3131 Robots and Dragons
Researchers from the M'kele system discover interstellar ruins of the legendary Solemic Empire. The group is funded and led by Ghislaine Tsibinda et Abo ne Umlambo, a wealthy autodidact from M'kele who has studied the legends of neighboring interstellar species extensively.
During his research Tsibinda found hints about the lost interstellar ruins of the legendary empire. After a long search, Tsibinda's scientists finally discover large clusters of technical structures in interstellar space that had been abandoned long ago.
The discovery solves one of the great mysteries of modern historical science: the whereabouts of the legendary Solemic Empire. Until then, almost no relics of this empire had been found, although it had ruled the local sector for millennia. Historians always assumed that the respective successors had taken over the infrastructure changing it over time until it became unrecognizable. Yet, Tsibinda's discovery proves that the Solemic Empire concentrated most of its resources in interstellar space, far from suns and from habitable planets. Most installations were close to rouge planets and brown dwarfs that served as sources of raw materials. The constructions are huge, but without exact coordinates they are lost in the vastness of interstellar space.
It is not clear why this civilization kept away from suns. In fact, proximity to a sun is not important for a high-tech civilization. Energy is abundant wherever an ice giant or a brown dwarf can server as a hydrogen source.
Life in interstellar space is not that unusual. For example, we have known about the Mansalu complex for over 500 years. A large part of the Mansalu are in interstellar space, the majority of them living on the net-side in virtual spaces. Other species, including humans, run parts of their civilization from mobile habitats. Some even in interstellar space where they "anchor" at starless planets in the void only occasionally visiting solar systems. These mobile habitats can be very large, hundreds of kilometers in size and inhabited by a hundred million people. Being economically self-sufficient and small worlds on their own they sometimes even constitute independent nations states. These habitats regard the high density of planetary systems as a risk rather than an asset.
However, in the case of the Solemic Empire almost the entire civilization had been located between the stars in the interstellar void.
Ghislaine Tsibinda begins her professional career in 2780 as an efficiency manager for logistics providers in M'kele orbit, where she oversees automatic optimization of docking procedures. She passes through various stations until finally, after a career of 120 years, she becomes the main portmaster of the M'kele system's interstellar trade hub.
It is a difficult time. Interstellar traffic volume declines as trade routes become unsafe and markets are lost. A few years later, even the Sol system falls under foreign rule, eliminating it as a trading partner for M'kele. Tsibinda keeps her position until the time of the Reconquista in the Sol system retiring at the beginning of the 31st century to pursue her hobbies.
For a very long time she has been studying the lore of various species. Her special interest is the legendary Solemic Empire in a period from 7,000 to 10,000 years ago. There are almost no digital records available from this time. Most of the data was lost in the dark ages after the end of the Mercato Domain. But there are sagas and legends among peoples who already had a spacefaring civilization 7,000 years ago (about 4,000 BCE).
After the sudden end of the Mercato Domain around 3,700 BCE, the sector plunged into a dark age during which the affected peoples lost most of their technological capabilities. Techno-barbarians, high civilizations, and species with incompatible moral systems came into conflict. Protection from raids and armament against neighbors consumed valuable resources. These efforts were not successful in the long run. Systems, species and factions tried to assert themselves often at the expense of their neighbors. No stabilizing power emerged in the sector for over 1000 years.
The Kisori were particularly hard hit. They lost their entire technology tree beyond simple electric motors including all information technology. No spin computer and no associative memory survived the three millennia until Kisor finally recovered. Society was archaic for a long time, with a curious mix of medieval tools and modern technology: there was gunpowder, printing, and – for wealthy people – electric light. But still, for most Kisori, daily life was more characterized by manual labor, carts with wooden wheels, and water-powered mills. During this time, the past lived on in legends, mostly passed down orally. This 3000 years long period is known as the Kisoran Middle Ages.
