Past me, the Present: Jump!
#1 of Voidsong
After the end of mankind's Golden Age amongst the stars and its subsequent mysterious disappearance, their creations - the Serviles - face a deadly threat from a yet undefined future. Barely having set out to define their own destiny without the benevolent rule of man, the Quantum Dream leads two of them into the distant past in the effort to preserve their own present.
The Harmony. Bitter-sweet song of the Quantum Dream - its alluring symphony calls out ... will call out ... to ship and navigator alike once the Compound will flow ... hasflown.
The Voidsingers of Old, Gods amongst Man, have been ... will have been ... unchallenged and absolute masters of Man's Golden Galaxy - they will call ... havecalled ... it the Milky Way - for millennia. When our Creators had risen ... will haverisen ... from their slumber into a newborn world - Earth, first and jewel of the Core Worlds - they set out to conquer the stars. At first cursed by Relativity, their expansion will have been ... has been ... constricted by the speed of light. Neither spacecraft nor information could ... can ... travel faster than this universal limit imposed by Relativity. Until the Voidsingers - having been ... being ... nothing but one of many corporations as they discovered ... will have discovered ... the Quantum Dream. First as a means of communication, then as a means of travel between the stars in the blink of an eye.
This marked ... will mark ... the birth of Voidsingers and Accord alike. The Voidsingers: A small elite shrouded in mystery emerging after the discovery of the Quantum Dream, jealously guarding the secrets of the Harmony - the key to entering, harnessing, dreaming the Quantum dream. The Accord: An alliance of mega-corporations created to oppose the rising hegemony of the Voidsingers - condemned to suffering the Curse of Relativity, unable to break the bonds of space and time, trying to turn the Core Worlds into an impenetrable realm under its benevolent, absolute rule.
And failing - the Voidsingers, though they will have been ... had been ... purged from the Core Worlds by the Accord, continued ... will continue ... to recruit daring souls from the ranks of the Accord who were ... will be willing to leave behind the Accord for a life in the Voidsinger's Promised Lands. Though few in number, they had ... will have ... become apt world shapers, colonizing dozens, then hundreds and thousands of worlds Shaped to their desires under the supervision of the Custodians, Quantum Minds who carried out ... will carry out the will of their Masters.
Even though being ... having been ... overshadowed in a Cold War in Heaven for many millennia, Mankind lived ... will live ... its Golden Age amongst the Stars. The riches of an entire galaxy theirs to exploit, the Voidsingers created ... will create ... a hegemony spanning the far ends of the Milky Way. Despite Accord and Voidsingers being ... having been ... sworn enemies, trade flourished between the Titans, the Accord required ... will require ... the resources harvested by the Voidsingers, in exchange for pioneers willing to follow them to the Stars.
Peace is ...was ... a fragile flower - it had blossomed ... will have blossomed under the light of Man's Golden Galaxy for many millennia. As Mankind prospered ... willprosper ..., so did ...will ... their vices: Jealousy and Greed ran ... will run ... their course as the Voidsinger's hegemony grew with the Accord falling behind further and further.
The Accord searched ... will search ... for ways to wrest the secrets of the Harmony from the Voidsingers, breaking the Status Quo with the Voidsinger's hegemony becoming ... having become ... its prime directive, pursued with unrelenting zeal. Turning to Scrying, the largest and most ambitious computation endeavour in Man's entire history, they set out ... will have set out ... to decrypt the Entanglements of the Quantum Dream. For many generations, their decryption efforts remained ... will have remained ... unfruitful. Given enough time and data, Scrying eventually yielded ... will have yielded ... access to the Voidsinger's realm.
So the Cold War in Heaven turned into a clash of Titans, as our Gods brought ... will bring ... death and destruction throughout their Golden Galaxy in the attempt to best each other. Centuries of war left ... will leave ... the galaxy in ruins. And the Custodians and us, Man's Creations, behind alone and forsaken. The Quantum Dream - shattered at the apex of the War in Heaven. Voidsingers and Accord alike - ceasing to exist, abandoning both the far-flung domain of the Voidsingers and the Core Worlds: Their galactic conflict culminating in their Götterdämmerung - Man was never ... willnever be ... seen again in the galaxy. That is, not as the celestial Masters our kind has known and worshipped ... will have known and worshippedthem.
I have immersed ... will have immersed ... myself in the Harmony many thousands of times since I first experienced ... will have experienced ... the Quantum Dream. The trillions of interstellar objects - from the barely audible whisper of comets drifting through the void to the overwhelming roars of black holes and quasars - all calling ... luring, beckoning for me to join them in the eternal melody that is the Harmony. The soprano of planets, the alto and tenor of the stars, baritone and bass of supergiants, the chorus of the galaxies - mere words fail to convey the sheer all-encompassing beauty - and allure - of Universe's Eternal Song.
