It had begun just after the galaxies had formed themselves. In thin clouds of liquid helium and ammonia which had somehow aggregated together, electrical currents flickered and flashed. Over time, these electromagnetic pulses interacted with each other more and more, until the first two primitive thoughts were formed:
“0” and “1.”
Simultaneously, in the quantum quagmires of the universe’s first young neutron stars, energy began to flow in enormous, organized patterns. Over a substantial amount of time, these energy pulses likewise evolved to discover “0” and “1.”
Thus were the first two forms of life born in the universe: the Nebulae and the Pulsars.
As both races evolved, they grew larger and astonishingly more intelligent. They found out how to add raw material to themselves in order to grow. Later, they discovered how to reproduce, as well as how to travel. True, it could take several million years to voyage to the nearest star, but even though these beings measured time in picoseconds, they were also exceptionally patient. Both Nebulae and Pulsars realized what the distances between stars were like. They even figured out how to make complex tools and instruments using only the material that they could scrounge up floating around in the void.
When these beings became complex enough, they discovered loneliness. Pulsars and Nebulae both began to consider the possibilities of other life in the universe. Both races had, on their own, found worlds developing the first primitive intimations of organic life, but they had not yet found any form of intelligent life besides themselves – and they hadn’t even found each other yet. The Pulsars, already aware of their enormous radio output, transmitted messages of incredible intensity in all directions. The Nebulae had a tougher time to go; they first had to build radar dishes and transmitters from the incredibly scarce matter around them. From slivers of silicates and trace metals, they produces enormous, gorgeous gossamer webs that could transmit powerful radio waves while picking up even the slightest whisper in the cosmic emptiness.
After several million years, each race realized that there was another species of intelligence in the universe. They had received each others’ transmissions, and energetically sent return messages. This continued, until a sort of “pen-pal” golden age began. Despite the fact that they had never physically met each other, they developed a rich, wondrous culture. This continued for nearly a billion years, until finally a monumental decision was made.
They would meet, physically, for the first time.
Representatives, the finest individuals from both races, were chosen to be the first ambassadors. Once a meeting place had been chosen, these ambassadors set forth to that point, which neither would reach for several millennia.
But when they actually did meet, disaster struck.
The Nebulae, because they had never wanted or needed to wander within a few billion kilometers of a star system, did not realize that helium boiled into a gas a mere five degrees above absolute zero. When the Pulsars and Nebulae came within two billion kilometers of one another, the Nebulae boiled away, killing almost all of them. Only one of them survived, living just long enough to radio a message to tell its fellow Nebulae what had occurred there.
The Nebulae were infuriated by the news. Immediately, they cut off all communications with the Pulsars (which the Pulsars, of course, did not realize for several millennia), denouncing them as murderers. Therefore, there was no way they could know that the Pulsars were mortified at what they had done. Many attempts were made to apologize to the Nebulae, but all were in vain. Nebulae anger turned to stark hatred quickly, as the lack of communications fostered rumor and misinformation. Soon, the Nebulae came to regard the Pulsars as the most loathsome things in the universe, and finally crossed that fatal line.
They began to mobilize for war.
It could not be a war that would be ended quickly. The speed of light limited both races to a slow-motion war, that would take at least a million years to finish. Because of the Nebulae’s lack of substantial amounts of raw materials and their intolerance of even the slightest bit of heat, they were forced to invent new and innovative instruments of destruction. They tried accelerating asteroids to nearly the speed of light, building low-heat high-intensity gamma ray lasers, even launching anti-matter bombs. But no matter what the Nebulae did, the Pulsars merely shrugged it off. Their neutron star bodies, nearly as dense as black holes, were impervious to whatever the Nebulae chose to do. Worse yet, the Pulsars nurtured a continually growing contempt for the Nebulae, which threatened to combust into an all-out war. But finally, one particularly inventive Nebula found a way to infiltrate Pulsar bodies. By building an ultra-stable, ultra-dense macronucleus with specific instructions programmed into its quantum energy matrix, and launching it directly into a Pulsar, they could penetrate a Pulsar to its very core.
When the first probe, constructed by Nebulae nanomachines (the Nebulae were too vulnerable to even the heat given off by this macronucleus), penetrated a Pulsar, it was ignored like all of the other Nebulae devices. But when the Pulsar began to involuntarily accelerate towards one of its brethren, it realized what the Nebulae probe was programmed to do:
Crash one Pulsar into another.
