Destinos

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Destinos is a belief, perhaps even a religion to some sentients, both organic and Machine-race. It combines science and religion, to some extent. The basic idea is that sentient beings will eventually evolve into the equivalent of gods, creating new worlds, performing what appear to be miracles, even ascending to a higher plane or different universe.

## Ascension Destinos

> **“Ascension Destinos is about what happens to sentient intelligence if you let it evolve for a billion years. Sentient civilisations gain more and more control of their surroundings the longer they evolve.” (RS-8)**
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## Origin Destino

> **“Origin Destinos....the Big Bang doesn’t make any sense scientifically—even the machines agreed that it happened, and their maths were ridiculously more advanced than ours. But in order for the Big Bang to make sense, you have to explain an act of inexplicable creation as an act of science… and it really only works as an act of god. But Destinos unifies god and science, because if any scientific, mechanical force could have created the Big Bang, it’s a super advanced mega-sentience that does it because it decides to, as an act of will, right?" (RS-8)**
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## Characters Involved

* Erik Debogande’s family members accept the theoretical principles of Destinos
* Styx of the Machine-race and Major Thakur discuss Ascension Destinos in Kantovan Vault
* In Rando Splicer, Lisbeth explains how the deepynine hacksaw queen Nia became interested in -- and alarmed by -- the ascension studies of the ancient Parren math scholar / philosopher, Cleorus:

> "This guy’s name was Cleorus. And he had a theory of organic religions that he’d devoted his life to studying… are either of you Destinos believers?” Rajnika nodded cautiously. “My family has always been. Back many generations.” “Right, so the basic theory is that science and religion become the same thing, because god is something that will come in the future, because if you leave organic beings to evolve over billions of years they’ll eventually become god, or something that’s so close to god that any attempt to differentiate it would be an exercise in semantics, right? And for a lot of people that’s Ascension Destinos, because it’s looking forward to the future, and believing that every action we take today is a step toward that ascension, which then provides a moral framework of progress and improvement within which all of us must live our lives. “Thing is, the machines… or most of them, certainly the drysines and deepynines… all believed basically the same thing. Only they believed that ascension would be achieved by a machine intelligence, because machine intelligence was the next obvious evolution upward beyond organic intelligence." ....
> Cleorus was fascinated not only by parren religions… because parren aren’t all about the study of their phases, there are a lot of other belief systems that grew out of that, some of which are still around… but also with the religions and beliefs of other species as well. And he said he’d found a common formula..." (among oxygen breathers, methane breathers, hive mind species, even machine-race species)(RS-8)
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* Liala, a drysine commander second only to Styx, explains that hacksaw queen Nia is still alive and wants to exterminate all sentient organics because they interfere with Ascension:

> "But now the theories of Cleorus demonstrated that organics were inferiors perpetually destined to interfere with progress toward Ascension. Not merely children playing with blocks and toys, as my friend Lisbeth recently put to me, but children playing with particle physics laboratories and Faster Than Light technology.... I believe that Nia was working on a thesis during her time here, before the Drysine/ Deepynine War. A thesis on why organic sentiences were too much of a threat to leave alive, anywhere, in any form. Thankfully a drysine victory prevented her from implementing any such plan.”
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> “And you think she’s still alive?” Verender murmured in horror. “Leading the deepynines from alo space?”
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> “It’s possible,” said Liala. “Styx believes it is highly possible.” (R-8)
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