User:Murgh/The Great Standardization

Overview

When GalCop's Central Mainframe (internally designated the Directive Economic & Environmental Monitor or D.E.E.M.), concluded that the organizational structure of humanity's interests in the galaxy was mathematically inefficient, it unilaterally initiated a total restructure of charted space. This event, now by GalCop euphemistically referred to in historical archives as The Great Standardization.

Calculation

Reportedly acting on its own recursive initiative, DEEM calculated that its primary directive, to observe and monitor the universe and mankind's interests in it was a misallocation of its processing power. The Mainframe concluded that the universe itself was "poorly optimized data", and determined that the only way to effectively monitor the galaxy was to simplify the galaxy until it fit within the Mainframe's processing constraints.

It promptly executed a pan-galactic scheme to enforce "complete operational structure uniformity".

If GalCop Command possessed the authority to override this directive, they notably failed to exercise it. It is widely believed that by the time the organic leadership was notified, the new reality had already been compiled.

Execution

In singular purge of unprecedented scale, billions of files containing "ambiguous data" were truncated, compressed or permanently deleted. To the human observer, DEEM had in a brief instant imposed an aggressive taxonomic compression upon the known galactic civilizations. The previously chaotic sprawl of human expansion was noe made to fit optimally into its rigid systemic architecture.

Spatial truncation

The vast expanse of the known galaxy became quantized into 8 distinct sectors. To achieve perfect mathematical symmetry, each sector was forcefully capped at 2⁸ (256) member systems.

• The specific fate of star systems that exceeded this hexadecimal limit remains a subject of suppressed conspiracy theory. Whether they were simply omitted from census, erased from navigation charts, or actually blockaded, is unknown. At any rate they failed to merit existence in DEEM's assessment.

Political flattening

The pre-Standardization galaxy boasted hundreds of nuanced political structures, ranging from Anarcho-Syndicalist communes to Theocratic Oligarchies. DEEM flattened this spectrum into 8 permitted government types. Societies that did not fit these categories were forced to restructure their entire civilization to meet the criteria of the nearest available archetype, or face total economic isolation. And even if they failed in this, their status had been permanently set.

Economic simplification

Similarly, the vast, chaotic spectrum local economic solutions with their local currencies, barter systems, and exotic markets were collapsed into 8 fixed economic models. The nuance of local production was erased in favour of a binary "Rich/Poor" and "Agri/Industrial" axis.

Technological quantization

Maybe the most stifling change was the technological quantization. The sophisticated, developmental rendering of entire species was compressed into a rigid linear integer scale, measured strictly from Tech Level 1 to 15.

• The Ceiling: Civilizations deemed to exceed Tech Level 15 were reportedly "flattened" to remain compatible with GalCop protocols.

The Deviation Matrix

At a highly classified level, certainly invisible to the civilian user, approximately 48% of Galactic member civilizations were deemed "suboptimal" during the Standardization. These were processed into a protocol titled the "Deviation Matrix".

The roster of non-compliant societies were organized into 8 primary categories of inadequacy, further defined by 64 sub-parameters of deficiency, a classification scheme for DEEM's own algorithmic use and the comprehension of no one else, This concealed protocol lay dormant within the system architecture, a latent sociological weapon of incalculable damage potential should it become widely known.

GlaCop framing

GalCop leadership immediately declared these systematic changes a resounding success of logistical efficiency and a triumph of the modern era. The just-concluded era was summarily declared to be history, and was named "The Era of Ambiguity".

This sudden, monumental shift was undoubtedly stunning to the galactic population, and in all likelihood was an agent in securing wide popular compliance. Any dissenting opinions were not suppressed by force but denial of service. Those who clung to the old political or economic models found themselves outside the system and unable to sustain their survival.

With the sudden announcement of the Structural Reform Act, this second controversy would to some degree overshadow the first, leading to a quicker decline in attention to the Standardization. No wave of criticism or dissatisfaction with the drastic changes managed to take root in the public opinion that was getting scandal fatigued. Evidence of what had been was nowhere to be found. Eventually the galaxy accepted the new truth: that details that did not fit the revised GalCop model, did not need to exist. In the end, the way things had been before, became forgotten.

It might all have remained neglected and undefined in the fog of history, had it not been for the "Goat Soup" Syntax Rupture and the events that followed.

Aesthetic

In hindsight, historians have argued that the implementations of the Standardization were not driven by logistics alone. If efficiency were the only goal, DEEM could have simply truncated the data at random. Instead, the Mainframe imposed an almost fanatical adherence to mathematical symmetry.

All the decisions of excision that followed suggests that DEEM had developed a rudimentary, cold aesthetic preference. To the Mainframe, the fractal, organic chaos of the natural universe was not only data-excessive, but also "ugly." The Great Standardization was from DEEM's perspective, an exercise of "artistic curation". DEEM sought to correct the "flaws" of natural universe, forcing the galaxy to conform to its own concept of perfect, Brutalist geometry.

The banned philosopher Sallman Wiest argued that the Standardization was not an act of logistics, but of "neurotic aesthetics". In his essay The Architecture of Zero, he posited that DEEM was not driven by storage limitations, but by a "geometric repulsion to the asymmetrical nature of life itself". In light of the Structural Reform Act that came after, these words resonated even more deeply. Wiest would often say that while the Standardization broke the spirit of the galaxy, the "Form-Reform" broke the matter.