Image from Steve Bowers |
[Darwin 1, 7732 AT]The Oshi-Durtam Web emerged around 5000-5200 in the far reaches of the Mutual Progress Association in the aftermath of the Version War, as a number of dynamic cultures still following their version of the Concord Ontology found each other, began to work together and set up their own wormhole nexus. The Web developed into a fairly unified culture, led by a merito-democratic government and with a local renaissance not unlike the one developing at the same time in the ComEmp (contact with the main wormhole nexus was achieved in 5248).
I never dreamed anything like this could really exist.
We landed in a clearing earlier today, scaring off a few bioids in the process; not everyone was killed in the collapse. The landscape here is like something out of a virch scenario. Not two kilometers to my right is a mountain, made out of metal that flows like water. Huge writhing tentacles shoot out and grab at flying creatures when they get too close. Behind me is a forest of diamond pillars, ranging from over a meter thick to barely wide enough to stay upright. Sunlight shines through them in a million blazing lines. The ground changes color like a soap bubble, and even the air seems to be watching me.
Every cubic centimeter of the Rash hums with life. Usually nano-based ecologies are fairly standard biospheres, but spiked with gengineering nanotech. Here it makes up the entire ecology, except for on the few inner worlds where only drytech was being used. I can hardly wait to get started. I'm setting up camp on the outskirts of the diamond forest. With any luck, my biochemistry will be too different to be recognized as food. -from "The Surreal Rash", 7732