Melikik VIII Detonation Event
One will orbit, lost alone
Two will make a human home
Three will guide the pilgrims route
Four will bristle, weapons out
Five will wallow, world of ash
Six will dig from under trash
Seven will party, rich to buy
Eight will learn too much and die
- Chant of Eights (Eschaton Juvenalians)
Sweet Melikik, I hardly knew ye
Fore ye went and born agained
Sweet Melikik, how I miss ye
Blinkt my eye and ye bin changed
- Chorus from "Sweet Home Melikik", secular tunnel-dweller folk tune of the Sixth Consortium period (later incorporated into Makhtow's Grand Lament Masse de Conflagratio)
"Good enough for now."
- Groundbreaking dedication of Gm. Regi Chinto (Testament of Norrigar v3.0.8: Gospel of the Barons 7:1)
Submitted to the Convocation by Ambassadite Twill
The planet Melikik was one of seven planets in the Nontia system, on the edge of the Wild Zones. Over a period of about 450 years, it was the site of seven successive "cultures". Including the pre-habitation condition, these are known as Melikik Cultural Phases I - VIII.
Melikik I
Melikik was a slightly smaller than average (-2.2 on the gaia scale) solid planet originally. Mis-categorized (somehow) as an unspecified Class One Navigational Hazard in the pre-Imperium (approximately BTE 3800) survey of the system, it remained uncolonized (the entire system, in fact, actively avoided) for more than two thousand years. It was not until Magdalus' (largely unsuccessful) Second Fold Expedition along the edge of the Zones that an automated drone returned to Nontia in BTE 1722, hunting potential creases into the Zones, and made three shocking discoveries:
- the system had at least seventeen valid elementary folding geometries, to this day the most "elementaries" ever found around one star
- there was no evidence of any sort of major navigation hazard whatsoever
- there was, however, clear evidence of a previously unknown solid planet within 10% of the human-habitable range
Melikik II
Terraforming of Melikik was underway within a year, building up planetary mass, slightly adjusting its spin and orbital distance, and laying down a sustainable atmosphere. Less than five years later, the first permanent settlers (a group of twelve hundred Norrigarian Separatists led by the charismatic guildsmann Regi Chinto) arrived by fold-transit. Other groups quickly appeared in-system as well (by fold, by torch, by beam-and-build) and by BTE 1710, there was a flourishing population of over ten million sentients (mostly human).
Melikik III
It was at this point that there was a successful attempt at instilling planet-wide homogeneity, begun (and later enforced) by Outer Cladistic Progressives who represented the plurality demographic. Recognizing the growing importance of fold-transit (and Nontia's strategic value in such), the Cladists re-tooled the entire planetary economy around assisting (and profiting from) the rapidly-growing number of thru-system travelers, and declared themselves the Third Melkiche Kingdom. An entire mythology of prophecy and pilgrimage was manufactured and propagandized to help grow this industry. Soon, billions of sentients were availing themselves of Melikik's services, both sacred and secular, and Melikik itself had become a strategically (and politically) significant planet.
Melikik IV
After less than a century, however, the Cladists fell to a military coup from within their own Liberal Inquisition, instigated by Generalissimo Dougani Chinto, the so-called "Son of the Seraph". The new dictatorship cored out most of the crust and upper mantle of the planet and turned it into a fortress. The new Fourth People's Republic of Melikik then adopted an overly aggressive stance in the galactic political arena and the Imperial fist was forced to come down in BTE 1585. Details of the operation remain classified even now, but it was evidently swift and thorough.
Melikik V and VI
A half million or so survivors scraped along on the surface in proto-feudalism for a few generations as the Fifth Melkiche Kingdom, until King Chinto-Reticulus III sold dump-and-salvage rights for the entire planet to a multiple-system waste management conglomerate. Between BTE 1510 and 1380, the Sixth Materiel Consortium of Melikik removed several trillion tons of salvageable content from the planet's surface and replaced it with several trillion tons of other inhabited systems' useless garbage. The remaining "native" populace lived in hand-tunneled warrens (as the atmosphere had long since been rendered unbreathable) until (in BTE 1379) they were relocated to the smallest moon by the new owners of the planet, the Seventh Reborn Magical Kingdom of Melikik Corporation, which dropped top-down reconstruction nano on the landfill and re-opened it as a series of two hundred separate island resorts, between them capable of servicing any sort of leisure requirement (poor or rich, family or solo, sexual or spiritual, physical or virtual.)
