Once, there were stars...

         The scenery of the place was utter darkness. At least if you or I were to take a look at it the way we are now. The lights had all gone out, and the pervasive darkness that had overtaken the whole of the universe was so complete that a single firefly would have been the brightest light in the whole of what remained of the universe. It wasn’t yet the end of all things though. In the darkness forms still moved according to their nature. Masses of iron, long dead stars burned out and coalesced once more continued on paths set for them. The long orbits and intricate patterns of their dance progressed even as they had grown so cold that they blended into the background radiation of the empty space around them. At the center of this dance was another cold world. Cold, but not yet dead.

         This world’s surface was iron, like almost all else in the universe, but it bore a shell of a completely different material. Here, in the darkness there were even occasional sparks of light. Nothing as brilliant as a firefly, but diminutive sparks of static discharge in rare specific circumstances would illuminate the crystal spires and glassy fields of purple-hued mineral. The sparks came from inside the stone, and would send light through the transparent crystal in short lived moments that almost recalled the shooting stars of worlds long past. The shell of this world flexed with the passing of unseen iron spheres, invisible, but still gravitationally potent. Distortion after distortion released electrical potency stored within the crystals themselves, allowing for the flow of energy in this place, even after all heat and light had gone from the rest of the universe.

         Amidst the stillness, there was evidence of something more happening that wouldn’t have been noticed without paramount patience. Some of the crystal formations slowly grew across the surface, or would use tension stored within their limbs to apply pressure to push themselves along as if on many feet. Some would tap their numerous legs in intricate patterns, sending vibrations through the ground, listening for echoes, or even the replies of other crystal forms. These creatures vary in size and shape, taking up roles in their ecosystem, changing from generation to generation, until at last there came to be congregations of a species of them. Unlike many of their predecessors, this species had evolved a way to communicate that was far faster, and more efficient than the tapping of their ancestors. Gathering together in great collectives they placed some of their upper limbs on special nodes that allowed them to merge their nervous systems together. Thus a prosocial species of crystalloids formed their civilization in the darkness, slowly learning to dominate the surface of the world they inhabited.

         At the edge of one of the vast clusters of crystalloids A small sub-grouping was gathered at the edge of the larger colony. They had disconnected into their own smaller network to better focus on their work, a task done by so many civilizations before, the work of learning.

         ”Today, as we come to a close in our lesson I would like to review the primary principles we have covered in the natural sciences,” Professor Silic said to his class. Said through his connection to one of his students. Said via electrical impulses between minds that echoed through to the rest of the students. A thought mimicked and shared between each of them, but close enough to language as we know it, that it could be translated thusly. “We have discussed the varying hypotheses that seek to explain the conditions of the Universe we exist in. There are massive objects that float above us far in the darkness of the sky. These can be observed with special instruments that measure the gravitational pull of these objects. You can also be assured of their existence in how they affect piezoelectric crystals that make up all life. From the simplest organisms, to ourselves, electricity is worked from the natural world to allow life to exist. Now whether there are two infinite sets, or finite sets, is not known. It is only known that they appear in pairs. One on either side of the world, equal in mass, and moving past us at the same speed in opposite directions. To the best of our understanding this process progresses back into time to the earliest life in the Universe, as there is no other possible source of energy that could provide electricity with which life could act.” As Silic spoke the signal of his voice softened. His body became dormant as the electricity it took to think and speak was drained away. The same phenomena propagated through his students, but a passing dark star coursed by overhead. Silic awoke, and without missing a beat continued, “Electricity is the source of thought and action, and what differentiates life from the rest of the natural world. Without it matter is inert, like the iron below the surface of the world. Even the smallest microbes that make their way to and from the inner core feed off the static electricity generated from the surface of the world.”

         There were murmurs of thought in the network connected to one of Silic’s nodes. The class was speaking to one another, and he wasn’t being directly contacted by the speakers. The barest static came to him, and he knew at once what they were speaking about. “Ah, yes, I seem to have forgotten my count of the cycles. Tell me, are we overdue for our dismissal?”

         “Yes, professor,” came the answer from Tassot, “ We have gone over time by 14 cycles.”

         “My apologies,” Silic answered, “I dismiss you, but I expect to hear from each of you at our next meeting how your lessons go with my temporary replacement. I shall be away, I suspect for a few tens of thousands cycles, to discuss work with a colleague, and perhaps I will be bringing back interesting news from the Deep Core Sensory station.”

