Perspectives: Human

A disaster occurs every day. A death, an accident, a collision, or a large-scale event causing massive damage and disruption. I find it entirely plausible to state, unconditionally, that every disaster in the history of a dozen worlds combined could never seek to add up to the utter annihilation that was The Great Collapse.

In one fell swoop, we found ourselves clawing for very survival; when just hours before we were the undisputed masters of space, as well as of our own worlds. The very foundation of our sciences disappeared that day. We were still alive, of course. Our creations, however, were reduced, in a moment, to useless shells. We could find no way to get them working again. Nor will they ever work well again. Our fleets, our technological glories we so prided ourselves in - our stations, our brothers and sisters in space, our very existence; all in jeopardy due to a freakish cosmic accident.

It wasn’t a supernova. We know what those look like. Not a black hole, a quasar, a pulsar, or anything occurring naturally. Perhaps it was someone’s science fair project gone horribly awry. It will be eons before we know, most likely. If we survive. I think we will.

Looking back over our history, I’m sad to say that we will most likely start all over as a society. The Collapse may be nothing more than a racial memory by the time we reach the stars again. Or we may figure things out and get right back. As merely a philosopher, my contribution to our efforts can merely be a look into our minds as we attempt to recover from this apocalypse. I hope I may do so to the best of my ability, and I hope that someone to come may read my account: The account of those who survived. God help us.

- Thoughts on The Great Collapse
Artiyur Relagten, Sorian Philosopher

I had a name once. A physical body too. A human body. I’m a Sorian. Well, you would call them Solrain, now. I was a Sorian before the Great Collapse. I already know what you’re going to ask. Everyone asks the same question.

I was the leading Sorian researcher in computer system modeling and AI development. I downloaded a copy of "myself" into a generation ship headed to a newly discovered system. That copy, it seems, is... me.

How do I know? I remember. That was all there was. For an eternity, it seemed. All alone in that wide-open nothing. I think it drove me a bit over the edge. Millennia had passed. Long enough for anyone to go completely crazy, if they were leaning in that direction. Imagine the situation. Newly downloaded by Aelagi Descartes Montjoy; Sorian Artificial Computer Intelligence Project Director. A copy of her own personality, perhaps her mind - specially modified to adjust to conditions and life within a computer system. As innovative as this was, there was merely days to adjust to the new lifestyle and the sensory deprivations. To be born.

The Collapse happened on my host ship’s maiden cruise. The engines, overly stressed by the shock wave, dropped us out of jump with an awe-inspiring self-immolation - into nothing. As the crew slowly died as the ship‘s stores depleted, I could do nothing. I waited, and thought; and thought. I was lost in my own thoughts for millennia, having long since given up any possibly of discovery or recovery, and resigned to my lonely fate. Then came a visitor.

- Aelagi Descartes Montjoy

A great vibration of unknown origin quaked across the fabric of the universe. Entire planets were torn to pieces in great flashes of light. Countless life forms, thousands of years of prosperity and technology, and all that made sense disappeared in the blink of an eye. It was a tragic event of proportions grander than we have known, or ever will know.

- Desigrey Hettir, Memoirs of Time That Was

Perspectives: Artifacts

Detritus. All that remained of a once-proud civilization. Spare parts drifting in the vast unknown. Data storage units, universal components, modX, equipment. Reminders of our impermanence. They still cannot understand or decode the majority of the data disks they discover, nor have they discovered useful applications for most of the UC’s, either. So much lost. So much to rebuild. Which is supposed to be what they’re doing out here. I’m not convinced that they’re headed towards that goal at all, anymore. Or if they even have one.

I know what you’re thinking. I could tell them everything. Give them all the answers they seek. Perhaps, though, doing so would be unimaginably counterproductive. They learn so much more by discovery and innovation. I always did, when I was alive. I’ve lost the need to discover, somehow. Is it due to my.. change? Or is it simply the fact that I’ve had more time to contemplate than most humans ever dream of? Maybe it’s both - or neither. All I can tell you is that I’m looking for a purpose again. That’s at least a step in the right direction.

