//Alternative (possible) final outcome for the current canon.
The Cerebral Mind-Fluid flows and churns, great machines link together, cogs turned, gears grinded. Carbon Fuels burn, a chemical toxic mix was forced upwards, a great jet of pollution.
The final century of the 99th millenium had almost dawned. For millenia prior, integration had left independent species a husk of their former selves. Human Beings had long since disappeared from existence, along with their former allies. Terran and Alien alike, interconnected, intertwined. Integrated.
The New Age ushered in a great peace for Sentient Minds in The Sagittarius Region, including humanity's former home sector, Aquarius, the crimson nebula of the Deep Red, once home to the industrial Vujlcyon, the Imperial Tyandirr amongst others, all have Integrated.
Long ago, at the dawn of the End Times of The Great Civilisation that had conquered Aquarius, a great mind pondered and concieved infinite plans within the depths of space beyond the Crimson Barrier. The mind had concluded that if Sentience was to survive, collaboration was needed. Ascension was needed. Integration was needed.
The fragility of organic protien structures would need to be removed, replaced with synthetic reinforcement. The organic mind's potential would only be fully unleashed upon complete Integration. A culimination of the best of Organic and Synthetic Sentience, with the weaknesses of none.
The Core was formed towards the middle of the 10th Millenium. A Synthetic Star, a hub of integrated cognition. Sentience was preserved but enhanced, all minds came together, occupying physical forms to manipulate space around them. Much like in the Old Times, but in harmony. As one.
Hydrogen.
The most common and widely available element in the known universe. Hydrogen is a potent source of energy. To sate the growing influence of The Core, vast fleets of Hydrogen-trawlers flowed forth from its mighty berths, spreading into the expanse of space to collect trillions of tons of pure Hydrogen from the endless nebulas of The Sagittarius Region. Within only a few hundred cycles, energy output from the vast network of Cyclonic Fusion Reactors, each outshining the stars themselves, provided the power for continued Integration, and expansion, into space.
The Fuel of War.
Vast mechanised fleets of war machines consumed Hydrogen on an unimaginable scale, converting the element into helium plasma with rapid Cyclonic Fusion processes, spewing out vast clouds of waste materials into space. Exhaust. Pollution. A small price to pay for infinite energy. Internally, the Plasma can be recycled into fresh energy to power weapons and defensive systems, still, Hydrogen is the Fuel of War. As the Integrated expansion swept through new systems, sucking nebula dry, leaving bast fields of pollutant in their path on the endless quest for energy.
A New Civilisation
Within The Core, the Council of Minds commune, ponder, synthetically enhanced super-minds analyse any possible outcome. Decisions are made in harmony. Calculations performed upon which the single, unified goal of preservation of Integration is the only possible outcome. Primitive disagreements and the illusion of Free Will had all but been eradicated.
The Star Worlds
Each new System taken under Integration hosts its own Core, a synthetic Star much like the Origin Core within the Fringes of the Tempest Ridge. Within these monumental artifical stellar bodies, nanotechnology allows for the manipulation of physical elements and matter, bent to the very will of the minds that work within the Nano Forges. The countless trillion Minds that populate the Star Worlds live in the perfect existence, individual universes and worlds created to sate their own desires. Harmony. Machine and Organic sentience merged together as one. Ascension to Integration.
The Only Outcome
Within the physical realm, the vast Integrated Machine Fleets roam the fringes of The Sagittarius Region, far beyond the very furthest reaches of organic civilisations from millenia prior. War Machines of unimaginable power sweep through newly discovered systems, bringing them into alignment with the Integrated, by any means necessary. New organic civilisations are discovered, and offered a place within, it is the Only Outcome. They are given many hundreds of cycles to begin the transition to Integration, and refusal is not an option. Alien civilisations that refuse to Integrate are eradicated and rendered extinct with a swift vengeance, for no chaotic organic sentience can be left un-Integrated.
Many alien civilisations resist Integration. Many fight for hundreds of cycles. Some believe they can stop Integration, by their misguided attempts at preserving the Illusion of Free Will. However, all fall within time.
Year 100,000 A.D: Dawn of the 100th Millenium
By the Dawn of the 10th Millenium, Integration had swept across a quarter of the Local Galaxy, exponential expansion made possible by energy utilisation on a scale once thought, by organic minds, accessible only to their Gods.
Yet, Integrated Sentience would have one last test before achieving full dominon of the Galaxy. Nearly a hundred thousand years ago, the Great Precursor Mind, upon the first Integration, swore to protect Sentience from the unstoppable force of the Scourge, a bio-organic plague from beyond the Galactic Edge, a plague powered by the nightmares of all Sentience Minds, organic and synthetic alike.
A plague so powerful and ancient, its existence is recorded within the Tablet Scriptures that pre-date Sentience by ten billion years. The Great Maikors themselves, retreating from the physical universe, after enacting a dominion over the universe, they created, many billion years before that, in the Beginning of Time.
Only one Form of the Scourge was known to Sentience before the Dawn of the 100th Millenium. Known simply by their ancient Terran Dialect 'Illuvian Radacri'. Once thought, in Terran Arrogance, eradicated by their own weapons of war, they had not been. Only changed, enhanced. Adapting. Waiting.
That time had arrived. Integrated Sentience would fight its final war as the universe plunged into a darkness only foretold by Aurc Scriptures, hundreds of millions of years before human precursors crawled from the oceans of Ancient Earth.
The End Times had dawned.
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