Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

Consider the example of the R’de.

Upon first contact with the Vyeah, the R’de were not numerous but their technology was considerably more advanced in many areas, particularly in propulsion, anti-entropic fields, and macro-scale engineering. Apparently, the Vyaeh had been monitoring their communications network for some time before receiving orders to attack.

The Orphaned Court had made its decision, and the pheromone-stamped orders were unambiguous. Rather than placing them under imperial domination, or even giving them the option, the R’de were to be exterminated. The technologically-advanced R’de were able to defeat the Vyaeh in several smaller-scale encounters, but they were ultimately scattered and their home world occupied.

Even now, millennia after the last living R’de was killed attempting to flee a pursuing Vyaeh naval detachment, standing orders remain to kill them and smash their technology wherever it may be found.

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The real thing that keeps Vyaeh policymakers awake at night is the thought of meeting a species that is technologically advanced and numerous enough to put them at a disadvantage. To this end, they ruthlessly exterminate species with technology or even theoretical knowledge that they consider to be uncontrollable or threatening.

Vyaeh reasoning and decision-making at the highest levels are notoriously opaque, as the Orphaned Court communicates only through intermediaries, and only in a limited and archaic register. What a particular species has done to merit extinction is rarely clear and seldom discussed.

The maintenance of a status quo in which the Vyaeh are ascendant is the ultimate goal of the Orphaned Court, and while they are likely not so foolish as to think that status quo can remain forever in a finite universe, they are nevertheless committed to its maintenance.

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Vyaeh imperial policy is best defined as “economic domination.” Lower-technology worlds are simply blockaded and made to grant the Vyaeh monopolies on off-world travel and trade, which are strictly controlled and taxed. By trickling advanced technologies into the populace, usually as upgrades of existing, native, devices, the Vyeah can further concentrate power into the hands of a local elite, through which they prefer to rule. If such a species develops its own advanced technologies or spaceflight as a result, the Vyaeh simply tax it, or require an allotment of troops or ships to bolster their own forces.

More advanced species, able to meet Vyaeh fleets on more or less equal terms, are generally unable to match the numerical superiority that Vyaeh imperial policy grants. Supplemented with numerous, if not entirely reliable, conscripted troops from client worlds, a Vyaeh fleet will often enjoy a ten to one supremacy over foes. Generally, a series of short, sharp defeats are enough to bring foes to the negotiating table.

However, in the face of protracted resistance, the Vyaeh will not hesitate to make an example of the offender and drive them into extinction. The imperial policy, after all, is less about creating a functioning galactic economy than it is enforcing control with a minimum of military expenditure. If an occasional extinction of an intelligent species is necessary to reach that goal, the Vyaeh are all too willing.

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We know little about them, now. Only a few fragmentary bits of data survive, and even those are degraded.

We know they took many photographs, capturing many brief instances of life, often with short captions. We have many short captions that do not accompany photographs, perhaps because the photographs were lost.

There are short videos that have been reconstructed, frame by frame, each capturing a bare few moments of the lives they lived. There is much that can be gleaned, of course, but much that is now lost with the failure of the systems that once housed everything.

Based on what is available, we can only estimate how much data has been lost, how many moments were once recorded but are now lost. It is incalculable.

Because of what remains, and what was lost, we know this time as the Age of Instants.

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“Sir, please step aside, sir,” the agent said, waving Simon aside.

“Wait, what?” Simon said. “I already went through security. Full body scan, three-ounce liquids, all that.”

“I understand that, sir, but this additional screening is newly mandated by the ESA, and you’ve been randomly selected for additional checks.”

“Uh, okay,” Simon said, nervously eying the taser at the agent’s side. “What’s the ESA?”

“The Emotional Security Administration, sir,” said the agent. “Sir, before you get on the plane, we’re going to have to screen your emotional baggage.”

Simon thought back to his emotionally distant father, crippling intimacy issues, and the whole recent nasty breakup with Cindy. “Well, crap,” he said.

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“What about the Drake Equation?” I said. “Why isn’t there extraterrestrial life out there?”

“The Drake equation in correct,” the Oracle said. “Intelligent life is very common in the universe. However, they almost all drive themselves to extinction before they are able to make themselves known. It is like a great filter. Environments are so fragile that the intelligent life will destroy its own native world. The distances between planets, let alone solar systems, are so vast that the amount of energy needed to travel between them exceeds what can be safely generated on a planetary scale. Extinction is all but inevitable before interstellar travel.”

I let this sink in a moment before grasping at a crumb of hope: “You said ‘almost’ and ‘all but inevitable’ just now,” I said. “Does that imply that this is not always the case?”

“Of course. But the changes to biology, energy requirements, and outlook required mean that even those vanishingly few civilizations that are not driven to extinction must evolve into forms that are inherently unlike any life we are prepared to witness.”

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“Your contact is a man, a White Russian emigre, named Ivor Mechtin. Don’t get him angry. Our last courier made that mistake and came home in the same box as his shipment.”

“And what am I giving him?”

“3500 Mauser rifles and 35,000 rounds of 8mm Mauser ammunition.”

“Are we starting a war or something?”

“Frankly, yes. If the deal goes well, we have 500 MG08/15 heavy machine guns ready to sell as well. If it doesn’t, well, you’ll be dead so it’ll hardly matter.”

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“I am looking for the village hidden in the east.”

Ito fell as silent as the people in the Amuramaro inn, though he did not regard Takenaka with the same mixture of fear and hostility. “You are not a stupid man, Takenaka-san,” he said. “Surely you know by now we do not speak of it here.”

“Surely you know by now one of my maxims: uncooked vegetables and uncut fish fester. It is hard work, but sometimes these things must be confronted.”

Considering this, Ito looked to the east. “We have never been there, never seen it,” he whispered. “They come into town for supplies, and they only ask once. We are warned not to speak of them, and some gossips have been killed.”

“Have you not brought this to the attention of the authorities?” Takenaka said.

“They killed a man sent to investigate in a rockslide.”

Takenaka stroked his chin. “It seems if I am to have my answers, I have but one choice.”

“To be as an avenging spirit, and cut them down?” said Ito hopefully.

“So many legends about the men I have cut up, and so few about the vegetables that met the same fate, even though one causes far more weeping than the other,” Takenaka said. “Except onions, of course,” he added with an impish grin.

“No, Ito-san, it is clear to me that if the village hidden in the east is stealing your food, they are in need of a genius chef. I suppose that I will have to do until such a genius arises.”

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The earth was disturbed for days beforehand, but no one thought much of it until the bleeding started.

Perhaps ‘bleeding’ is too melodramatic. No one saw it oozing up, or weeping impossibly from rocks. But it was there, pooled in the largest hollow that had been torn up by forces unknown. Something seemed to be stirring it below the surface, as only a few places near the edges and in the center of nigh-invisible eddies seemed to coagulate.

The slaughterhouse smell and the spots of coagulation were enough to show it was actual blood, which is just as well, because no one would approach the hollow to investigate it any further. Even when ordered by the local authorities, excavators refused to approach it. Local drivers refused to transport anyone to the site as well, and when someone tried to collect a sample, it was destroyed in their luggage before they could leave the area.

Everyone in the area agreed that the ground bleeding was a terrible omen, a sign of punishment to come, and they feared that any attempt at study would just make things worse.

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