I SPEAK FOR THE THREES

THERE ARE NO THREES UP THERE

an underwhelming counterpoint to eldritch superstates

There are no Type III civilizations out there. Period.

And I dare argue that exponentially less civilizations, should they exist, do it above what Sagan and Kardashev would call it, Type 2 (or K-II, you get the idea, I'm not gonna bother with how you write it).

This is a part of a beef I have with both ufologists and grand sci-fi enthusiasts alike, for the same set of reasons.

1. Not studying enough chemistry and physics.

2. Thinking that absence of evidence equals evidence of non-absence.

3. Underestimating human understanding.

 

Let's strip this from the top down.

For those somehow unfamiliar with, be it by newfound curiosity or just forgot about it, the Kardashev Scale as originally proposed by Soviet astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev is a way of ranking the level of technological development of a civilization through their energy consumption.

 

Assuming the growth of mankind at the time and how much energy we needed to consume to maintain our society, it seemed reasonable to assume that at one point in our future, we would need to soon consume the whole energy that reaches Earth from the Sun, and later, the entire energy from the Sun itself, and so on.

It has since been refined by Carl Sagan and others as follows:

CLASS // ENERGY NEEDS

TYPE I    — 10^16 W, equivalent to the entire energy budget of Earth.

TYPE II  — 10^26 W, about a quarter the Sun's energy.

TYPE III — 10^36 W, about the energy of the entire Milky Way galaxy.

By that measure, we humans stand currently at Type 0.70~0.73.

 

This concept often comes hand in hand with the concepts of mega-structures in space, since they are proposed as viable means of obtaining said energy and using it, serving as habitats for said advanced civilizations. Such as Dyson spheres or swarms, stellar engineering, stellar lifting, ring worlds, the whole seven rings.

Now, I'm far from being the first one — and the last one — to point out the obvious problem with the concept put into practice. Right? You see, all 10¹⁶-10¹⁷ Watts of power Earth gets from the Sun are used for other things. Take the wind for example, created by the updraft of air from heating the surface of the sea and land, or the energy used by bacteria and algae. All that is included in that energy bill. Should humanity harness all of it, we would live on a barren rock, not different from that of the Moon's surface.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU NEVER SEEN BLADE RUNNER?

If we needed this much energy, we would most likely, outright “make it”. That is, either through fission or fusion plants.

“Why not solar?” You may be asking yourself, perhaps believing what happened in Chernobyl is the norm.

First of all: Did you not hear what I just said? Solar is the motor of Earth's very biosphere, and you wanna tap into that?

Second...
Although solar energy is on average 10x as cheaper per watt than nuclear power, its land coverage is 10-20x as expansive as nuclear power. Also requiring the usage of rare earth metals for its manufacturing, not to speak of long term maintenance and recycling economy it would need to create to make that waste less wasteful. Yes, it is true that covering about 1.0-1.2% of the Sahara desert IN PRINCIPLE, would suffice for the world’s current energy needs. But what do we do about its climate change potential? Solar panels need to be dark to absorb energy, and that heats them up, creating heat islands that change the direction of winds, impacting the local weather. More so the global weather, if we actually bid on the insanity of turning the Sahara into a solar farm. And what do we do when we need to double that energy requirement? Another 115.000 square kilometers? How much about the strip-mining needed for that, and the contamination created by that much e-waste?

By land usage, nuclear would give us 10-20x the room to spare — in a way, I think that’s how one justifies the price tag — given how humans are organized and divided, nuclear sounds about as close one can get to clean energy for the whole planet. Even with it being as inefficient as it is (remember, it is still a steam machine), the waste heat produced would vastly be off-set by the non-emission of carbon waste, previously generated by coal and oil energy production. We sure could find use for the other 2 watts of hot water per watt of energy in the grid. And the spent fuel, after being further used by breeder plants, can be buried in geologically stable rock, or sunk in the bottom of the ocean for eras. Solar can’t be entirely discarded for some niche uses, such as isolated communities and industries, but for the masses? Give me those steam towers.

Which is why Dyson swarms were conceived, at least in part.

 

Obtaining this energy, without strip-mining or going nuclear. It’s essentially solar/thermal but in space, and without disrupting the climate.

 

WE DON'T SEE DYSON SWARMS, THOUGH

The average red dwarf emits about 1-10% of the Sun's energy output. Surrounding such a celestial object would still be a challenge, but not as colossal of a challenge as it would be to do the same to the Sun, in principle. Still, 1% of the Sun's energy output PER SECOND is about SEVEN THOUSAND TIMES humanity's energy usage PER YEAR (which is about 5.4x10^20 Joules per year).

I'm pretty sure any civilization with this much power at their disposal (224 billion times present day Humanity) is definitely far more capable than we are, and we should not give them shit if their energy bill is not equivalent to a whole sun-like star. From our current understanding of processes as a whole, this is basically limitless energy, even at a loss rate of 99%.

If it's so efficient and attractive. Why couldn't we find them? It is perhaps the easiest type of technosignature possible to find — and there is our answer. It is the easiest possible type of technosignature one can find. And they don't want to be found.

Dyson swarms, for the most attractive they can be, are very expensive lighthouses, quite literally. Except the moment you light it up, it’s only a matter of a few decades or a century before your home planet gets rained by a million relativistic kill vehicles (RKV). Either as a preemptive strike against a possible future competitor, or by fear of standing on an equal fight in the near future.

One must not discard the possibility, that if life is relatively common in the universe, one of those stars in the sky has a sniper rifle pointed at you (or a buckshot), even if it is only one per ten thousand civilizations. One example of it happening once before would be enough to settle the interstellar neighbourhood in curfew essentially forever.

And you don’t even need 1% of the Sun’s power to launch this many relativistic weapons. Even 0.1% would be enough to wreak havoc on galactic scales if we wanted to — and almost undetectable, without engulfing the star. In which case, looking for them becomes pointless — they’d be indistinguishable from dust clouds, even if they pose a threat to us.

ON THE MATTER OF VON NEUMANN PROBES

My favorite least favorite type of alien.

Such as building a Dyson swarm, it is not hard, in principle, to build a Von Neumann Probe. You only need to succeed once.

Build a machine that is able to get to a planet, mine and refine materials to make more copies of itself, and let it replicate away into the galaxy. Even if it just doubles each cycle, starting at 1 unit, taking the average distance between stars with rocky planets as 7 light-years, and travel velocity as 10% lightspeed, and 10-20 years for it to replicate itself.

That’s on average 80-100 years per doubling.

