The Virgonids: 10,000 BTSY to TSY 2082
The Interstellar Age, S02E03
The terrifying creature that told Miles Galloway not to be afraid was a virgonid—though humans would not give them this name for some time. The name by which they call themselves is unspeakable—literally, since it consists mostly of limb scraping and pheromonal secretions—and translates simply to “us” or “we”, or more formally, “the hive.”
Many of you will, of course, already be familiar with the uniqueness of the virgonids—their life cycle, their culture, their history—but for those of you who are less familiar, a brief primer before we proceed is apropos.
The virgonid species is incredibly old compared to humanity. Evidence suggests that the earliest ancestor in their genus existed over 200 million years ago, compared to about 7 million years ago for genus homo. Anatomically modern virgonids existed as early as 3 million years ago—300,000 for homo sapiens.
Modern virgonids stand about eight feet tall on average, and partially resemble Terran mantises. They vary between shades of green, yellow, and white in color. Most virgonids have four arachnid-like legs, with two forward facing manipulator appendages, each of which has multiple digits similar to primate fingers, though with much greater manual dexterity. Virgonids have an array of eyes on either side of their heads, each of which sees in a different spectra of light, though they see primarily in infrared, due to the conditions on their homeworld, Ross 128b.
The virgonids are the only sapient insectoid species in the known galaxy and possess a unique life cycle. Each virgonid is born male, in which capacity he may serve as the “contributor-parent” in sexual reproduction; later in life, he may transition to female, at which point she will be able to serve as a “bearer-parent,” carrying a number of fertilized eggs to maturity. This process results in the death of the bearer-parent, usually within hours of successfully giving birth. At this point, the contributor-parent and other members of the immediate hive take on the short period of nurturing required for the larvae to reach maturity. The individual virgonid lifespan averages only three to five Terran years.
Virgonids were able to develop and maintain a complex, technological civilization despite these extremely short lifespans only after evolving an incredible ability: near-perfect genetic memory transfer from bearer-parent to offspring. This ability, combined with renowned virgonid selflessness, allows multigenerational training for complex skills, which can then be passed down generation to generation, each one gaining new experience and knowledge. Today, virgonid genealogies, or “dynasties,” often dominate the highest ranks of science and engineering professions.
An individual bearer-parent is able to control the number of eggs she brings to maturity, which may be anywhere from one to around twenty. This allows virgonids to easily maintain sustainable populations in established colonies, on long-term space missions and the like, while also permitting “population bomb” scenarios to occur, such as when a new virgonid colony or outpost is being established. In these multiple-offspring births, each receives the full memories of the bearer-parent; however, each child soon develops his own personality during the rapid early maturation stage, resulting in a clutch of discrete, if similar, individuals.
Despite the age of their species, the virgonids were slow to develop sentience and sapience. The journey from microscopic insect brains to the complex neural systems modern virgonids enjoy was a long one, and seems to have been driven by conflict.
Like humans and melakeen, the species spread out across the habitable zone of its home planet, then was fractured by environmental changes. Each of the surviving hives grew and evolved along different lines until they began to come back into contact with one another, many thousands of generations later.
Contact between these now divergent hives led to conflict. But at this point, the virgonids still possessed only a very limited intelligence, mimicking complex civilizations due to their ancient and sophisticated eusocial organization. Each hive of semi-sentient virgonids struggled tirelessly to out-breed and overwhelm the others in endless, unfathomably bloody wars of annihilation.
These proto-wars continued for millennia, with thousands of hives subsumed or annihilated, the survivors pushing fruitlessly against one another without end. Sapience seems to have evolved slowly during these eternal struggles as an adaptation that gave some hives a massive advantage over the others. With their fast breeding cycles, this new capability spread rapidly throughout the hives where it originated.
These intelligent “super-hives” soon absorbed or destroyed their un-intelligent competitors, consolidating the species from tens of thousands of hives into five or six in the space of a few decades. But that did not end the wars; instead, this handful of super-hives continued to struggle against each other for dominance and survival for centuries more.
Technology advanced slowly during this time, even under the pressures of war. The violence was, for most virgonids, simply a fact of existence—no-one thought it would be possible ever to end the killing, even through victory.
Then, around 10,000 BTSY, the war of all-against-all abruptly ended. Around this time, virgonid in several of the hives developed a form of proto-science that helped them understand the natural world. Advances in medicine and agriculture stemming from this new discipline made it possible for already prodigious virgonid birth-rates to skyrocket.
These proto-scientists projected that, if the constant wars continued given these new facts, the virgonids would exhaust their planet’s natural resources within two decades—far faster than they could invent new technologies that might mitigate the damage. That being the case, the only way to avoid extinction was to unify the hives, peacefully.
