The entrance was built like a temple, all sturdy columns and smooth, rounded lines. Despite the intricacy of its design, though, it was built using only the crust of the system's moon. On the shuttle, overhead, Isaac had seen only dusty winds and craters on the surface. While the interior had been turned into some form of computronium he wasn't educated in the function of, the outside still retained its old form in dedication to All to One, the enormous entity made up of starstuff and yet bigger forms that he could as of yet only imagine. Stars were its lifeblood, while planets and moons were akin to the stuff you'd find around a house.
It was a culture heavy with respect, one that had been hard won, fought for in an invisible war most people hadn't even known was happening. The layers and things above needed to be protected, not simply burned into exhaust. There would come a time for renewal, when the stars waned, if everyone was patient. An influx of new matter and energy to the system, after the dark ended, when everyone was fast asleep in hollow moons like these.
Their function was … complex. And depended on both what you wanted, and what was needed. People were constantly needed in the world outside to work and keep the systems of survival running, meaning time spent in the moons simply dreaming was limited. At times, when great thought was required, everyone sleeping would have pieces of a problem routed through their minds, usually unconsciously.
Right now, thought was required. He knew that. Everyone did. They were in a time of crisis, as strange entities with hunger in their hearts ranged throughout the systems, causing death and destruction. They could only act with love in their hearts for so long before everyone went the way of the Pemalites and died in some evil maw. So they had to be smart about it.
They were in one of the time loops, advanced at this point to the level where friendly fire was minimized. Everyone knew their positions, and as more data was gathered new loops were started where good creatures were able to advance themselves and each other more quickly, more thoroughly. The goal was the completion of an ancient vow, the communal health and happiness of all sentiences, with peace and friendship between all.
Even, as it turned out, the evil ones. There was an entire infinity of people willing to sacrifice themselves to evil hunger, in the hopes that love from within would wake them up, would permeate through, would allow them to join the culture on the side of good.
As Isaac was led by an attending creature with protruding mandibles and a long cloak, the mood as he was sent through an array of rooms and chambers to find his pod was one of somber contemplation. His heart sank, slowly.
Why couldn't One for All do something about this? Surely, being the ultimate good that it was, it was concerned for the lives below?
Yet, the timescales. The sheer timescales involved … they must make this entire battle seem like a burst of heat, a spark, something it can't react to in time. Something it just has to let … play out.
It didn't seem right. None of it seemed right. They had generators working which held up stars, gave them infinite life, providing power from specific interactions on levels no one at their scale could perceive that meant no one had to eat another living being. A few strains of sapient DNA and quantum-level civilizations had perfected the machines, predicting they would lead to an end to all conflict.
It didn't work out that way. There was the problem of distribution, of turning it into consumable forms of matter for those species which required it, of making sure nobody turned it into a chain-reaction and made a neverending nuke, and of outside forces that either didn't or wouldn't understand what the culture was offering and refused communication.
There were ongoing experiments to network moons together, yet those were tempered. Advice relayed by the stars was that going too far in that direction would turn the culture into a colonizing cancer, a hegemonizing swarm. So far, they had slow-running projects with moons in orbit, projecting and receiving bursts of information between them even as they ran mostly independently. Large swathes of information were broadcast at the stars from those involved in that program while they waited on the okay from above to proceed in any specific direction.