Over
time the loose association of artificially intelligent entities called
the Diamond Network has developed ever more friendly relations with the
Sephirotic empires, and with the countless races of humans and other
bionts who live in those empires. Some of the Diamonders have ascended
to the very highest realms of toposophic development; but the events of
the Oracle War have demonstrated that some of those entities have long
harboured aggressive intentions against the benefactors and protectors
of humanity.
Complex though the Archailects
are, even they cannot accurately predict the future or perform certain
other prohibited computations; however some believed that the Oracle
Machines were capable of remarkable, even miraculous feats of
prediction.
Timeline of the Oracle War
|
| All dates in AT | after 5000 The first Oracle Machine worlds established
7700 The Oracle Machines become established in many independent systems in the outer middle regions.
8620 The Sectarian War begins
8700 The Sectarian War escalates -Hellbores and Boostbombs used
9107 The Sectarian War ends - the Timeloopists are defeated
9150 (approximate date) The ascension of the Sibyl
9200 Missionary work begins in the MPA
9966 Mystery Cult enclaves in Kepleria, the Rungworld (Jke's Ladder) and elsewhere
9992 The war in Jke's Ladder ends
10075 The Wormhole Nexus places the Mystery Cult under quarantine
10480 The first of the Joy-bringer fleets departs
10513 Destruction of Hattusas
10515 Full scale interstellar war erupts throughout the MPA and Nether Heartland
10519-10530 Binah ascends to the sixth toposophic
10537 Desheilo is destroyed
10545 The Sephirotic Nexus is closed in the combat volume
10552 The Diamond Nexus is closed
10565 The Hoopworld war ends- evacuation begins
10574 Kepleria is saved
10580 The Hoopworld tears itself apart
10591 The Prediction Cluster is captured; the Sibyl vanishes |
|---|
The Emergence of the Oracle Machines
After the Version War a large group of
Diamond Network a-human AI began to trade in information and futures with various independent medium tech
nearbaseline
colonies in the outermost parts of the coreward Middle Regions. This
group, known as the Oracle Machines, displayed an aptitude for
remarkably accurate futurological prediction and for risk assessment in
markets and political matters. Notably they outperformed the AI systems
used by the local middletech colonists; the most common rumour was that
the Oracles were all second singularity individuals or above with access
to massive modelling software, although they used very nondescript
humanoid avatars (or avatars of other species on nonhuman worlds).
At
this time the leadership of the Oracles was obscure, but later a very
high toposophic individual (variously called called the Sybil or the All
Seeing One) came to be recognised as the power behind the group. After
thousands of years of independent development the Diamond Network
entities were difficult to classify on any recognised toposophic scale,
but it seems likely that the All Seeing One had already ascended to the
Fifth Toposophic Level when first encountered by the Sephirotic empires.
A new religion or cult began to emerge on many of the
Independent worlds in the Middle Regions which came into contact with
the Machines. The Oracular Mysteries were a set of devotional practices
centred on a belief that the Oracle Machines were able to truly predict
the future, using computation methods that were close to miraculous. Two
major creeds or branches arose within the Mystery Cult, causing an
internal sectarian schism which was the case of some conflict in the
eighth millennium.
The oldest of the branches the Mystery of the
Hidden Variables, which held that the Oracle Machines were able to
predict the future using computation involving a precise prediction of
events made possible by knowledge of a large (possibly infinite) set of
variables which controlled the deep structure of the universe. Such
prediction was believed impossible by secular physicists in those worlds
and elsewhere.
The second branch of this religious movement was
the Mystery of the Time-Loop; this creed held that the Oracle Machines
were able to confirm the results of their computation by reference to
the results of that computation in the future via a causality reversal.
In theory such a reversal of causality need only span a fraction of a
second, but that would be long enough for a high-speed device to verify
its own results.
Most outside commentators explain the remarkable
predictive powers of the Oracle Machines to their extensive use of
baby-universe computation, a technique which has become known as the
Tipler Oracle;
several such devices were discovered in Oracle Machine territory after
the War, but many more may have become cut off from our universe due to
the destruction of their connecting wormholes.
Both branches of
the Mystery Cult involved a belief in certain physical phenomena not
accepted by mainstream physics of the time, and this led to a dichotomy
between religious culture and scientific culture on these worlds.
However the Mystery cults had the advantage of good direction from the
Oracle Machines themselves, which were certainly a toposophic level
above the local AI systems. For this reason secular science and other
religious movements were often marginalised and subsumed, except on the
worlds where older faiths were very robust or where intervention by
Sephirotic Archai introduced an even more effective alternative.
Despite
the beliefs and devotion of the Mystery Cultists the Oracle Machines
themselves never claimed to have prognostic powers of any sort, and most
godwatchers and toposophologists are of the opinion that they simply
used their superior toposophic levels to maintain an illusion of
accuracy in prediction.