Much later, after Kisor had finally recovered and achieved spaceflight again, the new Kisori found ancient outposts on asteroids and moons that had survived the destruction persisting into this new age. These places hat information systems that could be made working again and the new Kisori discovered civilian data storages with – for them at that time – already ancient entertainment and information programs. Before these discoveries, they had known their precursor civilization only from legends which were then already over 3000 years old.
Among the most famous stories from that time are Uri Tza Meka's Travels. The stories tell the adventures of Uri Tza Meka in the "cloud realm": how he starts as an apprentice electromagician to become a hero by saving the cloud realm. The he returns as a king. But in his return also lies the seed of doom. Uri Tza Meka fights against hostile sky people who eventually make the sky fall onto the earth. In vain does Uri Tza Meka try to hold the remnants of his kingdom together.
It is the classic Kisoran arc of destiny: the rise of an insignificant figure to hero status and their subsequent fall and decline. While many of our stories end at the climax, the so-called "hero's journey", Kisoran culture is more familiar with the arc of destiny: an unexpected rise and a bitter but inevitable end.
In our fairy tales, the simple peasant son can become a hero and marry the princess. The road is dangerous, but the happy ending is almost guaranteed, even if the positive ending is always questioned by emphasizing the risks on the way. In Kisoran literature, ascent is inevitably followed by descent. The fatal end of the Kisoran arc of destiny is just as certain as our happy ending. Most important are the adventures on the way: the struggle against superior powers and the ultimate sacrifice in a last stand situation are strong motifs. The hero's resistance against the inevitable end is as important as the improbable rise at the beginning of the story.
Modern Kisoran literary scholarship assumes that the arc of destiny emerged during the long Kisoran Middle Ages. After a peaceful period during the times of the Solemic Empire and the following Mercato Domain, the fall into the Middle Ages came very sudden. Before that Kisor had belonged to the interstellar civilization for more than 3000 years, first, well inside the borders of the Solemic Empire, later as part of the Mercato Domain, the Empire of Trade. Then, after 700 years, the Mercato Domain suddenly disappeared leaving the Kisor Twins unprotected like many other systems and planets. In a short time, the technical infrastructure was largely destroyed by foreign raiders. In the process, 90% of the population lost their lives. The technology quickly dropped to a medieval level and the population shrank within a few generations to just one thousandth. This must have been a traumatic experience that left deep marks in cultural memory. During this so-called Middle Ages Catastrophe, during the decline and in centuries of futile attempts to revive technology, the stories about failing heroes emerged, full of dashed hopes and an inevitable downward trend.
Uri Tza Meka's Travels do in fact follow this pattern. Kisoran literary scholars and historians considered Uri Tza Meka to be a mere legendary figure personifying the fall of civilization. However, Ghislaine Tsibinda is fascinated by the figure. She is convinced that Uri Tza Meka's Travels are based on true events interpreting the cloud realm of the legends as the historic Mercato Domain. In his opinion Uri Tza Meka was an info-designer or AI-manager. For listeners to oral tradition during the Kisoran Middle Ages, Uri Tza Meka's profession translated into the term "electro magician". Electricity outlasted the Middle Ages in niches, and electro magic was familiar to the Kisori of the time. Tsibinda believes that Uri Tza Meka rose at the Kisori royal court and then made a career off-world in the Mercato Domain. Then followed the rescue of the cloud realm, that is, the Mercato Domain. Is not known whether there is a real basis for him saving the real interstellar Mercato Empire of Trade. Perhaps this part is just a necessary dramaturgical twist to make Uri Tza Meka achieve hero status. After that Uri Tza Meka returns to Kisor. And this is where the most important part of the story begins – in the Kisoran understanding.
