A Contradictory Allegiance
Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2008 10:00 am
[center]The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. If Eudaimonia, or happiness, is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will be that of the best thing in us.
Aristotle, "Nichomachean Ethics"[/center]
Nothing could be received from the deep void, only for the constant, predictably shifting static. It was this way for thousands of years, since the first attempts of the SETI at the twentieth century. Never a stellar civilization has been identified from their own universe, explaining way Astrobiology was hardly worth more than an hour of work per day. The transmissions never were answered, and such news were far from good: without anything happening and with the need of struggling for survival long gone, the primary reasons to of live were entertainment and reckless seek of pleasure.
People were becoming adrift into selfishness, likely unwilling to move a finger to help, if there was ever a problem to help with. Were not the lipid burning nanites, Glacius would certainly became the Fat Druggie World to complement what the Dream has long become: a Bordello World. With heavy automation, most products became too abundant to have any worth, yet most still cannot pleasure from mere robots with false skin. Prostitution has become one of the Great Four that have spun the still viable market economy. Contraceptives are long forgotten due to many advances in medicine, and the industry is primarily featured by the attendance of all sorts of weird tastes one would rather not ponder about.
That was what the foolish transhumanists have not predicted, that their ideal of mankind would end into a post-human species of hedonists, slobs, sodomites and prostitutes forgetting the fact their existences are pointless through pleasure. They were too naive to consider that the primary reason for the existence of augmentations in such future would be to improve sexual performance beyond human limits and to maximize pleasure. Although an idle elite has brought many great thinkers in the past, this was definitively not a repetition of such fact. With no motive to learn, with everything taken for granted, it would be ironic that the seemingly perfect and Utopian future would have the same rate of illiteracy of the Dark Ages, that people were becoming stupider by the day. Evolution is at work, and with most of human intelligence being superfluous at the moment, some people, specially the biocons, feared that something similar to the Eloi would be the offspring of this new era. The formula to breed retards was simple: a slice of post-scarcity coupled with a cut of total automation, to ensure the cynical recreating of the old communist adage: "From each nothing necessary, To each almost anything they want".
Indeed, Homo Superior they were, descendants of the technological achievements of a morally and intellectually decadent civilization which most glorious days were those when they had to cope with scarcity and face a strategically superior enemy of freedom.
But those too busy doing sex or playing virtual reality games to think would not simply continue with their meaningless and idle existence should something happen, and perhaps soon the time would come. To that goal, some worked in secrecy, believing that a threat was the only way to ensure the return of mankind's true golden age. And the opportunity was ripe to achieve the true happiness.
It was almost entirely automated. A quantum relay station and observation outpost stood at about five hundred thousand kilometers of the Shadow Gate, a multiversal anomaly which has been mostly forgotten, with Chaos being little more than a subject of jokes and tales to scare children or the increasing population of adults with seven years old mentality. Machines and robots worked nonstop, with not a single Homo Superior overseeing it to ensure that it shall not be completely lost should an incident come, after all, the cynics say that work is not something for post-humans, and they might be right, considering which type of human being makes the majority of the economically active population.
When life is short, people find it much more important to achieve something, and that was true of all those who voluntarily refused the curse of eternal life. Annika Camarillo still could remember the day, a decisive moment of every Solarian life, twenty years ago. Her word was doubtless, she refused something which many would ironically kill each other for: immortality.
While very few of the immortals did not succumb to hedonism and idleness, a minority of those who have chosen to accept natural death have decided to focus their lives into pleasure. Annika was one of the few astrobiologists on active duty, although she was actually more knowledgeable of communication and languages than of biology. The woman walked around the base, taking delicate steps to preventing throwing herself somewhere due to the extremely low gravity. She refused to use the hover segway that most of visitors, too lazy even to walk on their own foot, tended to ride on. The corridor was on reality extremely dull, however, she could spot several portraits, sculptures, surreal decorations and speakers on the walls randomly shuffling millennial death metal songs. For a reason, an old one seemed extremely fitting with what was close to her. It was a song about chaos, decadence and hopelessness, so desolate that it could even convince a lifeless transhuman to put a bullet on his head to end his insignificant existence.
