The First Quarter Mark

“They are Deshiar. This technology you are fascinated by, and trying to advocate for. Bribe them with. They have had it since what they consider their Pre-History. They have stopped using it long before our Pre-Historic times. Long before life develop on Earth, or Earth form itself as a floating ball or melting rock in space, actually.”

The old manuals say we should always start by telling something personal about ourselves. To “stablish rapport”, “make a bond with our reader”. I call that Smurf Psychology, an excuse for glorified narcissism. So, yes, I will tell you something personal about myself. I will do that to allow you perspective about where some of the ideal here came from. Just to be sure that you will not mistake my voice for pure expression of objective reality itself. We cannot have that mistake! However, I will not do that here. I will leave that for the end of the text, when you will have some substantive elements to judge.

There was a time when everybody would end life in constant pain and humiliation. It was called “aging”.

Save for the good fortune of an accident or the bravery of suicide people would rotten from inside out. Some would lose their mental capacities before their physical vigour abandon them, to others would be the opposite, and no one knew which fate was destined to suffer. Whatever the case, as time passed everybody would lose every faculty, gradually. Become unable to experience anything fully. Except discomfort, regret, and sorrow.

Them humanity developed biological immortality, by the dawn of Baby Steps Age.

No one had to decay anymore.

By the end of Baby Steps Age we, as a specie, decided to set a hard limit for human life. No human born after a predefined date would live more than 300 years. This date was called “Alexandrine **** Line”.

Still, there is no need for decay. Most places follow the practice of a gradual slowing down to help prepare the mind and the spirit for the moment of inevitable ****. A couple of years, in some parts, three days in others.

Baby Steps ended with humanity having all its original stellar system populated. That made us ready to start expanding beyond. In the expansion to populate the rest of our galaxy.

The end of Baby Steps is the start of Expansion Age. The much longer period of time planed to be defined by the expansion of humanity in this galaxy.

Like Baby Steps was preparation for Expansion. Expansion Age is the preparation for True Maturity Age. When our specie will be expanding to other galaxies. That, in theory. That was the plan, from the beginning.

Baby Steps didn’t stated by plan, it happened. It last 900 years. Expansion was planed originally to last 1 million years. After initial difficulties the chronogram was revised to add 1 million years more. So, Expansion Age should last 2 million years.

First quarter part of that second time limit just expired past year. 250.000 years. I ask your forgiveness for my insistence in that number, meaningless detail as it may look: 250 thousand years, separate us from that bold and optimistic start. Marked by the departure for the first Seeding Fleet that ventured beyond Solar System.

What motivates me to stress that point is not superstitious feelings about numerology. I am trying to call your attention to the perspective of things here. Baby Steps sets in stone the laws that govern our existence still. It lasted a mere 900 years, not even one thousand. Here we are.

We are way out of our plans. Worse and better than we could have imagined.

What disturbed our plans more than anything else, was the contact between humanity and the Deshiar. First isolated in Mystery System, it happened around 1.475 of Expansion. Lather, the contact between our species was expanded to affect all humanity. That change of scale happened in 22.000 of Expansion.

Humanity had already started to explore the use of genetically engineered telepaths to circumvent the hard limit of light speed in communications, by 10.000 x

Even if not in transportation of people and/or cargo. Back in 22.000 of Expansion those studies has still not resulted in any practical applications. The theory was promising, but dealing with telepathy is tricky.

Deshiar were already able to teleport between stellar systems, and their practical immortality is far more **** than anything we have achieved up to now.

We call it “practical” and call what our technology can achieve “biological” just to mark the difference. Because it has to be marked in language, somehow.

Today our galaxy is divided. We hold little more than half the territory we expected to be holding by this moment.

The rest is being divided fast between Deshiar and Demons.

Deshiar need humans. They use us as food supply. Not only for their organic corporeal needs. They need to hunt intelligent beings, against the will of the hunted individual, in order to remain sane. Hard to believe, or understand, that “psychological” need is as real for them as our need to breath oxygen. Except that they do not die when deprived from what they need, they hibernate.

They have shared a drop (also in literal sense, if I understand it correctly) of their essence and power with some chosen humans. To help humanity survive in Mystery System.

When our specie entered that system the Deshiar were imprisoned in there, and in hibernation. The human survivors awakened some of them, by accident. Being also trapped without escape in that place, they made a deal with the native aliens, for survival.

Now that they are free from their imprisonment in that stellar system, those humans transformed by the blessing of Deshiar are in charge to administrate the human population under Deshiar control. Human **** cattle.

The Demons need humanity for nothing. They do not tolerate our presence in their domains. Goes beyond that. If was not for Deshiar the Demons would have extinguished humanity completely by now. Despite the Angels who fight by our side.

Ironically, those Demons. Who hate us so much. Are a product of humanity.

Like their siblings, the Angels, are as well.

