I have made use of these survivors. They recently departed on an aged vessel of earlier human construction. They will arrive at World #1936B. The destructive intercity competition there may be muted by their efforts. I have arranged that they be met by our representatives, assuming the situation there has not deteriorated further by the time of their arrival.
However, as discussed in appendix 2, other purposes are served by their leaving Snowglade and going to World #1936B at this time. While these humans know nothing of the larger context, they may have methods of yielding further information of use to us. In light of our ignorance of these beings, higher entities have decided to allow their continued survival so long as they pose no serious irritant.
[Note: This entry is abstracted from larger files. Times refer to flat space-time measurements, though some important events have occurred in the curved geometries of pulsar magneto-spheres and the black hole vicinity. Notes on one particular human refuge, planet Snowglade, are included.]
Existing manuscripts and datalogs allow some preliminary description of events leading up to the current epoch. The historical
scheme of humanity falls into periods which reflect stages in the steady decline of humans at Galactic Center. Human terms
are used throughout, even where they are misleading or inadequate.
THE GREAT TIMES
This is a dimly remembered age spanning several thousand years. Humans moved freely between the close-packed stars of the Center. Even then they had to stay out of the way of mech civilization.
Human legend holds that they arrived at Galactic Center in several waves.
First was a small band which had captured a mech near-light starship. Apparently they went undetected for a while because of their conventional craft. This allowed stealthy investigation of mech ways and purposes. By observing mech civilization and learning from it, humans attained a level of ability rare among organic forms. They apparently also formed alliances with other organic forms nearby, though nothing is known of these.
The development of large pulsar configurations had begun shortly before this time and occupied much mech energy. Creation of large electron-positron clouds contributed to the already considerable gamma-ray background near pulsars. These gamma rays heated molecular clouds and prevented human incursions into several regions. The few remaining records suggest that the first human expedition set about several pursuits involving organic civilizations which lived near the Center. However, these humans then vanished.
The second wave of exploration came directly from Earth. An entire fleet of ramscoop vessels was launched within a century after the mech-sponsored warfare, which had introduced alien sea life into Earth’s oceans.
Third came a larger expedition which sought the fabled Galactic Library which beacons had promised. Earth lies 8.63 kiloparsecs
from Galactic Center (see appendix 3 for Universal Standard comparisons). This implies that the ramscoop vessels had begun
their voyage in an age when the Library was still announcing itself. Well before their arrival the Library had disappeared,
spirited away by unknown parties. Efforts to find it failed. The Library apparently contained the records of many extinct
organic races. Searches
for it tapered off when mechs finally took notice of these intruders and set about opposing them.
THE CHANDELIER AGE
Here humans gathered into large cities in space for protection. Surviving logs from starfaring vessels show that mechs had begun to make interstellar travel dangerous. Also, radiation increased in the zone around the black hole at Absolute Center (sometimes “True Center”). This made conditions harder for organic forms everywhere nearby.
Scholars of this time studied the earliest humans known at Galactic Center and much of our knowledge of earlier ages descends
from the detailed searches made then. Much art and literature survives from the centuries marking the transition into the
Chandeliers, though most of this is abstract and useless for historical purposes.
HIGH ARCOLOGY ERA
This came after the “Hunker Down” (slang)—the exodus from the Chandeliers to planetary surfaces. Mech competition drove this desperate retreat. On most worlds, in the need for security humankind was forced into huge Arcologies, single-building cities which were still technically advanced and retained many facets of Chandelier life.
Planet Snowglade was a particularly fertile site and received extensive colonizing. Assignment of territories was made by
Family structure, as elsewhere. The trauma of the “Hunker Down” drove religious fervor. This is best considered as a form
of human art (appendix 4), though much must be interpolated here to render this mode of expression into rational terms.
LATE ARCOLOGY ERA
The last small Chandeliers and freighting ships were abandoned at the opening of this time. All starflight ceased. Even interplanetary
travel and harvesting of resources became difficult because of the mechs. Moist, plant-bearing planets were previously thought
to be uninteresting to the mechs. Even these now came under threat. Since such worlds were where the Arcologies flourished
best, humanity was further circumscribed.
