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“Spectrographic collation is in, Captain.” A voice rose from the general hubbub of the Longstrider’s main bridge. “Bogey is composed primarily of carbon and carbon isotopes, with large quantities of silver and hydrogen, though I must add that trace amounts of virtually the entire Table of Elements are present, as might be expected for an object this size.”

“Thank-you, Officer Cannae,” said Captain Rorson, all broad shoulder and cool command in his immaculate uniform. “But I don’t think you intend to share its most basic components alone, do you?”

“Er, no, right you are sir. Readings indicate base atoms are organized into a large variety of complex organic molecules and compounds common to biological systems. The majority of these are previously catalogued and highly familiar in our own galaxy. Only, obviously, not…”

“Not seen in something like this,” finished Rorson, indulging a bad habit. The light of the primary display screen reflected in his dark eyes.

“Mass readings indicate that despite surface area and volume,” added Lieutenant Trassamine from his left. “The object is hollow, and not particularly dense. Despite appearance and …composition, it is less dense than many gaseous planets, only about 150 kg per cubic metre, so perhaps 3% as dense as a terrestrial planet.” She gave an unconscious little cough. “I would find total mass, but without more information it is impossible to distinguish between mass of the phenomena, and its contents, which would almost certainly be many orders of magnitude greater. It’s like a very thin gauze wrapped around a bowling ball.”

“I think I know what this is, sir!” said Research Liaison Trebia. Her tousled hair seemed to get even crazier when she got excited. “Based on ancient star-chart information collected on this galaxy, years before the Experimental Super-Jump Drive was developed, this should be the site of the star Ra, the approximate mass of which would roughly equal what we’re picking up. Neutrino readings indicate that it is still there, and putting out a nice healthy 6,000 Yottawatts of energy per second. We just couldn’t have expected it to be enmeshed with- with this.” She broke off breathlessly.

Rorson inclined his head to one side. Somebody had to say it.

“It’s a Dyson sphere.”

“Oh, yes!” Gushed Trebbia. “And not a small one, Ra was a vibrant Class F! The Grand Scientific Council was only just starting to review committee proposals for such a device at the time we left port, and I can tell you they weren’t considering anything this ambitious!”

“Remarkable.” So why can’t I feel as happy and excited as you? Rorson added silently. It just hadn’t been what he was expecting, that was all. And not just because of scale. The object wasn’t quite spherical, but oblong, with long fins and flaps. Irregular bumps and tears stood out on a surface pitted with a worrisome number of micrometeorite impacts. Rorson blinked. Other than the tragic idea of seeing such an engineering marvel defaced, why should that be worrisome?

Because it means it's old, or fairly old. He thought. Whatever did this, it had the ability to do so a long time ago. If it’s still around, what could it be capable of now? He didn’t notice anything wrong with referring to the unseen sphere-makers -most of whom presumably had their own unique and original personalities, whether good, cruel, or simply alien- as ‘it’.

The entire thing was a shade that he would have rushed to describe as ‘unhealthy’, a mixture of mucous green and crab-back brown. Orifices that could have swallowed gas giants pulsed slowly, off-gassing clouds of matter or exhaust or who knew what. It bothered him to look at it, but why? After all, even stars breathed in their own way, steadily pulsing or vibrating in and out as gravity and fusion fought their eternal struggle. But then, such ‘breathing’ was only a metaphor, no star was really alive, whereas for this, he didn’t have quite the same confidence interval...

Its very asymmetry bothered him. If nests of leafcutter ants, wasps, and termites has joined forces to build a Dyson sphere, the result would probably look something much like it. Rorson got the feeling that no plan, even a monstrously complex one, had been used to assemble or spin or weave or culture the device, any more than some supreme engineer had ever presided over the most towering and complicated termite hive.

“There are signs of only comets, a few meteor fields, and some small planetoids elsewhere in the system,” said Trassamine. “Presumably anything larger was broken down to act as raw materials. No marks of ownership, let alone security. At this range, I can’t even pick up anything that would act as a linguistic designation. Whoever built this thing, they apparently weren’t worried about being attacked, having the – the building interrupted by others, or other people catching onto their engineering secrets.”

“Figures,” scoffed Trebia. “The Brass at the Federation Council have always got some flunky to come lecture us how any mega-engineering project will only make us a more tempting victim of attack from the Zarthon Clans or Korgax Empire or their angry neighbour down the street or whoever, and they talk about it being impossible to hide all the building techniques as though it meant eating a baby.” She tousled her hair some more and smiled. “Figures that anyone able to build something like this would have put all that behind them.”

