The Helianx Proposition/page 68
Noe had not been idle in preparing hirself for the encounter ahead,
the epiphany for which sHe had been chosen so carefully and that,
one way or another, would seal the fate of hir race.
Using hir genetic skills, and working extensively with hir RNA,
Noe had finally reduced hir size to more modest proportions.
SHe no longer inspired quite the same automatic response of terror
in the few human beings to whom sHe had chosen to quietly reveal hirself.
SHe picked carefully, selecting only those with the most independent minds
and who had managed to separate themselves from the tyranny of the counterfeit deities.
A tradition of using visionary plants had grown up amongst some of the more curious
and courageous humans, which had allowed them a far deeper perception of reality
and an understanding of the truth unmediated by the manipulations of gods and goddesses,
or the priests and priestesses that served them.
Noe soon found that even those rare individuals who were able to sustain hir presence without running away, often had the unfortunate proclivity of collapsing uselessly into a deep hypnotic trance when the cognitive dissonance grew too extreme. Noe, as all Helianx, had met with this reaction amongst some species on their interplanetary travels on the rare occasions they had explored a primitive world.
Not having evolved from a predatory past and considering themselves essentially well-meaning by nature, it had always been difficult and frustrating when they had encountered this defensive response. Luckily, as most intelligent species matured, and as they became gradually more accustomed to living in a vast Multiverse populated by strange beings of every shape and size, they grew less threatened by the overwhelming presence of the Helianx.
The situation in which Noe found hirself this time, however, was rather different. Here, there was no possibility of retreat, of slipping away back into the galactic night, leaving only trace memories in the myths of a terrified planetary population. Here, sHe did not have the luxury of anthropological detachment. SHe knew sHe had no choice but to break through the interspecies barrier by whatever means sHe could summon. And not only that: sHe needed to gain the complete trust of those sHe would ultimately choose. The computers had insisted that there had to be a willing complicity, specifically from the female of the species, if the genetic transference was to be effectively accomplished. Anything less than that would be sure to create a karmic trauma that would echo down through the generations of humanity, forever imprinting the species with an implacable dread of the unknown.
Noe was all too aware of the terrified reactions sHe evoked whenever sHe had tried to befriend human beings and it was simply not in hir nature to want to add to their burden of fear. Besides, sHe knew that when the time was right for the eventual expression of the Helianx genetic and historical reality as an inner experience, its emergence was going to be frightening enough without further encumbrances hard-wired into the species through any act of hir desperation.
