text | Header: URGENT QUESTION

[callsignhornet]

I have an important question for the sake of organizing information about the group.

Feel free to message me directly if you don't feel comfortable sharing publicly.

In the world you are from, what year is it?

Edit: record of death for me should be 2186. Or 2187, though it would be very early in the year.

Comments

[callsignhornet]

[Damn.]

Appreciate the explanation.

[hasapoint]

I've heard of 'Earth'. It seems to be a common world.

We had methods for [pause] visiting others in spirit, which is how I know. I don't expect anyone remembers how to do it deliberately and return safely anymore.

[callsignhornet]

We had another name for it. ‘Terra’. Always wished we’d use it more.

A shame that knowledge was lost. It seems like it could help a lot of folks.

[hasapoint]

That's a cute one. A different language?

That's the Cataclysm in short. We had so much, and then were knocked down so far. In this case though it was mostly a dangerous novelty.

[...Need does know how and has used that knowledge. It's not that hard to project into another canon, but returning to your body before something else slipped in is very difficult and she'd worried too much about modern people, who don't have anything like the basis for understanding what's really happening, getting it wrong.]

[callsignhornet]

Yeah we have a lot of languages on Earth and a particular language - English - has roots in several older languages.

I’m sorry that happened. I’ve fought against an event like that happening. I hope building anew is fruitful.

[hasapoint]

Sorry to hear that. You hate to have to address something civilization-ending.

After a couple of thousand years it started to happen again because it just fucked Velgarth up that badly, that it was going to keep echoing. I joined up with a team put together to try and stop that from happening. The most multinational coalition anyone's made in a very long time, actually. We averted the worst but there was a lot of damage along the way.

So that's why I'm here. I'd have preferred to make it through, but it worked and most of the others survived. If my calculations aren't all based on air, then if there's a third recurrence it will be a lot less destructive, and a fourth would be minor in comparison.

[callsignhornet]

Ours was about that long between incidents. Orchestrated by sentient machines that thought they should cull the various species in the universe every few millennia, assimilate the data they could get from our genetics, and keep everything under control.

It took the last two years of my life, but my crew and I forged a multi-planet initiative to stop the beings terrorizing us.

[There's a pause and then another message.]

The end is... fuzzy, but if I didn't succeed, then I know my crew finished what we started.

[hasapoint]

So we have a bit in common! Though that sounds like something with considerably more malice involved. Genetics is those elements that tell the body how to grow and be shaped, aren't they? And are heritable. There is a lot of information there I suppose.

[and some things just aren't going to make sense to her without a whole lot of patient explanation, she's aware. Need cannot imagine what machines, which she understands to be metal constructs that sometimes are people and sometimes not, would do with whatever form of the word 'genetics' is appropriate.

She does basically get the concept of genetics though. Altering them is something that's survived in a rough form, though nothing like pre-Cataclysm when designing new species was a mark of power and status.]

I hope so.

[callsignhornet]

We called them the Reapers. Clever, I know, but it got the point across fast. They seemed to consider it like pruning an overgrown shrub.

[hasapoint]

How pleasant of them. I've known people like that but mercifully they've all worked on a smaller scale.