Sealine Dawn

This place is insane.

There is no natural resource here to be explored, no significant source of raw materials in reach. Despite that we are likely to surpass the population of Solar System in 50 years, possibly less. Only because of one thing: curiosity. This is the only part of the know Universe that does not play by the same rules of nature we found everywhere else. People figured out that must be a reason for that, and they want to be as close as possible to the source of the information when someone finally find out what that reason looks like.

Humanity was always insane, you could argue. Even before it start making babies outside the comfortable limits of mother planet atmosphere.

Short before Baby Steps Age they were obsessed with having “too much people”. Making up reasons to panic about, like “clime change” and “super-bacteria”, pandemic virus, things like that. All that because they had reached about 10 billion individuals. That was a larger population that any other before that, for humanity. Ergo “too many people”, allegedly.

Ignoring that Earth was not the only planet that exists. Ignoring that humans do not need planets to live, actually, they need conditions that can be created about everywhere given the right investments and proper technology. Technology they already had, by them! Or at least had the basic tools to develop. They even ignored that the total number of humans a territory can support changes. Accordingly with the technology available to produce food and other goods. Instead of play with those variables, greatly beneficial to them at the time, and improving, their choice was to look at the absolute number “10 billion” and panic.

Just because.

Then, of course, Baby Steps came. Changing everything everyone knew about populational grow. Replacing a insanity for another.

Just like that, humans turned into optimistic, in love with being humans. Make babies became the most important thing in the minds of vast majority of people. As many babies as possible, as fast as they possibly could.

Artificial uterus were spreading like a plague, and the only complain people had about the situation now was that they could not find enough human embryos to make full use of their external wombs. This was the time when the first genetic engineered people started being born. Was the time when aging stopped being a fact of life, and biologic immortality became universal for humans. Talking cats, dogs, warthogs, and etc, started showing up. In increasingly humanized shapes. Local governs didn’t knew what to do with them.

War had to be fought because one space station felt the neighbour space station was not treating their uplifted pets the right way.

Economy went crazy, politics went crazy. Baby Steps Age lasts 800 legal years and the first half of it was feverish. No one seems to know what they where doing, everybody was euphoric with the realization that no one would die anymore. Even those people who had been born when biological immortality was already a fact. The vast majority of adult people since 25 years after biological immortality became a fact,

Only thing they seem to agree about is that they needed more human beings in existence. Never mind “what for?”, they just needed it.

They where still going in that direction 1.000 years after Baby Steps Age end. That was when the Mystery Fleet Expedition entered the Stelar System by we are orbiting now. And was completely destroyed. Actually, we are still going in that direction even now, 4500 years the end of Baby steps.

However, of course, we know “what for?”. Humans make as many human children as they possibly can, to spread humanity.

For now, the goal is occupy all this galaxy. Next step will be send Seeding Fleets to other galaxies. Everywhere. All places in reach of human space vessels.

Before Baby Steps humans though that 10 billion humans in existence was too many. Mystery Fleet had trillions of vessels. Six billion individuals for vessel, by the time they leaved the Solar System, but with space for populational grow. And some of the vessels had more than one hundred humans already. It was only some 300 years after the first space-fleet leave the system to colonize other systems.

To be fair, Mystery Fleet was the largest Colonizing Expedition ever send. Up to this day it remains the largest fleet assembled anywhere, from one single stellar system.

Despite that, when the Mystery Fleet was completely destroyed, and every person in those vessels died, the total demographic of humanity was not affected. The change was insignificant. In the 1 thousand years that Mystery Fleet had to travel to reach the place where we are right now, the population of Solar System continued to grow.

Even sending trillions of humans every year to other systems. In seeding fleets. Sun System was still raising its population, not just keeping its levels.

Of course, as you know, since a little before the end of Baby Steps those humans were no longer biologically immortal. Vast majority of them.

Any human person born after Alexandrine ****-Line Date is limited to 300 years of life. Most humans born before that decided by their own choice to give up their right of immortality and join the limit of 300 years. To not feel like hypocrites.

I thing that is one of the rarest moments in history when the vast majority of a population sacrificed their self-interest for the sake of avoid being hypocrites.