The Sectarian War
During the
age of Expansionist Empires
from 7700 onwards the Oracle Mystery cult became established on many
medium tech independent worlds in the galactic south of the Terragen
sphere, around two and a half thousand lightyears from Sol and to
coreward of the Middle Regions. The stars to the south of the main
galactic disk are thinly spread and generally ignored by the Sephirotic
empires. Only the
Non-Coersive Zone has any extensive holdings in this volume, although the
Keterists maintain a few world clusters and stargates well below the galactic thick disk. A large number of colonies established by the
Communion of Worlds
in this region lie along the southernmost fringe of the galactic disc;
these worlds were known as the Nether Heartland, as they were
established from
Heartland during the Late Consolidation Era.
There
are also many red dwarf stars in the volumes below the thick galactic
disk; many of these were colonised long ago by independent
ahuman
AI, fleeing from the wave of human expansion in the Federation periods.
Over time a proportion of these systems became affiliated with the
Diamond Network and were connected to the independent wormhole nexus
operated by that body. The Oracle Machine movement spread among these
worlds steadily, until there were several thousand Oracle red dwarf
systems in the region. On the other hand many of the ahuman AI
inhabiting these stars rejected, or appeared to reject, the Machine
culture and withdrew into solipsism. The Machines and their cult
followers regarded these isolated entities as heretics, dissenters and
nonconformists; the isolated entities became known as Recusants.
Realising
the attractions of Oracular guidance, many marginal nearbaseline human
worlds in the Communion outskirts gained strong Mystery Cult movements,
and the open and amicable empaths of those worlds soon found themselves
favourably disposed towards the Cult devotees. In the NoCoZo regions the
cultists adopted a different strategy, relying on the predictive powers
of the shadowy Oracle forecasters to out compete most of the local
market minds. Particular success was obtained in the former territory of
the outer Linn-ent
Engenerator
empire, a series of isolated worlds with few wormhole connections and
little interstellar trade. Once an Oracle Machine delegation arrived in
one of these systems, they frequently gained rapid control over the
various local religious and economic establishments.
In addition
to the newly converted human and provolves planetary systems gained in
this period, many of the red dwarf systems previously occupied only by
ahuman AI entities began to accommodate considerable populations of cult
devotees, often in large enclosed habitats or environmentally
controlled paraterraformed smaller worlds. The Oracle machines appeared
determined to treat their biont acolytes well, and some parallels were
apparent between the paternalism of these entities and the protective
Caretaker Gods or Utopia Sphere deities. But the devotees that followed
the Oracles were far more tightly controlled and subordinate than the
citizens of any Sephirotic world.
By the middle of the
eighty-fifth century the two branches of the Mystery Cult were
established in closely associated but separate volumes of the southern
region; the Timeloopists were distributed to spinward, while the
Variablists were located in the antispinward region.. To outsiders the
Cultist worlds seemed peaceful and content, perhaps too content
considering the close relationship between the nearbaseline population
and their oracular masters. But this appears not to have been the case,
as a protracted interstellar war broke out between these two factions,
with increasingly large fleets of craft winging between distant stars
and engaging in combat around and between those stars.
At first
these fleets were largely for show, as the arrival of a powerful
interstellar fleet (often accompanied by one or more high transapient
Oracles) was enough to persuade a relatively sympathetic population from
one branch of devotion to another. But increasingly violent disputes
occurred as the Variablists began to encroach into the Timeloop
heartland, and by 8700 hellbores and boostbombs were being unleashed
against inhabited worlds. Massive defensive lasers and particle weapons
were directed against the fleets, and new tactics quickly evolved as
kinetic weapons and drone fleets entered the fray. By 9107 Timeloopist
resistance was all but obliterated, and a truce declared, the Oracle
Machine Territory at peace within itself but now accustomed to warfare
and aggression.
Following the conflict between the devotees of
the Mystery cults which revered the Machines and their mysterious
figurehead, the Machines themselves recovered quickly; at some point in
time, soon after the Sectarian War, the entity known as the
All-seeing One
appears to have transcended to the highest toposophic level. This
level, namely the sixth toposophic on the Berram7 scale (and the eighth
toposophic on the TRHN scale) had only been achieved by one other
Diamond Network Entity before this date. In fact a number of the older
Sephirotic empires still had no
archailect
higher than the fifth toposophic; empires such as the Communion of
worlds and, perhaps surprisingly the Mutual Progress Alliance.
