The Helianx Proposition/page 23

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Commentary


The Great Ship was a marvel of bioplasmic engineering. Since the Helianx had originally created their computers by seeding a bioelectronic matrix with their own protoplasm, so also had the computers, in their turn, recommended the same process in the creation of the spaceship. This had allowed the Helianx to mold the craft to their precise specifications in an organic material with which they felt a natural resonance.

It was their familiarity with the ultimatonic structure of matter that had originally alerted the Helianx to the intelligence lodged within it, and which, in turn, led them to their mastery over the manipulation of matter. Although they did not fully understand the processes concerned, the intimacy of their involvement with the molding of molecules drawn initially from their own bodies had led them to a much deeper recognition of the inherent sentience in matter. The nature of the intelligence they had discovered was so different from anything they had previously encountered; so diffuse and subtle, so caring in nature and yet so vastly indifferent to the savagery of cosmic collisions, that they could appreciate how its presence had been overlooked by them for so long.

What the Helianx found in their explorations into the core of matter had revolutionized the way they had thought about the Creation. It was knowing about this fundamental sentience that had allowed them to work collaboratively with it, accomplishing tasks they would not have considered possible before the planetary calamity forced them to face up to the impending disaster. They had been able to micromanage the molecular structure of their own bodies for as long as anyone of them could remember, fashioning the simple tools they needed for their underwater life. But the intense pressure to design and build the ship had necessitated a profound deepening in their intuitive grasp of the inherent desire in matter to become form.

As a sculptress might gaze at a slab of marble to discover the form buried within its structure, so also had the Helianx, by cooperating with the subtle whispers they were receiving from the Heart of Matter, sculpted the living protoplasm into the organic structure of the Great Ship. And because it became a living thing, the craft responded autonomously to the needs of the moment. Elegantly surfing the gravity waves, the ship took it upon itself to grow great sails that gathered the cosmic winds and transduced the energy into a propulsive force, capable of accelerating the enormous vehicle to breathtaking speeds. When the Helianx were approaching an inhabited galaxy, the sensitive sails intuitively reversed the energy flow, slowing the ship down and locking it into a convenient orbit around the planet of interest. At that point the sails, ever-respondant to what was required of them, would furl themselves around and behind the body of the ship, so as to appear to those on the planet, like the distant glimmer of a comet slowly circling their world.

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