Chapter 252: (Terra)

"Welcome back to Face Smashing Opinions," the attractive Terran Descent Human female said, leaning back in her chair with a crystal flute full of champagne and bubbles. She was dressed in the current SolNet TalkStream fashion, her left mammary gland exposed and covered in sparkling diamond glitter, right thigh exposed and dusted with microprisms that made her leg glow with a soft nimbus, long crimson hair that rustled and shifted as she moved and spoke with crackling arcs of electricity moving through the long wavy curls, slightly larger than normal iridescent cyber-eyes, and spiked hoverheels with straps that went up to mid-calf.

"I'm your gracious hostess, Almanique Krikit Hrawgth," she smiled. She turned and motioned with her champagne glass to the Lanaktallan sitting across from her, who was dressed in high style, an elegant black suit with thin lines of diamond pinstripes with a flowing cape that shifted randomly through a pleasing pattern of random colors and a flank covering showing random landscapes. "I'm here with Vu'uklu'u of the Great Herd, author of I was so Busy Grazing I Missed the Slaughter and his newest book We am Become the Great Filter."

"Thank you, Almanique," the Lanaktallan said, puffing on his pipe and looking at the camera with a steady if slightly arrogant gaze. "I am glad you tuned in to listen to my wisdom as well as my hostess's keen analytical mind."

Almanique raised her glass to the camera in salute to her viewers then turned back to the camera. "That was quite a statement you made during our Q&A segment and my viewers would really like a further explanation on such an inflammatory and downright scathing observation about your people."

Vu'uklu'u nodded slowly, puffing on his pipe. "I am, of course, aware that you most possibly mean my claim that directly ties into my latest book."

"Well, some self-promotion is to be expected in TalkStream circles," Almanique laughed.

"Well, as I state in my book, each sapient species eventually faces Great Filters. Now, I personally believe in several more than your socio-scientists have theorized, but then my people have possessed a simulacrum of civilization for a hundred times the amount of time your people have had fire," Vu'uklu'u stated in stertorous tones.

The audience loved watching him, despite the feelings of anger and revulsion he instilled in many with his arrogant demenour and superior attitude. They watched just to be outraged in some cases, in other cases in hopes that they'd be the call-in that got to debate him, although every being who had so far debated the 'cowtard' as he was called, had ended up being made of a fool of on SolNet, much to the amusement of everyone watching.

Almanique could see her viewer count rising. She had been just one of the many SolNet TalkStreamers lecturing the void until she'd been approached by Vu'uklu'u, with a viewcount lucky to break twenty-thousand during live showings.

Now she could see that nearly two billion beings were tuned in and interacting.

She'd gone from a nobody TalkStreaming in her little apartment with barely any audience to a superstar with a production crew, holocam operators, sound and lighting techs, and an audience that hung on or argued with every word.

"Well, that isn't exactly the contention, is it, Vu'uk?" Almanique asked with a predatory smile.

Vu'uklu'u thought it interesting how at first that smile, all of those meat tearing teeth, had alarmed him and now it made him quiver with anticipation of having someone willing to argue with him or have him argue with an invisible audience.

"Ah, quite so, my dear," Vu'uklu'u said, puffing on his pipe. "Indeed, I postulate, in my new book, available in electronic and traditional format as well as lecture-holo versions," the barcode and purchasing link for the book appeared underneath him with a picture of the cover of the book, where Vu'uklu'u stared with barely concealed superiority at the viewer.

Two million beings hate-bought it right then.

"That where your people managed to bypass each Great Filter through the uniqueness of your evolution as well as your inherent sociological pathology, that my people not only failed the Great Filter, but did so in such an astounding manner that they became part of the Great Filter," he continued. "Interestingly enough, that same Great Filter your species bypassed but risked being taken out by a previous Great Filter."

Almanique saw that tens of millions were making guesses. Her legions of chat-room moderators were working overtime, even bringing in the eVI's, to keep some semblence of order in the eVR discussion rooms.

"As all of you know, since you are intelligent and wise enough to take the time to view this show, the Great Filter your species plays with is the Self-Extinction via Warfare filter, which is actually Great Filter One, and one of the first most species overcomes through cooperative survival mechanisms," Vu'uklu'u said, polishing his pocket-watch carefully even as he puffed on his pipe.

"Herd species overcome it," Almanique corrected.

"Cooperative species overcome it. The majority of competitive species do not pass that filter, however, your species is strengthened by it, a most interesting paradox and the subject of my next book, That's Not How Any of That Works: A study in Terran Descent Humanity Paradoxes, which will be available in the next few months," Vu'uklu'u said. The Pre-Order links appeared and millions rushed to order a copy, half of them infuriated by the picture of a finely dressed Vu'uklu'u patting on the head a dirty, raggedy haired, squatting Terran dressed in loincloth poking a stick into his own nose and buying it merely to be able to attempt to refute the Lanaktallan scholar's opinions and observations on their own SolNet platforms.

"Our species eventually, as yours did, encounter the Genomic Filter, or Filter Eighteen, as my people believe," Vu'uklu'u continued as Almanique poured both of them a new glass of champagne. "Your people, fractured, fractitious, and argumentative as they are, did adopt some of the dangerous technologies, fought wars over the application of genetic manipulation, and eventually settled for your Rules of Informed Consent, which I theorize is a type of Filter Bypass System your species discovered quite early, back when you had only bronze metals that you had to work hard to extract."

