Return of an Empire

[The Mindset]

Deep in the empty, cold depths of space, something strange was happening. Twenty nanoseconds past the initial energy spike the pulsating microsingularity, barely the size of a pinhead but massing more than a small planet, began expunging billions of terajoules of raw exotic energy into its increasingly cluttered accretion disc. Presently, local spacetime began undergoing spasmodic twists in its baseline fabric as the singularity pressed the velvet of the vacuum to breaking point.

Causality broke. An old star blazed into existence. The constructor created structure from dead mass. It had travelled light, packed down into a few cubic Planck lengths, disdaining the clumsy meddling of causality by merely human clades. Once it had arrived, self-replicators built purely from quarks recreated from ancient templates; presently, simple fusion pods blossomed and burnt bright and dirty. The frigid depths of space suddenly blazed furiously on all wavelengths. Once the planets were complete, the Guiders would emerge from aestivation, ready to observe their handiwork.

Sitting in a highly eccentric polar orbit that drifted almost sixty thousand kilometres above the forming planet below, the constructor’s prime node basked fat and happy at the heart of its creation. Now, as the first generation bots disassembled and were recycled, barely sixteen thousand seconds from the initial causality violation, the constructor took stock. The nebulous remnants of a long-dead star, expanding outwards at near light speed, had been reclaimed and reused in the reconstruction of this system. There were still copious amounts of mass to be used.

Meanwhile, the first signs of organic life were arriving. Once part of a human civilization that had been forcibly transported through time and space by a demigod-like artificial sentience, they had long since transmigrated into their own computer networks. The Mindsetti, once a proud and accomplished Empire, was now a travelling embassy, a nexus for the exchange of information and culture between universes. But now it was home. It had zigged and zagged its way through the multiverse for six thousand years, ever since it had developed tranuniversal tunnelling technology, gathering information and continually seeking a way home to the universe of its origin; and now it was here.

A foam of diamond was growing in orbit of Graxis, the moon of Midna, now fully formed and teeming with life far below. Strange emulsions stirred within some of the bubbles, a boiling soup of nanomachine-catalyzed chemical reactions. Other bubbles faded to black, soaking up sunlight with near-total efficiency. A steady stream of tanks drifted towards the foam on chaotic orbits, ejecta from the mining autofactories in the outer system. Within the bubbles, incarnate life congealed, cells assembled by machine rather than the natural process of mitosis. Thousands of seconds passed, a lifetime to the constructors: skeletons appeared, first as lacy outlines and then as postmodern rocky outcroppings floating in the central placental bubbles. Blood, tissue, teeth and organs began to congeal in place as the constructors pumped complicated synthetic enzymes, DNA, RNA and other cellular mechanisms into the artificially conceived living cells.

The first Mindsetti bodies began to twitch.

[The Mindset]

The starwisp Legacy of Nurik slipped down out of the night sky, its mottled black hull barely illuminated by the pale iridescence of the massive ion storms scouring the sky; an unfortunate side-effect of the cosmic engineering taking place back in orbit. Beneath the slick vessel, Midna formed a twinkling solidity of reddened light, stark shadows cast into the horizons of freshly formed mantle. Already, even before the biome had been seeded, mini-constructors were hard at work converting mass into endless kilometres of aggressively alien architecture: fusion substations, landmass-convertors, saltwater reactors, biogel plants and more stretched as far as Pandora’s freshly congealed eyes could see.

Pandora had examined its body template closely before it put it on again. After all, it had been over two millennia since the last time it’d been flesh and bone. During the intervening years it had been stored as a digital avatar inside the Upload; it had lived a billion lives within the Mindsetti pocket universe. There, time was merely an abstract concept, entropy non-existent. Inside the Upload, Mindsetti were gods of their own domain, and revered deities to all others. A true utopia.

