Punctuated Equilibria
The geological record of Earth contains evidence for long periods lasting millions of years during which gradual evolutionary changes occurred while continents slowly migrated across the surface of our world. Sometimes it is claimed that until humans arrived on the scene, no individual species of life had the power to cause a sudden mass extinction of species on Earth.
Click image to enlarge (source). |
In the Exode Trilogy, the pek arrived on Earth billions of years ago and inserted zeptites into our planet's ecosystem. Those zeptites were used to mine sedrons and facilitate the development of Earth as a Garden World. Pek zeptites are indifferent to the occurrence of mass extinctions, but the pek will take action to prevent the complete loss of life from a Garden World like Earth.
one of the many Preland subspecies (source) |
Revelations
Previously, I've assumed that the pek were the first aliens to visit Earth, but Gohrlay assures me that the bumpha Interventionists reached our world first. The bumpha knew that evolution of organisms able to produce oxygen from water is a major biochemical bottleneck throughout the universe.
In an effort to keep out in front of the pek, the bumpha have always spread outwards as rapidly as possible, seeding planets such as Earth with the genes needed to allow biospheres to convert atmospheres from reducing to oxidizing.
When the pek finally reached Earth, oxygenic bacteria were already thriving here. The pek were, by then, used to bumpha interventions into the development of life on terrestrial planets.
Director of Forestlands
For his Demon Princes saga, Vance imagined a future in which very little changed between the year 2000 and 3500. In the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I imagine that the future depicted in Vance's Oikumene was first written into stories by a Vance analogue the Ekcolir Reality. In the Reality where those stories were set, the Institute was able to function as the instrument of the pek and keep humans from developing hierion-based technologies during the first several thousand years of the Space Age. The few known technological advances of that age seem to have been due to a small Interventionist effort known as Zodiac Control.
The Halting Problem
The pek "halting problem": extinction curve (source) |
the assembly of R. Gohrlay |
Other blog posts in this series
Celebrating 100 years of Vance
May 7 - Scutinary Vitalists
April 9 - Vance +100
March 6 - Mirky Porod
Next: Mission on Sogdian
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