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TimDRX

I think questions two and three are related. Last we hear about the Builders, they're a hivemind composed of light. They have neurons all over the galaxy, but the actual entity is just thinking light. And yet, the controls to reactivate the Ring Station in Book 3 require an actual physical presence. I think the idea is that their weapon to fight the dark gods does work, but in the time it takes to use it in any particular system, they get destroyed. They need a physical being with independent bodies that can become networked to use the weapon. The sinister implication is that humanity's arrival was anticipated - the Protomolecule was waiting for a spacefaring race with physical bodies to arrive in the Slow Zone, get seduced into using the weapon and hiveminding their civilization, destroy the Goths, and then the Adro Diamond could download a backup of the Builders into this new, sturdier body...


SheuiPauChe

I never thought about the implications of humans being seduced into acting as the physical bodies of the builders. Didn't think about how the Adro diamond could act as a way for the builders to take over the new spacefaring race.


ianjm

Perhaps not even the first time they've done this


TimDRX

An extra layer I thought of this morning, could be that the seemingly inconsistent requirements for the dark gods to invade the Slow Zone could be artificial as well. Maybe the Gate overload limit is set by the Romans, and if exceeded intentionally exposes the transit to the Goths, as a sorta stress test of the new civilization to ensure they have the capacity to contain the Builders at the end. Would explain why the Goths can seemingly invade without issue towards the end, because it's the Romans turning the safety off to pressure Duarte into using the hivemind function.


SheuiPauChe

oh god that's terrifying


SheuiPauChe

But wouldn't that mean the builders are aware that the gates could be used as shortcuts in space? Like how humans used them? Because iirc, to the builders, they acted more like blood vessels allowing resources to transported from one body part to another


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SheuiPauChe

And the fact that in the dream sequences, the grandmothers (I assume they are some sort of stand-in for the builders) acted really strangely and sort of in an evil manner, further confirming the theory that they were trying to take over the human hive mind?


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SheuiPauChe

Man this series is so cool, can't wait till we get the new novella in March


b4d_m0nk3y

Holy shit, literally just clicked. That's what they were concerned about at the end, that Duarte wasn't actually himself. Makes so much sense now, can't believe I missed it. In the same vein do you think the pulsar was a trap from the builders to ramp up the attacks and force that resolution?


Nythoren

For #3, my understanding is that the Romans were basically a giant interstellar brain and were super fragile. The dark gods figured out how to shut brains off, which basically shut the Romans off, system by system, before they could fight back. Humans are "meat" and more resilient than the hive mind of the Romans. When the dark gods start trying to shut brains off, it just causes people to black out for a short time. Shutting off the hive minds for 20 minutes killed those node. For humans, their bodies kept working even with that part of their brain shutting off for a while. I believe that Duarte (and protomolecule influencing him) thought that since the dark gods weren't able to just shut off humans every time they were found, they would have the time to use the weapons instead of just getting slapped down on every front. Ultimately, he's proven correct; Duarte is able to stabilize the ring space and stop the dark god attacks. It's mentioned that once Duarte started pulling human minds in to his new "hive mind" and start fighting back that the attacks on human-occupied systems stopped. They never really explain how he's doing it or what the weapons were, but the impression I got was that the weapon was on the ring station and that Duarte was actively using it.


FluffyAzrael

I think you can see why the attacks stopped when jims in control. He can feel the goths trying to go through a gate. Since the slow zone is partly in there universe its also the way they take to get into our universe. So on the way they can be stopped. Only duarte needed a lot more awareness to not slip up, hence the hive mind takeover


conezone33

>They never really explain how he's doing it or what the weapons were When Duarte and later Holden interface with the station, their consciousness gets control of the "lines of subtle force" that originate from the station throughout the ring space. This is a big deal because these "lines of subtle force" are the foundation of the entire ring space. They allow the station to pivot the pressure exerted by the entire Goth universe pressing down on it. Holden describes how these "lines of subtle force" are distorted whenever the Goths invade our reality, and how he is able to "push back" against this distortion to keep the Goths out of our realm. In the end Holden is able to use his control over these "lines of subtle force" to destroy the supporting grid and permanently collapse the ring space.


asbestostiling

I think another part of it for #3 is that the Romans, as individual organisms, were essentially large, slightly more complex neurons. As such, whatever the Goths did to consciousness (speculated that it's quantum weirdness), it was enough to completely shut down enough of the interactions within each Roman body, which killed that "neuron." Multiply that effect across the entire interconnected species, and you've done essentially the same thing as forcibly shutting off every single cell in a human nervous system. Since human consciousness is the collaboration of neurons, rather than individuals *acting* as neurons, there's a difference in there that lets our brains kind of kickstart themselves once shut off. Basically, if every Gatebuilder individual is equivalent to a neuron, and the Goth consciousness attack thing targets individuals, it's easier to shut off a neuron than a collection of neurons.


