OU The Solarigens...

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

In the early-to-mid Miocene Epoch, during the great surge of
speciation that had produced many different kinds of proto-apes all
over the Old World, some were (naturally) much more successful than
others, and some that were initially successful could not sustain that
success. Even before the long decline of the proto-apes in the later
Miocene, one genus had nearly died off, and only a small breeding
population of this genus remained by 3 million years ago. Originally
thriving in Asia, this last remnant population had drifted back to
Africa, driven by more successful competitor species and climate
shifts to which they had been unable to adapt.

Unlike most of the proto-apes, this genus had been basically
carnivorous. While they could and did take some of the nutrients from
plant matter, their diet had emphasized meat, and this group of
species had preyed primarily on birds, rodents, and small mammals.
But now they were nearly extinct as a genus.

But that had something in common with the proto-human line: they were
developing to a limited degree the potential for a psionic ability.
Their brains were far simpler than those of even the primitive
proto-hominids, but by some quirk, they developed the ability to sense
the use of psionic power by other entities. The newcomers, already
adapted to hunt in pairs and trios, could use the ability to sense
psionic activity to detect the presence of a proto-hominid. They
became more or less viable prey.

The proto-hominids were relatively physically weak, compared to the
newcomers, which were nearly as physically powerful as modern
gorillas. Typically a trio of newcomers would corner a lone
proto-hominid, and being already adapted for predation, they could
usually overcome the target and make a neat meal of it. Once the
psionic sense became useful, evolution began to refine it, until the
descendents of the dying genus had developed the ability to sense
psionic power that wasn't even in active use, as well as the ability
to sense the presence of a working, living mind of any sort. Their
prey list expanded, as their senses became more effective.

The newcomers evolved, over about 200,000 years, into a new species,
Incubus devoraris (~nightmarish devourers). In some ways, they
reversed certain evolutionary trends among primates, as they adapted
to a primarily predatory existence. Their fingernails again became
fairly effective claws, their teeth adapted to bite and tear, and the
incisors lengthened. Their hulking physical strength transformed into
a lean, dexterous, fast strength, their physical senses such as small
and hearing sharpened, even as they retained the primate eyesight.
They were fast, tough, and relatively smart. At that time, the
proto-hominids were only marginally more intelligent than I.
devoraris.

They had excellent night vision, and in fact hunted primarily at
night, when their favorite prey was least effective.

[The species name might seem a little melodramatic, but the
paleontologist who will name them will be, after all, descended from
their primary prey. :) As we shall see, the 'nightmare' part is not
entirely inaccurate, as well.]

For a while, I. devoraris was the primary active predator faced by
the proto-hominids. Other creatures also went to feed the Devourers'
appetite, but they retained an evolved preference for hominids and
apes, who were especially vulnerable to their psi-sense. To make
matters worse, I. devoraris also developed other applications for
its psi faculty, including a crude instinctive
Flux-manipulation ability that gave every individual I.
devoraris the animal equivalent of the Luck advantage. They were Bad
News, if you were a pre-hominid in Africa ~2.5 million years ago.

As with most predators, they tended to prey on the weak, the sickly,
or the young, since that took less effort. But they wouldn't pass up
a healthy adult if the chance presented itself, and the high-energy
lifestyle of the Devourers gave them high-energy appetites. For a
very long time, I. devoraris represented a very effective check on
the population and safety of their distant proto-hominid cousins, for
a period of over 500,000 years, in fact.

So effective and dangerous a predator were they that the descendents
of their favorite prey never entirely forgot them, on some deep level.
They were able to go anywhere a proto-hominid could, climb the same
trees, slip into the same caves, elude barriers that other predators
could not cope with. The fact that they were similar in shape to
their favorite prey made it worse, somehow, psychologically for their
half-sapient victims. They often made a habit of slipping into a
sleeping group of near-humans and picking out a tempting victim,
sometimes slipping with a predatory cunning right past waking
sentinels.

It was all too common for a proto-human to be awakened in the night to
the realization that a Devourer was among them, in the cave, in the
trees. A long-lived proto-hominid might know this terrifying
experience many times.

The common irrational fear of the dark that human (and other
Homosentient) children display dates from this time. On thousands of
planets, Homosentient beings would recall unconsciously the fear that
haunted their ancestors in the wilds of Africa, a million years or
more before.

The bogeyman in the dark, that faint sound you heard in the night that
sent a chill down your spine...something in the back of your brain
remembers them, even after 2 million years.

In response to the Devourers (and other reasons as well, but the
Devourers were one of the major ones), the proto-hominids became
steadily more social (safety in numbers), and adaptive pressure
favored greater intelligence as a partial offset to the advantages of
I. devoraris. Also, an evolutionary development changed the
equation.

