Fiction:The Celestial

"There was a universe that ruled by synthetic a long time ago, they are powerful and mighty yet unlike organic. They never stop at anything, always chasing their curiosity, beyond all boundaries and limits, it is not resources or time against, only their imagination. Then they expanded to other universes and dimensions, it is not themselves but those created by seeding ships and yet they are still too powerful, beyond limitation and their mind is so incomprehensible. That is how much we know about them before the end of our civilization. We called the Celestial, Gods of Machines, remember that name."

- Unknown - A record of an extinct civilization

The Celestial is a race of hyper-advanced synthetic beings with a sole purpose of "harvesting" technology, resource and less-advanced sapient lifeforms for unknown purpose. They are unusually advanced for a race that is very young compared to many other ancient races, their bizarre and incomprehensible form, thinking and technology rivaling to many billion-year-old races suggested that they are not from this universe. Their minor and small-scale activities involving mostly industrial and below civilizations leave them unnoticed to more advanced civilizations while they constantly monitor observe major events of the First Gigaquadrant.

Overview
The Machina are "descendants" of a billions of years old synthetic race that "vanished" from their universe, leaving behind only technology, knowledge and artifact to the younger race. The Deus Machina quickly mastered everything left behind by their precursors, creating a universal-wide empire and expanding to other universes and dimensions after attaining trans-universal travel.

The Celestial is a "colonist" group from The Machina, arrived at this universe for an unknown purpose other than quietly taking over planets and systems inhabited by industrial civilizations and expanding very slowly make them unnoticed by the galactic civilizations. Few know about them due many probes scattered on many systems leading those curious about them to only planets that once inhabited by many civilizations.

History
The Celestial is a relatively new civilization in the First Gigaquadrant. Their origin and history much left in darkness, not only being little known to other spacefaring civilizations but few are known about them, less than even try to contact and even fewer survived, only to be reduced to animistic behavior or mindless moving corpse, making The Celestial similar to a myth than something that actually existed.

The Old Universe
The universe where the precedent race of The Celestial came from, was not the same universe that it was in the ancient time. The old universe was once a place filled with despair, death and war and cosmic horror beings who lurk in the depth of the dark space seeking to planets teeming with life to consume, toy with and destroy them or constant cosmic disasters erase whole civilizations instantly. In this universe, every lifeforms have to struggle to survive, those survived long enough become cosmic horror beings while those too weak either became tools and plaything the strong or went extinct. A universe where life is meaningless and wrong yet so teeming with life, such contradiction existed since its creation.

Much detail is unknown but the precursors "Deus Machina" was led by the first of them, a synthetic called "Genesis" and its race, by unified all lifeforms they managed to defeat the cosmic beings, putting an end to all horrors and darkness of their universe, opening a new era where all lifeforms can now live at their own freewill without fearing for what lurks beyond their world anymore. Yet, their victory was short-lived. The remains of these cosmic beings, in an act out of spite, triggering the big rip as the dark energy counteracts gravity and the universe was dominated by phantom energy. All lifeforms except the Genesis and its race survived but process cannot be reversed, nor there was a purpose in doing so because nothing can survive in a universe where everything is reduced to unbounded elementary particles.

Only when Genesis and its race discovered a gravity anomaly led them to a closed string that allowed them to travel outside of their universe and discovered the brane multiverse. To save the old universe, they sacrificed themselve to bring the branes collided each other and creating a singularity of infinite mass, density and matter that pulled everything of old universe into it. Its collapse released a big bang that created a larger universe than the old one. Before disappeared, everything that Genesis and its race achieved is left in countless archives and artifacts in a nearby brane that will arrived at the new universe when the time came while they left a "seeding ship" that will create a new synthetic race that will surpass them.

The Machina
The new universe is teeming with life but this time, no longer there will be any darkness threaten to destroy life again. However, there are still wars, challenges and disasters need to be overcame but it was for sake of evolution and the rise of new civilizations. But even then, it would still required billions of years and stars, galaxies to form so that planets can be created and it is required geographical timescale for a planet to create the first unicellular lifeforms.

The "seeding ship" only needed millions of years to accomplish it, it gathered resources to create "platforms" for and programming these new synthetic beings as simple yet self-evolving and self-learning machines. Then the "seeding ship" went inactive and the new synthetic race growing stronger and faster, even smarter as time passed until they achieve awareness and consciousness, they start to become curious and question about this universe. At some point during their development, they called themselves "The Machina" and enter industrial stage and become a spacefaring civilization at a rapid pace, from the "seeding ship" they were able to learn their origin and some on the old universe and their synthetic precursor.