There was no sound though, and all of those objects were completely immaterial, for she could see her hand passing through them. She knew what it was about: her connected mind blended the virtual and the real in the place, a convenient technique to reduce the dullness of space facilities without cluttering them with useless mass. Her favorites were being played there, and she seemed to almost distract herself from the matter at hand.
But soon she was there. The strangely wooden door was closed, but she simply passed through it, without even trying to pull its knob. It worked like if it was made of air. Only because whoever or whatever controlled it has allowed for her to pass. There was to her eyes, amidst an elegant ancient industrial era style office, a quite elegant man in an ultra-retro outfit reminiscing of the early 20th century. Of course, it was not what he wore in reality, nor the room really looked like something from the 1900s, it was only more of the convenient manner of having style without inconveniences through the Hybrid Reality. The man was black-skinned and brown haired, and Annika quickly glanced at his Turquoise eyes, remembering of the point of the meeting:
"Camarad Fitzgerald, como est el comunicacion con el univers de sombre? Ce necesit saber que Y descubri un viej senal de origen desconocid. Algun mesaj sobre un entidad chamad Union de Sistems Extra-Solars. Es preocupant el asunt del mesaj. Existen muches civilisacions alem del portal en guerra. Genocids, atrocidads y humans send anikilads. Potencies de poder incalculable y grands menazes a nostre soberanie y liberdad. Necesitens de despertar el pueble antes que sea tarde demas!"
"Annika, esta información es mucho importante. Usted hablo acerca de la Unión de los Sistemas Extra-Solares, una poderosa alianza que por el argumento de por ele objectivo de la sobrevivencia mutua, las diferencias ideológicas son irrelevantes. You tengo esperanza que usted conoce nuestra lengua original." the man answered back in a different, but somewhat similar language to that she has spoken.
"SÃÂ, como especialista en comunicación yo también hablo Español. Pero creo que mi fluencia es bien limitada. Lo seria mas conveniente hablar en Común, y hay un problema major a que debemos engendrar soluciones." she answered back with some difficulty. She could barely remember the last time she has spoken in such old language. And thus, Fitzgerald continued the discussion at hand with their more common language, which could be translated as the following:
"Yes, of course. I believe there is finally an opportunity for our civilization to get out from its prison of hedonism, to again return to the glory of the old days when our entire lives were dedicated for a greater cause, when people worked hard and gave their best in both peace and war, knowing that time was racing against their freedom. Just as an example of the decadence, I am sure you already know that our industrial sector is at less than ten percent of its maximum efficiency because of the lack of human supervision and management over incredibly dumb and inefficient machines."
"Yes, I am quite aware of that, but almost nobody seems to care as long as they won't starve and can get almost everything they want for free. Now I am not brain-dead to not guess that whatever you have in mind is related to the multiverse, to human genocides and oppression beyond the event horizon that the slobs claim to be of other universes, and thus none of their business, as a pretext to continue a vagabond way of life. And of course, what do you think about this Extrasolar Union of Systems you captured transmissions about?", Annika inquisitively discoursed about the subject, while taking a seat next to the less than solid desk between her and Fitzgerald.
"The multiverse is not isolated. I believe that every action brings consequences in an invisible form to different universes. That anomaly over there is an evidence of my idea that beliefs can shape reality in an almost imperceptible manner." he said, while making gestures with his hands to symbolize his words.
Annika did not buy his idea, and simply smiled sharply, looking at him and thinking. He seemed to ignore her irreverence, and eventually she felt it was the time to explain him how she felt about what he implied to seek. He clearly intended to continue before she interrupted him, but he did not express any bother from the fact.
"Beliefs can certainly shape reality. Do you know how many overconfident civilizations became extincted or worse thanks to their excessive interventionism and override of logical reasoning to pure ideology? Is that what are you suggesting? That we jump by the hundreds of thousands into a solipsist dimension where our nightmares and repressed urges become sentient demons?"