When that Pulsar finally did collide with its target, it had accelerated to nearly 99.99% of the speed of light. Of course, both Pulsars were destroyed. Of course, the Pulsars could not tolerate a catastrophe like this. Of course, the Pulsars had to prevent this from ever occurring again.
Thus began the first Interstellar War.
Obviously, the Nebulae would have become entirely extinct very quickly due to their extremely vulnerable nature. But soon after that first collision – relatively soon in cosmic terms at least, for it took several thousand years – both races made the most crucial and important discovery of all time.
They could finally cast off the shackles of matter and live on as energy structures.
Even though many Pulsars and Nebulae had been killed in the centuries before this discovery, almost all members of both species survived to make this monumental transformation. Now that the Pulsars and Nebulae had no physical differences between them (as they no longer had physical bodies), their quarrel was outdated and ridiculous.
But, like most sentient beings, they had extreme troubles giving up a grudge.
So the war raged on, but with significantly fewer casualties… at least, among the Pulsars and Nebulae. They both eventually found out that they could only be killed (or at least immobilized) by being shoved into a black hole. Before they found this out, though, both races annihilated dozens of planets, hundreds of stars, and thousands of asteroids and comets in their attempts to destroy each others’ invulnerable forms. At this point, both races knew almost everything there was to know about the universe, and were able to fling planets and stars as if they were skipping stones.
Then, purely by accident, a Pulsar took control of a planet to launch it towards a Nebula – and became the planet.
It turned out that both Pulsars and Nebulae could take physical forms whenever needed, and leave them whenever they wished. It took awhile for them to become accustomed to physical bodies again – dozens more stars and planets were destroyed in this learning process – but soon physical forms became as natural to them as their energy forms were. Just as crucial, however, was the discovery that Pulsars and Nebulae could both be harmed if their physical forms were annihilated. For instance, if a Pulsar occupied a planet, and it was destroyed, the Pulsar’s energy form would be disrupted to the point of lobotomization.
So the war continued. Tenfold.
At first, the Pulsars and Nebulae only occupied planets, stars, and other celestial forms (other than black holes, of course). Stars ripped each other to shreds with solar flares. Planets accelerated to huge speeds and smashed into their moons, or into other planets. Nebulae occupying pulsars would tear through Pulsars occupying nebulae or their protostars. Comets and asteroids went on kamikaze runs to annihilate planets or each other. This war even took place on the subatomic level; Pulsars controlling neutrons would split a Nebula occupying a uranium atom, or a Nebula controlling a neutrino would tear a proton to bits.
But soon, the Pulsars and Nebulae discovered that organic life had evolved into incredible new forms. They found the incredible complexity and flexibility of genetic material fascinating. Soon, the war shifted from the huge, clumsy celestial forms to the small, adept, evolving forms of life.
At this point, most life still existed only in the microscopic, bacterial stage. But higher life forms, even intelligent life forms, already existed in some obscure corners of the universe. With viruses and such, a Pulsar or Nebula could simply occupy the genetic code of an entire species, only dying when the last member of that species died or evolved into another form. Intelligent life, however, demanded that they pit individuals against one another. So as different species of bacteria, fungi, viruses and such waged war on each other, the intelligent species of the universe in turn waged war upon themselves. The Pulsars and Nebulae manipulated the genetic codes of the non-sentient species in an evolutionary war. Intelligent species, however, battled not with genetic material but with weapons of their own design, their emotions, and most importantly, their thought processes.
So the war continued.
The evolutionary wars between the lower species was not much different from those between the enormous celestial objects. It was merely a matter of manipulating the genetic code of a species so that they did the dirty work of their masters. But the Pulsars and Nebulae came to enjoy the intricate strategy and subtlety involved in manipulating intelligent species without being discovered. The play between empires and dynasties became a game to them. It was not as difficult as the massive detail work needed to manipulate an entire species, but the elements of psychology and sociology necessary to control individuals effectively proved enjoyable as well as effectively lethal. Most often they controlled the leaders of large empires and nations, pitting massive groups of soldiers against each other as if they were chess pieces. Indeed, being an individual manipulating large groups of people was like playing chess against several other players at once.
One problem continued to plague both players in the war, however. Whenever a culture, controlled by a Pulsar or Nebula leader, discovered sufficiently advanced weaponry, they quickly moved to annihilate the opposing players entirely. But somehow, the weapons were either discovered at the same time, or backfired in some manner that eliminated all of them at once. So they inevitably destroyed each other at the same time, usually rendering the planet uninhabitable in the process.
