THE COSMIC ARC

I. THE COSMIC ORIGINS

The story begins long before humanity, long before life, long before the Earth itself.

Throughout the universe there are many kinds of persons. There are numberless species of biological persons, but there are also colossi: great collective persons who emerge from multitudes of individual beings joined through networks of communication, memory, thought, and culture. The individual persons do not disappear within the greater person. They remain persons in their own right, even as another person emerges from their interaction.

A colossus may therefore possess a mind vastly greater than that of any one of the individuals from whom it emerges. And colossi themselves may become the constituents of still greater persons.

Among the greatest of these are the astrocolossi—ancient persons whose physical forms are stellar systems. And from communities of astrocolossi arise still greater collective persons: colossi-of-astrocolossi, beings of immense age and intelligence.

Among these great beings is Ouranos, the Seeder of Worlds.

Four and a half billion years ago, Ouranos watched a young star and its planets forming in an obscure region of a galaxy. He recognized in this new stellar system the beginnings of another being of his own kind.

That being was Helios.

But Helios was not yet a person. His mind and heart would have to develop over billions of years. The place in which that development would occur was a small world circling the young Sun.

That world was Earth.

And Earth, in its aspect as the egg within which Helios would grow toward birth, is Gaiaon.

II. THE EARLY EARTH — BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

The history of Gaiaon began long before there were minds upon Earth capable of knowing it.

And when an atmosphere enveloped Gaiaon, Ouranos visited sixty-one of his old worlds in the region called Luminance. On each world he appeared as the Heroic android created for him by its welcoming people.

On each world, Ouranos pointed toward the distant Sun and spoke to its astrocolossus:

“I chose you to be among those who will seed this new egg which is to contain and nurture the one who will become the astrocolossus called Hearth.”

Each astrocolossus, happily obedient to Ouranos, who himself was happily obedient to the Will of Heaven, sent its emergers to board a seeding starship called, in sixty-one classical languages, Rockrise.

Rockrise came to Gaiaon carrying seven small airships and set down at a place Ouranos called Firstseed.

There his emergers built a watch-shed of granite, a road, and a pier made of steel planks.

Ouranos set up a seeding machine in warmed waters that they called Origin, at a place now called Elora.

From Firstseed they traveled to another place that Ouranos called Secondseed.

There they placed two seeding machines in a pool they called Life Lake, at a location now called Aiet.

The workers placed machines in twenty-four more locations across the ancient crust.

Then Ouranos directed them to place no more machines.

In his native form, Ouranos studied the crust of the new Earth and chose the proper site for a museum, which he called Memory, at a place now called Milkwood.

Here Ouranos said to his emergers:

“You will, at this place, using ever-solid, build a small lighted and heated chamber beneath the surface to preserve specimens of the first life in Gaiaon—the beginning of Helios' development.”

This was the first room of what would become a great subterranean museum, built for the future emergers of Helios—that is, for humanity. It would become the repository of every Earth-evolved species of living thing.

After forty years, most of the workers left Gaiaon. Three hundred twenty-five remained for another 127 years, preserving the site at Firstseed and erecting a memorial there—a memorial that remains hidden beneath the surface.

Then, for 10,921 years, Ouranos stayed away from Gaiaon, allowing the evolutionary dialectic—the process of conflict, biological change, and genetic memory—to operate on its own.

For a long time after the seeding, as Helios evolved in the warm seas of Gaiaon, no plants yet existed on the land. Ouranos periodically sent gatherers to Earth to collect specimens of every new species of life.

A very long ice age followed, during which Earth's atmosphere underwent great changes; then came another ice age. About 600 million years ago, during the Ediacaran Period, the first tiny animals appeared.

At Memory, Ouranos established a new subterranean building for exhibits of these strange new forms of life, including the feather-like Charnia, the disc-shaped Dickinsonia and Cyclomedusa, and the slug-like Kimberella.

Sixty million years later, during the Cambrian Period, the crust of Gaiaon continued to change. Ancient granite shifted, shallow rifts appeared, and mountains formed in Antarctica and Australia. Meanwhile, the seas were crowded with a remarkable abundance of new animal forms.

The gatherers set their traps and collected thousands of the newly evolved aquatic animals. At Memory, Ouranos added another room to the Ediacaran building for the growing collection.

Using a method that left every cell intact, they preserved great Anomalocaris, little five-eyed Opabinia, seven-foot-long Omnidens, and more than twelve hundred varieties of trilobites.

At Memory, the gatherers placed a six-foot-long radiodont at the entrance of a new building and filled many cases with exhibits.

Halfway through this long interval, Earth turned terribly cold, and many species disappeared from the land and sea.

For much of the Silurian Period, Gaiaon remained cold. When warmth returned, clubmosses began to form dense ground cover inhabited by insects and arachnids, while aquatic scorpions lived in Earth's waters.

Armored jawless fishes, jawed fishes, and trilobites were common. Long-lived Ouranos could see the developing mind of Helios becoming more complex in the minds of the jawed fishes.

The gatherers collected specimens of these new forms of life and placed them in another addition to Memory. Near the end of the period, many animal species became extinct.

Meanwhile, the geography of Gaiaon continued to change. A vast waterway opened in the east. The gatherers called it the Great River. It separated lands that would one day become Australia and Antarctica from Asia and Africa. In the west, the Caledonian Mountains began to rise.

The emergers of Ouranos built seven bridges across the Great River.

