Destiny's Forge (1 of 5 free samples)

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COPYRIGHT
Destiny's Forge by Paul Chafe. Copyright 2006 by Paul Chafe.
All Rights Reserved. Sharing not permitted.

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Dedication: For Maggie, my mom.


Destiny's Forge

Paul Chafe


The Tyger

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
When thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears,
Did He smile his work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

--William Blake



The Roots Of Kzinti Culture, Language And History.

The kzinti culture is both more homogenous and richer than human culture. In a very real sense there are not one but many human cultures, since civilization arose not once but several times on Earth, each time in complete isolation and independence, separated by insurmountable geographic barriers. By contrast, both linguistic, historical and (where available) genetic evidence indicate that civilization arose on Kzinhome only once. In geocultural terms, this can be explained by Kzinhome's relatively small (~50%) percentage of water cover and proportionally larger contiguous continental area, combined with the smaller range of climatic conditions over the non-polar regions of the planet. This is caused by the denser atmosphere and the tropical wind belt phenomenon, which acts to pump heat from the equator to the mid-latitudes. This arrangement can be expected to have facilitated the movement of trade and technology over isoclimatic lines with relative rapidity.
At some point relatively early in the civilization cycle the primary kzinti culture was established and thriving planetwide. On genetic evidence it is certain that the kzinti species passed through a population bottleneck approximately ten thousand generations ago for unknown reasons.

Given the evidence of a single start point for kzinti civilization, we can argue that an evolutionary stress caused the bottleneck and triggered runaway sexual selection of intelligence with resultant rapid and concurrent development of bi-quadrupedal posture, language, and tool use as species traits. It seems likely this stress was a massive climatic shift brought about by the slight eccentricity in Kzinhome's orbit caused by gravitational interactions with the gas giant Hgrall. This posited orbital shift, occurring approximately 200,000 years ago, would have increased average solar flux, in turn increasing the average surface temperature as much as 3 degrees Celsius, extending growing seasons and accelerating the rate of water circulation through the atmosphere and hydrosphere. The combination of these effects formed extensive rainforests throughout the tropical and temperate zones. Simultaneously large sections of the continental interiors were reduced to desert.
The higher rate of photosynthesis has led directly to the high (~30%) oxygen levels seen in Kzinhome's atmosphere today. A general rule of planetary evolution states that the average mass of animal species increases with increased solar energy flux. This is due to both the greater availability of food through increased plant growth, which supports a heavier food chain, and the greater availability of oxygen due to increased photosynthesis, which allows the high metabolic rates necessary for large, active animals to exist.

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