THE CENSORING PHENOMENA

It has been hypothesized that the local region of space, in which the Federation is now growing, has been previously swept of the majority of its ancient artifacts, this activity seems to have been in effect a number of times within the last hundred million years, this activity has been called censoring by the xeno-archaeologists.

Some experts simply believe that no such censoring activity has occurred at all, and that simply there have not been enough races in local space to fill it with the predicted amount of artifacts.

But the more information that the Federation is retrieving from ancient computer cores suggest that this region of space has been a fertile ground for civilization, and that hundreds, if not thousands of empires and federations, have come and gone within this region of local space. However there are curious gaps of inconsistency of this censoring activity, the greatest known concentration of ancient artifacts has centered around the Thule system (For example the Hasardi-amorok Relic ground), and there are other smaller regions in local federation space that have an unusually high concentration of artifacts, it is these inconsistencies that in a way more strongly suggest that censoring activity has been going on, than a complete absence of artifacts everywhere.

The Thule system was the centre of a large civilization that appeared to have dominated this region of space about 3 million years ago, it was a prolific builder compared to quieter civilizations such as the nearby Derusai, and we assume that most of the relics found near Thule space are from their own industry. The Thule civilization was growing rapidly in an era after a great galactic war, the same era in which it is thought that the Pholi also greatly expanded across the galaxy, but before the last Great War, a million years ago. The Thule civilization seems to have disappeared prior to the Great War, but its artifacts still remain to this day.

The current hypothesis is that the High Council (the council of the ancient races), reborn at the end of the last Great War, was responsible for the dramatic reduction in the number of artifacts in Federation local space, in a way protecting the new civilizations growing on those worlds. However at this time the Derusai, a race close to Thule, were growing and advancing, and communicating with local Pholi worlds, which have provided us with the best accounts of far history. But as the Derusai were expanding, their region of influence protected the artifacts in Thule space from being swept away from the High Council’s censoring activity. It is thought that this shielding effect of the Derusai civilization that has prevented the High Council from removing most of the ancient artifacts from this region of space.

The Derusai themselves were in decline shortly after the Council’s final actions in local space, and their transcendence. The Derusai had not littered Federation local space with many artifacts, possibly instructed not to by the Council, and their last construction was the Derusai object, their transcendence device.

The purpose of censoring activity is perhaps best illustrated by what happens when it is not done at all. The Mawa-rei, a race that had extended their war into local space in recent times had grown so powerful so quickly and early in their development because their neighbouring planet in their solar system was once the home of a greatly sophisticated civilization, and the Mawa-rei simply duplicated and pirated their technology. Censoring activity therefore provides a way of preventing young and immature civilizations from having access to powers to which they are simply not ready for. This act of removing artifacts is a sign beneficence of older wiser civilizations that wish to protect the younger ones.

It is also thought that instead of simply destroying artifacts in local space they are instead preserved and moved to new locations, where they can be protected and their access controlled. Evidence of this comes from the fact that in various places around the Federation are packed with ancient objects, and more often than not these areas are protected in some way which stops us paying too closer an inspection. However this censoring activity is not truly absolute, local space still has great numbers of artifacts, though notably none of those currently discovered has technology greatly exceeding the Federation’s. Another idea is that instead of removing objects, a lot are simply being hidden (like the Guanan derelict), and only revealed to us as we become more sophisticated (and therefore the risk damaging our development reduced). If this is true then many artifacts are waiting to be discovered on our very doorstep, perhaps the magnificent structures that until now xeno-archaeologists have been denied.