Coming back from the cloud realm Uri Tza Meka becomes very powerful. According to legend, he is awarded the title "king of the terrestrial realm". Perhaps he was actually king of the Kisori. At that time Kisor was a monarchy since the office of governor for the Mercatos had turned into actual kingship 400 years earlier. The designation "king of the terrestrial realm" might indicate the head of the Kisori, as opposed to the "king of the cloud realm", the Mercato ruler, their Irun. However, there is no indication in the ancient Kisori data sources rediscovered in the new interplanetary age that the royal Kisori succession line was interrupted in favor of a heroic newcomer. There are many news articles available from the last years before the Middle Ages Catastrophe. These sources report in detail about the events before the fall making the people of that time well known to us. More likely, Uri Tza Meka worked in a leading administrative position in charge of defense or technology. The legendary figure Uri Tza Meka might in fact be identical to Isulisamikal, the last department head of foreign technology in the Science Directorate. This would fit the career of a Kisori returning to the home planet after a technology-oriented assignment by the ruling interstellar empire.
The name Isulisamikal sounds unfamiliar for today's Kisori. But the three-part naming scheme we are used to appeared only in the Kisori Middle Ages. At the time of oral tradition, the names of protagonists were probably adapted to the expectations of the audience. Quite naturally, due to the Early Middle Ages Consonant Shift, the name I-suli-sa-mika-l develops almost perfectly into uri-tza-meka. So, the adventures of the real Kisori Isulisamikal might have given rise to the epic of Uri Tza Meka. At least, Ghislaine Tsibinda is convinced of that.
Nobody has been interested in the historic Isulisamikal before. She lived 6700 years ago, and she was only one of more than 80 billion Kisori at that time. Still, Tsibinda considers her the key to understanding the legend. He not only uses the legend as a source, but he also delves deeply into Isulisamikal's life and into the activities of the Kisoran Royal Science Directorate of the time, as far as the ancient sources allow for it.
In the 3120s Tsibinda starts by searching publicly available databases. Kisoran historians had systematically recorded the moving past of their people compiling all information from earlier eras. The data includes huge amounts from the 5th millennium BCE, just before the Middle Ages Catastrophe. It comes primarily from entertainment and news programs rediscovered by the Kisori on the moons of their own system. To a lesser extent, there was also data on earlier periods available, from the Golden Empire of Kisor 12000 years ago and even from the first empire 15000 years ago.
However, in the meantime another blow of fate had hit the Kisor Twins. At the time of Ghislaine Tsibinda's research, the Kisor Twins are nothing but ice deserts. About a hundred years before Tsibinda started, Leccians of Sol had waged a religiously motivated campaign of destruction against Kisor. By then Kisor had already been weakened by its conflicts with the Sol-based first Reshumana. Then, sometime after Sol had fallen to the Leccians, these also campaigned against the Kisor system – a war ending with a kinetic bombardment of the two planets and the extinction of the modern Kisori civilization.
Some 6700 years ago the fall into the Middle Ages was a side effect of years of ruthless plundering and raiding after the Mercato Empire of Trade had suddenly vanished. The security situation had worsened over many years finally resulting in the destruction of its cities and all orbital infrastructure. Compared with that, the Leccian strike against Kisor in 2924 was done quickly and with the explicit intent of destroying Kisor. The campaign was supposed to be a punishment for the sacrilege committed by the Kisori when they attacked the Leccian's holy system, which as a matter of fact, was Sol at the time. For Kisor the attack of 2924 had even more severe consequences than the fall 6700 years before. In 2924 the two planets were almost completely sterilized by kinetic bombardment. Within weeks the entire surface was turned upside down while dust clouds were completely engulfing both planets. Temperatures dropped sharply turning the Kisor Twins into ice planets within a few years. And of course, most of the historical archives Tsibinda has been counting on were lost in the process.