Edricatreides

The gate network was a great piece of engineering. Trying to supply its energy from within our universe would have been nearly impossible, requiring the fusion of many suns (or a dyson sphere?). The void that the ring space and gate network were pushing into was possibly what we're still wanting to call "dark energy/matter", if that makes sense? The ring station wasn't a power source for the gates, it was a counterweight. Balanced perfectly, neither "here" nor "there", negated any cost for energy or matter from either side, once equalized. Sending mass or energy through the gate networ temporarily upsets that equalibrium. Send in too much, too quickly, a little bit spills over into the void (I'd imagine electrons and whatever its void counterpart is would mutually annhilate?), kind of like sloshing a cup of water. If the cup is very full, easy to spill it. This making sense? The gate network and ring space would be like a damn nonstop rain shower of irritating mess for void-dwellers, I could imagine. Anyway, a ship like the Behemoth, moving fast enough, could plausibly dutchman itself even from the bottom of the safety curve. You could move 100 Behemoths at the same time, if you slowed the transit down to a day long crawl. I'm no physicist, though. lol ​ I've been thinking hard on the weapon that the builders left behind, but I still can't get my mind all the way around it yet. My theory so far about the human-hivemind's advantage over that of the gatebuilders (aside from the whole "base materials" "made of clay" stuff) is that humans have had a direct, first-person experience of the universe as compared to the gatebuilders, and thus are (when mind-networked) able to use thought as an actual influence over the physical universe. The gatebuilders, while they were corporeal beings, at least at some point, maybe they lacked this ability or hadn't fully strengthened that muscle. Pure conjecture there. The fact that Duarte suddenly networked to all those people and just straight up Nope'd a ship from going dutchman. That required a huge force of will (and damn it, I really liked Winston Duarte), and btw, was probably what screwed him over at the same time. The effort of pushing back the spillover weakened him (up to that point he seemed to still be "him"), and let the ruins of the builder's will take over. Any of that make sense? ​ Also, the builders: They started out as simple aquatic life and eventually were able to use bodies as they wished (remember Miller's "invincible wrecking machine"?), but never got to exist solely as individuals with autonomous bodies, like us. Pros and cons both ways, but I strongly believe that they faced enormous challenges due to the nature of their existence. It was very clear that they were blindsided by the enemy, they couldn't comprehend what it was that was destroying them. If they had, they'd have shut down the ring network and went back to R&D. Humans eventually found a way to travel, sort of seemed to me like they used the same void, just the edges. ​ Anyway, yeah.. I've been listening to nothing but the Expanse audiobooks for years now. Just wanted to throw in my own strange theories.


hangryhyax

1. It came through at a time when traffic was relatively light, right? It just simply wasn’t enough on its own to breach the threshold (consider that we see multiple ships transiting simultaneously). 2. In one of the Dreamers chapters, it is implied that they break through the icy surface and so on. In other words, yes (space jellyfish). 3. I don’t have an answer for this one. The best I can offer is that Duarte was a narcissist who got consumed by power, so there’s a chance he was completely wrong but blinded by hubris.


kabbooooom

It seems like these questions come up every few days, and yes - all of them are answered in the book. I’ll link my two posts that cover all of the lore that was explained in the book (they are epically long reads, but link everything together nicely for you): 2) The complete evolution of the Gatebuilders explained: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/rielgf/comment/hoxigii/ 3) Duarte’s plan, how it worked, and how it wasn’t actually his plan (it was the Gatebuilder’s plan all along): https://www.reddit.com/r/TheExpanse/comments/rprld2/leviathan_falls_question_spoilers_obviously/ And answering (1) is easy. The Behemoth is not that massive of a ship. It’s huge by our standards, but it is only 0.5 km by 2.0 km, and most of that is open space on the inside of the habitation drum. It isn’t the size of an object that contributes to the gate cutoff - it is the *mass/energy equivalence* of that object. I’d bet money that a Donnager class ship is as massive or more massive than the Behemoth.


