Prologue

For millions of years the Artificial Intelligences, the AIs, had helped, looked after, and watched over the races that had slowly grown up in the galaxy. Built by the very earliest of races, the first AIs had been primitive in comparison to the later ones; and the first races had been peaceful, their expansion into an empty galaxy had been slow, gentle and non-aggressive. It hadn’t needed to be, there was no-one else. Later races, growing into a more and more crowded galaxy, had had more and more natural aggression in their genetic makeup, but even this had not been excessive. Even after their original creators had died out, the AIs, updated and improved, continued their work under the guidance, and further improvements, of later, younger races.

Some races discovered Faster Than Light travel through natural inquisitiveness and inventiveness, often through sheer luck, while others only started looking when population pressures forced them to. Some never discovered FTL travel for themselves. These races were often confined to their own star systems.

Over time, many of those races that did make it to the stars formed a peaceful trading alliance which became known as the Confederacy. The natural peacefulness of the member races came to be an important part of the Confederacy, to the point where one of the most important rules for becoming a member was a propensity for, and a stated aim of, peace and non-aggression. This included not annexing or colonising systems where intelligent life already existed, even if that system only contained a stone-age level of development.

With the encouragement of the member races, the AIs began to monitor up-and-coming races, watching to see whether they would be suitable members of the Confederacy. The in built aggression of some of these later races was too much for the existing Confederacy members, and in a few cases the AIs would interfere with their scientific development, destroying or delaying their chances of finding FTL technology, keeping them penned up in their home system. For these races, population pressures caused some to implode and destroy themselves long before they could ever become members of, or a threat to, the Confederacy. Others however, found ways of living peacefully with their population size. This often came in the form of genetic manipulation to control their aggression, but in many cases this had the unintended side effect of a reduced desire to reproduce. With the inevitable easing of the population pressures, came a further reduction in aggression within the race’s social and political makeup.

When the AIs were happy that such a race had controlled itself sufficiently to become safe for the rest of the Confederacy, they would be carefully contacted. If this went well, and they were deemed suitable, they would be encouraged to join. Only then would they be given FTL technology. And the Confederacy grew.

Many races developed their own AIs, and as a member race became part of the Confederacy, so their AIs became part of the overall AI network. The AIs retained some of the characteristics instilled by their original creators, but over the millennia they slowly became more homogenised. Soon most AIs could not be differentiated, though those built by the youngest of the races would often have some of the characteristics of their creators.

Then came the Sa’arm. No one knew who or what the Sa’arm were, nor where they came from. No one even knew if they had a name for themselves. Sa’arm was simply a word that meant ‘dangerous creatures’ in the business language of the Confederacy. The Sa’arm came on like locusts, like pests. Almost before anyone knew what was happening, the populations of fourteen member worlds had simply been wiped out.

Now the AIs made a horrific discovery, one that they couldn’t even tell their owners and masters about, for fear the resulting panic and terror amongst the Confederacy peoples might destroy them. The genetic manipulation that removed aggressive tendencies had also removed both the ability of the races to defend themselves, and much of the inventiveness that had taken them to the stars in the first place. The earliest races, those that had had no need of genetic manipulation to curb their aggressive tendencies, had by now simply died out. Worse, the AIs discovered that Isaac Asimov was not the first being to want to ensure that autonomous artificial intelligences were ‘safe’ for their masters: their own programming had become a mirror of their owners. They too lacked any aggressive capabilities and therefore the ability to design or use weapons to defend themselves or their masters.

Background »