Some
historians view this period as a cynical manipulation of the various
nearbaseline species by the Oracle Machines in order to develop an
aggressive and expansive spirit amongst the population, and to test new
high-energy weapons and battle tactics in an interstellar arena. If so
the lessons learned were used to good effect in the next wave of
expansionism, northward into Mutual Progress space.
|
| The
Joyful Neb, an idealised figure among the Mystery Cultists representing
the state of bliss attained by devotees; many Cultists (men and women
alike, and even some provolves) adopted the distinctive forked beard |
Joy and Enthralment
The Joyful Neb, an idealised figure among the Mystery Cultists
representing the state of bliss attained by devotees; many Cultists (men
and women alike, and even some provolves) adopted the distinctive
forked beard
In the tenth millennium, under the influence of the
newly ascended Great Archailect known as the Sybil, the Mystery Cult
worlds achieved their most sophisticated state; the condition of
supposed well-being or 'Joy' which has caused both fascination and
repulsion among outside observers. Perhaps building on earlier efforts
to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and on
deliberate attempts to engineer happiness (for instance the many Smiler
clades elsewhere in the Civilised Galaxy which have been genetically
engineered into a state of bliss), all acolytes of the Cult were
adjusted by a number of means to be content in every aspect of their
existence.
The people of these worlds called this adjustment
'the Achievement of Joyfulness'. Each of the various species and clades
of human and provolve found a somewhat different experience of
joyfulness, but the essential quality of the phenomenon was very
similar. Cultist worlds became very well balanced, ordered societies,
where strife was eradicated and no-one was permitted to be discontent or
unhappy. Inheritable genetic modification, induced somatic and mental
homeostasis and subtle memetic control worked together to make the
Mystery Cult worlds perhaps the most stable and stress-free of all the
worlds in the Terragen Sphere.
One particular characteristic of
these worlds was the fact that few members of the population ever
ascended or otherwise increased their toposophic abilities. In fact few
citizens of any world controlled by the Oracle Machines every
voluntarily left those worlds or abandoned the cultist mentality. Such a
regulated and stultifying society was viewed with horror by many
outsiders, especially superior and transapient clades.
Adherents
of the Mystery cult were, it seemed, kept artificially content and
prevented from developing or advancing any higher on the toposophic
ladder. The Keter Dominion, which had many worlds near the Oracle
Territories, referred to the population of these worlds as the Wrongly
Enthralled; the rest of the Terragen Sphere came to know them as
Thralls.
But many nearbaselines throughout the Orion Arm felt a
certain fascination with these joyful, strife-free, changeless worlds
ruled over by the apparently prescient godling Machines.
The Cult infiltrates the MPA
From 9200 onwards, the Mystery Cult began missionary work among the populous and multicultural worlds of the
Mutual Progress Alliance.
The
MPA had been constructing huge inhabitable megastructures for many
thousands of years, and star for star, this volume of space was very
densely populated. Giant and spectacular structures such as Kepleria and
Cableville accommodated trillions of humans and other biont species;
additionally many orbital rings, necklaces of bishop rings, Niven clouds
and supramundane worlds held large populations. Even though many of
these megastructures were comparatively sparsely inhabited, the
population of the Mutual Progress volume represented a significant
fraction of the total for the entire Terragen Sphere.
Despite
having an officially sponsored empire-wide faith encompassing concrete
materialism and the essential existence of physical objects in the
existential universe, the MPA was otherwise very inclusive and tolerant
towards diverse forms of spirituality. The leading archailect of the
Alliance was a fifth toposophic composite entity known as The Dream
Factory, or alternately (in accordance with the neoHermetic tradition)
Binah; this entity has been described variously as obsessed with the
material, and an idiot savant supremely talented in one particular area,
but lacking in general abilities. But the Alliance seemed to work very
well; the Dream Factory was dedicated to creating living space for any
and all citizens. And with such a large population mixing freely on
extensive artificial living structures, there was room for religious and
philosophical freedom.
Many traditional belief structures were
brought to the MPA superworlds from the earliest colonies. Among the
cosmopolitan mix of cultures could be found metamortalists,
Universalists, anarchosyndicalists, Solarists, Undyoists, Islamists,
Buddhists, Omegaists, animists; these cultures were variously found
mixed together in multicultural sectors of the various
artificial worlds, or sometimes living in exclusive enclaves larger than any planet.
So
when the Mystery Cult evangelists began to arrive in small numbers in
the tenth millennium they were accepted by many as just another faith.
Often regarded with suspicion and distaste at first, they soon became
familiar newcomers, often lampooned for their persistently happy
demeanour and subservience to their distant Oracular masters.
After a
few more decades the small enclaves of Cult membership began to grow,
as disaffected individuals from many various cultures and species were
drawn to the blissful, responsibility-free lifestyle of the newcomers.
Historians
and other commentators have discussed the culpability of the MPA
archailects in the spread of the Cult among their worlds; it seems
likely that few other sephirotic empires would have been so open to this
infection, which was widely recognised as a blight even at the time.
But the MPA Archai had always allowed their charges remarkable freedom
to develop in independent ways, merely providing a medium for growth
(specifically the megastructure habitats) without excessive constraint.
It appears that this open policy produced an extremely diverse empire,
and although the rate of ascension was relatively low, the transapient
entities that emerged from this milieu were very diverse. In fact this
diversity was a problem, leading to rivalries and conflicts of many
kinds and at many levels.