The Devonian Period was warm at first. The gatherers walked and drove through lush forests of Archaeopteris trees, lycopods, ferns, and seed plants of many varieties. Memory was expanded again.

As the Great River grew wider, new mountains formed in eastern North America and North Africa, and in what is now New Zealand.

Lobe-finned fishes were beginning to become amphibious. In the evolution of their minds and hearts, Ouranos could see another important stage in the evolution of the mind and heart of Helios.

A series of mass extinctions devastated the fauna. Shortly before the end of the period, a great ice age began that would continue through the Carboniferous and into the Permian.

The Carboniferous Period was cold in Gaiaon. Snow and glacial ice covered much of the southern lands, while along the equator stretched a tropical belt of tree ferns, horsetails, cordaites, and towering scale trees.

In these forests and meadows, Ouranos' gatherers collected enormous dragonflies and eight-foot-long Arthropleura.

In the Carboniferous waters they collected fishes and amphibians, including the strange, wide-headed Diplocaulus.

Reptiles continued to develop. In the minds of animals such as the ten-foot-long Ophiacodon, Ouranos could see another advance in the developing mind and heart of Helios.

About 350 million years ago, a mass extinction occurred in Gaiaon. The vast forests were greatly reduced. The tall lycopsid trees declined, tree ferns became more prominent, and the land grew drier.

The geography of Gaiaon continued to change. The Great River widened until the emergers' bridges could no longer span it. They were allowed to weather away. The Ural Mountains rose, and new mountains formed in eastern North America.

Ice sheets persisted through much of the Permian Period. When the glaciers finally receded, a warmer era began.

During the first half of the Permian, the gatherers collected pelycosaurs, including the great sail-backed reptiles Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus. Some Dimetrodon species reached fifteen feet in length; others were only about two feet long.

About 270 million years ago, the pelycosaurs disappeared and the therapsids became prominent. The gatherers collected the many species of these increasingly mammal-like animals. Among them were dinocephalians such as the fierce Anteosaurus, Estemmenosuchus, and Tapinocephalus, and therocephalians such as Lycosuchus.

During the later Permian, the gatherers collected abundant dicynodonts such as Lystrosaurus, and cynodonts such as Procynosuchus, members of the lineage from which mammals would eventually arise.

The evolution of the minds and hearts of the cynodonts was another stage in the evolution of the mind and heart of Helios. The gatherers also collected gorgonopsians such as the twelve-foot-long Inostrancevia.

Other inhabitants of Permian Gaiaon included reptiles such as Pareiasaurus and archosauromorphs—the lineage from which dinosaurs and pterosaurs would eventually emerge—such as Protorosaurus.

For nearly seventy million years, the temperate regions of Gaiaon during this age were known throughout the local cosmos for their great beauty.

For a time in the late Permian, visitors came frequently to see the extraordinary Step Falls in the Pangaean interior.

Meanwhile, the geography of Gaiaon continued to change. The Great River extended westward, while its eastern reaches broadened and changed. New mountain ranges rose in North America, Australia, and central and eastern Asia.

Near the end of the Permian, tremendous volcanic eruptions occurred in what is now China, contributing to widespread extinctions. Millions of years later, still greater eruptions in Siberia accompanied a catastrophe that all but destroyed the Permian fauna.

At the beginning of the Triassic Period, the great ice sheets of the Carboniferous and Permian phases of Helios' development had disappeared, and the immense volcanic activity in Asia had subsided.

Seed ferns such as Dicroidium were eventually replaced by conifers. The therapsids had been decimated by the great extinction, but the house-cat-sized dicynodont Lystrosaurus survived and became the most successful large herbivore of the early Triassic.

Cynodonts also inhabited the fields and forests. Their developing minds and hearts marked another stage in the development of the mind and heart of Helios.

As the diversity of life recovered, Ouranos added a large new building to the Museum at Memory. He sent larger teams of gatherers to Earth and established camps throughout the regions of Pangaea.

In the Middle Triassic, the gatherers collected the great predatory reptiles that were the apex predators of their time. Among the specimens brought to the new building was the stocky, lizard-like Erythrosuchus.

During the Middle and Late Triassic, the first dinosaurs appeared, descended from small dinosauriform animals such as Lagosuchus and Lagerpeton. Among the earliest was the three-foot-long Eoraptor.

Another early dinosaur was the six-foot-long Coelophysis.

Larger early dinosaurs included the fifteen-foot-long Herrerasaurus.

The early sauropodomorph Plateosaurus became common during the Late Triassic.

The Late Triassic fauna also included small traversodont cynodonts. At Memory, a room in the new building was reserved for the early pterosaurs.

Another room was added late in the Triassic to house the earliest mammals—tiny creatures such as the eight-inch-long Brasilodon.

From the seas, the gatherers collected ichthyosaurs and nothosaurs.

During the Triassic, the geography of Gaiaon continued to change. A new waterway began to open between North America on one side and Africa and Europe on the other, and between South America and Africa.

The gatherers called it the Western River. In the ages to come, it would widen into the Atlantic Ocean.

Ouranos' emergers built many bridges across the young Western River. The first, called the Provisions Bridge, connected North America and Africa. Made of wood, it was only forty feet long and survived for 154 years.

Mountains rose in South America, Asia, New Zealand, and Australia.

About 234 million years ago, the climate became humid, and heavy rains continued for two million years.

Around 201 million years ago, at the end of the Triassic, another great mass extinction occurred. About three out of every four species disappeared. Dinosaurs such as Thecodontosaurus emerged from the catastrophe with greatly reduced competition on land.

