[SmashMonkey]

WARNING: LONG

There'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

[AdmiralRalwood]

Good post.

I'd just like to leave the tech description of the Great Darkness here as a point of comparison, and so other people don't have to go look it up themselves:

We have discovered no hint, no residue, no archaelogical or astronomical clue that could confirm the existence of a Brahman civilization. The very notion of a mythical progenitor species is a hoary cliche.

Yet our own coexistence with the Vasudans, and our knowledge of the extent of Ancient xenocide, summons a powerful mystery. Technologically sophisticated life is apparently common in the galaxy - it arises frequently, and it has done so for some time now, at least in the cosmological span. Why, then, is the galaxy empty? Why do we find no von Neumann probes propagating through the subspace network? Where is the life that must have come before us?

We should inhabit a teeming universe, a bazaar of wonders, a cosmic ecumenopolis overflowing with civilization. The stars and galaxies around us should by all rights have been restructured to the needs of unimaginably sophisticated engineers. Technology self-catalyzes, and that catalysis has had time to flourish. The civilizations of the universe should, by now, have conquered reality itself.

We find no such wonder. Our cosmos is silent.

Certainly the Shivans provide one answer to this question - a great filter that annihilates spacefaring civilizations. But what if there was a time before the Shivans? What happened to the first life in the universe, the children of the dawn?

Did they pass on to some unglimpsable destiny, leaving no wreckage or monument? Or do we inhabit their tomb - a quarantine zone, a carcass, malignant with some ancient mistake?

[SmashMonkey]

Good post.

I'd just like to leave the tech description of the Great Darkness here as a point of comparison, and so other people don't have to go look it up themselves:

We have discovered no hint, no residue, no archaelogical or astronomical clue that could confirm the existence of a Brahman civilization. The very notion of a mythical progenitor species is a hoary cliche.

Yet our own coexistence with the Vasudans, and our knowledge of the extent of Ancient xenocide, summons a powerful mystery. Technologically sophisticated life is apparently common in the galaxy - it arises frequently, and it has done so for some time now, at least in the cosmological span. Why, then, is the galaxy empty? Why do we find no von Neumann probes propagating through the subspace network? Where is the life that must have come before us?

We should inhabit a teeming universe, a bazaar of wonders, a cosmic ecumenopolis overflowing with civilization. The stars and galaxies around us should by all rights have been restructured to the needs of unimaginably sophisticated engineers. Technology self-catalyzes, and that catalysis has had time to flourish. The civilizations of the universe should, by now, have conquered reality itself.

We find no such wonder. Our cosmos is silent.

Certainly the Shivans provide one answer to this question - a great filter that annihilates spacefaring civilizations. But what if there was a time before the Shivans? What happened to the first life in the universe, the children of the dawn?

Did they pass on to some unglimpsable destiny, leaving no wreckage or monument? Or do we inhabit their tomb - a quarantine zone, a carcass, malignant with some ancient mistake?

Thanks man! Good to know that my late night rambling makes a tiny bit of sense at the very least

[^Graff]

After reading the story, I'm wondering if the Brahmins, so interested in uplifting all life in the multiverse and uniting it into one giant system, reached a singularity in which they became one giant Aggressive Hegemonizing Swarm.

[mr.WHO]

There is a new RTS game called "Ashes of Singularity" where post-humans become supercomputers like beigns additcted to computing power so much that they started to devour entire planets even the one inhabited by sentient species. In the same time first, the oldes and most powerful human made benevolent A.I (build in the times when post-humans were yet to be inveneted) decides that post-humanity will sooner or later consume all life in the galaxy and then eachother and decide to stop post-humans for their own sake.

There are hints that Barhmans were present when the first apocalypse happened and maybe some of them become the Great Darkness.
Yet according to Shivans/Ken the Shivans themselves are as old as our universe or even ethernal.

Maybe Shivans are effect of "apocalypse zero" even older even that was caused by mulitiverse civilisation or maybe subspace-born civilisation (which would explain why they occured so early when our material universe was to hot/dangerous for life to even occur).
Maybe unlike "first apocalypse" which gave birth to Dreat Darkness, the "apocalypse zero" was sucessfully contained and that older race created/turned into Shivans as precaution for future apocalypses. I think that "apocalypse zero" was universe grade event, while "first apocalypse" was only galactic grade event that could have been low priority for the Shivans at that time and once Shivans arrived they noticed that Brahmans are advance enough to be aware of their wrong doing and that they share the same goals, thus Shivans allowed Brahmans and later Vinaashans to exist as long as they follow the rules.

The fact that Shivans tolerate Brahmans/Vinaashans somehow prove that "the Grear Darkness" is not so great, at least to Shivans (maybe it is the Brahman/Vinaashan origin name) and they are treating it as regular thread they are aware and know how to handle (with their usual Shivan cold efficiency).
I think that for Shivan all sentient races are like 5-years old children playing next to the armed nuclear launch button - if you play to close, you will be slapped (terminaly), but if you prove to them that you are able of self-restraint they leave you alone.

I guess that in FS1 they wanted to exterminate us and Vasudans as their standard protocol and the Lucifer fleet was just a "recon fleet". Then during FS2 they would finish the job if not Boshs' succesful attempt in communication.
BP follow on with this logic as Ken attempts in making contact prove that Shivans now see a possible chance in stopping GTVA without exterminating them. If they will manage to contact via Ken. It cost them nothing because if contact will fail or be rejected they just can follow the regular extermination protocol.

I think that with no point of contact (as Shivans think fundamentally diffrent that almost all existing races), Shivans see extermination as most most optimal solution, but when the species are capable of contact (Brahmans, Vinaashan, GTVA) the extermination is no longer best solution.

This however makes an interesting problem - why they don't use Vinaashan as a mediator for lesser species? Maybe Vinaashans doesn't know thay they didn't finished Shivan test yet?

There was a mention about broken trinity of Brahmans, Vinaashans and Shivans - everyone focused that trinity is broken because Brahmans departed (withdrawed from our universe? There was that place mentioned "The walls of Shambala?" where multiple species exist in safety from Great darkness), but maybe it's not Brahmans are missing, but Vinaashans are not worthy? They seems to mess in Shivan order too much and affect lesser races in wrong way, so they are starting to look for a possible replacement (maybe not immediately but in several..hundred thousand years in future).

This could share some common ground with Morrigan as:
UEF - Vinaashan dangerous toy
GTVA - Shivan possible candidate for Vinaashan replacement

We all know that Ken mentioned that if GTVA is not defeated then humanity is doomend, but he can have an agenda in it to heat up the UEF-GTVA conflict. Why? The longer the conflict the more brutal the GTVA become (I think Ken/Shivans already know that GTVA is to some point aware of Vinaashan mind**** of UEF) and less peace loving ubuntu like the UEF will become (purging Vinaashan influence on UEF. If GTVA would just blitz and swiftly takeover the UEF there would be a huge risk that it would gave the GTVA they ubuntu-cancer and this would be the doom of both UEF and GTVA.
In the end both UEF and GTVA would self-purify themselves from Vinaashan influence without engaging a single Shivan ship. Plus Ken point of contact make it easier for future Shivan explenation about "DO NOT PUST THAT GOD DAMN BUTTON". IMO this is very efficent, Shivan-like solution.
Vinaashans are screwed...the question is if they will drag the Humanity and Vasudans down with them (if I rememebr the backstory the Vasudans are also already infiltrated by Vinaashans too).