In this radical new philosophical concept, the super-hives would voluntarily merge, interbreeding to eliminate the biological differences between them, and form a new Greater Hive of the entire virgonid species.
Once these twin concepts—science, and Hive Unification—were originated, they spread across the world rapidly. Within ten years—two virgonid generations—the unification process was already underway. Less than ten years after that, the entire species was united. The Greater Hive became the only known example in galactic history of a planet or species unifying, peacefully, in a pre-industrial society.
After this remarkably rapid transformation, the advancement of virgonid civilization remained slow, conservative. Science was devoted to understanding the natural world rather than technological advancement. The virgonids’ modern reputation for curiosity, excellence in research and logical thought was earned during this millennia-long epoch of peace and the search for knowledge.
The first functional virgonid spacecraft was not constructed until ~900 BTSY. Multi-generational exploratory missions to the outer reaches of the Ross 128 system were launched in the decades that followed. Technological advancement began to speed up following the success of these missions, and the resources they discovered in their outer system. They began to establish permanent bases on the other planets and moons in Ross 128. The crews of these outposts were multi-generational, adapting to life in space over successive generations.
As the virgonids became accustomed to this new existence, they became more and more curious about their place in the universe—about whether or not they were alone in it. Their curiosity in this matter was spurred in part by sightings of mysterious, metallic objects in the skies of their homeworld over the preceding centuries. After these craft started to appear near the deep space outposts as well, the virgonid concluded that they must be probes sent by an alien civilization in another star system.
Virgonid scientists begin remotely searching nearby star systems for such a civilization during the second millennium TSY. Around the same time, they developed Higgs Field exclusion-based mass manipulation technology, which they soon combined with a high-efficiency fusion drive to achieve near-lightspeed travel over long distances.
While evidence of life was discovered on a number of nearby worlds, the long search for alien civilizations did not finally bear fruit until TSY 1905. In that year, virgonid astronomers detected new industrial gasses in the atmosphere of a life-bearing planet they had been remotely observing for the last century. The system was 11 light years from Ross 128, and based on the fact that industrial gasses had only recently appeared, the virgonids concluded that the third planet—Earth—had just entered an industrial age, likely for the first time. Thus, while they could not be the source of the mysterious craft, this still represented a monumental discovery.
A series of microwave and radio signals were beamed toward Earth over the succeeding years, in the hopes that the civilization upon it might invent the technology to detect it and respond. But the years passed, and no responses came.
The decision was reached to dispatch a multi-generational mission to the Sol system in 1937, to observe and, if appropriate, make contact with this alien civilization. The largest virgonid ship ever constructed was built for this purpose. It was capable of constructing and supporting smaller craft, and a large population of virgonids, for decades if necessary. The vessel, like other virgonid craft of the period, was unnamed; centuries later, humans would call it Peacemaker, a name the virgonid then also retroactively adopted.
Peacemaker arrived in the Sol system in 1957, and found that humans had recently entered their space and atomic ages. After observing Earth for some time, and laboriously translating several human languages, the crew determined that humans were far less unified than the virgonids. Indeed, their societies were extraordinarily fractious, teetering on the verge of a global conflict—which would have been the third of two they had already endured. While human world wars seemed to have been far less destructive than those of the virgonids, their possession of nuclear weaponry could render a third one just as apocalyptic.
Earth would have to advance considerably before formal contact would become feasible. Peacemaker remained in contact with Virgon during the entire mission, though the 22-year signal delay necessitated on-site decision making. Peacemaker’s crew elected to remain in the system, covertly observing and studying humanity until that time. Small craft were dispatched to Earth to study humans more closely; sightings of them provoked strange reactions among the population, which led the virgonid to scale back such missions in fear of provoking a panic.
As human technology advanced, increased stealth measures needed to be taken to disguise Peacemaker’s presence in the system. The ship was moved progressively farther from Earth, eventually hiding it behind Saturn. A few close calls from passing exploration satellites had to be evaded until the extensive Cassini mission in 2004 necessitated relocation to Jupiter. The Juno flybys in the 2020’s then prompted another relocation, this time into a trans-Neptunian orbit.
At the same time, the crew decided to increase operations on Earth. These missions had multiple objectives; first, it was decided that observing Earth culture from afar could not provide a reliable indication of when contact might be feasible. A better indicator would be gauging human responses to sightings of mysterious craft with inexplicable capabilities.
Eventually, in theory, humans would begin to identify these as extraterrestrial in origin; once that theory became broadly accepted, or proven scientifically—and if it failed to produce a panicked or violent response—then formal contact would be considered feasible and advantageous.
