Sometime ago sparked by various sources (e.g. the
-interview) I began reconsidering my campaign's meta-plots... While much had to go on the meta level, the ground level was mostly unaffected or was even improved
Yesterday night I had the sudden desire to write down part of the old meta-plot I had so unceremoniously dispelled for being rather unoriginal... and now I'm presenting the result to you:
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Have you ever wondered what it is what you are doing, each time you use that technology of ours? - You know the answer deep down in you, don't you?
If you now even try to deny to know what I mean you are even better than I would admit. You Cheat.
Yes, that's technology is for: to cheat, to beat the odds nature make you play by. Using technology you run from natural selection and as more sophisticated your technology the further you can run.
But don't think that primal principle of Evolution will not catch up with you. There is no way to outrun it since you are still nothing but an animal caught in the psychotic struggle of self-obsession and self-denial.
And though they may cheat and play their odds even animals have obey the imperatives of nature - otherwise their only chance is to end as part of some stain in the carefully written chronicle of geology, only to be discovered and catalogued as "extinct" by some passer-by.
But as we advanced through the ages of progress didn't we, who call ourselves homo sapiens
for no apparent reason other than our self-exaltation, become better than that? Didn't we improve our technique in cheating to a point it is art?
Haven't we already bested the rule "survival of the fittest" which is quoted at every turn in the wake of Darwin's theories?
Let me show you want I think. Let us cheat reality together for a second and imagine
a scenario....
Witness the developments of a galaxy from the outside, from some obscure observation station from which we cannot interfere.
Focus on one kind of planet, one with lots o blue and green, with temeratupres that allow biochemistry like ours to rise. Now browse through these worlds and search for the improbability itself, merest flicker of a chance, which we have come to perceive as so natural - Search for Life.
Once you have found it - and you will find it sooner or later because just as every gambler and attentive student knows all odds can be beaten if you just try often enough.
Now that you have our life forms to witness let us move a bit in time, fast forward the entire process looking for one or multiple species to rise to an age where they can will use their technology to travel to the stars.
Now you will see a bunch of cheaters that have circumvented "survival of the fittest" again and again. Technology has given them an entirely new way to be "fit" and given them entirely new areas where to be "fit".
But considering the rules of Evolution outlined by Darwin and his followers, they cheat natural selection. The quality of the cheating has improved but not that fact that it is cheating a natural baseline for Evolution.
But that is not as bad as it sounds - according to the Darwinistic lore this cheating is evolutionary fitness at its finest.
Now witness your chosen subjects to hurl themselves into the void. See them march into the cosmos, exploring and later colonizing new worlds.
Their cheating has just gained another quality, by conquering new land in the sea of stars they have allowed some the dangers to their existence to vanish into the background:
Overpopulation - you build habitats in space and on other worlds; you just gained alomst infinite real estate if know how to acquire it.
Starvation - with your new space at hand you can do more than populate it with your kind, populate it with some other species you can feed upon.
Lack of natural resources - though this is a tricky one, you can beat it if you just know how to.
New problems are bound to rise but isn't that just the way of things? - An evolution of its own perhaps?
Actually it is not. It's Nature (or better natural selection) catching up with them through themselves. You can take the beast out of nature but you can't take Nature out of the beast.
Even in a space age, technology does not allow you to change the rules of that biological game hardwired into every product of evolution - it merely allows to cheat.
But what becomes if the reachable worlds are exploited? What if your species continues to grow and grow regardless?
They will find a way to acquire new space, maybe even learn to do it faster and more efficient than before.
And now imagine this: On their quest for expansion, your chosen species encounters another between the stars. Somewhere another cosmic coin toss has resulted on the coin landing on its edge. Assume that species has as well evolved into space age, not as to the same degree as our first species but nonetheless they did. What do you think will happen next?
The products of two brands of that emerged from same evolutionary process meet. Maybe they will get along just fine for a while but at sometime the simple fact that while space is infinite, living space and all those shiny little resources, which you may need to advance in the arms race with the natural selection within you, are bound to come to an end.
That's why those two species' will have to compete with another and perform the evolutionary ballet which knows only losers and those facing another round.
Assume the first species won this round. Continue that a thousand times and let the first species win again and again. Even make them compete with species without space age technology.
You will see a pattern that we already know too well from home. A species with no natural place in the ecosystem is introduced to it and breaks it down just by being unopposed
.
