The Biomass

Descent into Madness 1

This is the captain's log of a military space ship designed to defend itself while transporting large numbers of troops. It is somewhat outdated in the age of drones and interplanetary peace, but is still sturdy and well-armed.

Date: 3 eons, 14,160 eras, 4 elapses, and 11,218 time units

We lift off from Kkruk today against orders of evacuation authorities. We have loaded a ship not necessarily designed for evacuation and filled it with refugees and rations. We are from a city that had one case of infection some time ago, and that disqualified all of us from legal evacuation. Some have debated whether it was a Biomass infection at all. Nevertheless, as long as we do not attempt to land on a GCS planet, we will not be persecuted.

The plan then? Perhaps we will float in space until our rations run dry. Then we will either starve or beg another ship to send us some food in an escape pod, or in some other way that does not risk them getting infected. Because we allegedly are at risk to be infected.

And perhaps one person in the crew of approximately 800 is infected. In that case, infection will be our end. I surely hope not. For now, we hope to live only a little longer. We are safer in space than we are on Kkruk.

Date: 3 eons, 14,160 eras, 4 elapses, and 11,297 time units

I find it bizarre that some people believe in a benevolent deity while almost nobody believes in a malevolent deity. No matter how much technology we accumulate, pain and death continue to exist, even before the Biomass. Now the Biomass has arrived, evidence that any pessimistic religious person could tout as proof of a cruel creator. But you don't hear about people saying that. Instead, you hear Savior worshipers coming up with these weird excuses for how a loving being could have formed an unloving universe. It just makes more sense that an unloving being created an unloving universe.

I can sort of understand some of the other predominant religions. Some believe the deity doesn't care, some believe one deity cares and the other doesn't, some believe in lots of deities. I don't buy it, but I can understand why someone else might. But if there are going to be people who believe in deities, why aren't there any who believe the deity is bad?

Date: 3 eons, 14,160 eras, 4 elapses, and 11,314 time units

I spoke with someone on board who is a benevolent monotheist, a Savior worshiper. He better explained to me how the whole good deity/bad universe thing works by sharing a narrative from ancient Sha!cuu/a. Now, the man himself isn't Bru/we'em, he's Gaspid. So that shows you it's an interesting story.

Basically, the creator wanted to love something. So he created the most loving thing possible: another identical creator. That did the creator no good: they were the same, and since they occupied no space or time, they did not actually change reality with this creation whatsoever. So the creator formed beings without the power of creation who would love the creator. But it was not meaningful love, because the beings had no choice but to love the creator. So then the universe was created. Any particular heavenly body could either shine like a star or remain dark like a planet or black hole. The stars would act in love by shining, but the blackness would not show love at all. But this was not meaningful love because there was no basis for decision and no consequence for it, merely random chance between brightness and darkness. Finally, the creator formed life. Living beings could choose to love the creator and the things created and be rewarded with a sense of purpose in life, or they could choose to abstain from loving and thereby abstain from purpose. However, the people who choose to hate live alongside those who choose to love, so all beings are forced to experience hate, even though the creator ultimately was a force of love.

Okay, so maybe it's not as interesting when I tell it. Anyhow, I challenged that the creator could have separated the good from the bad so the good don't have to suffer. But he pointed out that if we were always rewarded for good and always punished for bad, then our animal brains would be effectively conditioned to always doing good. There would be no free will in it, so it would be no better than the robot-like creatures that had no choice but to love. The idea is that we have to do good even when we get punished for it and refuse to do bad even when we get rewarded for it.