the privilege of being fully glutted that they were amongst the most gifted intellectuals in the universe - treading along doing whatever menial task or labor had been assigned to their lineage from bygone generations prior. If told flat-out that every indigent had to be sterilized, the overall Ennedi populace would not have cared one iota. They simply accepted the 'fact' that the Ennedi Legacy was morally and strategically entitled to pursue whatever agenda was deemed necessary, due to cultural indoctrination and mood-altering diets. Ignoring the foundation from which the entire Legacy's presumed authority sprung:
The Ennedi, as a species, were morally and ethically superior to all other forms of organic life. They were destined to rule, because they were best suited for the task. If others disagreed, they were automatically the inferior party and therefore aberrant, only fit for prompt removal. Thus facilitating the ideal state, wherein the Ennedi benevolently ruled an interstellar empire composed of countless indigent alien species who otherwise would never have known peace or prosperity to the degree seen within the Legacy. Preparing those species for their newfound existence required death and war because of their active and malevolent opposition of their eventual, fated, eternity of paradise under the benevolent and wise rule of the Legacy.
That was the premise upon which FI initiated all forms of diplomacy. That was the premise upon every war waged. That was the premise upon which all of Ennedi society had been maintained for hundreds of years. The Censors did not care about ideals and abstract strategic goals - they saw only numbers and statistical data and internal policy conflicts. Savants within living stone - omniscient, but ignorant.
In the end, Hakkaido doubted any of the indigents revolting beyond the core and hub worlds could be saved. They would be sterilized, as the Censors demanded. The indigents in the hub worlds though, undergoing integration - they could be saved, and the premise upon which the Legacy was built could be preserved.
Hakkaido was overwhelmed with a sense of internal gratification. Internally, they knew that the only reason they were so pleased with themself was due to the very cultural indoctrination and mood-altering diet which they had helped design, implement, and maintain - but self-perpetuity was very nearly the whole point. They had contributed to the greater whole that was the Legacy, and soon they would leave it - better than when they had joined it. Their offspring would do the same, as would their offspring. For one immaculate moment, Hakkaido could see all of eternity lay out before them - the Legacy, perfection across time, ever-improving, all-devouring. A self-perpetuating shadow of reality itself.
888888888888
Legacy Territory
Outer Boundary
Dark Space
Legacy Starbase 'Century Manifold.'
Amarok waited patiently for The Nothing After Death.
Patience was not a common Ennedi characteristic. They had so little time to start with, any waste of it, however small, was akin to a small existential crisis. As it happened though, naval warfare waged in a Galactic theater had spans of time as long as several hundred thousand moments where one was expected to do nothing but wait. As one of the Sector Heads of Legacy Command and Command-in-Chief of the Legacy Armada, Amarok had spent most of their life waiting, as most of their tactical and strategic decisions had been made almost instantly, and carried out just as quickly. The prospect of being forced to sit still while the biological clock wound down to the final toll before The Nothing After Death was one they were used to.
Amarok was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of awe. A quality not quite as unfamiliar to the Ennedi as patience, but usually only experienced once. Fully glutted Enedi tended to find awesome sights uninteresting. Seeing a planet from space for the first time. Standing at the edge of a ravine. Surveying a massive alien fleet on long range scanners. Trailing near the corona of a star. All of the Ennedi as one though, shared the common experience of awe in the last moments of life. It was therefore fitting that the word for Awe in Ennuic was the same for Solace and Terror simultaneously.
The display before Amarok flashed to life as they received a message from C&C.
The Censors have annulled all policies relating to interaction and integration of indigents. Social Sector Head Hakkaido has issued a number of hole policies drafted in accordance with prior agreements.
The Legacy Endures.
Amarok made a number of faint, light gestures with their maxillae as they began to issue orders via their circuit. Things had seemingly gone according to plan. With their final act, they would usher in a new era for the Ennedi Legacy. He briefly wondered how the Censors and Arbitration would react, when they discovered the duplicity. When they discovered the true occupants of the Torpor Probes that had been sent out. When they figured out that Amarok was Aberrant.
Amarok, being a fully glutted Ennedi who was In On It - It being the premise upon which the entire Legacy was maintained - had never really believed in The Nothing After Death. Not in any serious capacity. Just as their vision began to fade though, they thought they glimpsed something. A figure, an entity. Nothing within everything, space within spaces, void between all. It beckoned with the promise of blind eternities and the cessation of potential.
Having now experienced The Nothing After Death from the threshold at the end of life, Amarok came to the conclusion that death was immensely overrated. Then they died.
Elsewhere, within the depths of Subspace, several vessels had already journeyed more than halfway to their intended destinations. Soon, a new Era would begin.