“Right.” Said Rorson. This was not the first marker of intelligent activity the Longstrider and its experimental Super-Jump-Dive had found on its exploration mission. So far, they had found the cannibalized bodies of a whole range of frozen moons and ice giants, gnawed down to the hard core and all their ice taken, well, apparently taken somewhere else, as if a swarm of desperately thirsty locusts had buzzed down from the stars one day and chewed the entire planet to the quick.

But this was far more than such ice-mining efforts. To his knowledge, no civilization in his home galaxy had created a fully operational Dyson sphere, even if alleged wreckage from long-dead empires was sworn to allude to it in certain quarters. And as for the lack of security systems or counter-espionage mechanisms, perhaps that meant that at the time of creation this galaxy had been so peaceful as to make unnecessary, there simply hadn’t been any threats internal or external that the builders (weavers) had known of… Or there were no threats because the mysterious weavers had already wiped them out.

He could see the broad band of light of the elliptical galaxy stretching out behind the object. Beautiful, innocuous, and strangely welcoming, like virtually all galaxies he had ever seen. Superimposed on it, the Dyson sphere- no, Dyson cocoon was an ugly thing. Alien in many ways, it found familiar ground in his limbic system, triggering the same set of ancient impulses that motivated him to squirm when confronted by masses of crawling, pulsing things under rocks or in open wounds, and if he were a hundred AU tall Rorson didn’t doubt he would feel overwhelmingly tempted to raise one massive shiny dress boot and crush the thing into pulp. It looked like a wasp next, like a tumour, like a cyst in the body of the galaxy.

He could actually see the star Ra, almost make out its outline. The huge star looked sad and forlorn, like a glowing fish trapped in the belly of a predator at the bottom of the ocean.

His crew talked excitedly around him, and Rorson leaned forward, chin on fist, contemplating that endless field of other stars. There had, of course, been many objections, reaching all the way to the highest levels, to sending a scout ship out beyond the local hyperlane network to explore other galaxies. Not just because of cost, too, and while the fear had only rarely been articulated, the question loomed over the entire project, What happens if you stir up or attract the attention of something –anything- out there in another galaxy? Given the lack of a frame of reference, we have no idea what a hostile will might be capable of.

Probing this particular galaxy, MXT 3442, had been a compromise on that front- it was a small elliptical, perhaps in the bottom 5% of galaxies, and the resources available to any civilization that had developed there (in the unlikely event that there was one capable of even rudimentary atomic fission, it might be added with a cough) would surely be less than to the inhabitants of the Grand Federation of the Great Path. Rorson believed he had taken such fears seriously, even while volunteering to command the expedition. But had never felt them on any real emotional level until now.

So the captain of the Longstrider contemplated that untwinkling field of stars (how many of them had already been encased in similar cocoons or cysts, their millennia-old light reaching his instruments where he sat and happily lying that all was well?), and wondered if they had perhaps all made a grave mistake in undertaking this mission.

---

Found a new build I quite liked when playing Stellaris. Devouring Swarm, Ocean Paradise, and Catalytic Converter, with an Agrarian main species. I am very much a little-g gamer, but it made it pretty easy to conquer a Tiny galaxy in 52 years. That's not very impressive, but while waiting around for the Crisis (which never showed up- I waited until 2472 and the age-old curse that prevents me from ever meeting the Prethoryn remains in effect) I amused myself by mini-maxing the entire galaxy and building a few megastructures, which I find I never have time for in a regular game. Great tragedy of a Dyson sphere- by the time any civilization (in videogames or life) can build one, they probably wouldn't need to. I was heartbroken when I found out you can only build 1- I wanted to try encasing every star in the galaxy in one.

Anyways, it got me thinking- what would an 'organic' (since Catalytic Converters as a civic effectively make all your military hardware ultimately derive from organic materials) Dyson sphere look like? The result isn't what I had in my head, but I wanted to take a stab. I just liked the concept of taking what would normally be a wonderful engineering feat for the ages, and make it look subtly darker and more alien without adding any features that would be openly hostile or threatening.

Thanks for stopping by, feel free to leave a comment, and have a great day! As always, I would love to hear about your Stellaris play-throughs!

