The Ship of the Dakini

Scouting for the Sky Dancers

Thousands of years ago, our legends say, the Dakini came to Earth. There are many
strange stories of these visitors, said to be giants, dark skinned and powerful, virile and
seductive, fond of combat and hungry for human flesh. They made belts and necklaces of
human skulls and would dance naked, except for the decorations of our bones. They were
experts in magic, masters of the elemental forces of fire, water, spirit, earth, and air.

The Dakini danced across the sky to us from their island worlds, the Outer Heavens; they
rode dragons that flew through the air and drew up men and women and animals with
breaths of light. They warred with us and loved us and taught us great things. Some of the
best of their human students mastered the techniques of the Dakini and became their
equals, going with them into the Outer Darkness.

In my dreams I see the Ship waiting in the darkness between the worlds, running huge
and silent beyond the range of our electronic eyes and ears. No lights warn approaching
vessels of its presence; its first sign is that suddenly a star winks out, and then another,
and now more, until the massive shadow of the Ship appears, gaining shape from the light
it devours.

Drift closer and it nearly disappears, too huge to see within the limits of the cockpit
windows you press against. As you plod along in your pitiful scout, the immensity of it
becomes clear; the bit that you can see in front of you is the size of a mountain. Closer, and
the sharp horizons of the engineering sector blur; closer still and they resolve again into
jagged skylines, the patterns of cities built upon the massive hull.

Closer and now the gates appear, dots of blackness that shield the light of the interior from
distant eyes, and as your tiny ship and its small cargo of bodies and souls slide into the
maw, hope and thoughts of home vanish. Awe is all that is left. You have arrived.

You stand before them in the chamber, trembling in spite of the vow you swore to yourself.
They lean forward, eager to hear your news, looming over you in the half light.

Is it far? one asks.

Only a few years, you answer, even as you wonder why you do, and whether your loyalties
should lie with your own kind and not with these dark haired giants in their juggernaut.
But you shrug, and say, Not so far now. Fifteen years ahead. Third planet from the yellow
sun. You remember.

And they smile.

Writing this, I become discouraged. I know that much of what I have to say is true, but
also that I have been subject to manipulation. Some things I've been told may be
inaccurate or deliberate misinformation. I still feel obligated to report what I have seen,
because if it is even partly accurate it is important. In that case, I should not be
embarrassed to be wrong, and would actually hope to be wrong, because if what I've
been told is true, we are in for very rough times.

I want to tell you some of what I know about the Ship, at least from a physical
standpoint. This is the most accurate information I have, pieced together from my own
experience, gathered over the years from emerging memories that escaped the
blackout methods.

The Ship has a simplistic outward design--the main section is disc shaped, a biodome
about twenty miles in diameter. The biodome is multi-level, the upper or surface level
hosting an Earth type ecosystem and a community of both humans and exterrestrial
humanoids, as well as their offspring. The lower levels consist of maintenance and
storage tunnels and chambers, living quarters for entities seldom seen in the
community areas, and at the lowest levels a maze of machinery, the purpose of which I
can only imagine.

The second section of the Ship, the Engineering Sector, is a single long tubular
structure equal in length to the diameter of the main disc, somewhat ovoid in cross
section, with extensive superstructure on its surface. The vertical and largest
measurement in cross section is roughly a mile; my estimate is a guess because I have
memories of seeing only portions of it from outside the vessel. Along the central axis of
engineering is a transport system similar to a subway train; gravity control is such that
in the central axis there is little gravitational force, and this transport operates at very
high speed. Much of the engineering section visible from the tube train is biomass area,
where layered forests built in tiers of porous stone and humus rich soil maintain the
O2/CO2 balance and perform waste recycling functions. Lower areas house
manufacturing and military units. The main launch ports are at the rearmost part of
the main tube, along with medical facilities and quarantine areas.

In the biodome, at the juncture between the engineering tube and the main disc, is a
multilevel and mostly subsurface area housing beings selected for re-education. I refer
to this as the Galactic Center for the Morally Deficient; I know it pretty well since I
spent quite a lot of time there over the years. Its purpose is to create a mindset that is
not species dependent--in our case, an outlook and set of behaviours that are not
simply favourable to the survival of the human species. The human species is
expendable, and has its best chance of survival as part of a galactic community with
grander things to consider. Whether this is best for us in the long run is something I've
often doubted, since other and older races seem to be in charge of the system and are
much less likely to be expended. Fair or not, there doesn't seem to be another option for
contact.

Once you meet certain standards, you may be selected as part of the developmental
community in the dome itself. That doesn't always go as smoothly as hoped and there
are many security procedures in place for those (like me) who are inspired by the
increased freedom of that zone to become more rebellious. Individuals here, however,
are largely tolerated even if their behaviour is imperfect. Controls are strong enough
that there is little chance they will do any actual damage, and they have been selected
because their genetic material is especially suited to the task of the moment--the
redesign of the human species. The sexual and moral re-education takes place in the
temple zone, which I have described in another story; actual genetic mixing takes place
in the hybrid community living in the greater part of the dome. The housing units are
roughly in the center of the structure, surrounded by forests and plains, with access to
a large lake and a small river running from it. All this has been built by the community
residents, aided by the technology of the Ship; some decades earlier the dome had been
stripped bare and in succeeding years the ecosystem has been redesigned and rebuilt in
the style of Earth, literally from the metal "bedrock" up. In years to come, when its
mission here is complete, the Earth ecosystem will be disassembled and reprocessed,
and upon arrival in the next "farm" system, a new one suitable for that world will be
built.

The social structure of the ship community is a rough go for someone like me who has
grown up with ideals of freedom and individual choice. I had considerable trouble with
it, but it's a hard club to quit. There's only one way out, and few take it voluntarily.

The Ship itself is slow in galactic terms, traveling at near light speed between systems,
on journeys that take centuries, and is large enough to maintain a viable population for
thousands of years without contact with any planet bound culture. It does support a
fleet of hyperlight ships, scout and transport vessels which are able to fly ahead and
accomplish preparatory missions on target worlds; the energy cost of this type of travel
is high, and the maximum efficient mass of these vessels is correspondingly small.
Military vessels are crude and short ranged, in comparison to the main fleet, designed
for expendability as well as brute force. The parent cultures that created the Ship and
its counterparts are capable of wormhole travel, from fixed planetside point to fixed
planetside point worlds away, but the ecological and social implications of such direct
and constant contact are considered very dangerous. Such direct connections are
usually limited to a very few ancient homeworlds, although on rare occasions, such
gateways may be opened for special military operations.

Hyperlight travel, based on the conversion of mass to energy and energy to mass, is
used in the abduction and indoctrination of beings from the "farm" worlds. Those
beings sometimes find themselves, like me, living two lives; one aboard the Ship, and
another on their home planet.

Across the galaxy there are many farm worlds like Earth, warehouses of genetic
material and suppliers of essential resources. Life planetside is precarious compared to
that aboard vessels like the Ship, subject to natural disasters we are only beginning to
comprehend and fear; but the limited populations of the Ships are genetically
vulnerable, dependent on the home worlds for the essential diversity and natural
evolutionary processes that support the health of a species. Worlds like Earth are
essential to the system; their ecostructure and viability will be protected, even if their
resident cultures have to be razed back to the Stone Age level periodically to prevent
total self destruction. The benevolent intervention of such a Ship is a mixed blessing; it
is here to deliver and to enforce a sobering message: either we take care of our world, or
they will.

It helps to have that intergalactic viewpoint I mentioned earlier. Maybe not much, but
it helps.