The Great Game 🎲 Kollarum
3 Million Years
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Talfar looked again at the verse from The Book of Fractals:
Shine a white beam on the fractal orb’s colourful world, a microcosm in time, then let the beam continue on its path. A white line travelling in space across more fractals in time, through them, around them, across the Stream of Time itself into the Open Field.
Whenever Talfar was overwhelmed he went back to the sacred text, written a million years ago. From their laboratory caves above Vicino Prossimo’s Purple Sea, the Seven Sages used fractal orbs to see all situations. They used their deep knowledge of fractal mining to plant worlds within worlds, and to harness the infinite power of the infinitesimal. Their Book of Fractals shaped Vicinese culture and technology for the next million years. It gave inspiration to every Vicinese, whose deepest desire was for universal peace, order, and good government. The Holy Book had an entire chapter on it: Pace, Ordine, E Buon Governo.
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The Seven Sages were an idealistic lot, yet they were also realistic, and never tired of repeating that I popoli che non amano portare le proprie armi finiscono per portare le armi degli altri: People who don’t like carrying their own weapons end up carrying the weapons of other people. As a result, the Holy Book also provided a blueprint for the benevolent Vicinese hegemony of the nordern hemisphere, and for their general improvement of the Kraslika itself.
Yet the distance from la pace to il duce — from peace to tyrannical duke — wasn’t as far as the sages imagined.
As the Vicinese expanded, they came into contact with billions of species, none more formidable than the Fallarians, who had developed their own dark fractal technology. The period of expansion between 2 and 1 million years ago was the bloodiest ever. It’s euphemistically referred to as The Time of Cosmic Struggle.
Once the Vicinese and Fallarians gained control of their own vast universes (which contained about ten trillion galaxies each), they ventured toward the other 11 universes of the Kraslika, all of which had about a trillion galaxies each.
As the Vicinese penetrated soodward, into the serene skies and liquid cadences of the Dolcezza Cluster, they learned to translate their clear truths to the drowsy understandings of the lesser species, all the time making sure that they didn’t make them feel like they were being talked down to by their betters. The mid-belt was an even greater challenge, since these species felt that they somehow lay at the centre of the cosmos. It was true, they did live at the centre, but the Vicinese did their best to make them understand that they were looking at things from the side and not from the top. Looking vertically (down from the nordern pole), Vicino Prossimo was aligned perfectly at the centre of the Kraslika. The Vicinese soon discovered it was best not to spell out the implications of this fact, but to let the mid-belters figure out for themselves who the superior species was.
As the Vicinese advanced into the soodern belt of Nebulast, their advance slowed when they came face to face with the warriors of the Frozen Skiff and the Yellow Sky. The Vicinese message of Enlightenment became more difficult to see as it sank deeper into the murky regions of the Black Pulse. There, the Fallarians had built an equally impressive civilization based on what they called The Inalienable Rights of Individual Freedom.
Half a million years ago the Vicinese and the Fallarians agreed to keep to their respective ends of the Kraslika. The Middle Belt, composed of the Great Triangle and the Grey Phantom clusters, was designated neutral territory. As a result, the Kraslika became relatively stable. The Two Empires supplied a diplomatic framework, a stalemate of cosmic military forces, a logic of Mutual Assured Destruction. This effectively divided the Kraslika in three: the gold and violet light of the Vicinese fell brightly from the nord into the Dolcezza, while the crimson shadows of the Fallarians drifted upward from the sood into the Nebulast. The galaxies between them contained six trillion shades of grey.
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As Talfar looked down into the orb, he saw a dozen scenarios in the bright crisscrossing lines. Some of these lines converged to form images. He saw three forms rise from the green and blue planet of Earth. From the edges of the fractal, he saw the shadow of Thalphemera watching on. But the moment he saw the flicker of blue light in her eyes, she disappeared.
Among the fractal shades, Talfar saw the spiderweb lines of Knifestream, the most powerful Demon Priest in Fallar Discordia. Talfar saw his giant insect head and shuddered. As if to balance this frightful vision, he saw his old friend Farenn, who also had powerful wings, and sharp claws. These remained retracted, and from the outside he appeared like anyone else.
Farenn had travelled everywhere, for 200 years, gathering information, experience, and connections. He had sat on the scholarly councils of the best universities of the great capitals, and he had lurked in the lowest bars on the outskirts of the most violent towns. In the last 100 years he had become one of the most sought-after diplomats in the Kraslika. This morning — in an hour from now — he would step up to the podium of the Matterhorn Conference Centre. He would address the crowd of 33,000 leaders, ambassadors, and specialists, and perhaps influence the course of history.
Between the lines of Knifestream and Farenn, Talfar saw a jagged dark purple streak. This was the Derelectan named Dactalla. He had known this unnerving woman since his first foray into the Black Pulse. She was as tough a person as he had ever met. She grew up in the trenches of Fallar Discordia, rose through the brutal ranks of the Demon Priests, and worked her way into complete anonymity on a faraway planet. This anonymity had allowed her to seduce the Aatari spy Qayam, and to make contacts deep within the security apparatus of the Aatari Lok universe.
Looking down at the Milky Way Talfar saw a strange scenario: two Madonnas vaulted through space, the line bouncing in an oscilloscope and disappearing in a pink well. Beneath each line he saw a swarm of lines, expanding inward toward fractals so dense that it would have taken him decades to reach even one of their hearts.
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