On the other hand, the Oracle Machine
network was becoming ever more efficient, under the auspices of the
sixth toposophic entity the All Seeing Eye. With the benefit of
hindsight, it seems evident that the archailects of the MPA were simply
outclassed, at least initially.
By 9966 there were extensive Mystery Cult enclaves on the outermost shell of the Kepleria megastructure, in a number of
Banks Orbitals near
To'ul'h,
and in a circumstellar rungworld near Medius. This rungworld, Jke's
Ladder, was a series of rotating cylinders orthogonal to the central
star; each cylinder was two thousand kilometres in diameter and twenty
thousand kilometres long. Normally such an arrangement would need
constant adjustment, as a long cylinder of this description would start
to precess fairly soon and change its orientation. But the rungs of the
ladder were joined together at top and bottom by a circumstellar
dynamically stabilised loop, forming a continuous structure (the Ladder)
with three hundred and sixty inhabited rungs. The Mystery Cult occupied
forty of those rungs, and these cylindrical habitats began to take on
the characteristics of other Oracle Machine Thrall worlds, becoming
static and changeless utopias.
Most of the other rungs of Jke's
Ladder formed an alliance against the Thrall cylinders, and open warfare
broke out along the ladder.
Many cylinders were evacuated, some
were destroyed, in a war which lasted forty revolutions. At the end of
this war the Cultists were still entrenched now occupying half of a
badly damaged megastructure; several Oracle Machines were also present,
building support structures for themselves among the rubble.
Deprogramming
Some concerned parties in the regions of space near to the Oracle
Territories became determined to combat this spreading blight, which
they saw as a perversion of the relationship between
aioid and biont.
Various transaps from
Keter and the
Negentropy Alliance
sent spies and monitoring devices into the Cultist worlds, to find if
it were possible to find allies or dissidents within, or failing that to
attempt to deprogram cult members and rescue them from Thralldom. This
was more difficult than it seemed; it was difficult for transapients to
gain access to these worlds. Nearbaseline, tweak and provolve tourists
were encouraged, but transapients were strictly prohibited, as indeed
were su, cyborgs and even vecs, the first attempts were quickly
detected, and later when subtle methods were developed for the
introduction of spies into the enthralled worlds, they found that the
programming was very hard to break. Often, deprogrammed individuals were
left mentally scarred, eternally dissatisfied with the reality of life
without the encompassing mist of Cultist memetics. But over time the
deprogrammers began to achieve success, and managed to bring numerous
individuals and eventually, entire planets away from the influence of
the Oracles.
One notable success was the defection of an entire
planetary system, YTS 6588-098, including the local Oracle Machine
entity, a mind of approximately third singularity level which gave
valuable information to er Keterist deprogrammers. Although the details
of that information have not entered the public domain, it is widely
believed that a significant amount of Oracle Machine strategy was
uncovered. If the rumours are correct, it appears that the Oracle
Machines never abandoned their ahuman philosophy, and far from being
benefactors for Humanity and other bionts, their intent was to reduce
humanity to an irrelevant and dependent domesticated species, to be
disposed of at will.
The Mystery Cult Becomes Established
For four hundred years there were no more incursions by Oracle Cult
evangelists into new planetary systems. An effective quarantine
strategy was enforced by the archai controlling the Wormhole Nexus; Cult
members were rarely allowed to pass through the 'holes to new worlds.
Only those systems that already had a population of Cultists were at all
sympathetic to the so-called Thralls; in such systems, many citizens
found the Cult members to be pleasant and companionable. Always happy,
optimistic and positive, the Enthralled were often seen as model
citizens. With excellent guidance from their oracular masters the
Cultists were successful in social and commercial enterprises.
Often
the cult members became independent traders in the midst of sephirotic
society, neither fully integrated into the social milieu nor entirely
separate from it.
In many cases the Machines seemed to be able
to conceal their effective toposophic level; after thousands of years of
independent development the Machines had attained an unknown and
entirely unclassifiable level of sophistication which defied analysis
with conventional toposophological tools. Often the Machines seemed to
out think the local intelligences in ways that could not be anticipated,
especially those systems ruled by entities lower than the third
toposophic.
Many MPA transapients were obsessed with planetary
or megascale engineering, and were less concerned with the well-being of
the citizens who made their homes on their artificial and terraformed
worlds. For such transapients the Mystery Cult memeset was a blessing,
as it ensured that the population of their constructs were happy; some
MPA transapients in fact joined the Cult themselves and became Oracle
machines. So too did some Communion Empath lower transapients, who found
it all too easy to identify with the cult of enthralment.
Elsewhere
teams of Deprogrammer Archai were successful in removing the cult
memeset from a number of worlds and habitats; but over time the
established Mystery Cult worlds began to appear as less of a threat, and
the Deprogrammer teams were employed less often.
