Nullified.
Nov. 29th, 2005 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
md_donighalWell, I've been putting this off for long enough, and now I've officially committed to do something about it. As of last night, it's been four weeks since the paraversary, to coin a phrase, of what ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
aberranteyes pointed out as perhaps the most spectacular mistake of my life.
(Paraversary. An awkward neologism, perhaps, but it gets the point across, I hope. In case it doesn't, it means "the date on which an event happens in an alternate timeline".)
I don't know if it was my grandest mistake (some might award that dubious honor to N-Day itself), but I'll give him "the most glorious". The world learned of my existence, and Æon learned that I wasn't going away, and neither were my people.
It was a dark time for the One Race. Despite a steady rate of 30-40 eruptions a month, overall nova population, at the end of 2004, was up only 200 from the previous year-end count. Where were those novas going? Into hastily-dug graves inBahrain Kashmir or Africa, or (since September of '04) to Bahrain. (And doubtless there were those cases where Proteus was recruiting novas and making their CVs disappear.) It was increasingly clear that Æon's agenda hadn't changed since max_a_mercer left them from what it became when max_a_mercer and I left them: to co-opt as many neomorphs as they could and destroy the rest. And since I'd arranged for the majority of neomorphs to receive superhuman Inspiration, that meant their efforts were concentrated on eximorphs.
I knew the worth of the One Race; I sensed its frustration; and I believed I had seen its destiny. All in all, I have no regrets about the Null Manifesto qua Manifesto. But if I could talk to my younger self, there are things I'd try and persuade him to do differently, believe me. I'll illustrate with a few quotes from the Manifesto that seemed like good ideas at the time, and how a year or more of living as a human has shown me the extent of my prior recto-fossal ambiguity.
"Only those novas who are too lazy or too comfortable to think for themselves, to judge and regulate their own behavior accordingly, obey baseline laws. True members of the One Race sense their own laws within them..." I still believe that Homo sapiens novus is not inherently bound to the same social mores as H. sap. sapiens, but I've learned respect for those who choose to live within baseline law.
"Perhaps there are some novas who prefer to stay with the baseline herd for the warmth it provides. I say obtain your warmth from equals. Humans do not require the companionship of monkeys, and likewise, novas don't require the companionship of baselines." Novas, and other superhumans, are not baseline humans, and it's folly to try and live full-time as a human. At the same time, living among baseline humanity keeps a superhuman grounded, reminds him that he used to be just another human. (I'd done my best to forget that by 1998, let alone 2005; the Teragen at large followed my bad example, with consequences well-known to those who know my world.) The great thing about [Bad username or unknown identity: the Nexus] is that it gives me a place I can go to be my self, without jeopardizing my quiet life on this otherwise nova-less Earth. (A sort of multiversal bunburying, to be sure, but I find it works for me.)
I still believe nova-kind has its own evolutionary destiny, or rather destinies, but I no longer consider that this requires us to re-enact what H. sap. sapiens did to neandertalensis. Our niche is not theirs; there's no competition. Perhaps there can be cooperation... if both sides choose to cooperate.
aberranteyes pointed out as perhaps the most spectacular mistake of my life.(Paraversary. An awkward neologism, perhaps, but it gets the point across, I hope. In case it doesn't, it means "the date on which an event happens in an alternate timeline".)
I don't know if it was my grandest mistake (some might award that dubious honor to N-Day itself), but I'll give him "the most glorious". The world learned of my existence, and Æon learned that I wasn't going away, and neither were my people.
It was a dark time for the One Race. Despite a steady rate of 30-40 eruptions a month, overall nova population, at the end of 2004, was up only 200 from the previous year-end count. Where were those novas going? Into hastily-dug graves in
max_a_mercer left themmax_a_mercer and I left them: to co-opt as many neomorphs as they could and destroy the rest. And since I'd arranged for the majority of neomorphs to receive superhuman Inspiration, that meant their efforts were concentrated on eximorphs.I knew the worth of the One Race; I sensed its frustration; and I believed I had seen its destiny. All in all, I have no regrets about the Null Manifesto qua Manifesto. But if I could talk to my younger self, there are things I'd try and persuade him to do differently, believe me. I'll illustrate with a few quotes from the Manifesto that seemed like good ideas at the time, and how a year or more of living as a human has shown me the extent of my prior recto-fossal ambiguity.
"Only those novas who are too lazy or too comfortable to think for themselves, to judge and regulate their own behavior accordingly, obey baseline laws. True members of the One Race sense their own laws within them..." I still believe that Homo sapiens novus is not inherently bound to the same social mores as H. sap. sapiens, but I've learned respect for those who choose to live within baseline law.