JD

Description

“Spectrographic collation is in, Captain.” A voice rose from the general hubbub of the Longstrider’s main bridge. “Bogey is composed primarily of carbon and carbon isotopes, with large quantities of silver and hydrogen, though I must add that trace amounts of virtually the entire Table of Elements are present, as might be expected for an object this size.”

“Thank-you, Officer Cannae,” said Captain Rorson, all broad shoulder and cool command in his immaculate uniform. “But I don’t think you intend to share its most basic components alone, do you?”

“Er, no, right you are sir. Readings indicate base atoms are organized into a large variety of complex organic molecules and compounds common to biological systems. The majority of these are previously catalogued and highly familiar in our own galaxy. Only, obviously, not…”

“Not seen in something like this,” finished Rorson, indulging a bad habit. The light of the primary display screen reflected in his dark eyes.

“Mass readings indicate that despite surface area and volume,” added Lieutenant Trassamine from his left. “The object is hollow, and not particularly dense. Despite appearance and …composition, it is less dense than many gaseous planets, only about 150 kg per cubic metre, so perhaps 3% as dense as a terrestrial planet.” She gave an unconscious little cough. “I would find total mass, but without more information it is impossible to distinguish between mass of the phenomena, and its contents, which would almost certainly be many orders of magnitude greater. It’s like a very thin gauze wrapped around a bowling ball.”

“I think I know what this is, sir!” said Research Liaison Trebia. Her tousled hair seemed to get even crazier when she got excited. “Based on ancient star-chart information collected on this galaxy, years before the Experimental Super-Jump Drive was developed, this should be the site of the star Ra, the approximate mass of which would roughly equal what we’re picking up. Neutrino readings indicate that it is still there, and putting out a nice healthy 6,000 Yottawatts of energy per second. We just couldn’t have expected it to be enmeshed with- with this.” She broke off breathlessly.

Rorson inclined his head to one side. Somebody had to say it.

“It’s a Dyson sphere.”

“Oh, yes!” Gushed Trebbia. “And not a small one, Ra was a vibrant Class F! The Grand Scientific Council was only just starting to review committee proposals for such a device at the time we left port, and I can tell you they weren’t considering anything this ambitious!”

“Remarkable.” So why can’t I feel as happy and excited as you? Rorson added silently. It just hadn’t been what he was expecting, that was all. And not just because of scale. The object wasn’t quite spherical, but oblong, with long fins and flaps. Irregular bumps and tears stood out on a surface pitted with a worrisome number of micrometeorite impacts. Rorson blinked. Other than the tragic idea of seeing such an engineering marvel defaced, why should that be worrisome?

Because it means it's old, or fairly old. He thought. Whatever did this, it had the ability to do so a long time ago. If it’s still around, what could it be capable of now? He didn’t notice anything wrong with referring to the unseen sphere-makers -most of whom presumably had their own unique and original personalities, whether good, cruel, or simply alien- as ‘it’.

The entire thing was a shade that he would have rushed to describe as ‘unhealthy’, a mixture of mucous green and crab-back brown. Orifices that could have swallowed gas giants pulsed slowly, off-gassing clouds of matter or exhaust or who knew what. It bothered him to look at it, but why? After all, even stars breathed in their own way, steadily pulsing or vibrating in and out as gravity and fusion fought their eternal struggle. But then, such ‘breathing’ was only a metaphor, no star was really alive, whereas for this, he didn’t have quite the same confidence interval...

Its very asymmetry bothered him. If nests of leafcutter ants, wasps, and termites has joined forces to build a Dyson sphere, the result would probably look something much like it. Rorson got the feeling that no plan, even a monstrously complex one, had been used to assemble or spin or weave or culture the device, any more than some supreme engineer had ever presided over the most towering and complicated termite hive.

“There are signs of only comets, a few meteor fields, and some small planetoids elsewhere in the system,” said Trassamine. “Presumably anything larger was broken down to act as raw materials. No marks of ownership, let alone security. At this range, I can’t even pick up anything that would act as a linguistic designation. Whoever built this thing, they apparently weren’t worried about being attacked, having the – the building interrupted by others, or other people catching onto their engineering secrets.”

“Figures,” scoffed Trebia. “The Brass at the Federation Council have always got some flunky to come lecture us how any mega-engineering project will only make us a more tempting victim of attack from the Zarthon Clans or Korgax Empire or their angry neighbour down the street or whoever, and they talk about it being impossible to hide all the building techniques as though it meant eating a baby.” She tousled her hair some more and smiled. “Figures that anyone able to build something like this would have put all that behind them.”