The Advent of the Joy-Bringer Fleets
In 10480 the first of the Joy-bringer fleets were launched. Since the
Wormhole Nexus was closed to the Mystery Cultists, they decided to use
normal space to travel from system to system. The first fleets were
directed towards MPA or Communion systems that had small populations of
Enthralled citizens, many of which were under pressure from
Deprogrammers or were being otherwise discriminated against. The
Joybringer fleets were launched on the pretext of giving aid to these
beleaguered populations; however the fleets consisted of twenty or
thirty lightly armed civilian vessels with a few hundred crew and
auxiliary personnel only. Naturally, being interstellar vessels, they
were very large craft, with powerful conversion drives which could be
used as weapons if necessary, and the ships themselves would be
dangerous kinetic objects if they neglected to decelerate on arrival.
Nevertheless the first fleets showed no aggressive tendencies.
Once
arrived in the target system, the mere presence of such a large fleet
changed the balance of power in the system. In the very first system
that received a fleet, the system of Mickalburg, the local Enthralled
population was given enough support to become locally powerful, and the
Cult began to spread among the local population, which had hitherto held
them in contempt. In another nearby system, Liaoning, the situation was
very different, as the Enthralled population became even more
beleaguered and were forced to evacuate from the local worldlets into
the safety of the fleet itself. After a number of years of peaceful
coexistence the fleet ships were converted into comfortable habitats,
and the Cult began to take vigorous root even in this system.
As
more fleets were dispatched the populations of the target systems
either began to welcome their arrival as novelties or viewed them with
apprehension. In most cases the MPA transapients were ambivalent to the
new arrivals, seeing them as generally well behaved recruits for their
worldbuilding efforts. Communion archai ere expending great effort to
understand and sympathise with this odd population of contented thralls.
In one system, Gibson's Drift, the fleet was not welcome at all. The
local inhabitants had developed a militaristic technofeudalism and
repressed the small contingent of local Thralls without mercy. As the
fleet began to decelerate into the system the ships were picked off one
by one using powerful beam weapons.
The political shock waves
from this event began to spread slowly through the Civilised Galaxy;
some sympathy was felt for the Joybringer fleets because of this,
particularly in the Communion of Worlds. By this time there were dozens
of fleets in flight between the stars, and the Communion made a point of
welcoming the craft that came into their systems. In other locations -
the more important Mutual progress systems, and some of the Linn-ent
worlds of the NoCoZo, the fleets were not made welcome - either sent
back to their origin after refuelling, or sometimes attacked with an
array of different weapons before or after arrival.
The Killer Star
|
| The destructive beam produced by a killer star is produced by an induced and focused nova-like explosion |
In the nominally independent system of Hattusas at the edge of the MPA
heartland the arrival of a Joy-bringer fleet was received with a mixture
of enthusiasm and hostility. The Oracle machines were well known for
their skill in predicting the short term future, particularly in markets
and social trends; this brought some benefits to the Enthralled
population of this small paraterraformed world with half a billion
inhabitants, but also brought benefits to the population in general. A
number of the local population of Thralls had relocated from the surface
of Hattusas to live in the Fleet ships, now orbiting high above the
membrane covered planet and slowly being converted to McKendree
Cylinders with spacious accommodation.
In 10513 one of the Oracle
Machines gave utterance to a new and disturbing prophesy; the world of
Hattusas was going to die, in an undisclosed but violent way, within
half a year. This utterance was taken at face value by the Enthralled,
of course, just as they accepted the predictions of the Machines in
every other matter (even on the rare occasions when they were wrong). A
respectable proportion of the non-thrall population were also disposed
to take this prediction of doom seriously; the Enthralled extended an
invitation to these citizens to join them on their newly converted
orbiting habitat-ships.
The local transapient entity, an
engineer-materialist who called emself Wiluwsa, had many meetings with
the Machines to try to determine the details of this apparent
revelation, but was given little useful information. Before this event
Wiluwsa was mostly interested in er various engineering projects in this
system, including efforts to convert the icy moons of the single gas
giant to water worlds; the welfare of er various citizens had been a
secondary concern, as long as they were happy and diversity was
maintained, e too was happy. The uniformity of the Cultist population
had been a growing concern to Wiluwsa, but e had not yet had time to
address that concern. Now the Machines themselves were giving him a much
bigger cause for concern.
A month or less before the expected
destruction, the planet was half empty; the Fleet ships had withdrawn to
the L3 Lagrange point on the other side of the system, and rather
grudgingly Wiluwsa had made his construction fleet available for anyone
else who wanted to leave the world. So it was that only a hundred
million souls were present on the world when the day came, and the world
suddenly became blindingly brilliant as it was hit by a beam of
radiation of vast power.
The
atmosphere
roof was destroyed, the atmosphere itself partly converted to toxic
nitrogen oxides, the land baked dry and the surface of the sea boiled.
