Phase Q/What Happens Next
And then…
The starlight comes in. What’s that? Why is there light coming from a slowly dying star? That’s just the way things are.
On this planet, pretty much everything revolves around the star. Literally. And also technically. Basically all of the energy circuits in the stellar system come from the star. That’s partly why it’s called what it is.
Down come the angels. Flying through space with harps and trumpet and laser weapons blasting away.
And there are the planetary people, victims of the attacks. Sitting there defenseless.
Yet angry.
The people pull out all the stops. Homemade flamethrowers, basement grenades, antique weaponry, alongside all the military might of thousands of years of warfare. And millions of years of evolutionary warfare.
But it’s hard to pierce an angel’s armor.
Especially when it’s made out of bits a billion times stronger than steel.
The battalions clash. Angels triumph.
In the civil sphere, the people lose just as badly. The angels multiply more rapidly.
Resentfully, people petition against the angels. However, the authorities are powerless to stop them.
As time goes by, the disparities increase. Eventually, the angels win.
“It’s not fair,” says a youth.
“It’s just a parable,” says an elder.
One way or another, it has some emotional resonance. The youth signs up to join a biolist group.
As the different groups clash, a new dynamic evolves around them. Many opportunists switch among the teams to further their own positions. Over time, the competing factions come to resemble each other. Soon, the biolists and the mechists have similar organizational structures, manifestoes, and memberships.
The underlying demographics seem to disconnect from the representatives. Somehow it seems to work out even better for many people. On a metadimensional quark exchange, the biolist population winds up with a much-needed shipment of pomelo codes.
The mechists synthesize a new form of machine that operates like a biolist on every observable level. The biolists refuse to acknowledge the new machine, on the grounds of its mechist origins. The machine joins the biolists, and boosts the merits of a holistic biosystem.
In an old war with a new face, the mechs and bios tear each other apart, just like in all their parables and holos. Their parables and holos also say that those who listen and watch will learn to do things differently, but anyway they fight.
Neither side pulls off a clean, clear win. Instead, most agents lose – their property, their freedom, their life – while a handful of agents come out on top, almost by accident, and the resultant holistic mechabiosystem resembles nothing that came before.
Then the mechabionts find a new difference to fight over. Should the star engine convert through an ECH circuit, or through a Gotist-Tunyion circuit?
Either way, more fuel. But it depends which kind of fire you want to burn.
People differ.
Phase Q: An interactive adventure.