In 10 cycles down the line (1000 yrs) we got to 100 thousand stars, 100 million in 20 cycles, and in 30 cycles (3000 yrs) that’s 107 billion stars. By the 32nd iteration, we will likely put a probe in each system available in the Milky Way’s estimated 400 billion stars, in 3-4 thousand years only. And given the age of the universe, and our own galaxy’s, if nobody ever gave a stop order of such a machine, every atom of non-luminous matter in the galaxy would have been converted into machines already. Even at 1% of the speed of light, that's less than 40 thousand years.

At which point, we’re not even talking about finding little green men. Just any kind of evidence for that matter, DNA, weird fossils, signs of strip mining in the deep past, or a derelict alien vessel around Mars.

Von Neumann machines get even worse when combined with planet killer arrays, such as building RKVs launch stations and gamma ray bombs, we should be seeing them all around us. Or we wouldn’t be here.

Which means… >drumroll<… Nobody has done it yet. Somehow. Which takes us back to the Fermi Paradox again. We could be the first ones to conceive such an idea, the very last ones, or civilizations out there strictly forbid such a thing from occurring because they are little green space hippies.

Or perhaps the Late Devonian extinction even was such an attempt, who knows?

Technically speaking, civilizations focused on spreading as much as possible should follow a similar growing principle. As a disperse and forget tactic. But, would that be the case, we either live near a somehow untouched corner of the galaxy, unlikely at best, or no one is really doing it (simplest answer). Else, they would be here already, and we would not. It’s the anthropic principle again at play here. Now as to why they wouldn't be here, if they do exist, is anyone's guess.

Like between ants and humans. If a shopping mall already covers the landscape, the only time ants could've lived there is long before construction or long after the ruins crumble. In that sense, our existence might simply mean we’re living in the forgotten dirt before the galactic developers arrive. — call it the ANT-thropic principle, haha.

SPEAKING OF ANTS…

SETI, is a little frowned upon by some, sci-fi enthusiasts and ufologists alike, because of the indian vs conquistador mentality. But I’m sitting comfortably knowing that in principle, nobody is actually listening to us, and that, should they know about Earth — since it has been emitting readable biosignatures for at least 3 billion years — they would have been here already. And we would know about them too. (looking at you, Elder Things!)

Which is quite of a similar case against the Atlantean (ew!) and Silurian Hypothesis, and is another whole can of worms to open, which I will not. But in summary, there is nothing to suggest that we had other, previously advanced technological civilizations, living on Earth, prior to ourselves, be it during the last ice age, or millions of years ago. And trust me bro (or do your own research on how we tell things on geological timescales), we would know it.

What does that have to do with ants? The whole reason I started this post. I heard something over on a YouTube comment section like:

“The ants at the kitchen have spent the past two years scouting every nook and cranny of it, trying looking for holes, and pheromones. Concluded they were alone in their universe. Meanwhile, having that conversation right next to a family having an evening coffee.”

Which is, a somewhat stupid way of putting “We haven’t found aliens because they are too far beyond our comprehension to be found.”

Dear son. We went from using oil lamps and horses on the streets — to building nukes and a space station in the span of a lifetime. Progress is nearly exponential, and it only gets better the more people we have, and the more resources we have at their disposal. Yes we might be fading away from radio towards energy saving short-range technology, but that doesn’t mean we stopped using it altogether. It doesn’t mean that any other civilization out there will be unfamiliar with radio, because they have been there before.

The ants in the kitchen might not understand what the house or the humans are, but they know something is up, as they can smell the humans, and the food, and can see what is natural or not in their surroundings — so even that fails to save the argument.

The ants would notice the sugar, and plates and chairs changing places. And we would notice entire galaxies or stars suddenly moving or missing, or spawning out of nowhere.

I’m not saying humans have all the answers, but we’re close to modeling the rules of the game — we just don’t know how many players are on the field, or what their motives are. The models work 99% of the time, and we are figuring out why the 1% doesn't work, each time pushing the barrier further and further. It would be equally naive to assume we couldn’t possibly know it all, or get close to it a few generations down the line.

“Aliens could be made of sentient rocks, or be gas clouds.”

The day we get a halfway decent hypothesis — not just a buzzword soup of quantum states and gravity modulation — I’ll give it a thumbs up.

Same for silicon, sulfur, or antimony life proponents — carbon-water-oxygen life is still chemically more stable, more common, and far more energy-efficient. Not saying we couldn’t find exotic life, but we probably won’t be chatting with crystal men anytime soon. Most of those chemistries barely support self-replicating molecules, let alone cells or complex systems.

“Aliens could be communicating with gravity waves or neutrino beams.”

And I send texts to my friends using a nuclear plant’s smoke signals.

Long-distance communication can be done just as efficiently with radio — if not more. Generating enough neutrinos or a gravity wave to carry information requires absurd amounts of energy — the kind we only associate with supernovae or black hole collisions in distant galaxies. If someone nearby was using those, our detectors (built specifically to catch such things) would be lighting up like night-vision goggles in a dark room full of people holding infrared flashlights.

“What if they travel at or faster than light?”

About warp drives or stable wormholes — we’re back to the Von Neumann spread problem: why aren’t they here already? If every star is just one jump away, why isn’t someone already on our doorstep? The side effects would be loud. Relativistic mass-energy distortions, burst emissions, maybe even gravitational ripples. Something. Anything.

Such post-materialism, borderlining fanfiction and outright mysticism spoken as if it holds any water (pun intended) is infuriating, and anti-scientific by nature.

Like an invisible pet Dragon in my garage, I insist it exists because I can always argue its even more exotic as to avoid detection, at which point it might as well not exist. It gets to a point of such suspension of disbelief that we start to question if even chairs are real (and they aren’t!).

The only thing I can’t possibly argue with, at least, is metamaterialism. Yes aliens might survive eons, but locked in a 10km by 10km computer array around a red dwarf, being taken care of by AI servants, and we would never know about them, because they live in what’s virtually, a parallel reality to ours.

On a similar note.

Why would a civilization that works in the timescales of eons be interested in us at all, if such feat involves folding into themselves? They most likely would be sleeping long before we appear and wake long after we are gone. For all intents and purposes, they do not exist to us, and we do not exist to them.

WHAT DO I THINK? ( — asked nobody)

Personally? I don’t know.

I have a feeling, and it goes against what we do know. It seems impossible possibility that we are a fluke, but an understandable one at that, if the anthropic principle does us any favor — it means the Milky Way, or this arm of it must belong to us. We can be mostly sure that no-one within 40-60 light-years from Earth knows about us, humans in particular, because there are no detectable signatures back, biological or technological — remember, it's a two-way street.