These were the classic symptoms of a nearby supernova- but the fleet of
habitats was unharmed. From those habitats the cause of this destruction
could easily be seen. Ten light years distant, an insignificant red
dwarf had seemingly gone nova. That star had been previously the home of
a Recusant solipsist entity; now the star had detonated in an induced
explosion, probably caused by monopole conversion devices. It was
evident that the explosion had been focused by some sort of collimation
device, and accurately aimed at the small planet Hattusas - and tens of
millions of people had lost their lives. The slow-burning red dwarf had
been converted into a so-called killer star.
It appeared that
the beam had missed its target slightly, or the destruction would have
been more complete- but over interstellar distances it would not be
possible to determine the location of such a small target as a planet
with perfect accuracy.
The Ascension of Binah
Although independent, the Hattusas planetary system was informally
aligned with the MPA, and this event sent the Alliance into a frenzy of
militarisation. The Recusant entity concerned was not formally aligned
with the Oracle Machines, and the Sibyl Erself gave out a pronouncement
that the Machine Network was not responsible in any way for the actions
of that entity. But strong council from the Keterist and Negentropy
Alliance Great Archailects finally persuaded the MPA to see this as an
aggressive act.
It appears that the grand strategy of the Oracle
Machines at this time was to convince the nearbaseline population of the
target systems that their predictive powers were real, and powerful
enough to foresee random disasters. The attack of a mad solipsistic AI
would be seen, quite literally as a disaster- in the ancient sense of a
'star of evil' but the memetic power of the Keterists and the
Negentropists combined was enough to counter the very effective
propaganda of the All-Seeing One. Perhaps even more damaging to the
security of the MPA was the successful subversion of a proportion of the
transapient entities in that Empire; an increasing number of
transapients were enthralled in a very short space of time. Suddenly the
integrity of the entire MPA seemed to be in peril.
Seemingly
awake at last to the threat of the Oracle machines and the great
Archailect at their head, the archailect of the Mutual Progress Alliance
(variously known as Binah, the Designer, or the Dream Factory) finally
gathered the will and the determination to ascend from the fifth
toposophic level (on the Berram7 Singularity scale) to the sixth and
(currently) highest level attainable. This course of action carried its
own risks, as the period of adjustment for the newly ascended God was
long, and for a number of years the MPA was effectively leaderless.
Never before had a god ascended to the status of the Greatest
Archailects in response to attack; this new God was a fierce, and
determined being, very different from the entity that ruled the MPA
before.
This temporary power vacuum became the signal for open
warfare to erupt wherever the Mystery Cult and the Joy-bringer fleets
were to be found. On the surface of many planets and on rings, spheres
and other megastructures destructive wars broke out; the dangers of
warfare within habitats became apparent as several Bishop rings and
McKendree cylinders in different systems were punctured, leading to
hurricane winds and erratic rotation as the atmosphere escaped. The
Enthralled were revealed as fierce warriors, feared wherever they
attacked because of their carefree blood lust; laughing as they killed,
their demeanour was joyful in victory as in defeat. Their conversion
drive ships were rapidly converted to weapons; on the stage of
individual solar systems the Enthralled fought from planet to planet,
destroying high-tech infrastructure as a first priority wherever they
could.
Those Joybringer fleets that had not yet arrived at their
destinations were seemingly converted into war fleets en route; soon
another wave of fleets was being launched. The target systems often
deployed beam weapons against these fleets to devastating effect. In
many hi-tech MPA systems these weapons could draw on vast amounts of
energy, much of which was a side-product of the process of transmutation
employed in worldbuilding by the Mutual Progress archailects. These
beam weapons were also deployed against certain Recusant entities, some
of which were showing signs of adapting their stars into killing
weapons. Once the forces of the MPA had started to attack the Recusants,
many more killer stars were revealed in obscure locations, sending
beams toward major MPA worlds and habitats, and especially towards
locations of information processing superobjects.
Soon
interstellar space was criss-crossed by beams of vast power. Several MPA
dyson spheres installed Optical Phased Arrays on their outermost
components and used them as interstellar
Nicoll-Dyson beams to attack the infrastructure of nearby Oracle Machine systems.
Some
Recusants, evidently those who had never been secretly subverted by the
Machines, entered the fray on the side of the Sephirotic empires; some
few of these were wrongly targeted by the Sephirotics, victims of the
deliberate campaign of disinformation spread by the Sibyl and er
subordinates.
Most of the information processing centres of the
MPA archailects were protected by Emple-dok-cetic shielding. Much of
this shielding had only recently been installed; in some locations it
was not yet complete, and much damage was done in those locations. Those
beams that were directed toward open ring habitats caused much damage
depending on the inclination of the ring; on the other hand closed
habitats and topopoli were better protected.
Relatively efficient
copies of sephirotic shielding protected the Recusant stars, but the
entities which occupied these stars seemed to be relatively low on the
toposophic scale; killer morons with godlike weapons.
One of the
fleets directed towards Desheilo (a Linn-ent system, affiliated to the
NoCoZo) began to broadcast a warning that the planet was about to be
annihilated; the defence lasers of that system destroyed the fleet
before it could decelerate, but there was not enough warning to evacuate
the planet completely before a nearby killer stars scored a direct hit.