The man seemed to openly ignore her question about what she thought he was suggesting. Maybe it was not what he really planned to do, but there was an itching feeling in Annika's mind about the overall idea of promoting progress again. She did not know why, but her mind was fabricating a sort of unconscious paranoia about the discussion at hand. It was always strange for her, although her choice as the permanent staff was very convenient, considering the reports of extremely traumatic dreams and visions of monstrosities and fear in the dark corners of the station, and the fact that she never have experience anything of the close yet distant Chaos, like if her mind was a closed book to it.
"Look at our history, of how it came right after the victory in the Silicon War, or how our society degenerated after destroying its reason d'etre. The only reason Solar Communes was created was to liberate Earth from tyranny and from the last government. I know we came to other goals, but we must find a greater objective or threat that we could overcome to awaken our people. The more we promote freedom, more the universes will change, and eventually, even Chaos itself shall be defeated." he further argued, still being delusive about what he really was looking for.
Annika crossed her two arms and looked at him, like a curious girl wanting to know the ending of a tale. She knew he was holding something from her, delaying her about what is the point of the meeting. She did not speak further, for her expression clearly pointed her will.
"All right, I will be straight: we must journey through chaos, colonize another universe and explore new possibilities. We have stagnated for too long. Our civilization is revolutionary by legacy, and a revolution dies when there is no more change for better. Annika, you are of one the few references for many. I want your help to convince people for the expedition."
Annika eyed Fitzgerald suspiciously. He would never in his sane consciousness suggest a suicidal romp through the Immaterium. Something was definitively out of place there, but she could not understand what exactly. Pondering for a while, she quickly reached his hand and looked at his eyes, speaking:
"Change for better? The way you speak of it seems extremely familiar to what is so close to us. And do you not see? We have no technology capable of blocking the psychic terror of that place. If we send hundreds of thousands through it, the sheer majority of them will be dead, or worse, and the few who survive will be too traumatized to be able to drill a hole, let alone build a colony from scratch!"
Sighing, he looked at her and nodded, admitting his defeat over the argument. Annika noticed that he seemed to be back in place, like if her influence was beyond the argument. She still had the weird guess that there was something out of place, but it was not about him anymore.
"You are right. I have been to busy dreaming about the betterment of our people to pay attention to important barriers, but I am curious. I never heard you screaming here. Did you never witness anything strange, scary while awaken or while dreaming?"
"Not really Fitzgerald. I have heard all those stories about strange things lurking on the shadows, about bizarre and frightening noises, horrible nightmares and alike, but I have never felt anything strange here. I do not know why, but I am very glad about it." she answered, but after a quick thought, rapidly changed to a more indifferent tone of voice, and suggested:
"You are not asking me this question to convince me to get through the gate, are you? Because if you are, I believe it is not necessary to explain you that I would rather poke my own eyes out with my bare hands than get inside that dimension alone!"
The man nodded again, apparently comprehensive about her. Then suddenly his face turned into an expression of fear and despair, but he seemed to hold himself well despite that.
"Annika, do not leave me alone... there is something wrong here. Something came out of the Gateway, and it is going for me. I can feel an eerie echo of screams and fire, but it cannot get closer, there is a demon in this base.... and according to the reports of the first expedition on these, these beings... we are fucked!"
The woman felt even weirder because she could not feel the same, intense terror that her friend felt. Perhaps she was the last thing between whatever was there or him. Sighing, she looked at him and said, in a more friendly manner:
"Do not be afraid comrade, I will not leave you alone. Now I launch this demon as the last argument of my rhetoric against using that gateway. There is no counter-argument capable of detaining it, but as long as we stick together, it will eventually get bored from we who are orderly and boring people... and hopefully go away from this base."
Fitzgerald looked at her and sighed:
"I could be possessed by a demon and you use it to prove your point? Are you fucking serious? I am almost crapping my diapers in this suit! This is not a joke! There is nothing funny about Chaos"
Smiling sardonically, she pointed her finger at him, and simply kept the gesture for a while, as he asked what the hell she wanted to say. When he was almost losing his patience with her she finally said:
"Why do you contradict yourself? If there is nothing funny about it, why are you pretending that there is a demon nearby going after you? This is not a joke! Right?"
