WARNING: LONGThere's a story that goes along like this:
"Two young fish meet an older fish, who asks them 'How’s the water?'
The younger fish look at each other and say, 'What the hell is water?'"
The point of the fish story is that experience opens our eyes to the reality around us. And so has been the course of human history: our distant
Homo erectus ancestors took the presence of fire for granted. Our modern ancestors emerging out of the steppes of Africa took the bright flare of a supernova in the night sky as a given. The first colonists landing in Jamestown, Virginia were oblivious to the fragility of humanity's existence on Earth were we to be struck by a moderately sized asteroid.
Today, we take our existence for granted having decided that the lack of a satisfactory answer to Fermi's Paradox ought not concern us. What if
KIC 8462852's dimming was the result of a half-complete megastructure? What if that megastructure was never completed because the local civilization was exterminated by another presence?
FreeSpace attempted to answer this enigma - as to why there is no intelligent life in our local vicinity that we can observe - by proposing the idea of the Shivans, the Destroyers and Preservers alike. The BP universe expanded upon this, and showed that the Shivans operate as part of an ancient protocol somehow linked to the Great Darkness.
In this respect, life itself is composed of prey and predator. Just as we prey on animals, the Shivans prey on us. And the Great Darkness.... seems to pray on Shivans.
After reading Battuta's brilliant story today, I started thinking about the fish story above, and how little we know of our universe. How little we know of our predators. When I started thinking about the Great Darkness, my first thought was to view them as utter monsters beyond what the Shivans are capable of. I wanted them to be utterly scary: If the Shivans - who are composed of the fabric of the universe itself - pray on entire galaxies, then the Great Darkness prays on universes.
But what is their motivation? Why pray on certain universes? Why pray on our multiverse? Perhaps multiverses containing intelligent life are favored over those without?
Perhaps the Great Darkness is drawn towards intelligence the same way a mosquito is drawn towards the CO2 emitted by its prey?
What if the Great Darkness is an artificial construct - very much like the Shivans - that targets multiverses? And how incredibly powerful would an entity be to construct and utilize such a weapon - just as the Masaii utilize their spears as weapons to hunt wild buffalo?
A weapon so powerful that the "Brahmins of old" had to "burn" the multiverse clean of intelligent life - the same way a mother in hiding would suffocate her newborn out of fear so that its cries would not alert the Gestapo hunting her down? Something so dangerous that the Shivans in response utilize noise/non-directed behavior as a decision-basis rather than utilizing goal-directed behavior so as to not attract it?
Returning a final time to the fish story, how little do we know of our universe? How much more is out there? What if there's something beyond the multiverse? What is there that could be hunting us? What if that is the Great Darkness and its wielders?
And what if there is something even beyond that? Something that occupies it that hunts those that wield the Great Darkness?
After all, life - and everything - is composed of prey and predator.
Could this - and will this - possibly be an idea explored in the BP series?-----------
tl;dr: The Great Darkness could be really ******* scary