Pandora had lived eight hundred terra-years in real time before the Upload was built and the second great Singularity occurred. Its body, (mostly) physically standard human, betrayed no hint of age and was permanently pristine at biological mid-twenties. Completely neuter, completely asexual, completely androgynous, she was no closer, genetically speaking, to a 21st century human than a 21st century human was to an ape. Within the Upload there was no need for gender; a mind is a mind, after all. That is not to say that it did not have genitalia – on the contrary, Pandora could manipulate its flesh into any shape it required. Sex within the Upload was a pansexual smorgasbord, and so it is within the real world.

Back in orbit, in the constructor’s prime node, it’d emerged from the crystal foam of her fleshly birthpod, drawing its first breath for two thousand years. Its chest jerked up and down, sucking air as if it’d just emerged from a nightmare. Its hearts began their rhythmic pumping, and it felt the warm, sickly moist air of the birthing chambers brush across its pale skin. A slow smile revealed perfectly white teeth. I think I’ll be female for now.

Breasts instantly grew.

Pandora reviewed the landing vectors the semi-sentient software of Legacy of Nurik had fed directly to her brain, bypassing conscious thought routines. She intuitively knew the trajectories without reference to charts or graphics. She could very well have simply teleported to the city unfolding below her (which would’ve been much more efficient in terms of mass and energy expenditure). However, she’d been looking forward to this moment for too long: the Mindsetti home world (perhaps not the original but as close as to be indistinguishable save a few technological upgrades) sprawled before her, bathed in the light of a star that had not existed but three hours previously.

The ship gracefully decelerated at ten thousand t-gees, before stopping dead in the elaborate grounds of a baroque mansion. Newly constructed six hundred seconds ago, Pandora gave a wide grin to see her family home with her own eyes again. If she were honest with herself it was a bit of a monstrosity; a mansion in the decadent style of 21st century industrialists, laid out in four wings whose silver and black roofs curved up into a central spire stretching far into the ion-illuminated sky.

Pandora walked through the wall of the small craft, which turned semi-solid to allow her passage. Without hesitation, the mansion smartsoft greeted her.

“Pandora, darling. It’s so good to see you again. How long has it been? What, two millennia?�

Pandora gave a wide grin, her eyes sparkling. “Oh do shut up, you know full well how long it’s been.�

“Yes, exactly two thousand , one hundred twenty three years, eight months, two days, six hours...�

“Stop!� she laughed, “you know, Petal, we’re the only two sentients on this planet, for the time being. Doesn’t that make you feel lonely?�

“I’m not sure my neural structure is built to accommodate that particular feeling, really. What use would a smarthouse who got lonely when no one was around be? I’d go mad.�

“I suppose you would.� Pandora approached the imposing front door, which silently slid open to admit her. “I also suppose you know why I’m here?�

The whispery voice of the smartsoft, nicknamed Petal by Pandora as a child, betrayed little obvious emotion and sported an acutely dry sense of humour. “I’m shocked and appalled that you’d even think such a thing. Surely you must know my IQ exceeds your own while you’re a merely a meatbag.�

“Ah, of course! My lovely Petal, please don’t be mad. I’m here to arrange a broadcast to the universe. We must shout into the stars: the Mindsetti have returned!�

“Of course,� Petal intoned, barely containing its mirth. “Perhaps they’ll bring wine.�

[The Mindset]

OOC: At this stage, if anyone is interested, a reply to the message can be made. I'm not sure how far I want to take this RP, but if it lets me flesh out the new Mindsetti culture and tech then it sounds good to me.

[Arizona Nova]

Kertai watched. Deep within the core of the SCC on Kelwynd, his counsels were happily troubled.

Information taken from innumerable star and navigation charts across the Milky Way Galaxy, for the past ten centuries, had been indicating a steady decline in activity across the board. As the long years had passed, as he paged through terabytes of compressed information, civilizations faded, flickered, and died out altogether; once busy trade lanes dried up and were forgotten, stars which twinkled mainly because of busy traffic in-system took on more natural astronomical rhythms, and wars won nonetheless utterly consumed the victor. For the past thousand years, as far as the Arizonan records were concerned, it had been a slow grind down to quiescence. Even the Long Peace had been, in his eyes, but the precursor to the dissolution of Sornei civilization.