Smiling, the man quickly let down his false facade of fear and looked at her:
"Nice guesser, aren't you? How did you discover?"
"Freudian slip my friend, Freudian slip. But, on another subject, may if we waited something else than psychic demons could come from that gateway. Like in an old essay: if the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain. Perhaps we could even contact this mutual protection regardless of ideology sort of alliance you have estimated from the communication echoes filtered from the anomaly."
"That thing has been there for almost three thousands of years, how can you know that this time something useful for our people will come out from it? And how do we trust something which we have only heard about through communications garbled by chaos that might have entirely different meanings from those we managed to estimate?" the man asked smiling, as this time, she would be in the defensive regarding the argument of the moment.
"We should just wait. It is a much better idea than getting through there and ensuing another disaster like the latest expedition of thousands of years ago which returned with a crew turned into a legion of blood-lusting serial killers and psychopaths we had to blow up before they could reach surface. At least regarding that we have become smarter." she argued for her position, and then prepared to answer the other question.
"To explore the multiverse and establish contacts without support is akin to suicide. We have been unmolested and rarely contacted by foreign civilizations because I believe we are in a very obscure corner of the multiverse, and finding a haystack in Jupiter is likely easier than finding us. This Extrasolar Union of Systems seems decent enough for me. I know my business on communications, and considering how many care, I believe that if we agree, an alliance might be in place."
"All right, but that still takes the supposition that something comes out from there, and that whatever it is, it belongs to this ESUS and has enough influence in it to admit new allies. For all our luck, it could eventually come a mass-murdering dreadnought out there with almost impenetrable hull!" he argued, apparently still disagreeing with her on the subject.
"It won't come to that. If after almost three millennia the first thing we get is a murderously massive spacecraft bent on our annihilation with no logical reason behind it, then we should all die before our bad luck worsens." Annika replied to the man in a somewhat humorous manner. She would not let pessimistic possibilities downplay her strong arguments, and finally pointed out:
"I cannot affirm that something will come. But should an ESUS spacecraft arrive at five hundred thousand kilometers away from us, behave diplomatically and show trust, would you support my decision to negotiate with them to secure our future beyond the event horizon?"
"Well... I suppose yes, but wasn't such extremely important decision for the future of our people supposed to be voted upon by a larger number of people?" the man asked, in a last, futile attempt to break her argument.
Smiling like a victor contemplating the defeat of the rival, Annika quickly replied to him, finally putting an end to the long argument between them. And indeed, it was somewhat ironic that in one of the greatest bastions of true democracy in the universe, two people would decide the fate of an entire civilization because of the indifference of the dull majority to issues that could put their own freedoms and pleasurable existences at stake.
"Yes, but most of them are too busy with sex and virtual games to care about voting."
And thus, the man nodded, and finally gave in what she wanted since the suggestion she has given:
"All right Annika, if it happens, I will support your decision."
And after greeting him again, she left taking the hybrid reality corridors and areas of the station, where another hit of death metal played for her. Until she finally got into her bed, in a cramped but immensely decorated room, with most of it being virtual for a change. She let her eyes close and fell into a calm slumber, uninfluenced by the nightmares of the Shadow.
Fitzgerald instead opened his helmet to take another sleep-replacement medicine. It was not as perfect as a real sleep, but it did not have the side effect of horrible and vivid nightmares.The time their routine of checking the machines and awaiting for an answer of other civilizations would take before something truly different happened was not yet known, but they would likely witness change in their lifetime, a significant and permanent change, or maybe not.
Although the work was far from as easy and pleasant than spending their entire lives with sex and virtual games, they were strangely much happier and meaningful than most of those they pitied and hoped to awaken from idleness.
