Universal Explorer in the Milky Way Galaxy: 1939 AD, Earth Time
Dom was content with his mission. As the rotations passed, his resolve grew stronger. There was no greater purpose for existence than the relief of intelligent beings. Before his relief, he had been driven by another purpose—the perpetuation of his species. But that seemed far away now. He still enjoyed the pleasurable parts of it, though. Explorer had pierced this average galaxy for some time now. The Senses activity was much more intense than it had been in deep space. In that forbidding place, the Senses had provided the Collective with a constant stream of simulated stimulus to overcome the eternal void of a place where even hydrogen atoms were parsecs apart and time dragged like an anchor on the soul. Hibernation was always an option, but Don had not taken it, always hopeful that the Senses would find something new about their destination that he didn't want to miss by sleeping through it.
The Collective was small, numbering 956,677, allowing Dom to know everyone without overburdening his enhanced brain cells. He had ample time to get to know every one of them. Foremost was Seala, his mate before their relief. The primordial drive that was in them before the relief was still strong, only now it was redirected into a self-renewal force so powerful that Dom and Seala felt more alive with each rotation. There was no need to procreate. Their number had not changed since the launching. Without shame, but with high purpose, they met in secret rooms of their own devising.
Seala was more beautiful than when he first saw her, coming out of the water thousands of cycles ago, but, for all her renewal, she remained unique and true to herself. Evolution proved to be a great diviner of beauty, and Seala was no exception. It was hard to improve on perfection.
In an atmosphere, they could still communicate by sound waves, but they rarely did. It was much more intimate and direct to communicate by thoughts. "Seala, what would you like to do?" Dom thought.
From a distant part of the Explorer, Seala answered. "Why don't we take the Tour of the Fourteen Planets? And then, we could feast by the falling water, and watch Tome and Kea making Love." Tome and Kea were legendary for their love making among the Collective. Although Dom knew them, he wasn't sure whether they were real or just a figment of the Universal Intelligence's imagination, provided by the Senses for their entertainment. Real and imagined had become part of the journey of many cycles.
They met in the middle. The Senses created the scene to their liking. Weightless lovemaking was unique, and they never tired of it, but sometimes they preferred their native gravity, the weight of their bodies on each other as they entwined. Kea was so beautiful and her skin so transparent, she fairly glowed. Dom never tired of watching her. "Look at that!" Seala exclaimed as she sipped sweet nectar, so close by his side that he nearly melted into her warmness. "Tome's sure is long! ... And I should know, because I've felt its full length!" Dom laughed.
Although Seala could have used her imagination to intensity the feeling, Dom knew she was just teasing him. Teasing always got his blood up. It was part of Seala's style. What she said was true . While love was monogamous in the Collective, the primal urge was not. On the Explorer, the combinations were endless. It was all part of the Universal Intelligence's way of allowing the primal order of creation to continue in a nondestructive way while relieving the boredom of the journey.
"Yes," Dom said, feeling Seala’s hand tighten around him and that familiar squeeze that he always responded to, "I have too, and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." His hand was nestled in the softness of Seala’s pubic hair, petting her like a kitten. Dom was thinking of the stark beauty of Kea's breasts as they heaved in orgasm. He was sure Seala could feel his thinking of another one but it was all part of the ecstasy of their love. A freedom from guilt that was so refreshing and new that it never grew old. Soon, deep inside her, Dom abandoned himself to orgasm. Seala was in orgasm too, as was the Collective.
Seala and Dom, and others in the Collective were growing more excited with each passing rotation. The galaxy was alive with activity, and the Senses were filling their minds with images of stars being born, dying, exploding, and collapsing. The parade of planets in one, two, three, and four star systems was as endless in their variety as in their number. And, there was life, mostly very primitive, but of great variety and abundance.