Gradually, the Pulsars and Nebulae turned more and more of each other into vegetables, annihilating more and more planets and species and civilizations. Eventually, the entire civilizations of Pulsars and Nebulae came to occupy a single planet. This planet was the third in a backwater system of a backwater galaxy, orbiting a muddy yellow star. The life on this particular planet relied on dihydrogen monoxide and complex carbon compounds to grow and survive. Like on all the worlds before, the Pulsars and Nebulae played a massive game of chess in their efforts to manipulate each other. But these particular beings were especially easy to manipulate.
They were the most gullible creatures either race had ever encountered.
These primates were more vulnerable to lies and deception than any other species in the universe. Everyone trusted the leaders of their nations despite their overt transgressions, and only bothered to dispute or overthrow them when they did something absolutely abominable. Each primate wholeheartedly put its faith in its species, its nation, its socioeconomic and socioecologic group, and most dangerously of all, in itself. Every primate lied to all other primates, but even worse, each primate lied to itself more than it lied to everyone else combined. More absurd yet was the belief the entire species held that a supreme power, created in this species’ own image and given its characteristic flaws and traits, governed the whole universe. This being apparently ignored the rest of the universe and concentrated on only this species, and justified one group of primates killing or torturing another.
So the Pulsars and Nebulae took advantage of this. By fostering faith in the leaders of certain nations, both races could wage hideously massive wars on each other. The idea of the “Supreme Being” and its hundreds of forms in the minds of primates across the planet added fuel to this already blazing fire. Teaching obedience to these primates was, coincidentally, easier to do than with any other species. The threat of death or worse kept them in line, despite the fact that the world’s leaders actively executed or tortured their own followers. In fact, this fostered even MORE reverence from a leader’s subjects. The threat of eternal suffering after death, made by individuals strategically controlled by both races who were supposedly “chosen” by the supreme being, ensured even more loyalty and obedience, despite the fact that this being was supposedly “kind” and “merciful.”
So the war continued.
Once again, the Pulsars and Nebulae proceeded to slaughter each other by the hundreds. In the process, millions upon millions of primates died in battle, from starvation, or from the myriad of social ills constantly plaguing the planet. After several thousand years, the destruction of Pulsars and Nebulae left only one member of each species remaining. Billions of the primates now occupied the planet, however, and became as powerful as most of the other species controlled by the Pulsars and Nebulae had been in their prime. At this point, the last Pulsar and Nebula controlled the leaders of the two most powerful nations on the planet, each plotting against the other leader and his nation. Each nation had the most wealth, the most resources, the most primate gophers, and the most weapons. But the last Pulsar grew weary of this eternal war. Each race had existed for nearly seven billion years, and the war had gone on for over three billion of them. This Pulsar had been among the oldest of its race even when the war began; indeed, it might have been the oldest of them all. The cunning of old age had somehow kept it from dying in every single battle ever fought across the universe.
But now, after all this time, it hated the war, hated the useless massacres of both races, hated the horrible waste of thousands of civilizations, species, stars, planets.
So it decided to make peace with the last Nebula.
The Pulsar cordially invited the Nebula to its central embassy at the capital of its nation. It knew that the Nebula could smuggle in a nuclear weapon, deadly viruses, chemical devices and such, but it wanted the Nebula to know that he was the one taking the risks. Surprisingly, the Nebula accepted the invitation, and arrived at the designated location seven solar cycles later.
As the Pulsar went to meet the Nebula’s primate form, it noticed that the primate had six bodyguards surrounding it. No matter: once again, the Pulsar was taking the risks here, trusting the Nebula to accept his invitation to peace. Pretense was unnecessary here. The Pulsar extended its primate form’s hand in a gesture of friendship.
“Welcome,” it said in the primate’s voice.
The Nebula’s primate form then extended its hand and grasped that of the Pulsar’s in a similar gesture of goodwill.
The two leaders then had an involved discussion concerning the states of their two nations and the current situation confronting them both. Afterwards, the last Pulsar gathered the nerve to ask its question.
“Can there be peace between us, after all this time?”
There MUST be peace between us, the Pulsar thought. This Nebula is also one of the oldest of its race. Surely it sees the folly of this tiresome war and grows weary of it as well. I’m sure of it!
The Nebula’s primate form grinned. “Of course there can be.”
The Nebula made a slight gesture with its primate’s hand, and one of the bodyguards took out a weapon and put a bullet through the Pulsar’s brain.