“A million years ago” is the sort of thing people start saying after 5 years, and stop believing is hyperbole after a generation.
The truth is most Ouinhead Cylinders were constructed in a relatively short period – about ten generations – making the doom of the following 45k generations.
Nobody could tell you what a year on the Ouinhed homeworld was like. Their equivalents of a minute, or second, without intensive study. Surviving, populated Cylinders tend to treat these groups as religious and cultish; weather those cults have power in the local politics is a different question entirely.
Succinctly put, there was a land boom. The rich commissioned their own habitats – never meant to leave their points of orbiting the Ouinhed star.
The thought of making them mobile started to come up when populations raised high enough that governments thought to extend taxes and protections to space habitats – rather than allow their power to be demised long-term, the rich, kings of their own domain, wanted to put space between those who would subdue them. This came under the guise of intergalactic colonization. And when the resources started to add up, to strain those planetside – scientific study suddenly started to hint that the Ouinhead star might be much further along it’s life cycle than previously speculated.
There was a panic, amplified in every way the rich could amplify it. Fortunes were made and lost striping the Ouinhead system of materials to build more Cylinders, fitted with the best antimatter propulsion systems that could be designed and constructed; Several sections of the Ouinhed homeworld were ravaged with collecting raw materials and boosting them into orbit, dissent crushed by the economics of the situation. Many, not believing the ‘evidence’, put their fortunes in simply because Cylinders promised a better life.
There was no coordination as the rich “retired” to the black – sometimes taking extended families with them, sometimes leaving a heir of their own blood to continue the scam, sometimes a favored assistant. Departures were haphazard, often intentionally so, seeking to avoid any last responsibilities or retributions, burning through significant amounts of antimatter fuel to put as much space in between them and anybody who cared as possible, trying to propel themselves to significant fractions of light speed.
How quickly the first stage of transformation of society depended on how dictatorial they were, how much skill they had brought with them. Soft despots lived longer, establishing dynasties. A thousand unobserved experiments were made and repeated, and lost to ancient history.
“Day” and “Night” lost meaning. “Leaving”, as the ancestors knew it, lost that meaning. The children heard of sunrise and sunset from elders; these were phenomenon of stars and planets. “Stars” were points of light poking through the black. They might concern future generations. or maybe for those few that were selected to be pilots, those of myopic vision that ignored the stars that would move a hairsbreadth from their circular paths during their entire careers unless all they knew was in great peril.
A star would move. Noticeably. Continuously. Ancient records would be consulted, translated. Records from another world. A world.
They might respect the ancients’ wishes
To find no world around this star. Then, they harvest.
To find no “antimatter” to slow to stay around this star. Then, they must abandon. And never would all abandon.
To find a world with a voice. An then they must ask, who deserves the world? And often, they let the ancestors answer for them.
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