As the Collective traveled through clouds of dense gas, matter, and energy, they could feel the gravitational pull and critical mass that coalesced the gases into a star or group of stars, matter flung off or in between also coalesced into planets trapped in the superior gravitational pull of the stars, fired by their own fusion when they reached critical mass. Stars were as varied as their composition and mass, but they invariably radiated heat, light, and other radiation to the colder bodies around them. Life began as a parasite on these cold bodies, feeding off the radiant warmth of nearby star or internal heat from molten core. Given enough time and stability, life became intelligent, intelligent life developed technology, and intelligence with technology, always sought to leave the planet of its birth.
The Senses drew Dom and Seala close to these evolving scenarios. Even the imagination of the Universal Intelligence could not prepare them for the beauty and emotion they felt in this fertile place. While the Explorer skirted stars at a safe distance, the Senses drew on their systems and fed it to the visual cortex of the Collective. Dom and Seala found themselves on many a rocky shore, by a green ocean, sipping nectar in the hazy purple sunset of three suns, surrounded by thousands of creatures, so docile you could touch each one. Distance had its advantages. Some planets were swarming with creatures so violent that fragile bodies, unprotected like theirs, would be killed in seconds and devoured in minutes.
Strangely, intelligent life evolved more quickly in such violent places. Probably, this was true because it took more intelligence to survive predatory nature. The evolution of stars and planets demanded distance. Immense gravity, radiation, heat, and collisions were most inhospitable to life. Even the Universal Intelligence could not protect them from these forces. Red giants, while seductive subjects of study, expanded so rapidly that there was great danger in getting close. Exploding stars were more predictable, but impossible to approach within a parsec. Their gamma bursts could fry the Explorer and had to be avoided at all cost. The most dangerous of all were the black holes. The black holes were stars so dense that not even light could escape them. Like eddies in the fabric of the galaxy, they drew the surrounding matter and energy into their blackness like the Explorer gathered space dust. Even the Universal Intelligence had no guidelines on how close to get. The Explorer steered a wide birth of all black holes it encountered.
Dom and Seala were dining, watching the lava flow create a never ending painting of hot orange on black on the surface of an emerging planet, when the word came. The Senses directed it to the Collective as it was received: "Tap, tap... tap. Tap... tap. Tap... tap, tap. ...."
The tapping was a simple code, easily deciphered by the Senses: "Mr. Marconi ... stop. Do you read my message ... stop." A shudder of wonder ran through the Collective, followed closely by a sigh of discovery. Finally, after so long, a sign of intelligent life. The celebration lasted for nearly a cycle, and ended with a mutual orgasm.
From then on, the mission changed. The Senses continued to provide information on passing stars and planets, but it paled in comparison to the meager words coming from the blue planet. Starting with that first simple code, a trickle of words flowed to the Collective. Each word was savored, tossed about and analyzed. A disturbing pattern emerged from the messages. The creatures that sent them were often in distress. "May Day, ...May Day!" was picked up often, clearly a sign of great peril. Too many times, this message was the last one heard. It was hard, for all he knew of life, for Dom to think of it ending, especially like that. There were joyous messages of hope too, like, "Will arrive at 11:00am on Thursday, ... stop. Love, ... stop. Carl, ... stop."
Most disturbing were the cryptic messages of war. They were coded, but the simple codes were easily deciphered by the Senses. It was so sad, listening to intelligent creatures plotting to kill each other for nothing other than a small piece of the planet or an idea so primitive and weak that was clearly ridiculous. Most ridiculous of all was the fact that, with all their intelligence and knowledge, the Collective could do nothing about it. Time and space prevented their swooping down and saving this blue planet before its inhabitants destroyed themselves. The Universal Intelligence warned, with many scenarios, how primitive intelligence was predatory. Predatory behavior rose from the need for species to survive. The most intelligent species find ways to survive above all others. When intelligent predators develop technologies, they begin the endanger themselves. A common scenario was to make contact with intelligent life, then rush to the scene, only to find the planet devastated, with no intelligent life remaining. Dom knew that there was no time to waste. With the Explorer locked on to this fragile bit of life on its fragile planet, they could only listen to and watch the drama unfolding until the Explorer got there.