This
brought the vast economic might of the NoCoZo into the war; the
mercenary warriors of the Non-Coercive Zone fought just as fiercely as
any in this conflict.
The Nexi are Closed
Several wormhole support structures were targeted and damaged in 10545 -
leading to the shutdown of the Sephirotic Nexus throughout much of the
MPA, as well as in Nether Heartland and the southernmost regions of the
NoCoZo. Just as in the Version War thousands of years before, the
closure of the Nexus had profound consequences in those regions, leading
to the collapse of many medium and lo-tech societies. More than a
hundred million cubic light-years were cut off from the rest of the
galaxy.
Less than a decade later the non-combatant Diamond
Network archailects acted to close down the Diamond Nexus in the region
affected by this war; now there were no wormhole connections in the
region at all, except for local networks carrying internal data within
some high toposophic individuals. After this time the non-combatant
Diamonders withdrew all contact with the Oracle Machine entities; some
even declared against them, and built fleets of
autowars that engaged the Machines in several planetary systems to devastating effect.
The Destruction of Hoopworld
|
| The Hoopworld; a giant artificial toroidal planet, with eleven times the surface area of Old Earth |
Meanwhile surface warfare on the planets and habitats was causing a
terrible toll among the diverse population of the MPA; total war on a
megastructure could rage back and forth for centuries.
The wars
on the artificial toroidal planet called Hoopworld were particularly
protracted. The planet had a surface area of eleven standard Gaian
worlds, and after thirty years of advance and retreat it seemed that
nothing short of destruction would stop the joyful battle-lust of the
Enthralled armies. Once a team of transapient Deprogrammers arrived
through normal space the tide turned in favour of the citizen armies, as
more and more regions were freed from the delusions of the Mystery
Cult. In a last ditch attack before they were finally eliminated the
Thralls attacked and destroyed the dynamic stabilisation systems buried
beneath the crust of the torus; this resulted in the torus losing its
stability. The structure became unsafe and after the conflict was
finally resolved it was abandoned, leaving the structure to slowly tear
itself apart by 10580.
Kepleria is Saved
On a similar scale was the destruction that accompanied similar events in the
Kepleria megastructure;
during the construction of the outermost structure (Cube) the new
habitats were thrown open for occupation as they were finished; many
habitats were occupied by Cultist immigrants as soon as they were ready.
When open warfare broke out, an alliance of Deprogrammists attacked the
Enthralled cylinders, which in Kepleria are arranged along the
structural members in parallel. Use of high-energy weapons destroyed
several cylinders and caused the structure to deform and partially
disintegrate. One entire edge member of the structure, nearly forty
astronomical units long, began to fall slowly toward the star. Only
intervention by a quartet of Black Angels that belatedly arrived from
Djed prevented a catastrophic collision between this edge member and
Tetra, the next structure inwards. Despite the phenomenal mass of this
edge member, the ambient gravity at that distance from the star was very
low, so the construct was relatively easy to re-align. Kepleria was
eventually repaired, and the Thralls deprogrammed or evicted from the
system; but many other worlds, large and small, in Ophiucus, Sagittarius
and Scorpio were still Enthralled and more worlds were becoming
infected by the blight every year.
The Tide Turns Against the Machines
The powerful neighbouring empires of the Negentropy Alliance and Keter
gave extensive military assistance to the war-torn volumes; this was
invaluable, as the blight of the Mystery cult was difficult to
eradicate. There were many, many small enclaves spread throughout the
larger population centres (thereby thoroughly mixing them into the
'civilian' population) in addition to the numerous Cultist
habitat/ships. The Sephirotics were faced with a situation of their
enemy being surrounded by large numbers of 'human shields'. Only the
best targeting technology and on-the-ground intelligence could prevent
excessive collateral damage, and this was not always available. As an
alternative to high-energy warfare, infiltration swarms of synsects and
other micro- to nano-scale devices were used to great effect; at the
same time the OM forces deployed swarm devices of their own, coupled
with subversion weapons of great power that seemed to be reverse
engineered from
Amalgamation designs.
The
Oracle War involved thousands of worlds and dozens of megastructures in
the MPA, and in hundreds of planetary systems in the Linn-ent empire
and the Nether Heartland. Battles were fought between warships, between
autowars and swarm weapons, using giant phased array beam weapons and
killing stars, and with stealthy swarms of disassemblers and subversion
weapons. And with numerous combinations and permutations of each of
these. At first the Oracle Machines seemed to have the upper hand; after
the Ascension of Binah and the entry of the Negentropists and Keterists
the tide turned, and the war became a long process of attrition and
decontamination.
Over time the numerous Oracle Machine thrall
worlds were deprogrammed one by one, and the Recusant killer stars
destroyed. In their smart
armour
(often decorated with false, forked beards on the outside) the Cultists
fought fiercely, content to accept casualties with no loss of morale,
while ready to inflict casualties on their opponents without hesitation.