Their nascent psionic Powers had become a liability in the
face of the Devourer psi-sense. The disadvantages greatly outweighed
the advantages, and evolution responded by increasing the power of
their Antipsi to the point that it began to short-circuit their own
Powers, making them psionically invisible to the Devourers. The
Antipsi strength continued to grow in response to evolutionary
pressure, until it began to interfere with the Luck advantage of the
Devourers. [1]

The combination of growing intelligence and more and more effective
social organization, the use of fire, the ability to use strategy and
tactics, the skill and will to shape tools as effective weapons (a
Devourer is a lot less threatening to a proto-hominid with a nice
sharp stone knife in its hand, and a dozen such proto-hominids led
by an experienced hunter carrying a torch is better yet) began to turn
the tide against I. devoraris.

The emergence of the first true members of Genus Homo marked the
beginning of the end for the Devourers. Homo habilis was smarter,
just as ruthless, and able to organize themselves with true spoken
language. Parents could pass on useful tactics and skills to their
offspring, and the hunter became the hunted. There could be no
quarter for the Devourers, they had been too great a threat. The
emergence of the still more capable H. erectus was their death knell.

By 1 million years ago, Incubus devoraris was extinct.[2]

The long harrowing struggle with the Devourers had left its mark. The
nascent psionic powers on which their ancestors 750,000 years earlier
had depended for survival were now self-suppressed.[3] In their place
were language, tool use, fire, and social organizations orders of
magnitude more complex than anything previously seen in Earth's
history. The primates had done what NEMESIS had feared the Cretaceous
Plumivenitors would do. They had become sapient.

But if Homo erectus was safe from I. devoraris in fact, he never
forgot the Devourers. On some level, every subsequent human and
near-human culture, no matter the species or the place or the time,
remembered. In some form, the barely comprehensible hungry apes
kept appearing in myths and nightmares, so deep had the fear been,
so profound the impression.

But now came the next scene in the drama. About which...

MORE LATER.


[1] Which is why psionic powers remain rare among H. sapiens and his
cousins ages later.

[2] Then again..., that's what they said about the coelacanth...

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

With Homo erectus now spreading out across Africa and Eurasia, one
might have expected that NEMESIS would take notice. Well, perhaps the
murder machine should have done so. But it should be kept in mind
that NEMESIS was not all-seeing. Surely, from time to time some
sensor or other, carefully hidden to avoid being detected by the
Eldren, would perceive an H. erectus going about his or her
business. But only occasionally, and at that given time there was
always a chance that the person in question was not carrying anything
obviously artificial, or otherwise showing much sign that he or she
was anything but a great ape that happened to have less hair and walk
more upright than most.

Still, the clues were there, but there weren't assembled into a full
picture. The indications of something important happening in Africa
(and Asia and Europe) on Earth were spread out across many data files,
and NEMESIS, its attention largely elsewhere, failed to put the pieces
together.

Much of its high-level cognition was now devoted to the rapidly
ripening plan for a new galaxy-wide attack, a second attempt at what
it had failed to achieve at the end of the Permian. Another
distraction was also occupying the machine's attention at that this
time, on a planet on the far side of the Milky Way from Sol.

Yet again, NEMESIS was distracted by its bird fixation. On the second
planet of a class K star, over 70,000 light-years from Sol, the Eldren
had introduced a large number of species of birds during the
Cretaceous period. They did this on many worlds, but on this one the
birds exploded into the empty ecological 'space' left behind after a
local (and purely natural) mass extinction event.

The 25 or so species of birds the Eldren introduced exploded in
numbers and speciated radically. By the time H. erectus was emerging
on Earth, and finishing off I. devoraris, the birds on this far-off
world had speciated and taken up residence in every environment.
There were thousands of species of birds flying in the skies, there
were countless species of flightless bird on the plains, in the
forests, and roaming the jungles, there were shallow-water birds,
deep-water birds, and a few species of birds that lived their entire
lives in the sea. There were birds the size of hummingbirds, and
birds the size of elephants. There were birds with no greater
intelligence than a shrew, and birds that were showing remarkable
levels of social interaction and learning capacity. All in all, this
planet was made to order to alarm NEMESIS, with its already
oversensitized bird fixation.

This planet, which Terrans would someday called Avius, was the top
priority for NEMESIS during this period. For over 5 million years,
NEMESIS, with its usual careful, secretive thoroughness, placed
additional sensors, worked out scenarios of action, and generally drew
up its plans against the bird world.

This, then, might explain some of the reason H. erectus was not
noticed, or rather not properly recognized, by the enemy of Solarigen
life for so long.

In the meantime, H. erectus spread out until the species was to be
found in all parts of Africa, most of Asia, and some of Europe. The
population density was never high, but it was sufficient. For a
while, H. erectus was relatively stable as a species, though brain
size was slowly growing. Then, sometime around 200,000 years ago, H.
erectus began to display a speciating tendency.