So, between 3050 and 3070 Ghislaine Tsibinda leads several expeditions to former military outposts in the interstellar neighborhood of Kisor hoping to find backups of historical archives. Tsibinda reasons that the religiously motivated attack of 2924 was – while having been of surprising speed and ferocity – not really unexpected. It rather was the fatal end of a 100 years long decline with many interstellar conflicts, with wars between developed civilizations, and attacks by techno-barbarians. The situations in the 30th century CE and just before the Middle Ages Catastrophe in fact share similarities. In both cases Kisor had been weakened by sustained outside attacks. The Kisori often had reason to worry and care to safeguard the data of their civilization. Perhaps, Tsibinda argues, there might still be backups of the Kisori information network at military outposts – which might also contain historical archives. And perhaps Kisori military historians of the 30th century CE, in a desperate situation, were interested in the measures their people had taken 6700 years earlier to avert doom – which in turn would be exactly what the Tsibinda group is interested in. At least that was the idea.
Tsibinda's group does indeed find some backups at old Kisoran outposts. However, access to the data proves difficult in practice. Most of the abandoned bases have been looted or the information technology has been repurposed in the meantime. Furthermore, all data found is encrypted and the keys have long been lost. Since military encryption technology is quantum hard and unbreakable, they do not achieve much with respect to useful historic data.
Only one base discovered by Tsibinda is still occupied by military personnel holding out for more than a century. They resent being tracked down. The crew of this secret base in fact keeps backups of the – once again – vanished Kisori civilization with the goal of handing them over to the new Kisori, later when the home planets are finally repopulated. Yet the data is still subject to military secrecy 100 years later. Long negotiations, confidence-building measures, and secret material aid over several years are needed to change the commanding officer's mind.
The Kisori eventually provide Ghislaine Tsibinda with access to the civilian part of the data once freely available on the Kisori network. This includes entertainment programs, news, ancient lore, encyclopedias, technology databases, and historical archives 6700-year-old sources. This is a far cry from a complete data set, because the storage capacity of the base is much smaller than that of the original planet wide network, but it is still large enough much that the data cannot be transferred or copied easily. So, the Tsibinda group must run its information gathering tools on site. Automatic classifiers, data miners, and association agents keep checking the data for years until a picture of the conditions preceding the Middle Ages Catastrophe is formed.
For several millennia the local sector including Kisor had been part of the huge Solemic empire. But then about 7500 years ago Mercatos, the galactic traders, suddenly became aggressive. They attacked the Solemic Empire destroying its interstellar infrastructure. Finally, the Mercatos won and founded their own so-called Empire of Trade. For Kisor the switch was almost unnoticed because the conflict was largely carried out in interstellar space. This new empire guaranteed peace and free trade. The Kisor Twins prospered and after several centuries they were rich enough to buy themselves free from taxes. Being located inside the borders of the Mercato Empire, they were still well protected, but otherwise largely independent. However, the situation only appeared to be stable. The Empire of Trade was the work of one single Mercato individuum, a charismatic figure, the Mercato Irun. Usually, Mercatos do not establish dominions. As traders they travel in clan ships without any ambition for power. And when the Irun died after 700 years, the other Mercato clans immediately returned to their old trading habits.
When the news of the Irun's death spread, the Empire of Trade disappeared in an instant. It left behind a prosperous but defenseless sector, because the Mercatos had banned all military technology among the species within their sphere of influence. Without the empire's protection the wealthy but undefended former Mercato vassals were easy prey. Not all species and factions have high morals standards like the Kisoran Alturism. Species with different biology often have incompatible ethical systems. They are neither good nor bad, just different and for some of them a region of defenseless star systems was legitimate prey. Apparently, a wave of extortion, looting, and piracy broke out on the former Mercato vassals. And in the midst of it were the two Kisor planets. Many aggressors could not be identified even then. There are reports about raids by insectoids, probably Chinti swarms, about negotiations with rouge Interian "persons" who kept coming back despite high payments, and – almost a cliché, Kelan pirates.
The last news preceding the fall 6700 years ago describe a desperate situation. Kisor was repeatedly threatened by armed invaders. Planetary orbits were occupied. Interplanetary traffic was cut off from the surface. Interplanetary infrastructure and planetary targets were destroyed, sometimes as a warning, sometimes as a punishment. Kisor was helplessly trying to build defenses, but the attacks were too numerous. New terrible news kept coming all the time.
