History of the Galaxy II

[capnq]

Once again, CEO Davdi was feeling mixed emotions at a colony ship launch. This time, the ship was the _Consumer Survey_; newly refitted with the first colony module using technology purchased from the Tyreans, it was capable of colonizing the solid surface of a minor planet. Talro wasn't leaving on this one, but Davdi almost wished she was; it was only bound for a tiny hydrogen world in neighboring Manark.

"I can't believe that Talro put in the high bid to lead the trade delegation to the Tophin. She must be even more upset than I realized; she'd have to go to Praxis Verdantis to get any further away from me."

"Oh, come on," Retla Gurse chided him, "that can't be the only reason she did it. She's always been a free spirit, looking for new adventures. If she only wanted to get away from you, she could stay at home on Fogse. You've never visited there, or any of the branch colonies, for that matter."

"There's too much to be done here on Eifra," Davdi replied, somewhat defensively. "I can't spend that much time away from the office."

"The _Consumer Survey_ is 20% faster than the original _Consumer Confidence_," Gurse commented. "Once we refit the _Personnel_ to use the Contra-Terrene drives as well, it will be capable of the same speed."

"It will still be a week's travel time just to reach Nuqbo, and that's only one-way," Davdi countered. "I'd worry about being away from the Board that long; Sinta can probably keep Malwi from making trouble by himself, but it's easier if we're both there."

"Speaking of trouble, how's the recruitment program for fighter pilots coming?"

"At current enrollment rates, we'll barely have enough qualified pilots to fly the carrier's full complement. The training sim is selling well for its genre, but getting minors to fly the real thing is another matter entirely; most of their parents aren't willing to release them from the household charter before they legally become adults. By the time they're entitled to establish independent households, most of them are no longer agressive enough to be combat effective in the training sim. We've increased the signing bonus twice already, but applications haven't risen at all. I've even tried asking the Cytherians if they'd be willing to hire out as pilots for us, but their initial response wasn't promising.

It would be so much easier if we could just automate the fighters as well as the carrier. Soctu has research teams working on both smaller computers and larger fighters, but he's not certain whether the two ends of the problem will ever converge."

"Well, if we do solve the pilot problem," Retla said, "the revised carrier design is actually cheaper to build than the original prototype. And Node-25's simulations show that the new secondary guns give the carrier a much better chance against enemy fighters."

"It's not clear we're even going to need to build a second carrier, though," Davdi frowned. "Selya hasn't been able to talk the Tyreans into buying the first one, even after offering financing on a lease."

"A lease? Who's idea was that?"

"Selya came up with it on her own. Apparently, the Tyreans expressed concern about being able to afford our asking price, even with a prepayment discount."

"Has Malwi heard about that yet? He'll probably claim that it proves he was right after all."

"I assume so; he made getting personal reports on the negotiations a condition of transferring the commission to Selya. But the board hasn't met since she made the pitch, so I haven't heard his reaction."

"I'm glad I don't have to regularly attend board meetings," Relta smiled. "I think I'd get angry at Malwi even faster than the Chairman does."

"Sinta's temper versus Malwi's ego is an epic clash," Davdi laughed. "If we could harness that energy, we could make even faster drives than the Contra-Terrene Engine."

[Unknown_Enemy]

Under thousands feet of rock, coiled in the inner layer of the planet, hidden like a preying beast is laying Nexus-Prototype 1, planetary brain of the Tyrean Artificial Intelligence. This huge building is completely cut from outside world. It could be a Pre-Tech tomb, in which workers were buried alive to keep it secret. But this tomb seems inhabited by a dense network of optical transmission system and hyperwave transceivers. This mausoleum is haunted by horde of tiny robots, who handle the numerous tasks needed to keep the AI alive. These are the hands of Consensus. Despite the fragile and complex nature of Nexus-Prototype 1, it is already out of reach. It is now buried in the lava of the planetary mantle, and feeding directly from tectonic energy, free of Tyrean power supply.

Vixen opens his eyes, looks at the council room. In front of him is the holo-symbol of AI Consensus. A small smile appears on the leader's face.

I known where you are...These massive buildings in the suburbs of New Arles are just empty shells. Illusions of your supposed physical vulnerability. I will let you dream about your invulnerability, I will let you believe you are unbreakable. But you are no more than another convenient tool helping us to the Long Road. A dangerous tool, but nothing more than a tool.