"That would be early works such as the Code of Hammurabi," Almanique said, clinking one shining and sparkling almond cut fingernail on the crystal of the champagne glass. "A Bronze Age ruler of Ancient Terra, not the Warlord of the Tranvaskus Cluster." Links appeared below Almanique, including several VR educational classes.

She got a small cut for each of the thirty thousand beings who, out of curiosity, signed up for the classes.

"My people discovered genetic manipulation, then discovered the biggest threat of the Genomic Filter," Vu'uklu'u said. He paused, tapping the ash out of his pipe and repacking it.

Longtime viewers leaned forward, knowing it was about to get good.

"The so called 'Happiness Gene' and its manipulation," Almanique mused. "What's wrong with wanting everyone to be happy all the time?" she voiced the question on millions of viewers minds.

"With no lows there can be no highs," Vu'uklu'u snorted, looking at her as if she had suddenly become stupid. "With genetically enforced happiness, a being is happy even as they are starving to death or being subjected to the most horrible conditions that do not ouright kill them."

Pictures came up of Lanaktallan space factories, cities, mining worlds.

"Billions, every one of them completely content, happy even, as I was, slaving away their lives in the pursuit of absolutely nothing," Vu'uklu'u said. He shuddered dramatically. "Not even the pursuit of happiness, because the happiness is genetically forced upon them. Not in pursuit of love, because genetically imposed happiness overwhelms the desire for one to seek out amicable romantic partnerships, not for fame or glory or anything else, because their very genetic code makes them happy at all times," he shook his heavy bovine head. "They are little more than one of your animated appetite driven dead."

"A zombie," Almanique said. "All right, say that what you say so far is right, defend the rest of your statement that now you're part of the Great Filter," she said, leaning back and smiling.

"Once my people had completely been enslaved by the so-called 'Happiness Gene', we then utilized pharmaceuticals to ensure that even if the gene was unable to do its work an individual could not realize it," Vu'uklu'u stated. He kept an eye to the side and saw the different species that the Lanaktallan 'stewarded' over the last hundred million years.

"Not content with that," he said when he saw the images were being put between Almanique and him, "We then performed the same genetic manipulation and drug regimen on every species we encountered, becoming, in effect, the Great Filter personified. The universe, terrible, malevolent, and cruel, wrapped us up into that Great Filter and sent us out to the stars to ruthlessly press our hooves against the face of those species while yelling 'YOU ARE NOW HAPPY!' at them even as they tried to squirm away."

He shook his head sadly.

"And those that would not submit," he paused for a second and Almanique did one of her famous inhales, making her chest rise impressively so that she could interrupt at top volume.

"We proposed, to use one of your species historic activities, a Final Solution," he said. "Just like my people plan on doing to your Confederacy."

"And if we resist?" Almanique asked sharply, sitting up, "If we look at you when you raise your hoof to plant it on our face and tell you 'no step on snek?' then what will you do?"

Vu'uklu'u snorted and shook his head. "Well, then, my dear, according to the philosophy of the Great Herd" he looked at the camera. "We will spectacularly commit suicide by Terran by the trillions until we finally manage to reach out and gentle you too, bringing you into the embrace of the Great Filter," his eyes got a particular gleam. "After all, what chance do you have when you can't even bring back the two extinct genetic dead-ends your species is so enamored with?"

The chat rooms erupted in shouting as links to donation sites for Feline and Canine restoration programs appeared.

Almanique smiled inside, watching the numbers.

Vu'uklu'u calmly finished refilling his pipe, using his implant to order Vodkatrog Red Grass for his estate's galloping lawn as the money just poured in. He was surprised at just how correct Almanique had been as literal billions of credits flowed to the restoration programs just to spite him.

It's good to be me, he thought to himself.

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MANTID FREE WORLDS

He's just so goddamn smug.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TREANA'AD HIVE WORLDS

I don't know which one I love watching more, him or Ba'ahn Ya'ahrd.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GESTALT

He practically gloats over what his people did to mine.

He just sits there, with that stupid pipe, and gloats and brags about what his people did.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

I hate him so much. Him and that stupid pocket watch and that stupid pipe and that smug expression.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK GESTALT

I've never wanted to yank out someone's pinfeathers and toss them from a cliff so bad in my life.

How dare he smugly talk about how they destroyed our people

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

DIGITAL ARTIFICIAL SENTIENT SYSTEMS

And yet he's telling all of this to an audience of tens of billions.

He's detailing every one of his people's crimes, every single incident of crimes against sentience his people have done, not only that, but has gone past that.

Do you think we should butcher every Lanaktallan we see, even the ones working in factories?

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TELKAN FORGE WORLDS

Well, no. They're genetically modified to only feel contentedness and drugged up. It isn't their fault.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

AKLTAK GESTALT

Those poor people can barely think through the haze of drugs and genetic alteration. You don't slaughter people like that, you should do your best to help them recover.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GESTALT

Oh. My. God.

He's actually showing us that the average Lanaktallan is just as much a victim as our people are.

ARRRGH! I hate him even more now!

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

MANTID FREE WORLDS

I know, right? How dare he make you realize that things are not just black and white.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

TNVARU GESTALT

RIGHT!

Wait... you tricked me! I wanna change my answer.

---NOTHING FOLLOWS---

CYBERNETIC ORGANISM COLLECTIVE

LOL