A Brief Introduction To The Inverse Shadows Universe
The universe is a very strange place.
As it became aware of the possibility of life on other worlds, the human race was increasingly baffled by the absence of apparent alien civilisations. Logically, humans reasoned, any species capable of intelligence would eventually develop spaceflight and even if they were restricted to slower than light spacecraft they would have spread across the universe well before the human race discovered fire. A number of theories advanced to explain the lack of intelligent races, ranging from humanity being truly unique to a hostile force that tracked down and destroyed intelligent races as they developed technology. It was not until the human race developed warp drive, and later hyperdrive, that the truth was finally uncovered.
Intelligent races, it was discovered, generally fell into three categories. Some races never developed technology, never developed scientific methods they needed to understand the universe around them and therefore never progressed beyond the stone or iron age. Some races fell victim to their own technology, fighting a nuclear war or accidentally creating antimatter or black holes on their homeworlds, wiping themselves from existence. And still others developed socially as well as technologically, passing through the singularity and developing post-scarcity societies, and never felt the need to settle vast regions of interstellar space. It was surprisingly rare for a spacefaring species to colonise more than a handful of star systems, before they reached the point that further expansion seemed pointless. Their maturity led them to isolate themselves from other developing worlds, when they encountered them, and eventually to seek fulfilment by transcending become a higher order of life. In doing so, they effectively removed themselves from the universe.
The human race was unusual in that it developed faster than light travel before it was mature enough to handle it. Instead of a slow and steady settlement process, humanity exploded in all directions, expanding so rapidly that hundreds of planets were settled within a few dozen years and a number of races, trapped in technological bottlenecks, found themselves introduced to the wonders of interstellar civilisation. Humanity rapidly discovered dozens of worlds that had been left behind by races heading into the higher orders, and artefacts that veered from understandable to the completely incomprehensible; they stumbled across the Galactic Net, the creation of a long-gone race that allowed sufficiently advanced aliens to converse with their peers, and developed their own, often bootstrapping human technology on the remnants of alien civilisations. It was a time of great heroism, of pushing back the boundaries of the possible, but it was also an age in which some of humanity’s worst traits were allowed to roam free. Humans dreamt of a universe in which everyone was equal, but others dreamt of a galaxy ruled by the human race – or nightmares in which a handful of genetically superior humans would rule the rest of the race for the rest of time. In some ways, humanity’s vast expansion made it extremely difficult for the human race to mature, pass through the singularity, and develop a post-scarcity society. Even now, humanity has not quite faced up to the past and prepared itself to walk into the future.
It is often said that the Confederation is the last survivor of the wars for supremacy over the human race. It is a post-scarcity society in the truest possible sense; it has no trouble meeting the reasonable or often unreasonable demands of its human inhabitants, from simply ensuring they have more than enough to eat to churning out everything from private starships and fabricators to entire pocket universes and de facto immortality. The average inhabitant can live pretty much as they please, as long as they don’t infringe on the rights of others, and in consequence there has been a great flowering of technology, artwork, and everything else that gives the human race meaning. Crime is almost nil, with the exception of sociopaths (see below), and a combination of freedom of expression and very few laws have ensured a certain degree of maturity for the human race.
The Confederation has almost completely abandoned planets, choosing instead to build megastructures, pocket dimensions and planet-sized starships to house its population. The vast majority of humanity’s former colony worlds have been restored to their pre-discovery state, as much as possible, and left fallow in the hope they will one day produce an native race of their own. Earth herself is one of the handful of planets that remain inhabited, cleansed of the pollutants of early technological development and turned into a tourist attraction. Most humans will make a pilgrimage to Earth at least once in their lives. It is generally expected that the remaining worlds will be abandoned in the next few thousand years.
The average human child is born into a luxury their predecessors would have trouble comprehending. Most humans spend their first decades developing a basic understanding of their society, then indulging themselves until they develop the maturity to realise that pleasure is not the be all and end all of their existence. At that point, they start to search for meaning in their lives: they join the Peacekeepers (the de facto Confederation Navy), lose themselves in research, or join one of the uplift programs designed to assist races trapped in technological bottlenecks without destroying them through contact with a vastly superior species. A handful request private starships and set out on their own missions of exploration, although the Confederation generally maintains a careful watch on such missions and forbids unsupervised contact between humanity and races that have not reached interstellar space on their own merits.
