Central Mind

from the Intergalactic Encyclopedia

Central Mind is Overarch of the Intergalactic Alliance of Worlds and queen of the Ynnai’im. She is by far the most powerful and intelligent supersapient entity in Alliance space. She governs both the Alliance and the Ynnai’im as an absolute monarch. Via constant interface with Yog’s Eye, she maintains the safety and reliability of both forms of effective space travel (see Bleed). She is also believed to maintain a direct line of communication to the Gravitation’s singleton. Her exact age is unknown; she is believed to be between fifty and seventy million years old. According to official records, she has governed the Alliance as an absolute monarch for approximately thirty-eight million years Phenae time, and the Ynnai’im as the same for about eight million years longer.

In physical terms, the Central Mind is a vast mass of semicrystalline flesh occupying much of the interior of Phenae 49, the asteroid that serves as the Alliance’s capital city. Phenae 49 is located in a pocket, a region of three-dimensional space mostly separated from the surrounding spatiotemporal fabric but accessible via a narrow opening (one can imagine a pocket as the interior of a wide-bodied, narrow-necked urn). There is a large borehole entrance at the center of Phenae 49; the majority of the Central Mind’s mass and the majority of the Archives are in the borehole. Fleets of oxygen and hydrogen tankers regularly visit Phenae 49 to replenish the Central Mind’s water supply, and Yog’s Eye continually feeds her electromagnetic power.

Though the Central Mind can in theory intervene anywhere in the Alliance’s power structure, in practice she rarely participates in the year-to-year tasks of governance. Below the Central Mind, the Alliance government’s hierarchy comprises four principal levels: the Inmost Ring (7 members), the Inner Ring (49 members), the Middle Ring (2,401 members), and the Outer Ring (5,764,801 members). Each member of the Middle Ring governs 2,401 members of the Outer Ring; each member of the Inner Ring governs 49 members of the Middle Ring. The Inmost Ring governs the Inner Ring as a body; traditionally, Seven (the designation given to the most recently appointed member of the Inmost Ring) acts as a messenger for members of the Inner Ring who wish to communicate with the Central Mind.¹ The Inmost Ring operates primarily in the shadows, leaving the Inner Ring as the highest-ranking government body to exert year-to-year control over lawmaking, law enforcement, and economic operations.

When a member of the Outer Ring leaves their post (due to death, resignation, promotion, or other loss of ability to fulfill the duties of the position), the Middle Ring elects a replacement from a list of suitable candidates provided by the constituency. When a member of the Middle Ring leaves their post, the Inner Ring elects a replacement from the Outer Ring. When a member of the Inner Ring leaves their post, the Inmost Ring elects a replacement from the Middle Ring. When a member of the Inmost Ring leaves their post, the Central Mind appoints a replacement from the Inner Ring. Various procedures insulate the system from populism. For example, consider a vacant Outer Ring seat. If, after three rounds of voting, no candidate from the constituency-provided list has received more than 1,200 votes, the problem is “tossed upstairs” to the member of the Inner Ring whose governed territory includes the constituency. The member of the Inner Ring then unilaterally appoints a replacement of their choosing; the replacement may or may not be from the list. The Middle Ring may, if a majority votes accordingly, strike part or all of the list before tossing it upstairs; the Inner Ring member may not appoint a candidate whose name has been struck out.

The Central Mind may at any time appoint replacements to any or all seats in any of the Rings. She may at any time dissolve the Rings and implement a different system of government; she may at any time abolish any law, suspend any law, or selectively ignore any law. She may also create any law, even a law invalidating some or all of her own legal privileges. However, she rarely exercises these powers, and she has never dissolved the Rings or replaced Ring members wholesale. She is not believed to have created any self-constraining laws, but, as she has the power to create secret laws, this cannot be known for certain. One, the least recently appointed member of the Inmost Ring, is her heir apparent in the unlikely event that 1) she has died or been otherwise rendered unable to govern too quickly to appoint a more suitable heir and 2) the Alliance government still meaningfully exists. Her remaining lifespan is estimated to be somewhere in the hundreds of millions or billions of years.

1. Seven is colloquially known as the Mind’s Eye.