The Merge

The governing body on the Nexus is called Helios Mergence (aka The Merge). The Merge is a multi-species coalition formed hundreds of years ago, not long after Mankind's discovery of the Mass-O and the integration of new species at the Nexus; the inevitable friction between the first species on the Hub gave rise to the need for a political body to resolve disputes and guide the growth of the intergalactic community.

The Merge has grown and evolved over the years, allowing new species to join the coalition and have their voice heard in debate; only the most advanced and collaborative races are invited to join The Merge, however, and a primary requirement in the Merge application process is that a civilization must have experienced a system-wide peace for two decades at the time they request official recognition. In terms of jurisdiction, The Merge has exclusive access to the Astrograph -- a holdover from The First Cycle -- which shows a real-time, holographic map of the Unioverse. Specifically, which planets are "online" (having an operational Lander and jump deck) and which worlds are "offline" (Lander destroyed or shut down). With the Astrograph, The Merge has their finger on the pulse of the universe and takes the following actions when there is coalition consensus:

The Merge’s organization has 10 key councils/committees and hundreds of sub-councils. Some key councils:

The most prominent of the major committees is the Security Council, which meets in a special place called The Hall of Emergence. It features 10 members selected by the Merge representatives and is led by the head of the Merge Science Advisory Council, Leader Olen Gray. As its name implies, the Security Council is charged with looking after the stability and safety of the Merge and Helios Nexus. While Ambassadors can be called upon to assist all major Merge committees, they answer directly to the Security Council and take their assignments primarily from this group.

One key aspect of Security Council members is that they tend to come from worlds that are both prominent and older, and also show prolonged evidence of political stability.

The Academy: One facet of the Science Council's work is overseeing The Academy, the central academic institution on the Hub. The Merge is heavily invested in every system and planet linked by the Mass-O, and one of the Science Council's charges is to learn about every sentient species, including the history of any lost civilizations. The Academy employs an extensive network of scholars who explore planets linked with the Hub, collect information, and then submit it for approval and inclusion in the Academy archives. These records are made available to citizens on the Hub as well as to anyone with access to the transpod data-streams. Lucinda Bakira is the Head of the Exploration Division, and a member of the Academy administration.

The Atheneum: Under strict control by the Merge, the Atheneum is a combination of library and museum located within the Merge Citadel. The Atheneum houses not only the digital and holographic data-streams covering all of the known worlds, but also artifacts, real and recreated (via Assembler), from Merge and non-Merge planets. One overarching goal of those who run the Atheneum is to reconstruct the past, with a focus on finding out what happened to cause the Great Fracture. Access to the Atheneum is highly restricted; dzYUWQfZNRiZVOQTm8X4cTk3s14+PLo edvr9hOpDnSjmkOgEcg+R+g0+BO0l+K2LJundQL/itE29DpCEM0bhIiO50AxH+Kr1tqalmsByo0t3hNo0L7VHhnYIdnf4qPmqu6qPvtRqxRnH1WgKM80OersV7GM7Yrxq

The Immaculance: An organization that oversees religious organizations throughout the universe.

Religion was a large part of this culture exchange, and while some civilizations were content merely to share their theologies, others were more interested in spreading their world’s gospel, sometimes quite aggressively. So the Merge created the Immaculance, an organization tasked with monitoring – and when necessary, policing – religious interchanges throughout the galactic coalition, headquartered in Nexus City. MzkZY5E7hG1B6d93igVjiDo9J+ZWNyjZ68wwVXI38W YydN4y73uoYA==

All Immaculance agents have an AI, called a paraclete, integrated into their brains:

Paracletes were AI’s that all Immaculance operatives possessed, created by a colony of nanobots that had been fused with the user’s brain. They served as advisors and guardians, but their primary function was to store information on the thousands of recognized religions in the Hub, far more data than any non-enhanced human mind could contain, and provide it to their user when needed. The tech wasn’t widely used by the Merge. Identity boundaries could blur over time, making it difficult to tell where the organic personality ended and the AI began. MzkZY5E7hG1 B6d93igVjiDo9J+ZWNyjZ68wwVXI38WYydN4y73uoYA==

Each world has a single representative to the Merge, which has sometimes caused great political conflict, as Progenitor Ships do not analyze global and system-wide socio-political dynamics before seeding a world. In some cases, a newly opened planet may have many competing cultures and nationalities on it. Part of an Ambassador’s role is to journey to these places and help opposing sides begin to see a larger picture about their planet’s role in the intergalactic community.

Because officials at the Merge are planetary representatives, their skins are required to be identical to the biological originals left behind on their home worlds.

The Merge takes an aggressively benevolent approach to interacting with new sentient species, providing extensive resources (scientific/technological information) to help accelerate the development of the civilizations on newly opened worlds. The belief is that the Creators built this system linking sentient beings so that they can help one another, learn from each other, and evolve together. In some cases, when the host planet wants to limit the Merge's involvement, only a few representatives will take up residence on the planet and help guide the process of integrating Creator Tech. In others, however, when extensive help is requested, the Merge will contract with a corporation which then facilitates a full-scale program of technological acceleration to bring the new world up to speed with the Merge.