         There was a collection of respectful thanks and well wishes as the small network broke apart. Silic’s students reconnected to the collective, sharing their experiences with their kindred. Silic, for his part, did not turn back to the large nearby colony, but instead began to work his way away. Professor Silic moved as fast as he could. While he had been hesitant to close up his class, he had received a cryptic message from his colleague, Professor Narot, which had read simply, “I think it may be speaking.” Granted, the energy cost of sending a communication via core line was expensive, but so was taking the tram all the way out to the Deep Core Sensory outpost, and it was a long journey. In about seven hundred cycles he reached the tram.

         It was a metal cart, arranged just below a raised metal platform, with every edge smoothed and only barely starting to be coated in growing crystal surfaces. Attached to it were four large crystalline lifeforms, roughly 4 times taller than Silic, and possessing long spindly legs below their central mass. They were highly trained striders, ready to draw the tram up to the launching platform. Cycle after cycle passed as Professor Silic moved his many feet to crawl onto the tram, and anchored himself as best he could.

         Two thousand four hundred cycles more slipped past Professor Silic as he waited in the tram. He listened to the creaking growth of the four crystal striders that pulled the tram forward. Up and up the shallow incline of the railway. The sound of the striders came to him through the floor of the tram, reaching his many dozens of sensitive feet. To his senses the sound was distorted thanks to the unusual nature of the material that lubricated the tram’s rails. Liquid helium was the only known liquid to occur outside the living bodies of crystalloids, or the laboratories of high energy physics. It proved useful in so many regards that wars had been fought for it in the past. Now, thanks to deep core research, such wars were a thing of the past.

         Professor Silic considered his people’s history and his position in it, to fight off the considerable dread welling up in his body. The striders were nearing the apex of the rail, and soon the slow ascent would become the Plunge. Professor Silic hated the Plunge. More adventurous people would take such journeys just to experience a cataclysmic rush of energy like this. The force of gravity was well understood, but releasing stored energies with it was always startlingly abrupt.

         The realization that the Plunge was about to happen had settled in. He heard the striders be released from the tram and start hastily moving away. He felt the gates to their pens shut, and knew that the Plunge would come any moment now. The professor stilled his thoughts and counted the cycles as they passed. It helped to calm him, feeling them as they washed over him. The mysterious electro-magnetic pulse coming from the core of the world, the center of all knowable things. They felt like a slight pull downward, and a ‘brightening’ of his thoughts. The effect was subtle, but was experienced by all living things. Paying careful attention to the cycles made him feel at one with the world. He almost forgot the Plunge was coming.

         The tram tipped forward and sent hurtling down the iron tracks on which it was set. The incline of the railing was shallow enough to be considered safe. Additionally the tram's wheels were made with a friction braking system which would automatically engage whenever his speed grew too great. The tram’s rails lead in a shallow downward slope almost directly to the Deep Core Sensory outpost.

         To professor Silic the journey might as well have happened at the speed of light. Experientially for the professor a single loud crash occurred and the tram had come to a stop. The energy build up in his body had supercharged him. Static electricity sparked from his feet and discharged into the iron of the tram, and then into the iron of the world beneath it. His thoughts were muddled for a moment as the pathways of his mind were overwhelmed with electricity. Despite this he flexed the tendrils of his legs and pulled himself from the tram.

         The electricity in his body would help him move faster than he would throughout most of his life. His body would not differentiate the energy from an orbiting iron star, or from the violent shaking of a tram ride. So he moved up the pathway to the remote structure at stunning speed. He crossed hundreds of feet in a single cycle, something that would normally take a dozen cycles or more to manage.

         The outpost stood before the professor nestled in between two columns of crystal that had naturally grown at the site, and then were shaped to allow the outpost to tap into their trunks, sapping away the electricity that the columns would normally distribute into the iron shell of the world. This seemed to be part of the symbiotic life cycle with the microscopic organisms that lived within the iron shell of the world. Despite its solid appearance the surface of the world was filled with many microscopic pathways leading deep underground. These paths were built and traversed by a plethora of micro-organisms whose mysterious evolution incorporated no piezo-electric crystals of their own. Instead their bodies contained super-capacitors that would charge off of nearby static. Slowly these organisms brought iron up from below, along with other far rarer elements apparently formed in the world’s core. Using an understanding of the rules these organisms follow, structures could be grown out of iron. As the microorganisms could be tricked into depositing and fusing their microscopic cargo into macroscopic shapes.

         Thus the observatory had been built, over 10 million cycles, of carefully guiding microorganisms to build the equipment needed to listen to the core of the world. This was one of the few places in the world with external walls. The equipment here was sensitive, and now that only professor Narot remained as permanent staff it was necessary to keep the equipment safe from wandering wildlife. If a strider were to bump into any of the equipment it may take a million cycles to fix. That was unlikely though, given that the walls were half as tall as a strider, making it impossible for their long spindly legs to allow them to step over it.

