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Greetings! And a question/clarification/food for thought.
#1
Hello all!
Long time sci-fi and hard sci-fi addicted here. I really don't remember how I found about OA a few years ago but it was glorious since then! Absolutely love your stuff! Expecially the depth of the articles on the EG and the consistency on a so large timescale.
But there is a thing that has always bothered me a lot and in the end I decided to come here to try to get an answer or explaination. Or maybe give you a good topic to talk about.
I don't know if this has beed discussed already, not on this forum from what I can read but I never accessed the old one. Anyway:

The great and greatest Archai (S5 and S6) posses a great deal of extremely destructive and effective weapons in their arsenals; among these the ne plus ultra for ruining someone's day are probably the metric bomb due to their destructive force and extremely low detectabilty. Also, as stated on the EG page:

"it is rumored that virtually all of the major archai, both within and outside of the Civilized Galaxy, maintain arsenals of such weapons in a modern echo of the ancient Balance of Terror that once gripped Information Age Old Earth."

And again, on the page related to the Void Swarms:

"Other bubbles, or motes, can serve as mass/energy reserves (most probably hawking knots), and as weapons caches, equipped with an extensive array of godtech weapons. Some observed variants have included displacement cannons, shatterbombs and god-level disassembler swarms. Some might even contain metric warheads as a kind of "permanent deterrent"."

It's then heavily implied that metric bomb arsenals are created as an retaliatory measure.

The part that bother me can be extrapolated from the penultimate paragraph from the metric bomb EG page:

"It is notable that the Sephirotic forces did not use Metric Bombs during the war against the Oracle Machines, perhaps because they would leave no recoverable data behind after use."

Only the mainbrains know if this is a valid reason... But the real question is: what about the Sybil's arsenal? From the official material on the EG it appears the E , in the end, before commit full data suicide or escape in a baby universe, didn't deliver the ultimate SCREW-YOU-ALL parting gift. Why? The destruction of Eir cluster brain at the end of the Oracle Machines war fits perfectly the situation that trigger the use of these weapons in retailation.

I always found this a significant (logical) plothole.

I came up with just three possible explaination on my own:

1: The Sybil in eir last moment decide to not employ the weapons.
2: The sephirotic war machine is somehow capable of destroing/defuse the vast majority/totality of the weapons.
3: Bombs are indeed been launched but at the present OA time, 11601, they have crossed just 10 - 30ly, assuming they have been launched before the destruction of the Predictiion Cluster in 11591, and are still far from their probable targets: the largest computronium megastructure, the mass dense Valhalla Clusters and the volataile largest wormhole, Nexus node and grazers located at the center of the Negentropic and Keterist space (for sure), MPA (probably) or the whole Terragen Sphere.

Consideration:
1: I find this overall the weakest scenario: the Sybil showed very well eir disregard for mass murder.
2: Just slightly less weak: finding and destroing/hacking a vast number of weapons that are probably hidden with S6 cunning and technology seems a unfesible. Unless someone wants to came up with an Orintergen (the great Cyberian hack wizard), feeded up to the last bit with godtech steroids and throw at the Sybil's network Big Grin
3: Your classical Doomsday scenario but one that logically fits very well the situation, the actors involved and the tools at their disposal. I assume that due to the massed presence of S6 armies in the volume of the Oracle Machines the launch have been detected and the Archai informed through tactical comm-gauge wormhole. Obviously not informing the rest of the Terragens to avoid mass panic.
Due to being S6 weapons agains S6 defenses I assume perfect defense is not possible and a few bombs will get through. The problem with the metric warheads is that a few could be more than enough on the right target.

I hereby confess that I like the 3° scenario just for the sake of having the GodWeb unexpectedly jumping an order of magnitude or more in volume of data exchange, with a non trivial amount composed of "S6 perfect art swearing" so deeply horrifing they'd maim the mind or turn insane any sub singularities that colud grasp a bit of them Tongue 

Anyway, I missed anything? There is or not a reason? Let me know.

Cheers!
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Greetings! And a question/clarification/food for thought. - by Vitto - 09-02-2020, 05:42 PM

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