Redemption Ark

The great work encompassed more than just the movement of stars, of course. Even if the two galaxies only grazed past each other rather than ramming head-on, there would be still be incandescent fireworks as walls of gas and dust hit each other. As Shockwaves rebounded through the galaxies, furious new cycles of stellar birth would be kickstarted. A generation of supermassive hot stars would live and die in a cosmic eyeblink, dying in equally convulsive cycles of supernovae. Although individual stars and their solar systems might pass through the event unscathed, vast tracts of the galaxy would still be sterilised by these catastrophic explosions. It would be a million times worse if the collision was head-on, of course, but it was still something that had to be contained and minimised. For another billion years, the machines would toil to suppress not the emergence of life but the creation of hot stars. Those that slipped through the net would be ushered to the edge of space by the star-moving machinery so that their dying explosions did not threaten the newly flourishing cultures.

The great work would not soon be over.

But that was only one future. There was another, Felka said. It was the future in which intelligence slipped through the net here and now, the future in which the Inhibitors lost their grip on the galaxy.

In that future, she said, the time of great flourishing was imminent in cosmic terms; it would happen within the next few million years. In a heartbeat, the galaxy would run amok with life, becoming a teeming, packed oasis of sentience. It would be a time of wonder and miracles.

And yet it was doomed.

Organic intelligence, Felka said, could not achieve the necessary organisation to steer itself through the collision. Species co-operation was just not possible on that scale. Short of xenocide, one species wiping out all the others, the galactic cultures would never become sufficiently united to engage in such a massive and protracted programme as the collision-avoidance operation. It was not that they would fail to see that something had to be done, but that every species would have its own strategy, its own preferred solution to the problem. There would be disputes over policy as violent as the Dawn War.

Too many hands on the cosmic wheel, Felka said.