Krulle wrote: ↑Mon Jul 27, 2020 11:44 am
That, and the Pol may really have been a last-fail-safe, not intended to be accessed unless the civilization has to be rebuilt after a catastrophic collapse. Which happened to the Soia.
The Soia may have expected to have still access to space travel, or at least rebuild that quickly enough to access the database before it collapses.
That is, in itself, a questionable concept. You can't dump the entirety of a technology into a database. For a re-emerging fallen civilization it would be incomprehensible without the whole context that created said technology - the culture of their ancestors, academia and all, which are pretty much guaranteed to be drastically different in a post-apocalyptic civilization that would actually stand to gain anything from such a backup. A pile of textbooks and formulae could mean every possible interpretation that could be encoded in them without the scientific history and culture and technological background it originates from, joined in a society of minds to comprehend them. The language, the notation, the axioms, the assumptions and the subtext - the whole meaning of most concepts expressed in the hypothetical cache would be largely lost in a medium that cannot comprehend the limitations of it's readers and work through them. Some parts of the message might be useful, others misunderstood completely, and as such misleading - the recipient would need actual pre-Fall academics for the message to be properly understood. Otherwise, it will be a His Master's Voice scenario - some minor scraps picked up while even the implications of the whole are barely registered. Even if they took a sanzai read of such a cache, Loroi themselves most likely would not understand what they saw even, much less the meaning of the content. Just silent artefacts of technology would explain more than such a database.
Consider intelligent, living Historians who actually understand how their own technology works and could explain it in greatest detail - even they could only provide a different, not much less advanced civilization with a significantly simplified variations of their own technology, the Union could neither manufacture not fit the more advanced stuff into their own scientific framework - they are just not ready yet, it would take some more vital time for Historians to guide their understanding and implementation of technology until they reached the necessary point. How would a cache work to bridge a much larger gap? Would our USB-Pol themselves be actively aware of the knowledge they carry? If they are aware - one would expect them to act upon this knowledge ingrained into them, interact with it, change and use it as far as they can. Who would post-fall Soya even be to demand that Pol divulge something that they now comprehend as a part of themselves, much less teach it to something that is no longer their creators? And if they are not aware - they would only be able to store and provide it, not teach it, unless it comes with some kind of a Mass Effect Thorian Cipher bullshit (which would be cheap and lame and Arioch is better than that).
Plus there's the consideration of trying to make a data cache to survive an event of massive intelligent species extinction in the shape of a species - the one thing most threatened by the event it is supposed to survive. We know for a fact that a plenty of sapient species did not survive the Soyfall - what about our USB-Pol would ensure that they do not join the host of annihilated lifeforms? If we really want such a cache, why don't we create a civilization that would be capable of full range of development, but with their society at least partially focused on preservation and careful propagation of information, that of their own and others? Could call them something simple and obvious - like "Historians", just in case we forget why do we keep them around. Or just pull a Foundation and create a secret colony of your own well away to live through the collapse and emerge in the aftermath as themselves. Or, once again assuming that such a cache would be useful - carve it in 100-meters tall symbols on the surface of some rocky moon on the far orbit of System Nowhere.
Krulle wrote: ↑Mon Jul 27, 2020 11:44 am
We don't know, and we likely never will, as I don't presume that the story will go into that direction enough to answer our questions.
And the Soia are meant to be an unsolvable enigma.
I don't think they were conceived as an unsolvable enigma - their past and present role probably has a sound and straightforward explanation. Though not one that will be ever spoonfed to us, I suspect.
WeOur grandchildren will have to piece it together from the material of Outsider, Project Forward and whatever other bits provided. Or someone just manages to get Arioch drunk enough to sing.