There is a famous book from a guy who was 423 years when the **** Line broke. All his friends, family, everybody he knew, decided to sign away their biological immortality. He was alone in the decision to keep it.

So, 275 years later many among those who accused him of being a terrible person started getting second thoughts. A number of them decided to go back and since they could no longer get their previous legal status they accepted to become non-humans. What we now call “degenerated-humans”, the famous dges. Who have no right what so ever in the eyes of High AIs. Are just living property, like any uplifted or non-uplifted pet, farm beast or wild one.

One of those who change their minds was the guy ex-wife. He accepts to be registered as the owner, as a mere formality. To prevent her to be registered as public property, since no one knew for sure what directions laws would take after that point.

When the book was written they had lived for 2011 years as a married couple. After leave the Solar System. Never telling their neighbours and friends in their new home this personal detail about their family.

Then never had children of their own, because any children she generates will be legally a dge. However, only people who know that are the AIs. For everyone else it is a philosophical choice without any personal motivation.

Guy changed the names and other biographic details to avoid identification. Despite that, I suspect some of their friends may have at least imagined they had been part of the story. Who the author is, also.

Not a huge issue presumably, because people who live that long in a society where everybody else is ties to the limit of 300 years will need to move, from time to time. It they don’t want to suffer growing resentment and envy from their neighbours. AIs are great in keeping people’s privacy and help those adaptations. Fortunately. But that is if, and only if, the person asking for help is legally human.

Part of what makes the book so interesting is in the background details about their two different marriages. How things changed from the 30 years they had as a couple when both were people, equal in rights, in a society of biologically immortal humans, egalitarian in regard to sexes, and obsessed with breed faster than rabbits. To the second marriage, in a society limited to 300 years of life, where they are biologically immortals living discreetly and omitting this detail about themselves. Also, how the fact that she is now his legal property, with no chance to end the relationship or walk away, affects their daily life. Even If they never speak about, and live the same way they would if they both were still legally humans.

Allegedly, exact the same life.

All strange things in History before and after that cannot compare to the Consensus of Alexandria. It’s consequences still shape more things in our daily lives than we realize.

Even if they could never have imagined this situation. The archipelago of spaceships and adjacent structures that is growing here. “Sealine” we call it, taking the name from a small floating mountain that was to be the last stop of Mystery Fleet before they reach and start colonizing Mystery System. Ended up as their last stop before destruction.

All stellar systems are sending fleets here. Bringing cargo, materials to build shipyards and space-stations. The flux is almost equivalent to the one directed to Solar System, and that is the birthplace of humankind. Where the Hearth of Humanity is.

History is, complicated.

Consider the situation of those non-human people born before Alexandria. When the criteria separating humans from non-humans, and people from non-people, where still open for debate. A debate now closed for most practical purposes. Closed for good, since the Consensus of Alexandria.

Some of them had lived all their lives in nations where they were citizens. Granted the same rights and subjected to the same obligations that any other citizen. Being born from a fox, a shark or some creative bioengineered design conceived from scratch was irrelevant. They where people just because they where able to speak and demonstrate some predefined levels of intelligence in specific tests.

Suddenly, after Alexandria, everything had changed for them. Perhaps their Nation still considered them the same way, but they knew it was likely to change in the long run. Because this powerful element, common to almost all communities and integrated in basically every thing would from that moment on place a huge distinction between them and their fellow neighbours born from human parents.

Distinction that still applies everywhere in this galaxy. Including here. On the edge of this precipice named Mystery System.

Sealine if growing fast. Carefully, to not collapse into a blackhole due to excessive mass in too small place. From distance this place is starting to look like a self-produced spider web. Or some sort of white fungus.

Almost everybody here is a scientist. Involved with a handful of large and expensive projects. To poke and to lick the borders of Mystery System in every conceivable way. Short to actually enter that region in person. Because we already know what happens when people to that.

So far, no consistent data was produced. From here the place remains as mysterious as it was when the first scientists who discovered it were looking their telescopes. Inside Sun System.

We are not sure how mane planets there is in the System, how many natural satellites each one has. Or what substances are present in each celestial body. We could not find our missing ships, their parts, anything. We see the movement, but from a moment to the next it seems to change, in impossible ways. As if we were not looking at one system but to an infinite number of systems.