(OOC: This is basically the IC justification for Solar Communes to become a member of the ESUS. It is open for anything except blowing up their planets because colonizable planets are a rarity for them. Also, their galaxy is under the iron fist of Special Relativity, and thus FTL travel is impossible through it, except that it is possible to reach Gliese 581 quickly through a WH40k Van Grothe's Rapidity, but past the Warp all travels will be sub-light)
Aristotle, "Nichomachean Ethics"[/center]
Nothing could be received from the deep void, only for the constant, predictably shifting static. It was this way for thousands of years, since the first attempts of the SETI at the twentieth century. Never a stellar civilization has been identified from their own universe, explaining way Astrobiology was hardly worth more than an hour of work per day. The transmissions never were answered, and such news were far from good: without anything happening and with the need of struggling for survival long gone, the primary reasons to of live were entertainment and reckless seek of pleasure.
People were becoming adrift into selfishness, likely unwilling to move a finger to help, if there was ever a problem to help with. Were not the lipid burning nanites, Glacius would certainly became the Fat Druggie World to complement what the Dream has long become: a Bordello World. With heavy automation, most products became too abundant to have any worth, yet most still cannot pleasure from mere robots with false skin. Prostitution has become one of the Great Four that have spun the still viable market economy. Contraceptives are long forgotten due to many advances in medicine, and the industry is primarily featured by the attendance of all sorts of weird tastes one would rather not ponder about.
That was what the foolish transhumanists have not predicted, that their ideal of mankind would end into a post-human species of hedonists, slobs, sodomites and prostitutes forgetting the fact their existences are pointless through pleasure. They were too naive to consider that the primary reason for the existence of augmentations in such future would be to improve sexual performance beyond human limits and to maximize pleasure. Although an idle elite has brought many great thinkers in the past, this was definitively not a repetition of such fact. With no motive to learn, with everything taken for granted, it would be ironic that the seemingly perfect and Utopian future would have the same rate of illiteracy of the Dark Ages, that people were becoming stupider by the day. Evolution is at work, and with most of human intelligence being superfluous at the moment, some people, specially the biocons, feared that something similar to the Eloi would be the offspring of this new era. The formula to breed retards was simple: a slice of post-scarcity coupled with a cut of total automation, to ensure the cynical recreating of the old communist adage: "From each nothing necessary, To each almost anything they want".
Indeed, Homo Superior they were, descendants of the technological achievements of a morally and intellectually decadent civilization which most glorious days were those when they had to cope with scarcity and face a strategically superior enemy of freedom.
But those too busy doing sex or playing virtual reality games to think would not simply continue with their meaningless and idle existence should something happen, and perhaps soon the time would come. To that goal, some worked in secrecy, believing that a threat was the only way to ensure the return of mankind's true golden age. And the opportunity was ripe to achieve the true happiness.
It was almost entirely automated. A quantum relay station and observation outpost stood at about five hundred thousand kilometers of the Shadow Gate, a multiversal anomaly which has been mostly forgotten, with Chaos being little more than a subject of jokes and tales to scare children or the increasing population of adults with seven years old mentality. Machines and robots worked nonstop, with not a single Homo Superior overseeing it to ensure that it shall not be completely lost should an incident come, after all, the cynics say that work is not something for post-humans, and they might be right, considering which type of human being makes the majority of the economically active population.
When life is short, people find it much more important to achieve something, and that was true of all those who voluntarily refused the curse of eternal life. Annika Camarillo still could remember the day, a decisive moment of every Solarian life, twenty years ago. Her word was doubtless, she refused something which many would ironically kill each other for: immortality.
While very few of the immortals did not succumb to hedonism and idleness, a minority of those who have chosen to accept natural death have decided to focus their lives into pleasure. Annika was one of the few astrobiologists on active duty, although she was actually more knowledgeable of communication and languages than of biology. The woman walked around the base, taking delicate steps to preventing throwing herself somewhere due to the extremely low gravity. She refused to use the hover segway that most of visitors, too lazy even to walk on their own foot, tended to ride on. The corridor was on reality extremely dull, however, she could spot several portraits, sculptures, surreal decorations and speakers on the walls randomly shuffling millennial death metal songs. For a reason, an old one seemed extremely fitting with what was close to her. It was a song about chaos, decadence and hopelessness, so desolate that it could even convince a lifeless transhuman to put a bullet on his head to end his insignificant existence.