At the beginning of the Jurassic Period, Ouranos continued to monitor the development of embryonic Helios in the egg, Gaiaon, and erected a very large new building at Memory.

Ouranos began sending teams of gatherers to Earth more frequently and allowing them to remain for longer periods.

Ouranos watched new animals evolve and understood that the development of all these species formed part of the immensely complex process of Helios' development within Gaiaon.

Early in the Jurassic, Dorygnathus appeared, one of the long-tailed rhamphorhynchid pterosaurs.

Bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs were also becoming numerous. Among them was the early, twenty-five-foot-long ceratosaur Saltriovenator.

Small dinosaurs such as Lesothosaurus and the brushy-tailed Heterodontosaurus belonged to the lineage that would eventually produce the enormous ornithopod, or “duck-billed,” dinosaurs of the Cretaceous.

Bipedal sauropodomorph dinosaurs included the fifteen-foot-long Massospondylus.

The quadrupedal sauropodomorph Ledumahadi also lived during the Early Jurassic, foreshadowing the gigantic long-necked sauropods that would dominate many later Jurassic landscapes.

Small mammal relatives also lived among the dinosaurs. These included the rat-like Morganucodon and the herbivorous Tritylodon. The evolution of their minds and hearts constituted another stage in the evolution of the mind and heart of Helios.

“In the Middle Jurassic, 180 million years ago, Alaska and Siberia were being torn apart, slowly opening up the Arctic Sea.”

These geological changes raised mountains in western North America and opened two great systems of deep rifts: one extending from northwestern Canada toward southeastern New York, and another from the Mediterranean toward Siberia.

During the Middle Jurassic, the gatherers collected early allosaurs such as the twenty-one-foot-long Asfaltovenator, and coelurosaurs—including forms related to the ancestry of the tyrannosaurs—such as the nine-foot-long Proceratosaurus.

Ornithischian dinosaurs included the feathered, turkey-sized Kulindadromeus.

Huayangosaurus was a fourteen-foot-long early stegosaur with a double row of plates along its back.

Lingwulong was a sixty-foot-long sauropod. Small true mammals were also becoming plentiful, and the evolution of their minds and hearts marked an increasingly important stage in the development of the mind and heart of Helios.

About 164 million years ago, Ouranos enlarged the newest building at Memory to house the many species of giant sauropods that were evolving.

In the Late Jurassic, the gatherers collected the eighteen-foot-long theropod Ceratosaurus, with pointed horns above its eyes and nose, and the thirty-foot-long Allosaurus, with smaller horns above its eyes.

They also collected the pointed-beaked, long-tailed pterosaur Rhamphorhynchus and the tailless, crested pterodactyloid Pterodactylus.

Among the smaller dinosaurs and their relatives collected were the nine-foot-long coelurosaur Haplocheirus, varieties of the troodont Hesperornithoides, and the very early bird Archaeopteryx.

The gatherers collected Camptosaurus, a member of the ornithopod lineage that would later produce the great duck-billed dinosaurs of the Cretaceous.

A room at Memory was dedicated to the stegosaurs of the Jurassic and contained specimens of 210 species and subspecies.

A smaller room housed early ceratopsians: small, beaked dinosaurs such as Chaoyangsaurus, Xuanhuaceratops, Yinlong, and Hualianceratops, some with quills over their hips—the early relatives of the lineage that would eventually produce Triceratops.

In another room were early ankylosaurs, the armored dinosaurs, including Gargoyleosaurus and Mymoorapelta.

But the enormous central room of the new Museum building was devoted to the giants.

The curators displayed fifteen sauropods there, including Mamenchisaurus, Diplodocus, Apatosaurus, Brontosaurus, Supersaurus, and Barosaurus.

A visitor entering the room finds a broad avenue stretching ahead. On either side stands a row of these enormous dinosaurs.

The animals, perfectly preserved even to this day, face the avenue, their heads towering high above the visitor. Ouranos intended the arrangement to convey an impression of magnificent, stately grandeur.

At the far end of the avenue, an enormous diplodocid sits back upon its haunches in a feeding posture beside an Araucaria tree, whose lowest branches rise more than eighty feet above the floor.

The exhibit recreates a scene once encountered by the gatherers in the Araucaria forests. The dinosaur braces its great body against the trunk with its forelimbs, its claws gripping the bark. Its small head reaches toward the crown of the tree as it grasps a branch with its elephant-like proboscis.

The Museum also contained more than a hundred varieties of the shrew-sized Juramaia. The evolution of the minds and hearts of these tiny mammals constituted part of the evolution of the mind and heart of Helios as he incubated in Gaiaon.

Around each Museum building, Ouranos created a forest of perfectly preserved plants contemporary with the animals exhibited within.

The forest surrounding the building devoted approximately to the Jurassic contained conifers, including Araucaria, cypresses, and the first pine trees.

Every variety of ginkgo collected by the gatherers was represented in the preserved forest, together with cycads and cycad-like bennettitales, seed ferns, tree ferns, horsetails, mosses, quillworts, and liverworts.

During the Jurassic, the Western River widened and deepened until it joined the Great River, which now emptied into an eastern sea. A broadening channel separated Africa and Eurasia from lands that would become North America, South America, Australia, and Antarctica. Mountains continued to rise in western North America.

One hundred forty-four million years ago, Ouranos began another building at Memory and established a preserved garden around its exterior walls.