Yet within the past few years, within local space, the trend abruptly reversed. It was as if whole empires were springing back into existence like trees after a long winter. Trailers, Mekanta, Indra Prime, Jordaxia, Raysia - what had been fell names from ancient tomes were shouting into the void - fear, for I live again. Science and reality were seemingly bent as they came rushing back into a void almost as virginal as when they first appeared.

And now, on Easter Sunday of all days, The Mindset. God Himself would be amused. Border station 15-3A on the sectors closest to the former territories therof had reported a sudden, colossal disturbance on par with N-scale weapon firings, and shortly thereafter a greeting rang out. It was a surprising matter indeed.

It was too soon to act (nor should he without informing Anikar), and they had their own troubles to sort out at the time. Though stars shone brighter in other places, there was a gloom falling within Sornei domains as what he knew would become known as the Ilë Sornë Civil War began its ravages. But if not now, then soon, Anikar would need to gather friends to herself. Something in his near-infinite artificial mind, untouchable yet still tangible, foreboded ill. Things would turn soon, and for the worse.

He sent out dispatches to various bureacrats within the Imperial administration. History courses and texts should immediately stop referring to "The Rise and Fall of the Mindsetti Empire," and were to begin referring to it in other manners more fitting for changed circumstances. He sent them also to media contacts, though he had little doubt they were already crawling all over the wondrous event.

[Capsule Corporation]

Though new to the Extra-Solar systems, Raysians have caught the hang of things rather well over the last few years. However, the technology that drives them, clearly inspired of something higher than their comprehension, seems to sometimes take them places they never intended on visiting.

One of the irrevocable laws of the universe... matter can not be created nor destroyed.

A star system labelled temporarily as P3X-787, contained a prospect for colonization. The RMF Shiblon, Kryptonite-Class, was on a recon mission, collecting samples from the planet's atmosphere and soil. That all came to a sudden abortion when the sky grew dim. Not a cloud in sight, all eyes turned to the now-tolerable sun. Even those on the surface had a chill sent down their spine.

The crew and surface teams, 10 light minutes from the sun, knew they were already up a creek. All the marines, scientists, and personell abandoned their posts at a single command, spanning all channels, broadcast from the Command and Control center of the Shiblon.

"All personel, emergency abort. All personel, emergency abort. Attention: Please get the f*** back to the ship!"

2 minutes later, the last kumen-class jumpship burnt out its rockets accellerating towards the ship. The arresting fields froze the small ship angrily and hastily between the larger ships twin hulls.

Instantly, a barrier of energy surrounded the ship.

"Alright, take us out of here, before that sun does it for us!"

The outermost shockwave from the explosion of the sun, travelling nigh unto the speed of light, impacted the barrier. The Shiblon shook gently, the wave being mostly radiation, but the crew then noticed the new info on their scanners. Supersingularity forming, system collapsing.

"I don't get it, commander, what's going on?"

Commander Blade Sa'Fyre glared angrily at her science officer.

"Commander, the grav well is immense, there's no way I can calculate a fold destination, its throwing us off."

"Did I TELL you a destination? Just get us away from here, NOW. I don't care if you have to dump half the ship's fuel into this!"

The barrier around the ship swelled with light and plasma, until with a visual pop, the entire bubble, and everything in it, dissappeared. The star finished its explosion, only to suck itself back in, along with everything in the system, and then, moments later, with a similar pop, dissappeared.

With a deafeningly audible pop sound, the crew found themselves hovering in orbit of a planet, just the same as before.

"Sci, what the crap happened, why aren't we gone.... and why is the star back?"

"That's not the same star, commander. We're 47,000 light years from our past location... and this star is not on any of our maps. We've never seen it before."

"That's impossible, look at it, that star is millions of years old!"

