Chapter 79: While my mind was in Virtual Reality

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While my mind was in Virtual Reality
and my body was in the tub, getting a full ‘do over’ The Q-Hive continued to make wasps and Q. Marvelous stuff that Quintessence. Jenny had closed the door and the printer was filling the room full of the stuff, the wasps could crawl under the door.

“P.E. isn’t all that you’re going to do.”
Kitty told me. "Oh no. You have classroom work too. If you recall I promised you a history lesson.”

She was teasing. It wasn’t at all like classroom work. It was VR. It was like being there. I experienced history first hand but without all the pain. There was a LOT of pain, blood, suffering and death.

“We’ll start at the beginning and work forward. This would take a LOT of time if our clock was set to standard. Fortunately for you we can speed it up some...by several orders of magnitude.” She said.

“Like a dream?” I asked her.

“Exactly like that.” she said " A lot of time will pass subjectively but relatively little in the Real World. Good thing too...the body re-build takes a long time but not THAT long.”

So I learned.

“First thing is a little bit of back ground” Kitty said "Let me tell you about your wetware. Knowing how the hardwiring in your brain works will make the rest of what you will learn much easier to put in context.”

So I learned about Dunbar’s Number or as kitty put it..the monkey sphere.

“Humans are hardwired” Kitty said "to live in clans, extended families or small communities. We evolved knowing everyone we saw and we had ELBOW room, not at all like those who live in cities. Those of the clan or community are US. Those outside the community are THEM. The rules for dealing with US are hardwired into our brains. The rules for dealing with THEM are variable. They may be kind and generous or they may be harsh and treacherous but the rules for dealing withTHEM are not hardwired, they are learned.”

“Ok... that seems reasonable. I’ve never heard it put in those terms but it matches what I’ve experienced.” I replied.

“Such has been the case for hundreds of THOUSANDS of years. We developed a great many high tech cultures, clans, who traded among themselves. We had a global free market and it worked fine because we did not try to exceed the constraints of our neural hardwiring. Eventually we expanded into space and lived there too. We are STILL living there.” she continued.

“Then the aliens came.” she said.

“Was it an invasion? Space war? Kinetic bombardment? Stuff like that?” I asked.

“Yes..that and more.” Kitty said sadly.

“They hit the planet without warning....kinetic bombardment...AND EMP. The impactors disrupted the climate causing the Younger Dryas . The planet had been in it’s normal cycle of warming after the last glaciation but the junk the bombardment threw into the air blocked the sunlight and reversed the cycle. It got really cold really quick, killing a lot wild life” She mourned

“But..but...” I started to say

“Johnny Popping again are you Dale?” she teased.

“It’s a habit...sorry” I apologized.

“No matter” she replied " It’s cute. But to continue with my story. The EMP was worse. It was MUCH MUCH worse. It killed Billions of humans almost instantly. You see, even then we had a form of Q. Our whole civilization was based upon it. The Aliens emplaced hundreds of Electro Magnetic Pulse Bombs in multiple necklace orbits then detonated them all at the same time. The entire planetary surfaces was irradiated at instantly. All of the Q went dormant simultaneously all over the world.”

The prospect of THAT was chilling. I could just imagine what it would be like to be flying high and suddenly have my wings go away.

“Icarus?” I whispered.

“That’s where that myth originated, yes.” Kitty said "When the Q was EMP’ed all that was left is something that is easily mistaken for Diatomaceous Earth. There were no artifacts left for later generations to see. All that they had was a vocal tradition passed on to them by the pitifully few survivors. The Aliens did their best to erase that tradition. They were not entirely successful but it was horribly distorted.

I nodded numbly. I could see where it all fit together now.

“The Aliens landed before those of us in space could react. It was a surprise attack. We had no reason to even suspect their existence. They subjugated, not without a fight, as many of the survivors as they could capture. It was hard for them to capture humans while they were still disoriented and confused by the Q dissolution. Later it got much more difficult.

The Aliens found that they couldn’t do much with those guys anyway. A free human is free even in prison and can NOT be enslaved, only killed. The aliens got remarkably little cooperation from those heroic men and women. Finally they gave up trying and just imprisoned them, fed them, and pretty much left them alone. Oddly enough the Garden of Eden myth originated there.” She said sadly. "Like you said...history is a lie that’s repeatedly revised to fit the narrative.”

“Human nature being what it is, the survivors had children. The first few generations were allowed to stay with their parents and encouraged to breed. When there were enough of them to provide a stable genetic pool the survivors and the first generation were killed.” She said sadly.

“A very few humans had survived the collapse and escaped capture. They were hunted like animals and killed. None of them were ever captured....they died fighting rather than allow that to happen.” she was almost in tears.

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