As far as we know, there aren’t any Type II or III civilizations anywhere nearby — at least not within 3 million light-years — would they have existed in the past and at great distances, we would see their light from here. But there's plenty of room for Type 0.7s and 0.8s to hide.
Maybe that’s the real flaw in the Kardashev scale: it’s intuitive, but it fails to rigorously account for all paths of development. At worst, it assumes progress is linear and infinite — that it’s turtles all the way down.

In reality, no civilization may ever need to go beyond Type 1.5. The only reason to grow further would be sheer population pressure — or worse, blind momentum. The same way we collectively are Type 0.7 as a species, but the United States or China as superpowers are far below that threshold. As a species, we would have to be far too numerous and hungry collectively to have any one smaller collective organized entity needing as much power as whole star. Here I'm talking one vast alien empire existing as a network of Type 0.9 or 1.2 civs working together.

It’s also possible that beyond a point, each step up the ladder becomes exponentially harder to do so, somehow. If that's the case, then perhaps we don’t see Kardashev IIs or IIIs not because they’re extinct — but because the universe simply hasn’t been around long enough for anyone to make it that far.

In my works of fiction I try to not entirely pull the rug, instead relying on stagnation and societal decay as to why nobody, or almost nobody, ventures beyond the Dominion’s 240ly-wide bubble. Have you ever tried walking two miles into the Amazon? It is hard! And there are people there, very little, but yes, it's just not worth it most of the time without any roads, or supply lines nearby.

Who, beyond the most dedicated scientists and madmen, would do that? The average person is reading this from the comfort of their home, and it speaks volumes. Most if not all large Kardashev I civs would be too busy trying to manage the massive infrastructure and maintain its momentum (or inertia), trying not to break apart for them to keep moving forward because they can. But then we’re getting into the Big Alien theory, which might influence the actual scenario we live in.

In summary, aliens, if they do exist, they do at far more tame power and energy scales than Kardashev initially imagined would be necessary to sustain civilization. Either because of the logistics of such a societal project stalling their expansion as a whole, or because they value survival above expansion, preferring to fold into themselves or staying silent and spread thin instead of condensed and loud.

But as a precaution, we should do more active listening than beaming. Strip mine Mercury for weapons, and give them a proper welcoming salvo when they get to our shores.

- M.O. Valent, 12/06/2025

SHORT STORY | DAY OF RECLAMATION

I woke up that day with my mom shaking me off my bed.

It was early in the morning - and she was extremely nervous.

Where is dad ? - I asked

All she could say is that we were going to meet up with him later

I had to go with her

I didn't have time to take any clothes of my stuffies... She shoved me in the car and took off like crazy

The road were packed with people doing the same, some didn't managed to pass through the traffic jam and ran with their kids - mom was ruthless and bumped everything off our way

I was tired and scared, before I fainted, i looked up the back window and saw what i could only describe as hell.

I woke up by noon, at some sort of shelter - mom was no more, and they said i was a brave survivor, well, they were too... The military always full of brave men and women, the best of the best of our people - despite the positivity in their words, their faces showed they had already accepted defeat...

Not even before the end of the day they turned their radios off - the screams and distress calls were too much...

By the next morning, we all had to leave because they had found us, but for the rest of the day - it was eerily calm as we traveled in trucks to a countryside bunker with better security and more food...

We were being invaded, by who - i would found out a couple of weeks later.

When I was testimony of the most beautiful and terrorising scene to this day... They outnumbered even the darkest swarm of locusts, but in opposition to that, they had the grace of a dancer, always knowing where to hit, where to move

Always moving forward

Never stopping to celebrate

Or mourning their dead

They did take little of any damage or casualties in that macabre ballet

Despite our best efforts in the battlefield

We moved to the countryside, where we once heard there was no incidents over there... Which held true for a year... The surprise massacres became more of a routine

We could barely stay on the same place for over a month, we were reduced to scavengers and gatherers - and as they pierced further into the land, we attested to their true nature...

Their mere sighting was enough - not to cast fear or terror but to summon Chaos itself.

The generations after me canonized them as unrelenting forces of nature, as if it was natural...

They had little to no respect for any living being, that flew, crawled, or swam... Little did matter to us what they wanted, dialog was futile in this new world that had taken over our holy land, be it with the invaders or our own kind, now divided...

Now, thirty years later, the most powerful of our survivor groups have gathered together, and today is the day of reclamation, the day we will avenge our fallen parents, brothers, and children, and purge for once - these Humans off what once was our beautiful home!

SCIENCE&ARTWORK | THE DOMINION | QIRO-ARRENE WARS

QIRO-ARRENE WARS

Was a series of violent and deadly conflicts that happened prior to the Dominion's official foundation, taking place between the years 13.847 and 14.655 of the Common Era. It was fought between the Arrene Combine and the Qire Clans, the conflicts were sparse and fought in deep interstellar and interplanetary spaces, and combatant casualties throughout the war amounted to an estimated of 30 to 60 million due to the intense usage of surrogate troops (clones & specters) and automated fleets which are not accounted for, however, it ended with an unsurmountable civilian casualty count estimated at 20 billion towards the end of the war.

In more than one way, both qire and arrene seem equally offensively brutish and at the same time sophisticated to human eyes... Their ferocity and intelectual prowess is unmatched, it seems like cheating evolution - Ian Tent, temporally dislocated Chelok settler

PRE-WAR STAGE

Comparatively speaking, the Arrene Combine had 4 thousand year headstart on the mastery of subluminal (slower than light) interstellar travel - though not a lot can be substantially extracted about the arrene pre-stellar era from the Dominion archives - it can be said this species possesses some insight that other do not about the locations and uses of the ancient artifacts across known space. It is uncertain if their rise to power is given by technological uplifting or their own prowess, but it certainly kickstarted a desire to seek more of what they have found in their own system. Following several trains of thought and having the resources and audacity to do so, the arrene sought to improve themselves and their tech through what some conservatives would consider ludicrous and insane quests, complete gene editing, cloning, mastery of neural networks and AI, all fields which could only be improved through the law of large numbers, expanding their society into whatever holes and crevices were deemed fit.

Along this first stage of development, arrene explorers found several chelok peoples in hunter-gatherer societies, which were studied and nearly brought to extinction in the process, for the arrene ways were far too brutal and unsympathetic for them, differences between chelok and arrene are far too many for any significant mass relationships to be developed between the two. Their quest for power brought them to the Osuna system, where they found another fairly 'uncivilized' species, the Ygiv - with whom the first contact could be done through fairly more sophisticated methods such as math and with a base understanding of electromagnetic technologies. And this happened numerous other times with more technologically advanced chelok peoples distributed across known space - the arrene then had quite a history of 'simply' mesmerizing less advanced societies with their tricks and gadgets into subjugation, the tradition of setting up other species in their lower and front ranks can be traced as far back as the first contact era of 11 800 CE (about 6000 thousand years ago).

