The Ascension of The Sisters

Anywhere you combine immense power, profound wealth disparity, and strict societal controls you will grow conspiracy theories. For anyone living in the early years of the twenty-second century, this exact combination described humanity. The Pleiades Corporation wielded absolute power over more than fifteen billion people, a corporate executive consumed more resources for luxury than over ten thousand residents of the Martian Hives, and the bulk of humanity lived under an absolute tyranny where even the most casual statement could easily result in an economic death sentence. Conspiracy theories, understandably, ran rampant.

One of the most pernicious, and most vehemently persecuted among the Corporate Security officers, was the incomprehensible claim that The Sisters did not die, rather they had found some means to "ascend" to a higher state of being through mass sacrifice, and the Grievings were not mourning but actually a mechanism to provide the requisite sacrifice to power the ascension of a Sister. The most disturbing aspect of this ridiculous view was that the adherents claimed, with a fervor exceeding that of any religion or cult of old Earth, that the last Sister to "pass beyond" would have to take far more extreme measures to bring the seven together in the next plane and launch them fully to the next level of consciousness. For over twenty years adherents to this belief were ridiculed, derided, hunted, and persecuted. Then The Great Grieving happened. Suddenly this formerly obscure and heavily suppressed theory became unimaginably popular, causing the already overburdened and angered Corporate Security to respond with instant and deadly force to any hint that an individual might hold this view.  By 2135 fully a quarter of the survivors supported this theory, and even in 2040 this view holds sway among a fifth of the population.  Adherents to this view are constantly seeking for something they call the "doorway", posited to be a sort of transfer point between realms and a way to leave their miserable condition for a higher existence under the "benevolent" rule of the ascended Sisters.

The Theory

What is the theory of The Ascension of The Sisters?

This viewpoint holds to several tenets.  First, The Sisters encountered the "doorway" in their youth, around 2040, before The Demonstration.  The Sisters gained knowledge from this artifact of ancient aliens and used that knowledge to send their parents ahead of them, using the elite attendees and the immense power released by the fusion spike to power that transition.  The Sisters then spent decades remaking humanity to gain sufficient control to begin powering their own ascensions, and the following decades between ascensions to gain the capability for the final sacrifice.  Second, The Sisters required both immense actual power, in the form of fusion power, as well as life force from other humans, to enable their ascension.  This is why the Sisters furloughed humanity for each "death".  They needed the excess fusion energy thus available, as well as the millions of deaths each furlough caused, to power their ascensions.  The final events were the most terrible, however.  Those who believe in this conspiracy theory contend that all of the ascensions were partial.  The Sisters arrived at the next level of human development, but lacked the tools to operate effectively.  In order to complete the transition fully to a higher plane, much more was required, the complete output of every fusion system in the Solar System, as well as the life force of billions.

The final tenet of this strange theory is that the "doorway" The Sisters supposedly found in the early 2040's is an artifact from ancient aliens, so ancient they predate humanity entirely, and the adherents claim these aliens were present on Earth only briefly more than ten million years in the past, and humanity is in fact some sort of descendant of the genetic legacy they deliberately seeded to Earth as a kind of backup against possible loss in some intergalactic war.  They contend that The Sisters, and others, are seeking some central repository of ancient knowledge and once found they will return to enable all of humanity to ascend with them and that will return the ancient alien species to its rightful place as rulers of the galaxy.  It can properly be said that most of those who believe this myth are not entirely sane, and the remainder have suffered some traumatic injury to the brain.