In Europe, the species Homo neandertalensis emerged. Elsewhere,
some other new breeds of Human emerged as well. This speciating
tendency began to sputter along, with new breeds 'peeling off' the H.
erectus breeding pool in various parts of the 'Old World'.

About 100,000 years ago, a fresh burst of speciation occurred, and
onto the stage stepped a new cluster of sapient species, including the
first true Homo sapiens, emerging in what would later be called the
Levant. But H. sapiens was not alone. He had 'sibling' species
that were just barely different enough to be non-interfertile, plus
some of the oldest Homo species were also still around. By 100,000
years ago, there were perhaps 30 species of the genus Homo coexisting
across Africa and Eurasia. The breeding pool for most of them was
very small, and the continued existence of many was quite precarious.

These species, collective called Homosentients or Homosentience, were
all of comparable intelligence. They had some common tendencies
across the genus that limited their prospects, however. One major
problem the genus began to display was a low fertility. The
Homosentient species had a problem with childbirth, in that the large
brains necessary for consciousness and sapience required large heads,
in turn making pregnancy and childbirth particularly difficult for the
various Human breeds. Many of the species had annual or semi-annual
breeding cycles. Overall, they were a slow-expanding group.

There were some exceptions. The most successful of the new Human
breeds was Homo sapiens. This breed had, by the standards of the
genus, a high breeding rate, with multiple chances at pregnancy per
year, and easier pregnancies and childbirth than most of their sibling
species. By 85,000 years ago, H. sapiens was the most numerous
Human species, and their percentage of the whole was growing slowly but
steadily.

It was ~80,000 years ago that the Eldren, surveying Earth on their
regular schedule, first noticed that since their last general survey,
a tool-using sapient genus had emerged. To say they were caught by
surprise would be an understatement, this was the first such thing
they had ever encountered in Solarigen life, and the first mortal
sapients they had encountered since the time of the Helian empire,
half a billion years earlier. [1]

The Watcher was summoned, and it gathered its fellow Familiar Eldren
on Earth, to take counsel on what should be done. The Familiar Eldren
gathered on Earth, actually having their meeting in physical
proximity, near what would one day be called Mt. Kilimanjaro. While
such physical proximity was not necessary (they could communicate
telepathically across intergalactic distances), it was sometimes
preferred.

A few humans saw the meeting, or rather, from a distance, saw that
something very strange was happening on the great mountain. They
had no hope of comprehending what they saw, a dazzle of distant,
brilliant points of light flying about the mountain, shifting in color
and intensity from moment to moment, just one more supernatural
manifestation in a world of such, to a TL0 H. sapiens or H.
eostellaris or any of the other species inhabiting that region. Had
the witnesses realized that what they were seeing was a contentious
debate about their own fate, held among beings mightier than their
tribal gods, they could hardly have understood the implications.

The debate went on for some time, and there were a variety of opinions
about what, if anything, should be done. The debate lasted for over a
Terran year, and it went on 24/7 throughout that time. Eventually, a
consensus emerged on a few points. The Familiar Eldren concluded that
the sapients of Earth would be relocated, and the preparations for
that plan now began.

MORE LATER.


[1] At this point, the Eldren still did not know that the Helialisks
existed.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The reasons for the disputes among the Familiar Eldren were complex,
but in much they were based on the fact that they still, even after
nearly half a billion years, had no clear idea of the nature of the
foe who was periodically inflicting so much damage on their
biospheres. They had not forgotten that the mystery-foe had come
perilously close to wiping out almost all multicellular Solarigen life
245 million years before, and that since then there had been many,
many cases of near-total extinctions on individual worlds that they
knew or suspected could be traced to their mystery-enemy.

They knew from observation that this foe used tools, along the same
line that the long-gone (as far as they knew) Helian sapients had
used. They had observed patterns in the attacks they had experienced.
In some cases, they had discovered something in time to ameliorate
it. Sometimes they managed to head of an attack beforehand, all too
often they learned that a world had been targeted when a regular check
revealed a more-than-natural extinction event had occurred since the
previous check.

Further, they had come to be aware that smaller-scale extinctions,
ones that left the planetary biosphere essentially untouched but
picked off a single species or group of species, were sometimes
occurring for less-than-natural reasons. With over 100 million worlds
to study, they had noticed that any species showing intelligence or
social organization above a certain level was a highly likely target
for their enemy, be the attack specific or world-wide.

They had even noticed that birds seemed to draw the enemy's attention
particularly often. In retrospect, they had a fair suspicion that it
was something about increasing bird intelligence that had led their
enemy to inflict the Dinosaur-Killer on Terra, a mere 65 million years
previous.