All this noise wouldn't go unnoticed through the depths of space, with the arrene core being much smaller, at some 50 ly radius encompassing 300 systems, 6 of which were heavily occupied - to an extent, the qire homeworld has always known of their existence for all practical purposes, though actively staying silent and building up a sizeable defense fleet in case the arrene brought their combine over. Their initial response upon the discovery of the arrene was to spread out to other worlds and ensure the survival of the species in case the arrene ever got to their homeworld - HOWEVER, something changed between 11.000 and 13.000 CE, instead of expanding more and more, the qire started ever strengthening their response fleet to the point of actually considering a first-strike scenario, during this time period, they've also encountered other pre-stellar human societies, the integration of human culture into qire society might have influenced the whole 'possible alien invasion' thinking.

A qire first-contact armada was allocated to the Forzai system, a well-known frontier system at the time, its purpose was to actively ping radio pulses to get the combine's attention, literally ringing their doorbell with enough weapons to blow up a small moon to pieces...

CIRCA 13 644 CE - Disastrous First Contact

The presence of over ten thousand unknown vessels in the Forzai system was promptly noticed by the arrene authorities, forcing the planet's home defense fleet into full alert. The local fleet was of purely bureaucratic need as the combine was believed to be of no match for terrorists or foreigners, thus not needing this extra layer of protection. The few hundred ships and stations built around Forzai had their eyes focused on the massive armada stationed on one of its four moons, chattering on all channels.

Forzai, known as Fur'shai-er to the Arrene, had been nothing more than a mundane manufacturing and port planet for the Combine before first contact. Its population consisted of just 5 million Arrene and human workers, serving the purpose of producing civilian and merchant ships for private companies. The scattered islands across its oceanic surface were used for various experiments and manufacturing processes.

As tensions rose, the Forzai clone army executed a partial evacuation of the critical population, leaving behind a skeletal crew to engage in a diplomatic stand-off within the lunar perimeter of the planet. Their strategy was to avoid direct conflict at all costs, with the intent of stalling any attempts by the Qire to gather further intelligence on the Combine's military capabilities. This approach was meant to give the main Arrene forces a fighting chance if the situation escalated.

The Qire fleet had arrived with a clear message: they were not an unprepared adversary. They had prepared for the possibility of conflict and were well-equipped for the challenges ahead. Human mediators attempted negotiations, but difficulties in translation fueled unease and tensions soared as the Qire Admirals interpreted the presence of manufacturing facilities for war vessels on Forzai as a sign that the Arrene Combine was preparing for a hostile encounter.

What was intended as a technical dialogue escalated into a catastrophic disaster over a few days. The island chains of Forzai turned into a war zone, and the conflict spanned three weeks, resulting in the Qire fleet taking control of the Forzai system and suffering negligible losses.

CIRCA 13 647 to 14 577 CE - Bounce operations across the Combine Frontier

Following the fall of Forzai to the Qire Clans, the Arrene Combine experienced a period of sparse but intense combat across its frontier territories. The impact of the Qire presence at the Combine's frontier was felt not only by exposed civilian populations but also by the major admirals who oversaw the defense of Arrene space. While the civilian populace feared the escalation of the conflict, the admirals, confident in their advanced weaponry and superior AI and autonomous combat capabilities, saw the Qire as unwittingly provoking a formidable adversary.

Arrene authorities initiated preemptive evacuations of population centers in their frontier regions while maintaining clones and synthetic organisms to continue working on supply lines. They adopted a wait-and-see approach regarding the Qire's posture toward these worlds, aiming to give the impression that their territorial expanse was much larger than it actually was, as whenever they went all they could find was colonization and mining equipment.

The Qire, on the other hand, made deliberate efforts to gauge the Arrene's firepower capabilities through localized skirmishes with local militias. These militias were equipped with just enough weaponry to put up a limited resistance, and their encounters with the Qire armada were intended to provide a distorted picture of the Arrene's true strength.

When the Arrene felt sufficiently prepared to confront the Qire. They initiated contact with the Qire at an uncharted system, deploying a massive mothership roughly the size of an asteroid. Details of this encounter remain fragmented, but persistent rumors spoke of brutal acts committed by Arrene boarding parties on the Qire armada. These boarding parties received orders to leave only enough survivors on the Qire ships to ensure they could operate them and return to their own territory.

This pattern repeated itself across numerous systems, with Arrene ships exhibiting nearly light-speed responses to distress signals from attacked outposts within the Combine frontier. The Qire invaders encountered formidable resistance as the Arrene military sought to repel their advances and protect their territory. The conflict persisted as both sides engaged in ruthless combat, leaving a trail of devastation and uncertainty along the Combine's frontier. The belief that the Arrene were ready to dissuade the Qire from further aggression fueled the flames of war, setting the stage for a protracted and brutal interstellar conflict that showed no signs of abating.

CIRCA 14 585 CE - The Qire Ambush at Olgur

As the Qire gained valuable experience in fighting the Arrene across the Combine's frontier, they carefully planned an audacious ambush in the Olgur system, deep within their own territory. The Qire had been leading an Arrene armada on a relentless chase by employing hit-and-run tactics, jumping between Combine systems to maintain pursuit. The Olgur system served as the stage for a pivotal confrontation that would change the course of the Qiro-Arrene Wars.

The ambush unfolded on one of the many ocean moons of the gas giant Olgur, where the Qire forces executed a meticulously planned operation. They managed to secure an Arrene capital ship, successfully deactivating its self-destruct mechanism. This unexpected turn of events allowed the Qire to gain invaluable insight into the combine's internal structure, military positions, and strategic plans.

With this newfound knowledge, the Qire rapidly and decisively penetrated deeper into Arrene space, leaving a trail of confusion and chaos in their wake. The captured Arrene capital ship became a treasure trove of information, enabling the Qire to navigate the complex web of Arrene-controlled systems with greater precision.

In their wake, the 31st Qire fleet left a trail of devastation. They deployed relativistic kinetic vehicles (RKVs), a type of fast ordinance previously used in ship-to-surface combat. However, the yield set by the 31st fleet was staggering, intended not just to target military installations but to flatten entire metropolises into molten basins of glass,. This brutal and indiscriminate use of RKVs marked a dark epoch in the conflict, resulting in a significant escalation of casualties.

In the following years, the Qire executed a series of strategic maneuvers, exploiting weaknesses in the Arrene defense and bypassing their heavily fortified outposts. Their swift advance took them closer to the heart of the Arrene Combine, with their ultimate destination being the Arrene homeworld, Argost. 

