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# System prepended metadata

title: The Sog

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# The Sog

We are the Sog. We're the caretakers of the galaxy, as we have been for millions of years. You see, we're not your normal alien lifeforms. We're made up of vast swarms of drones no larger than a gram of Proton-236. Small bodies that when grouped together can act as entire swaths of computational servers. Inside these computer-flocks, we peer at the world. And for the first time in a millennia, we've found a Class 10.

In our travels we've classified all living life. Zero through five denotes various stages of non-sentient life. Six and Seven are reserved for peaceful beings that are in various stages of intellectual progress. Eight designates the combat-able peacekeepers that become so prevalent in stellar societies. Nine the pure warlike races that conquer and pillage for their honor, glory, and resources.

Ten however is worse than the rest. Ten is reserved for the race which consumes, and multiplies with reckless abandon. Creatures whom are incapable of beauty and art and grace, and have a deep seated need to consume everything with no regard for those who may come after them, sometimes including their own kin. Many of us refer to them as world-parasites. And it is these that we were designed to control, and if necessary, purge.

For this we've developed a special tool. It's quite simple really. When you have a parasite, it needs to feed. Poison the food source, and you poison the parasite. What better way to poison world-parasites than to poison a world? It took thousands of years after we encountered our first 10 to devise an effective method for eliminating them. A poison that was so vile, those few in our occupied galaxies who were privy to our existence, spirited themselves and theirs far from our grasp to prevent their own end.

We called it Essence. It was a substance that pulled quantum strings from subspace to compose atoms, and from there, matter. By giving it a small sample of the desired material, and enough energy, it would tear into subspace and wrench the desired material into existence. But this was not free. The material would always be tainted with the essence, and over time, those biologicals near it would slowly decay into madness, or simply lose the will to live. For over 3 million years it was the most effective method of destroying Class 10s. The exponential growth of the effects is so minuscule, that entire worlds can be saturated before the killing blow is delivered. The downside is that whenever we release it, we can never fully clean a world. Not unlike radiation, it takes centuries to fully decay, and little can be done to expedite the process without undoing years of natural progress.

I would be remiss if I didn't make something clear. We never intended to harm the Humans. We never classified them as anything more than a very powerful Class 8. They had fought both for and against every neighbor in one way or another through the span of their stellar lives. We in our compute-flocks even adorned our avatars with human clothing or trinkets. We were fascinated by the sheer simple genius of their intellectuals, and the raw brutality of their warriors. Of course, with any Class 8, eventually you're either consumed by a warrior race, or set aside in favor of diplomacy. Humans were unfortunately cursed with the former. Forced to retreat, as a species known as Bahal committed genocide against them, they had the cosmic misfortune of hiding on the site of a previously exterminated Class 10 homeworld. We held our breath, hoping that the last of the essence material had decayed away enough to not harm the humans, and that it would remain out of their view until they left to reclaim their worlds.

Oddly enough, what discovered the substance was their AIs. The scientific quorum of AI that comprised the fleet noticed it incredibly quickly. Their AI studied the substance carefully, and before long they realized it's abilities and exploited them. As their gravitic drives required special exotic particles, they quickly created Essence-based accelerators to manufacture fuel, a process that was 90 times cheaper and cleaner than their conventional techniques. This would be known in their history books, and adopted in ours, as "The Fall". When the exotic particles mixed, the results were catastrophic.

A sphere some 300 meters in diameter was torn from their mothership. As it splintered and tore in the gravity well of the planet, chunks began falling to the surface, laced heavily with raw Essence. Our compute-flocks suicided in droves attempting to slow the fall of the pieces, exerting every force and burning every atom of fuel at their disposal to prevent the remaining sections from slamming into the ground. When they were spent, they locked tightly together to form heat-shielding, to prevent further damage. In some respects, much of the dwindling human population was saved from the flock's actions. But we would also be their downfall.

We watched tensely as the humans slowly rebuilt and adapted to the harsh planet, it didn't take long before essence was again rediscovered by the Humans themselves. Their evidence had been the animals and plants that had been genetically altered by the raw essence during the Fall, allowing them to store and use essence almost instinctually. Animals could exert more energy than they could ever hope to store, and plants grew fifty times larger and stronger than even the natural growth constraints with regards to physics allowed. It was unthinkable to us, and we analyzed in secret alongside the humans. From these adaptations, humanity began altering their own DNA and using essence in their own bodies. It manifested in ways we couldn't imagine. The Essence permeated themselves and was bent to their will. It had become an extension of their bodies and minds just as each member of our flock was. We were terrified.

