Intuition: The Flames of Destruction

This page was last updated Wed Apr 16 13:12:54 EDT 2003 .

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  1. The Ardenti (My name for them; we don't know their own name for themselves.) are an old and powerful alien race.
  2. The creature which has been known to manifest itself as the Great Omphalos Dust Worm calls this race, "my people."
  3. Omphalos described the Flames as the "great grief of my people" and also as "a sentience-destroying wave that sweeps back and forth across the universe."
  4. The Ardenti have the ability to shield themselves and others from the Flames.
  5. Omphalos would not interact with Jayla or Katya.
  6. Omphalos described itself as a force which created, protects and tries to destroy the Hegemon.
  7. The Flames last passed the Linked Worlds well over a thousand years ago.
  8. They should arrive in the Linked worlds again in between 6 months and a few year. The speed of movement does not seem to be fixed.
  9. The Hive managed to survive the last passage of the Flames by pulling pretty much all the way into the 4th dimension and hiding there, where there was damage but not total destruction.
  10. Machines remain undamaged by the Flames.
  11. A single human soul can hold only one third of the "psychic energy" required to shield humans from the Flames. A single human soul can not generate that much power in a lifetime, and so the hegemony was created to focus the power of humanity in thre bloodlines.
  12. The Deciders have a method to shield themselve from the Flames, but are unable to execute it because they have depleted certain psychic talents in their race through past wars.

All of that leads me to believe that:

The Flames are a ripple in the "sentient consciousness" of the universe, caused by the ascension of the "Ardenti" to a different level of existence/sentience. When they saw what was happening as a side effect of their ascension, some Ardenti tried to stay to protect the universe's less evolved races.

The Ardenti probably did not know about the Hive's existence at the time of the last passage.

Each time the Flames bounce off the edge of the universe and return, they grow weaker. (Though perhaps "bounce off and return" is not quite right, but it's the best analogy you've got.)

Each time the Flames pass they take with them some of the remaining Ardenti; not enough remained after the last passage to protect the sentient races through this one.

The idea of the "sentient consciousness" of the universe echoes some of the images in the Puritan Book of the Hegemon. (Though clearly there has either been drift of ideas over time, their understanding was imperfect, or the author(s) were attempting to obscure the truth-- or some of each.)

The second point (about the Hive) would seem to imply that the Ardenti knew about and protected the Vertak.

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