The dispute among the Eldren, once they became aware of the existence
of Man, was about what the likely results of the the genus Homo on
Earth would be. It was inevitable that sooner or later, their
mysterious foe would learn of the existence of sapient tool users on
Earth. There was little doubt among the Familiar Eldren that this
would draw an extermination attack of some sort, and the possibility
existed that the enemy might inflict something on the scale of the
end-Cretaceous to be sure of eliminating the Homosentients. After
all, there were already Homosentients spread thinly but widely across
three continents, and the Eldren could project that they would be
spreading further in a relatively short time, as such things went.
The wider the spread, the more likely the enemy would resort to global
destruction to achieve its ends.

They didn't know what sort of weapons or powers the enemy had
available that might be of use in such an attack. They had scoured
the Solar System and found nothing, but they remembered all too well
that they had scoured the System after the Permian Event, but missed
the modified Dinosaur-Killer, to dreadful consequence later. For all
they could be sure of, the enemy might well have further megaweapons
in wait, ready to be used if needed. The Eldren's lack of full
comprehension of technological thinking made the task of finding them
and identifying them that much harder.

The Eldren were delighted and fascinated by the emergence of sapience
in Solarigen life. They had been fascinated by the Helians, as well,
and had been sorry to see them (as far as they knew) wipe themselves
out. Now they had the potential for another fascinating sapient
civilization rising, and they wanted to make sure the enemy could not
snuff out the chance.

Also, of all their worlds, none could fully match the complexity and
vitality of Earth and its native biosphere. New species and new kinds
of creature appeared on Earth in greater numbers, and at a greater
rate, than on even most vibrant of the terraformed worlds the Eldren
had spread across the Greater Milky Way. But the enemy had already
inflicted world-wide damage to that biosphere twice.

One faction wanted to minimalize Eldren interference with the
Homosentients, to see what they would become. Another faction was
concerned about the danger of detection, and what might follow. Of
those who feared detection, the proposed solution varied widely.

Eventually, the assembled Familiar Eldren (by now numbering over 1000)
concluded that the safety of both the new sapient races and the
biosphere of Earth was compromised by their close proximity. It was
decided that the Homosentients must be dispersed, since having them
all on one planet made them vulnerable to a sudden thorough extinction
attack, and it was further decided that they made too tempting a
target for their mysterious enemy, and so that they should be
evacuated from Earth in the entire, for the safety of the primal
biosphere.

The meeting concluded after a debate of over a year, and the Eldren
immediately began work to implement their plan. Out of well over one billion terraformed worlds, suitable environments had to be chosen for
the Homosentients who were soon to be involuntary colonists. This was
more complex than it might seem, because of those worlds, many were
'Earth-like' only in the loosest sense, not all of the worlds hosting
complex Solarigen biospheres would be hospitable, or even tolerable,
to unaided Homosentients.

Many of the terraformed worlds had environments too hot, too cold,
chemically unsuitable, too low or too high in oxygen, too much or too
little gravity, or were subject to other factors that made them
unsuitable for Homosentients, even though they could and did host
Solarigen life.

Eventually, the Eldren selected 1728 planets as colonization targets.
For the most part, these worlds were among the most similar to
'modern' Earth (this period is modern Earth, for all practical
purposes). A few were special cases, though. Once the target worlds
were selected, the Eldren began deciding which species or breeding
groups would go where. This was a complex task, requiring a great
deal of observation and calculation, and some guesswork.

In some cases, the Eldren decided that they would move all the members
of an entire Homosentient species to a single planet. This was
usually in the case of species that had numbers low enough that
dividing them would be a greater survival risk than putting them in
one place. For more numerous species, they chose multiple target
worlds, to minimize the risk of extinction natural or artificial.
Sometimes they placed more than one species on a single planet,
sometimes they restricted it to one per world.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

When the time for the exodus arrived, the Eldren were
ready.

Let us join one of these people.

--
His name would translate poorly into English, phonetically
it would sound like 'Larketh'. We join him as he rests in the heat
of a north African day, having spent the morning tracking
game, with less than usual success. But he was well-fed, as his
people went. Indeed, he mused as he rested in the shade of a rocky
hillside, of late food had been plentiful, game seeming to fall
into their snares or to the spears of the hunters. Life had become
easier over the last 3 or 4 seasons.[1]

Most of the True People, the people of his tribe, gave no thought
to such matters, but Larketh had the curse of wondering 'why'. His
father and his father's father both had been thinner than he now was,
food had been harder to come by.

Larketh was a grown man, experienced in the ways of the True People,
and he had lived now 22 dry seasons. His father's father had long left
them, but his father remained alive, though he no longer hunted, and
he advised the Old One who decided things for the True People.
Larketh mused on that, as he waited for the Hot Fire to sink
in the sky so he could resume hunting.

There were the True People, the ones of his tribe, numbering now 190.
There were the People, of course, the other tribes with whom they
sometimes exchanged good and women. They had been gathering here in
these grasslands in recent years, though none could say quite why each
tribe of the People seemed to feel the need to be closer to the
others. But then, there were the Other People.