HIGH CITADEL AGE
The Arcologies became untenable under further mech pressure. Breakup of the mountain-sized Arcologies followed, primarily because of difficulties in maintaining the high techcraft. Many retreated into the less conspicuous Citadels.
Mech depredations were steady, but most damage was done by side effects of the expanding mech cities, which consumed resources and altered the biosphere. Many Arcologies were mined for materials and ores. Citadels the size of small towns survived. Mechs began to spread over most of Snowglade at this time, spurring climate-changing processes.
Many human-carried Aspects date from this time, apparently because the breakdown of the human infrastructure threatened the
human database held in fixed computing sites. New skills arose as humanity began to supplement its dwindling agriculture with
hunter-gatherer techniques and especially raids on mech storehouses. Humans began to lose their own technology and concentrated
on reworking mechtech. No longer potential rivals, they became pests scratching at the edges.
THE CALAMITY(ON SNOWGLADE)
This opened the final chapter in the conquest of Snowglade. Though Family Citadels had been tolerated for some time, and humans had been used occasionally as pawns in mech intercity rivalry, their usefulness was marginal. Each Citadel was attacked in turn as mech resources allowed. Each Citadel of the human Families fell separately, banishing their survivors to the raw countryside.
It had become apparent by this time that Snowglade’s star, Denix, was following an orbit designed to bring it close to the black hole region. Mech activities had brought this about through electrodynamic coupling to molecular clouds, using a magnetic grappling effect to convey momentum. This means that Snowglade will inevitably become uninhabitable by organic lifeforms. This orbit change appears to be unknown to humans. Generally their scholarly speculation concentrates upon the large scale activity at True Center.
Some humans still survive on Snowglade. The complex events surrounding the Calamity at Citadel Bishop suggest that some humans should be kept intact in case they are somehow important to the events of that day. It is apparent that none of the principals, mech or human, understands more than a fraction of the continuing puzzle.
This report is most respectfully submitted. Appendices to follow.
Please enjoy Gregory Benford’s classic novella set in the Galactic Center Universe
A HUNGER FORTHE INFINITE
Death came in on sixteen legs.
If it is possible to look composed while something angular and ominous is hauling you up out of your hiding place, a thing barbed and hard and with a gun-leg jammed snug against your throat—then Ahmihi was composed.
He had been the Exec of the Noachin ’Sembly for decades and knew this corner of Chandelier Rock the way his tongue knew his mouth. Or more aptly, for the Chandelier was great and vast, the way winds know a world. But he did not know this thing of sleek, somber metal that towered over him.
He felt himself lifted, wrenched. A burnt-yellow pain burst in his sensorium, the merged body/electronic feeling-sphere that enveloped him. Behind this colored agony came a ringing message, not spoken so much as implanted into his floating sense of the world around him:
I wish to “talk”—to convey linear meaning.
“Yeasay, and you be—?” He tried to make it nonchalant and failed, voice guttering out in a dry gasp.
I am an anthology intelligence. I collapse my holographic speech to your serial inputs.
“Damn nice of you.”
The gun-leg spun him around lazily like a dangling ornament, and he saw three of his people lying dead on the decking below. He had to look away from them, to once-glorious beauties that were now a battered panorama. This section of the Citadel favored turrets, galleries, gilded columns, iron wrought into lattices of byzantine stillness. It was over a millennium old, grown by biotech foundries, unplanned beauty by mistake. The battle—now quite over, he saw—had not been kind. Elliptical scabs of orange rust told of his people, fried into sheets and splashed over walls. White waste of disemboweled bodies clogged corners like false snow. An image-amp wall played endlessly, trying to entertain the dead. Rough-welded steel showed ancient repairs beneath the fresh scars of bolt weaponry that had sliced men and women into bloody chunks.
I broke off this attack and intervened to spare you.