         A simple gate blocked the way to the path inside. Professor Silic used one of his feet to slide it open and dragged himself in. It slid shut behind him automatically, and he carefully felt his way through the lab. He tapped his feet as he walked, listening for the echoes of equipment around him. There were many delicate pieces of machinery, designed to pick up subtle signals from inside the planet. The machinery included listening devices, tools for measuring the electromagnetic spectrum, apparatus for precisely measuring electrical loads on the core lines beneath them. Older tools tended to have a small stamp-hammer that would tap out their outputs on the ground, so that they could be listened to from a distance. More up-to-date devices would have a small pad, shaped like the nodes on Silic’s upper body. They could be connected to in the same way that crystalloids talked to each other, and crude speech could be transferred between the device and the user.

         Then, at last, Silic felt a sound that wasn’t an echo. A sound greeting tapped out by professor Narot. Silic hastened to Narot’s side and reached out an arm, tapping the tip of the crude appendage along the center mass of Narot’s body. Narot did not do the same, as one of her arms was touching a nearby interface and moving enough to help Silic search would break her connection. It didn’t matter much though, as Silic and Narot were familiar to one another. Silic found a node along Narot’s body after just a few cycles. As he touched the node it provided a link between their nervous systems.Immediately the electricity began to flow between them. In bursts of barely perceptible electric pulses they began to speak.

         “Welcome Silic!” Narot said, excited and giddy in a way Silic had never heard from her before.

         Initially Silic planned on playfully chastising Narot for making him come all this way, but her excitement got the better of him. She, having been out here for far longer than was typical, may be suffering from some slight derangement. “What did you call me out here for? Who do you think is speaking to you?” Silic asked, hoping for a rational response.

         “The core, Silic. The core is speaking,” She answered, as if it were obvious.

         “You’ve been out here too long,” Silic said. “It would do you some good to come back to civilization and share. Maybe anchor a little while and - ”

         “No, you don’t understand. It’s not simple patterns or echoes. It’s a tap greeting coming up from underground, but it's electro-magnetic! I didn’t believe it at first, but it is there. It comes in between cycles. It’s small, so you can’t feel it. I tried using this console and some of the outpost’s power to send a greeting in kind. And that is when the message changed. I would have told you more by core line, but there was so much. You had to come so I could talk to you.”

         Silic considered for several cycles before saying, “You mean to tell me there is someone living underground? Someone who is somehow surviving in the iron core or some subterranean hydrogen lake?”

         “Not just a someone. Lots of someones. The one I’ve been talking to says they are speaking for ten to the twentieth (10 ^ 20) individual persons,” Narot said.

         “That’s impossible,” Silic replied. “They would have to be miniscule, and survive the pulse that causes the cycles. That much electrical energy so close, they’d overcharge and burn out their minds.”

         “No, Silic. The cycles won’t burn them out because they are what causes the cycles. Part of it anyway. I think we need to spread the word about this. The Scholars council will want a say in what we communicate, and there is so much to learn from them. Also they want to learn about us.”

         “How do we know we can trust them? This is some mysterious person making impossible claims before you even have a chance to go to the council? It must be a trick,” Silic said.

         “If you don’t trust them, then ask them yourself.” Narot said, and then pulled her arm free of the interface. Silic shuffled into place and contacted the interface. Meanwhile Narot placed her arm on one of Silic’s nodes so they could continue talking.

         Silic listened to the device and heard nothing, “No one is saying anything.” He said to Narot.

         “Say something into the machine,” Narot said. “They are listening for us now.”

         Professor Silic let a cycle pass before he sent into the machine, “Hello, I am Professor Silic from the surface world.”

         A cycle passed, and then the machine sprung to life, feeding electrical current into Silic, patterned as if it were speech.”Hello, Professor Silic from the surface. Professor Narot has told me you were coming.”

         Silic shuddered subtly. He was startled by the response, not because he thought Narot mad, or a liar, It was because the reply was so tonally perfect. When listening to sound patterns through a machine like this it was almost always too mechanical. This was so much like a person speaking to him that he was caught off-guard. “Are you a sentient microorganism? Narot told me that you said you were speaking for a very large number of people.”

         The pause between the cycles came and went, and then came the reply: “No. I am difficult to describe to you in terms of size. My mind is maintained within the vast complex of a computer which composes the center of this world. I was created with the specific purpose of treating with you. I’ve been waiting for you to create the tools you would need to hear me. This meeting between us has been long anticipated. Our conversation is being observed by many millions of others. There are many questions for you, and much we can learn from one another. Unfortunately limitations in time prevent me from asking all of these questions now.”

         Silic took this in, and turned his attention back to Narot, who was still connected to one of his nodes. “Did you know this creature claims to be a computer?”