The Confederation is a representative democracy, with each habitat electing a council that makes local decisions and a representative who speaks for the habitat in the Confederation Senate. Most matters are debated endlessly on the datanet, before referendums are held, and everyone is allowed to have their say (although there is no requirement for everyone else to listen). Politics are normally low stakes, which does tend to make debates more intensive. The few matters that are genuinely serious – contact with peer aliens, for example – are treated with more caution.
The Confederation’s medical science is second to none. The average human has been genetically improved to render them incredibly adaptable, to the point they are immune to almost all known diseases; it is child’s play, to the Confederation, for a human to change sex, skin colour, or even basic bodily form (or upload themselves into a datacore/android body/nanite cloud) and indeed most citizens will spend some time experimenting with such matters until they discover one they find comfortable. The average human is also effectively immortal, their cells regenerating automatically and in the event of actual death, most humans can be resurrected from their backups (although some humans choose not to have backups).
The Peacekeepers are the closest thing the Confederation has to a proper Navy, and they are – to all intents and purposes – the most powerful military force the human race has ever assembled, with weapons that can atomise planets and trigger supernovas. Service is strictly voluntary, with a training period followed by a first deployment; promotion is strictly on merit, and – unlike the rest of the Confederation – there is a firm chain of command. The majority of Peacekeeper starships are cruisers, capable of handling most operations alone, but backed up by planetoids if they face a more significant threat. Their ancestors would find the Peacekeepers disturbingly lax, when it comes to matters of discipline, but they are well trained and most discipline is internal (a consequence of most volunteers being constantly older than their ancestors when they join up).
Crime is relatively low within the Confederation, a natural effect of living in a post-scarcity society. There is no need to steal food, for example, and most human desires can be met quite easily without infringing on someone else’s rights. However, the human race has not yet managed to expunge all of its demons: sociopaths, humans who get their pleasure through hurting others (or playing games with other races), remain a constant headache. Most tend to be extremely adaptable and innovative, which makes them incredibly dangerous because they lack the morality of the mature human race. If they are caught, they are normally given a flat choice between personality reconstruction or permanent exile to an asteroid that has every luxury save one: the right to leave. It is often claimed that the Peacekeepers sometimes recruit sociopaths for dangerous missions, but that is simply untrue. The Peacekeepers have no trouble finding someone capable of handling nearly any mission, without the downsides of having to deal with a known sociopath.
Perversely, the simple fact that the sociopaths are willing to transgress so blatantly against the laws of their society gives them a kind of disturbing glamour. Some take advantage of this, broadcasting recordings of their crimes into the datanet and revelling in their infamy: others, perhaps driven by demons they do not fully understand, try to stay as undercover as possible.
The Confederation attempts to maintain friendly relationships with peer powers (alien civilisations advanced enough to give the Peacekeepers a fight). This isn’t easy. Some races are too alien to be easily understood, others resent or fear the human race; some are so distant, on their way to join the higher orders of life, that they are beyond all contact. A surprising amount of contact occurs at lower levels, meetings on neutral territory (such as the Life Sphere), or through the Galactic Net. By contrast, the Confederation attempts to keep its distance from less advanced races, fearing the disruption direct contact will cause to their societies. The possibility that the more advanced peer powers feel the same way, about humanity, is one the Confederation chooses to overlook.
Despite being one of the most advanced (and certainly the most populous) societies in known space, there are still mysteries that baffle the Confederation. A handful of inexplicable alien artefacts have been discovered, their mysteries beyond human understanding; several hundred worlds are dead, so dead they appear to be wrapped in timeless space and modern technology, no matter how advanced, is disturbingly unreliable on such worlds. The ancient sections of the Galactic Net whisper of godlike beings, and wars fought so long ago that they have passed into legend, and races that were actually designed by elder races, their origins long forgotten. It is rare for an archaeologist to stumble across something really dangerous, but isn’t unknown. The Confederation attempts to keep a watch on all potentially-dangerous alien artefacts, yet even the Confederation cannot keep an eye on all of them.
In some ways, the sheer scale of humanity’s advancement makes such mysteries harder to tolerate. But the quest to solve them may lead the human race into some very dangerous places indeed.
