The Wind and the Stars

The Wind and the Stars

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“Gravity and Light: the many generations of space gods and their effects upon-”

(Taken from the introduction)

-         Dr. G.J. Haber, visiting lecturer on experimental alchemy and paratypical psychiatry)

The mariners of old had the wind and the stars to guide them, for those whose desire to expand, to know, to explore, exceeded their technology.   It us ultimately from these people the Imperium hails its foundations and continuations. Without them, we have no civilization.

In the pre-stellar era, a given technological civilization has few opportunities to leave their world and fewer still to do so under their own means.   For those who brave this, most final of void-oceans, only the gravity keys between the worlds of their solar system and the positions of the great celestials themselves, the bright stars, the galactic medium itself, and other, distant but visible galaxies and phenomena. 

It is the wind and the stars all over again. 

While the stars have not changed, for the most part, the wind is now the interlocking forces of gravity within a solar system, at least until gravity is recognized as the enemy.

The common mytho-historical image of the cosmonaut struggling against the universe is not our best guide to these people. No, those first explorers who lack even fusion technology, are more akin to those who sail the currents of island chains in canoes made of local vegetation, fashioned with their bare hands. They who in the span of years will colonize an area over a thousand times more vast. 

To those first, those earliest of star sailors to emerge from the home worlds of our ancestors, there were always the lord of light and mother space, the goddess of gravity. The gender roles are not important but among many clades those are the tendencies. There is of course a third force underlying all of this but only many thousands of generations selection bring that particular need about.  

But it is the holy dance of light and gravity of which I now speak. Sometimes twins, or siblings.  Often lovers, many times enemies.   It is only through a logical understanding of the fundamentals of both and how they intersect that makes those first voyages possible…for the survivors. For these are the Gods of the Lucky Ones, of the hundreds that lived when millions were sent out.  Those who survived, made more, thrived, and then kept going.  Those who forgot the truths of light and gravity stopped expanding, and likely died out but their epic voyages of expansion were over.  

Those who persisted those are the spacers.  Those who gave up, those are the Ketraxians, the Maenads, the Friggians, the Saurids, the Vroids. 

It may help to remember that that selection process goes on today.  All of you are from worlds, member worlds of the imperium yes but now you are in imperial service. You are among those selected to later return to the stars and the process begins anew, if you thrive in imperial service then the imperium thrives, and your descendants will challenge the stars anew, raising up their own gods.

In these later generations perhaps we should find a psychopomp to raise up, to remind us the lessons of entropy.

Light, gravity and entropy, so still like the stars, the wind, and salt.