The Helianx Proposition/page 26
The closeness of the bonding the Helianx experienced as a race had deepened considerably in their long last swing
through the inhabited worlds of the second superuniverse.
It was toward the end of their altruistic mission that the Elders had noticed gradual, but radical, changes taking place in some of the younger Helianx. Noe, for example, had taken to spending an increasing amount of time on hir own, appearing to explore the vast interior spaces of the Great Ship. Some of hir younger contemporaries were also showing signs of levels of individuation that the Elders had not seen since the dreadful years when the biosphere on Womb Planet was collapsing. But that had been driven by fear and these puzzling new changes appeared to have no immediate cause.
As the realization had sunk in that their oceans really were evaporating, the frightening impact had temporarily fractured the fragile consciousness of the youngest Helianx. Curling in on themselves in fear, they had found themselves disconnected from the Web for the first time and had panicked, wildly swimming off in different directions. It had taken acts of unprecedented self-discipline by the Elders to stabilize the Web and to draw the youngsters back into the relative safety of the collective consciousness of the group. It was only then that the Helianx had found it possible to gather sufficient pranic energy to fashion the space glider and they had not quickly forgotten the lesson.
This bitter memory directly contributed to the Elders' initial nervousness when they observed Noe's evident desire to spend so much time on hir own. They finally relaxed somewhat on seeing that sHe seemed to be fearless in hir solo explorations and genuinely curious to simulate the lives of the many species represented in the ship's holographic museum. Using a subsystem of the acoustic holography that their computers had developed as an aid to storing the immense amount of information gathered, the Helianx had designed selected chambers in the ship to act as 3D platforms for massive holograms of the living environment of the worlds they had visited.
These exhibits were designed in collaboration with their computers to be participatory holograms, cunningly activated by the songs they had gathered and synthesized. By relaying the songs in a specific sequence the explorer could energize the hologram to cycle through the important events in the evolution of that particular race; all their achievements and challenges, their artistic and scientific accomplishments; their hopes and fears; and, most important to the Helianx, the belief systems that the race had constructed to explain the Creation to themselves. In this way the young Helianx were able to have an experiential taste of the worlds their forebears had visited, and at the same time had a compelling and beguiling reason to learn their songs and mythic histories. In fact, a visit to the holographic museum in the company of one of the more experienced Helianx quickly became the high point of the shipboard meetings for the alien diplomats teleported up to the Great Ship.
