The Helianx Proposition/page 19
Since their computers had been so vital in developing a plan to leave Womb Planet, the Helianx once again found themselves having to rely on their bioplasmic associates
to discover a way out of their new dilemma.
Their altruistic impulse to spread the news of the impending reversal of the space/time continuum
to all the species they met in their journeys also had the advantage of giving
the computers enough time to consider the problem in depth.
They all knew that it was not going to be easy. To even consider the idea that the the very ground of their being might reverse its expanding momentum and collapse in on itself, was terrifying enough to think about in practical terms. This was certainly the view of many of the species the Helianx had tried to warn, and who consequently found it all too easy to dismiss the prediction as a whimsical fantasy; and far too far in the future for much concern, even if it might be true.
The Helianx, however, took the information a great deal more seriously. After all, their computers had already solved one seemingly imponderable situation and the Helianx could only hope that they were up to puzzling out this one, too.
What at first appeared to preoccupy the computers as they examined the unimaginable event that lay ahead, was what they had been discovering about the nature and structure of matter itself. Whereas the scientists of many of the races of that time held that matter was inherently lifeless, the Helianx computers were starting to look at the growing possibility that somewhere at the heart of matter--buried perhaps within the very smallest of the particles--lay an intelligence of an entirely different order. For the Helianx this had been hard to confront, since if matter did indeed possess an innate intelligence, then presumably there had to have been some form of intentionality behind the stellar nova that had destroyed their planet. As a consequence, they did their best to resist this notion for a long time.
It had been just as difficult for them to view the calamitous event as entirely arbitrary, as a cosmic accident in a dangerous and impersonal superuniverse, since Womb Planet had always been so placidly well-ordered. Everything had been in its correct place in their underwater paradise and had always seemed so. It had been perfection; its primal purity preserved by countless generations of Helianx convinced of their good fortune; a complacency that had only become more firmly reinforced after they had seen the tumultuous physical challenges faced by the intelligent species on most of the worlds they had observed astrally. From the security of their waterworld, it had never once occurred to the Helianx that some cosmic intelligence beyond their understanding might have some future plans for them.
Having finally come to terms with the emotional impact of their collective trauma, the last thing the Helianx wanted to believe was that there was some sort of hyperphysical entity, who clearly seemed to have a rather poor opinion of them.
