Solar Storms Recycling

This is random, old stuff. I may incorporate some of it but for now, ignore this.

Interlude

At the very dawn of the 23rd century, during their unceasing quest to conquer the light barrier, humanity cheated. The mobius patterns seemed to defy the second law of thermodynamics, offering no explanation for their capabilities. Most were small, and fragile, but they were something else.

They were life.

It was decades before humans became aware of just what they had done. Before their intervention, the multiverses... megaverses... whatever, were happily colliding away, self-immolating, only to be reborn anew, with no such thing as a memory of their previous state.

But then humans brought a piece of this immolation, this rebirth, into their own realm, and began bending it to their will. This delicate flicker threatened to become an inferno that would sweep the Universe, and perhaps beyond.

Such presumption of godhood did not go unnoticed in the infinite expanse.

Though evidence for sapient life elsewhere in the galaxy slowly began to mount, the seemingly complete radio silence made most dismiss the notion of aliens.

Blissfully ignorant of the trap that awaited them, mankind worked with only the slightest notion of caution, and, enabled by their new discoveries, they looked into fields millenia ahead of their time.

Through accidents, intent, and strife, the people of Earth announced their presence to the Universe, Multiverse, and beyond. Through skearns and stargates, the means existed to reach the Solar System.

The most distant visitor needed no such means.

The Act

Trapped between ancient stellar empires whose resources vastly outstripped it, the solarians hoped for peace, despite the other race's views on their blasphemy.

Before the 23rd century reached its midpoint, the forces surrounding the slowly expanding Solar Consortium and its various leagues became acutely aware of humanity's potential. Mankind built its empire on circumventing the laws of physics, and if not crushed soon, no known power in the Galaxy would stop them.

What happenned next was called the Purge.

Perhaps, for all their numerical might, the Great Coalition would still have lost. Though host to barely more than a dozen star systems, the humans had patterns and their blasphemies, and every ship the alliance lost meant more resources for mankind's effort.

Many had suspected that some sort of trap had been laid for humanity, or rather, the species that aquired the ability to manipulate the patterns and form a kind of symbiosis with them.

The arrival of the being known as Anianke confirmed this suspicion.

Epilogue

Humanity learned, first hand and in painful form, that it was not the first race to begin merging with the patterns. Nor was it the second, or third... those two had been destroyed by the First.

Whether or not these 'First' - called the Cognita Primus by many - are the true first Phymbionts, or those who usurped a previous such race, is unknown, as only a handful of contacts are a part of the galactic experience. Regardless, each one is a being of immense power, claiming to be a god amongst gods.

Despite his power, Anianke could not overwhelm the human Triates, and though many perished, they took his life in turn - but this unprecidented victory cost the people of Sol the war.

During his death throes, Anianke sent a message to the Procyon Concord. Realizing the defeat of their creators was inevitable, they moved their fleets to the Solar System, and set about completing the Dyson swarm around the yellow dwarf.

Drawing their strength from symbolism and honing it through form, the complete disappearance of their host star was a blow of stunning proportions to mankind. Most of the patterns perished, those that did not were significantly weakened along with the triates.

Diaspora

Their home system lost, humanity turned to flight, and the gerents scatterred across the Milky Way. The Great Coalition did not turn to genocide, instead, in order to try and harness the power of mankind, they gathered up those who remained behind - the content - for study. By the will of the Procyon Concord, the roots were left on Earth, undisturbed, and the Dyson swarm moved out past Neptune's orbit, obscuring the entire planetary system.

The energy from the swarm was combined with that from a massive Klein tap constructed on Mercury. This phenominal power was channelled to a massive dimensional stabilization field, to suppress the formation of skearns around the Solar System, and keep the swarm in proper motion.

A few decades later, another First, known as Khien-voe, arrived in the Milky Way, to investigate the seemingly impossible death of his 'brother'.

A New Reality

At the very dawn of the 23rd century, during their unceasing quest to conquer the light barrier, humanity cheated. The mobius patterns seemed to defy the second law of thermodynamics, offering no explanation for their capabilities. Most were small, and fragile, but they were something else.

They were life.

It was decades before humans became aware of just what they had done. Before their intervention, the multiverses... megaverses... whatever, were happily colliding away, self-immolating, only to be reborn anew, with no such thing as a memory of their previous state.

But then humans brought a piece of this immolation, this rebirth, into their own realm, and began bending it to their will. This delicate flicker threatened to become an inferno that would sweep the Universe, and perhaps beyond.

Such presumption of godhood did not go unnoticed in the infinite expanse.

Though evidence for sapient life elsewhere in the galaxy slowly began to mount, the seemingly complete radio silence made most dismiss the notion of aliens.

Blissfully ignorant of the trap that awaited them, mankind worked with only the slightest notion of caution, and, enabled by their new discoveries, they looked into fields millenia ahead of their time.

An accident was waiting to happen, and only three years after the discovery of the patterns, Kennedy Station, a research platform located at Earth's L4 Lagrange point, exploded, and for a nanosecond, outshone the Sun by several orders of magnitude.

The light itself was a side effect of the true nature of the explosion. Tachyons are not particles, but rather, electromagnetically measurable lines of effect along space. Inside the Solar System, this inteferance was so strong that its nature as an explosion - was clear.