"Perhaps there are some novas who prefer to stay with the baseline herd for the warmth it provides. I say obtain your warmth from equals. Humans do not require the companionship of monkeys, and likewise, novas don't require the companionship of baselines." Novas, and other superhumans, are not baseline humans, and it's folly to try and live full-time as a human. At the same time, living among baseline humanity keeps a superhuman grounded, reminds him that he used to be just another human. (I'd done my best to forget that by 1998, let alone 2005; the Teragen at large followed my bad example, with consequences well-known to those who know my world.) The great thing about [Bad username or unknown identity: the Nexus] is that it gives me a place I can go to be my self, without jeopardizing my quiet life on this otherwise nova-less Earth. (A sort of multiversal bunburying, to be sure, but I find it works for me.)
I still believe nova-kind has its own evolutionary destiny, or rather destinies, but I no longer consider that this requires us to re-enact what H. sap. sapiens did to neandertalensis. Our niche is not theirs; there's no competition. Perhaps there can be cooperation... if both sides choose to cooperate.
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no subject
Date: 2005-11-29 11:09 am (UTC)Now, to be fair, Michael, that was never the agenda. We wanted to explore the world and use our discoveries to bring about a better future for humanity; something which I'm sure you agree is at least somehat noble.
There were simply some Inspired who took their newfound powers as a God-given sign that they could exploit humanity at their whim. I didn't agree with this then, and I don't agree with it now. As those individuals stood in the way of the progression of the human race, something had to be done to stop them.
There were thousands of Inspired who never joined our banner, and I certainly never set out to destroy them. Many of them did good works, and just as many stayed out of the public eye altogether. If they wanted to follow their own path, I was happy to let them.
Now that Proteus bunch... I never was very happy with them. Very distasteful business. It was all about controlling the nova population rather than helping them acheive their greatest potential.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-29 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-29 04:28 pm (UTC)As to your main post...
(looks at what he wrote) I phrased that poorly. When I said "Æon's agenda hadn't changed since Mercer left them", I wasn't meaning to blame you for what the Society became after you continued on your travels. At least, not consciously.
(sigh) I'm not going to mince words here, Max. When I saw what Æon had turned into, with you absent and me having become their enemy, I did blame you, for abandoning them just when (as I saw it) they needed you most. I spent roughly a century mad at the ones who were betraying your dream in the name of preserving it, and mad at you for letting them do it. (It was easier than staying mad at myself for no longer being on the inside to deflate any scheme too pie-eyed for my sensibilities.)
When your words from the Inspiration Age finally clicked in my mind, just before I departed our Earth, my resentment of you crumbled. I realized how many of your actions in my past must have been shaped by what you'd seen in your initial journey(s) to the relative future. I saw that you had to let certain things happen, even though they galled you, lest the whole sequence collapse.
Very noble ideals. And with you in charge, it lived up to them quite well. It sounded like pie-in-the-sky at the time, but even I had to admit, if anyone could make it work in the real world, that man was you.
I don't ask you to agree with it. Put in those terms, I don't agree with it myself. I still hold that the Inspired, or their equivalents in the other worlds that link to the Nexus, are the world's natural leaders, but that doesn't just mean rulership. And if we're going to lead, I still believe we should do so openly.
I'll admit to turning a blind eye to Terats like Angela and Allison, who treated baselines as toys for the breaking. Even James, for all the care with which he chose NV's targets, dispatched those "zips" with the joy of a child squashing bugs. If the Hell of my childhood fears still waits for me, novas like Shrapnel, Narcosis and Geryon are among the reasons.
"Distasteful". You could say that, yes... if you wanted to commit probably the most masterful understatement since the Bard had Mercutio allow as how his death-wound was "not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door". It's never been any surprise to me that poor Jennifer, when she found out just enough of their plans to doom herself, concluded they were dedicated to the destruction of all novas.
It occurs to me, of a sudden, that perhaps they were trying to prevent the Aberrant War. (The First Aberrant War, perhaps I should say, given your news about the Colony's return.) If they could have got a sufficient majority of novas to buy into the Utopia program, of novas building a better world for everyone, there'd have been no reason for the war to break out. Unless their plans were exposed (as in fact they were), in which case the war would become (as in fact it did) inevitable. (sigh) Roger Zelazny once said that the reason mythic prophecies tend to be self-fulfilling is that they tell the recipient just enough to let him steer himself into the mess he's trying to avoid.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 04:55 pm (UTC)That is, I suppose, fair criticism. I would say that an organization that cannot survive the absence of its leader, but that (as well as demonstrating my own misgivings about what the organization has become) is something of a cop-out. Truth be told, Michael, I left because of you.
When we last saw each other, I was facing my oldest and best friend, to the death. After it was over, I couldn't help but think what I done wrong, what I might have been able to do differently so that we wouldn't have come to blows like that. I'm thankful that the battle came to a stalemate. The next several years were spent in quiet introspection, and eventually I decided the Society would be better with a leader in absentia rather than with an ineffectual one.