There was no sound though, and all of those objects were completely immaterial, for she could see her hand passing through them. She knew what it was about: her connected mind blended the virtual and the real in the place, a convenient technique to reduce the dullness of space facilities without cluttering them with useless mass. Her favorites were being played there, and she seemed to almost distract herself from the matter at hand.
But soon she was there. The strangely wooden door was closed, but she simply passed through it, without even trying to pull its knob. It worked like if it was made of air. Only because whoever or whatever controlled it has allowed for her to pass. There was to her eyes, amidst an elegant ancient industrial era style office, a quite elegant man in an ultra-retro outfit reminiscing of the early 20th century. Of course, it was not what he wore in reality, nor the room really looked like something from the 1900s, it was only more of the convenient manner of having style without inconveniences through the Hybrid Reality. The man was black-skinned and brown haired, and Annika quickly glanced at his Turquoise eyes, remembering of the point of the meeting:
"Camarad Fitzgerald, como est el comunicacion con el univers de sombre? Ce necesit saber que Y descubri un viej senal de origen desconocid. Algun mesaj sobre un entidad chamad Union de Sistems Extra-Solars. Es preocupant el asunt del mesaj. Existen muches civilisacions alem del portal en guerra. Genocids, atrocidads y humans send anikilads. Potencies de poder incalculable y grands menazes a nostre soberanie y liberdad. Necesitens de despertar el pueble antes que sea tarde demas!"
"Annika, esta información es mucho importante. Usted hablo acerca de la Unión de los Sistemas Extra-Solares, una poderosa alianza que por el argumento de por ele objectivo de la sobrevivencia mutua, las diferencias ideológicas son irrelevantes. You tengo esperanza que usted conoce nuestra lengua original." the man answered back in a different, but somewhat similar language to that she has spoken.
"SÃÂ, como especialista en comunicación yo también hablo Español. Pero creo que mi fluencia es bien limitada. Lo seria mas conveniente hablar en Común, y hay un problema major a que debemos engendrar soluciones." she answered back with some difficulty. She could barely remember the last time she has spoken in such old language. And thus, Fitzgerald continued the discussion at hand with their more common language, which could be translated as the following:
"Yes, of course. I believe there is finally an opportunity for our civilization to get out from its prison of hedonism, to again return to the glory of the old days when our entire lives were dedicated for a greater cause, when people worked hard and gave their best in both peace and war, knowing that time was racing against their freedom. Just as an example of the decadence, I am sure you already know that our industrial sector is at less than ten percent of its maximum efficiency because of the lack of human supervision and management over incredibly dumb and inefficient machines."
"Yes, I am quite aware of that, but almost nobody seems to care as long as they won't starve and can get almost everything they want for free. Now I am not brain-dead to not guess that whatever you have in mind is related to the multiverse, to human genocides and oppression beyond the event horizon that the slobs claim to be of other universes, and thus none of their business, as a pretext to continue a vagabond way of life. And of course, what do you think about this Extrasolar Union of Systems you captured transmissions about?", Annika inquisitively discoursed about the subject, while taking a seat next to the less than solid desk between her and Fitzgerald.
"The multiverse is not isolated. I believe that every action brings consequences in an invisible form to different universes. That anomaly over there is an evidence of my idea that beliefs can shape reality in an almost imperceptible manner." he said, while making gestures with his hands to symbolize his words.
Annika did not buy his idea, and simply smiled sharply, looking at him and thinking. He seemed to ignore her irreverence, and eventually she felt it was the time to explain him how she felt about what he implied to seek. He clearly intended to continue before she interrupted him, but he did not express any bother from the fact.
"Beliefs can certainly shape reality. Do you know how many overconfident civilizations became extincted or worse thanks to their excessive interventionism and override of logical reasoning to pure ideology? Is that what are you suggesting? That we jump by the hundreds of thousands into a solipsist dimension where our nightmares and repressed urges become sentient demons?"