"That's what i'm trying to get at... it shouldn't be here... it just poofed itself here, for lack of a better scientific term."

The tactical officer piped up. "This system is not uninhabited."

The commander looked over at the tac officer's surprised, yet controlled expression on his face. "...on screen?"

The scene displayed the once-lost mindsetti world of Graxis, and the ship(s) in its airspace.

"Cross-referencing with ESUS network databases," muttered the communications officer as she browsed through a form of the galactic internet. "Uploading new information to tactical panel."

The tactical officer scratched his head. "The vessels, the planet, they're ...they're from an ancient race known as the mindsetti. They were members of the ESUS back in the founding days. Should we open a channel?"

"...Well I don't suppose we should sit here and look suspiscious... Send them a basic greeting, apologizing for our accidental presence in this system, and asking permission to stay and greet their leaders."

"Sister, are you sure you're ready for a diplomatic event like that?"

The commander giggled slightly as she sat back down in her chair, the alarms silencing finally. "They just poofed here out of nowhere... I don't suppose they're wearing formalwear either. Hail them."

[The Mindset]

“They’re responding,� Petal intoned.

“So quickly? I guess I’d forgotten how densely populated this particular universe is.�

Pandora’s consciousness shifted into another body. Her memories, her thoughts, her very being; instantly transported by entagled quantum bits of a causal channel to a fresh Mindsetti meatbag back in orbit. She was subconsciously aware of a non-Mindsetti ship in-system. It had appeared in a wave of twisted space-time, probably caught in one of the drifting tendrils of the transuniversal shift that’d brought her civilisation home at last. For a moment she was apologetic. She considered her options: the ships were of ancient Raysian design (from the temporal standpoint of the Mindsetti), but given their hull’s rate of neutrino decay were unlikely to be old. This, along with a detailed pulsar map, gave her an idea of when they’d popped back into existence. I hope they’re not scared off by the activity in-system, she mused. I believe we’re currently manufacturing at an output greater than the entire combined history of the Mindsetti to this date.

Waves of patterned energy washed over the hull of the constructor node. Decoders and decrypters played with the sequence of ones and zeros, before spitting out a greeting from the unexpected visitors, along with a sidelined apology for intruding in on the event. Pandora focused her attention, and instructed the node to send a reply:

“Greetings from the Mindsetti! I’m sure that you’re confused; we’ve been gone so long. The sights we’ve seen! The marvellous wonders of the multiverse open to our perusal... but now, finally, we are home. I am Pandora. I speak for the Mindsetti; at least, presently, for few have been restored to physical bodies yet. Our technology and our culture is vastly different from our last intrusion in this universe, perhaps we are unrecognisable. In the aftermath of the post-post-singularity diaspora, where we were uplifted by a semi-benevolent semi-deity called echo01;, much knowledge was lost. We have drifted the cosmos, the multiverse, acting as cultural ambassadors and collectors of knowledge. Much of the technology we’ve encountered relies on quirks in the physical laws of particular universes, and sadly cannot be used in this more restrictive one. However, we’ve advanced both technologically and culturally, and this advancement may seem drastic. To us, we have been lost for six thousand terra-years. Perhaps we should meet? I’m sure I can have a constructor node pop out a bottle of wine.�

Pandora shifted back into her land-based body.

“Too pushy?�

“You, my dear, could never be pushy,� Petal laughed silently.

[Capsule Corporation]

The commander ended the conversation with a confirming smile, then looked towards her other senior officers.

The science officer raised an eyebrow at the data, commenting that they were dealing with a sligtly higher degree of consciousness in these beings. However, with a shrug, she signaled for the tactical officer to have her shuttle readied, and headed to her ready room, the door closing behind her as she quickly grabbed something a little more formal, and began to fix her hair. She smiled to herself at the idea of going from prospector, to crisis commander, to ambassador in the space of 10 minutes.