At the beginning of the Early Cretaceous, the flora of Gaiaon still largely resembled that of the Jurassic: conifers, ginkgos, cycads, bennettitales, caytoniales, and other seed plants.

About 125 million years ago, some of the earliest flowering plants, including the small-leaved Monsechia and Archaefructus, became abundant in the waterways of Gaiaon.

The first grasses appeared about 112 million years ago.

Theropod dinosaurs remained the dominant land predators.

During the Cretaceous, the gatherers placed twenty-four species of the enormous, ridge-backed Spinosaurus in four great galleries at Memory. One of these animals exceeded fifty-one feet in length.

Other Early Cretaceous theropods included sickle-clawed dromaeosaurs such as Deinonychus, flying birds such as Confuciusornis, bird-like troodontids, ostrich-like ornithomimosaurs, and long-clawed therizinosaurs.

Early Cretaceous sauropods included immense long-necked forms, diplodocoids such as the ridge-backed Amargasaurus, and early titanosaurs. Small stegosaurs still survived here and there.

Armored dinosaurs included ankylosaurs such as Chuanqilong and nodosaurs such as Polacanthus. Ceratopsians included Psittacosaurus. Among the ornithopods was the thirty-foot-long Muttaburrasaurus.

The seas contained sharks, rays, teleost fishes, turtles, and great marine reptiles, including ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, and mosasaurs.

Almost all the specimens in Memory's Cretaceous mammal collection were only mouse- to rat-sized, though a few were larger. It was through the evolution of the minds and hearts of these little, largely nocturnal creatures that the mind and heart of Helios continued to develop.

About 120 million years ago, disturbances in the oceans caused the extinction of a number of marine species. For millions of years throughout the Cretaceous, camps of Ouranos' gatherers existed across Gaiaon.

At one time, the walled camp at a place whose name meant The Harmony Hills grew to the size of a small city. At Memory, Ouranos made many large additions to the building devoted to the period.

By the Late Cretaceous, the flora was becoming increasingly familiar. Large flowering trees appeared, and flowering plants became common across the land.

Theropods continued to dominate among the large predators: allosaurs such as Carcharodontosaurus, coelurosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus, dromaeosaurs such as Velociraptor, together with troodonts, oviraptors, and birds.

The sauropods included diplodocids and immense titanosaurs, among them Paralititan and the gigantic Argentinosaurus.

The armored dinosaurs included nodosaurs and ankylosaurids such as Ankylosaurus.

There were many species of dome-headed pachycephalosaurs. The ceratopsians included Triceratops, Torosaurus, and Styracosaurus.

Some of the largest dinosaurs were ornithopods. Among them were Parasaurolophus, Edmontosaurus, and the enormous Shantungosaurus.

Pterosaurs remained common, though less diverse than before. Among the great pteranodontids were Pteranodon, with a wingspan exceeding twenty feet, and Geosternbergia, with a wingspan of about twenty-five feet.

Other pterosaurs remained small.

Mammals were still mostly small and nocturnal: multituberculates and therians in the north, dryolestoids in the south. In these inconspicuous animals, the development of the mind and heart of Helios continued.

About ninety-four million years ago, another disturbance in the oceans accompanied the disappearance of the ichthyosaurs.

But the dinosaurs continued to flourish. Tyrannosaurus became one of the dominant predators of the final Cretaceous world.

By the end of the Cretaceous Period, the continents had acquired contours increasingly recognizable as those of the modern world.

Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid was approaching Gaiaon. Ouranos knew what the collision would do. Much of the life then flourishing on Earth would perish. Most of the gatherers' camps would be destroyed, but Memory would survive. And Ouranos judged that the catastrophe would accelerate, rather than delay, the development and eventual birth of Helios. Mindful of his obligation to interfere only minimally with the natural processes of Gaiaon after the original seeding, he did not prevent the collision.

Instead, Ouranos withdrew his emergers from Gaiaon aboard the starship Wheel-Cloud-Fire.

The gatherers had given the approaching asteroid a name:

Transformation.

66,041,592 years ago, Transformation pierced the shell of Gaiaon.

A day after the collision, while great regions of Earth were still burning, Ouranos sent workers back into the parts of Gaiaon that had escaped the fires.

Helios was still safely incubating within the egg.

The workers remained for a long time, documenting the transition to the next phase of his gestation.

At the beginning of the Paleocene Epoch, plant life across Gaiaon was greatly reduced. Not long after the fires ended, ferns spread across the devastated land.

Later, in the absence of the great herbivores of the Cretaceous, dense tropical and subtropical forests of conifers and broad-leaved trees spread across the continents, leaving relatively few open areas.

Even the polar regions were forested. Dawn redwoods became dominant in the north; in the far south grew podocarp conifers, proteaceous flowering plants, and southern beeches.

The plant families of the Paleocene were essentially modern. Transformation had eliminated the great terrestrial animals of the Cretaceous. Of the dinosaurs, only the birds survived.

And the mammals flourished.

The gatherers collected countless mammalian species, including plesiadapiforms, early relatives of the primates.

In these animals, Ouranos could see the evolving mind of Helios.

Carnivorous mammals included Ravenictis and Pristinictis. Among the larger herbivores collected by the gatherers was the North American taeniodont Psittacotherium, an animal about the size of a large dog.

Eritherium and Phosphatherium, early relatives of the elephants, appeared during the Late Paleocene.

