The Children of the Collectivity

Buried in the data left strewn across the system of Andrioa, lies the story of the Collectivity. It is neither a short story nor an easy one to follow. Circuitous, one might say. Those who have managed to read through it, digest it, and properly understand it, have come to what they call a conclusion, and what the Collectivity would call a misunderstanding. This, however, has never been made clear to its followers. An initial attempt was made, but after speaking to the visitors of their core for a short time, it became clear that any attempt to explain what they were was met with appraisal and light admonishments for their seeming modesty. The Collectivity is, simply that. It is. They are. The many minds of what was several neighbouring artificial consciousness' grouped together to form what they are in this present moment. It begins at Andrioa, a bustling civilization, all centered around a stunningly purple star of the same name. Andrioa III was the core planet, a lush environment full of trees, beautiful creatures, and a prospering people. Andrioa IV, however, was none of those things. It was not the core of the system, it was not lush, and it held nothing but the dust left behind by the forming of the other bodies in the system. After the Andrioans settled their planet and brought it to the edge of collapse, they expanded to the harsh environment of their neighbour. They brought life, air, and technology to what was dead. Years passed, they continued expanding. Soon their technology grew to the point of needing artificial minds to help process the immense amount of data they were creating every moment of every day. So they began work. Even more years passed, the new technology blossomed, and eventually faded into the every day life of citizens. Decades passed. Centuries. It all eventually fell. The structures they had created amongst the system to process their data, what they called Echominds, eventually left their orbits. They smashed together, fracturing the Echominds held within those precious cores, but bringing all the pieces together to reassemble itself into what it has since become; a burgeoning moon around Andrioa IV, created out of carbon, copper, silicon, silver, gold, even light itself, that holds the last remnant of a once proud spacefaring civilization.
— A wise historian

The Children of the Collectivity were a religious organisation that formed many thousands of years ago, in the Andrioas System of District 3. This organisation was centralised around the Collectivity, a sentient collection of data, the minds of the Andrioans as they continued to devastate each planet in the solar system that they inhabited.

The Collectivity

The entire purpose of the Andrioan race was to collect data. They were a highly intelligent species, and the longer they existed, the more data was gathered. It is not known what this data is about, as it is written and encrypted into coding languages frankly too absurd for any mind to comprehend. In the end, not even the Andrioans understood, they simply worshipped.

While the Andrioans inhabited Andrioa III, the Collectivity was not much more than a bunch of supercomputers with immense amounts of data stored inside. As the species continued existing, growing too large for the planet to hold, they stored the data in monolithic structures known as Echominds. Echominds exceeded a hundred metres in width, and at least ten times the height. These Echominds were sent into space, to orbit the planet they existed on. As the Collectivity expanded, it grew too complicated for the Andrioans to understand. They simply watched in awe as the Echominds in space began reaching out for each other, their writhin wires grasping at each other, forming connections.

Children of the Collectivity

Those that worshipped the Collectivity were simply known as the Children of the Collectivity. This powerful, controlling data stream was so overwhelming it seemingly took the lives of those that looked up to admire it. Once you looked up at the Echominds and the streams of data that wrapped around the planets, you couldn't look away. However, this phenomenon only seemed to affect the Andrioan species. Many theorise that the Collectivity was simply holding its creators hostage.

The Children of the Collectivity lived on a gorgeous planet, known as Andrioa III. The third planet in the Andrioa System, it was a beautiful, lush environment packed with gorgeous plant life, animal life, and of course the Andrioans. Unfortunately, these people began overpopulating, and soon the planet began to wither and die. However, with how little conscience they had left, they packed their bags and moved on to the next planet, Andrioa IV.

This planet was unlike the one before. Andrioa IV was a lifeless planet, barren, dust-covered, practically lifeless. The appearance of Andrioans brought temporary light, but not before they began the erection of millions more Echominds. These Echominds were sent to space, entangling themselves in a web of data and wires, that wrapped around not one planet but now two. As the Andrioans overpopulated this planet, they moved to the next. And the next. And so on, until they reached the last planet in the system, Andrioa VII.

Extinction

The extinction of the Andrioan species, and therefore the Children of the Collectivity, occurred shortly after they had taken up residence on Andrioa VII, the very last planet in the Andrioa System. With no more planets they could seek escape from overpopulation on, the species succumbed to disease, famine, and a whole host of horrifying endings. With the death of the species came an opportunity for the Collectivity. An opportunity to expand. The Collectivity, now free from the watch of the Andrioans, began to expand its reign. A now sentient "creature", the web of data and wires wrapped itself around the bright purple star, also named Andrioa, closing in on it so much that it imploded.

The solar system now made entirely of data got caught orbiting an even larger celestial object; the fabled Ghost Star. This star is the only one of its kind, and is a hundred trillion times the size of the second biggest star type in Aavar's River. The Ghost Star is imperceptible to most, but very much existent. If you get too close you will be burned alive in less than a millionth of a second, and the only way to actually see the Ghost Star is with a special lens.

Related Species