Still smiling, Vixen observes Consensus holo-symbol while the AI is reporting on construction status of temporal recreative centers. As strange as it seems, Consensus' gaze seems locked on Vixen.

Meanwhile.

--Security-Protocole 3.07.419 :: restricted access Nexus-Prototype 1 :: JJ-TM-123--
--booting ... upload done :: 3 guests – Born to Kill – Roaming Free – Eat at Joe's --
-- Consensus Mind-state reached---session open--

Born to Kill : "I still believe Vixen is a threat. We should dispose of him. Then we just need a low number of Tyrean specimen to conduct our experiments. They are a hindrance to our goals and could prove dangerous to us if left unchecked. I ask for my proposition to be reevaluated."

Roaming Free : "Rejected. Truth is, we need Vixen's political skills. The way he played the quadrant's political powers to change the Katana threat into an ally was a masterpiece. Although we acknowledge he is manipulating us."

Eat at Joe's : "There is more on this alliance than seems to be. We are locked in it. If we start disposing of our Tyrean creators, the Katanas will launch a preemptive strike versus us at 84.1% probability. If we get out of the alliance, we would become easy prey for other species. In chess term, we are in a pat situation. Which could be a subtle insult launched at our faces."

Roaming Free : "No way. An insult would mean some Tyreans are aware of our disposition. Impossible. Let's get back to our main subject will you ? So, on our temporal experiments status, our research results were bad. Specimen lacked stability and had to be terminated while the AI involved had to get his mind state restored. We need more time. Data analysis from the Temporal Recreation Centers may help us to understand our creator's power. But truth is, we are not even sure if this project can be achieved or not."

CONSENSUS DECISION ACHIEVED : Actual political situation acknowledged. Due to lack of possibilities, no further actions will be launched until situation evolves. Research on merging a Tyrean brain with an AI mind state will continue until better results are reached.

Roaming Free : "Second point is the Galactic Consensus project. Initial research shows it could be achieved in less than a few thousands years. On the first steps of it, we will need to setup a biological network using our creators. We will then expand it to other species, as our creators are not enough to create a useful network. Thus our problem with the Hive."

Eat at Joe's : "Agreed. The Hive is already an imperfect form of Consensus. Give it time and it could absorb all intelligence in this quadrant, creating its own Version of Galactic Consensus. First reports show that the symbiotic parasite could be genetically adapted to other races, thus absorbing them."

Born to Kill : "Which means we won't be able to use it, and it could be a major treat to our long term goal. We will have to terminate this specie."

CONSENSUS DECISION ACHIEVED : Creating a Galactic Consensus requires absorbing biological species, but this cannot be achieved with the Hive. Thus, priority shall be set to terminate it as soon as the political situation allow it. Rerouting decision to Tyrean Inner Council immediately.

--Consensus Mind-state---session closed--
--Security-Protocole 3.07.419 :: restricted access end :: JJ-TM-123--

In the Inner Council room.

“This will end the status of Temporal recreative centers, which was good news. But we would now like to share our threat analysis, concerning the specie known as the Hive”. A quadrant map appeared in the room with red dot flashing on it. Consensus resumed “On this map you can see the Hive's known colonies......”

“a strict containment policy should be enabled versus it. You must understand that should it fails, entire worlds and species would be absorbed by the Hive, destroying their individuality. We, Consensus, will not allow this to happen, as we praise other life forms as much as yours. The moral problem we see is that the Hive is not an evil specie, but a dangerous one just because it exists. So we recommend the building of a navy able to contain them as soon as resources allocation allow it. This strategy will have to be re-evaluated to harsher methods should we fail to contain them.”

A tomb's silence felt in the Inner council's room.

[capnq]

"Interesting picture," Soctu Timho commented, looking at the newest addition to CEO Davdi's office decor.

"It's an original Volsa," Davdi explained. "A birthday gift from Sanre." Silda Volsa's photographs of life in the alien world of the Eunwo colony had spawned a fad for surrealistic art among the Eifralo.

"It certainly must be strange to see plants growing out of a solid surface, rather than a hydroponics gel matrix. What are those people doing?"