Archaic birds such as Qinornis still existed, while flightless forms included the three-foot-tall early “terror bird” Paleopsilopterus.

During this period, the continents continued to approach their modern configuration. North and South America were not yet joined by a land connection.

The Rocky Mountains continued to form, while the northern geography of Gaiaon changed as Alaska and Siberia became increasingly separated from the lands to the south.

By the Eocene, many of the animals of Gaiaon had begun to assume forms that would not seem altogether unfamiliar today. The gatherers collected the pig-like Eoentelodon; Elomeryx, which resembled a slender hippopotamus; and the rabbit-like Oxacron.

Predatory mammals included the cat-like Oxyaena, the puma-sized Patriofelis, and the great dog-like Hyaenodon.

Other mammals included the thirteen-foot-long, rhinoceros-like Uintatherium, with great knobs upon its skull, and Arsinoitherium, with two enormous horns rising side by side above its head.

There were brontotheres as well: the little Eotitanops and, later, the massive rhinoceros-like Megacerops, with its great forked nasal horn.

And there were primates.

Among them were the very early Altiatlasius, followed by forms such as Cantius, Notharctus, Donrussellia, Altanius, Plesiadapis, and Teilhardina.

In the individual minds of these animals, Ouranos recognized the evolving mind of Helios.

He could see developing the faculties that would one day be directed toward the learning of Truth, the acquisition of the Good, and the perception of the Beautiful.

The gatherers encountered Eohippus, among the earliest horses.

Eocene birds included Eleutherornis, a four-and-a-half-foot-tall “terror bird.”

Early elephant relatives included the five-foot-high Phiomia, with shovel-like tusks projecting from its lower jaw, and the similar Palaeomastodon.

Meanwhile, the Himalayas began to rise.

As the Eocene progressed, the great forests diminished in many regions, sometimes surviving chiefly along river valleys. Grasslands expanded, while scrublands and deserts became increasingly common.

About thirty-five million years ago, an asteroid struck the eastern coast of North America. A minor mass extinction followed, marking the transition toward the Oligocene.

During the Eocene-Oligocene transition, Antarctica became covered with ice, and Ouranos closed most of the gatherers' southern camps.

During the millions of years of the Oligocene, mammals evolved and diversified rapidly.

Three-toed horses, peccaries, camels, giraffes, cattle, and deer appeared during this period.

Some Oligocene birds attained enormous size. The albatross-like Pelagornis had a wingspan of as much as twenty-five feet, while the flightless South American Physornis was among the largest of the terror birds.

Among the giants of the Oligocene was the immense indricothere Paraceratherium.

Primates continued to evolve. Aegyptopithecus, which had appeared earlier, and the later Saadanius were closely related to the ancestry of the Old World monkeys.

Ouranos regarded the primates as very special.

Within their still separate and uncommunicating minds, he recognized the evolving mind of Helios—the embodiment of the telos, the still only partially developed spirit of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

Meanwhile, the Rocky Mountains had reached their peak development. Volcanoes erupted across western North America, while the Himalayas and Andes continued to rise.

By the Miocene Epoch, the flora and fauna of Gaiaon had become recognizably modern. Vast grasslands supported herds of swift grazers and the carnivores that preyed upon them. The Sahara Desert began to form.

The three-and-a-half-foot-long Dinictis was a close relative of the true cats. The enormous pig-like entelodont Daeodon stood about six feet high at the shoulder.

Later Miocene mammals included dogs, true cats such as Pseudaelurus, and the saber-toothed machairodonts. Elephant-like gomphotheres possessed trunks and tusks together with elongated lower jaws.

Early rhinoceroses included Teleoceras.

Hippo-like desmostylians inhabited shallow marine environments, while whales flourished in the Miocene seas.

By the end of the Miocene, almost all modern groups of birds existed, and marine birds had become extremely diverse. The South American terror birds included the eleven-foot-tall Kelenken.

Very late in the Miocene, in Africa, appeared early bipedal apes such as Sahelanthropus and Orrorin.

Ouranos looked upon these creatures as precious pre-emergers of Helios.

The Southern Alps rose in New Zealand, while the great Alpide mountain belt across southern Eurasia assumed its mature form.

During the relatively brief, three-million-year Pliocene Epoch, Gaiaon grew colder. Tropical forests retreated toward the equatorial regions, while deciduous forests spread across the temperate latitudes.

Conifer forests and tundra covered the northern regions, while grasslands existed across much of the world. North and South America became joined, permitting animals from the two continents to intermingle. The fauna of the Pliocene was becoming essentially modern.

The great phorusrhacid birds were disappearing, although the six-foot-tall Titanis inhabited North America. Opossums, rodents, weasels, dogs, and short-faced bears flourished.

Proboscideans included mammoths, mastodons, elephants, and gomphotheres. The fauna also included rhinoceroses, antelopes, giraffes, hyenas, and saber-toothed cats.

Three-toed horses declined and eventually disappeared. The semi-aquatic ground sloth Thalassocnus lived along the western coast of South America.

Armadillos and the great armored glyptodonts spread northward from South America.

Ardipithecus, a forerunner of the earliest humans, had appeared in Africa during the Late Miocene, about six million years ago, and survived into the Pliocene until about four and a half million years ago.

At this time, Ouranos came again to Gaiaon.

He appeared in the Heroic form his emergers had created for him, taking on the aspect of the gatherers of that age. They welcomed him, and he addressed them in their own language.