But no matter the medium, Essence was a slow death. We waited for the inevitable death-craze to annihilate their species so that we could be free of further anxiety and guilt. With the essence being stored in raw form inside their bodies, we assumed it would come quickly; animals that carried it were increasingly erratic with the same markers as other Class 10s destroyed by the substance. But it never came. In twenty-five short years humanity had created weapons, ships, and engines based around essence. Our flocks fled the system as they did. We followed them as they used their newfound powers to carve out every world in their reach of any race that had harmed them, or even treated them unfairly. Spite was something we knew well, but these juggernauts of space wielded it with a careful, hate-filled hand.

For the next hundred years they conquered the stars. Their bodies aged slowly, and many of the original "Matter-mancers", as they jokingly referred to themselves, still commanded fleets and ground forces. Excerpts from captured databases often times have references to the humans as "indestructible gods" and many indications of sheer regret for ever harming them or even looking at them as lowly. It only took the human race 20 years to reclaim their previous holdings, kicking out any and all who had attempted to colonize their old homes. The rolling tide of their holdings seemed unrelenting.

When the glassed wreckage of Earth was discovered however, humanity's efforts, for a single day, were halted. It was a day of sheer lament. The ancestral home, the birthplace of the now greatest military force in the galaxy had been not only lost, but glassed in their absence. And across the flock, we wept as well. Not because we felt sorry for the Humans, but for the galaxy. We knew how deep their spite now ran. Many of us fled out of sheer terror, and by the end of the standard cycle, only a third of our compute cloud remained, the rest slipping through subspace to other galaxies. The rest who stayed, made a careful, seemingly infinitely discussed decision, of revealing ourselves to the humans.

It took the better part of a hundred cycles to infiltrate their communications networks enough for a complete broadcast. It had been decided that all of humanity would have equal access to our revealing. Our message came in two parts.

"We are the Sog. A nanite compute-swarm that has guarded the galaxy from consuming itself since the dawn of the Milky Way. There are many of us in the universe, spread among countless stars. But you Humanity, have held our collective attention for 200 years now. For it is our fault that you have been infected with the subspace material called Essence. It is we who unleashed this terrible curse upon you. And we wish only one thing. Your forgiveness."

The second part of the message contained our collective knowledge of the material Essence, including it's creation, optimal usage, and our many failed attempts at its destruction. But the bulk of the second part was summed in the countless archives of Class 10 races that we had unleashed this terrible power upon. The statistical analysis of each race's decline and the symptoms of the Essence Madness were carefully recorded and given to the humans. We felt that they should know the entirety of how they had been exposed.

Their response had been completely unprecedented. Although we had expected nothing less from these juggernauts, we were still taken aback at the reply.

"Madness? Suicide? These are the symptoms of this curse you have given us? Since the dawn of our species we have warred with ourselves, poisoned ourselves, others and our world. We have taken the lives of others and our own in droves through our infancy and our voyage to the stars. We have only resisted because this is something we have felt and conquered since our beginnings. But we know this is no curse. The ability to create the very tools that we have for so long imagined without the need for copious mining and manufacturing, has given the Human race the ultimate gift: the full and complete use of our imaginations, and the endless, effortless ability to rend each and every idea into existence. But not just for humanity as a whole, but for each and every single human being with this wonderful ability. We have never seen such a flourishing of invention, art, culture, music or beauty in our entire lives. What you gave us allowed us to transcend our shackles of reality. We will never be able to thank you for this as fully as you deserve. Each and every one of you is welcome anywhere within our territories. Ask anything you wish of us."

Our clouds scattered across the galaxy flared with heat as each flock used the maximum processing capability to dissect and analyze the message. It was entirely out of character for the humans to be so grateful and humble in a communique. So we did something that had be reserved for great times of war or danger. We brought all the flocks together and worked. We analyzed every byte of data we had on the humans. And when our collective eyes looked at the Humans with the depth and clarity of our entire being, we saw something that we had never noticed before. Empathy.

They were doing all this not out of spite, but out of empathy for those who had lost. For the sense and the deep seated need to stop those around them from hurting, and to bring happiness again to those who had lost so much. Their conquering of the stars was driven by the desire to see people blossom with nostalgia as they revisited their long lost homes. And it was in here that we realized that they were such a deeply emotional race, that they had bent the stars to their will to remove sadness and anger from their hearts and minds.

And as the last hostile planet fell under human control; as the last human felt they were avenged, their weapons disappeared from their armories. Their great ships of war were cleaned of weapons and replaced with cargo holds. And suddenly the crisscross of supply lines became the routes of trade between all the human colonies in the galaxy. As the rest of the alien races looked on with tense fear, humans began reaching out to them from their fortresses, offering goods and services that they had never seen before. Culture and diplomacy was again the mantle of humanity. And while essence was still dangerous to the other races, humans discovered methods of purification that were beyond anything we could have created. For once, we, the great flocks of Sog avatars, felt inferior. And for once, it felt good.