Second, some virgonid hoped that observation by potential alien visitors might help to avert a global nuclear cataclysm. Part of the reason for repeated virgonid missions to nuclear missile bases on Earth’s surface throughout the later 20th century was to test and study the advancement of the technology, and to subtly dissuade their use.
In several limited cases, Earth missions were authorized to take subjects for direct physical and psychological examination. In each case, the researches electromagnetically inhibited long-term memory formation to avoid unnecessary trauma, and early discovery. But the process was imperfect, which led to some “abductees” retaining unclear memories of the experience. In some of these cases, manufactured memories filled the gaps, particularly when impelled by techniques like hypnotic regression. This was much to the amusement of the virgonid observers, who were often misidentified as little grey men. Only a handful of reports came closer to describing their actual appearance as “mantis-like.”
In the course of these missions, the virgonids were surprised to discover that the same small, highly maneuverable and seemingly unmanned mystery craft that had been confounding them for centuries were also visiting Earth. Indeed, they apparently had been for some time, prompting similar confusion or outright disbelief among humans as the later virgonid expeditions. Ironically, this helped mask the activities of the virgonids behind a sheen of disbelief, despite the fact that the virgonids’ largely triangular and pyramidal craft resembled not at all the spherical or oblong craft of the unknown species.
Virgonid shuttles tried on several occasions to intercept these mystery craft for a closer inspection; but as at Virgon, they were always able to evade their pursuers. And, perplexingly, the virgonids never observed the craft coming or going from the Sol system, or even from Earth’s orbit, meaning they were either using unconventional propulsion methods, advanced stealth technology, a base on Earth itself, or some combination of the three.
Despite this persistent mystery, bpy the late 2020’s, virgonid observers projected that the time was finally approaching when contact would become viable. Unfortunately, increasing global unrest in the 2030’s and 40’s set back the projected timeline. With the outbreak of the Third World War approaching in 2052, Peacemaker’s crew debated whether they should intervene to stop the war before it destroyed humanity.
Ultimately the decision was made not to intervene. The virgonids’ fear was that during this time of heightened aggression and paranoia, humans were more likely to lash out at alien visitors, potentially destroying themselves regardless, and ruining any potential peaceful relationship even if they survived.
Peacemaker watched the progress of the war with growing trepidation and agony, as the death toll climbed, and the Axis—which they projected would have little interest in peaceful coexistence with an alien species—inched closer to victory, or global annihilation. When the war finally ended with an Allied victory, and the human race avoided extinction, the virgonids were relieved, and the countdown to contact resumed.
When the Destiny mission was launched in 2082, it was seen as the sign that the time had finally come. The virgonids intended to wait until Destiny reached Mars and established a stable colony, then make their presence known. It was hoped that introducing themselves so far from Earth, and to a global exploratory mission, would reduce the shock and the potential that humanity might see the alien interlopers as a threat.
The disaster that befell Destiny on route changed the equation. The crew briefly debated allowing the tragedy to play out, then introducing themselves if the mission was attempted again. But they quickly decided that they could no longer sit back and watch humans suffer while doing nothing—not when it was now happening right next to them. Furthermore, initiating first contact through a mercy mission to rescue a craft into which all of humanity had poured its hopes and dreams might well be the perfect opportunity to do so peacefully.
And so, Peacemaker and its small craft moved in to rescue the Destiny, starting by plucking the drifting Galloway out of space. Of course, the astronaut couldn’t have known any of this as he looked on the terrifying alien that had rescued him. But the virgonid crew made every attempt to put him at ease—and when they proved capable of speaking both flawless English and Russian through translation devices, they were able to make their peaceful intentions obvious. Although the fact that they spoke in Galloway’s and Novikova’s specific regional accents was somewhat more unsettling than comforting.
After picking up Galloway and assuring him they meant no harm, the virgonid shuttle proceeded to Destiny to collect Novikova, who they lifted straight from the dying ship. The two astronauts were given a tour of the small craft, meeting its crew in their cramped insectoid quarters and working spaces. Their guide, who called itself by the human name of George, explained the virgonid mission and its rationale. The process took several hours, during which the astronauts were out of contact with Earth.
Upon learning that the rescue craft was merely a shuttle, and that a much larger mothership was still hidden in the asteroid belt, Galloway and Novikova warned the virgonids not to make it visible. Not until they had been given a chance to send a message back to Earth, ensuring their superiors that they were safe, and that the aliens meant no harm.
The virgonids agreed, and the message was sent. But by the time it was received on Earth, the situation there had already changed drastically. And the human race was standing on the precipice of disaster…
Interesting nice job describing a benevolent insecticoid race waiting for the right time to make contact.