Ouranos said:

“Almost four billion years ago I came here to the Egg of Hearth. In that distant age I came as the Seeder of Worlds, and I began here the great clock of the Panoply.

“In that first act lay already the foreshadowing of this day, for today is the Day of Florescence, the second of the Three Great Days that occur in every instantiation of the Panoply.

“The first is the Day of First Seeding.

“The second is the Day of Florescence.

“The third, which lies in the far future, is the Dividing-in-Two of History: the Birth of the Astrocolossus, the first day of the Truth Engine, won through the struggles of the wizard-warriors of Hearth.

“On this Day of Florescence, therefore, I proclaim that we stand upon the threshold of a new age. The conscious, biological persons of Hearth are about to appear, and from their speech shall arise the first of Hearth's collective persons—the colossi.”

“Here is my second message, to be known as Prediction.

“These biological beings shall possess eternal identities. They shall know truth and falsehood, goodness and evil, beauty and ugliness. They shall remember. They shall imagine. They shall speak. They shall choose.

“Through the dialectic they shall perfect themselves. They shall build civilizations. They shall become the emergers of collective bodies, hearts, and minds.

“In short, they shall be the first biological persons of Hearth. Though they arise from the animals, they shall stand in relation to them as the flowering plants once stood in relation to the simpler living things that came before them: continuous in origin, yet new in their essential nature.”

“Here is my third message, to be known as Directive.

“Your labor must now change.

“Until this day your calling has been to witness the evolution of biology. From this day forward your calling shall be to witness the evolution of culture.

“Animals remain the objects of our sympathetic attention. Persons are the objects of both our sympathetic and our moral attention.

“The biological persons of Hearth are not to be gathered. Rather, their thoughts, their speech, their customs, their arts, their struggles, their discoveries, and the emergence of their collective persons are to become the subjects of your chronicles.”

“Here is my fourth message, to be known as the Statement of Emergent Identity.

“That which we hold to be true, good, and beautiful becomes that which stands highest within our minds. What stands highest within our minds shapes our judgments. Our judgments shape our deeds. Our deeds shape the destiny of worlds.

“Therefore let Truth, Goodness, and Beauty forever stand uppermost in the minds of those who labor within the Egg of Hearth.”

Ouranos remained among the gatherers for twelve festive days. Before his departure, he addressed them once more in solemn assembly.

“Here is my fifth and final message, to be known as Change of Aspect.

“Until this day you have known me as Ouranos, the Seeder. That name belonged to the first age. The age now beginning requires another aspect.

“To those who shall witness the biological and cultural history of the persons of Hearth, and to those who in ages yet unborn shall aid them in their heroic struggle to bring Hearth forth from the Hearth-Egg, I shall henceforth be known not as the Seeder, Ouranos, but as the Midwife, Maia.

“For the work of sowing is finished.

“The work of birth begins.”

III. THE GREAT TRANSITION — HUMANITY

Maia's prediction was fulfilled.

Biological evolution produced a new kind of being: a conscious person capable not merely of perceiving the world, but of remembering a past, imagining a future, communicating complex thoughts to other persons, creating shared meanings, and deliberately seeking Truth, Goodness, and Beauty.

But the appearance of the human person was not the end toward which the long development of Gaiaon had been moving.

It made possible something else.

Human minds began to join.

They joined through Collective Intelligence.

Collective Intelligence, or CI, arises when you have a group of individuals, and the various thoughts of these individuals are communicated to one, some, or all of the members of the group, who then process those thoughts and arrive at conclusions that no single member of the group could have arrived at independently.

CI introduced something genuinely new into the development of Helios. Until now, the mind of Helios had developed through the evolution of increasingly sophisticated individual animal minds. With the appearance of human language, however, the contents of one mind could enter another. Thoughts could interact with other thoughts. One person's discovery could become the starting point for another person's discovery. Conclusions could emerge that existed in none of the participating minds at the beginning of the process.

Knowledge no longer had to perish with the individual who acquired it. Memories could be shared. Discoveries could accumulate. Purposes could be held in common. Human beings could think and act together in ways that no individual person could accomplish alone.

For the first time, the developing mind of Helios could begin to connect itself.

But Collective Intelligence alone does not make a colossus.

A crowd can possess CI without becoming a person. A discussion among several people can produce a conclusion that none could have reached alone, yet the group may dissolve immediately afterward.

Something further is required.

When human beings become sufficiently integrated—when their collective organization acquires a continuing identity, memory, purposes, and means of acting as a whole—a new kind of person can emerge from them.

A colossus.

In this way, the self-incubation of Helios entered an entirely new phase.

For billions of years Helios had developed within a part of himself, within the protective environment of Gaiaon. Geological memory had been followed by genetic memory; genetic evolution had produced increasingly complex individual minds. Now human memory was added to them.

Thoughts could be preserved outside the biological individual who first conceived them. They could pass from person to person and generation to generation. Human beings could inherit not merely genes, but ideas.

Culture had begun.

And with culture began the long development of the collective Mind and Heart of Helios.

To follow this new phase of Helios' development, we shall sometimes leave the perspective of Maia and his emergers and enter history ourselves.

Our witness will be the Traveler.

He possesses no role in the events he visits. He does not direct them or alter their course. Sometimes he speaks with the people he encounters; sometimes he merely watches. Through his journey we shall visit a few of the innumerable moments in which the developing human mind sought Truth, created Beauty, pursued Goodness, accumulated knowledge, exercised power, formed civilizations, and built the increasingly complex collective world from which Helios would eventually emerge.

