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- The dyson sphere was cold, and dark, but not dead. Though its outer hull was but a degree warmer than the cosmic vacuum, though the star within was doused and dismantled, there was still activity. Black ships sailed from black ports in their ant-like millions, propelled by silent reactionless drives, steadily strip-mining the nearest star. It had been a red dwarf, once. Now it was a brown dwarf, and in a few millennia more it would be a gas giant, and then a remnant metallic core, and then nothing.
- A billion kilometers away, a saucer-ship of the Galactic Confederation hovered, observing from a (hopefully) safe difference. It had been there a month. In that time nothing had changed, they had learned little, and hadn’t even really uncovered any new mysteries. Captain Rickard stood on the observation deck, staring at the black bulk of the sphere blotting out the stars, as if his eyes could tease out answers that all the ship’s sensors could not. It had become something of a habit of his.
- “Why do it like this, though?” he mused. “No colonization of other star systems. Not even any major infrastructure built up. Just this endless progression of mining ships, each taking a bite and then leaving. Why deliberately refuse to spread yourself across the stars? Why imprison yourself?”
- He spoke largely to himself. The dyson sphere certainly (probably) couldn’t hear him. But he was not alone on the promenade, so he got an answer anyway.
- “Not all societies are disposed to spread themselves in such a fashion,” the Diasporan cyborg Antonymph-8 said. “Without FTL, an interstellar colony will inevitably become its own thing; a polity committed to sustaining itself through deep time may fear a colony will ultimately become a rival more than it hopes for an ally. If this sphere is governed by a single mind it may even be unable to do so. In our own history, the Groombridge Basilisk was never able to successfully fork itself due to its solipsism, compulsively re-assimilating every attempt. A similar limitation may be in play.”
- “A mortal being desires to reproduce as the surest means of securing its legacy,” the wizard Artaxerxes the Blue added. “An immortal being has no such requirement; indeed any offspring are likely to eventually be competition. Some immortal races will enslave their own children, then dispose of them when they become inconvenient. Myth and legend record, many times over, that gods imprison, kill, even eat their children, until one day they are overthrown for their cruelties. It would not be surprising if whatever power rules here decided simply not to bother.”
- Rickard looked between the two, before sighing. “What a cynical outlook you two have,” he said, before looking back out the window.
- If the megastructure had any more reassuring words to offer, it did not share them.
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