(A.D. 14600) Endarkening: Dependence on talking machinery and biomachinery spreads mass illiteracy. Factions embracing anti-intellectual doctrines become predominant. Widespread system failures of infosphere leave whole continents without literature or learning for generations. Ghosts decimated.
Montrose retreats to the plutino worldlet 28978 Ixion.
Vega is the Pole Star
Myrmidon Era
• 16th Millennium A . D . / 54 V
THIRD HUMANS: MYRMIDONS
Jupiter under Del Azarchel’s direction creates the Third Humans, the Myrmidons, based on extrapolations of Hyades’ mental architecture. Originally intended to be the replacement race for mankind, longer-lived and more cooperative, the Myrmidons are hideous creatures, as uniform and inhuman as insects, lacking sex, art, religion, or any finer feelings. The Myrmidons are capable of total Noösphere nerve-machine integration.
Swans remove to Antarctica, Greenland, and Siberia to maintain strict isolation from Third Humans during these centuries.
(A.D. 15177) The Myrmidons construct and send out Leucothea, what will later be called the Antepenultimate White Ship, to a second antimatter star found in M17, the Omega Nebula, in the Sagittarius Arm of the Galaxy, 5,000 lightyears hence. Del Azarchel departs.
• 17th Millennium A . D . / 53 V
Loss of the Earth’s magnetic field. Solar wind damages Earth’s atmosphere, leading to widespread desertification. Domes of lightweight fabric erected over cities as moisture traps. Widely regarded as an assault by the Myrmidons (who are unaffected by the change).
Nyctaloptic Earth. Unshielded Humans and Swans able to emerge only after sunset.
[This is the predicted end of the human race, had not pantropy and terraforming techniques been decoded to allow the race to resist the ecological disaster.]
• 18th Millennium A . D . / 52 V
Rise of the Adamites, ascetics who reject human gene-experimentation. (These are the ancestors of the Covenanters.) The Sacerdotal religion, at this point in history, is decidedly ecumenical and universal, rejecting no expression of faith from any culture: Adamism comes to dominate Sacerdotalism, and ancestor worship and ritual purity form the backbone of this system.
Many diseases reappear in the human ecology, and various forms of mental retardation.
• 19th Millennium A . D . / 51 V
Rise of the Living Empire. This is a single life-form occupying most of the equatorial region, growing the foodstuff and materials of life for a highly dependent core population: perioeci and helots live in the temperate zones, with ruling Myrmidons able to pass freely between climate zones.
Jupiter emerges from his somnolence. [Jupiter is roughly 14,000 miles in diameter at this time, and 70^5 IQ.]
• 20th Millennium A . D . / 50 V
Ice Age. Swans emerge from the polar regions, and multiply in numbers. Living Empire becomes coniferous. Adamite political system, which prohibited human bio-adaptation even to Eskimo levels of alteration, is overthrown.
Rise of the Hibernal Men, who change fur during seasonal variations.
Myrmidons under Jupiter’s guidance begin an active program of colonizing the main asteroid belt. Ice Age ends due to military bombardment.
At about this time, Dominions in Sagittarius become aware of the existence of Tellurian expedition and colonies in the Omega Nebula.
• 21st Millennium A . D . / 49 V
Swan Renaissance. Humans alter the Living Empire to create jungle canopies to prevent asteroid drop targeting from the Myrmidons, and all surface technology is dispersed into a highly diffuse and mobile form, an insect-based infosphere. Biopeonage exists in the cultivated areas, elsewhere nomads in large tribes live as herdsmen, hunter-gatherers in smaller bands.
Hibernals, Nyctalops, and Troglodytes flourish, and decimate other, older, human races. Earthbound Myrmidons driven into the Andes and Himalayas.
• 22nd Millennium A . D . / 48 V
Swans form first mathematical descriptions of human thought. Rule by the Swans through the Neural Indication Protocols, a xypotechnology-intensive hierarchy where each person’s duties and role in society is determined by his thought-architecture. This is a limited and individualized form of the Sculpture of the 24th Millennium (see below).
Energy-intensive forms of war cease. Earthbound Myrmidons ejected into space, take up residence in the asteroid belt.
[Jupiter is roughly 28,000 miles in diameter at this time, and 50^6 IQ.]
Alpha Draconis is the Pole Star
• 23rd Millennium A . D . / 47 V
The Time of the Dark Cloud. The approach of Cahetel becomes the epicenter of human history.
A crude form of murk, created by slavish mimicry of the murk electronic arrangements, becomes the primary building material of all artificial minds. This allows a divarication to form in the previously unified Third Humans.
(A.D. 22196) Divergent Myrmidons prevail upon Montrose to emerge from his self-exile and become supreme military leader of a resistance.
The Re-Armaments. Creation, over centuries, of the Black Fleet. The office of Nobilissimus revived.
• 24th Millennium A . D . / 46 V
Sculptured Lifeways. Time of the Bred Men. Rise of the Five Families, famed biotechnicians (Eventide, Leafsmith, Phosphor, Orison, and Grimm. The Bloodrose family is usually considered collateral line of Leafsmith, despite their pretensions, not a separate family).
Although later regarded as an anarchist utopia, the Sculpture was a rigid set of social control provisions that operated through the media, schooling, medical networks, marriages, fertility control. The ability of Firstling-tribes to form or ignore systems of force known as governments was largely bypassed as irrelevant to the aims of the Swans.
Scholars returning from deep communion with Jupiter usher in the Nanotechnological Revolution. Matter on Earth is hereafter regarded as a programmable substance.
Tellus enters a Turing Halt-State. (This state will persist until the 40th Millennium).
Gamma Ursae Minoris (Pherkad) is the Pole Star
Second Sweep—The Starfaring
• 25th Millennium A . D . / 45 V
SECOND SWEEP
(A.D. 24113) Arrival of Cahetel Cloud—second immediate defeat of Tellurian forces by the Hyades Domination: Myrmidon Noösphere is betrayed into the Cahetel Format. The Myrmidon Black Fleet cannibalized for Diaspora to second sweep worlds: the asteroid belt flies into interstellar space.