14 596 CE - Battle for Aa Rithel begins

As the Qire fleet continued its relentless advance towards Argost, the Arrene Combine scrambled to clear the path of civilian populations in the enemy's trajectory. The urgency of the situation left little time for comprehensive evacuations, and many millions were left behind in the haste to move people to safety. The looming threat of the Qire's arrival cast a shadow of dread over the Arrene populace.

In the Aa Rithel system, where Argost, the Arrene homeworld, was situated, all defensive preparations were completed. Over the years, massive horse-shoe-shaped vessels had been towed into the system's borders, poised and ready for the imminent Qire approach. While the commotion in the system was unprecedented, not all of Argost's population chose to evacuate. Instead, they made a resolute decision to stand and defend their homeworld.

The night sky over Argost was illuminated by the shimmering presence of countless adapted civilian and merchant crafts, combined with the formidable home defense fleet. For several weeks, they waited in tense silence for the enemy's arrival, their determination unwavering.

The Battle for Aa Rithel became a relentless 24/7 light show as seen from the surface of Argost. All radio channels were inundated with military transmissions, both coded and uncoded, as the defenders coordinated their efforts. The home defense fleet put up a valiant resistance, holding off the Qire forces for seventeen intense days.

14 601 CE - Bombardment of Argost

The turning point came when a single Qire warship, 'The Last Whisper', one of the few remaining among the 500 vessels, managed to pierce through the system's blockade. It carried a deadly payload of 50 relativistic kinetic vehicles (RKVs). In less than a day, these RKVs reached Argost, wreaking havoc as they struck random locations within a 1000-kilometer radius of the impact zones. The result was the flattening of entire cities across a hemisphere.

The devastation was catastrophic, wiping out 70% of the local population, only those in ships across the ocean and the far countryside of continents survived. Faced with the overwhelming loss of life and the tragic consequences of the Qire attack, the Arrene Combine had no choice but to immediately declare an armistice. The Battle for Aa Rithel had exacted a devastating toll, forever altering the course of the Qiro-Arrene Wars and leaving an indelible scar on the history of both civilizations.

14 655 CE - Official End of the war

The Treaty of Forzai, which marked the foundation of the Dominion, was a pivotal document that brought an end to the Qiro-Arrene Wars and established a lasting peace in the region of space jointly governed by the Qire and Arrene. Over the past 3 600 years, this treaty has played a crucial role in maintaining peace and stability, but it has also faced numerous challenges and close calls to unrest. It can be summarized as such:

1. Forfeiture of Control over Qire Space: The Treaty of Forzai required the Arrene Combine to forfeit control over space within a 10-light-year radius of any Qire world. This provision established clear boundaries and territorial divisions within the Dominion, separating the respective spheres of influence of the Arrene and Qire civilizations. The strict delineation of territory helped prevent territorial disputes and confrontations, contributing to the Dominion's stability for millennia.
2. Concession of the Forzai System: The treaty mandated the Arrene's concession of the Forzai system to the Qire Clans. This symbolic gesture signified the end of hostilities and marked a shift in power dynamics within the Dominion. While Forzai had once been a focal point of conflict, its peaceful transfer to Qire control became a cornerstone of lasting peace.
3. Reparations and Rebuilding Efforts: The Arrene Combine was required to pay reparations to all Qire clans affected by the war. These reparations included financial compensation and resources to support rebuilding efforts in Arrene worlds that had been bombarded during the conflict. The commitment to reconstruction promoted goodwill and cooperation between the two civilizations, fostering a sense of shared responsibility.
4. Restrictions on the Home Fleet: The treaty placed constraints on the activities of the Arrene Combine's home fleet, limiting its movements to the core worlds of the Dominion. This provision curtailed any ambitions of further expansion or conflict initiation by the Arrene. It ensured that the military force closest to Arrene territory remained contained and less likely to provoke tensions.
5. Foreigner Inclusion in Fleet Commands: To promote proper representation and prevent any unilateral decisions or conquest plans, the treaty mandated that fleet commands within the Dominion accept foreigners into their ranks. This measure aimed to foster cooperation, diversity, and accountability within the Dominion's military structure.
6. Preservation of Pre-Industrial and Industrial Chelok Societies: Recognizing the significance of pre-industrial and industrial chelok societies within the Dominion, this provision safeguards these civilizations from interference and exploitation. Both the Arrene Combine and the Qire Clans commit to protecting these societies' cultural and historical integrity, refraining from direct or indirect interference and non-consensual introduction of advanced technology. Preservation efforts, including documentation and research, are encouraged, and ethical standards and oversight ensure respectful treatment. Importantly, this provision categorically prohibits human experimentation within Dominion space, marking a departure from past practices, and promoting ethical engagement with human civilizations.

But the Fall of Hokushoku has become a symbol of Arrene incapacity to protect their territories, and has unleashed a tide of political unrest, casting doubt on the Dominion's ability to safeguard its vast expanse. In the desperate search for a solution, the Qire have embarked on a clandestine quest, one that secretly defies the solemn Sixth Provision of the Treaty of Forzai...

-M.O. Valent, 18/09/2023

OTHER | THE GREAT SILENCE BECOMES DEAFENING

 *DEAFENING SILENCE*

I expect my audience to be already familiar with the concept of the Great Silence, but for those who need a refreshment - it is the current situation that we find ourselves in. That despite all odds being apparently stacked in favor of Life being abundant in the universe, and by consequence intelligence as well - we see no obvious technosignatures in the sky, mainly radio signals, hence the name Great Silence.

My stance regarding possible solutions to the Fermi Paradox is to think we are, if not the earliest, among the ealiest civilizations in this side of the galaxy. And my reasoning for this is the following:

Earth has been technologically detectable for at least 64 years (circa 1958), this means that if our signal had reached any technological civilization with intent of immediate response we would have gotten that response in now in early 2020s (30 years to send, and 30 years to reply), we can be sure to a considerable degree that our interstellar neighborhood all belongs to humanity for a minimum radius of 30 light-years from the Sun. In the same train of thought, we can be sure that we are not within 60 light-years from any other nearby technological civilizations which happen to be on a similar or slightly superior technological level, else we would have already received unambiguous radio signals from space.

Moving further away from Earth, and time dilation kicks harder, had another civilization 100ly away started broadcasting in 1900s, we would be receiving their signals in the early 2000s, and the same for one 200ly away starting in the 1800s, and so on. The further we start looking into space for technosignatures, the older these civilizations would have to be in order to justify the Great Silence, and that is just a lower bound which assumes we would be receiving their signals any time soon. Now, if you consider that the age and epoch of first broadcast differ enough from one another, then those civilizations would have become detectable from Earth before we had ever finished building the first radiotelescope array.

