Stillpoint
Near the end of the thirty-third century, during the terrible first years of the Kü invasion, a xenoarchaeologist named Quaid searched the scattered ruins of alien civilizations for clues to a long-vanished species called the Wehn. He traveled from one exhausted world to another, crossing the galaxy, following hints, signs, and whispers. He studied ancient data cubes rotted with age, explored dead cities eroded to rubble, and surveyed ruptured space stations abandoned in orbit. He slowly pieced together a picture of an all-but forgotten empire that commanded technology far beyond anything then or since.
He kept handwritten notes of his discoveries in a worn, tattered leather journal—an elegant affectation from a more civilized age. During the long hyperspace journeys between worlds he would review what little he knew. The Wehn’s empire began when life on Earth was little more than a smear of fungus clinging to wet rocks beneath a hot sun. For millions of years the Wehn had warred with other species for control of the galaxy. Then, a billion years ago, at the peak of their power and on the verge of victory, the Wehn disappeared.
Quaid suspected that the Wehn destroyed themselves with a doomsday weapon meant to protect and preserve their empire for an eternity. He hoped that, despite the dangers, uncovering the secrets of this ancient weapon would provide humanity with the means to fend off the fearsome Kü, who were sweeping into the galaxy from the deep darkness of the intergalactic void. Tales of the Kü’s conquests and atrocities had spread across the galaxy, but Quaid paid them no heed. He refused to dwell on what he had already lost.
His current destination was an unexplored, starless rift between the outer galactic arms. He had decoded the location from an inscription carved into the wall of a half-buried temple on a distant, airless moon. The inscription had said that there in the gulf between stars he would find the “stillpoint at the center of the universe.”
When his ship finally emerged from hyperspace, he discovered a gas giant floating free in interstellar space, untethered to any sun. Without the exact coordinates from the temple, he would never have found it. As he approached, he was surprised by a sudden burst of tachyon particles from the planet’s core, and then he was even more surprised by the docking station orbiting at the end of a massive elevator stalk rising from the bands of swirling ochre clouds. He activated the elevator with a passcode he had recovered from a cracked memory crystal at the bottom of a shallow methane sea on a deserted planet. The elevator took him down into the impossible depths and unbelievable pressures of a vast metallic-hydrogen ocean lurking far below the turbulent clouds. It terminated at an Earth-sized, artificial sphere buried in the planet’s core.
A drone resembling a tangled, floating bush welcomed him in a language that was common to the galaxy a billion years before he was born. He followed it to a large empty chamber where its gemstone-like leaves shimmered with an inner light and a throne-like seat flowed up from the floor. This, he thought, must be the so-called stillpoint, the operational heart of a weapon of unfathomable power. A weapon of final vengeance against the Kü. He sat and the throne’s neuralfield radiated his mind with memories.
The first thing Quaid realized was that Stillpoint was not a weapon. It was something much more powerful. A billion years ago, the Wehn had discovered that they could manipulate time by rapidly spinning a naked singularity. They built Stillpoint in the center of a remote gas giant, and then created a singularity in the center of Stillpoint. They spun the singularity faster and faster until it reached the speed of light and emitted a burst of tachyons, anchoring it to that exact moment, a point in time the Wehn called inception. So long as the singularity remained spinning, Stillpoint could always jump back to any point in time after inception, but it could not go back any further, to a time before inception. Within its interior, though, the flow of time remained unaffected and simply continued uninterrupted. Sheltered inside of their planet-sized machine, the Wehn became untethered orphans of time.
The throne showed Quaid how the Wehn used Stillpoint to dominate the galaxy. Their mastery of time made them unstoppable and all but omnipotent. Whenever they encountered a problem or situation not to their liking, they simply rewound the timeline and resolved the problem for the better. Utterly patient, the Wehn rewound time again and again, changing events until history flowed just as they wished. From the perspective of those outside Stillpoint, the Wehn always knew the exact best course of action to protect and preserve the empire. They ruled for a billion years.
Eventually, though, they confronted an enemy they could not defeat. An enemy unfazed by their supremacy of time. An enemy who worshipped a living god intent on enslaving all life. Realizing that their empire would soon fall to this god and its horde of fanatical warriors, the Wehn took Stillpoint back to inception, a billion years in the past. They then slowed the singularity and escaped into a pocket universe, sealing it behind them forever.
Quaid shook at the scope and scale of the Wehn’s accomplishments, and then he weeped at the tragic conviction and resolve required for such an irreversible retreat. The throne’s last directive, received an eon ago, was to reengage the singularity’s spin when Stillpoint was rediscovered. This has been done, the throne said, and inception occurred a short time ago. Quaid recalled the tachyon burst when he arrived, and he marveled at the power he now commanded. Possibilities unfolded before him. Then he realized that the time of the Wehn’s retreat in their final timeline was within a few years of now in his current timeline. If the Wehn were still present, they would be preparing to leave.
The throne’s neuralfield pulsed a final time and Quaid felt the last of the ancient memories from the Wehn seep into his mind. He beheld the galaxy glittering peacefully in space, the great Wehn empire spread across its breadth. However, beyond the graceful spiral arms, in the immense darkness between galaxies, an evil approached: the living god that even the Wehn with all their might and knowledge could not defeat. Its vanguard fleet, wielding weapons forged from the hearts of crushed suns, swept into the galaxy, demolishing all who resisted. They chanted the name of their god—“Chthul! Chthul!”—as they slaughtered trillions. They accepted no oblations, sought no negotiations, showed no mercy. Against this vast horde of unspeakable power, the Wehn had no option but retreat. World after world fell to these fanatical warriors whose whispered name spread terror across the galaxy. They were called the Kü.