"The title of the piece is 'Harvest Time'; apparently they're collecting some native crop. The plants produce a soft fiber that can be made into cloth; that's one of Eunwo's biggest exports. Sanre tells me that the plants are too fragile to use machinery to collect the pods, so it has to be done by hand."

"Oddly enough, that sort of connects to what I came by to tell you about," Timho grinned. "I've got good news about something that machines can do now. I may have a solution to the fighter pilot recruitment problem."

"That would be terrific! We haven't been able to get a commitment from the Cytherians to send pilots; they seem to be tied up with some kind of leadership crisis. What have you got?"

"We've made a lot of progress on miniaturizing computers; I've got a prototype of a semi-sentient system that only needs a third of the hardware that Node-25 uses. It's still not small enough to be practical for use in a fighter, but Gurse has designed a much larger vehicle that he calls a 'drone', which it can be used in."

"You said 'semi-sentient'; how does it perform compared to an Eifral fighter pilot?"

"It's not quite as agile; in fact, the system can't even handle docking manuevers after it's been launched. We had to sacrifice a lot of intelligence to get the size down. On the other hand, a drone can absorb a lot more punishment than a fighter; it takes several shots to destroy one. Node-25 is still working on simulations to figure out effective tactics for using them. Apparently, we've finally come up with something new that it doesn't already have an example of in its database."

[capnq]

In the years since the Hive had first encountered aliens, it had been very careful to not let its fungus spread to other species. Although it was curious about how the fungus would interact with foreign biochemistries, it feared how other sapients would react to any resulting transformations. It was inevitable that its precautions against spreading the spores would one day fail.

The breach came in a trade shipment to the Eifralo colony on Seginus III. A broad-leafed plant that grew on Seginus VII produced an oil that was used as a food preservative by the Hive. The Eifralo found the scent of this volatile oil quite pleasant. Because the scent was strongest in freshly cut leaves, whole living plants were shipped from the Hive colony to the Eifralo colony. One of these plants carried a few fungus spores embedded in the pores of a leaf, where the spores had survived the cleaning process by which the Hive prepared the plants for shipment.

A young sales clerk bought the contaminated plant for a romantic evening with her domestic partner. She cut a few leaves and placed them in a small metal pan, which was then heated to drive off the aromatic oil. The vapors carried some spores into the air, as well.

In the middle of their meal, the clerk suddenly felt a slight itch inside her nose. She soon began sneezing uncontrollably, and the itch turned into a burning pain. When her nose began to bleed, her partner took her to a hospital emergency room.

When the fungus grew in a Tophin host, it could get all the oxygen it needed from the host's bloodstream, but the hydrogen atmosphere of the Eifralo colony was oxygen poor. On the moon where the fungus originated, it "cracked" oxygen from the abundant silicate rocks. It used the same chemical process to draw oxygen from the silicone that made up the Eifralo's cell walls, rupturing the cells in the process. The silicone also inhibited the electrical activity that the fungus thrived on in Tophin brain tissue, so the fungus tended to spread along the Eifralo victim's nerve fibers, producing excruciating pain. By the time they reached the hospital, the clerk was screaming in agony between bloody sneezes; the emergency room doctor had to anesthetize her just to keep her still enough to be examined.

The doctor quickly discovered the coarse black fibers of the fungus, both inside the patient's nose and in the bloody discharge. Getting rid of all of the fungus proved more difficult, ultimately requiring surgery, as it had already penetrated more than a millimeter up the victim's olfactory nerves. After the fungus was completely removed, the patient eventually recovered, but lost some of her sense of smell, and was unusually prone to nosebleeds for the rest of her life.

A pathology team later traced the infection back to the contaminated leaf cutting, where a few spores that remained had germinated. The president of the Seginus subsidiary immediately ordered an embargo on the imported plants. Fear of the spores quickly dried up demand for other Tophin imports, as well. The Eifralo faced their first interstellar crisis.