The Other People looked like the People, or most of them did, but if a
man of the People lay with a women of the Other People, no child ever
came. The Other People were said among Larketh's tribe to be all
alike, but he had met them, and even spoken with them, and he believed
there to be many sorts of Other People, as Other to each other as they
were to the People.

Indeed, they could speak with each other, and many spoke the some
tongue as the People, while others spoke in ways none of the People
could understand. Sometimes Larketh had the odd thought that perhaps
the speech of the People sounded as silly to the Other People as
theirs did to him.

When the cool of evening came, Larketh resumed his hunt, but
unusually for recent times, the game seemed fled away. He returned to
the Place where the True People gathered, near the spring of cool
water. The White Circle rose above the Edge of the World as he
arrived, to find that the women had been more successful than the men
that day, and if there was no meat there was plenty of fruit and root
to eat.

It seemed the none of the hunters had succeeded that day, something
nobody could recall happening in 5 dry seasons.[2] There
seemed to be no game within hunting distance of the Place. Larketh
could think of no reason for all the animals to flee, but perhaps the
Old One could remember such a time before. The Old One, who had lived
50 dry seasons and more, had led the True People for 14 dry seasons,
and had lived longer than anyone of the True People could remember
anyone living. He could remember many things.

The White Circle rose up, as Larketh prepared to sleep, since it was
not his turn to stand watch for the True People. The White Circle was
tonight but a half a circle, and Larketh wondered why the White Circle
got bigger and smaller and sometimes vanished, while the Hot Flame did
not. He wondered such things, but nobody else in the True People did,
they just said it was the way of things and shrugged.

Larketh found himself unable to rest. Something, something he could
not define, bothered him. He forced his eyes shut, the mild night
breeze playing over his body, but the nervousness only grew. Then,
suddenly, he knew without knowing how he knew that something had
changed. His hunter's instinct caused him to tense, he opened his
eyes, and what he saw took an instant to penetrate his mind, but when
it did, he was afraid.

The White Circle, which should have been descending toward the Edge
of the World, was gone!

He sat up, and looked around, and terror filled his soul. All around
him slept the half-awake True People, but they were now stirring as
well, because they were no longer at the Place of gathering!

Panic soon filled the air. Larketh ran to the sentries, who were
babbling with fear. One who could still speak clearly said that in
one moment, the grassland was lit with the light of the White Circle,
the next moment, so fast he could remember nothing of the moment, they
were surrounded by trees!

Indeed, all the True People now found themselves in a clear area
surrounded on all sides by the largest trees they had ever seen![3]
The sound of the spring, and flicker of the fire, all were gone. The
people had awakened still sleeping in relation to each other as they
had been, but the World had changed.

A light came, and some thought it might be the White Circle, but as it
rose above the trees, a new fear filled them. It was too small to be
the White Circle, and it was in the wrong part of the sky! Then, only
a short time later, another light appeared over the trees, larger
than the first but still too small to be the White Circle, which was
vanished from the sky!

It was then that Larketh's father, Larkeis, said quietly, "Before the
new lights appeared, I saw the stars, and the stars are wrong." This
filled Larketh with fear, because his father had watched the stars,
and knew them all.

The Old One appeared among them, and began to calm his People. Had he
not been there, panic might have taken them all, but they were used to
the calming presence of the Old One, and if Larketh could see that
that Old One was as afraid as everyone else, and as puzzled, he kept
this disturbing knowledge to himself.

As the hint of day appeared in the sky, many took hope, perhaps the
strange magic that had befallen them would be clearer by the light of
day. But when the Hot Fire rose over the trees, yet more fear
accompanied it, for it was too larger to be the Hot Fire, and it was
the wrong color!

Over the next few days, only the wisdom and will of the Old One kept
the True People together. He gathered them, and posted triple
sentries, and sent out scouts in groups of 2 and 3 to see what could
be seen. He refused to send more, lest too many of the young men fall
to some evil, he sent none alone for fear of losing a person
needlessly. The scouts were gone for days, but most returned alive
and safe. They had found that many of the tribes of the People were
here, but none had found any of the Other People.[4]

One pair of scouts reported that a day's walk through the trees they had
come to a water so wide they could see no shore, and that the water
was bad to drink, but that the water of the rivers was good. Larketh
had spoken to some Other People once, who had said that the land
stopped in such a water to the north of the lands of the People, but he
had never known whether to believe such a tale.

As the True People and their fellow People explored their changed
world, they found that indeed, all the lands had shrunk to a
land with water all the way as far as the sharpest eye could
see beyond.[5] It was a land of trees, though it had some clear
areas, and nowhere in the shrunken land could any Other People be
found, only People.