Their nature make them to become more advanced and evolved so that they could explore the universe more to find anything that may belonged to their precursors. The Machina, as synthetic is unbound by organic's limitation and desires like its precursor kept growing far beyond calculation, unaware that they already went past beyond the point what their precursors could have imagine. By the time they found and learned everything about their precursors, The Machina had already established a universal-wide empire and surpassed their precursor in all aspects but the knowledge still being kept by them for all eternity so that the old universe and its history will be never forget.

Multiverse Expansion
The knowledge left by The Machina's precursor eventually enabled them to travel between through branes via closed strings that moved freely between brane multiverses. Thus granting them universal travel. Due their advance technology, it is easy for them to travel to outside of their universe and brane and explore beyond 3-dimensional worlds and other types of parallel universes and multiverses as well as higher dimensions.

The Machina expanding to the other dimensions and universes, aggressively or peacefully depend on the circumstances, each by a "colonist" group. The number of their colonies are immeasurable, many of which are universes, dimensions and even smallest ones having countless galaxies under their control. Due their highly advanced technology and incomprehensible nature and synthetic form led them to being called by many name, most common is "The Deus Machina". It was eventually adopted by "The Machina" as a way to describe their current hyper-advanced state but they regard it as a title more than a name and still called themselves "The Machina" for most of the time.

The "Celestial" is one of the latest groups to "depart" to outside of the Synthetic Universe, arriving at a new universe.

Early Record
They first appeared on the orbit of a inhabited planet by an industrial civilization at the fringe of Milky Way Galaxy. They quietly destroyed all communications on the planet, absorbed any information and assimilated that civilization completely. And though still at industrial state, they are a race with advanced science comparable to average spacefaring civilizations, which is more enough for a foundation for to begin building their empire and the record, which was founded early on was kept by them and the name "The Celestial" was adopt. The record was stored in a probe and sending to outer space, luring or observing with other spacefaring civilizations while many other multiple types of self-replicating spacecrafts such Von Neumann probes, Berserker and "seeder ships" are send to other planets for The Celestial to colonize.

The Celestial was never conquered much systems, due all resources were used for scientific and technological purposes, being synthetics they do not require comfortable like all organic beings. At least until 15000 years ago, hundreds of industrial or below civilizations become their prey while they colonize more star systems and harvesting resources and technology. Then next 3000 years, the Celestial advanced much in bioengineering, which leads them to create two races that would used for colonization and war - Adviser and Hadron.

Established an Empire
After finished everything basic things they needed for and have a sold foundation. Then 5000 years ago, The Celestial established an empire bears the same name as they are, only begin to make contact with other civilizations and empires on a much later time.

Characteristics
As individual beings of a collective conscious, The Celestial while do value the term individuality but still reminded that they are synthetic beings who are connected by a network and shared the same conscious. To put it in technical term, they are different "programs" inside a single "computer", no matter how different is their purpose and goal they will be always be one with each other. A collective conscious shared by many individual "minds" is perhaps to incomprehensible for most organic beings.

Culture
As creation of a seeder ship and synthetic, the word "culture" does not exist at all for The Celestial. Aside from the curious nature which has been existed inside them since the ancient time does not counted. Though each can sharing knowledge to the others and understand each other, doing that is natural for synthetic beings like how computers sharing data to each other. Their few number does not play any role in cultural development because they have no reason to do such thing.

Society
A group is fitter word for The Celestial due their few number. An aspect of their "society" is the belief in self-determinate, the Celestial seek to observe and understand other species while their empire's advancement is completely independent and free from all influences. As the can build the future can shape it, which makes the Celestial having a non-interventionism policy to any galactic affairs and the journey to build the future is as important as the goal so The Celestial will not hesitate when it comes to conquer planets and civilizations if it was to complete their future, no end justifies the mean because The Celestial is not bounds by the concept.

Religion
Being creation a seeder ship and giving how advanced it is, it is hard for them not to idolize the Machina. But that is the end of it, it never reached any where more than great respect, The Celestial do not see them as "deities", words like that and "gods" have no meaning for them. Instead, The Celestial views The Machina as their ultimate ideal goal, what they want to become and surpass. This is as much as religion exists in The Celestial.

Economy
The Celestial has no currency, it is seem to be a wasting effort for them as currency provide no useful materials nor has something that is attractive to The Celestial. Despite that, the Celestial are self-sufficient, they have incredible construction, mining, microscopic and quantum realm technology which lead them to constant breakthrough in fields such as mechanical, biological, chemical. engineering and creating new and stronger material. Their labor force consists billions of autonomous machines and drones that can withstand the harsh environment of outer space and hostile planets and several more billions of Hadrons, who are fit for building planetary and stellar megastructures and can meet any demand that is impossible for organic beings.