A another prophecy of biology fulfils itself here: No longer evolution but ecology is emerging dominant.
In an honest game evolution would fix the broken ecosystem given time. But there is no time because there is some cheater going round who just cannot stop cheating. An infernal host of biological machines caught in an infinity loop of faulty programming in making a mess of the fragile equilibrium that enabled it in the first place.
This sounds pretty bleak.
But is there really no way out? Is there truly no way to escape this?
There could be - a flicker of a chance, an improbably that requires even more struggling until the metaphorical deities of chance will grant us that favour:
Image in third species in the galaxy of our imagination. Give it every characteristic you like but still give it two - its greatest achievements:
a) It has broken the rules and b) it got away with it.
I can only imagine a race like this to have come to existing by cheating for so long that one day it began cheating its own needs to survive (which includes cheating the need to cheat to gain the access the ability to cheat
).
Now imagine being one of these beings. You wouldn't be the perfect altruist, because the altruist needs the opportunity to be selfless. Try to think be utterly without needs, even if you fail because your conscious self lists you right now the need your unconscious self has at some point in your life expressed. These beings I am proposing have perfected apathy for not even apathy's sake. They are without desire and motivation, not even to simply be.
Even if we can't think that to its logical conclusion with our human minds as we are bound by its limitations. There is no analogue to this is the living world we know, even plants are "motivated" by metabolite imperatives.
Don't worry about this extreme and unconceivable beyond stage of an imperfect blueprint. This is an extreme and even for this text only of theoretical relevance.
Now construct some branch common ancestry of the mind between the first born of our mental galaxy and those beings without motivation. I doesn't matter how many steps you choose them to be apart, it is of no consequence how many dead-end and dead-ends-to-be you include in your genealogy - just do it.
Now go from where branches of your model family tree part up to until you almost reach the motivationless extreme. Just before you reach that end insert another branch. Let there be the third ones.
Model at your liking but with some exceptions:
Leave them enough motivation to care
about that "galactic ecosystem" we already doomed by helping the first species to rise. Remove them of all desire to conquer our mental galaxy, make them isolationist. Give them means (technological and otherwise) to defeat the first species at any opportunity. Last but not least, let them think logically.
Now place the third ones at any edge of the galactic map while I rewind time before the "galactic ecosystem" was lost beyond hope.
Once we are both are done let us watch the events play out again (maybe dismissing the one or the other error arising from coins falling on opposite sides).
You will see that at some point the third ones will be forced to compete with the first born and as they are per definition capable to defeating the first born they will triumph and an equilibrium for galactic ecosystem will be restored in time.
Our logically thinking third born will assume based on the fact that the pattern that made life evolve were responsible for this threat to the galactic ecosystem in the first place are the same that drive all evolution including theirs. But in the light of their sophistication they will come to conclude that if let life run its course species' will emerge that can defeat their evolutionary imperatives.
Let them, as isolationists, decide that they will retreat to what territory you gave them but leave behind a guardian with riddle. This guardian is tasked to seek out newly emerging species in their technological space age and test whether they have reached the third ones degree or if they become a threat to other life just as the first born had been.
And give the guardian the directive that failing to solve the riddle and so proving to be a danger to all life in the galaxy has to be punished by extinction.
Now let time pass again.
Let a coin be tossed and land on its edge. Let evolution run its course and allow a forth species to emerge and venture into the void. Let them follow in the unseen footsteps of the first born until they encounter the guardian.
Let them try to solve the riddle and let them fail.
As guardian beings with its campaign of xenocide, let the froth species evade and hide to no avail.
And just before extinction let them find the solution but let them be to weak to gain anything off it.
Again let time pass. Let dust settle on the ruins of the forth species until a fifth space-travelling species by chance stumbled upon those ruins and wonder what all those warnings of the guardian mean.
Let them dismiss them or interpret them as you see fit but withhold the eureka moment - the moment they decipher their predecessor's legacy on the guardians riddle until the fifth have already failed to solve it.
In their new found knowledge they will find a way to break the rules of the guardian's riddle. No cheating, no loophole - just brute force shattering the guardian's foundation and rendering it broken and powerless to perform its cruel task.
Now imagine you are on the third ones witnessing that event. What would you do now?
Would accuse the fifth of cheating? - Would smile on the fact once again the smallest improbability has bested the system? - Would reflect on your own arrogance to impose an artificial selection?
What would you do now?