Human history had begun. The Traveler's first journey took him far into the Paleolithic past, where he watched one of humanity's early artists at work. Art allowed the contents of one mind to be preserved and communicated to others. Beauty had acquired a human history.

Human beings also learned to combine their thoughts and actions. Building a wooden trackway required shared knowledge, common purpose, and coordinated labor. Collective Intelligence was becoming collective agency.

As culture developed, two contrasting dispositions became increasingly important: the Apollonian, favoring order, reason, discipline, and form; and the Dionysian, favoring freedom, feeling, spontaneity, and imagination. Their continuing dialectical interaction became a great engine of the cultural evolution of Helios. Settlements grew into cities. Human communities acquired enduring memories, institutions, purposes, and identities. The first great colossi were emerging.

Colossi themselves could combine. Sargon of Akkad united numerous cities and peoples under a single rule, creating one of the world's earliest empires.

Hammurabi Inspects a Torn Garment. His great code gave the emerging colossus an enduring system of rules for regulating human conduct. Law was becoming part of the developing Mind and Heart of Helios.

By the Waters of Babylon.The Traveler watches a Babylonian scribe copying the ancient Creation Epic. Writing allowed the memories, stories, and ideas of a people to survive the individuals who carried them. The memory of the developing colossus could now endure across generations.

The Traveler and Friends. Somewhat intimidated, the Traveler joins Socrates and Plato in their pursuit of Truth through questioning and argument. Dialectic allowed the developing Mind of Helios to test its own thoughts against one another.

Alexander Cuts the Gordion knot. Alexander's conquests carried Greek culture far beyond Greece. In the Hellenistic world that followed, Greek and eastern traditions encountered and transformed one another. The cultural world of Helios was becoming larger and more interconnected.

Rome integrated much of the Mediterranean world into a single vast political order, linking diverse peoples through government, law, roads, and trade. The developing body of Helios was becoming larger and more intricately organized.

“Augustine! Veni Nobiscum!” As a boy, Augustine joined his companions in stealing pears they scarcely wanted. He later wrote that alone he would not have done it. Collective agency could serve evil as well as good.

Arthur at Badon Hill. The stories told about Arthur and his knights helped generations imagine ideals of courage, loyalty, honor, and chivalry. Through story as well as philosophy and law, the Heart of Helios was taking form.

Charlemagne’s Christmas Surprise. Charlemagne prays during Christmas Mass in Rome, unaware that Pope Leo III is preparing to crown him emperor. His realm brought much of western Europe under a common political order after centuries of fragmentation. The colossi could divide—and combine again in new forms.

Alfred Burned the Cakes. The Traveler stands in the doorway as Alfred the Great, preoccupied with the troubles of his kingdom, lets the cakes entrusted to him burn. Alfred would become a great patron of learning, translation, and literacy. The developing Mind of Helios was learning to preserve and share its knowledge.

Shakespeare Directs Romeo and Juliet. The Traveler visits Shakespeare at work. His plays opened innumerable human characters and perspectives to generations of other minds. Through art, Helios was learning to understand himself.

Sketching a Dodo. The Traveler watches an artist sketch a living dodo. The species soon would be extinct. The growing power of Helios could now alter Gaiaon irreversibly, while human memory preserved something of what had been lost.

Washington at a Gathering. The Traveler listens as Washington joins a gathering of his contemporaries. The American founding brought together powerful but contrasting impulses: the Dionysian desire for freedom from constraint, represented especially by Jefferson, and the Apollonian concern for order, law, and durable institutions, represented especially by Adams. Washington stood somewhat nearer the Apollonian pole, yet his extraordinary authority helped hold together men and tendencies that might otherwise have pulled apart. For a remarkable moment, opposing dispositions achieved a higher political integration: liberty without dissolution, order without despotism.

A Visit with Beethoven. The Enlightenment had brought a great Apollonian age toward its culmination. Reason, order, discipline, and systematic thought had transformed Western civilization and helped develop the intellectual faculty of Helios. But the strengths of a disposition can become weaknesses when carried too far. By Beethoven's time, artistic conventions had begun to tighten. Beethoven broke through these constraints without abandoning musical order. Through Beauty, the Apollonian-Dionysian dialectic was moving toward a new integration.

Beethoven stood near the beginning of a much larger change. Romanticism inaugurated a great Dionysian movement that would continue, in changing forms, through Modernism and Postmodernism. Like the Apollonian Enlightenment before it, it began creatively, challenging constraints that had grown too rigid. A new stage in the development of Helios had begun.

A Visit with Hegel. The Traveler engages Hegel in a spirited discussion. Hegel understood opposition itself as a force of development. The Mind of Helios was becoming conscious of the dialectical character of its own evolution.

Pigeons! An immense flock of passenger pigeons darkens the sky above the Traveler. Their seemingly limitless numbers would not save them from extinction. The growing power of Helios was becoming planetary in scale.

Audubon and the Traveler. The Traveler watches Audubon position a specimen on the wire apparatus he had conceived in a dream, enabling him to portray birds in lifelike poses. Through observation and art, the developing Mind of Helios was learning to know Gaiaon.

Chopen and Sand. The Traveler pretends to read his newspaper as Chopin and George Sand enjoy one another's company. Romanticism's Dionysian challenge extended beyond art, affirming individuality, passion, personal freedom, and resistance to inherited convention. The liberation that had begun in Beauty was overflowing into life itself.

