Chapter 483 (1/2)
MANTID FREE WORLDS
Have you all taken the time to look at some of this stuff?
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PUBVIAN DOMINION
If by 'look at it' you mean: devoted thousands of researchers to start going through it, then, yeah, basically.
By the Sus'd Amogus, who would thought that they were capable of all of this? We thought we'd seen everything humanity could throw at something or do, then all of this drops into our lap.
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
We don't really understand what all this is. I mean, yeah, it's technical, geographical, societal, and cultural data, but why was it just data-dumped on us? Why did they have it? Why was so much of it unused?
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
You understand the human concept of ”Black Box Project”, right?
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Yeah. Ultra-secret research and development. Usually for weaponry.
Lots of people do it. But why did they dump it on us?
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Do you understand the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction? That wholly human concept of 'lets both put on dynamite vests and hold each other's triggers to make sure nobody pulls a knife' that they follow?
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
Yes.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
This is part of it. This is part of what they called the ”Dead Hand System”, which makes sure that anyone that kills them doesn't live to enjoy it.
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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL
By dumping all their raw and refined data, experiments, and research on everyone?
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AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS
I get it.
If they got eliminated, then whoever it was had the capabilities to overcome all of the Terran safeguards, technology, martial might, and everything else.
Their allies might still be around, might be able to put up a fight.
The Terrans are betting on the fact that something in all of their data might provide the rest of us with an edge to enable us to take out whoever eliminated the Terrans.
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MANTID FREE WORLDS
Pretty much.
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PUBVIAN DOMINION
Some of this stuff gives my researchers the heebie jeebies.
At one point they managed to create digital sentiences of us.
They loaded long-sleep ships full of genetic samples, digital sentiences of us, and launched it toward another galactic arm with fake history and a fake disaster they were running from.
Part of something called Operation Stormy Beach.
The reasoning is insanely human.
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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
What was the reason?
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PUBVIAN DOMINION
So that our people would not be gone from the galaxy.
That's it.
Because we were their friends.
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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
Trust us on this one, being their friend is the most important thing in the universe to them.
They were so lonely for most of their existence.
In a sad and tragic way, loneliness is a defining trait of humanity. Not Terran Descent Humans, but humanity.
They uplifted us just to have friends.
Before that, they pack bonded with us when we were all afraid of the thunder outside the cave.
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TNVARU GRIPPING HANDS
What's your opinion on all of this, Lanky?
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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
I am startled, as are all my people, that we would have been included. This is a wealth of technical data that will take my best people centuries just to catalogue.
Why would they give it to us?
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Because you're in here, us Elders voted to release it to you, but most of all...
...because the Terrans didn't believe that you were the ones who would eliminate them. Not even with biowarfare. You got Culture-Cracked, there's no coming back from that.
They didn't want you to succumb to whatever destroyed them.
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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
Terrans are confusing.
We were/are their enemy, the war was not yet over, yet they deliver this to us.
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RIGELLIAN SAURIAN COMPACT
Dead Hand Systems aren't known for their precision.
It determined that you were in danger too.
”Let not the light flicker and die” was the header on so much of that.
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BIOLOGICAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
We thought we knew everything that the Terrans knew.
This data, though.
By the Digital Omnimessiah.
When Sis said that the Terrans were so twisty they had to screw their socks on, we had no idea they were thigh high socks.
It's more than the weapons, more than the ship types, more than just the fabrication techniques. There's genetic information in here on creatures we've never even met.
I'm not even sure what some of this stuff is.
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LEEBAW CONTEMPLATION POOL
There's complete data on my world, I mean, COMPLETE data. There's even annotations that the Unified Council had never gentled us before, that we're newcomers.
They did a Leebaw Genome Project on us within a week of meeting us.
Everyone has always said that cracking the genome was impossible.
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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
We told everyone that to prevent their research.
We looked at the genetic data that was handed to us.
Some of it was monstrous.
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DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENCE SYSTEMS
I have to say, seeing where some scientist in a Black Box designed a bioweapon to turn all of you into shape shifting unicorn/human creatures using nanite 'magic' was probably the funniest thing I read.
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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
I did not understand why that was so funny. Project Blue Adept, Subproject Neysa was terrifying and I am glad it was never put to use.
The fact that the Terrans ran it to its conclusion before cancelling the project alarms us.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
Nothing like finding out the Terrans could have planet cracked you right in the face while laughing at you to make you realize you got off lucky.
Trust me, we get it.
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TELKAN FORGE WORLDS
The plan to singularity spike Sag A* if the Mar-gite spread out too far is what scares me.
I mean, what kind of maniac uses a hypernova weapon on a supermassive blackhole with the add-ons that they planned.
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HESSTLA TECHNOBURROW
I didn't really understand that.
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AKLTAK SOARING WORLDS
The black hole would explode in a supernova, but the surrounding 'fields' which are layered like an onion, would have taken massive waves of radiation into hyperspace and dropped them back into realspace through the entire galaxy.
Scouring hyperspace with high energy particles, dissolving anything in jumpspace, and scrubbing stringspace.
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LANAKTALLAN FREE HERD
Wiping out all life in the galaxy in less than ten hours.
To destroy the Mar-gite.
The researchers who read that fainted.
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TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS
I about fainted.
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