a brief history of ooranye
26: the rhenium moment

[continued from 25: The Kalyars]

Rhenium Moment

The scene: the Hall of Zdinth at the Noad’s Palace at Skyyon, Sunward Polar City of Ooranye. At the high table, men and women in various national and species costume. Some in bodily appearance were identical to the humans who would evolve much later on Earth and become the readers of this account; others were furred, scaled or crested kalyars.

It was an international conference, one of many such, but this one would prove to be unique. The expectation was widespread, that if this meeting did not succeed in the establishment of agreed territorial spheres of influence and the resolution of political differences between the species, Syoom would finally erupt in an inter-species war. But the air must also have been heavy with less definable psychic pressures.

What happened was that for five hours the conference, and to a lesser extent the whole world, was gripped by a transcendent experience. In a sense we know nothing about it, but in another sense we know enough. The planet Ooranye harbours something analogous to a world-spirit, a living thing, or which can be likened to a living thing. Uranians name nen Thremdu (from a phrase meaning "the emergent one"). Very occasionally, Thremdu intervenes in history. Nen does so for reasons we can only guess at; this "Rhenium Moment" was one of those occasions. Nen spoke into people’s minds, employing their inner voices, but nen's message, necessarily unrecorded, and unreliably remembered, can only be deduced from the aftermath.

The impact of the five-hour Moment was such, that even the eomasps with which it began and ended were hardly noticed while they occurred. Only afterwards was it realized that during those five hours Era 75 had come and gone.

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