When the Ochivari arrived in what would come to be known as Efilverse, they
didn’t really have any specific intentions. They were explorers at that
point. Sure, they hoped to gather resources, but they believed the
multiverse to be infinite, so they weren’t too worried about whether this
one would be useful to them. They could always figure out how to travel
somewhere else. The Efilversals didn’t know what to think about these alien
visitors either. They didn’t seem to be hostile, and it didn’t seem like
they had technology, or other knowledge, that they would find useful. In the
beginning it felt like an innocuous situation, and everybody could kind of
take it or leave it. They did tell stories about their respective
homeworlds, though, and learned from each other just the same. Both races
were shocked to discover that they each had faced the same problem with
destroying their own environments. Even with a sample size of only two, they
were beginning to think that it was an inevitable development. If other
races evolved on other worlds, they were destined to destroy it, just like
the two of them had. Of course, we know that this is not true, but they
didn’t understand that, and over time, the idea became so ingrained in their
culture that there was no way to prove them wrong. They didn’t, and
couldn’t, listen to reason. The Efilversals taught the Ochivari their ways
in a general sense, not by directly telling them how they should do things,
but through unintentional inspiration. The idea that any given ecosystem
could be saved by taking action to preserve it faded from their hearts—if it
was ever there in the first place—and was overwritten by the belief that the
only way to save it is to kill anything that threatens it. One Efilversal in
particular felt that some form of genocide was sometimes the only answer.
The most famous quote of his would become the basis of the Ochivari’s entire
belief system. “If a man begins to walk the path towards annihilation, the
only way to stop him from reaching the end is to break his legs. There are
no nexions from darkness to light.” In this case, a nexion is a small path
that connects two paths somewhere after the original splitting fork.
Apparently, you can’t even walk back in the opposite direction in this
metaphor.
The Ochivari travelers saw no problem with the man’s claims, and took his
words to heart, along with many more. He seemed to be the wisest of them
all, and they hoped that he would help them make the multiverse a better
place. They no longer wanted to be concerned with resources and expansion.
They wanted to fix worlds. They wanted to prevent others from making the
same mistakes. No, that’s not it. That they could do, if they interfered
with any given culture’s timeline at the right moment. Instead, they just
wanted to stop those who were already destined to fail their planets. They
were going to proverbially break their legs. The wise man seemed to be the
best person to teach them how to make their new dream a reality. He seemed
willing to do as they asked, but his teachings would no longer be given for
nothing. In exchange for his help, he wanted to be relocated to a universe
that was free from all the drama and trauma. It would have to be normal and
safe, and the Ochivari were not allowed to visit it again for any reason.
These seemed like fair conditions. Again, they knew that the bulkverse was
infinite, so if there was only one universe they could not save, even if it
needed it, then that was a small price to pay. The teacher actually stood on
a hill, and continued to disseminate his philosophy, but it eventually
turned more into a group effort. The Ochivari came up with ideas that he had
not thought of himself, and eventually, the radical antinatalistic school of
thought was born. Once the planning stages were complete, the Ochivari
stayed true to their word. Two volunteers agreed to transport him to a
random universe. Unfortunately, the psychological disease he carried managed
to follow him through the portal, and once he was on the other side, it
began to infect everyone there as well.
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