Melikik VII
The Corporation used many of the same pseudo-mythological advertising tactics that the Cladists did in the pilgrimage years. Coincidentally, there was a renewed interest in fold-transit as the so-called Second Mathematical Wave turned up new "complex" folding geometries in many systems - most especially Nontia - opening up thousands of longer-distance jump opportunities. Again at a center of galactic transportation, the Seventh Kingdom became an unqualified success. Several of its backers soon found themselves in the ranks of the Hunnertgeld, that ancient and secretive society of and for the galaxy's one hundred wealthiest sentients - most especially Baron Guillaime d'Pedrosco van Chinto, estimated to have been the forty-second wealthiest being in the galaxy when he acquired majority shareholder status through means both legal and questionable. He then announced (in BTE 1306) the dissolution of the Corporation, the closure of its resorts, and a repurposing of the entire planet and its real estate assets to the function of Universal Archive, a repository for all the Known Information in the galaxy.
Melikik VIII
The planet was rebuilt once again, this time by the Eighth Known Collection Foundation of Melikik, which began avariciously acquiring any and every bit of information it could. Volumes could be (and have been) written about the relationship between Baron Chinto and the Princess-Apparent from Argolas, Freya-Maurine Otoko, but that lengthy discourse has no place here at this time. The practical consequence of their partnership was that the Melikik VIII "culture" was one of academia at all costs. Even the gruesome high-energy deliquescence assassination of the Baron in their third year of operation did not stop, or even slow, the Collection's efforts at copying, indexing, linking, and providing information.
Within twenty years, it had established itself as the premier source of information of any and every sort, and by BTE 1275, access to the Known Collection had become a mission-critical component in almost every commercial, military, and bureaucratic process in Imperial Controlspace. It was then (a mere 450 years after first colonization) that there was a major two-pronged attack on Melikik (by warships and denial of service simultaneously) that attempted to seize control of the Known Collection for the purpose of sealing it off and denying all access by the rest of the galaxy.
It was the first time that the more militant sects of Ascension Hax Abyllon> would rise to the level of widespread public perception, but it would not be the last.
In short order, the fleets of eleven other major interests (financial, governmental, and religious alike) and two carrier groups of the Imperial Navy had folded into Nontian space. A multi-way conflict ensued for control of the Collection. The AHA battle groups (having underestimated the speed and strength of likely response) were quickly scattered, but it was the software attack that proved to be the real threat. It was (eventually) the official position of the Imperial Tribunal Commission on the Melikik-VIII Detonation Event that the viral payload unleashed within the digital infrastructure of the planet had triggered a long-dormant, never-used (and previously unknown) last-ditch defensive self-destruct system planted in the planet's core by the military junta of the Fourth Republic. There are, of course, competing (but not officially recognized) theories.
The Detonation
The planet was almost instantly converted into superluminal energy, primarily in the tachyon and anti-protymion ranges. Because of the holographic nature of the Known Collection's storage facilities, a significant amount of its stored information propagated along these bands in thought-form as it was destroyed, causing billions of sentients within a radius of more than five hundred light years to experience flashes of spontaneous insight and false memory when the blast-front reached them. The descendants of the relocated "natives" of the Sixth Consortium Period, on the small moon, received the brunt of this effect; most of them developed genius levels of intelligence for a time. Mindlifts, hyper-interviews, and cerebral scanning of this populace (which quickly dubbed itself the Ninth Lunar Kingdom of Melikik) eventually managed to recover fully two percent of the Known Collection from them.
The detonation also permanently collapsed the geometry of the Nontia system, leaving it with not even a single folding point. As a result, a significant portion of the fighting forces in-system (lacking torch drives or any other secondary FTL) were stranded until retrofitting platforms could be torched in from the next-nearest foldable system, Evitalia.
The End of Melikik
Despite this loss of any accessible creasing, the Nightbringers of the Circus Inferorum showed an unusual amount of interest in the system when they first emerged from the Wild Zones almost four hundred years later. Several small groups loitered in the system for several weeks (completely ignoring the largely inbred and moribund Ninth Lunar Kingdom's ineffective attempts to attack and drive them off) before finally extinguishing Nontia, bringing the story of Melikik (and the Kingdoms) to its final end.
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For consideration: O Magnificent Universe, how great are your Horrors? O Terrible Universe, how great are your Wonders?