That is a popular theory about the Mystery, actually. This is some sort of window to parallel Universes. We don’t understand what we see because it is constantly changing. Each time we look a different system is there. From a different Universe.

No one could suggest a way to test that theory. Not any way that would have chance to produce results. Nevertheless, is about the best thing we got.

Sealine is planned to form a ring around Mystery System. At safe distance. Then, in time, the ring shall grow into a sphere.

Going back to my initial statement. It is insane!

It will be a single nation, supposedly. Federation of sorts. Already has quadrillions over quadrillions of states. Logically, will have a lot more. Some rules must be common toward all the structure of Sealine, I understand.

Permission to arrive here, and be integrated in the structure is a contemptuous subject.

Administrate all that would be impossible without High AIs. But I fear the task may prove to be beyond even the mighty intellectual capabilities of those self-sentient programs.

People are being born here all the time too, goes without saying. What complicates things even more. Because are we supposed to **** those people born here to grow up to dedicate their 300 years of existence to science? And particularly to the scientific mission to decipher Mystery System?

Or should we **** those who don’t engage in this project willingly to pack and leave some point in their lives? If so, then when?

Space here is precious. The best Physicists in all Galaxy dispute the chance to came here. Even knowing they will not live long enough. And can only reach a fraction of the way before die from old age. Or need to give up their human status, in exchange for biological immortality.

How about us?

I mean no offense. Some people are more sensible with that sort of thing, some people not at all. I mean, I cannot tell where they squeezed your DNA base from, but anyone can see by looking at your face that you will not be talking with any AIs.

You are not the only one, of course. Some of the most relevant mathematicians and theoretical physicists in the Galaxy, who are alive today, happen to be here in Sealine. A significant percentage of them are uplifted octopuses or other cephalopods. We can travel for days in this section of Sealine without cross with anyone who has humans in the blood tree. Of course, we prefer that way.

Each one of us must deliver results, above human average, just to be allowed the comfort of being left alone. Since AIs do not work with us, we need human mediators online just to communicate with them, what makes everything way harder.

Nothing special, everybody here has been making it work. It is possible!

My distant ancestors happened to be camels in some African Earthling desert, as you may be able to imagine from those subtle clues on my skin, face and feet. I am one of the lucky ones, actually. Nine generations separate me from my closest ancestor who could not speak. I grew up in a family, fairly large one actually. My people had already started to build a history and a culture for themselves, at the borders of those humans let then have as scraps, when I was born. I know people who are first generation. Taken right from the oven! No identity to claim for themselves.

Only shame.

Well, one consolation is that: is impossible to tell just for looking at someone.

Dra Meredith, our chief surgeon in this sector, is one of the oldest of us. In existence! She was cooked in orbit of Earth natural satellite. On the original “Moon”. Little more than one century after Baby Steps start. Her DNA is almost pure akita dog. She is one of those who don’t mind people knowing about her origins, and she is a first generation. However, most first generations are not like her. I would not point them to you, obviously.

Father Oliveira is a third generation, his kin was genetic engineered from ground zero, to look like humanoid dragons. Flying, fire breathing, the whole package. His body is about as strong as any living thing can be before you add cyborg improvements. However, his instincts are a mess. He practically don’t have them, whatever comes naturally for naturally evolved being (uplifted or not) he must train himself to do, and intellectually remember. His specie don’t even know what sexual impulses are, beyond what they can understand intellectually. Works fine for a catholic priest, I suppose. A bit of cheating, if you ask me.

However, the man is sincere in his faith. More than serious in his dedication for help his community. And the best nuclear-engineer you will ever meet! Self-taught. He is the one who fixes our mechanical problems when they get too serious for the rest of us handle.

That is the kind of people you will find here. Hard to be around most of them. Many have difficulty to trust anyone.

Many will make honest effort to help you find your way here.

Good people, almost everybody.

We are trying to be there for each other. No one can say how long it will last. We are all property of someone, or some institution. Even if our sector has a self-sufficient economy, almost. And is caring its weight in terms of infra-structure and research. Keeping internal security and all small and big administrative details that are administrated with the help of AIs in other parts of Sealine. Even if we do nothing wrong. There are no guarantees.

We have no chance to win a war against humanity.

Therefore, we just play or role and hope for the best.