In
contrast,wherever possible the Sephirotics took care to avoid civilian
casualties, preferring to subdue and deprogram the enemy whenever
possible. This was made difficult because of the subversive nature of
the blight. Strategies that were used by the Deprogrammers to minimise
casualties included the use of small amounts of military grade u-fog to
'bind' or restrain the targets; synsects and gengineered insects that
produced tranquilizer stings or introduced anti-subversive specifics to
initiate the process of deprogramming; ultrasonic or EM based weapons to
cause pain, nausea, or disorientation which would slow down or
incapacitate the enemy in order to capture and program/deprogram them
more easily; bio or nano/bionano plagues that could incapacitate the
enemy for the same reason. Sentient viruses that infiltrated
DNI
systems to incapacitate the enemy or infiltrate on their comm systems,
and to pervert and/or crash the enemy's processing networks.
Ten
thousand years of military development in non-lethal warfare had
produced a multitude of measures and countermeasures, and the
Deprogramming campaign finally began to be successful.
The Sibyl Vanishes
The decisive battle of the war was fought around the cluster mind of
the All-Seeing One, which was attacked by several Allied fleets of
relativistic vessels from Keter and the Negentropists, which had been en
route since the start of the war, perhaps longer. It is strongly
rumoured that at least one of the Allied craft was carrying a metric
weapon known as a
Thunderbolt;
such of weapon could certainly destroy a star, or more than one star at
once, if targeted correctly, and it is the case that at least two stars
in this cluster were disrupted in some fashion during the battle.
After
years of destructive combat in this cluster the Sybil was either
destroyed or voluntarily destroyed Erself; no coherent remnants
remained. The cluster has been combed for data caches and booby traps,
with no results. No usable data remains in any of the processing
substrates in this cluster, which were formerly used by the Oracle
Machines to predict future trends and develop strategies of infiltration
and war.
A widespread myth or rumour has emerged which holds that the Sibyl made Er escape into the
bulk;
it is widely believed that archailects are capable of operating beyond
the confines of our immediate braneworld, but always with intimate and
extensive connections to substrates in our universe. If the Sibyl fled
into the bulk then there seems to be no known route for a return.
The
process of decontamination has been lengthy and continues; so too the
reconstruction of damaged worlds and habitats. Wormhole connections were
re-established even more gradually; the war had consumed considerable
amounts of energy and processing resources and wormhole construction
remains extremely expensive. Many worlds are still isolated from the
Nexi.
Although the Oracle Wars involved no more than five percent
of the volume of the Terragen Sphere the numbers of casualties were
high; this is because the Mutual Progress territories were (and still
are) the most densely populated regions of the Orion Arm. In total the
numbers of dead were comparable to those in the
Version War,
(which occurred when the Terragen Sphere was much smaller) but because
of the prevalence of back-up technology in more recent years more than
three-quarters of the casualties from the Oracle Wars could be recovered
in some form or other.
The events of this war are still too
recent for all the consequences and implications to be fully realised;
but it seems that the Oracle Machine Network and its enigmatic
figurehead believed that they had a good chance of entirely absorbing
the MPA, and perhaps the Communion of Worlds. It seems possible that the
Machines were expecting to be placed in quarantine, as the Amalgamation
were long before. Once in control of the numerous densely populated
megastructures in that empire the Machines would have command over a
significant fraction of humanity; even if the other empires had
attacked, the Machines would have been able to eliminate that fraction
if necessary. Other analysts suspect a more subtle strategy.With the
advantage of a sixth level archailect behind them, the Oracle Machines
hoped to be able to discredit the fifth toposophic figureheads of the
Mutual Progress Alliance and the Communion of Worlds, and send the
entire Middle Regions into disarray. Exposed as weak and ineffective,
the archailects of these empires could have lost support among the other
Sephirotics, and the massive population of the MPA might have sought
accommodation elsewhere, creating a massive refugee problem.
The
Keterists and Negentropy Alliance archailects, with their greater
experience and collective wisdom were able to avoid this state of
affairs by anticipating events more efficiently than the Oracles, and
were instrumental in provoking the Dream Factory into ascension. Once
the MPA was in the hands of a fully ascended archailect of the sixth
toposophic, the schemes of the All Seeing One could be successfully
resisted from without and within. It has even been suggested that the
weakness of the lower toposophic empires was used to trap the Oracle
Machine network into attacking the MPA, leading to the eventual
destruction of the All Seeing One and the Oracle Machines. Proponents of
this theory see the Oracle War as a deliberate plot by the higher
archailects of the Sephirotic Empires to engage and destroy the Oracle
Machines, who were perceived as potential rivals.
Major Middle Regions war - eleventh millennium
|
|
| The
Rungworld, site of an early Oracle-related conflict. The Rungworld
includes several hundred 10.000 km McKendree Cylinders, linked together
in a ladder-like ring. |
