His Grey Aspect droned for attention. Her voice came slowly, as though working across the abyss of time that separated Killeen from the High Arcology Era.

There were records… I once saw… incomplete… from a time long gone… Some said… before the Chandeliers… before even the First Comers…from… a culture of legendary origin… called Earth. That too was a time… when men lived… beneath the will… of beings vaster. Gods moved the heavens… determined… fate of men… and beasts… In those times… humanity scratched out its destiny… in soil… under tortured skies… where huge things… in comfort… dwelled. Some thought these superior beings… were gods. Yet men lived lives of meaning still… despite their small stature… in the scheme of things. So do not despair… Humanity has found zest and verve… before… in the shadows of vastness… in a place called Greece.

Killeen nodded. So even this was not new. Humanity’s most heartfelt joys and crushing defeats had been mere sideshows, small dramas acted out at the feet of greater entities.

It did not matter whether one termed these forces gods or the products of further evolution. Enormity defied definitions. Skysower was a living thing, but Killeen could not tell whether it even thought. Perhaps the distinction itself did not make sense at that level of grandeur.

He looked up into the colossal sky. Fingers of knotted fire worked in molecular clouds. Storms frayed against the stars. Tides of light ebbed and flowed with ponderous majesty. Amid it all, Argo sailed on, a mote.

“Shibo,” he whispered. “I love you.”

It seemed as though the words were new, and that he said them for the first time.

Chronology of Human Species

(Dreaming Vertebrates)

at Galactic Center

This summary was prepared at your request, in order to make intelligible the human point of view. I must confess that this is fundamentally impossible even to anthology-class minds such as myself, and probably to any entity which does not arise from an initial organic base. However, as much as is possible I shall take the cramped human version of their own history, however distorted or inadequate this may be.

These matters were of no concern to us until the strange events at the collapse of Citadel Bishop (see appendix 1). Some effort to understand that engagement led to my involvement with the humans who escaped our extermination.

I have made use of these survivors. They recently departed on an aged vessel of earlier human construction. They will arrive at World #1936B. The destructive intercity competition there may be muted by their efforts. I have arranged that they be met by our representatives, assuming the situation there has not deteriorated further by the time of their arrival.

However, as discussed in appendix 2, other purposes are served by their leaving Snowglade and going to World #1936B at this time. While these humans know nothing of the larger context, they may have methods of yielding further information of use to us. In light of our ignorance of these beings, higher entities have decided to allow their continued survival so long as they pose no serious irritant.

[Note: This entry is abstracted from larger files. Times refer to flat space-time measurements, though some important events have occurred in the curved geometries of pulsar magneto-spheres and the black hole vicinity. Notes on one particular human refuge, planet Snowglade, are included.]

Existing manuscripts and datalogs allow some preliminary description of events leading up to the current epoch. The historical scheme of humanity falls into periods which reflect stages in the steady decline of humans at Galactic Center. Human terms are used throughout, even where they are misleading or inadequate.

THE GREAT TIMES

This is a dimly remembered age spanning several thousand years. Humans moved freely between the close-packed stars of the Center. Even then they had to stay out of the way of mech civilization.

Human legend holds that they arrived at Galactic Center in several waves.

First was a small band which had captured a mech near-light starship. Apparently they went undetected for a while because of their conventional craft. This allowed stealthy investigation of mech ways and purposes. By observing mech civilization and learning from it, humans attained a level of ability rare among organic forms. They apparently also formed alliances with other organic forms nearby, though nothing is known of these.

The development of large pulsar configurations had begun shortly before this time and occupied much mech energy. Creation of large electron-positron clouds contributed to the already considerable gamma-ray background near pulsars. These gamma rays heated molecular clouds and prevented human incursions into several regions. The few remaining records suggest that the first human expedition set about several pursuits involving organic civilizations which lived near the Center. However, these humans then vanished.

The second wave of exploration came directly from Earth. An entire fleet of ramscoop vessels was launched within a century after the mech-sponsored warfare, which had introduced alien sea life into Earth’s oceans.

Third came a larger expedition which sought the fabled Galactic Library which beacons had promised. Earth lies 8.63 kiloparsecs from Galactic Center (see appendix 3 for Universal Standard comparisons). This implies that the ramscoop vessels had begun their voyage in an age when the Library was still announcing itself. Well before their arrival the Library had disappeared, spirited away by unknown parties. Efforts to find it failed. The Library apparently contained the records of many extinct organic races. Searches for it tapered off when mechs finally took notice of these intruders and set about opposing them.

THE CHANDELIER AGE

Here humans gathered into large cities in space for protection. Surviving logs from starfaring vessels show that mechs had begun to make interstellar travel dangerous. Also, radiation increased in the zone around the black hole at Absolute Center (sometimes “True Center”). This made conditions harder for organic forms everywhere nearby.

Scholars of this time studied the earliest humans known at Galactic Center and much of our knowledge of earlier ages descends from the detailed searches made then. Much art and literature survives from the centuries marking the transition into the Chandeliers, though most of this is abstract and useless for historical purposes.

HIGH ARCOLOGY ERA

This came after the “Hunker Down” (slang)—the exodus from the Chandeliers to planetary surfaces. Mech competition drove this desperate retreat. On most worlds, in the need for security humankind was forced into huge Arcologies, single-building cities which were still technically advanced and retained many facets of Chandelier life.

Planet Snowglade was a particularly fertile site and received extensive colonizing. Assignment of territories was made by Family structure, as elsewhere. The trauma of the “Hunker Down” drove religious fervor. This is best considered as a form of human art (appendix 4), though much must be interpolated here to render this mode of expression into rational terms.

LATE ARCOLOGY ERA

The last small Chandeliers and freighting ships were abandoned at the opening of this time. All starflight ceased. Even interplanetary travel and harvesting of resources became difficult because of the mechs. Moist, plant-bearing planets were previously thought to be uninteresting to the mechs. Even these now came under threat. Since such worlds were where the Arcologies flourished best, humanity was further circumscribed.