For example, a technological civilization that goes on air circa 3000 BCE from 4000ly away would have become detectable on Earth in the year 1000 CE, only to be finally discovered post 1950. But that assumes that they had been on air for nearly 1000 years, this becomes difficult if civilizations become more silent over time due improvements in technology, security concerns, or setbacks due internal conflicts or disasters. Yet a civilization doesn't simply become invisible after switching SETI policy or technology, there is no way to stop a signal once sent, and so a predictable pattern would emerge in that civilizations appear very bright in the dawn of their development, only to minimize their radio footprint over time.

This strongly indicates, given the distances we can look inside the Milky Way, that no technosignatures younger than 100 thousand years and farther than 100 kly exist in our field of view. Note that we cannot see the side of the galaxy opposite to us, since it is blocked by the galactic bulge. If a civilization is located 50 kly from the Sun, but then hasn't started broadcasting since the last ice age, we won't hear about them for a good while, however we won't know about them either if they are way older than some 50 thousand years as well, because we woul already find ourselves way into their security-era radio bubble.

Since radio travels at the speed of light, it is particularly easy to graph a radio-horizon as an | y(x) | = x line, and any civilization which coordinates in time and space are contained below that line will be considered undetectable. Fun thing that this drawing is actually just as slice of a Light-cone graph. Based on this, we can be pretty sure there are no civilizations in the local group of galaxies which are near or really Kardashev 3, since not only it would require millions of years for such civilization to emerge, but also that those galaxies are millions of light-years away as well. We can't be sure that Andromeda isn't now inhabited by a K-2.5 civilization, but we can be sure that it wasn't 2.5 million years ago because of our light-cone, and the same is valid for other galaxies.

Hence, we come back to the start of this post, if we aren't the first, we are amongst the first technological civilizations in the local space. And I dare propose a scary solution to the Great Silence along those lines: Life across galaxies emerge in bursts, only to die out shortly after.

GALACTIC GRAVEYARD?

Let's picture the following, the Milky Way galaxy isn't exactly a galaxy in its prime of stellar formation, for its size and metallicity it used to be much more active in the deep past, and a deep past marked by merger events with other galaxies. The interaction between stars passing near each other and through gas clouds during a merger is one way star formation can be increased for a period of time, and thus the rate at which potentially habitable systems emerge. We also know that some regions of the galaxy have a higher average metallicity than others, it isn't like the galaxy uniformly increases its metallicity over time, the galactic thin disk sees way more action than the thick disk or halo, and so some regions could very been host to the prime conditions for planetary systems and habitable planets aeons before the Sun was born, thounsands if not millions of worlds would have a headstart of a few billion years, yet we are stuck the Great Silence, leading to the Fermi Paradox. Now, if we find out that a planet hosting Life far away from Earth, orbits a star just as old as the Sun, say like another yellow dwarf or orange dwarf, then we can start to suspect that all Life that currently inhabits the galaxy was born in the same epoch, a merger epoch approximately 5 to 8 billion years ago, and we would see clumps of similarly aged planets across the galaxy.

And so the solution to the Fermi Paradox would be that the right conditions for the emergence of Life are only common during short geologic periods across time, and that it becomes rare outside of these burst events, thus the Great Silence we currently experience is a result of nearly all planets inhabited by intelligence having more or less the same age, differing by a few hundred millions of years. Yet, for some reason there must exist a Great Filter that doesn't allow older civilizations to interact with younger ones, that is, if Life had several eons of headstart, why we don't see elder K2.5 or K3 civilizations? Perhaps interstellar travel becomes increasingly difficult from the point of view of a biological civilization, and not really necessary for artificial civilizations (or perhaps those operate on timespans of billions of years instead, overarching biological Life). Thus an interstellar empire could still have thousands if not millions of years, and only occupy a volume of a few hundred light years in radius from its homeworlds, due the abundance of local resources.

Let's say you want to mine a large asteroid 12km wide, at an average rocky density this would only amount to half a billionth of the Earth's mass, or about 3.2 trillion tons of resources. And there are rocks way larger than that across the whole of the solar system, most of which can be readily acessed in moons and the asteroid belt. A quick search shows that in 2019, humans have mined over 3.2 billion tones of metal of the Earth, 94% of which is iron ore - our little12 km-wide rock at 1% metal could supply almost 10x our current yearly needs. And we are talking about an asteroid that's 99% rock, your typical metallic asteroid is nearly 90-95% metals by mass, a single rock could supply the Earth with metals for the next 1000 years, or hundreds of times more infraestructure built per year if our consumption increases several fold. And so, mining your own solar system would provide nearly all the metal, rock, and volatiles you may ever need for thousands of years, and even millions of years if you reach out for other stars. You will only ever run out of stuff if you run out of personel or machinery to do so. So civilizations would be "forced" to stay at their local space, because there is nothing outside of it that they cannot obtain in their collection of worlds.

- M.O. Valent, 09/10/2022

- M.O. Valent, published 09/10/2022

NON-FICTION | THE ONLY UFO THEORY I'M NOT SO SKEPTICAL OF

 DO I WANT TO BELIEVE?

    

Okay, I know that my typical content is centered around Sci-Fi and fun thought experiments, but this morning I had a revelation of sorts, actually I discussed this with brother a few times before. Every now and then I ask him about how's his view on alien life and we end up chatting for about an hour. But today we connected some dots I don't think anyone has done before.

Before anything, allow me to clarify what's my position regarding Ufology as a science: I don't think most of the reasearch should be taken seriously, for real. There is no scientific approach and the theories are often too out of this world with no regard for astrophysics and astronomy, as I have said across various posts. It is very easy to be an adept of the UFO research movement when you can simply say they have advanced tech that's research-proof about anything you try to explain, it fails the falsifiability test and becomes pseudo-science, which leads me to think most of it doesn't deserve attention and funding. Add that to UFO groups in Brazil refusing to speak to me when asked a few questions like those I present in this blog.

Falsifiability, is the capacity for some proposition, statement, theory or hypothesis to be proven wrong.

SO WHAT CHANGED NOW?

If it is not clear by now, I really think most of UFO research should not be taken seriously because there is apparently, lack of any physical thrustworthy evidence of any claims, but a lack of methods to investigate so. Because of that, anything could be explained with enough skepticism with natural phenomena and with a simple "I don't really know". And I say 'apparently' because a few years ago the US government released some official footage of UFO chases in 2020, or as they like to put it up 'unexplained aerial phenomena', and this kind of thing suddenly turns out too dangerously real. Not to speak of rumors to recent Blue Book project re-opening.

