“Who and what is M3?”
M3 constitutes the regency of the Orion Spur wilderness, until such time as a worthy native government arises—that is, an Orion Archon self-created out of the scattered civilizations and ghost planets here, able to repay the cost of ascending them to sapience. Despite being remote from Orion, the dominions of M3 were awarded this task and combined and elevated themselves to the mental plateau of an Authority. The evolution to this station took place quite recently—the time value, given in terms of periods of radioactive particle decays, put the date somewhere in the middle of the Carboniferous Era Earth, when the first shark ruled the sea, and, on land, the first primitive tree reared its crown—Like mankind, M3 won freedom from indenture by sheer force of singlemindedness.
The Authority at M3 refers to itself by a conceptual intersection best translated as “Absolute Extension” since there is no point in the volume of space M3 regards as unworthy of being filled.
Del Azarchel said, “From the name it puts on itself, it is clear that M3 seeks to rule everywhere, all things. Ergo there is a rival to my ambition. Very good. Let us hope M3 worthy of being defeated.”
14. Memories and Regents
Montrose had a question: “You say that M3 serves the memory of the dead Panspermians. Good enough, for a weasel answer. But answer me this, then: Who the hell appointed M3 regent here? Who made M3 the guardian of all of us—Hyades and Praesepe, and all the other Dominions and Dominations here—until our age of majority?”
It is believed excitations in the Galactic Core carried some of the protobiological spores of the Panspermians into the Outer Arm of Cygnus, giving rise to the ancestors of the Hosts, Dominions, Dominations, and Authorities who form the current Archon there, a mental system, or, as you might call him, a being, who is reticent and austere to an extreme degree. Call this Archon “the Austerity.” The Austerity may be considered the one who bestowed the grant of power to M3 and who has the ability to revoke it if the Orion Arm fails to bring itself to life and self-awareness.
“May be considered?”
The Collaboration operates by consensus and calculus rather than by legal formalities. There was no vote; instead the Archons of Milky Way each in silence foretold the outcome of their mass action and acceded to the visualization thus provoked.
Montrose said, “Torment, are you deliberately mussing and fussing with the translation?”
Torment said, “I am trying to simplify innately complex and subtle concepts, some of which have no corresponding terms in our language. And some of it is guesswork.”
Mickey said to the Ain moonlet, “The Austerity is therefore not the Monument Builder. If the Outer Arm wished to interfere with Orion Arm, easier and more direct ways were open, where they not?”
Your conclusion cannot be confirmed with confidence: there may be restrictions on the behavior of such a being, so far superior in mental and energetic scope, reach, penetration, and creativity to myself, which are therefore unimaginable to one of my order. This may for reasons unknown have been the preferred method to proceed.
Del Azarchel asked, “Why has the Austerity not interfered to protect M3?”
The Austerity of the Outer Arm is dispassionate and taciturn. Its mental processes are opaque. However, the more fearful prospect is that the mastermind behind this crime is equal or superior to the Austerity in intellect.
Montrose said, “This was a crime, by your lights?”
It is sabotage of the effort of sophotransmogrification, for which cause I was created and outside of which I have no purpose. It is beyond crime: it is blasphemy.
Montrose said, “You diddling with the translation there, Torment?”
She said, “No. That symbol-gestalt was alarmingly accurate and clear. Ain speaks of something that offends with an absolute offense, something so alien to all he holds sacred and so inimical that there is no possibility of coexistence.”
Your race has been disadvantaged and made to suffer countless ages of coercive deracination which could have been avoided. Likewise have been disadvantaged all the other Hyades races—Asmodel and the others—who attempted to assist in the cultivation of your species. The loss is incalculable, terrifying to contemplate.
Mickey asked, “So is fear an emotion you still possess?”
Very much so.
Mickey asked, “What do you fear, Noble Lords?”
Extermination.
Montrose said, “Don’t keep us on pins and needles, jackhole. Who did it? Who is your enemy? Because they are surely ours now, too.”
Torment put the question to the emissary of Ain.
There was another pause of silence, ten hours while light traveled to and from the distant, gigantic orange star.
There is insufficient information from your report to me, nor do I have the necessary instruments to discover, the identity of the Monument Builders. However, an examination of the sophistication of the deception involved implies them to be equal to or older than of the Forerunner races of the Milky Way. The Forerunners, in ancient days, erected the Galactic Collaboration and established the protocols which govern interstellar intercourse, trade, and activity: the Cliometric Consensus, the distorted version of which you know as the Cold Equations.
The Monument Builders seeded many copies of this Redacted Monument throughout this whole volume of space, in ways so as to come to the attention of lesser races like you and yet so as to avoid the attention of greater races like us—by what means is yet unknown. Each Monument sculpted the details of the message to fit the local situation and the psychology of the race discovering it.
Montrose said, “Wait—what? Was the Monument alive? When I walked on its surface—it was watching us?”
Alive is an inexact term. It was active.
Mickey said, “It was haunted. You should have had your chaplain, Father Reyes, perform an exorcism.”
Del Azarchel said, “Or signed a compact in blood with it. These Monument Builders seem to be a powerful and ancient force.”
Torment said, “We have yet to hear the motive of this act, assuming Ain knows it.”
The Monument told you that Hyades meant to enslave you and, in so doing, prompted your odd and shortsighted responses to Asmodel and Cahetel and the other Virtues sent you, both an attempt to fight the slavery and the attempt to embrace it. These responses provoked the Concubine Vector logic and required the Principality of Ain to impose an indentured servitude of the proper period as a retaliatory means of recompense as well as to instruct.
The Monument is agitation propaganda. The purpose is to create friction and internal discontent within the Praesepe hierarchy during the First Contact process by which naturally evolved and lesser civilizations are met and elevated to conform to the standards and protocols of the Collaboration.
Torment asked, “Why?”
I can only speculate: the Authority at M3 competes with other Archons and Authorities for predominance over the Orion Arm. All are devoted to sophotransmogrification, but differ as to strategy. M3 favors a nonaltricial approach where colonies and constituents are given minimal home support, and perish or prosper on their own; whereas others favor an altricial strategy, where few colonies are lavished with massive home attention. The same Concubine Vector equations that defined the callous treatment of Sol by Hyades are mathematical expressions of the nonaltricial strategy: an outcome of M3 policy.