aki’Drednanth believed, with a reasonable amount of scientific verification, that their consciousness was collective and eternal. The former assertion, given that the aki’Drednanth were perfect telepaths, was pretty solid. The latter, well, that was a bit more difficult to verify, wasn’t it? But the evidence was compelling.
Aki’Drednanth , literally if not exactly, meant the living Drednanth . The Drednanth , in turn, was the immortal psychic gestalt the aki’Drednanth considered their true species-self. It was horrifyingly complicated, but the theory could be simplified thusly: aki’Drednanth consciousness was collective, and each huge beast constituted a node, like a processing hub. When an aki’Drednanth died, her consciousness was dispersed among all the others. It simply folded into its own personal Dreamscape and existed as pure thought in an unimaginable, supercooled organic mainframe.
Naturally even the amazing, intricate crystal-quantum computer of an aki’Drednanth brain couldn’t contain the full consciousnesses of more than a few individuals, and the Drednanth was by simple arithmetic made up of trillions of former minds. This was where it all got a bit myth -y. It was said that the Great Ice, a band of almost-interlinked comets that was the aki’Drednanths’ home and ran like a ribbon through the near-centre of galaxy, contained structures to house the vast majority of the Drednanth ur-mind.
It certainly made a fun explanation for why they were so mercilessly territorial.
It got even more tricky when you took their idea of reincarnation into account. With aki’Drednanth, reincarnation was quite literal. When an aki’Drednanth conceived, the existing ancient minds bucked for position according to unknowable Drednanth rules, and one candidate wove herself into the new aki’Drednanth right from the first cell division. She directed her own growth, building body and brain electromagnetically around her consciousness, until the infant that was born was a new iteration of a being that had last been aki’Drednanth maybe two hundred thousand years ago, and had spent the past two thousand centuries as Drednanth.
You could laugh at an aki’Drednanth and tell her that her beliefs were a load of shooey, of course. An aki’Drednanth would most likely ignore you serenely. They had the pacific nature that Cratch whimsically liked to believe came hand-in-hand with immortality, and while some things did goad them to terrible anger, just laughing and calling them insane liars wasn’t one of those things. And a darn good thing too.
Why, you just had to hear their crazy ideas and legends about the origins and history of the universe – legends apparently garnered from the length and breadth of the eternal gestalt existence of the aki’Drednanth – to know that the majority of it was most likely down to interpretation and metaphor. Or, at best, truth viewed from across a vast species gap and through a cultural lens a light year thick. No wonder people called them wacky-wacky-Drednanth.
There were deeper and larger games at play, of course. The selection of which specific Drednanth was to become aki’Drednanth started in the mind-plane and continued in the womb, and then in the ferociously primitive litters aki’Drednanth birthed, of which only one or two in twenty survived to juvenility. Being reborn was just the beginning – if you didn’t have what it took, you’d be dumped unceremoniously back into the Drednanth ocean, and wait another few hundred millennia. There was the myth of assorted Drednanth heroes, giants among giants, leaders and demigods who marched forth from the Dreamscape in the aki’Drednanth hour of need.
There was, of course, the myth of the oona’aki’Drednanth – the New . Because all those thousands of billions of Drednanth had to come from somewhere, right? They couldn’t all be recycled, all the time. Occasionally, a true newborn would come, and be added to the
Aki’Drednanth , literally if not exactly, meant the living Drednanth . The Drednanth , in turn, was the immortal psychic gestalt the aki’Drednanth considered their true species-self. It was horrifyingly complicated, but the theory could be simplified thusly: aki’Drednanth consciousness was collective, and each huge beast constituted a node, like a processing hub. When an aki’Drednanth died, her consciousness was dispersed among all the others. It simply folded into its own personal Dreamscape and existed as pure thought in an unimaginable, supercooled organic mainframe.
Naturally even the amazing, intricate crystal-quantum computer of an aki’Drednanth brain couldn’t contain the full consciousnesses of more than a few individuals, and the Drednanth was by simple arithmetic made up of trillions of former minds. This was where it all got a bit myth -y. It was said that the Great Ice, a band of almost-interlinked comets that was the aki’Drednanths’ home and ran like a ribbon through the near-centre of galaxy, contained structures to house the vast majority of the Drednanth ur-mind.
It certainly made a fun explanation for why they were so mercilessly territorial.
It got even more tricky when you took their idea of reincarnation into account. With aki’Drednanth, reincarnation was quite literal. When an aki’Drednanth conceived, the existing ancient minds bucked for position according to unknowable Drednanth rules, and one candidate wove herself into the new aki’Drednanth right from the first cell division. She directed her own growth, building body and brain electromagnetically around her consciousness, until the infant that was born was a new iteration of a being that had last been aki’Drednanth maybe two hundred thousand years ago, and had spent the past two thousand centuries as Drednanth.
You could laugh at an aki’Drednanth and tell her that her beliefs were a load of shooey, of course. An aki’Drednanth would most likely ignore you serenely. They had the pacific nature that Cratch whimsically liked to believe came hand-in-hand with immortality, and while some things did goad them to terrible anger, just laughing and calling them insane liars wasn’t one of those things. And a darn good thing too.
Why, you just had to hear their crazy ideas and legends about the origins and history of the universe – legends apparently garnered from the length and breadth of the eternal gestalt existence of the aki’Drednanth – to know that the majority of it was most likely down to interpretation and metaphor. Or, at best, truth viewed from across a vast species gap and through a cultural lens a light year thick. No wonder people called them wacky-wacky-Drednanth.
There were deeper and larger games at play, of course. The selection of which specific Drednanth was to become aki’Drednanth started in the mind-plane and continued in the womb, and then in the ferociously primitive litters aki’Drednanth birthed, of which only one or two in twenty survived to juvenility. Being reborn was just the beginning – if you didn’t have what it took, you’d be dumped unceremoniously back into the Drednanth ocean, and wait another few hundred millennia. There was the myth of assorted Drednanth heroes, giants among giants, leaders and demigods who marched forth from the Dreamscape in the aki’Drednanth hour of need.
There was, of course, the myth of the oona’aki’Drednanth – the New . Because all those thousands of billions of Drednanth had to come from somewhere, right? They couldn’t all be recycled, all the time. Occasionally, a true newborn would come, and be added to the
Similar Books
![Jaguars' Reward [Impulse 3] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)](https://fs.collectorofbookboyfriends.com/511469/thumbs/152x264/jaguars-reward-impulse-3-siren-publishing-menage-everlasting.png)