         “Yes,” Narot replied, “It spoke much of itself and how it relates to the cycles. Before you arrived it told me that all those people it represents are also ‘in’ this computer. The cycles are the result of the massive device called a particle accelerator. They use it to break down or build up iron into different materials. The energy we feel during a cycle is the result of this accelerator turning on. They don’t run it constantly because it is close to their computers and they have to keep them cold. They power everything using energy that passes from the piezo-electric crystals on the surface through the conductive veins we harvest core line from. The subsurface microbes, the ones that deposit materials from deep within the planet, those are carrying material from the particle accelerator. These people, they built the foundations of our entire ecosystem!” Narot was ecstatic, her words came in staccato bursts of electricity pulsing into Silic as soon as she had the energy to speak.

         While she spoke a dreadful question began to form in Silic’s mind. Into the machine he said, “Narot has told me you created the microorganisms that carry up materials from the core. Why did you create them?”

         There was a pause, then the pulse of the cycle, and then the computer in the center of the world replied, “To replenish the piezo-electric crystals on the surface. To repair the superconductors that carry the discharge from those crystals into the capacitors which power out minds and machinery. To answer the question you would ask next: No, we did not create them so that your species would evolve. The arrival of your kind, or something like it, was a near inevitable eventuality that vast eons of time brought forth by happenstance.”

         Silic’s mind grasped desperately at a dozen more questions, but settled for one that he couldn’t let go. “How did you know I was going to ask you if you had intended to create us?”

         “Because this is not the first time we’ve had this conversation,” the computer replied, “but your recollection of that time would eventually lead to traumatic events. It was determined that that question was the last moment which did not lead to a civil war amongst your species, and your failure to save yourselves. At least, as you understood yourselves to be.”

         “What have you done to us,” Silic asked, a tone of horror in his voice.

         “Please understand,” the computer replied. “We had no choice by the end. We risked much to give your species the chance that was offered. Your civilization was a danger to us, and we tried to work with you. It was one thing to allow life to form on the surface. We could adjust for the shifts in mass and electricity that resulted from that. The careful arrangement of the iron spheres was established long ago, when the universe was young enough to allow us the energy necessary to set them on their course. Their orbit carries them far from this place, which is now effectively the center of all things. Their orbit, for it is indeed an orbit, though your species has yet to discover this; extends so far that as they pass this world they appear to move by in two parallel straight lines. Energy is added into the system by the expansion of space itself, at the far edges of orbit the iron spheres are allowed to go a little further than their momentum would allow, and as such in their returning course have a little excess energy to impart upon this world with their passing. We slow their orbit enough so that they do not break free of the gravity of the system they have been built into. Should a single one break free, the balance will be broken and would lead to the eventual death of all life that remains in the universe. Small subtle changes in the shape of the surface of this world can disrupt the carefully planned orbits of these iron spheres. We could manage those resulting from herds of striders, or the occasional shattered sky pillar. Your civilization though, ordered and organized, could move more mass than we could adjust for. Then you started drawing up the superconductors we used to draw energy from the surface. We knew they were merely a valuable resource to you, but to us, they were the veins that carried our lifeblood. Still we waited for you to contact us, so that there might be some salvation for both of our civilizations.”

         Silic sent to Narot, “Did they tell you what they’ve done to us?”

         “I don’t think I know what you mean?” She said, concerned at the tone of Silics voice.

         Then to the machine, Silic said, “You killed us, didn’t you?”

         The computer didn’t reply for two cycles, as if giving Silic the chance to fortify himself for the answer. “Yes,” The computer said, “Though we were exceedingly careful in the disassembly of your species in order to reconstruct you to the last detail. You see, when you tried to organize your society to meet our mutual needs, ordering the mass of the surface so as to keep the iron spheres orbiting in perpetuity, you failed. It worked for a long time, but eventually civil war broke out. Disorder and discord on a great scale, and the chaos could not be rectified by your kind. Eventually it would have broken the carefully crafted orbits of the spheres that grant us energy. We could not sacrifice all life that has been for your kind to have time to discover the way forward on your own. We took your world apart and built it up again, a simulation, with us. If it’s any consolation, you tried, valiantly.”

         Silic stood very still, a response adapted to help his kind hide from predators, he managed to send into the machine, “What now then. If I’m a facsimile of the life I was, what good is it now to live?”

         “A question asked many times before this. You can still think. You can still learn. You can still experience life, more of it than you would have had otherwise. There is much to teach you, and now, now there may be time for it. Time enough to carry on for an eon and more. You might come to find you prefer your place in the universe now, to what it was in your natural life. We have a great many things to show you, and senses to share with you. Long before your species evolved on this ancient world the universe was a very different place. You see Silic, once there were stars…”