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It has been suggested that all things enjoy a certain degree of consciousness. Even the fundamental particles that make up ice cream cones or fluffy slippers. This same school of thought says that if you arrange enough of these quasi-sentient little blobs properly you’ll end up with a dung beetle or a palaeontologist or even a central heating engineer. Something conscious but not necessarily possessing a conscience.
It’s a question of complexity, it seems. The more complex yet structured an object, the more likely it is to make that incomprehensible transition from just being a blob to being a sentient being. What the benefits are is a question that still haunts many. Consciousness definitely drags with it a lot of excess baggage. Fear, greed, lust, envy, ceramic quadrupeds ... to slap labels on just a few of those bags.
Planets would seem to be pretty good candidates for your everyday conscious entity. They are well structured but extremely complicated objects. The individual bits and bobs of an average sized planet run into billions and billions. If complication were a prerequisite for consciousness, then your average planet would easily fit the bill.
However, as no evidence has been presented to the contrary, it must be assumed that Jupe, a gigantic, orange, gaseous world swinging lazily round a medium sized, yellow sun, is happily oblivious to the appallingly indifferent void in which it exists.
Likewise, Jupe’s two moons, Edenia and Horridoa, are sadly unconscious of the magnificence of their parent planet. They can never appreciate the subtly serpentine tangerine bands or the angry brown whorls of storms, thousands of miles in diameter, raging endlessly through the turbulent atmosphere.
A shame really.
Forgoing its indifference momentarily, the universe smiled on Edenia making it by far the more attractive of the two moons. Blue and green with lots of wispy white bits. An incandescent jewel of a moon.
Horridoa, on the other hand, must have been a pretty nasty piece of work in a previous existence because Horridoa is brown-grey and ... well ... lumpy. An anaemic walnut of a moon.
Edenia is warm and cuddly and supports an immense variety of life. The most abundant life form on Edenia is a small yellow bean. The pitteth.
The pitteth is so called because when it is squeezed between the thumb and forefinger of the second most abundant life form on Edenia the pitteth goes "pitteth".
Horridoa alternates between extremes of heat and blinding light, and cold and deepest darkness. The most abundant life form on Horridoa is a tall, hardy, razor edged grass called chawoo. The second most abundant life form on Horridoa couldn’t remember why chawoo had this name. But somehow it suited it.
The Edenians, inhabitants of the cosy moon Edenia, though highly intelligent, developed technology only as far as the wooden bucket. Why strive for more? Why, indeed. The pitteth is quite delicious, extremely nourishing and easily harvested. A firm grip, a stout pair of legs and the humble bucket are all that is needed to transport pitteths from the lush valleys to the warm, breeze tickled hills where, upturned, the bucket doubles as a handy stool on which to sit and ponder the wonders of Jupe resplendent in the azure sky.
Not that it never rains on Edenia. Of course it does. But only in the small hours when everyone is tucked up in a warm cave or snuggled under the protective shelter of a welcoming pitteth bush.
To the Horridoans, on the other hand, progress and ever swifter technological advances were fundamental to their survival. The initial driving forces behind this rapid development were the simple needs to keep warm during the freezing night, keep cool during the scorching day and make the chawoo taste of something other than month old toenail clippings.
After the invention of the telescope, there was no turning back for the Horridoans. A beautiful sister moon came sharply into focus one unusually clear night. A moon which did not simply orbit Jupe but swooned gracefully to and fro maintaining just the right distance from the sun to ensure the days were warm and the nights were pleasantly cool.
The ever sceptical Horridoans thought this new moon too good to be true. There had to be a catch. No water. A surface covered in a twenty foot layer of choking dust. An ammonia atmosphere.
Larger optical telescopes were built and trained on this apparently idyllic neighbour. Life! The sister moon supported life!
Radio telescopes were constructed and, finally, a sophisticated satellite was put into orbit around Edenia. People! There were people on Edenia! And they were mostly strolling about! Or splashing in sparkling streams! Or horizontal!
The terrible truth dawned: while the Horridoans had been struggling to survive on a moon whizzing backwards and forwards between the boiling sun and the freezing void of outer space like some crazy ding ball attached to some demented ding bat wielded by some demented ... ding bat wielder, the morons on Edenia had been swanning around discussing buckets and wondering whether to eat now and have a snooze or take a quick nap, discuss buckets some more and then eat!
News of this idyllic world of unappreciative cretins spread around Horridoa like a chawoo lager rash. The Horridoans rose as one and swore to the heavens that their children, or their children’s children, or their children’s children’s children, or somebody, some day would have their revenge on Fate for making their lives so bloody miserable.
Generations of Horridoans gave themselves to the Cause. Technology blossomed under the light generated from the heat of their united fervour. Gigantic space going transporters were built in orbit. An invasion force consisting of the entire population of Horridoa, excluding of course people who couldn’t read without moving their lips, descended on Edenia. The dumbfounded Edenians were easily herded aboard the transporters. Twenty-four hours later and the Horridoans on Edenia were having fun in the sun eating piles of the delicious pitteth while the Edenians where standing bemused on Horridoa watching their buckets fill with rain.
*
With the slow dawning of what had happened to them the Edenians’ under-utilised brains started to experience an altogether new and compelling emotion. Indignant outrage.
Spurred on by the harsh conditions and a burning desire for revenge, the Edenians went from the wooden bucket age to the bronze, iron, industrial, tootsie-glow single slipper, and space age in just a few hundred years.
The whole Edenia population on Horridoa worked as one towards the “Great revenge”. A task force of gigantic battle cruisers was assembled and dispatched to Edenia but the Horridoans on Edenia weren’t going to give up their newly acquired paradise without a fight.
Inter-moon war raged.
The word "war" is a tad severe. "Raged" is probably a bit strong too. It was more of an inter-moon shouting-finger-wagging-with-the-odd-shove argy-bargy.
After all, the population of Horridoa had got used to their new planet. Hundreds of years had made it home. Technology made the climate bearable. A little illegal trade with Edenia brought in a few culinary luxuries. The foul tasting chawoo turned out to be excellent at sorting out even the most determined acne.
*
The Edenians still felt a twinge of guilt for their ancestors’ actions so they were never going to mount any full scale attacks.
There was the odd dispute over mineral rights on some of the larger asteroids. But any prisoners taken by either side were returned unharmed after a suitable amount of public humiliation and a few political points had been gained.
None of the awesome weapons that both sides had built was ever fired in anger. The most dangerous piece of technology developed by both sides was the matter transporter. It was generally agreed that this could only be used to transport fruit, livestock and machinery. The matter transporter was to be used on people only in an emergency. It was employed occasionally when capturing enemy forces but with a failure rate of one per cent was considered too unreliable for general use. It was embarrassing enough, being deposited somewhere with your underpants inside out over your trousers, without having to suffer the indignity of having your head inside out over your left wrist as well.
Those in power, on both moons, considered the war, on balance, neither a good nor a bad thing. Not many people got hurt, the people were focused and hard working, and technology and research drove forward at an artificially heightened pace.
A place for everyone and everyone in their place.
It couldn’t last for ever, of course. Someone, someday, had to ask the question. But, first, someone had to think of the question.
Copyright (c) Mitis Green 2004 - mg@bramblingbooks.co.uk
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