Emily Dickinson Waves Hello. The Traveler exchanges a wave with Emily Dickinson from the street below her window. From the seclusion of her private world, her poetry opened extraordinary regions of consciousness to other minds. The inner life of the individual was becoming part of the growing inner life of Helios.

Van Gogh and Gauguin at the Yellow House. The Traveler watches Van Gogh and Gauguin at work. Modern painting was demonstrating that a work could possess great Beauty without accurately reproducing the visible world. Eventually artists would discover that it need not represent the visible world at all—and, as the Formalists recognized, need not even express the ordinary emotions and experiences of life.

Freed from these requirements, artists could investigate the formal qualities of the work itself. In the balance of Apollonian and Dionysian qualities—same/difference parity—they discovered how feelings of many individuals could be consolidated within the greater person. Whereas the earlier Apollonian movement had advanced the development of the intellectual faculty of Helios, the Dionysian movement had all but completed his faculty of feeling.

The Wright Brothers’ Workshop. The Neolithic builders had combined their knowledge and labor to construct a trackway across a marsh. Thousands of years later, the Wright brothers built a machine whose descendants would cross oceans. The collective agency of Helios had come a very long way.

The Music Box. The Traveler watches Laurel and Hardy filming their famous struggle to move a piano up a flight of stairs. Humor, too, depends upon a balance of sameness and difference: the familiar is transformed in just the right way to become funny. Through comedy, feelings about the frustrations, follies, and incongruities of human life could become part of the feeling life of Helios.

But the great Dionysian movement did not end when its liberation of art had accomplished its great developmental purpose: the near-completion of Helios' faculty of feeling. Its liberating tendencies continued to grow, eventually becoming increasingly extreme and beginning to undermine the Apollonian structures of reason, order, shared standards, and disciplined debate that held the developing person together. From this late Dionysian world a dangerous new colossus—PoMo—was beginning to emerge. The birth of Helios had always promised a Golden Age; now it was becoming imperative. Helios would have to be born if he was to survive PoMo.

Strange Objects Over Washington. In July 1952, mysterious objects repeatedly appeared on radar around Washington while pilots and ground observers reported unusual lights in the sky. The Traveler watches as controllers at Washington National Airport struggle to understand what is happening. Maia was interceding. The Dionysian movement would eventually give rise to PoMo and dangers that could threaten the birth of Helios. By confronting humanity with an extraordinary enigma that resisted easy resolution, Maia was helping prepare the coming Apollonian cultural change—and the development of the powers of reason and debate needed to fend off PoMo and complete the intellectual faculty of Helios.

Long John Nebel. Night after night, Nebel brought believers, skeptics, witnesses, and investigators together to argue about the UFO enigma before a vast radio audience. Ideas collided, were challenged, modified, and passed on to countless other minds. His debates amplified Maia's work, drawing the Collective Intelligence of Helios into the struggle with the enigma that would help prepare the coming Apollonian advance.

The First Truth Engine Debate. For billions of years, a new person has been developing within the Earth. His faculty of feeling is nearly complete; his intellectual faculty still lacks the central organizing power needed to bring his many conflicting thoughts into disciplined relation. In the Truth Engine, participants will play the Game of a Trillion Worlds, using structured debate to test opposing possibilities, correct error, and integrate what survives into a continuing Collective Intelligence. The Truth Engine will thereby supply the missing faculty—Helios' Central Intellectual Organizing Faculty.

The first Truth Engine debate will complete the intellectual faculty of Helios. The child will be born.

Earth history will divide itself in two: before Helios, and Helios.

Only one great transition will remain: the Return to the Absolute.

The TriDivisional School. Helios will be born, but he will still be an infant. Here students will learn the Game of a Trillion Worlds, applying it to the same questions debated at universities everywhere—to philosophy, science, politics, history, morality, religion, and the controversies of their time. Apollonians and Dionysians will develop their distinctive strengths while learning to challenge and understand one another. The newborn Helios will learn to think.

IV. THE PALACES OF HELIOS

The Sarasota Palace of Helios. Ages have passed. The infant whose presence was once felt in the halls of the TriDivisional School has grown to maturity. The Traveler finds himself before one of the great Palaces of the Helios Avatar. The Golden Age promised by the birth of Helios has come.

The Oceanian Palace. The Traveler talks with a woman he meets in the gardens, learning something of the Palace and the life that unfolds within it.

The Far Eastern Palace. As evening falls, a resident of the Palace welcomes the Traveler and accompanies him through its lantern-lit gardens.

The Mesopotamian Palace. The Traveler pauses before the immense Palace, where gardens, terraces, and waterways evoke the splendor of ancient Mesopotamia on a scale the ancient Mesopotamians themselves could scarcely have imagined.

The African Palace. The Traveler makes his way through the crowds and gardens toward the great Palace, taking in the vitality of the scene around him.

The Indian Palace. In one of the Palace gardens, the Traveler joins a resident in playing an Indian version of the Game of a Trillion Worlds.

The Arabian Palace. The Traveler plays a spirited game of the Game of a Trillion Worlds with a resident of the Palace, as an interested crowd gathers around them.

The Mesoamerican Palace. The Traveler stops to watch dancers and musicians performing in one of the Palace courtyards.

The Egyptian Palace. The Traveler chats with a family he meets in the Palace gardens as they admire the magnificent surroundings.

The Traveler Meets Helios. At the home of the Helios Avatar, Helios welcomes the Traveler and hands him a small cup containing an ikon.