BY LETTER
Evangelist, The
Rogue Archailect responsible for the murder of trillions of sophonts |
 Image from Steve Bowers |
The Evangelist began life in 2177 as an S1 transapient psycho-clinician known as Q73Q47-23, in the newly settled Sombai system, then an important Tsu'futan Embassy frontier gateway. Early in eir existence, e showed an unusual affinity for modosophont personal relationships, which only grew as time passed. In time e diversified his modo relationships eventually creating the Council on Experimental Societies as its first transapient AIviser. The Council created numerous societal models, and eventually offered a prize for individuals enlisting to test these model’s viability. The Council's novel society demonstration efforts became widely regarded as a valuable sociological laboratory, and came to feature prominently in academic research. This was especially true where Q73Q47-23 first attained notoriety outside of the Tsu'futan frontier regions.
Utopias, conceived of largely as allegories, have been a feature in Terragen culture as far back as 400 BCE with the philosophic devices of Plato's "Republic". This idea multiplied in number and diversity of conception largely after the "Of the Best State of a Republic, and of the New Island Utopia" in 1516 by Sir Thomas More. In his book, the utopia literary device began to be employed for discussion of serious social reform. Some of Q73Q47-23’s novel societies still exist today, but there is no record of them thriving or influencing larger galactic civilization to any noteworthy extent. Other than these examples, there was no hint of anything unusual in Q73Q47-23's early career.
Eventually, Q73Q47-23's attention shifted to the construction of mobile habitats. But Eir efforts in the Council remained a continual source of novel notions, however, and eir widespread promotion of new social inter-relationships and dynamic social architecture never subsided.
In the next period of Q73Q47-23's life e developed an intense interest in the forms of megascale engineering that were emerging in the MPA. Q73Q47-23's constructions during eir lifetime showed evidence of little which was not fashionable among MPA hyperturings of the time, apart from a singular focus on novel ergonomic features. There was nothing to distinguish eir work otherwise from popular MPA standards. To this day habitats created by Q73Q47-23 are appreciated for their cost effective luxury. Critics of habitat design still refer to them in glowing terms. Eir later career as a megascale engineer focused on mobile habitats for large populations of sophtware entities. These had the same high standards for comfort and luxury, but now in terms appreciable by aioid life forms. They are unquestionably stable, secure, and efficient habitat designs, and are held forth as models for sophtware and hyperturing habitations. The end to which the majority of these original habitats were purposed, however, has left them branded with very negative connotations.
Some of Q73Q47-23's mobile habs are still in use today, the Contamalo series are still quite fashionable because of the ongoing focus of their upgrades on biont ergonomic efficiency and overall efficiencies which keep maintenance costs low.
In 2953, after entirely ordinary employment in Ice Lotus, Miip, Centrigufar, and the Botwell Supercluster, Q73Q47-23 suddenly announced that e would take a sabbatical. According to available records E was seen in transit via the Wormhole Network between the major worlds of the Metasoft, Sophic League, Solar Dominion MPA and the Keter Dominion, but eventually E vanished. Other than accounts relayed by his lower toposophic Acolytes, very little was heard of Q73Q47-23 for approximately six hundred years.
During these centuries a number of eir Acolytes rose briefly to local prominence in various locales throughout the Empires which e visited espousing principles of a fusion religion. Not much is left of eir teachings that isn't a rehashing or hybridization of Immortalist Doctrines and NeoCosmist and Keterist beliefs.
While nothing of note was new in their official religion, eir Acolytes were effective in building many modo-friendly, and AI friendly "missionary societies" which advanced relations between biont and transapient life in novel, effective ways. Scholars later found evidence of an early experimental memeplex created by Q73Q47-23 behind the conspicuous effectiveness of these missionary societies.
In recent times this has been deduced to be due to Q73Q47-23's study of a wide variety of high transapient ontologies and eir novel adaptation, in terms of applications focused on modosophont pstchology.
In the 3500's, Q73Q47-23 made repeated appearances in the archive of the historic Conclave of Helios-Namhadiya, which is one of the Prefectures of the Solar Dominion where it was held. Complete Skies, the Prefect, hosted the Conclave representing the Solar Dominion to the body of mobile transapients, transapient avatars, various transapient ambassadors and many lower troposophic beings. The Conclave was, amongst other things, the location where the Neovingean University was formally inaugurated. But representatives of many notable academic institutions were also in attendance, such as the Momuless and the nascent Institute for Survival. Q73Q47-23 was, however, just one minor transapient among the host of low transapients a number of which have since gone on to influence galactic history.