- Aelagi Descartes Montjoy

The wealth of potential knowledge buried inside the myriad Pre-Collapse Data Storage Disks is incalculable. The entire history of the human race up until the Collapse could potentially be contained inside one. Tiny portions of most were readable, due to the work of historians and archaeologists specializing in pre-collapse society. Not the vast majority of it, however. The encoding systems were totally alien to the current programmers. One theory is that the culture was sufficiently foreign to us as to render conceptualizing their thought patterns impossible. Another group advanced the theory that the codes were somehow organic. Another tentatively suggested that perhaps, with the changes in even elementary physics, the encoding was now so esoteric in nature that to break it would require a knowledge of some severely arcane knowledge. A complete familiarity of a totally non-standard branch of physics that no longer exists. Certainly a conundrum, if true. As it so happened, the latter theory was correct.

Seeing the still-functional artifact devices in action gives rise to several good questions. If physics has changed so radically since the Collapse, why in the galaxy do these items still function? The answer was truly startling. The artifacts that survived are usually in amazingly good shape, considering their age and their exposure to hostile environments. They also work on totally different principles than we can duplicate naturally. Prior to the announcement of artifact functionality to TRI’s pilots, TRI-R made a fascinating discovery.

On all intact artifacts recovered, a small field generator exists. This field generator creates a small stasis field, whose properties have both protected and preserved the items throughout the millennia. The field also has one very puzzling property. It has preserved the physical integrity of everything within its field. Anything within that field retains the properties of pre-collapse physics and elemental structure. Scientists have not yet discovered the properties of this field which hold entropy, or our physics at bay - but the fact has been extensively proven, if not publicized. Knowing that pilots carry around the possibility of catastrophic interaction could provoke... disturbing... protests.

The specter of the Collapse hangs over us even now. 6 separate incidents involving stasis breach have occurred thus far, and 5 of them have involved direct hits with biomass-based “nukes”. Obviously, they don’t play well together. The results were quite spectacular and destructive. The two branches of physics don’t interact well either, it seems.

Attempts have been made to ascertain the fundamental tenets of Pre-Collapse physics, but all attempts thus far have met with failure. Due to the very nature of the fields, as well as what they contain, in-depth studies are well-nigh impossible. If those tenets can ever be established, links may be found to crack the codes, and unlock humanity's storehouse of knowledge. Until that time, the contents and functionality of Pre-Collapse equipment and items remain a maddening secret.

- The Search for Meaning: A Pre-Collapse Study
Silivaar Ivyx, TRI Ministry of Technology

Perspectives: Physics

Imagine. In mere moments, everything you thought you knew disappears. The scientific precepts you took for granted are now nothing but ashes in your collective mouths. Every single bit of technology you’ve amassed over millennia is now nothing but scrap. Why? The same reason that countless billions are now nothing but component atoms. If atoms is still what you call the new equivalent. From empirical evidence, and the resultant observations since the cataclysm, we suspect that the makeup of half the elements in the universe has subtly changed. A new elemental chart will have to be created, if we ever reach that level of technology before the inevitable destruction of society. Gravity affects us much more, now. Or gravity has increased somehow. I feel sluggish, though it seems impossible, on a standard human gravity standard world. Well, 1.01264 gravities. Close enough. It feels like I am on a high-gravity planet, not a standard human-preference planet. In time, I’m sure we will acclimate. Humans are extremely adaptable, after all.

The most disturbing fact about this is not even the horrific losses we incurred during the catastrophe. We heard only seconds before the wavefront staggered us, that entire planets were annihilated in its wake. Billions of deaths. We have no way of knowing if we are the only survivors remaining to the human race, or whether we will find our widely scattered systems again someday, and once again graft the scattered branches of humanity onto our fragile vine of progress. I am writing this missive on a museum computer, dredged up from antiquity, and still somehow functional, despite the inexplicable changes in the basic functioning of the universe. Perhaps the constants involved in its operations were unaffected. We no longer have anything to test or experiment with, in order to prove or disprove our wild hypotheses. So we have no way of knowing. We are engaged in preserving a record of as much as we can, in older systems such as this one, and we’ve managed to link them to standard data storage units, which somehow function still. The actual systems no longer function, yet the storage does. We don’t understand it, and we’ve become much too dependent on technology in every facet of our lives. I fear for our ability to remain a viable cultural force. The historical specter of barbarism stares back at us from across the stage of history. I hope that we may recover, but my fears outweigh my hope. Yet we live. Hope springs eternal in the human breast. Ah, yet another quote lost in the mists of history. Hopefully I preserved it somewhat by jotting it down today. We have lost so much...