As much as I hate to use Proteus' excuse, certain sacrifices had to be made in the name of disaster control. Proteus was not my idea and happened in my absence, and I had little influence over it by the time I returned. I minimized their damage as much as I could.
Just so. You have captured the essence of my dilemma. Proteus was at least somewhat necessary as a damage-control variable. You see, I had reason to believe that following the Aberrant War, there would be no more Earth. Certain measures would be necessary to mitigate the worst possibilities, and Proteus was largely the method by which those measures would be executed. Although they weren't aware of it at the time, of course, and Thetis grew a little too prideful and out of control. But the alternative was too horrible to contemplate, or so I thought.
You don't know how right you are, my friend. The Aberrant War would, I'm convinced, have happened without Proteus (due to the Taint problem, although your solution seems elegant), but they certainly didn't help matters. In any event, the Earth survived, for which I can count my blessings. When several thousand people with the ability to reshape the universe want to fight, it's a wonder there was any habitable land left at all.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 02:57 pm (UTC)One of your chronomorphs? Or a psion whose gifts include precognition?
...I probably deserve that, but it hurts all the same. I hadn't let it hurt like this since we faced each other on the glowing deck; that was one of the reasons I felt the need to go on with my new life as if Michael Daemon Donighal had died. I thought I'd alienated you forever; you almost certainly don't yet know, truly, how glad I am to have been wrong.
I've thought about it a time or two myself over the years, mostly in the time I spent in my Personal Space. Even now, though, the main things I can see that you could've done to head it off involved a level of prying to which I can't see you stooping if you didn't suspect you had probable cause, just as I can't see you suspecting you had such cause without the prying.
So am I.
...A reasonable fear, given some of the damage the combatants inflicted (Calvert by fire and Felice by water, for instance). Even if (or perhaps especially if) China hadn't forced the issue, warring gods and demons could very well have torn things up on our own.
Not to mention that she lost sight of the distinction between her own good, the good of Æon and the good of humanity. (Though, given the prevalence of that viewpoint in the Æon of the Nova Age, it hardly needs mentioning except to cite her as the most egregious example.)
As
(bows) Thank you. I'm not sure even more widespread use of Chrysalis could have prevented the war, though, given the morphological prejudices that got aberration ostracized. Oddly enough, I suspect baselines back home are still more likely to trust a human-looking face, even one with utterly amoral sentiments behind it, than a slavering mass of toothy tentacles that displays an amiable disposition. *8-)
MDD
Bahrain in the membrane?
Date: 2005-11-29 05:30 pm (UTC)Hate to say it, O Beacon, but I think you've got Bahrain on the brain (not that I can entirely blame you, given). Shouldn't that be "hastily-dug graves in Kashmir or Africa"?
Re: Bahrain in the membrane?
Date: 2005-11-29 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-30 07:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-11-30 08:59 am (UTC)MDD
no subject
Date: 2005-11-30 10:41 am (UTC)Diana Kadmon, and Apollo Milliken and the other novas who followed her, and the baselines who followed them... they all found a new home, and last I knew, they were all in fact doing quite all right indeed. Does that knowledge help?
Z
no subject
Date: 2005-11-30 02:33 pm (UTC)MDD
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 05:01 pm (UTC)Yes, Apollo and his ilk are doing rather well with a colony of like-minded baselines. They have called their new world "Eden." No relation to the Operation of the same name, I'm sure.
In fact, they'd recently opened up a dialogue with the United Nations, offering their assistance to combat the Colony's Taint-maddened followers.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 01:19 pm (UTC)Maybe not a direct relation (I don't think either Apollo or Diana ever worked with Utopia), but I wouldn't be surprised to learn it'd been at the backs of their minds at the time. The reclamation of Ethiopia was one thing Utopia did that practically everyone agreed had been a good thing. (At the very least, even Terats could agree that it had had positive side-effects, such as the eruption of Bene Manata and others who later found their way to the movement. The only people I ever heard consider it an unalloyed evil were Toren Cargill and his compatriots, for whom Utopia could do no right in any case.)
And I'm glad, much gladder even than I would have been when I left, to learn that they're still ready to work with baselines. (And I hope the baselines reciprocate; I hope I didn't scar them too deeply for them ever again to trust a nova.) Against the Colony, we're all on the same side; if I'd known what it would become, I'd have destroyed it when I had the chance.
MDD
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 03:57 pm (UTC)I'll be honest with you (and about time, I know). In avoiding the subject of what happened on your Earth after you left, I was trying to prevent either of us from going off half-cocked. I was afraid I might tell you some piece of the bad news about the situation there, which would lead to you being so desperate to get home that you punched a hole in the space-time manifold and I fell through it like a stone through a wet paper bag.
But with
no subject
Date: 2005-11-30 09:01 am (UTC)