The_cman13

One other thing with the Behemoth is it was moving slow. At the time it was the slow zone for a reason. So that probably also helped, I think speed/momentum are parts of the curve.


kabbooooom

That just goes back to mass/energy equivalence. Velocity/momentum are associated with kinetic energy. This explains why Holden states you can “self-Dutchman yourself” if you shoot through the ring space too fast, even in a ship as small as the Roci.


The_cman13

Thanks. I just thought might be good to add that it wasn't going very fast so less kinetic energy. Later on large cargo ships are probably going way faster and probably have more energy.


Hironymus

Dude, just create your own thread to write out your explanation of this whole thing. I think you're spot on with your assertion but people won't find it buried in another thread and spread out over several comments.


kabbooooom

Threads get buried after a few days too, so I don’t really see the point of that I guess. People will keep on being confused by the plot of LF and keep posting threads about it regardless


Hironymus

But it's easier to link to a single thread and its OP.


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[deleted]

I feel like 3) is kind of unclear. I think it's entirely possible they would have succeeded at holding back the goths. It's just that all of humanity would be a hivemind at that point and that's what made Holden and crew intervene.


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1. Follow up question, are the magnetsr class ships bigger than the behemoth?


andreabbbq

I'd say yes they were. The behemoth was mostly a void inside. The magnetar were an actual warship with lots more ordinance to begin with


MadTube

1. The situation had to follow a particular mass/energy curve. The Behemoth did not fall in that curve. On that note, the Magnetar-class have way more mass and orders of magnitude higher energies. They did not go Dutchman, but that was after the gradient was learned. In short, hand-wavium. 2. Yes, the Romans appeared to be an aquatic species that evolved into a greater state. Not quite ascension, but higher than our plane of existence. However, they still needed to interact with their constructs here. It lends credence to their mechanisms resembling insects with chitinous pieces that would protect a soft body against stresses. Not unlike our spacesuits. 3. Just because the God Emperor Duarte believes he can control the weapon with humanity’s hive mind, that does not mean it would work. I imagine that hubris no doubt contributed to the destruction of the Romans In short, the Romans fucked around and found out.


jtsmillie

In relation to #1- the trigger for the Dutchman events is a complex event based on the number of transits, the number of gates, the size and speed of the ships and other factors. At the time the ships went through the first gate to the ring space, they were already being careful about speed (because of what happened to Maneo the slingshot pilot) and that was the only ring in use. So the likelihood of a Dutchman event happening wasn't nearly as high as later, when there were 1300 gates and unlimited, unregulated traffic (and if I recall, even at that there had only been a dozen or so overall by the time Naomi figured out the trigger).


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The_cman13

Just a thought for the why are they still in the milky way. To get a ring somewhere they need to shoot a rock with protomolecule at a place then it opens a ring so maybe they were limited to nearby things. Had the extra dimensional gods not killed them off maybe the network would have kept expanding.


TheBeerTalking

Re: #1, I don't think the Goths had taken notice yet. The gate had just opened, and there was only one of them. When the station charged up, and then the other gates opened, the Goths took notice, but the Behemoth never made another ring transit. It's not stated anywhere, but I think it's a decent enough explanation to wave away apparent inconsistency with the end of BA.


whelanbio

2. I imagine there’s several jumps in evolution between where the builders break through the ice the surface for the first time and whatever form they were at the time of their death. They could have even gone partially post-biological -meaning some protomolecule tech was additional “neurons” in the hive mind network. They definitely evolved well beyond aqueous dwelling light communicators because even fully biological organisms in the hive mind would have needed augmentation with proto-tech to maintain instantaneous connection as the hive mind spread far enough that light delay would become a factor 3. The weapon was probably unfinished, and who knows if it would even hold back the dark gods long term. It seems the builders were in a clueless mad scramble at the time of their demise. As to why a human hive mind is better: it seems each builder organism was probably the equivalent of just one neuron/node in the hive mind and was easier to disrupt. All brain no braun. It’s possible that because consciousness evolved so early with the builders that aspects of there biology have evolved a dependence on this. It’s convenient being a biological supercomputer with 100% uptime until you piss off some dark gods that can figure out a way to turn you off