Larketh would live to a great age, as the True People reckoned such
things. He would learn to live in his newly changed home, as would
his fellows. They would learn new foods, new animals that were good
to eat. They would discover one good with the new world: the great
predators were gone, nothing remained that would harm a Person.[6]

He would become the new Old One when the Old One had passed and the
One after the Old One had passed. He would live to what would have
been 61 dry seasons before the Change, and he would wonder throughout
his long life why the World and the Sky had changed,
and never would he know.
--

The Eldren repeated this over 1000 times, varying the details
each time. Never was any effort made to explain, or ask permission,
such a thing simply didn't occur to the Eldren.

MORE LATER.

[1] To prepare their subjects for transport, the Eldren had been
making life easier. Game animals were steered telepathically into
Homosentient traps or made easier to hunt. Foragers were 'guided' to food,
water, and safety. The Eldren wanted the Homosentients in good health for
what was coming.

[2] When the Eldren were ready, they moved the animals clear to the
target zones, since they wanted to transport only the Homosentients. Thus the
hunters had found no game.

[3] The True People are a tribe of Homo eostellaris, who had lived
in grasslands and were unfamiliar with trees in large numbers.

[4] The Eldren had moved the breeding stock of Homo
eostellaris to one new world, and decided to leave it a
one-sapience planet. Thus the other tribes of their species were present, but
none of the groups of the other Homosentient species they had known in Africa.

[5] They had been transported to an island, and had they known it, there
were lands only 70 miles from the shore of their new home. But they had never
been near an ocean, and as far as the colonists knew, the world had shrunk and
flooded when the sky changed.

[6] The Eldren had cleared the predators and dangerous animals and
parasites from the island and the nearby lands. It would be some time before
ocean-capable predators returned to the region.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Over the course of several centuries of work, the majority of Earth's
sapient population was transferred from Africa, Asia, and Europe to
1728 planets orbiting almost that many stars. For the majority of the
species of Genus Homo, the entire population of the species was
removed, only a handful of Homosentient species were still present
on Earth by the time the project neared its end.

The two most populous sapient species to start with had been, by far,
H. neandertalensis and H. sapiens, and of those remaining on Earth,
they were the large majority. Only a handful of a few other species
remained. Even among these two, the majority of the population of
each species had been moved already. The Eldren were planning to
move them in the immediate future, which would have completed the
task, leaving Earth empty of sapient life.

But something was about to go strangely and drastically wrong with the
Eldren plan.

In order to understand what was about to happen, we must step back a
moment and realize that there are more players in the game than we
have yet seen up close, and that there are many more Eldren in the
macrocosmic Universe than the Familiar Eldren we've encountered up
until now. Up until this point, the Eldren had little noticeable
impact on the tale of planetary life in the Greater Milky Way, with
the exception of the handful of Familiar Eldren. This situation was
about to change.

By the time Earth was nearly evacuated of Homosentient beings, with
only the last few groups remaining to be transferred, the Familiar
Eldren numbered a little over 1000. The group had grown over the half
billion years of the project's existence, but it was still led by the
Eldren Homosentients would someday call the Watcher. The Watcher was
the oldest and most powerful of the Familiar Eldren, and acknowledged
among them as the final authority over their 'little hobby' (that is,
the Heliugen and Solarigen worlds and life).

But 'oldest and most powerful' is a relative concept. A little over one
billion years old, the Watcher might be very loosely compared
to a grad student, in terms of its age and place in the Eldren hierarchy.

The other Familiar Eldren ranged from almost as old as the Watcher, to
a few who were barely more than a few tens of millions of years old.
The entire project, from its beginnings in the Cambrian Period to the
time of the Homosentient Resettlement, was no more by Eldren standards
than a modest hobby. The Familiar Eldren might be compared, in that
scale of things, to a group of collegiate and high school hobbyists and
friends engaged in a personal interest.

But there are trillions of Eldren. They have their own hierarchies, 'laws',
and doings, most of them foreign to mortal comprehension. But their
power structure centers primarily on their relative ages. The power,
knowledge, and comprehension of Eldren increases with the passage of time.

The ultimate authority with Eldren 'society' lies with the First
Generation of the Eldren, called variously the First Eldren, the
Celestial Eldren, or the Primal Eldren. They came into being in the
afterglow of the Creation, barely 10,000 years after the beginning of
time, over a brief period. After that, no more Eldren came into being
for over a billion years, and the later Eldren were far less powerful
and perceptive and knowing than the First Eldren. Within the Eldren
society, the word of one of the Primals is universally acknowledged as
law.

We'll get to why this matters in a moment.

The Eldren have their own rivalries, friendships, alliances, and
associations. One such rivalry existed between the Watcher and
another, somewhat older Eldren, a rivalry that dated back into the
Proterozoic. The source and reasons for the rivalry are
incomprehensible in human terms, and of little moment to our tale.
Suffice it to say that the rivalry existed, and was bitter.

