Ciron Taken Over
Introduction:
The Author of this humble text would like to point out that this isn’t the popular book How To Take Over Ciron; but rather a discussing about the effects said book had on its planet. Normally, writing about another’s work is reserved for reviewers and tasks in various educational systems, with the exception of a few races; the Hiu, for example, write exclusively about works of their ancestors. However, How To Take Over Ciron is a work that has had a huge influence in the history of Ciron, and these effects are actually much underrated in the civilization’s raise to power. Due to this, it is almost a duty transgress the normal field for a writer to bring to the honored readers attention the importance of How To Take Over Ciron.
Our story starts in the time before Ciron had made first contact, and was just one of oh-so-many minor civilizations stuck in the time before discovering FTL-travel. There are just so many of them that nobody bothers anymore to actually exercise themselves to take contact. If they’re worth the trouble, they will discover FTL-travel of their own eventually, and take contact themselves.
Well, in these times there was a little group of Cirr calling themselves The Team For Change (And Cheese), or for short TTFC(AC) who decided to take over Ciron. No big surprise there; internal take-overs happen to most at early stages; and to many at later stages (with the exception of hivemindcivilizations). What set this group apart was that they actually were good at what they were doing.
Not that TTFC(AC) was made up of extraordinary bright people; nor did they spend years of planning. Actually, they were just a group of friends who met on their days off to discuss how unjust and bad the social system was; in particular how the elder generations hadn’t taken good care of the planet, how the younger generations didn’t pay enough respect to the elder generations, which modern-squeaking shows should be cancelled and why working as long and hard as they did was unfair. The rest of the semi-week they watched the modern-squeaking shows that should have been cancelled, and worked as long and hard as they always had. And one day, after a really, really bad show, they had just had enough of it all. They stopped talking about change, and started to do something about change.
The second most important thing in this revolution according to experts, which set it apart and made it go smoothly, was what they did the first of the ten days: they sat down and thought before they acted. As Nimbun stated the chapter 2 of How To Take Over Ciron: “We’d all read some history in school, so it was clear that mindless violence wasn’t going to aide us much; neither was a war. We didn’t want to destroy Ciron or harm it; just take it over. Also, our time was limited, because there was a ballsurfmatch scheduled soon.”
The most important thing they did was of course to have Nimbun write down the entire thing.
Nine days later, Ciron was ruled by the TTFC(AC) The story of how they managed to do that will not be repeated here; it is written much better that the Author could ever attempt in original version of How To Take Over Ciron. In fact, Nimbun was such a gifted writer that the book in its original language is considered one of the top million stories ever written. The Hiu, however, consider it to be one of the worst pieces ever written, because it doesn’t even once mention a story written by Nimbun’s ancestors.
After a few days in charge of Ciron, the group got tired of it. It turned out change didn’t happen just because you ordered it, there wasn’t enough money to launch all the great ideas they had had, there was lots of boring administration to do and they didn’t even have time to watch the newest modern-squeaking shows which suddenly didn’t seem so bad. So TTFC(AC) decided they had ruled the planet long enough; and quit.
A few weeks later, How To Take Over Ciron was published. The book held a detailed record of the events around the recent take-over, in addition to equally detailed instructions describing how to, well, take over Ciron. The books became a bestseller within days. There were lots of people who wanted to take over Ciron, due to various ideas of how they could make the society better. Soon everybody tried to take over Ciron, at the same time. They led, understandable, to a great deal of confusion on how currently was in charge. A stable rule soon became impossible, as changes in power happened almost every day; and sometimes several times each day.
The situation became somewhat better after Nimbun’s second book, Why Not To Take Over Ciron, which basically continued where the last book had stopped, and explained why the TTFC(AC) had given up their power and returned to a normal life. But even presented with these good reasons, many people didn’t believe that leadership was a burden until they had tried it themselves.
Many people attempted to device methods to stop the take-overs, securing their places in charge (mostly, they did this before they actually were in charge). However, How To Take Over Ciron proved to be above all those attempts. Nothing could stop the easy step detailed in the book to work like a charm.