“Right.” Said Rorson. This was not the first marker of intelligent activity the Longstrider and its experimental Super-Jump-Dive had found on its exploration mission. So far, they had found the cannibalized bodies of a whole range of frozen moons and ice giants, gnawed down to the hard core and all their ice taken, well, apparently taken somewhere else, as if a swarm of desperately thirsty locusts had buzzed down from the stars one day and chewed the entire planet to the quick.

But this was far more than such ice-mining efforts. To his knowledge, no civilization in his home galaxy had created a fully operational Dyson sphere, even if alleged wreckage from long-dead empires was sworn to allude to it in certain quarters. And as for the lack of security systems or counter-espionage mechanisms, perhaps that meant that at the time of creation this galaxy had been so peaceful as to make unnecessary, there simply hadn’t been any threats internal or external that the builders (weavers) had known of… Or there were no threats because the mysterious weavers had already wiped them out.

He could see the broad band of light of the elliptical galaxy stretching out behind the object. Beautiful, innocuous, and strangely welcoming, like virtually all galaxies he had ever seen. Superimposed on it, the Dyson sphere- no, Dyson cocoon was an ugly thing. Alien in many ways, it found familiar ground in his limbic system, triggering the same set of ancient impulses that motivated him to squirm when confronted by masses of crawling, pulsing things under rocks or in open wounds, and if he were a hundred AU tall Rorson didn’t doubt he would feel overwhelmingly tempted to raise one massive shiny dress boot and crush the thing into pulp. It looked like a wasp next, like a tumour, like a cyst in the body of the galaxy.

He could actually see the star Ra, almost make out its outline. The huge star looked sad and forlorn, like a glowing fish trapped in the belly of a predator at the bottom of the ocean.

His crew talked excitedly around him, and Rorson leaned forward, chin on fist, contemplating that endless field of other stars. There had, of course, been many objections, reaching all the way to the highest levels, to sending a scout ship out beyond the local hyperlane network to explore other galaxies. Not just because of cost, too, and while the fear had only rarely been articulated, the question loomed over the entire project, What happens if you stir up or attract the attention of something –anything- out there in another galaxy? Given the lack of a frame of reference, we have no idea what a hostile will might be capable of.

Probing this particular galaxy, MXT 3442, had been a compromise on that front- it was a small elliptical, perhaps in the bottom 5% of galaxies, and the resources available to any civilization that had developed there (in the unlikely event that there was one capable of even rudimentary atomic fission, it might be added with a cough) would surely be less than to the inhabitants of the Grand Federation of the Great Path. Rorson believed he had taken such fears seriously, even while volunteering to command the expedition. But had never felt them on any real emotional level until now.

So the captain of the Longstrider contemplated that untwinkling field of stars (how many of them had already been encased in similar cocoons or cysts, their millennia-old light reaching his instruments where he sat and happily lying that all was well?), and wondered if they had perhaps all made a grave mistake in undertaking this mission.

---

Found a new build I quite liked when playing Stellaris. Devouring Swarm, Ocean Paradise, and Catalytic Converter, with an Agrarian main species. I am very much a little-g gamer, but it made it pretty easy to conquer a Tiny galaxy in 52 years. That's not very impressive, but while waiting around for the Crisis (which never showed up- I waited until 2472 and the age-old curse that prevents me from ever meeting the Prethoryn remains in effect) I amused myself by mini-maxing the entire galaxy and building a few megastructures, which I find I never have time for in a regular game. Great tragedy of a Dyson sphere- by the time any civilization (in videogames or life) can build one, they probably wouldn't need to. I was heartbroken when I found out you can only build 1- I wanted to try encasing every star in the galaxy in one.

Anyways, it got me thinking- what would an 'organic' (since Catalytic Converters as a civic effectively make all your military hardware ultimately derive from organic materials) Dyson sphere look like? The result isn't what I had in my head, but I wanted to take a stab. I just liked the concept of taking what would normally be a wonderful engineering feat for the ages, and make it look subtly darker and more alien without adding any features that would be openly hostile or threatening.

Thanks for stopping by, feel free to leave a comment, and have a great day! As always, I would love to hear about your Stellaris play-throughs!

JD