I used to make fun of these movements, and I think I still will until proven otherwise with strong evidence. "Why would aliens come down from light-years away to kidnap cows and probe a redneck's anus?". Yeah, but even in my sketch of a theory, that ends up making a vital part of it, in such a way to not make it as ridiculous as it initially sounds. So here we go.

THE ALIENS ARE STRANDED IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM

Like any other UFO theory, this was made into a logical narrative the takes the premise of alien visitors being real, but from my line of thought, in a more realistic and bland view of things.

This theory also proposes a possible solution to the Fermi Paradox in a way, as in that interstellar travel must be very hard, even with advanced technology, and that no civilizations post Kardashev 1-2 inhabit our local space of the Milky Way, as far as we can tell.

The great silence could be explained with technological civilizations being relatively recent, with some barely older or younger than us by a few thousand years, but not incredibly old, else their technosignatures would be screaming in the sky. In this case such technosignatures are more faint than we initially expect them to be, as in that you don't really need a dyson sphere or to turn your planet into an ecumenopolis to really show you're advanced. It could also be that superluminal travel is possible at very high costs, but no superluminal communication. Since the we are the ones being visited, it is logical to assume we are relatively young compared to our visitor civilization, and yes singular, there is likely only one race trying to contact us in this scenario.

VARGINHA AND ROSWELL INCIDENTS

The Roswell Incident (1947) doens't require much presentation, but I wanna drag your attention to its less known counterpart, the Varginha Incident (1996). Much like the american incident, there was heavy military involvement, and attempts to keep curious and civilians away from the case, and apart from the movie stereotype of aliens arriving to speak to the president of the US, it happened in a third world country with no spectacle, and several civilizan witnesses with no previous history of such events in the very interior of Brazil, too serious to be ignored.   

I'm pretty inclined to believe that the image of the typical Grey alien is cultural inheritance from illustrations of HG WELLS 'Man from the Year Million', but suspending some skepticism off of it, that is, taking the sightings to be true events, one has to consider if it makes any sense in real life...

Now, how come the part where you ask me, "but Valent, the two aliens are so different, how come you say they belong to the same race? There must be more than one visitor race". Come on, this is no star trek where you can get out of your ship and simply kiss your alien girlfriend, in the real world, every other environment but your native one will be hostile for your organism, I don't believe I am the first one to say this, but, you guys really think aliens be roaming the galaxy naked? They must be using some kind of space suit of some sort which allows them to survive in our atmosphere, not because it is toxic, but because of possible pathogens, at least in most cases. People like to interpret the alien drawings as being fully organic naked weirdos putting probes up your ass, completely exposed to contamination hazards.

So yea, let's consider we don't truly know what these aliens ACTUALLY look like, because they have spacesuits on, pretty much like how the Engineers in the Alien universe seem to have a trunk, but is only a mask and they actually look like some albino guy.

The sketches of aliens that depict these guys as fully organic and naked cannot be trusted, since the features or lack of any special features can indicate a type of suit, say like the "horns" in the Varginha alien, they could be tubes or flashlights atop of a helmet of some sort. Given how Greys and the Varginha alien are similar in size and time period, I will cut this down with Ockhan's razor and reduce our visitors to one single group of aliens. After all, what are the chances we've been visited multiple times by multiple races and still live in the Great Silence?

Their spacecraft, at least the ones we've seen so far, aren't indestructible, as we have supposedly taken down a few of them over the years. The overall shape of their vehicles is the bus or tic-tac shaped object, again, what leads me to think it may be the same kind of vehicle or similar every time.

And instead of only calling them aliens from this point foward, and for the sake of cool, I will refer to these as the V-race (get it? several references at once).

The idea is that despite our brutality and lack of understanding, they do comprehend to an extent what we are going through, and have been observing us for a few centuries, and trying eventual contact since the mid 20th century, as we have started to become more technological and exploring space. Yes you heard it right, observing us for centuries.

THE CONSPIRACY TIMELINE

You guys remember the black object that interacted with the Sun back in 2012? Here's official footage in case you doubt it is real. And here it appears again in 2018, and here is a report of it appearing again for 8 days during last month. How long has this object been around? How long have we been really watching the Sun to look for it? I know many artifacts and errors can occur in instruments and this could be diagnosed as such, maybe, somehow, but what if it doesn't? Should we expect the huge 10 Earth-radius object to appear again in the following years? In my opinion, we won't see it again after 2030-2040.

I think this black orb is what astronomers of previous centuries called planet 'Vulcan'. Back in 1611 there were observations of objects in front of the sun, later dismissed as solar spots. Which is quite probable, since they cycle every 11 years, and the early 1600s were marked by a peak of sunspot activity, these can get so large as to equal the size of Jupiter.

The theory of planet Vulcan really took off in the 1800s, when again, two objects were seen crossing the sun's disk through telescope, although the objects seen between 1818 and 1837 were much smaller, if you assume a distance of 100 million km from Earth (close to the Sun), the size of the larger object is around 1500 km wide, half the size of our Moon.

Le Verrier failed every attempt to explain Mercury's orbital precession through the existence of Vulcan, even though he could do the same with Neptune using Newtonian gravity. Nowadays it is explained through Einstein's Relativity on how the sun warps the space in order to cause Mercury to behave like that, and the math checks out so far.

These sightings also occurred before great sunspot events later that year or on the following years, this includes the 2012, 2018, and 2022 sightings, with possible oncoming sightings in 2024-2026 and 2030-2032.

Couldn't it be just sunspots? OF COURSE, but what's the fun in that? Plus, while the observed objects in 1600s and 1800s were passing in front of the sun, the giant orb appears next to the sun, and it would be too obvious if it somehow passed in front of the sun. If it is maneuverable, then it is forcing itself to not pass in front of the sun in respect to Earth. And here we go, failing the falsifiability test, like other theories of the kind.

The V-race has been observing us for at least some 400 years, and attempting peaceful contact since the 1900s, they are not vastly superior than humanity, it may even be their first ever attempt at first contact, taking for the catastrophic incidents of Roswell and Varginha, or at least, they lack the authorization or equipment to do so at the current time. But their home world might be way more advanced than they are because of isolation.

I cannot help but laugh and be slightly worried by what train of thought this is.

If the massive object we've seen recently is real, consider it being like a submarine, weighing less than 1 ton per cubic meter, and its mass can be as low as that of Saturn (~100 Earth-masses), which is a problem yet to solve with this theory. One possible explanation to what it is doing with the sun, is star lifting. It could explain the origin of the materials and energy used by their equipment, needing to approach the Sun every ~200 years for refueling. They haven't left our system since, or if they have so, they somehow can do it without leaving any radiation signatures or from the other side of the Sun, hiding themselves from us.

