Entities and Novas

The Entities

In my dream I was walking in a dark wasteland, some kind of infinite parking lot dotted by weird pillars and surrounded by tenements. I was terribly thirsty… cold and thirsty. I must have been walking for hours. I was thinking that I would give anything for something to drink. Then I saw an orange tree bearing a single orange. As I approached it seemed to shrink away, but I ran and flew towards it and finally I grasped it. I was so thirsty I didn’t even peel it; I just squeezed its juices into my mouth. Oh, how it tasted! It was not just something to drink; I could feel it giving me warmth and energy. Sheer ecstasy. But all too soon I had squeezed it into a hard dry pulp. And it was then I realized that it was the sun. The juice dribbling on my clothes was light. Beneath me I saw that the parking lot was the Earth, covered in darkness and with my footprints all across it. I must have crushed continents just by running across it. But I was still horribly thirsty and cold – even thirstier and colder than before. And then I saw that those distant lights I first thought was tenements were other suns. And I began to rush towards them to eat them too…
-- Recording ENA0502113, psychological counselling session with Dr Tiebout Brobst and Juan Martinez Escudero

If the devil is in the detail is God in the overall plan?
-- The Doctor, from The New Doctor Who Adventures

The Entities live in bulk space, the many dimensional void outside the three-dimensional brane where the known universe exists. They are vast and powerful beings that cannot exist within the limited brane. Their structure, thought processes, everything is based on physics entirely unlike ours. Still, they need the singularities that can be detached from it by black holes and other cosmic detonations. To this end they create tools to manipulate the brane from inside – novas.

Novas are linked to the bulk space, which is the source of their powers. Surrounding them in the other dimensions is a symbiotic creature/tool that links to the spacetime geometry and enables it to be manipulated. By adjusting the brane different forces can be generated and shaped. The symbiont acts as an interface for the Entities. They need something that can perceive and handle the brane (the nova) and a way of sending and receiving the information gained. Symbionts are more like computer software than living beings, although they are highly adaptable and can reproduce. While in principle it is possible to create symbionts that animates ordinary matter the entities for some reason find it easier to exploit the characteristic quantum patterns of cognition. By controlling the symbiont the nova can be controlled and used as a tool.

The goal is simply to implode galaxies, stars and any other masses in particular ways to feed the bulk space entities delicious matter and baby universes. The method has been used for hundreds of millions of years but each species requires their own tuning. Right now the Entities (or rather, some form of automated device) are mainly inserting symbionts, allowing them to adjust themselves. The first wave of nova eruptions was simply the successful contact between human minds and symbionts. After some tweaking and adjustment a larger experiment was launched, the second wave. The goal of the second wave is to gain more data on the interface and enable one- and two-way communication with the brane. A parallel project explores nova replication: can the patterns learned by the symbionts be used to replicate new symbionts based on them that interface well? In the near future the Entities will move on to exploring direct control of novas and novas of greater power. Once they are good enough the entities will start erupting as many novas as they can and unleash them on the universe, driven by a program of mass annihilation. The novas will go into space to destroy first the solar system, then the rest of the galaxy. Reproducing on the way they will become a wave of unstoppable devastators driven only by the need to find mass and implode it.

The Entities are completely beyond human comprehension. Even the Dwellers cannot truly understand them. Existing within the multidimensional bulk space, bound by laws and forces that cannot exist within the brane, they are for all practical purposes inscrutable gods. To the Entities there is no intelligent life in the brane. Sure, there exist systems of human level intelligence and above, but that is still ant-like and trivial to the gigantic Entities. Even the Wall-dwellers are merely troublesome animals trying to interfere with a serious project. Still, the Entities are not trying to oversee everything personally (if there is anything similar to individuals or teleological threads among them) and that makes it possible to outwit their symbiont “machines”.

What are the singularities for? It is unknowable. It could be that they are used to inflate new universes, filled with life and civilization. It could be that the Entities are feeding. Or just doing their equivalent of mowing the lawn. Humans and novas, not even star-eaters, will never know.

Astrophysical Evidence

The Horologium Chain Reaction

O Krishna, pervader of the universe, you are lapping up and devouring all these people from all directions; with your fiery mouths covered by your radiant effulgences fearsome rays all the universes are scorched.
- The Bhagavad-Gita

A strange phenomenon observed by the Hubble Telescope in the Horologium supercluster of galaxies 900 million light years away. Surrounding an apparent void there seems to be a wave of supernova activity spreading across several galaxies.

This is another Entity intrusion, where an alien species is being used to harvest the universe. From the bulk perspective of the Entities it was just the start of one early harvesting program. Many similar have been started elsewhere and Earth is just one among many.

The alien novas look like squids or starfish made of black metal. Many seem to be totally solid, navigating through gravity control and telekinesis. They enter into stars, gathering plasma around themselves into blazing nuclei. Here they bask as they drift deeper into the star. From time to time they will reproduce themselves by simply creating copies, which also set out to implode their surroundings. Eventually the mass of novas will be so powerful that they compress the entire core around them. In a moment of titanic power they propel themselves outwards as the core implodes into a black hole. The supernova feeds them and gives them the speed to blast off towards other stars.

Most stars they invade have been abandoned by the Dwellers, but sometimes they meet opposition. Then the stars and spaces between them flame with warfare of literally stellar scale. Stars are detonated or used as enormous lasers, gravity control compress planets into deadly pieces of cosmic string or even black holes to hurl at the enemy. Illusions the size of globular clusters hide clouds of animated antimatter, and collective minds spread across galaxies seek to infiltrate and overcome each other. While the novas at first are usually easy for the Dwellers to attack, they tend to rally. Successful strategies lead the novas to reproduce, and their prodigious breeding often leads to a simple numerary victory. The Dwellers can at most slow their expansion, not stop it.