The Start of Eternity/3

Human agents
Five days after leaving Tokishira the Main Sails completed a long hyperspatial jump and was at optimal viewing distance from the Large Magellanic Cloud. Fint and Lorn-Kru had a date on the observation deck. Fint was trying to explain the concept of a romantic rendezvous. The concept was meaningless to Lorn-Kru. "Look, Lorny, I know even your pathetic species has the concept of beauty. When you sneak off somewhere to meet your lover you are thinking about how beautiful your lover is and you want to take your lover to a beautiful place in order to make it a beautiful experience."

Lorn-Kru wondered how calling your lover's species "pathetic" a beautiful experience, but decided thon was being too analytical. "What if your lover decides that the romantic location is more beautiful than you are?"

Fint replied, "He better have the sense to pay attention to me anyhow."

Lorn-Kru still felt a shudder every time Fint used the word "he". It was clear that she wanted Lorn-Kru to learn to play the role of a "he", but among the Ouwui, "he" or "she" implied a sexual pervert who denied half of thons hermaphroditic nature. For Lorn-Kru, this view of the galaxy they were approaching did provoke what thon thought of as a sense of beauty....an intellectually-based sense of awe and wonder provoked by the idea of billions of stars and millions of worlds with untold numbers of living and thinking beings. The crew had now been briefed on the nature of the civilization that existed in this minigalaxy, and Lorn-Kru was eager to visit and learn more.

Lorn-Kru had learned that there was a 15,000 year old space-faring culture here populated by humans and half a dozen other species. The Huaoshy had taken humans off of Earth many tens of thousands of years ago. Then, when the Huaoshy were defeated at Earth, the Huaoshy simply continued their project of pushing humans along the desired cultural development path....it just all happened on worlds of the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Fint could now easily recognize when Lorn-Kru was lost in thought. She had also gotten past her natural tendency to get angry with Lorn-Kru when he slipped away like this. The easy solution was to just blow warm air into his ear. "You did it again."

Lorn-Kru came back to his senses. "Sorry. I simply cannot look at this cute little galaxy and not think about how humans have developed here, in such a normal way...while they made such a mess of their home galaxy."

Fint decided it would be a waste of time to continue trying to get Lorn-Kru to act like a love-stricken male of her species. Fint gazed for a moment at the swirl of stars and tried to think of it as Lorn-Kru did, as a giant test tube for sociological experiments. She suggested, "Maybe some day this will be a classic case for study and taught as proof of the value of Huaoshy methods. Then again, maybe some day this mission will be used as an example of yet another failed attempt to strike back at the humans. I've certainly not heard how the Huaoshy plan to make any more progress against the humans now than they have for the past 20,000 years."

Lorn-Kru complained, "The Captain refuses to explain how humans defeated the Huaoshy. It cripples my thought processes to be kept in the dark like this. I can only assume that we will be told the truth at an appropriate time. It is as if we are being tested. How much idiotic secrecy will we put up with before we quit?"

Fint did not envy Lorn-Kru for his relentless seriousness. "This is why I'm trying to teach you how to have fun. The Captain ordered me to keep you entertained so that you will not quit the mission in frustration."

Lorn-Kru suspected that Fint was joking with thon, but he could not be sure. "Are you serious?"

Fint smacked thon on the top of thons head with a tentacle. "No, silly. I'm sure Hooski is sickened by my silly games, just as you were at the start of this mission."

UNDER CONSTRUCTION
The Many Sails will first stop at a Huaoshy base in the Large Magellanic Cloud. There are humans at that base who were taken off of Earth over 100,000 years previously by alien Observers. These humans have human-like robots that have been produced for the purpose of being taken to Earth's Moon where they will make use of Eternity to change time, replacing the Foundation Reality with a Final Reality in which Galaxia does not exist, humans are only one of several species that colonizes the galaxy, producing a multi-cultural Galactic Empire that can easily merge into the Huaoshy inter-galactic civilization.

The Huaoshy at the base in the Large Magellanic Cloud have realized that humans in the Milky Way Galaxy are being genetically engineered so as to make Galaxia a reality. The Huaoshy have also discovered Gaia. By sending their human agents to Gaia, it has been learned that telepathic robots are responsible for the genetic engineering of humans that is allowing Galaxia to forms and which has been going on for other purposes during the entire history of the Galactic Empire. In particular, humans have been genetically engineered to have reduced curiosity and creativity: they just want to fit into their existing culture.

The Huaoshy are now guessing that the original loss of their base on Earth's Moon was due to telepathic robots. They have arranged for a biological crew that is ignorant of this to take special humaniform robot agents to the Moon Base. The humaniform robot agents are equipped with a means to shield their thoughts from Earth's telepathic robots. Also, some humans from the Large Magellanic Cloud will be sent along: they also know nothing about the true nature of the mission, but they will be able to issue orders to the telepathic robots. At this point, the Huaoshy have no idea that the telepathic robots have used time travel (Eternity). That will only be discovered when the Many Sails reaches the Moon Base. So, initially, the plan is just to find out more about the telepathic robots.

Stop at a "zoo world" on the way to Earth