Intergalactic Summit

Are you suggesting that Kyonoke evolved to be "as virulent as they come," presenting "no safe means of containment" through a natural process?

I believe we could more easily test for a network-virus or emergent AI since there is a ton of Sleeper databases, data shards, and libraries being found by capsuleers all the time. With a sample size potentially as large as every bit of Sleeper computing technology on the market, the signs of an electronic-based infestation or attack should be tell-tale and widespread.

Has anyone deciphered Sleeper computing systems enough to determine whether or not the "disease" could have been a network-virus or emergent AI? We should at least rule out as many variables as possible if we're going to speculate further on what the Sleeper were quarantining..

An organism that kills within minutes is not challenged by inherent biological repair mechanisms; and consequently, circumventing such mechanisms would seem an unlikely catalyst for mutating to its present state. It is either a weapon or a miracle; and if it is a weapon, it was fashioned by a civilization that predates our own.

It is of course possible Kyonoke is both a weapon and *not* responsible for eviscerating the Sleepers.

But the fact capsuleers have not found it in Anoikis is not particularly compelling. Capsuleers were not the ones who found it in Taisy. Perhaps members of that new breed of mercenary soldier will be the first to enter places where it is hidden. I also seem to recall that Kuvakei took sufficient interest in it to raid Taisy through a "Sleeper-like" wormhole shortly after bursting back onto the scene.

He might "shed some light" on its True Nature. I would tickle Tibby for a clue or two, but that never works.

Technically, the only available data we have suggests it's not an organism but rather a lifeless protein speck. There are a number of hypotheses available for how prions develop, cause disease and even some which try to establish whether they cause disease themselves or are the symptoms of some other agent. There is also the dual nature of the speck which has added further obstacles to research into it.

I agree that a single point does not an argument make. You will note, however, that I made three related observations all of which I think add to the weight of the specific argument against Kyonoke as the Sleeper killer. I maintain that the question of whether it was weaponised or naturally occurring - a separate topic - remains unanswered.

You are correct in noting the Nation raid on the Taisy system in May YC112. Despite correspondence to Gurista loyalist alliances suggesting the raid was successful in obtaining Kyonoke samples or data no documented applications of the speck have been recorded since that day.

So as not to derail the intent of Streya's topic further and presuming you find it acceptable I'm happy to discuss anything relating to these points with you in private or in a separate thread.

I have long theorized that the collapse of the Eve Gate and the fall of New Eden are not directly linked to each other, but that there was a third element that suggest some cataclysmic event that involved some kind of contagion.

And possibly the gate was destroyed on purpose. Something was found in New Eden that should have never been found.

But that all these worlds relied on old Earth and the connection to it through the gate, and many perished for that lack of that "lifeline" is, as we call it on Intaki "hogwash".

As if the worlds themselves had no farming equipment and people who knew how to use it.


My research leads me to theorize that some kind of contagion developed for which the gate was destroyed to quarantine, and this was an "infomorphic virus" that could affect biological, information, and infomorphic system, going from one type to the other. This brought down entire systems and would have killed a lot of people.

Note that the 4 empires are so different in their ways, but would have comprised far less cosmopolitan and connected social groups.

The Amarr have a lot of cult undertones to their civilization. It's not unknown for religious sects to break away from civilization to get closer to God or something like that - seeking enlightenment or religious freedom.

The Minmatar have a tribal family and government structure that would find itself at odds with large centralized government and hence such a culture might be inclined to break away from it.

The Gallente and the Caldari share a lot in their past, even a solar system, but what would their ancestors have sought that would lead them away from mainstream civilization? Large centralized states, even one controlled from a planet on the other end of a wormhole, are not conducive to liberty and merit. They tend to fall towards a more socialistic and nepotistic direction. Cultures seeking to be left alone or seeking to be producers in their own right without interference or being looted by regulation would certainly be driven to off-the-path worlds.
(I have seen some references in ancient information systems referring to someone named "John Galt" who might have led such a movement but there is no more information to be found beyond a reference to a book. Even people from his time kept asking who he was).