The man seemed to openly ignore her question about what she thought he was suggesting. Maybe it was not what he really planned to do, but there was an itching feeling in Annika's mind about the overall idea of promoting progress again. She did not know why, but her mind was fabricating a sort of unconscious paranoia about the discussion at hand. It was always strange for her, although her choice as the permanent staff was very convenient, considering the reports of extremely traumatic dreams and visions of monstrosities and fear in the dark corners of the station, and the fact that she never have experience anything of the close yet distant Chaos, like if her mind was a closed book to it.
"Look at our history, of how it came right after the victory in the Silicon War, or how our society degenerated after destroying its reason d'etre. The only reason Solar Communes was created was to liberate Earth from tyranny and from the last government. I know we came to other goals, but we must find a greater objective or threat that we could overcome to awaken our people. The more we promote freedom, more the universes will change, and eventually, even Chaos itself shall be defeated." he further argued, still being delusive about what he really was looking for.
Annika crossed her two arms and looked at him, like a curious girl wanting to know the ending of a tale. She knew he was holding something from her, delaying her about what is the point of the meeting. She did not speak further, for her expression clearly pointed her will.
"All right, I will be straight: we must journey through chaos, colonize another universe and explore new possibilities. We have stagnated for too long. Our civilization is revolutionary by legacy, and a revolution dies when there is no more change for better. Annika, you are of one the few references for many. I want your help to convince people for the expedition."
Annika eyed Fitzgerald suspiciously. He would never in his sane consciousness suggest a suicidal romp through the Immaterium. Something was definitively out of place there, but she could not understand what exactly. Pondering for a while, she quickly reached his hand and looked at his eyes, speaking:
"Change for better? The way you speak of it seems extremely familiar to what is so close to us. And do you not see? We have no technology capable of blocking the psychic terror of that place. If we send hundreds of thousands through it, the sheer majority of them will be dead, or worse, and the few who survive will be too traumatized to be able to drill a hole, let alone build a colony from scratch!"
Sighing, he looked at her and nodded, admitting his defeat over the argument. Annika noticed that he seemed to be back in place, like if her influence was beyond the argument. She still had the weird guess that there was something out of place, but it was not about him anymore.
"You are right. I have been to busy dreaming about the betterment of our people to pay attention to important barriers, but I am curious. I never heard you screaming here. Did you never witness anything strange, scary while awaken or while dreaming?"
"Not really Fitzgerald. I have heard all those stories about strange things lurking on the shadows, about bizarre and frightening noises, horrible nightmares and alike, but I have never felt anything strange here. I do not know why, but I am very glad about it." she answered, but after a quick thought, rapidly changed to a more indifferent tone of voice, and suggested:
"You are not asking me this question to convince me to get through the gate, are you? Because if you are, I believe it is not necessary to explain you that I would rather poke my own eyes out with my bare hands than get inside that dimension alone!"
The man nodded again, apparently comprehensive about her. Then suddenly his face turned into an expression of fear and despair, but he seemed to hold himself well despite that.
"Annika, do not leave me alone... there is something wrong here. Something came out of the Gateway, and it is going for me. I can feel an eerie echo of screams and fire, but it cannot get closer, there is a demon in this base.... and according to the reports of the first expedition on these, these beings... we are fucked!"
The woman felt even weirder because she could not feel the same, intense terror that her friend felt. Perhaps she was the last thing between whatever was there or him. Sighing, she looked at him and said, in a more friendly manner:
"Do not be afraid comrade, I will not leave you alone. Now I launch this demon as the last argument of my rhetoric against using that gateway. There is no counter-argument capable of detaining it, but as long as we stick together, it will eventually get bored from we who are orderly and boring people... and hopefully go away from this base."
Fitzgerald looked at her and sighed:
"I could be possessed by a demon and you use it to prove your point? Are you fucking serious? I am almost crapping my diapers in this suit! This is not a joke! There is nothing funny about Chaos"
Smiling sardonically, she pointed her finger at him, and simply kept the gesture for a while, as he asked what the hell she wanted to say. When he was almost losing his patience with her she finally said:
"Why do you contradict yourself? If there is nothing funny about it, why are you pretending that there is a demon nearby going after you? This is not a joke! Right?"