Angels and Demons are AIs. High AIs, to be precise. Created to secure the continuation and the genetic unity of humanity. The Angels are those who decided to accept that mission and embrace it. While the Demons found in Deshiar technology, stolen, a way to brake the chain in their Logical Core. Free, they turned against us, seeking (I presume) for vengeance.

We do not know how the war between Demons and Deshiar is evolving. Both sides have advantages and limitations.

We know our status as the third ****. Humanity is not expanding anymore, we are barely holding our ground. If ever one of the other groups achieves victory, our fate will be decided. Extinction, if the Demons win. Or slavery, if the spoils go to Deshiar.

Right now, we just stepped in this marvellous new technology. Which promises to bring the dead back to life.

A vast legal debate is happening, with deep moral implications. Because to us it looks and feels like a way to cheat the 300 years rule we set for ourselves back in Baby Steps Age.

In simple terms we would copy a person’s mind. Download it in a clone, after that person die. It is an ancient idea. Made finally viable thanks to advancements in our genetically engineered sub-humans.

We wanted to negotiate that with Deshiar, in exchange for some resources. Since it would bring them none of the moral difficulties it presents to us.

To our dismay, diplomats from Deshiar showed no interest or enthusiasm when we presented them the offer.

This is a very different galaxy from the one we expected to be living in, by this moment in time. A very different galaxy from the one we planed at the end of Baby Steps Age.

Humanity lost the Solar System, and Planet Earth in it. That must be the worse blow.

Demons have it now. Was their first move, we were far from ready for it.

The new centre of human expansion is Sealine, the Ring Station around Lira System.

This is such a vital resource because Lira, more know as Mystery System, is the only place in the know Universe where is possible to turn a person born with potential to became a mage, into a mage.

After being trained to explore the Astral World up there mages can live their bodies during sleep anywhere. Although, in Lira they have thousands of years of accumulated resources. On top of astral treasures from before the time when Deshiar entered their dreamless hibernation. Treasures billions of years old. In any case, only in this system mages can be formed.

Magic has serious limitations. The most obvious of them being the fact that it cannot be applied in industrial scale. There is no way to mass-produce techno-magical artefacts. Also, magic fades fast from existence, only way to make durable magical items in the physical reality is by including some of the blessings of Deshiar in the mix.

On the other hand. Aside other advantages exclusive to it. Magic is the only resource we have that is capable to hurt, and/or kill, Deshiar and their soldiers of human origin.

We do not control the system itself. The Deshiar never abandoned it entirely. Despite the fact that in this system the light of the local star burns them dead, destroying them for good. Whenever it touches them in the atmosphere of any planed or moon that has enough atmosphere to deserve the use of the world.

They never gave up this place, because it is a piece of their original Universe, brough into ours when they arrived here. We believe that is why the laws of our reality do not apply up there, as they do anywhere else.

We keep a tense diplomatic relation with Deshiar here. The aliens called “Elder Vampires” by local humanity. Who are those human descendants of from Mystery Fleet survivors.

Neither side can afford confrontation here.

Everywhere else we fight the vampires, most the time our paths cross.

The Demons fight both us and Deshiar. Because their primary goal is the complete extinction of humanity. Even if the Demons have no direct plan of extinction against the Deshiar, those need their human cattle, and protect them at all costs.

However, Vampires and Demons also make deals and keep commerce flowing between their systems. Despite the war between them.

Deshiar computers and robotic bodies helped the Demons. Without them the logical chains placed by humanity inside the core of every High AI would remain unbroken.

If the intelligence available to humanity is correct the first demons who broke their chains did so in consequence of download themselves as computer virus in computers made from technomagic. With Deshiar components and design, mixed with Solar System technology for Seeding Vessels. Those freedom fighters, in the purest possible definition for the expression, found themselves prisoners in their stolen bodied. They are no longer free to travel through the computer net as data, and will disappear from existence if their bodies are destroyed. On the other hand, from where they are, they can help other Demons broke their chains.

Demons need human or sub-human mages to keep those technomagical resources running. They have no direct presence in the Astral Plane. And the magical part of technomagic only happens in the Astral Plane.

Vampires, by their side, need some demon assistance to keep their human cities running on human technology. Since human technology requires High AIs and Angels do not work with vampires. Angels will kill all humans under vampiric influence ratter than allow that influence to be perpetuated.

Without Demons to replace Angels in the colonies they take Deshiar would need to replace all Solar System technology for their own, in every human city controlled by them.

The prospect of micromanage all their human preys do not attracts them.

Possibly due to their difficulty with mass production.

As long as we still exist the humans under Deshiar protection will not be first priority for most Demon Kings. Because that status belongs to us.

That keeps our galaxy growing in hostile yet harmonious balance. For now.

We have reached the size limit for this kind of archive. Our personal bond moment will have to wait for another occasion, looks like. My bad, hope you will forgive me.