Bob is sitting at a control panel. He has numerous screens in front of him where he’s monitoring the course and progress of almost two thousand various makes and models of intergalactic cargo vessels. He alone is piloting all of these cargo ships remotely from his control panel, which is integrated into his “living” and telepathic hover chair. Presently, he is busy adjusting the course of one of the ships that is in route to a very remote and isolated planet way out on the far rim of one of the smaller galaxies belonging to this confederation.
The particular ship, well on its way to this planet, is a midsize ship being not more than one hundred miles in length, seventy-five miles high and fifty miles wide. And those figures, by the way, are calibrated to within a thousandth of an inch. This vessel is a disseminator type that is at least ten thousand years old. But even at that age, it remains to be a dependable ship and has many more years of use left in it. It’s called a disseminator because once it arrives at its destination it thoroughly broadcasts its cargo over the programmed target. In this case, the programmed target for this disseminator’s cargo is the entire planet that it is heading for across an immense quantity of deep space. A trip that even in hyper-space drive requires three years for the journey.
Like Bob’s post, the cargo that fills the hold of this ship is top-secret material and must be delivered to this planet no fail once every thousand years. This point is emphatically expressed in the contract between the corporation Bob is employed with and the Confederation’s Department of Conformity. Another specification among the myriad in the contract relating to this particular planet and cargo is that all deliveries must be remotely piloted and cloaked. If this delivery was in any way inhibited there could, and most probably would, be disastrous consequences.
Bob’s thoughts and attention wander away from the job he’s doing. He begins thinking about the history of this obscure little planet and why these once every thousand years deliveries are so important to so many.
*********************************************
The Confederacy has been in existence for several trillions of years. It does have a name but that will not be revealed for just in hearing the name there could be dire consequences. Over sixty million galaxies of all types and sizes comprise the Confederation and with the continual welcome and often times intensely battled annexations of former independent star systems, new membership is ever growing.
Almost from its inception the Confederation has had to deal with a persistent problem. But we’ll get to that a little later.
The creation of the Confederation was the creation of a new organizing and ruling governmental entity that was composed of trillions of trillions of separate independent governments. The Confederation at its inception was really “something.” But the Confederation, from the moment of its inception, was, as a group entity, not aware that it had entered onto a dwindling spiral. With this occurrence the “something” instantly began to actively devolve toward becoming a “nothing”.
In the beginning the Confederation could have been and was called divine and was not perceived as being anything but divine for hundreds of billions of years. But the perception was false. And eventually the endurance of this false perception became part of a plan to obscure the ongoing and escalating degeneration of the Confederation. This plan was the bright idea of a collection of gargantuan intergalactic corporations that had things going their way and, even if it meant the continued degeneration and degradation of the whole Confederation, it was of no concern to them. In their view, they could easily insulate and protect themselves from any ill effects that may be the consequences of their actions. After all, they had complete control of all the wealth and personnel within the entire Confederation. They ruled the game. They called all the shots and they felt they were invulnerable.
In the last several hundred million years as the Confederation has continued down the dwindling spiral it has become, generally speaking, increasingly more brutal and sadistic. It rules with ultra heavy force and punishment. It is very, very serious about, and incredibly obsessive and compulsive, in its relationship to order.
A little less than one hundred million years ago there was a catastrophic event that took place within the Confederation. And if there are points in the dwindling spiral where the spiral just straightens out and becomes a vertical fall, this event certainly was one such point. After this event, the Confederation, which was already well on its way down the spiral, immediately fell into an abyss of insanity. A point that is only recognized fully if one is outside looking in. To those within the sphere of influence of the confederacy their actual condition is perceived as being anything but insane.
The Confederation demands and gets precise compliance and execution of even the most petty of tasks. There are rules and policies to govern every single action involved in every miniscule thing throughout the entire confederacy. The prime directive of the Confederation is, “ALL MUST CONFORM. ALL MUST COMPLY.” The, “or else” is only implied but it is implied most severely and with very little or no instigation. In other words, the Confederation has perfected the art of punishment-based persuasion in bringing about compliance. And the pettiest of offenses can set the compliance machine gleefully whirling into motion.
The Confederation’s Department of Conformity, especially with consideration to the immense scope and diversity of civilizations, staggering numbers of populations scattered hundreds of thousands of light years in every direction within the boundaries of the Confederation and the hundreds of trillions of trillions of individual life units involved, has done a pretty darn good job of seeing to it that almost every single life unit is in compliance with every applicable rule. And if they aren’t, well, as mentioned earlier, they have in their possession very effective methods of behavior modification. However, and as also mentioned earlier, they have a persistent problem that has been tormenting them to no end.
No comments:
Post a Comment