You will reproduce beyond the limits your own technology could sustain. You will absorb all that oppose me. You will bring the new stability." The third or fourth time she watched the item, Ravna tried to ignore the words, concentrate on Nilsndot's expression, comparing it to speeches she had in her personal dataset. There was a difference; it wasn't her imagination. The creature she watched was soul-dead. Somehow, the Blight didn't care that that was obvious ... maybe it wasn't obvious except to human viewers, and they were a vanishingly small fraction of the audience. The viewpoint closed in on Nilsndot's ordinary dark face,
复件 (92) air max1, his ordinary violet eyes: "Some of you may wonder how all this is possible, and why billions of years of anarchy have passed without such help from a Power. The answer is ... complex. Like many sensible developments, this one has a high threshold. On one side of that threshold, the development appears impossibly unlikely; on the other,
复件 (43) air max2, inevitable. The symbiosis of the Helping depends on efficient,
Fire 45 ClassStretch 10 Class, high-bandwidth communication between myself and the beings I Help. Creatures such as the one now speaking my words must respond as quickly and faithfully as a hand or a mouth. Their eyes and ears must report across light-years. This has been hard to achieve -- especially since the system must essentially be in place before it can function. But, now that the symbiosis exists, progress will come much faster. Almost any race can be modified to receive Help." Almost any race can be modified. The words came from a familiar face,
复件 (21) air max1, and in Ravna's birth language ... but the origin was monstrously far away. There was plenty of analysis. A whole news group had been formed: Threat of the Blight was spawned from Threats Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group, and Close-Coupled Automation. These days it was busier than any five other groups. In this part of the galaxy,
复件 (79) air max, a significant fraction of all message traffic belonged to the new group. More bits were sent analyzing poor ?vn Nilsndot's mouthing than had been in the original. Judging from the flames and contradictions, the signal-to-noise ratio was very low: Crypto: 0 As received by: OOB shipboard ad hoc Language path: Acquileron->Triskweline, SjK units From: Khurvark University [Claimed to be habitat-based university in the Middle Beyond] Subject: Blighter Video Summary: The message shows fraud Distribution: War Trackers Interest Group, Where are they now Interest Group, Threat of the Blight Date: 7.06 days since Fall of Relay Text of message: It's obvious that this "Helper" is a fraud. We've researched the matter carefully. Though he is not named, the speaker is a high official in the former Straumli regime. Now why -- if the "Helper" simply runs the humans as teleoperated robots -- why is the earlier social structure preserved? The answer should be clear to any idiot: The Helper does not have the power to teleoperate large numbers of sentients. Evidently,
复件 (31) air max, the Fall of Straumli Realm consisted of taking over key elements in that civilization's power structure. It's business as usual for the rest of the race.