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New page: Image:lighterstill.jpg center|frame ---- '''<center>Commentary</center>''' When the Helianx designed the Great Ship, their computers had insisted...
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[[Image:Helianx27.jpg|center|frame]]



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'''<center>Commentary</center>'''



When the [[Helianx]] designed the Great Ship,
their computers had insisted on including a large [[simulacrum]] of Womb Planet
to be buried deep within the hold of the craft.
This was not to be a mere [[hologram]],
but needed to be fabricated directly into the structure of the ship.
The Helianx had been advised to fashion their substitute world as a simulation of their planet
at the point at which there were still large lakes separated by dry and sandy mesas.
The computers had wanted to duplicate the most challenging environment
the Helianx had had to face in those dreadful last years.
But they had relented slightly when the Elders had suggested that it would be
far more valuable to include a wider range of physical conditions.
They had maintained that in this manner the younger Helianx--born after their world
had been destroyed--would have some idea of what it was like to swim
in the constricted and diminishing waters of their home planet.
In their omnisentient [[wisdom]], the computers had understood that it was important
for the Helianx to have a sentimental remembrance of the glorious days before the [[nova]].
Although the compromise reached did not completely satisfy either party,
the spacious lakes had allowed the Elders to initiate the young ones into
an admittedly vague reminder of what life had been like in an increasingly distant past.

In retrospect, we can now appreciate that even in those early stages of shipbuilding,
and well before they had finished crunching the numbers on the many cosmologies
they had collected, the computers had been starting judiciously
to prepare the Helianx for the trials ahead.
Later, the Elders were grateful for this fortunate [[prescience]].
However, they still remained profoundly disturbed by the sight of those bleak and barren hills,
on the rare occasions they were required to accompany a young initiate
to the simulated world in the hold of the ship.
The pair would slip into the water-filled tunnels that linked
the maze of chambers to the furthest and most private reaches of the craft,
where they had located the enormous simulacrum.
Without surfacing, the Elder would guide hir young companion directly into the great central lake.
Then, by placing hir massive body between the coastline and the sight line of hir younger ward,
they were both able conveniently to avoid any thought of those barren, sandy hills,
and the frightful memories that the devastated landscape invariably raised.

Planetary [[Psychohistory|psychohistorians]] have since speculated that whilst the Helianx
might well have dedicated themselves to investigating the [[physical]] and [[spiritual]] causes
for the demise of their world, they clearly had not come to emotional terms with the trauma.
Some have suggested that it was by consistently ignoring the implications
of the intense gravitational field and the harsh conditions of the arid desert above the waterline,
that the collective [[consciousness]] of the Helianx had developed
what might be considered a [[carapace]] of [[psychic]] scar tissue.

Over time, this level of profound denial resulted in a cultural [[taboo]]
which effectively discouraged all the younger Helianx from exploring the arid wastes:
All, apparently, with the exception of [[Noe]].

[http://nordan.daynal.org/wiki/index.php?title=The_Helianx_Proposition/page_26 Previous Page]

[[Category: The Helianx Proposition]]

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