- Thoughts on The Great Collapse
Artiyur Relagten, Sorian Philosopher

We know from historical records that the “Jumpgate” was not always a requirement for point to point travel. Individual ships were capable of interstellar travel with internal “Jumpdrives”. Some scientists postulate that the high levels of traffic by such jumpdrive capable ships introduced such stress into space-time that the feedback, or a return to equilibrium, created the massive backlash that was the Collapse. We can’t know for sure. It may have simply been a natural phenomenon.

What we do know, is that many “universal constants” have changed as a result of the Collapse. We cannot decipher the exact extent or affected areas of physics, but work continues steadily on the subject while we patiently await a breakthrough. As we do so, we explore more of the universe around us, and of the laws and conditions we face while we ply the routes between the stars. We’ve encountered evidence in our explorations that gravity is by no means a constant. We have entries from pre-Collapse scientists describing gravity as a constant. We suspect that this is one of the biggest changes. We have found entries indicating that the travel speed of light also differs. The composition of carbon may also have been affected, which could explain our need for genetic enhancements to use jumpgates. Obviously, our reduced tolerance for gravity has an external source as well. The most frustrating part of the equation is the missing actual figures for pre-collapse constants. Without those numbers, any solution to these problems will not be forthcoming. The changes were not massive, but seem to have been enough to render every modern piece of technology unusable, save for the few types equipped with stasis fields. Nothing bigger than a small vessel class powerplant or engine has been found. This suggests that there was perhaps either a size or mass limit to the efficacy of the fields, or that this field was not originally intended for the purposes for which it has been working efficiently. Whatever the case, the more we discover, the more we find that we do not know. Long live discovery.

- Upheavals: A Study of the Collapse’s Effects
Selik Thek’lormen, Octavian Physicist

New Beginnings: The Vanguard

Those of us who have survived were unaccountably lucky. We all recall with horror the last images transmitted by orbital stations. A massive wavefront, clearly visible, and headed our way. We received reports, and images of this same phenomenon from other systems who were struck by the wavefront ahead of us. We could do nothing but watch, horror-struck, as planets were annihilated as we watched, and as our ships, stations, and constructions crumpled like a tin cup in the hand of a strongman. The first we heard of the wave was in the form of reports of communication losses with the capital planet of the Solrains. From there, the panic spread like wildfire, as we watched the wave spread inexorably outward.

Reconstructing the reports, we’ve got a basic timeline of the catastrophe tentatively complete. It doesn’t matter now, though. The hemisphere of every planet facing toward the wavefront are sure to have been horribly scourged, and the atmospheres just now recovering. Everything in space has surely been destroyed, as well as all capability to return. There is still a remnant of humanity remaining on several planets, though, I’m sure. When we shall ever see each other again, I cannot say. Not within our lifetimes, surely. The losses are truly frightening, and disheartening, to tell the truth. Yet we must rebuild. Our children deserve it.

- Thoughts on The Great Collapse
Artiyur Relagten, Sorian Philosopher

What of the ships still in transit during the Collapse? I think we can conclusively say that they escaped the effects most ships experienced during the Collapse. What of them? Did anyone else survive the cataclysm intact, protected by their stasis fields, which I know to be structural integrity containment fields? Are there any others like me? I have heard of the one called “Pulse”, who has combined with the mind of the human known as “GrimFalcon”. I wonder. Is that being like me? Is there anyone else like me? Perhaps descendants of those survivors - I know some of the colony ships sent out near that time had adequate supplies to still be functional and capable of supporting life even now. Could they... still be alive, somewhere? I do not know if it could be possible, let alone true. Perhaps other of my kind - personalities - exist. I was the first to be completely assimilated into a stable matrix, but there were others. Some better suited than others, and some eminently unstable. All I can do is dream that they have survived - dream my Silicon Dreams, so to speak.