While Kisor's industry was struggling to build weaponry after 700 years without any military experience the Royal Science Directorate tried a different approach. They set out to harness – then already 700 years old – technology of the Solemic Empire. These activities are not described directly by any source. However, Tsibinda deduces from the legends and from circumstantial evidence provided by digital sources just before the fall, that the Kisori suddenly gained access to very powerful military technology able to repel the attackers.
The older – yet technologically modern – accounts report that the Science Directorate managed to build a defense for their star system using exo-technology. It can be assumed that Isulisamikal, the head of the foreign technology department at the time, was involved.
In the newer – yet archaic – tale, Uri Tza Meka traveled to the distant Dragon Islands in search of fire-breathing monsters (humans would say "dragons") which, according to lore, could be tamed by electromagicians.
In modern interpretation "dragons tamed by electromagicians" is a paraphrase for autonomous weapons systems controlled by AI-managers. There are no details in the modern accounts of how and where the Science Directorate got these weapons. The details were certainly kept secret. Ghislaine Tsibinda hypothesizes that the "islands" mentioned in the legends are installations of the late Solemic Empire in deep space, a kind of islands in the void. According to legend, dragons were sleeping in the ruins of ancient castles. A rather apt description for decommissioned AI-controlled weapon systems in the remains of Solemic infrastructure clusters.
The Uri Tza Meka epic describes the dangerous reawakening of these dragons. To prove himself worthy he had to perform difficult tasks, survive adventures, solve riddles, and, in the end, tame the dragons with cunning. This can also be interpreted in a modern way: certainly, there are riddles to be solved, when trying to reactivate 700-year-old exo-technology. For sure there are many problems to be overcome, not only understanding an advanced alien information architecture, but also with security routines that had to be disabled in creative ways. Autonomous conscious AI can either be reprogrammed or, if this is not possible, it might at least be talked into cooperation. This can be done by deceiving the AI, for example by pretending that it is fighting its old enemies. The description "tamed by cunning" suggests that the team of Isulisamikal was able to trick the AIs of the old weapon systems.
Today, it is impossible to tell which weapon systems were used at the time, but they seem to have been very effective. News reports are full of praise for the Science Directorate and some feeds even feature Isulisamikal on the front page. It can be assumed that the weapons Isulisamikal acquired were immensely powerful. Tsibinda believes, that they in fact originated from the Solemic Empire. They had been built for a high-tech conflict between this empire, one of the largest and oldest dominions that had ever existed, and the Mercatos, who having been space faring for millions of years. The few relics of the Solemic Empire known to us are highly sophisticated, not at the level of supercivilizations like Mansalu and Taumass, but well beyond our own tech-level. The Solemic Empire seem to have used their long rule well, for advanced technological development, a fact which by the way does not match other claims about the stagnant and stifling character of this empire. The Mercatos on the other hand, having been active on the interstellar stage even longer, could draw upon information sources and technologies unknown to all other species. So, the power struggle between these different but evenly matched rivals was fought on a very high technological level with correspondingly sophisticated weapons. In any case, the weapons seem to have been far superior to everything Kisor's attackers could field. As long as they worked.
At some point the weapons became unusable. Perhaps they required ammunition that Kisoran technology could not produce or maybe the AIs found out that they were being tricked suddenly refusing to fight for the Kisori. Legend has it that a long time ago the dragons had been put under a curse and that they had been promised to be freed from their spell by serving Uri Tza Meka. Each dragon was only ready for one battle and then flew away. So, Uri Tza Meka's dragons den emptied over time. It turned out the dragons had only deferred the inevitable doom.
A new expedition to the Dragon Islands was supposed to find more dragons or other magical items to defend the realm. But the night before departure the plan was betrayed and Uri Tza Meka's group of adventurers was ambushed. The king sacrificed himself to preserve the royal insignia which included the Book of Electromagic containing the incantations and secret rituals required to tame dragons, and a map of the Dragon Islands. By modern understanding this would have been access codes for the weapon AIs, activation procedures, and coordinates of the Solemic relics.
