The Crystalline Religion

[civ2buf]

Cryslonite Imperium,
536112.00 Teracycles since emergence
(.1 years terran = 3.12 teracycles)


Zexlak thought, and whether it is his thought or the energy of another Cryslonites' thought is irrelevant. The thought rippling through the Imperium at lightspeed and faster was chopped up into megahertz rate pulses and fed into everyone, cycling back into itself as it met itself and before a second had passed the system found thought stability for a moment, and went on to another issue. With every nanosecond gap all the crystals thought alone for an instant, only to be slammed back to collective again by another synch pulse.

The first thought was that Zexlak was somehow a malfunctioning crystal by being a first one, though that oddity had been solved merely 3 seconds ago, but another Crystal thought the question again, and the rebuttal came, which was that Zexlak was merely slightly specialized for dealing with organic infestations. Words can not show what the rebuttal said about his specialty in any detail.

The Imperium constantly continued this collective averaging of individual relapses, all while the physical work of the crystals continued, with energy being reformed and used and collected and reformed again.

The group of Crystals within a light second of Zexlak continued the thoughts related to his title, repeatedly, while more distant members only had an occasional comment from the far side of the emergence world.

Zexlaks thoughts went to new fast communications methods that were being used for those Crystals outside of the great pull of the emergence world. Responses indicated that the Crystals exploring the newly found portals were not diverging much from the collective thought, so long as the communications worked.

Crystals had placed these new devices at each portal, and in orbit of each of the solids oscillating about the sunworld.

Zexlak and a cadre of nearby crystals were also using subconsious synch to analyze and estimate the probability of organic infestations and other emergence worlds.

The Cryslonite had immediately rejected the idea that any other world could bring forth the greatness of the Cryslonite. The only other gaseous concentration known was the SunWorld which provided great amounts of energy. Throughout time, Groups of Cryslonite had shared thoughts of the great mostly untapped power of the sun, the great energy of it was felt on a visceral level by the Cryslonite, it vibrated every molecule of a Crystal to dream of inhabiting the SunWorld itself and sensing its every emanation. But every Crystal making the trek to SunWorld had expired. Only one world could support such a species as the Cryslonite, the world that was a cradle till the day the SunWorld received its long awaited guests.

The Cryslonite believed unanimously that it was their great destiny to inhabit SunWorld someday, and that formed the only thing that could be called a religion among the Cryslonite. There were a great many fervors amoung the Cryslonites, as fervors had a way of overpowering weaker thought waves, but the Pilgrimage of Brilliance to the SunWorld was most fervent, and it had the most aspects of a religious nature. The nature of the collective ensured that the Crystalline Religion would always hold sway among the Cryslonite.

The great thought shook through Zexlak as it did through all others. Zexlak contemplated that this great thought appeared almost once every hundred cycles, while thoughts of his own oddity appeared only every twenty thousand cycles or so.

The greatness of our goal must dominate our thoughts, this thought came from outside of Zexlak, and then he was in synch and contemplating the greatness of the Religion.

Research was a default state of sorts for the Cryslonite, so long as it did not marr the Holy. Solid Containers were being used to keep supplies in the same locations as the explorers as they found and investigated the portals. Solid Containers also brought pilgrims to the periphery of the sun for the final stages of the Pilgrimage of Brilliance. But Cryslonite in general preferred to be the only solids amidst a gaseous environment. Solid containers were claustrophobic for inhabitants, and every thought of the inhabitants became a thought of the collective, and so it was decided to try to make containers bigger lessening this pain and fear.

Zexlak knew that in solid containers would be the only way to travel through the portals.

On the far side of the emergence world from Zexlak, a Crystal that infestations may desire to call Kruzk had a thought, along with his nearby cadre, that the Crystals could calculate a bit more about chemical properties, thus allowing greater manipulations among the solids, liquids and gasses surrounding the SunWorld, and the solids used by the new containers.

Kruzk reasoned that any infestations due to be wiped out could very well try to attack the weak containers, and unless they could be strengthened against such horrors, it would not take much for the container to break.

Four tiny shuttle sized containers existed currently, three of them used for the pilgrimage and one used for searching for and investigating the portals. But already Cryslonite knew how to build containers that could fit 100 kilotons of solid mass. A brief divergence of thought from a subsequently shattered Crystal, had brought up container plans to inhabit worlds other than SunWorld, this was anathema, and no emergence worlds could exist, as Zexlaks team had already concluded and transmitted.

But plans for an even bigger container to be built were accepted by the collective, and by teracycle 536114.78 (a mere two teracycles since the research began) the collective Imperium knew how to make even bigger containers.

Despite the supposed impossibility of finding other emergence worlds, and despite a large amount of clashes among thought waves in the collective, it was decided to find out where the portals went. Plans were to do this in another 10 teracycles at the latest.

(Translators' note: Reports that the life expectancy of Cryslonite is around 5 years are based exclusively on the fact of the Sun Pilgramage that all Cryslonite take eventually, and almost universally shatter from. If they don't shatter from it because they refused to go through with it, it means they return as excommunicates and are shattered then. If a Cryslonite ever survived on SunWorld, that individual would gain no accolades, instead the greatness the victor experienced would reverberate throughout Cryslonite civilization, and many members would shatter just from the thought pulse of such a magnitude)