Smiling, the man quickly let down his false facade of fear and looked at her:
"Nice guesser, aren't you? How did you discover?"
"Freudian slip my friend, Freudian slip. But, on another subject, may if we waited something else than psychic demons could come from that gateway. Like in an old essay: if the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad must go to the mountain. Perhaps we could even contact this mutual protection regardless of ideology sort of alliance you have estimated from the communication echoes filtered from the anomaly."
"That thing has been there for almost three thousands of years, how can you know that this time something useful for our people will come out from it? And how do we trust something which we have only heard about through communications garbled by chaos that might have entirely different meanings from those we managed to estimate?" the man asked smiling, as this time, she would be in the defensive regarding the argument of the moment.
"We should just wait. It is a much better idea than getting through there and ensuing another disaster like the latest expedition of thousands of years ago which returned with a crew turned into a legion of blood-lusting serial killers and psychopaths we had to blow up before they could reach surface. At least regarding that we have become smarter." she argued for her position, and then prepared to answer the other question.
"To explore the multiverse and establish contacts without support is akin to suicide. We have been unmolested and rarely contacted by foreign civilizations because I believe we are in a very obscure corner of the multiverse, and finding a haystack in Jupiter is likely easier than finding us. This Extrasolar Union of Systems seems decent enough for me. I know my business on communications, and considering how many care, I believe that if we agree, an alliance might be in place."
"All right, but that still takes the supposition that something comes out from there, and that whatever it is, it belongs to this ESUS and has enough influence in it to admit new allies. For all our luck, it could eventually come a mass-murdering dreadnought out there with almost impenetrable hull!" he argued, apparently still disagreeing with her on the subject.
"It won't come to that. If after almost three millennia the first thing we get is a murderously massive spacecraft bent on our annihilation with no logical reason behind it, then we should all die before our bad luck worsens." Annika replied to the man in a somewhat humorous manner. She would not let pessimistic possibilities downplay her strong arguments, and finally pointed out:
"I cannot affirm that something will come. But should an ESUS spacecraft arrive at five hundred thousand kilometers away from us, behave diplomatically and show trust, would you support my decision to negotiate with them to secure our future beyond the event horizon?"
"Well... I suppose yes, but wasn't such extremely important decision for the future of our people supposed to be voted upon by a larger number of people?" the man asked, in a last, futile attempt to break her argument.
Smiling like a victor contemplating the defeat of the rival, Annika quickly replied to him, finally putting an end to the long argument between them. And indeed, it was somewhat ironic that in one of the greatest bastions of true democracy in the universe, two people would decide the fate of an entire civilization because of the indifference of the dull majority to issues that could put their own freedoms and pleasurable existences at stake.
"Yes, but most of them are too busy with sex and virtual games to care about voting."
And thus, the man nodded, and finally gave in what she wanted since the suggestion she has given:
"All right Annika, if it happens, I will support your decision."
And after greeting him again, she left taking the hybrid reality corridors and areas of the station, where another hit of death metal played for her. Until she finally got into her bed, in a cramped but immensely decorated room, with most of it being virtual for a change. She let her eyes close and fell into a calm slumber, uninfluenced by the nightmares of the Shadow.
Fitzgerald instead opened his helmet to take another sleep-replacement medicine. It was not as perfect as a real sleep, but it did not have the side effect of horrible and vivid nightmares.The time their routine of checking the machines and awaiting for an answer of other civilizations would take before something truly different happened was not yet known, but they would likely witness change in their lifetime, a significant and permanent change, or maybe not.
Although the work was far from as easy and pleasant than spending their entire lives with sex and virtual games, they were strangely much happier and meaningful than most of those they pitied and hoped to awaken from idleness.
(OOC: This is basically the IC justification for Solar Communes to become a member of the ESUS. It is open for anything except blowing up their planets because colonizable planets are a rarity for them. Also, their galaxy is under the iron fist of Special Relativity, and thus FTL travel is impossible through it, except that it is possible to reach Gliese 581 quickly through a WH40k Van Grothe's Rapidity, but past the Warp all travels will be sub-light)