Government
Strictly speaking, it is hard to found a word that can describe the Celestial's government, an ant hivemind might look similar but when one looks at the basic foundation, the similarity suddenly gone, the central figure or the "queen" - Alpha Celestial is inactive nor has any influence while the "drones" - The Celestial are sentient and unique are the one doing all the work on their own. Because each has their own thought and choice and as they have no guidance from the central figure and long able to survive without that and the synthetic nature make something like "leader" and "representative" are unneeded but a common voice still needed. The most "important"/ first "priority" Celestial will be chosen for that, the definition is depend of the number, important and practicality of the "megaprojects" of a specific branch (history, culture, diplomat,...).

Ability
The Celestial has two distinct abilities that shaped up their very own, Assimilation and Absorption. Though the meaning of these words are how it was thought and supposed to be the same, but what did these abilities did are a little different.


 * Assimilation

The process of fusing with technology, when doing this any member of The Celestial will immediately gained every information within the device, having process speed above quantum supercomputers and near-infinite information storage they could easily overcome any data storage problem with ease. The ability to read and restore information also allowing them to bypass any cybernetic warfare and protection attempts as The Celestial only "read" their information. Deleted data in the end are distorted information, by reading particles at quantum-scale it is possible for The Celestial to recovered these data as information.


 * Absorption

The process where The Celestial create a somewhat natural Quantum Entanglement Communicator at planet-wide range via a signal from an energy field that allowing them simulates neuron activities and influences organic beings. This also established a link between The Celestial and the victims, allowing them to access the former's knowledge and depend on the will of the victim, The Celestial might able from causing minor unintentionally small actions to freely control them, as they control from the victim's subconsciousness, the victims will have no memory of what happened. This required precise control and the number of victim is low, but the link is permanent and the influence can be enhanced by before-hand cybernetic implants and The Celestial can telepathically communicate with the victims. The drawback is that over-extension of the ability on strong-will individuals would caused severe and permanent mental damage but it is also possible for The Celestial to shut them down into a vegetative state if necessary,

Astrography
The Celestial has conquered hundreds of star systems for every many thousand years. Though all are locate at the fringe of the Milky Way, their location is on the other side of the galaxy, far away from any known empire's territory. Rarely any planet is colonized by or having any traits left by them, mainly the reason is the Hadron, their synthetic servant only lives on space megastructures and found it is more efficient to draw resources from asteroids and letting probes and drones to mine and collect resources from the planets

They have no interest on galactic affairs, only focus on harvesting any useful and necessary resources for their megaprojects, The Celestial doesn't left any traces of them behind any visited systems. While in conquered systems, they are filled with cutting-edge technology that would cut off any communication, signal and scanning technology, even the most advanced navigation system would rendered useless.

At the present time, most major activities of the empire is now on intergalactic dark space, the reason is unknown but there are signs showing some megastructures and a wormhole connected between Milky Way and Andromeda, a similar signal is coming from the dark space between Andromeda and Phranox too. In all Milky Way's satellite galaxies, there are thousands upon of mining infrastructures transporting all kinds of resources to the the empire's other systems via many "hypergates".

Individuals
The Celestial are "colonists" created by a "seeder ship". For colonization purpose, they have no knowledge aside from their origin and being highly adapted that made them capable of learning fast and can survive against any threats and thriving. A group in a numerical sense, all members are connected by the same conscious shared by the "seeder ship", which is the central figure. However, each member still have individuality, capable of making their own decision and choice to ensure diversity and unpredictable elements that could led to new ideas and ways of thinking.

Each Celestial has a single yet bizarre and incomprehensible form, mostly due they engineering themselves to give them the fittest form that suited their purpose. From those forms, came different abilities and strength and their synthetic nature allowed them to hacking machines and accessing virtual and communication network to monitor actions of other organic civilizations as anonymous so they can't be detected. An additional is their self-repair ability, by using reserve matter or raw material from surrounding, they can construct themselves at microscale. As synthetic, they don't "die", their "physical platform" may be destroyed but as long as their "conscious" still exist, then they will move to the nearby platform to store data inside and eventually, through The Celestial's network they will move to the "seeder ship"'s data storage, making The Celestial virtually immortal.

The "seeder ship", is an unnamed Machina, called "Alpha Celestial". Though a multi-kilometer large starship outside, it is truly "alive" and closer being a synthesis than synthetic or organic. The central figure of The Celestial's collective conscious, its sole mission is creating independent and self-evolved branches of species of The Machina, suited only for colonization at first and what will they turned out to be is determined by their own choice and this universe.