Humans and dges know they are not welcomed in this sector, but they also understand that we will shallow our dissatisfaction when they choose to **** their presence on us. Specially the humans. Because, there is only so much we dare to do.

Many people toward Sealine make the option to have cyborg surgery. Replace at least the skeleton and some muscles for structures stronger than what DNA based materials can provide. The architects of Sealine did a really great job in may aspects, but some parts of this place have **** variation in gravity. Sometimes going from 20 times standard gravity to almost zero in few kilometres. Nothing can help you deal with that half as well as a cyborg skeleton, and lungs.

Even if you stay in one neighbourhood all the time, sometimes gravity will change drastically. Because someone is moving some heavy engine, or a cargo of engine replacement parts, too close to us.

This, at least, is something everybody in Sealine has to deal with. Not just us. The best planning cannot solve all the details involved in a project as big as that. When nothing in that scale was ever tried. Not even close.

We are not the only monsters in Sealine, of course. There are talking people without human ancestors everywhere, or more exactly in most parts of this spiderweb. We try to help, make contact. Build a common identity, in the long run. Whit those who show interest.

There is a project in the opposite side of Mystery System. Named “Othershore”. Much smaller than Sealine, little more than a large space-station. I was involved in the logistic, a little.

They build this place as distant as possible from here, but also as close as possible from Mystery System. Because the plan is to accommodate telepaths up there. Populations of them, from virtually all species ever created with this strange genetic engineered trait.

People like us. Perhaps closer to the situation of Father Oliveira than they are to my situation or yours. Took a scary amount of creative bio-engineering to reach this trait.

Telepathy! We still don’t know exactly how it is possible.

Is dangerous to have large populations of them. No one has any way to say for sure what will happen when all those different species breed distant from each other, in different stellar systems, find each other. And start sharing their lives, in such large numbers. It sounds irresponsible, unjustifiable even.

Despite how it looks like, this is a huge project. The volume of investments is hard to believe. Many influential decision makers of humanity have decided to take a bit risk.

Hoping to find our more about Mystery System, by the use of this telepathic component.

One of the theories is that there is a mind behind Mystery System. According to it, this place was designed as it is. Our difficulties to study it are the product of some advanced camouflage. If that is the case, we may have found the first intelligence that has nothing to do with humanity. Neither is human not is the product of human art. A mind entirely alien.

That being the case, they hope telepathy may be able to give us some sort of additional information about what we are dealing with.

Possibly even stablish a first like of communication. That is the highest hope here.

More likely those telepaths will suffer some sort of large-scale short-circuit and die in a big mental explosion, undetectable by non-telepaths. All of them sacrificed to achieve nothing.

Is something to try, anyway. They will try that. If doesn’t work, they will try something else.

We all think something will work. I suppose. Or we would have no reason to want to stay here.

Sooner or later something has to work.

Keep in mind, I want to stress that point to you and everyone else in our Sector. Until something work, what may take millions of years, the rest of Expansion Age actually. Until something work. Othershore is not “business as usual”. Not “just another project”. This people whom they are risking up there for the sake of humanity are flesh and blood people. They are neither humans nor dges. That makes them “us”! By exclusion.

I don’t really wish to see dges tortured or killed, but neither I care much when that happens. Humans can do with their degenerated cousins as they please. I could not care less about what humans do to other humans, that is only their business. This is different.

Everything we can do to make the survival of those people more likely, we must do. I already contacted a group of people in the Sector. Great minds from different fields, who may help design strategies to make the survival in Othershore more likely. ****, hypnotherapy, even feng shui. Our human employers are interested in results, a mass **** of telepaths would not be a bad thing for them if it produces any advance in the knowledge we have about this stellar system.

We are highly motivated too, but we have only one goal when the subject is Othershore: the wellbeing of our people up there. Keep that in mind: they are our people.

If you think you can help this project, in any way, I would be glad to include you in our discussions. Cannot promise you much in terms of financial support, we are all working for peanuts, metaphorically speaking. I can guarantee you a place to stay, at least. Basic needs, and a chance to make contacts that may lead to more profitable positions in the future.

No pressure! Take your time, consider your options. This is a serious decision and serious commitment to our cause will be demanded from you if you say yes.

I will not hold your decision against you, if you say no.