Not unlike the Cythereans of Universe Prime, the humans of Moderaverse chose
a very different technological path, and it has kept them off of the
Ochivari’s radar. Instead of developing more powerful computers, or faster
spaceships, they internalized everything. They figured that the only point
to technology was to make their lives better, easier, and infinite. They
didn’t much care to learn about the universe, unless it directly impacted
them. They didn’t even feel the need to research animals, because they
believed it best to simply leave wildlife alone. This gave them time to
focus on their main goal. They called it biological optimization, and it
involved genetically engineering themselves to be able to survive in a
multitude of environments, all without the aid of external tech. No
implants, no wearables, not even any handheld devices. Different people have
different optimizations, so I won’t get into the details, but there are a
few commonalities. They can extract energy from any number of environments.
They can communicate with each other telepathically. They can go for long
periods of time without stopping, and they don’t have to sleep, though they
quite often do as a natural component of relaxing. Relaxation is the most
important aspect of their lives. They don’t perform work unless they have
to. Their ancestors put so much effort into perfecting their bodies that
they don’t have to work anymore. This is not because automation takes care
of everything, like it does in other advanced cultures. They don’t work,
because little needs to get done. They don’t need to eat a lot, and they don’t
generally value the culinary arts, so people just consume what they find in
nature, during the rare occasion that it’s necessary. Most of them are solar
powered, so they only need to eat to gain certain chemical nutrients.
The Moderaversals do not limit themselves to a single planet, and in fact,
their way of life would not be conducive to such a thing. While other
environmentally-conscious civilizations build great megastructures to lower
the amount of space they take up, the Moderaversals stay on one story, but
live quite sparsely. They separate themselves into small villages, which
restricts their impact on any one area just as well as—if not better than—an
arcology-based society. Instead of using ships to travel to other worlds,
they harness the power of natural wormholes. In their universe, wormholes
open and close all the time, even on the surface of planets. They’re
microscopic, and just as unstable as they are anywhere else, but there’s a
fix for that. There are pretty much only two types of advanced tech that
these people use. One is a series of artificial satellites that look like
nanomoons, and ground arrays that look like trees, to predict, detect, and
map the wormholes on any inhabited world. The other is a wormhole stabilizer
that will allow a traveler to pass into the wormhole’s event horizon, and
slide to their destination. These wormholes are not rare, but the right
wormhole is. They pop up constantly, but if you’re trying to go to a
specific location, you’ll have to wait until one that satisfies your needs
appears. This could happen tomorrow, or in a few years. There’s no way to
know, as the predictive models can only guess a day or two in advance.
Fortunately for the immortal Moderaversals, time ain’t nothin’ but a thang.
It’s perfectly reasonable to schedule an event with others for whenever,
sometime in the future, and just wait until everybody finds the right
wormhole, and makes it there at some point. The Moderaversals live easy, and
they live free. We could all probably learn a thing or two from them.
No comments :
Post a Comment