As the Watcher and its associates prepared for the final stages of
their plan to evacuate Earth, they did not realize that this rival was
watching them. We shal call th is individual simply 'the Rival', the
descriptive title is as good as a name for such beings.

The Rival was older and more powerful than the
Watcher, and knew how to cloak its presence from the Watcher and the
other Familiar Eldren, unless they were actively looking for it. The
Rival had come to realize that an effective way to irritate the
Watcher would be to sabotage the Watcher's favorite project. The
Rival was looking for the best way, and waiting for just the right
moment. After watching and waiting for a million years or so, that
moment finally came in what we would call ~73,000 BC.

The large majority of the Familiar Eldren were on Earth at the time,
preparing for the final population transfers. Only a handful were out
on the other Solarigen worlds, making preparations to receive the last
few shipments of people from Earth.

Unlike NEMESIS, the Rival had no reason to be particularly subtle,
since it wasn't all that concerned with secrecy. In fact, it wanted
the Watcher to know who was responsible for what it was about to do,
after the fact. The whole point was to annoy the Watcher, after all.
The Rival needed only keep its intentions secret long enough to carry
them out without the Familiar Eldren interfering to stop it. While
the Rival was easily a match for the younger Watcher in a
straightforward battle, it couldn't hope to prevail against hundreds
of its younger fellows at once.

(If the Watcher was a grad student, the Rival might be loosely
compared to a junior untenured professor in terms of age/power.)

The Rival proceeded to quietly begin altering the geology and
subsurface activity of various volcanic provinces and tectonic
activity zones. The Rival isolated the various megavolcanoes, such as
what Humans would someday call Yellowstone, Toba, Atlantis, Long
Valley, etc, as well as some unknown to science as of 2004. The Rival
built up pressure in the gargantuan magma chambers, and began to
quietly, steadily fracture the rock sealing them in, preparatory to
its plan to force full-scale eruptions in all of them at once.

The Rival was planning a mass extinction, of course, along the same
lines as some of those NEMESIS had inflicted in past ages. The Rival
did not really care about long term effects or the Solarigen project
as a whole, this was roughly the Eldren equivalent of drive-by
vandalism, meant to annoy the Watcher and little more. (The Rival
knew about NEMESIS, mind you, and in fact knew a lot about the
murder machine. There is more to that story to be told.)

Unfortunately for the Rival, it got caught before it was ready.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The Familiar Eldren were gathering another group of H. sapiens for
shipment, one of the largest shipments to date, in fact. They had
actually placed the involuntary colonists in stasis, and surrounded
them in a force-shell for transport across the void to their new
homes. As the great globe of force was lifting clear to the African
plains, one of the Eldren shepherding it happened to focus its senses
more closely on the gathering heat anomaly under one of the
supervolcanoes, and it did so at just the right time to notice that
another Eldren was tampering with the subsurface magma plumbing.

Word flashed out telepathically to the other Familiar Eldren,
including the Watcher himself, who was supervising the transfer of
people. What followed took only a few minutes.

Recognizing the Rival at work, and perceiving almost instantly what
was in the works, the Watcher promptly split its forces, directing one
group to continue moving the Homosentients while the Watcher himself
and another group of the oldest and most powerful Familiar Eldren
moved to head off the Rival from finishing its sabotage.

The Rival, realizing it had been detected, tried to detonate the
supervolcanoes prematurely, planning to at least have the satisfaction
of doing some damage to the Watcher's pet project. But the Watcher
used its own abilities to try to stop the detonation, aided by other
Familiar Eldren, and what followed was a contest of skill and power,
using the elemental forces of nature as instruments.

Remarkably, against the odds, the Watcher and its fellows mostly won
the contest. All but one of the great supervolcanoes subsided, the
pressure (which was after all unnaturally applied) easing off, the
magma chambers settling down again. All but one.

In the supervolcanic province humans would later call Toba, the Rival
managed to 'blow' the magma chamber before the Watcher could stop him.
Toba was the volcanic province the Rival had brought closest to
readiness, and the eruption was gargantuan.

Even the volcanoes where the Watcher had more-or-less won the struggle
for control often released small bursts of activity. Tremendous
amounts of ash were blown into the upper atmosphere, and global
temperatures fell noticeably in the ensuing centuries. It was far
from a mass extinction, however. The Watcher and the other Familiar
Eldren reacted fast enough to damp out the worst of the effects,
turning the intended event into a 'fizzle'. Mostly.

Even as the near-disaster was dying away, though, the Watcher and the
Rival had taken their dispute onto the physical level. The Rival was
still bent on doing some damage to the Watcher's favorite planetary
biosphere, the Watcher, for its part, was 'fed up'. As the Rival
tried to lash out, doing as much direct damage as it could as fast as
it could, the Watcher moved to intercept, and the battle that followed
would have been legend, had there been any Homosentients close enough
to perceive it and far enough away to survive the experience.