The digitally recorded history ends here, at the very moment when Kisor's interplanetary civilization was shattered. However, the oral tradition continues after Uri Tza Meka's sacrifice. The Uri Tza Meka epic is seamlessly continued by the Dragon Legends. There are countless stories with a dragon in the shape of a Kisori as a kind of superhero. According to legend, the dragon was a friend of king Uri Tza Meka. The dragon helped the king out of gratitude for having been awakened from a hundred-year long sleep. In the beginning this dragon was so powerful that he could crush all opponents. But then one day in a fight against a foreign mage he was cursed by a spell banishing him into the body of a Kisori. The spell took away his dragon powers. From then on, he needed long rests after great efforts. Though he was still strong, he was no longer invincible.
After Uri Tza Meka's death, the dragon roamed over the land for 1000 years helping the Kisori people as much as he could. He fought evil trying to put the broken world back together. All the time he carried the royal insignia he had received from Uri Tza Meka – including the map of the Dragon Islands. He kept the map for the purpose of returning to the Dragon Islands for more help from other dragons still sleeping in the ruins of forgotten castles. Many of the Dragon Legends follow the Kisoran arc of destiny: the dragon discovers a treasure, for example technology or information giving hope for reconstruction, then comes a setback and in the end the dragon must move on alone.
In the modern interpretation of Ghislaine Tsibinda, the dragon was one of the Solemic weapon AIs. The AI was reactivated by Isulisamikal and helped defend Kisor by controlling Solemic technology. At some point, this suddenly seems to have stopped working. Perhaps the information structure of the AI was corrupted by info-weapons during battle or maybe its physical interfaces were damaged. In any case, it could no longer control Solemic technology. Thus, an important part of the defense failing Kisor was eventually overrun and its cities destroyed by orbital bombardment ("enemies let the sky fall onto the earth"). At the moment of greatest despair, Isulisamikal transmitted the most important data and coordinates to her friend, the AI.
The legends suggest that after the catastrophe the AI spent a very long time on Kisor-Beta. As a "dragon in Kisori shape", the AI apparently used a Kisori android body. It may well be possible that it was a nanocomplex able to take on any shape choosing a Kisori appearance so as not to attract attention among the real Kisori. The AI tried to help the people by recovering technology and putting it back into operation to stop the descent following the fall. Time and again it also had to fight, sometimes against Kisoran warlords striving to cut a piece of the post fall chaos for themselves, sometimes against desperate people just trying to survive by stealing from others. Usually, the AI fought just like anyone else with sword and shield, but it also employed magic – in other words: its nanotech arsenal – or by persuasion and seduction meaning advanced memetics techniques. Yet, the physical power of the AI was limited by the availability of energy sources and according to legend it needed "long rests after great efforts". This sounds like a small charging power requiring a long time to replenish the energy storage after periods of high power consumption.
The Dragon Legends are open-ended. We do not know the whereabouts of the AI. It might have been destroyed in a fight or by an accident. It may have stopped working when self-repair failed after 1000 years, but it is also possible that the AI lasted throughout the entire 3000 years long medieval period to be active right into the new modern era of Kisor.
Ghislaine Tsibinda starts his analysis by focusing on the map of the Dragon Islands and on the activities of the Royal Science Directorate. There are many indirect references to actions of the Science Directorate at the time in the records provided by that surviving military outpost:
- There are queries for information by Kisoran NGOs to the Royal Administration. Responses given under the Royal Freedom of Information declaration include details of times, places, and people working for the Science Directorate and particularly for the department of Foreign Technology.
- A transcript of a hearing on a civil claim for damages names the exact arrival date of a witness who, according to other documents, was with the Science Directorate under Isulisamikal. Travel times can be deduced from these documents.