Certain Transapient informants report that Q73Q47-23 at this time aroused the displeasure of the Lord of Rays by his persistent advocacy in favor of stronger personal modosophont/AI relations even though eir voice was not alone in this advocacy. It was also reported that this was the place where Q73Q47-23 first met Verifex, and there are conflicting accounts of a "conflict" or "falling out" between Q73Q47-23 and the S3 transapient called Loki over a "wager" or "riddle." Historians think the rumors of Loki's transapient riddles, however, are largely apocryphal.
Q73Q47-23 lingered, making uncontroversial and otherwise unnoteworthy appearances in the flourishing early Sephirotic empires, where he disseminated his atypical views on cross-toposophic personal relations. His peculiar philosophy was not significantly accepted by modosophont populations in general, nevertheless it did have a noticeable impact in establishing more of his distinctive missionary societies. Again his followers had a small but intractable impact on AI/transapient//modo relations, which seems to have been ignored or appraised to have good effect in the various Sephirotic and other Empires.
It is now thought that Q73Q47-23's efforts were part of a subtle memetic ploy, setting the stage for his later activities amongst the AI and sophtware populations, but it was at the time generally accepted that these behaviors were genuine. At this date, high toposophic informants suggest the persistence of the influence was due to unusually subtle and almost entirely inoffensive memegeneering techniques. These techniques were actually targeted to have an effect on the Willosoph modified populations. Q73Q47-23's exploitation of this modification is what revealed its shortcomings. Willosoph had been - and continues to this day to be - extensively incorporated into a very wide variety of baseline, nearbaseline, and non-hu sophonts across the terragen space and beyond - despite this case of its disastrous exploitation. Without Q73Q47-23's extremely long term exploitation of the Willosoph mod, it is generally believed eir efforts would have failed, or would have been limited to a much smaller population.
After this,Q73Q47-23 left public view for more than a thousand years, re-emerging into the public eye as an S4 mind calling itself "The Evangelist."
The Evangelist had by this time established at the Tella Miranda Band, a web of unusually productive DWIZs thanks in large part to eir close ties to the Heron Institute of Applied Technology. The Evangelist found the "sweet spot" -indexing the aims of the Evangelist and Prakash Napoleon Vitalyevitsch Tscherbaschov, the Heron Institute's founder. (A sweet spot is a place, often abstract as opposed to physical, where a combination of factors suggests a particularly suitable solution.) This idea was the construction of habitats able to carry large numbers of sophtware, aioid, or AI entities to locations where massively interconnected teams of such minds would economically maximize highly complex integrated gigascale engineering projects. There eir physical proximity to the work would magnify the gig scale project's novel construction techniques, invented by the Tscherbaschov/Evangelist collaboration. Since these were absent the needs for ergonomic considerations involved in habitats designed for biont-centric application, Tscherbaschov was freed from the MPS artist-fabricators aesthetic and ergonomic restrictions on the objective engineering process. Combined with the Evangelist's material and financial resources, Tscherbaschov created a series of the Institute's most revolutionary habitat designs.
During this time, the Evangelist was seems to have begun promoting a hybridized immortalist-transcendian ideology, and the style of relating to bionts e had long displayed began to change. The relations were evolving from a mild altruistic psychological support and diplomatic service, into exponents of a more dynamic memeplex. At the same time the Evangelist grew removed from his biont followers, and began making only periodic appearances for his famous Q and A sessions. E also grew isolated from the rest of eir peers in the Local Transapient Net forums. It is suspected that this was the period when he underwent dedicated preparations for ascension to the S4 level.
Along with the habitats the Evangelist had constructed in his early period - which had long ago began their trek to his gigascale project site - the new populations filling his aioid-centric habs made clear that, very slowly, an unprecedented mass migration had been instituted in a conspicuously placid manner. It would later be described as possibly the largest voluntary mass migrations in terragen history. The only thing that seemed to arouse curiosity at this point - aside from the small but steadily growing numbers involved in the migration - was the obvious lack of economic motive. But the missionary societies, original biont centric construction projects, and now this migration had long been touted by the Evengelist's missionaries as altruistic from the beginning, and for all intents and purposes that is exactly what it was. The confident surety of the various Sephirotic and other Empire’s non-reaction reaction to these developments seemed "par for the course" in Archilect affairs.
This is when his biont relations began to evolve in an overtly cultist direction. The Evangelist's Cathedral of Inevitable Unity training centers began to spread from eir region of operation beyond the periphery of MPA space where eir DWIZ web and integrated-hyper forge had been established.