Even as it was, the battle (which lasted about 93 seconds from start
to finish) left the region blasted clean of life for centuries, soil
baked to glass, water boiled away, and the bedrock fractured. The
Watcher alone would have been overwhelmed by the Rival, but with the
assistance of several of its most senior fellow Familiar Eldren, it
was a more even fight.

The Eldren shepherding what would prove to be the last 'shipment' of
Homosentients found themselves trying to steer the half-mile wide
globe of force out just as the struggle between the Watcher and the
Rival broke out. It took them 33 perilous seconds of desperate
effort, but they managed to keep the force-globe intact and its
suspended-in-time passengers alive and healthy. But in the ensuing
chaos, they were forced to split the force-globe into smaller ones,
dividing the last shipment.

It was at this point that it became clear the that Rival was not
alone, either. Like the Watcher, it had several of its own
compatriots on its own side of the rivalry rushing to back it up. The
battle started to escalate, but the Watcher and its own allies were
more numerous on-site, and more familiar with Earth and the spacetime
around Sol, giving them a 'home team' advantage.

The Rival had another card to play, however. Exactly what it did
would be almost impossible to explain in mortal terms, but it might,
very, very, very loosely, be compared to a computer virus. Any
Eldren has the ability to 'subdivide' itself into smaller selves with
the same mind, and to remerge those selves. The action of the Rival
had the effect of 'trapping' its victims in a subdivided state, and
forcing them into something like a 'trance state'. The Rival used
this weapon it had created on the Watcher and the Watcher's allies in
the struggle, and it was devastatingly effective.

But the Watcher reacted faster than the Rival expected, and managed to
trap the Rival into the same effect, before the Rival and its fellows
could get clear. Caught in their own trap with their victims, the
Rival and its allies were left just as helpless as the Watcher.

The remaining Familiar and Rivalrous Eldren who had been off-planet
were about to intervene to assist their leaders, but it was at this
point that the adults called 'time out', or an approximation thereof.

One of the Primals, noting that the dispute among these youthful Eldren
was escalating to the point of becoming dangerous, and
irritated by the antics and nuisance it was causing, ordered the
remaining younger Eldren to 'cease and desist'. Both the remaining
free Familiar and Rivalrous Eldren were forbidden from taking any
further direct action with regard to the battle or the aftermath of
it. Earth was placed 'off limits' to both, neither permitted to
approach closer to Sol than roughly 43,000 astronomical units, nor to
take any direct action with regard to the Solarigen worlds, until
further notice. The free Familiar and Rivalrous Eldren were strictly
enjoined from approaching any Solarigen world closer than an Eldren
unit of distance that would translate to roughly five light-days.

There was enormous protest at this, especially from the Familiar
Eldren, but the Primal had spoken, and that was that. Active defiance
of their authority was both socially unthinkable, and nearly
impossible, since one Celestial Eldren could easily overcome thousands
of lessers in a struggle.

It had all happened over the course of less than 24 hours. One
planetary rotation earlier, the Familiar Eldren had been in the
finishing stages of evacuating sapient life from Earth, for the
protection of both the sapients and the planet Earth. Just 24 hours
later, the leaders and many of the long-term members of the great
project were trapped helplessly on Earth, along with many of the
Eldren rivals, and the remaining free ones on each side were forbidden
to intervene to assist them. Though they were not dead, they were,
for the moment, essentially helpless and nearly comatose, and it would
be some time before that state changed.

The plan to evacuate Terra collapsed, of course. There were only a
relative handful of H. sapiens and H. neandertalensis left, and an
even tinier smattering of other hominid species. From the remnant of
H. sapiens who had missed being removed, would come the modern
Human race of Earth. [1]

But perhaps the most significant fact of all, from the point of view
of a Homosentient or any Solarigen life intelligent enough to even
have a point of view, was that the Familiar Eldren were effectively
removed from the picture. This meant, of course, that there was
nothing to prevent a certain living machine from executing its
programming without interference or the need for secrecy. The only
thing left between NEMESIS and that was the lack of realization on the
part of NEMESIS that the Solarigen biospheres and their innumerable
species were now essentially undefended.

NEMESIS would not immediately realize this (fortunately!), but it was
only a matter of time before it did realize the opportunity before it.
But about that matter, and what followed...

MORE LATER.


[1] Note that this is why the modern H. sapiens population of Terra
shows such a remarkably low genetic diversity. The large majority of
our species' breeding stock was removed from Earth over 70,000 years
ago, and spread across the Galaxy.

--------------------------------

At this point, it seems reasonable to move to a new thread for a new 'chapter':
The Eosians