- Even 6700 years ago on Kisor, there were so-called secret-observers, people whose hobby was to hang out at military bases with camping chairs (or to sneak up on asteroid bases with remote-controlled telescopes) meticulously recording air/space traffic to detect patterns in secret government activities. These secret-observers posted extensive lists of takeoffs and landings on the public networks, some of which are preserved in the backups.
From all these sources an associative data-miner creates a 4-dimensional probability distribution in time and space for the activities of the task force around Isulisamikal.
Another data miner searches through the Dragon Legends for representations of the map. Some stories make reference to the map describing its contents or at least relative distances between known landmarks. The "triangular mountains two hours from the invisible cliffs" might in fact be the pyramids in the Abunnaz star system. The "invisible cliffs" may stand for a well-known gravitational sinkhole of dark matter 1.4 light-years from Kisor. The miner evaluating the reliability of references assembles the most likely variations of the map.
The combination of probabilistic motion data with potential map variants – taking into account stellar motion over the last 6700 years – leads to possible locations of Solemic relics, the legendary Dragon Islands. Most target coordinates are in interstellar space with a margin of error in the order of light weeks. Assuming that Solemic infrastructure was located near sources of raw materials the search space reduces to "only" a few cubic light-years in total. A huge but solvable task.
Ghislaine Tsibinda and her partners mobilize the public of their home planet M'kele. An extraordinarily successful crowd-funding campaign raises the funds necessary to charter a small fleet of search vessels. The crews are composed of volunteers. Equipment and supplies are paid for by merchandising and product placement in infotainment programs. Enthusiasts from M'kele also join in with their private vessels. The campaign's information service assigns search volumes to anyone wanting to participate. Campaign tokens and profit shares are traded on the stock market. After 12 years the campaign has been able to check half of the search space. If one shares Tsibinda's assumption that the legends are based on real events, then the probability of success per volume increases the longer the search lasts. So, stock market values of campaign tokens skyrocket inducing commercial prospectors to participate.
After 17 years and 95% of the probability-weighted search space a volunteer ship finally discovers a Solemic complex: huge installations in space, once rotating habitats now fragments drifting apart, damaged ships, destroyed segments of FTL tracks, defunct fabs, inactive computronium clouds, but also well-preserved clusters of industrial equipment that look like they are ready to start just waiting for a power source.
Later it is discovered that private prospectors had known the cluster for five years. They were exploiting the relics in secret not reporting their findings because according to the campaign's bylaws signed by anyone applying for search volumes, they were expected to hand over the coordinates for a decent but comparably small reward. These prospectors claim ownership by right of discovery, but eventually the courts award the ruins to the Tsibinda campaign.
So, Ghislaine Tsibinda did in fact solve one of the greatest mysteries of historical science – through her imagination, by willpower and persistence. Her contribution will never be forgotten.
She declares her life's work completed. 361 years after her activation as a logistics management AI, she shuts down voluntarily. Her last wave: "It cannot get any better now". She had never liked the Kisoran arc of destiny. After this triumph anything less is out of the question for her.
An authorized static personality simulation is publicly available for questions and discussions at any time.
The Great Expansion
There are still lots of small an short entries. The are great ideas and great milestones. They deserve more detail and love. First results of the expansion campaign:
2136 1000 in Space
2154 New Living Space
2155 Asteroid Mining
2158 Space Patrol
2179 Private Asteroid Base
2182 End of Venus Terraforming
2187 Moon Deportations
2192 Anti-Expansionist Terror
2197 Lunar Revolt
2205 Corporate Cosmos
2222 Space Piracy
2231 United Planets
2234 Orbit's End
2247 Quantum Leap
2248 Gemini Disaster
2269 1 Million in Space
2284 Great Separation
2291 Illegal Research
2293 Expansionist Uprising
2302 Solar Coalition
2303 Space Trader Coup
2312 Alien Spaceship
2318 Earth Union
2321 Earth Isolation
2326 No Interplanetary War
2333 Metric Impulse Drive
2337 Lunar Takeover