Moments later, a slicked (weaponless) Kumen-class jumpship left one of the hangars of the RMF Shiblon, and finished the already-closing distance between the two ships. The pilot cracked over the comm on an air traffic line, "Shiblon a01 to Mindsetti Starwisp, requesting destination: Landing Bay or Location on the planetary surface?"

Blade, sitting in the personnel-configured cargo bay, roomishly disguised as a luxury transport, made sure she had all her representation gear. Alcohol nullifier pill, ingested; personal sidearm, welcomely visible; Full-length formal overcoat, worn really however she feels like it, which today would be just draped over her rather informal wear, something that would seem more fitting of a privateer than a formal military commander. Nothing pretentious about it, this girl doesn't like being formal about anything, but there's an effort to stand with decent posture and modest apparel. Oh, and the last touch, the greeting package, snatching it from a locker and setting it in her lap, a small box with easily-translated national information on data cards, an official welcome plaque, and a box of Raysia's finest chocolates.

The XO of the Shiblon, already notifiying Zarahemla-Raysia command of the situation, gave her a final go-code transmission from HQ, giving their blessing, and she signalled to the pilot to travel to whatever point they would be welcome at.

[The Mindset]

“A ship has been dispatched, and is asking for a rendezvous itinerary,� whispered Petal, directly into the back of Pandora’s mind.

“They’re asking for coordinates? I have a better idea,� she laughed silkily.

Space is big. Really big. It’s hard to comprehend just how mindbogglingly big it is. And that’s why there was something intrinsically funny about a seven foot Mindsetti-humanoid woman knocking politely on the outer wall of a Raysian airlock. Of course, it wasn’t a real, flesh and blood being. That’d just be absurd. The frigidity of the vacuum would’ve simultaneously frozen her tissues while boiling her blood. It would not have been a pretty sight, nor a good first impression. No, Pandora’s hologram, transmitted and projected from the constructor node orbiting high above Midna, knocked politely upon the outer hull, and patiently waited for entry.

[Capsule Corporation]

"Commander.." the pilot buzzed over the radio as she was staring blankly at the box. "They're outside."

"That's funny, I didn't feel us land..." The reconfigured ship had no real windows, just a monitor that she didn't feel like turning on.

Blade reached for the Side-installed personnel door, about to throw the handle.

"We haven't... the Mindsetti representative is... outside the door... but we're still in space."

She scratched her head, thinking for a second as the knock finally registered in her ears. Tapping a few buttons on a nearby console, she erected an artificial airlock around the Mindsetti Avatar. A Forcefield quickly flashed around the humanoid figure and filled with atmosphere. After only a second, the door hatched open.

With a smile, she greeted the female, arms straight down at her sides at first, standing up as formally as possible. "Greetings, Pandora. I'm sorry I fail to know a more formal greeting for one as respectable as yourself, But I am Commanding Sister Blade Sa'Fyre, Raysian Marine Force." She smiled, and after missing a beat jumped with embarassing shock. "Oh! Please, come in... though I would prefer meeting in person, if you will have it." She stood aside and motioned with her hand, with a warm welcoming smile on her face.


In the meantime, the group of marines stood at attention, the 3 in corners of the room. But as far as the first topic of conversation, she asks "What exactly brought us here? We haven't quite figured it out. Where did you come from?"

[Trailers]

The Sentry aspected Scryer had been placed in the Mindsetti deadspace mere days after their controversial and exhaustively-argued disappearance over two thousand years ago. The Trailarii were peculiar about such things, keeping an eye on territory forsaken by their fellow elder races. It was nearly hallowed ground to them, and they would be goddamned if some underdeveloped inefficient little civilization moved in and touched things with their grubby little hands..

At any rate, the Sentry, not quite the size of a golfball, just happened to have the bad luck to be in the way of the rather larger vehicles and their incredible energy energy emissions. Shortly before it was vaporized by the Return, it transmitted as much data as it could, spilling the contents into the ESUS battlenet to anyone who missed the Mindsetti call. And bring wine.


C