Chapter 131: The Difference

“We could understand the reproduction method Human Civilization mentioned. In the past, during migrations in space, we had met carbon-based civilizations with the same way of reproducing as Human Civilization.”

“But that civilization wasn’t as strong as Human Civilization. When Stuo Civilization met them, they were stuck on their home planet and hadn’t entered space.”

“We knew this way of reproducing, which needed two or more people to work together, often left stories about fighting over ‘having babies’ rights in a civilization’s history. These effects stayed even in the space age.”

“But in the history of Stuo Civilization, there were no such stories. From old times to now, we focused more on struggles for social rank.”

Clearly, Stuo Civilization felt no surprise about Human Civilization’s reproduction method.

This big difference made Human Civilization a bit curious too.

“Respected Stuo Civilization, based on what you told us, can we say you don’t have a ‘family’ structure?”

“In our civilization, long ago, the family was the smallest unit that brought people together. It grew from families to clans, from clans to tribes, from tribes to countries. That’s how we built links.”

“We’re curious about how you made the earliest connections between people?”

Facing this question from Human Civilization—maybe from earlier talks with other civilizations—Stuo Civilization gave a clear, simple answer.

“The top-down links happened through the split between a mother entity and child entities. In our old stories, all individuals of our civilization came from just three starters.”

“We don’t have families for sideways links. By Human Civilization’s info, you might think our smallest social unit is the tribe. We skipped the family and clan parts.”

“The children we split off also needed to grow up. Our split-off children were raised collectively by the whole tribe. They grew up side by side, naturally learning to cooperate.”

Natural Collective Social Rearing?

At this point, the Social Philosophy Department of Human Civilization naturally thought about this.

But they sort of felt something was off.

Then,

after more talking,

Human Civilization learned one more thing from Stuo Civilization that puzzled the Social Philosophy Department researchers.

It was about Stuo Civilization’s current social setup.

In these talks about the social setup,

Stuo Civilization brought up an individual or entity within Stuo Civilization.

Stuo Civilization had already joined as one—it was easy for them.

This was known.

But Stuo Civilization’s level of control seemed a lot higher than Human Civilization had expected.

According to Stuo Civilization,

their civilization had a ‘Sacred Decider’.

The actual word wasn’t that, but the meaning was close: “sacred, great, never-wrong decider”.

From what Stuo Civilization shared,

everything in Stuo Civilization got decided by the ‘Sacred Decider’. Things like the civilization’s future path or making all its laws,

right or wrong in its morals, all came from this ‘Sacred Decider’.

Then, the whole civilization just followed and did what the ‘Sacred Decider’ ordered.

“The Sacred Decider judged it was needed for Stuo Civilization to go into space and find different civilizations to talk to. So we started this long, endless journey again.”

“After finding Human Civilization, the Sacred Decider decided we should make contact. So we turned to head near Human Civilization.”

With this message from Stuo Civilization and earlier details, people could mostly tell

the Interstellar Fleet now coming close to Human Civilization was likely all of Stuo Civilization. Stuo Civilization was moving as one in space, not just sending a fleet from home.

But for Human Civilization, the ‘Sacred Decider’ being around wasn’t great news.

This ‘Sacred Decider’ will was so strong in Stuo Civilization.

It meant the whole civilization could flip with the ‘Sacred Decider’ mood.

They were chatting fine now, but they might turn bad suddenly.

When two civilizations talk, upsetting each other by chance isn’t easy.

But hitting one person’s nerve? Much simpler.

So for Stuo Civilization, choices got made fast, but they seemed too simple and spare.

“… Respected Stuo Civilization, if this isn’t rude? Can we know how the ‘Sacred Decider’ gets changed?”

Before, Stuo Civilization said they once fought for social ranks,

so how the ‘Sacred Decider’ started shaped their whole social way.

“Friends of Human Civilization. The ‘Sacred Decider’ has never changed since birth.”

Stuo Civilization’s reply added more confusion for Human Civilization.

How long can carbon-based beings live?

It couldn’t be this Stuo Civilization decider was only born recently on the trip.

Going by Stuo Civilization’s hints, that was hard to believe.

As for Qin Yu,

he saw the info about the ‘Sacred Decider’ in Stuo Civilization too.

His feelings got a bit strange.

In some ways, he also acted like a decider for Human Civilization,

but he just gently nudged Human Civilization’s path at key moments.

While this ‘Sacred Decider’ sat strong on the civilization wagon, driving it.

After answering Human Civilization’s questions,

Stuo Civilization asked Humans in return at the end.

“We want to know if Human Civilization has joined up as one? Is there a being that stands for the whole? How do you run your society?”

For this,

the Social Philosophy Department researchers thought hard and replied.

Since they wanted closer touch, there wasn’t much to hide here.

“We have ‘HCC (Human Coalition)’ speak for us. We pick the smartest folks in civilization. They deal with the toughest problems and guide our path.”

“Other people, by their skills, do work in other smaller research and creating fields.”

“After coming into the Intelligent Era, we don’t need to do making stuff or serving. Artificial Intelligence handles our society’s basic running and making things.”

After this message,

Stuo Civilization, which should have written back on time, went quiet.

This silence made the Negentropy Research Institute and Social Philosophy Department teams tense.

Was anything wrong with that reply?

Figuring from where Stuo Civilization’s Interstellar Fleet was near Jupiter,

it was almost a day late before Stuo Civilization sent Humans an answer.