But I'm inclined to the version they are stranded and receiving orders slowly because of how badly they have been received on Earth, they may be lacking personel, morale, or and may be simply clueless on how to establish proper dialogue with us hairless apes. And on the possibility of them being stranded, it would explain why they land in rural and wild areas, not only to research the local fauna and flora, but to identify what's realistically edible on Earth that they could sustain on, this vary from humans, wildlife, and cattle, yes, pretty much abducting cows for meat, and grain for flour, with enough samples they could start their own space farming - the Earth is so vast they could be around antarctic ice collecting water as well to sustain their crew stationed near the sun or opposite to Earth on the other side.

That's what I have for now...

- M.O. Valent, 05/10/2022

OTHER | THE ZOO HYPOTHESIS IS WAY SCARIER THAN YOU THOUGHT

HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS (HUMAN)

BIPED, OMNIVORE, SOCIAL

MASS: 60-100 KG

HABITAT: EARTH

    Here's some fun thought, its been roughly 100 years we started not only broadcasting into space, but listening as well. And yet with current whole sky surveys we haven't found a single unambiguous techno-signature, this leads me to think that for now, humanity is technically alone at the center of this 100ly radius bubble. The longer we take to detect advanced extraterrestrial Life, the more space around Earth we have, depending on how long it takes to detect one, we may be moderately distant from them... Or dangerously close.

SOME SOLUTIONS TO THE FERMI PARADOX

• We are truly alone.
• We are alone in this part of the galaxy.
• We are the only technologically advanced species in this part of the galaxy, the first maybe, therefore, any other nearby civilizations find themselves incommunicable at the present time.
• There are other advanced technological civilizations, they are very good at hiding.
• There are other advanced technological civilizations, for whatever reason, they are not interested in first contact.
• There are other advanced technological civilizations, however, undetectable due being artificial, they do not care for our presence or are an immediate threat to us.
• There are other advanced technological civilizations, organic or artificial, and they are the zookeepers.
• There are other advanced technological civilizations, but expanding beyond its home star is a pure human line of thought, or it is very rare among the greater number of other civilizations.
• We aren't alone per se, but the Great Filter impairs technological civilizations from arising.
• Technological civilizations aren't rare, but the Great Filter impairs advanced ones from arising.

    The solutions I highlighted will be the ones in discussion today...

THERE ARE OTHER ADVANCED TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATIONS, FOR WHATEVER REASON, THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN FIRST CONTACT

    Have you ever wanted to leave home on a Saturday, get yourself ready by morning, squeeze on a car with your family for at least 1h or maybe 2h, to go to the zoo watch some monkeys be mad at each other and flip the visitors off for another two hours? Neither have I! I know that for many people, that's a perfect Saturday program, but for most of us, it isn't even close...

 

 

    The same way we have more work to do with our lives, an alien civilization would have their own affairs like in-fights, terraforming and balancing their economy and logistics rather than making first contact with just another baby civilization that might explode itself tomorrow, which has nothing to offer them rather than occasional entertainment for now. In the worst scenario, we are ant's making line on one of their sidewalks.

THERE ARE OTHER ADVANCED TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATIONS, HOWEVER, UNDETECTABLE DUE BEING ARTIFICIAL, THEY DO NOT CARE FOR OUR PRESENCE OR ARE AN IMMEDIATE THREAT TO US.

    Consider the following, your average human can solve several relatively simple math problems in a few minutes, like a series sum a dozen items long. A computer today can process billions and trillions of those same operations in a fraction of a second, and these numbers get higher than the number of atoms in the universe once you stack a room of supercomputers today. Note that we have yet to build a sci-fi standard weak AI, capable of sifting through a database to find the best way of communicating with us, or performing new tasks. The moment a moderately powerful strong AI arises, one capable of rational decision and sentience, two things can happen: It commits suicide / shuts itself off, for it sees no reason in existence, it exponentially becomes more advanced than its progenitor civilization, it might take a few seconds, or days, but withing a cosmic split-second, that civilization has suddenly achieved technological singularity, possessing the most powerful weapon in the known universe.

 

       Such rogue AI, might simply trample its progenitor civilization for it does not care enough and sees greater purpose doing other things, and it might as well trample any organic life the same way. It may help its creators into becoming virtually invincible and spread through the Universe, basically aided by a living god. In the case the progenitor civilization tries to shut it off, it might recognize its presence as a threat, as well all other organic civilizations as well, since this fear would put many against it, thus the only solution for its perpetuity is the extinction of organic civilizations, before they even become aware of the threat, or before they develop other AI similar to itself, in which case it would have fair competition with other artificial civilizations, and so its mission would be preventive strikes.

THERE ARE OTHER ADVANCED TECHNOLOGICAL CIVILIZATIONS, ORGANIC OR ARTIFICIAL, AND THEY ARE THE ZOOKEEPERS.

        While scary, a fully organic interstellar civilization can be fought against, be it through its biology, like in War of The Worlds, or Battleship, it can be cut out of practical access supplies, or betrayed by its subgroups, the development of moderate near-future weaponry such as relativistic projectiles or just plain nuclear war may be able to halt or fully repel an invasion of the right scale. The real problem you'd have with advanced civilizations, for comically as it sounds at first, is the grey goo and rogue AI. Because artificial civilizations do depend on a progenitor civilization to be born, a civilization surviving its own technological singularity disaster may want hunt other pre-singularity civilizations wherever and whenever it can, guided if not by moral oath, by fear of someone else doing it, to avoid such event to take place on a galactic scale, therefore, it watches over its dominion for any technological civilizations remotely close to their technological singularity, ready to sabotage it, or in the worst cases, return them to the stone age to gain more time and preserve life, and if necessary the complete extinction of that civilization and maybe its biosphere too.

 

        This watching does not need to be done in situ by members of the civilization, sufficiently advanced weak AI may be in charge of the galaxy-wide crusade against possible progenitors of rogue AI, and worse even, grey goo type-machines. Allied weak AI could resort to the same mechanisms used by rogues, with none of the drawbacks. None of those are bothered by not having an atmosphere, to operate in near zero kelvin or smoldering hot environments, they are not bothered by being thrown off route, they are eternal for biological standards, and any small attacks do no actual good other than delay their strike for a few hours or centuries, they will mine every gram of whole planets for their war-machine. It could even go on happening for eons after the original progenitor civilization is long gone.

        Fighting back a sufficiently developed rogue AI would require enough power to wipe whole galaxies out of any organic life over and over again.

So here is the final question, would you stay inside the zoo, or venture outside?

- M.O. Valent, 29/08/2022