The Futurological Congress

Dschubba System is one of the most interesting in the Terragen Sphere; the largest star of this quadruple system is a rapidly rotating B-emission star, with a disk around the equator which consists of mass expelled at least partly due to the considerable centrifugal force at the rim of this very oblate star. Two other very bright stars and another more distant companion make up the rest of the system. The total output of these stars is more than twenty thousand times that of the Sun; this energy is  used commercially by the cross-cultural Triumvirate metapolity.

The Curatorial Progress Negentropy Civilization Ship The Futurological Congress set out from Dschubba Amat Combine in 8502 and set out at relativistic speed along the MPA- Negentropy border towards the galactic core. Every byte of information available about the Terragen sphere was incorporated into its memory stacks, including as comprehensive as possible recordings of virtual fiction scenarios from the 21st century onwards, and written material from "Gilgamesh" onwards. The baselinophile Godlet in charge of the ship and its Pitch Drive was particularly interested in Old Earth literature, and collected it when e could. Near NGC 6334 the ship passed a double G star system, with nominal Negentropy allegiance, and acquired some previously lost Creationist tracts which amused The Congress greatly. However one item, called "Omphalos; an attempt to untie the geological knot" by Phillip Henry Gosse interested em very much..

The Knot that Gosse was attempting to untie was the difference between the age of the earth in the Judaeo-Christian Bible and the newly discovered geological record. Gosse's idea was that, just as God had given Adam a bellybutton (omphalos in Greek), so he had created the fossil record and the ancient rocks in 4004 BC to test the faithful.

The Congress realized that this argument was unassailable. Assuming a creator god with a toposophic level of infinity, such a deception would be possible, and if true the universe was no more than twelve and a half millennia old, and all starlight more than that age would be an artefact. If the Congress could travel beyond the c-horizon to before that light was emitted e should enter the universe as it was before the Creation.

In legends of the Sagittarius Arm Outer Volumes were rumours of a partial and decaying wormhole link to the inner Scutum-Crux Arm. Using its powers of persuasion the Congress managed to take nearly three quarters of its normal 500,000 complement of human librarians and crew with it on its quest to use the wormhole (if it existed) to jump out of the expanding sphere of existence into God's outside paradise. No contact with The Futurological Congress has been made for nearly two thousand years.

Related Links:
A movie of the main stars of the Dschubba system made using Celestia, showing the emitter disk and the innermost companion stars.
http://www.orionsarm.com/movies/dschubba.wmv

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