To civilizations many thousands to billions of light-years away, it was a signal of unimaginable power.

But to one, not even residing in our own multiverse, it was special.

Interlude

Humans played at politics and war, blissfully unconcerned with, and unaware of, the ramifications of the accident. Instead, they focused on repairing the damage, and struggling to control just how the future would be molded.

After the Solar Consortium failed to destroy Ouranos Prime at the conclusion of the One Battle War, the combined powers of the triates tore open the fabric of space itself in the fight, creating the first of countless skearns that now plague the Galaxy. Some of these held life, but a more ominous realization dawned on mankind - the faint afterglow of tachyon transmissions from expansive locations about the galactic plane.

Combined with the discovery of the Centaurus Relic, most humans not among the content came to realize that not only was Earth far from the only source of sapience in the Milky Way, something was very, very wrong.

Redux

Sometime, in the year 2202, humanity cheated. This much humans know. The mobius patterns seem to defy the second law of thermodynamics, offering no explanation for their capabilities. Most are small, and fragile, but they are something else.

They are life.

It may be aeons before humans are aware of just what they have done. Before their intervention, the multiverses... omniverse... whatever, were happily colliding away, self-immolating, only to be reborn anew, with no such thing as a memory if their previous state.

But now, humans have brought a piece of this immolation, this rebirth, into their own realm, and are bending it to their will. This delicate flicker threatens to become an inferno that may one day consume this Universe, and whatever lies beyond.

Without fear of disease or hunger, without worry of age or even death, the overwhelmingly vast majority of humans are called the Content, paragons of Nietzsche's Last Men, both male and female. They live their simple lives, either in quiet ennui, hedonistic frenzy, or somewhere in between, caring not for a future they believe to be garaunteed. By their own actions and decisions, they are second-class citizens, fourteen billion humans united in apathy.

But the future is not yet written, and, whether through circumstance or raw personal drive, some seek to guide or alter the status quo. Those who belong to this fractured lot are the authors of humanity's future - however minor. They manage and guide humanity and its creations, trying to forge their vision of what the future should be. Due to this, some call this section of humanity the gerents.

This is no consensus. The current dominant body is the Solar Consortium, which formed after the Martian Compact had taken control of Earth. The old powers who held sway over Earth's people before that incident have not forgotten, and neither have the masses who have rejected technology entirely, living outside of the great Arcologies as the original humans once lived, fortelling of the days when the sins of Man will be brought low.

Not half a century after the rise of the Consortium, it already finds its power threatened. Humans, transformed by the meddling of science into affairs that should have never been possible, are displaying abilities beyond the ken of current knowledge. Hunted, these rare humans banded together to build Ouranos Prime, a mighty space station resting inside the orbit of the seventh planet. There, they built a new weapon, revealing its nature in an event now known as the Jovian Massacre. This bought them many enemies, but also a measure of safety, at least for a few years.

Out across the vast gulf of space, the recent destruction of Kennedy Station has alerted another intelligence to humanity's presence. In a fit of panic, they have expended centuries of carefully harnessed energy in order to reach the nascent civilization. They have no idea what they will find.

Mankind knows little better.

Three

By the dawn of the 23rd century, humans have visited every planet in the Solar System. A roving mass of man-made satellites swarm about Sol, and some three hundred million people do not call Earth home.

The vast majority of those who call themselves human are nearly immortal; over a billion people have entered their third century, and in the next few decades, a few will complete it. Genetic engineering has gone from curing the ills of aging and defects, to enhancing the human mind as well as the body. With each passing year, the limits of humanity's horizon seem to grow ever outward.

Though the drums of war beat silently in space, all can hear them. The Solar Consortium, fresh into its power, attempted to stamp out those that could one day challenge its might. The symbol of its failure is Ouranos Prime, a gathering of whom their government would see extinct.

---

Over a century has passed since the Prometheus Accords, and the development of the Alpha Strain. This genetic modification divided humanity into two camps - those that rejected technology, and those who embraced it. The former cast themselves out of society, now living as hunter-gatherers, struggling alongside the common animals. For their faith, those who embraced technology, and the Alpha Strain, no longer know age.

With natural causes of death almost unheard of, genetic engineering is taking humanity to new heights. The Prometheus Accords called for further genetic modifications to humanity. Alpha Excelsior, the Beta Strain, and the Gamma Project all continue to seek a different idealized version of the human form.

Those who left refused to call these strains human.

Shortly after the discovery of the mobius patterns, the first team that worked on the Gamma Project made an exotic breakthrough, finding a similar alternate realm, and incorporating it into their work. The official report of the Solar Consortium is that the experiment caused brutal, painful deaths for all involved.

Some know better.

---

During the American battle for independence, and the development of the mighty nation that arose from it, one of the founding notions has ever been:

"All people are created equal."

That notion is dying, on several levels.

Are artificial sapiences people? What of people created by the hand of humanity, formed together out of organs, a synthetic fusion of flesh and machine?

Can one honestly argue that a normal, pureblood human is, in any way, equal to one of the advanced strains?

There is a desire, for many people, to move up in the world, to take this power for themselves. Outside of the songs, much of it is firmly locked in the hands of those who already had power after the Martian Conflict.

And, for all that, no amount of money will allow a person to find their own Song. No amount of power will make one Chosen.

Only one's own merits can prove worthy.