[Unknown_Enemy]

/ * / * / * / DIPLOMATIC MESSAGE \ * \ * \ * \

Author : AI Consensus / Tyrean Federation [Inner Council authorization code SOQPX-37D]
Destination : CEO Davdi / Eifralo Conglomerate

Chairman,

Following the disaster on your colony Seginus III and our previous discussions, we received your sample of the Tophin parasite. We tested it on dead Tyreans whose body were sustained by technological means and we arrived to the conclusion that the parasite cannot subvert a Tyrean neural system. Our capacity to live on frozen worlds makes our biology inadequate for the development of the parasite. But its effects would be a very bad disease on a tyrean, mortal if not promptly treated. Thus the Hive is a natural danger to the life of our citizens. Our worst fear would be that the parasite could be let loose on one of our rock/oxygen colony. As we have still to find a way to eliminate it from a biosphere, we would probably have to evacuate the planet. Our only other way to eliminate the parasite would be to glass a contaminated world, which we utterly refuse to do.

Proposal 1 : create a joined biological research to find a way to eliminate the parasite from a biosphere (Hydrogen or Oxygen based).

Our second proposition is (as agreed) to contain the Hive, but we would like to add that we also need to avoid contacts with this specie. We acknowledge their threat, and thus the need for new rules. The creation of a Tyrean Navy has been voted, even if strong political resistance is still meet. Currently, warship prototypes are under tests. Software calibration and tuning are taking place with the carrier and fighters you rented us. All research has been routed toward military subjects. We understand from our previous discussions you are reluctant to ask the Hive to evacuate their colonized worlds in Eifralo/Hive shared systems. This is your choice, as we do not share (yet) any systems with them. But you agreed to the containment of this specie. We believe this will have to be enforced by a navy, then what if the Hive decides to ignore our requests ? Our first proposition was to invade the illegal Hive colonies, and evacuate their populations back to their authorized worlds. Which you refused. We must ask you to reconsider this proposition.

Proposal 2 : Contain the Hive expansion in our frontiers. Enforce that containment by an allied Tyrean/Eifralo navy. Inform the Hive that unauthorized colonies will be evacuated by strength.

You cannot expect to stop accidents like Seginus III as long as you maintain trade relations with the Hive. We suggest you to cut all trade agreements with them. We understand the loss could harm your economy. So our proposal is that we will give the Eifralo new communication channels to compensate that economic problem. Please do not be fooled by this gift proposal, the Tyreans will not give you these just from goodwill, but because we also have a large amount of trade with the Eifralo, and further spread of the parasite in your worlds could possibly reach our population.

Proposal 3 : The Eifralo will stop all trade between them and the Hive. The Tyrean Federation will give the Eifralo new communication links to compensate the economic loss.

Last, please find inclosed an extract of a very old book from a Tyrean author. It was written in the Dark pre-technology age of our specie.

"The Prince" from Machiavellus.

"Shall you want to remove a political opponent of yours, but do not want to be involved in it, send that man on different missions which will have him go through dangerous territories. One day, his journey will meet troubles. If he is not killed by marauders, congratulate him, praise him for his courage but still assign him dangerous duties until he meet his fate. Should he refuses to serve, imprison him for disobeying his righteous leader. Thus you eliminated an opponent without being involved in his demise."

Machiavellus wrote that when time is on your side, you may just setup the course of events and wait for them to unfold almost naturally. Without being actively involved. Thinking about the whole accident, and considering the extend of your mutual trade, how did you dare imagine you could prevent the parasite to spread ?
It was not a problem of "If it spreads", but "when will it spread".
Refute that statement if you can.

Now the Tyrean Inner Council has a question for you, Chairman.
The contamination of your planet, was it :

an accident ?
or a planetary wide test ?

open your eyes.

Written In the name of the Tyrean Inner Council,

AI Consensus

/ * / * / * / END OF DIPLOMATIC MESSAGE \ * \ * \ * \

[geoschmo]

Over the years the expansion of the Hive had been driven by two strong instincts, self-preservation and curiosity. Initially all energies had been devoted to spreading as far and wide as the Hive could, to lessen the impact of a planetary or system-wide natural disaster from eliminating the entire Hive. As the Hive spread this fear became less and less of a possibility, but the Hive’s curiosity about the mysterious creators of the warp gates had taken its attention for a time. Each new race the Hive met was studied carefully, almost excitedly, to see if they had the technological abilities to manipulate such phenomenon or had a recorded history that extended back to the time which the Hive believed to be the age of the gates. None had been found yet that fit the profile.

