“High General Rethais! Ser, I need to speak to you urgently, in private!”
Kaldoran had always been a very quiet yet loyal Rethan, never someone who spoke out of line. A Rethan so dedicated to medicine and science that he would spend days and days locked away inside his office, his own soldiers having to remind him to eat or sleep. His sudden appearance right now, in the middle of a meeting with foreign leaders, was very peculiar.
Rethais glanced at his own soldiers, not sure why they just let Kaldoran interrupt the way he just did. The other, non-Rethan beings he had been speaking with all stopped what they were doing, curious about this sudden interference.
“What is the matter, General Kaldoran?” Rethais tutted. “You do know it is rude to interrupt, yes?”
“We need to speak. In private. On a very serious matter!” Kaldoran exclaimed. “And it cannot be done here. It is of utmost urgency.”
With a sigh, Rethais turned to the foreign leaders. “Please excuse me. Vice General Lepidas, can you please continue the conversation in my absence?”
The Vice General nodded. Rethais got up from his chair, put his arm around Kaldoran and led him out of the room, down a corridor and into an empty office. Unlike the grand, opulent hall they were just in, this office was as bare as could be, with nothing more than a desk, a chair and a couple of empty shelves, all meant to be used by visiting emissaries.
As soon as they entered, Kaldoran closed the door, leaving Rethais’s guards outside. There were a couple of uttered complaints, but Rethais silenced them. Kaldoran had asked for privacy, that was what he was going to get. Rethais sat down on the undersized desk, leaving the chair to Kaldoran, but the worried Rethan refused to sit down.
“So, tell me, Kaldoran, what is the issue?”
“You know that I compile Rethan health statistics every six months, yes?”
Rethais nodded. “Of course, they are invaluable in finding weak spots in our society.”
“Yes, well, in my work, I have… discovered something incredibly unsettling. We are steadily heading towards a complete Sapiapathy Collapse!”
“A… A what now? That… sounds rather bad…” Rethais asked. “Would you mind explaining what that means?”
Kaldoran hesitated, then cleared his throat. “There is a threshold where the majority of a sapient species suddenly falls back towards being only sentient, blindly led by the few remaining sapient beings. They stop caring about the world around them, as long as they get what they need to remain happy and healthy. As an example, the Vohra were originally a lot like ourselves, albeit smaller, with all their stages of growth being equally intelligent. They then suffered several Sapiapathy Collapses – one among the adult male population about a million years ago and a later one during the Great War which made the majority of the Vohra population completely under the control of the Vahyra Queens. We are heading the same way, we will lose the empathy and general sapience of our main population!”
Rethais didn’t say anything at first, as he mulled over Kaldoran’s words. “So… you are saying that the average Rethan will… become feral?”
“No, not feral. Obedient. We are already seeing pockets of it. Rethans who will just do as they are told because a General told them to. We are all susceptible to it.”
“That is… insanely worrying… Do you have any idea how we can stop this collapse or at least slow it down?”
Kaldoran closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “I believe we are already past the point of no return. Had I… realised… ten years, maybe even five years ago, I could have arranged education programs. But now, I do not… know how effective they will be. These Collapses, from what I have seen, are… almost instantaneous…”
“How long do we have?”
“I… I do not know.”
Rethais grunted, hiding his steadily growing concern. “Whatever it is you need to slow this down, you have it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Funding, staff, anything. Whatever you need, I will find a way to provide it to you.”
Kaldoran lowered his head. “Thank you, ser.”
“Do not thank me!” Rethais tutted, getting up off the desk and heading towards the door. “Save the thanks until we have some progress on this pressing issue. But do me a favour: try and keep this out of the hands of other races. The last thing we need is everyvok else believing that the Rethavok, the guardians of this sector of space, are going soft. You keep it in-species only. Understand?”
“Understood!” Kaldoran bowed. “I will let you know as soon as I have made any progress…”