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.One side claimed that allowing aliens to wallow in the mud was racist, that aliens too deserved to share in the unlimited bounty of the Confederation.The other side pointed out that aliens needed to work their own way up from the mud, or they’d never become anything other than clones of humanity.“If Darius can really teach us how to manipulate the quantum foam,” Jorlem mused, “our society will be turned upside down.”Elyria lifted an eyebrow.“How so?”“You ought to understand,” he said, dryly.“What would a person from a pre-singularity society make of us?”“Culture shock, at the very least,” Elyria said.“And the leaders would want to stop their people from emigrating.”Pre-singularity societies – which were often scarcity societies – had real problems coming to terms with the Confederation.Their established modes of thought had been built in an environment where there were laws and limits and cultures that didn’t quite make sense.They concentrated on amassing vast sums of money.and then suffered terrible shock when they discovered the Confederation could literally turn lead into gold.And that was a comparatively minor issue.The discovery that some humans existed inside AI cores, where they could devise their own realities to their heart’s content, or had merged into the giant MassMind.primitive societies had real problems coming to terms with it.There were other issues, cultural ones.Most primitive worlds had marriage as a contract between two families, rather than between two people.It wasn’t uncommon to have one or both of the partners simply pushed into the match, and forced to wed if they were unwilling.There were strong economic reasons for that, none of which excused it in the eyes of the Confederation.And many primitive worlds treated various subsets of the population as second-class citizens, something that was equally inexcusable.Their first contact with the Confederation could be devastating to their worldview.“It would be harder than that,” Jorlem said.“What would they make of the MassMind? Or the Changed? Or, for that matter, the AIs? You and I are relatively normal by their standards, but if they cut us open they’d discover all sorts of little improvements.And then they’d discover the Elders and perhaps even start worshipping them.”He shook his head.“But our society is based on equality of opportunities, if not outcomes,” he added.“Everyone lucky enough to be born inside the Confederation has access to more wealth and opportunities than the average pre-singularity society can even dream of.But what will happen if we cannot splice the Darius DNA into our genetic code? What if only people who are descended from those born on Darius can use the ‘magic’?”Elyria scowled.“You’re talking about another Kahn, aren’t you?”“I’m afraid so,” Jorlem said.“And it could be worse for us.”There were few criminals in the Confederation, simply because most of the old motives for crime no longer existed, but there were a handful of people who were simply born wrong, without the basic empathy that allowed them to operate normally within human society.Kahn had been one of those, a sociopath who had fled the Confederation fifty years after his birth and eventually landed on a primitive world, where his enhanced DNA had given him a staggering advantage over the locals.Two hundred years later, when the world had been rediscovered by the Confederation, his descendants formed a ruling class that was literally superhuman, compared to its subjects.Why not? They were stronger, smarter and healthier than the locals.“The AIs are fantastically more intelligent than us,” Elyria said, finally.“We survived their development, didn’t we?”“The AIs aren’t human,” Jorlem pointed out.“How would we react if one group of humans was incontestably superior to another group of humans – and we couldn’t uplift the second group?”Elyria shook her head.“If they have somehow managed to develop the ability to.tune into the universe and change it, we can learn it too,” she said, firmly.“And if they have a unique trait in their genetic code, we can duplicate it and splice it into our own.I honestly can’t see how they can hope to remain unique for very much longer.”“I can’t see how a QCC link can be disrupted either,” Jorlem said.“They’re meant to be impossible to detect, let alone jam – and yet we see the links regularly disrupted on Ancient worlds.And Darius, of course.” He grinned
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