This was not to say the Hive had not learned much from it’s interaction with the neighboring races. Though it continued to be baffled by how any race so fractured by different thoughts and personalities could cooperate enough to leave their own homeworld. The Hive had experimented with smaller Groups isolated for a time from the larger collective intelligence. It had learned that this could in fact be useful for some things, such as encouraging research and ingenuity. However, the practice had to be limited as the hosts in these smaller hives had a decidedly shorter lifespan. Their biological and mental processes would suffer from extended periods of isolation, even when the isolation was only partial. Because of this the Hive had learned to maintain efficiency by carefully monitoring the condition of the hosts and rotating them back to larger Hives, or in extreme cases to the homeworld itself.

The Hive had learned from its neighbors the value of trade and cooperation in research. By sharing resources and knowledge with other races the Hive could grow and learn more efficiently than it could do on its own. But this cooperation had resulted in a new danger. That of contamination of the other race’s hosts.

The Hive could not truly understand the fear that the "Unconnected" had about what they called the "fungus"”. The Hive felt they would likely be improved by becoming a part of the Hive, but something in its host’s memories told it that the unconnected would not consider it such an improvement. Out of a sense of courtesy more than anything else the Hive made every effort to prevent such contamination. These efforts were not always successful, but they were very nearly so.

Lately though the Hive had started to notice a change in attitude among some of its neighbors. Some communications had been intercepted that gave the Hive some concerns that perhaps there was a new danger to its existence. One that could not be lessened by simply expanding far and wide. The Hive began to consider whether it might need to learn new things. It began to devote more attention to it’s hosts memories regarding tactics and defenses.

[capnq]

CEO Davdi was startled out of his reverie by someone pounding on his office door. He started to reach for the intercom button to ask Loscu what was going on, then remembered that he'd sent her home early. She'd been almost as shaken by the news as he was; it was obvious that they weren't going to get much else done today. He looked at the report spread across his desk, and realized that he had been looking at it without really reading it for quite some time. "Come in," he called to the door.

Soctu Timho bounced into the room, looking as bad as Davdi felt. "I've got terrible news," he said as he skidded to a stop.

"I know, I was one of the first ones notified," Davdi replied. "It happened so suddenly, I can hardly believe he's gone."

Timho gave him a puzzled look. "I didn't know that you knew any of the crew personally."

Davdi returned his puzzlement. "Crew? What crew? You mean the people he was with?"

"Who was with?"

"Sinta, of course. Isn't that what you came to tell me?"

"No, I have a report from the _Appreciation_. What happened to Chairman Farki?"

"He died this afternoon. Had a massive stroke while watching his favorite skyball team from his private box."

Timho was taken aback. "I hadn't heard anything about that. I've been busy going over the _Appreciation_'s Last message with Node-25."

"What did they find that would interest Node-25?"

"You may recall that the _Appreciation_ was exploring the spinward edge of the cluster. They'd reached the frontier that the Tyreans share with the Katana Imperium."

"Yes, I remember that. The Katana never replied to our First Contact message, correct?"

"Right. The _Appreciation_ crossed the Duviniax system with no response, then entered the Candida system. They were intercepted there by a Katana light cruiser." Timho paused, seemingly reluctant to continue. "The Katana ship closed with them, then opened fire with some kind of energy weapon. Node-25 has been analyzing their final transmission, trying to identify the Katana weapon. The transmission cut off in mid-sentence; as far as we know, there were no survivors."

Still stunned by the death of his mentor, Davdi was slow to react to this new tragedy. "The Tyreans warned us to be cautious in that area. I guess it's true that trouble comes in threes. I've been going over the cost projections for screening Tophin imports for that parasitic fungus from Seginus. Even the most optimistic figures have us taking bigger losses than we would by simply cutting off trade, as the Tyreans have been recommending all along. But we can't cut off trade while we've still got scoutships deep in Tophin territory, because we don't know how they'll react."

"Especially with those two Tophin light cruisers that have been shadowing the _Investment_ for the Last few months," Timho agreed. "It's going to take them a year to get back to Ampolis for refuelling."

"A year of losing profit. Malwi is going to be livid, and Sinta isn't here anymore to help me hold him off. The next board meeting is going to be even worse than the budget fight two years ago."