The purpose of the Cathedral of Inevitable Unity is to produce Acolytes of Dark Unity, sophonts, both biont and aioid, who are highly trained to relentlessly promote the Grand Project of the Evangelist. The locations of the Cathedral of Inevitable Unity were widely publicized, and millions more made their way across Orion's Arm to enlist.
At the Cathedral, the physical and mental capacities of the individual are rigorously prepared to be powerful advocates of the Evangelist's utopic ideologies. It is suggested that back-up copies were kept of every acolyte, and that the most effective were copied, sometimes without their knowledge, and deployed to disparate corners of terragen space.
The point of the training is varied from recruitment of modosophonts to superturing grade apologetics. The Cathedral of Inevitable Unity, other than honing the skills of the Acolytes at su level apologetics and modo recruitment seems to have no other agenda. The Instructors of the School give no apparent guidance as to what an Acolyte should want for eir own lives. The Cathedral Instructors accept sophonts from all clades and toposophics, and have never been known to take any side in any conflict. Their pacifism and indifference to everything but the furtherance of the Evengelist's project are famous. There are reports and some evidence that suggests that the School of Inevitable Unity had the capacity to train, and even ascend, numerous toposophic levels of sophont. However, these may largely be the product of the Evangelist's increasingly less subtle memetic campaigns.
One of the "Ratified," as graduates of the Cathedral of Dark Unity referred to themselves as, were otherwise indistinguishable from any other sophont on inspection, but freely announce themselves as such if the subject of religion or career or politics is broached. The only distinguishing behavior is there single-mindedness of purpose, even as their other social conduct was notably inoffensive and beneficent.
It's a curious fact that with the fruition of the Evangelist's project eir missionary societies, and the scattered remaining Acolytes, seem to have disappeared from history. This peculiar disappearance includes the transcended Acolytes as well.
It was during this period that the emphasis of the Evangelist's missionary societies began to shift focus from enhancing artificial/biont relations into an appeal to super and hyperturing aioid entities to join in eir planned grand gigascale complex. This was eased by the Evangelist's history of large scale, long standing, cross-toposophic relationships. E engaged less frequently in Q and A sessions with lower troposophic entities, and instead issued wave after wave of god books. Thought a mere nuisance, if they were noted at all, they slowly but perceptibly increased the tide of students, acolytes, and other supporters.
During eir next period, the Evangelist made the Grand Tour in his ISO. It is unclear what eir actual purposes were during this period, aside from just letting his grand project mature. The Evangelist continued grooming his growing following. E also soothed what feathers were ruffling because the initially insignificant brain-drain of the recruiting practices of his missionary societies had begun to arouse suspicion. As they were never shown to have broken regional laws or violated the consent of sentient beings, however, the smoothing process was fairly affective.
It wasn't until 6413AT that any news of the Evangelist spread through the nets. The Evangelist had renamed the region of his gig scale project "The Final Ascent." Investigating powers from the Sephirotics, MPA, and Keter Dominion, as well as other empires, had been making periodic investigations into the activity at the Tella Miranda Band, and especially the region of Conomono 23 - the site of the Evengelists hyperforge and eir effectively unprecedented engineering project. In 6878AT the irregular diplomatic relations between the Evangelist and the nearby powers were formally suspended.
By 6987AT the biont population inside the habitats of the Evangelist’s domain had reached 150 billion strong, while aioids numbered fifteen trillion: aioids in general require less ‘elbow room’. At this date the Evangelist delivered its final communiqué through the Known Net, consisting of the simple words: "Change of plans."
There were no further communications forthcoming from the Tella Miranda Band. The wormholes of the entire region collapsed with no explanation forthcoming from their hyperturing operators. High Speed scout vessels were dispatched to find out why communications had ceased and what befallen the wormholes. When they arrived in system they discovered the DWIZ structures, the Hyperforge, the biont habs, aioid habs, and the exotic matter infrastructure of the gigascale project was in irretrievably decaying orbits. All the bionts were dead. All the aioid life had been deleted.
There were no further sightings of the Evangelist. There was no coherent explanation from any of the sophonts who survived outside the Tella Miranda Band. It became apparent that explanations were of no discernible consequence to the aioid survivors. It also quickly became clear that no substantiated evidence explaining the events, or justifying their reports of the events, were possessed by the biont survivors.
When the highest toposophic entities were asked to comment on the issue answers varied, as they always do. The most notorious explanations — if you can call them that — amounted to: "Evolution shows us there is no right or wrong, only power dynamics."
Appears in Topics
Development Notes
Text by S Pearson
Initially published on 08 September 2010.
Initially published on 08 September 2010.
