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Note: Reference material includes all books of the Foundation Series (including the Second Foundation Trilogy).
Just working with an idea…
Foundations Fusion
Prologue
Galaxia – initiated from the planet Gaia by the former Councilman of the Foundation, Golan Trevize, as the last hope of humanity. It was later determined that Trevize's justification for his decision during what is now known as The Choosing at the half of the Interregnum held merit. Whether or not he and his companions acted…
Private notes of Hari Seldon, recently discovered on Trantor, spoke of a Second Plan. A plan not named but described. According to these notes, this plan was not of Seldon's creation but one of a mind greater than his: "A mind stronger, more dedicated and more patient." There was speculation that this 'Second Plan' would eventually overwhelm the Seldon Plan making the science of psychohistory meaningless. Historians point to these notes and the knowledge of Galaxia as being one and the same. According to the journals left by Golan Trevize, these correlations…
Whether or not Galaxia was a part of this Second Plan that Hari Seldon wrote about, it is clear from the accounts left by those who experienced the events directly after The Choosing that they felt the galaxy changed irrevocably. With the First and Second Foundation gripped under the powerful control of the Gaian overmind, the Seldon Plan became all but a sham. A humanity forever bound by the Laws whose origins had their start with the Four Laws of Robotics. These laws, briefly stated, are…
The justification from the perspective of Golan Trevize, at the halfway point of the Interregum, on the surface proved valid. The Seldon Plan called for two children to lead humanity into a Second Galactic Empire and as time went on, these children would begin to compete. A Second Galactic Empire according to the manner of the First Foundation or according to the Second. Each choice called for the one to dominate the other leading invariably to a copy of the First Galactic Empire and resulting eventually in the same sort of demise. Galaxia was heralded then as the more prudent move to complete galactic unity.
Three choices Golan Trevize was given and choose he did. And it was a good choice for it was the only choice he could have made according to axioms of psychohistory. What Gaia and their robotic originators failed to realize was that they too were a part of the Seldon Plan. Gaia had maneuvered Trevize to his decision with the knowledge that the First Foundation and the Second Foundation were ready to initiate the Second Galactic Empire five hundred years early, confident in their belief that Hari Seldon and psychohistory could not have accounted for the rapid rise of their technological achievements nor the growing ambition of the mentalics. It is noted…
Historians realize that without such technological achievements by the First Foundation or the growing awareness of the Second Foundation, Gaia may not have acted as soon as it had. And so the question remained: In the exact science of psychohistory, were such achievements the cause or the effect?
For there was a fourth option that neither Gaia nor Golan Trevize considered during the time of The Choosing. And yet, had they considered it, Seldon's Plan may yet have been derailed a second time for it was this fourth option that set the stage for the final half of the millennia-long Interregnum.
Ironically enough, the fundamental design behind the unfolding of the Seldon Plan for the final five hundred years was made public fifty years after the settlement on Terminus and the establishment of the Encyclopedia Foundation Number One during the first appearance of Hari Seldon within the Time Vault.
Why this kernel of insight was granted to the First Foundation and only the First Foundation lead many to conclude…
…and as the galaxy's powerful players maneuvered and schemed, all with benign intentions (mostly), the gears of the Seldon Plan continued to weave tighter forcing both Foundations into a course that would either bring the Interregum to its end at the prescribed time or plunge the galaxy into 30,000 years of barbarism.
On the one hand: absolute control by an overmind intent on moderating human potential. A clearly more palatable measure than the earlier technologically applied dampening effects but control nonetheless.
And on the other hand: The culminating feat of the thousand year Seldon Plan, his words echoing from his first appearance, half a millennia in the past: "..But this I can tell you: Terminus and it's companion Foundation at the other end of the Galaxy are seeds of the Renaissance and the future founders of the Second Galactic Empire."
And so the dead hand of Seldon, indeed of Psychohistory itself, pushes events ever onward set to a timetable all it's own and towards a path that, when applied to science, becomes ultimately inevitable.
The stage was set and as was the case with each and every person, government and will that came up against the Seldon Plan, victory seemed in Galaxia's grasp. A claim similar to the one Bel Riose, the Last of the Imperials, had made, being applied once more: A dead hand against a living purpose…
The first clash between the two plans occurred…