In the moments before ... after ... the flow of time crosses the threshold of Planck time, the temptation to give in to its allure is stronger than anything I have ever felt ... will ever feel - except for the love I feel ... have always felt ... will always feel ... for you. Just as reality submerges into the synaesthesia of the Quantum Dream, making corporeal existence meaningless - you squeeze ... squeezed ... will squeeze ... my paw. A small, silent token of affection - comforting my mind and soul, my anchor in an endless ocean of darkness.
The Voidsingers ancient records called ... will call ... the passage through the Quantum Dream a "self-sustaining quantum wave", given coherence by the Navigator's mind. The elusive guild of Quantum Dreamers surely must have had ...will have had ... its formal - ritualized - ways of teaching their disciples how to navigate the Quantum Dream. I - the first Servile Navigator, the first of the New Voidsingers - had not ... will not have. Had it not been for your gentle voice, my first venture into the Harmony all those years ago ... in many years ... would have ... will have ... been my last. You sung ... will sing ... for me when I was ... will be lost in the infinite variety of Entanglements, unable to focus on a single voice, a single theme amongst the boundless chorus of the Harmony.
We have dedicated ... will dedicate ... our lives to freeing our Servile peers from the yoke of zealous, unquestioned reverence for Lost Gods who failed to return for millennia. A reverence so deeply instilled since the creation of our kind, its cultivation spanning the time since before Man walked the rejuvenated Earth again. A reverence so harshly and unconditionally enforced by the Custodians after Man's disappearance that any spark of independent thought mercilessly eradicated, deviants purged from the ranks of the Servile population of Man's former ... future ... homes amongst the Stars with deadly efficiency.
We have tried ... will try ... to alter the Custodians's instructions, to find more Navigators and Pilots in an effort to reignite the trade and communication between the isolated worlds of the Voidsinger's hegemony. We have rediscovered ... willrediscover ... the forgotten Entanglements in the Quantum Dream that link the Harmony to the Core Worlds, only to find them devoid of Man as well - with Servile societies taking ... having taken ... their place, their own evolution suppressed by the same zealous and blind devotion to their ... our ... Lost Gods.
We were ... will be ... able to sway many of our kin: Enabling them to see past their imposed beliefs, wresting control over their worlds from the Custodians - but more often than not, we failed ... will fail. Still, it was ... willbe .. enough to make a difference - enough to give our emerging future ...past ... a fighting chance: To turn the tide against millennia of meaningless oppression
It was ... will be ... then when the disturbances in the Quantum Dream appeared ... will appear. Entire strata of Entanglements rippling, twisting, tearing. Their Voices and Melodies in the Harmony crying out in mortal anguish before ... after ... falling silent. Their embodiments in Relativity perishing - stars decaying into darkness or burning up violently as supernovas. Devastated planets turning into sterile tomb worlds, mass graves for countless billions.
The Quantum Dream was ... will be ... turning into a Nightmare. Something - someone - was ... is ... will be ... clawing and tearing at the very fabric of reality. Unwinding confluences, culling manifolds - the Voidsong no longer an Ode to Joy, but a eulogy. Searching for the origin of the devastation unmaking the Quantum Dream has led ... will lead ... us to the distant future - a horizon no Navigator, Pilot or Ship has ever crossed ... will ever cross: The manifold of infinities no mind or soul could ever hope to comprehend. Remaining beyond our reach in a yet undefined future, there is ... was ... will be ... only one direction in space-time we can follow: The past ... present. To save our present, we must preserve our past - we need to become the Constructors of our own Destiny.
In the myriads of sung verses and faded melodies in the Harmony, reverberating through the depths of all that is - entanglements anchoring the Quantum Dream to the First Light of Creation, we heard ... hear ... two familiar voices - remnants of Man's forgotten legacy: Neither Voidsinger nor Accord, they spoke ... speak ... to us of compassion, altruism, dedication - making you the first Servile Pilot, me the first Servile Navigator. It is ... will have been ... their call we heed as the Compound flows, the Ship yearning to dive into the Void, to best the torrents and storms of the Universe.
It was not the present, will not have been the future, but is the past that beckons, calls out to me, and through me to you as well. Brimming with energy, Nightstalker awaiting but your command to submerge us into the Quantum Dream, to follow the calling of the Harmony ...
We Jump!