It seems far too possible that the Super Happies are not telling the whole story here. For all Akon and his crew know, virtually everything the SH have told them is a lie crafted to minimize their resistance so that the SH can either enslave them or destroy them and take over their starline network. Several of the SH’s actions have been fairly suspicious—for example, they seemed awfully quick to give up on diplomacy with the Babyeaters. Also, “several weeks” seems like an implausibly short amount of time for even a highly advanced technological force to pull off the kinds of changes the SH have planned for the BE. Conversely, it does not seem as implausible a time frame for destroying/enslaving the BE. Suspicious, I tell you. The facts fit either hypothesis about equally, except that I’m not entirely convinced that a species which truly eliminated pain would survive twenty years.
The fact that Akon and the gang don’t appear to have even considered this possibility leads me to agree with the Confessor’s apparent conclusion that the crew is no longer sane.
At this point, humanity has totally failed at interstellar diplomacy. The SH know about humanity now, and at the rate they are developing, they will probably be able to find us within a few centuries even if the Impossible destroys the local star. The only acceptable solution I see is to follow the SH ship and hope that they can find a nova-able star in/near the SH home system.
It seems far too possible that the Super Happies are not telling the whole story here. For all Akon and his crew know, virtually everything the SH have told them is a lie crafted to minimize their resistance so that the SH can either enslave them or destroy them and take over their starline network. Several of the SH’s actions have been fairly suspicious—for example, they seemed awfully quick to give up on diplomacy with the Babyeaters. Also, “several weeks” seems like an implausibly short amount of time for even a highly advanced technological force to pull off the kinds of changes the SH have planned for the BE. Conversely, it does not seem as implausible a time frame for destroying/enslaving the BE. Suspicious, I tell you. The facts fit either hypothesis about equally, except that I’m not entirely convinced that a species which truly eliminated pain would survive twenty years.
The fact that Akon and the gang don’t appear to have even considered this possibility leads me to agree with the Confessor’s apparent conclusion that the crew is no longer sane.
At this point, humanity has totally failed at interstellar diplomacy. The SH know about humanity now, and at the rate they are developing, they will probably be able to find us within a few centuries even if the Impossible destroys the local star. The only acceptable solution I see is to follow the SH ship and hope that they can find a nova-able star in/near the SH home system.