In time, the people of Ciron learned to live with constant shifts in power. They went on with their lives, caring little about who currently was in charge, nor what they ordered. Life resumed to become something that might be called normal.
Centuries passed, and technology evolved on the little planet which still was viewed as unimportant by most civilizations in the galaxy. Eventually, Ciron discovered faster-than-light travel, and made Contact.
Contact, being the act of meeting a new intelligent race, is often viewed as exiting and somewhat romantic by civilizations before they have entered the galactic society. These ideas soon fade when you have met thousands of other intelligent beings. Eventually, meeting new races becomes a routine.
Even though, many races are interested in newcomers, those that just have made it into FTL. They reasons vary, but it might be interesting to know the most common: One is that these civilizations, being technologically less advanced, are easily controlled, and thus represent a cheap workforce. Others are interested in the ideas these new civilizations may have, and want them to be guided, but given freedom to find their own solutions to problems. Still others think that all new civilizations should be destroyed, or at least held on a very short leash; to prevent them from becoming powerful and threatening the power balance of the galaxy. The idea of committing genocide on an entire species is then often countered by other who view all intelligence as sacred.
Due to all the different interests in new species and the shear amount of new species, a system had to be devised to both offer the some protection, and to control them enough to prevent harmful intentions. This basically consists of choosing a mentor/protector/guardian race for each newcomer; who takes care of that race until it is seen fit to act on its own. Duties include preventing others from destroying the new race, and helping it to find its place in the galactic society; in addition to preventing it from becoming too powerful.
When Ciron made Contact, they were assigned to the Hiu. All things considered the Hiu were quite good mentors, lettings their protectees doing mostly what they wanted. The only thing people complained about was that the Hiu tried to convert all their writers to write about books written by their ancestors. Given that at that point the Hiu usually were viewed as almost omnipotent by the new races their were supposed to protect, they had some success, and the literature of these races was changed forever.
Due to the fact that the Hiu didn’t care about the normal books on Ciron it took some time until the existence of How To Take Over Ciron became knows to the general public of the galaxy. In fact, for about fifty years nobody knew about it. Then, an expert appeared.
Due to the fact that there are huge numbers of experts in the known universe and everyone wants to be an expert in some area where noone else is an expert, there is a law that states no matter how obscure something is, someone will be an expert on that matter sooner or later. A stronger version of the law states that once someone points out there is something without an expert on it, it will take no longer than 10 years before such an expert exists. Until now, the law has held.
Due to this, an expert on Ciron’s history seen from an alien viewpoint soon appeared, and started to study said matter. Actually, his work was rather boring, so we won’t consider it here. The important thing is that he noticed an anomaly a few centuries back, where the entire planet for a few decades had been in chaos. It soon turned out that the cause had been a certain book. He published his findings, and soon someone caught interest in said book, and found out what it was about. After that, event started to happen fast.
Within seconds, the whole known universe knew about How To Take Over Ciron.
Within minutes, the book had been translated to every know language.
Within hours, billions of new versions of the book had been written, detailing how to take over everything from a snow castle to a galactic council.
Within days, everyone tried to take over everything, at the same time.
The chaos Ciron had experienced after the publishing of the book had been nothing compared to what happened now. Nobody knew what was going on, leadership changed several times each second, usually before any orders could be issued, and there was generally lots of confusion. Alliances shifted all the time, several galactic empires were destroyed and new ones rose in the confusion, only to fall again minutes later. Several races mysteriously disappeared, and other even more mysteriously appeared.
In the core of all this Ciron stood unmoved like the silent spot in the eye of a storm. They had long since learned how to deal with constant change of leadership, and if it was a politician or an alien leading them made little difference. People started noticing that Ciron somehow had managed to keep a resemblance to normality during all that was happening. Scared by the chaos around them, they turned to the young civilization for help.
In time, everybody learned to live with the changes in power, just like Ciron had once. Some found solutions of their own. Most copied Cirons system to deal with the problems. But there were also quite many who had escaped the chaos by joining the Cirr, effectively becoming dependent on them to survive constant leadership changes. Thus a vast empire with Ciron in charge was formed, concluding Cirons rise to power.