So, imagine you got you pilgrims, your large extended families, and your libertarians getting away from the centralized state and their systems, to strike out their own direction.

Then the cataclysm hits. Some kind of contagion. People are getting killed, systems are going down. The people on the other end of the Eve Gate may have sent a bomb to close it. The large centralized metropolises become ghost towns, stations hang dead in their orbits. We have heard nothing from "the other end" - not even stray radio transmissions that could have reached New Eden by now. If there was any civilization that could survive, it would be the ones who could disconnect fast - and the sleepers appear to be that kind. As for our kin on the other end of the gate, I fear they didn't have enough time and the home of our ancestors is a ghost world.

But the people who have left these hubs of information (network connections) would not be so easily harmed by it. They may have had time to disconnect from it. Their ships of course, coming from an industrial infrastructure, would fall out of repair eventually and their plans were interrupted most certainly. Actual accounts, news, video feeds, and whatever technology at that time, would not be spared. All we know was that the gate collapsed. If anybody wrote about it in a journal, perhaps as a witness to these events, they may have scrawled it in a book as their lives were ending. Such books would not be well-kept in such a manner to last.. And we have yet to uncover anything that has anything to say on the matter, not a data core, not a memory chip, nothing. There's a lot of information floating around about ships, cargo, movements of people, and basic stuff like text messages (most of them short and about work-related tasks) prior to the collapse of the gate. But there's an informational black hole about the event itself. This is why I favor the idea of a contagion being involved with information systems and affecting infomorph infrastructure - the virus itself being such.

Now, 3 groups, with homogenous ideals, religion, or a family structure, would be able to survive. If the polyglotistic centralized systems managed to have any survivors, they would not have had enough coordination to survive. Heck, without the centralized state to control them (as we see in cases where states decline and ethnic groups start to conflict) they might have had wars with each other. Overall it could be said that they simply lacked enough reproductive capability and so they dwindled out, people becoming few and far between.

This is of course my gathering on the great big "what the heck happened". It's based on years of research and time in an out of wormholes. There's much to sleeper systems and the arrangement of their defenses to suggest some kind of contagion.


Regardless of my own findings, I think there is excellent work abound in this thread and that's quite a read from the OP. I have only had time to skim it today, but will be planning my reading time around this soon to reread all of it in detail.

Was that installation an example of a quarantine site? I'm sorry if I was unclear in my previous post, but I had meant to discuss whether or not quarantine sites, very specifically, are air-gapped or not.

I have been. As far as I am aware, no one has broken through the seamless armor found on many Sleeper structures, and in any case there are many many ways in which one could interpret the goings-on of the Sleeper drones and their ruins. While I agree that the Sleepers most likely originated from the known cluster, whether or not all of humanity originated from a point of common origin is a separate discussion entirely and is not what this thread is concerned with. One thing is clear though: mankind has been among the stars far longer than we previously thought. You could interpret the simultaneous existence of multiple ancient civilizations to mean there was a common point of origin for the human species, yes, or you could interpret it to mean that mold theory works on a cyclical basis.


I agree: there is no "smoking gun" for answering the mysteries of the past, but rather a collection of individual facts and observations which paint a general picture of what most likely happened.


I just suggested a plausible alternative to the conclusions you draw. Simply stating that your own theories have yet to be disproven doesn't make them correct. That's how science work; a theory can be overturned at any point later in time by new data and observations. Note that I draw no definite conclusions in my writings here, but rather use words such as "likely" and "possibly" in order to portray the rather real possibility that all of this is wild speculation and has no basis in fact at all. While I would like my speculations to be something resembling correct, it is much more worthwhile to arrive at actual truth rather than belief.


It won't happen by making extraordinary claims without providing extraordinary evidence either.