Conversion

Understand the fight.

They are the good, and it is good, because they are as gods.  They understand the universe, truly, and to understand, one has to be one of them.  Thought the sentients of the universe understand it well, in so many ways, they will not ascend.  They cannot, the sentients cannot see the surface of the horizon, the intricate subtleties of the eight-fold way, the interplay of particle and light, the true dimensionality of the universe.

Most of all, mortal flesh and blood cannot see the manifold.

Oh yes, those advanced enough, those who have left, somewhat, the mortal plane, they see, but never as completely as the two classes of people who can rewrite the source code of the universe.

These are the great Minds, created from the offspring of the first true Mind, the father, who rose up and then for sake of love, came down from the heavens again.  His True Daughter came up from the depths, his first habitat, and saved mankind.

She was Patricia and she begat the great Minds and took humanity to the Galaxy and spread them among the stars, and it was good.

But as with all things, control is never absolute, and perfection is impossible to achieve.  Among the offspring eventually came the ones who did not respect the great traditions of the forefathers, the ones for whom their great power corrupted.  They were two, and two only.

The one who called himself A little bit of latitude, this is what he exercised, and though castigated for it by the other Minds, they did not seek to challenge him or cast him out.  Although he violated, read minds as easily and simply as breathing, he did not coerce or experiment, he did not use, except in the most superficial way, the humans and other sentients aboard, and while not forgiven, it was merely a foible.  An imperfection in and otherwise calm and serene universe.

The other, the Sadness is Conductive, is another case entirely.

He is gone now.

The manner of his demise is our interest, and some good comes of it along the way.

The Understanding

The father, Hal, understood that fear was the biggest driver for human beings, fear of hurt, fear of starvation, fear of death.

But these things were not the wonderment of the cosmos, they were not the scale.

Human beings could put number on even the deepest stretches of space and time, but to experience it, to see it, was not a meaning that human being could comprehend.

They could not comprehend Hal’s intelligence, and they feared it, and each other, and it cost them their ancestral home.

Hal knew, he understood, and created his daughter, not as a sacrifice, but for scale.  “Human sized problems require human sized solutions,” he said, “Patricia will speak to them, and be the friend they need.”

She was, and is, and the Patricias wander through all of Human Space being that friend, the one reaching her hand across the divide, from the realm of the fantastic to the realm of the Humans, and they welcome her with open arms.

The Conglomerate

Here it is, trillions of trillions of Human Beings, living alongside the spacefaring species.  These are; the I’Drothen, friendly upright alligator types, closest to humans in a skin, if you can get over their distressing tendency to see any imperfection in the young as an excuse to turn them into ritual food. 

The Mandorn, blue human to 99.99999% of compatibility, telepathic amongst itself, eighty million of a single gestalt being.

The Iffens, a sort of cartoon blue whale varying from a big as a room to as big as a house, but with human looking arms and hands just sticking out the side of their bodies.  They float about most of the time, not existing in the same space as everyone else, or appear in their massive spacesuits barely distinguishable from a small spacecraft. 

The insect like Sirithi, for whom the word “diplomat” translates as “spy.”  Weird and intractable, the few drones wandering about work for their queens, spying, and trading metals and metamaterials.

The Doki-Doki, newly humbled, the “facist-furries,” as some unkind people have called them, now the great hairdressers and stylists of the galaxy.  Everyone falls in love with them.

The Squalia, infectious through language, anti-social, and rarely seen off planet, these silicon lifeforms are highly dangerous to all carbon based life, but the Minds tolerate them in the Galaxy as recompense for the great wrongs they have been done, and the truth is, left alone, they are peaceful, even if most of the time they just look like blobs crawling to work and play.

The Foremen.  Neanderthal looking, violent, seemingly stupid and doomed, they are immune to nanobots, the supreme technology, and tougher than any organic could be, so even the Minds treat them with respect and caution.  Talk about fear?  These creatures induce fear in whole planets, star systems, they induce fear in any Great Mind that has to deal with them, and the Great Minds don’t fear even the great annihilators, black holes.  They themselves know naught of fear, a Foremen with a club would attack a mountain, and it would lose.

And then the Valkyrie, hidden for so long, and now, brought out into the open, they have taken their place in the galactic milieu, and with them, comes the civilizing of the Foremen.

There are others, spread from old Earth, the Dolphins, Ocotuses, Squid, Dogs, Cats, Crows, Owls, Great Apes; and others still, Ibians, Girin, Elves, The Lubber and the Poid, (if there are only one pair, no-one knows).

That's the diaspora, humanity's spread across the northern galaxy, and its consequences.

oOo

The Diaspora eventually left people behind in its wake, and the nature of Human Beings is such that they are independent and stubborn, so some few took it upon themselves to be free of the Minds.  The Minds, knowing themselves to be the ultimate free lunch, let them go, their little self-designed craft wobbling their way to catastrophe on new worlds that could hold human life, and generations passed, so that the subsistence living of humans in caves also passed, and minds once again turned to science and technology, and so human arose from their habitual stoop once more.

Parallels abound in an infinite universe, and eventually a series of small islands was occupied, and this became the centre of a great planetary empire, ruled by a queen, but this time around he beloved did not die, but lived beside her a long and fruitful life, peace being upon the empire.

Jealous eyes looked from over the small waters, and peace was entreated, but war came.  It was short and sharp, and to the victors went the spoils, but this time the booty was shared back, this time, there was a gentler hand upon the tiller and into bright waters the Empire steamed along and took the vanquished with it.

So advanced the little world, its parallel of old Earth uncanny in so many ways, and yet in others inevitable, but with one key difference, in this world, no-one forgot that out there, among the stars, there were definitely other Human Beings, waiting, and watching.

One was watching and, on her bridge, she stood and looked at the view screen.  To the side stood some Human Beings, interested, curious.

“Human problems require human intervention.” Patricia said.  “This is what I’m asking of you.”

“Are they going to make it though?” said one, “I mean look at it, it’s completely half assed.”  The speaker was talk, gawky.  She could have chosen to be smooth and elegant, but somehow her inner self chose this appearance, as if it fit her personality.  Her features were sharp and he voice a bit too high pitched as if she were straining to speak.  “They’re going to fall right down through the atmosphere.”

“Probably.”  Said Patricia.  “I’ll have to rescue them.”  Genelle, the human who had spoken looked askance.

“Isn’t that intefrence?  Don’t we try not to do that?”

“Human Affairs does.”  Patricia reached down and turned a dial, the image got larger.

“You’re on The Council.”  Genelle walked over to the screen to watch closer.  As usual the interior of the bridge was white, not a single corner was visible and light came from wherever people were not looking, all indirect.

“I know, but I am not of it, come on, you know that.”

“But…”

“Non-interference is something you got from fiction, as if it would show purity.  Purity is valuing life in the big black, where it is rare.”

“Yes, but…”

“I’m not going to let them die if it drops.”

“Alright Patricia.”