VII - The Age of the Federation - Utopia

Hell is other people, so they say, and there's only two roads out of that hell.

The violent route is straightforward. Provided you’re strong enough, you can get a long way before you realize the self-defeating futility of your quest. The only alternative is more frightening and difficult than eternal war; to recognize that the Other and the Self are one.

Our final test would come now, the fabled Enemy that drove the Infinite Empire before them and provoked galaxy-spanning tragedy. Though we started divided and fought each other to terrible effect, eventually all would stand as one, alongside the reformed Infinite themselves. Sparing them, allowing them to join the community of star nations, was a refutation of those old doctrines. It did also give them a chance to confront their long-sought tormentors, who had now been provoked by our level of development to come for us, while we could still be contained.

Or so they thought.

As such quests to extinguish the Other always end, they'd finally picked a fight they just couldn't win, though it was a close-run thing. Worlds and fleets burned in uncountable number. No conflict before it could compare. Yet life is stronger than ****, hope greater than fear, and we proved it in this final apocalyptic reckoning. Our coalition had finally arrived at their hidden homeworld, given one chance to rid the galaxy forever of this manifest evil. You can guess what happened next; just like the Bound, the Enemy were astonished by our ways, but could hardly refuse the chance to live again. There was just one condition; they would become the guardians of the new Galactic Federation.

Finally, all the ancient divisions fell away; there is only life and ****, and all that is alive is our ally. Our selves. Focusing inwards, we stabilized the jump points, allowing any vessel to transit via nodespace instantly. Later, we cracked the hypergates of the Ancients, and zipped between worlds faster than one could once cross their hometown. In time, the vast bulk of the Federation took up residence aboard vast megastructures, worldships, and ringworlds, experiencing life as beings of data in the cloud.

For those who remained concrete but immaculate, better to leave the life-bearing worlds to their original inhabitants, eschewing terraforming, colonization, and borders. Out there in the black is all the space, building materials, and energy a corporeal civilization could use. Black holes are a great power source once you figure them out, very sweet and accommodating.

Don’t like a particular community? Vote to change it. Can’t get the votes? Go found your own station and live according to your code. Nothing’s perfect, and we’re not going to agree on everything. Your freedom can’t be infinite without restricting, paradoxically, everyone else's. There’s still going to be mistakes and malice, burdens to bear and conflicts to fight.

But more and more every day, you can do what you want, and live voluntarily, without the compulsion inherent even in physical reality. The reason is in our will, which endures now past space, time, and **** itself. We won’t stop this party until long after the last star has winked out.

So, time for the only question that matters. How do you want to live?