The Helianx Proposition/page 20
Since the Helianx had come late to externalized technology
they tended to create what they needed as they needed it: Creation as a direct response
to necessity was how they would have contrasted themselves
to those more purely technological societies that seemed to have a gadget for everything.
The space gypsies also had the luxury to observe,
in their extensive travels through both the inner and outer worlds of the superuniverse, how different species handled their relationship to technology.
Watching some planetary cultures struggling with the consequences of thousands of years
of unchecked technological advances, had served to remind the Helianx of their decision
to ensure that any creation of theirs would have to remain well within their control.
Having successfully fashioned the Great Ship as their only possible response to the impending planetary disaster, the Helianx became more confident in their ability to construct and materialize thoughtforms. This served them well as they settled into a very different life from the one that had been so peaceful back on Womb Planet. They were still careful to respond only to a real need, but their nomadic existence had made new demands on their technical ingenuity. The creation of localized transporters, for example, so necessary for teleporting up the ambassadors and diplomats of the races they had come to know, had led naturally to the desire for more efficient translating devices.
The need for the Uniscan had emerged when the Helianx had stumbled upon inhabited worlds they had not previously discovered. While they were orbiting the planet of interest, the uniscan let them see the level of intellectual and spiritual development of the various intelligent species. This had allowed them to avoid belligerent and fearful races and had much simplified their analysis of belief systems. Without having to interact directly they were able to observe, on the enormous screens of the uniscan, the perennial struggle for survival that dominated life on more primitive worlds. Having had no experience of predation back on Womb Planet, the Helianx found themselves particularly fascinated to watch the long process by which true intelligence climbed out of the instinctual drives that governed the animal nature.
They had to steel themselves from time to time while they looked on in horror, as different species fought each other to extinction, only to frequently destroy themselves, along with their planet, when they finally gained dominance. The endlessly long lifespan of the Helianx frequently gave them the dubious opportunity to watch this entire sorry process reveal itself in realtime on their uniscan screens.
As this long last journey had played itself out, the Helianx realized with a growing sense of foreboding that their computers were urging them to take careful note of the most problematic and challenging biospheres they were encountering; and moreover, to pay particular attention to the emotional and psychological makeup of those beings who survived their brutal evolutionary rise to power.
