A Cancer in the Force

It is a well known fact that the region of space known as the Corporate Sector has almost no indigenous sentient species. According to an old spacer legend, it is because the Corporate Sector Authority in ancient times massacred all native populations for that they didn't have to follow the terribly costly and bothersome Unknown Alien Encounters Orders that the Old Republic put in place to protect and study unknown sentient species. However, this is a tall tale. While several atrocities happened under the 'supervision' of the Corporate Sector Authority, there was no systematic genocide against native peoples.

While no scientist believes this rumor due to historical records indicating the contrary, it is still a favorite legend among spacers and tin-foil hat conspiracy theorists- likely because they are not the type who likes big business. Some astro-xenoclimatoloists speculate that the reason for this inconsistency in the distribution of life is because of strange solar effects in the Corporate Sector. Their theory has something to do with solar neutrinos being slightly off, but it lacks sufficient empirical support. Some Jedi theorize that it is simply because the Force never chose to create life in those locations. This theory is somewhat plausible sounding to those who specialize in Force-based metaphysics. After all, Jedi scientists point out that there is little record of life evolving outside of the central Galaxy- although due to increasing evidence that this is not the case, even most Jedi are skeptical. Most non-Jedi scientists dismiss it out of hand as it sounds a bit too much like intelligent design for their liking.

However, the most plausible explanation for this phenomena is far more insidious. There is an increasing consensus among historians that it was the Xylan who were responsible. The Xylan devoted most of their efforts to creating and researching superweapons of terrifying power. These weapons needed to be tested. However, since the Xylan were very conservative and not expansionist, they were afraid to venture too far out of their own protective galactic bubble in fear of revealing their existence to other advanced societies that could oppose them. As a result, they decided to test these weapons on nearby primitive species.

Xylan Intelligence Experiments:

The Xylan knew that the only thing more deadly than an unknown superweapon capable of destroying entire populations was the same weapon controlled by an extremely competent commander. However, as they had little patience for war games and strategy, they delegates these operations to automated computer systems. These artificial intelligences were placed in command of their superweapons. The idea was to create a series of highly competent A.I. that could eventually reach such a level of complexity that they could become fully sentient the way organic beings are. To accomplish this, they set the A.I.s to kill off random populations of nearby planets in order to study sentient nature.

Droid A.I.s:

I believe it it necessary to talk about droid intelligences before proceeding as there is much misinformation surrounding the topic. In particular, there is the question of do droids have true sentience, and if so, should they have 'rights.'

The pre-Republic philosopher Plaristes famously wrote that droids are not and cannot have true sentience. He believed that what appeared to be sentience in the mind of a droid was really just a bundle of electrical impulses determined by preexisting programing. He believed that droids were perfectly determined and as such could not have free will nor any type of true mental experiences the way organic species do. For him, the thing that set true sentience apart was the presence of a 'nous' in the brain that could give the otherwise determined molecules in the brain a chance of freedom by manipulating quantum indeterminacy.

This 'nous' was a nexus in the Force that acted as the unifier between the individual and the 'universal soul' (the Force) which led to the possibility of transcending the physical and becoming unified with the One (existence as a whole). Droids were not connected to the Force as organics are and as such it is impossible for them to have a nous.

As much of Plaristes' philosophy was taken up by the Four Sages of Dwartii and later Shassium, whose political philosophies formed the ideological backbone of the Republic, Plaristes' beliefs have had an enormous influence on galactic culture- even if few are professed Plaristians anymore. As such, most consider droids to be nothing more than highly advanced machines.

Plaristes' philosophy has also been taken up by the Jedi and as such is generally held to be for the most part doctrinal, even if some doctrines have been edited out over the years. For example, while almost all Jedi believe in some type of nous, Plaristes held that the nous has complete universal knowledge from birth as it is always connected to the realm of the 'Plaristian Forms'- which sounds just as insane to Jedi as to non-Jedi. As to the role of the physical sciences, while the Force is an area outside of empirical verification most of the time, most physicists do refer to it, at least on a universal level, meaning that while the role of consciousness in the universe is, as it always was, a fuzzy area, most do acknowledge the existence of unique and unpredictable quantum patterns in the brain leading to a widespread acceptance of some form of this theory.

As for droids, there is some debate. On the one hand, there are those who believe that all droids are mindless machines who can only act according to their programing without any conscious experience. On the other, you have some who believe that all droids are equal to organic sentient species. However, the majority view is that Plaristes' view is correct, but only up to a point. Plaristes was right in believing that a nous is required for sentience, and as droids are not connected to the Force in the slightest, consciousness is impossible for them. However, most believe in what is known as emerging sentience. This view holds that droids are not sentient and are not alive, but that it is possible, if the droid becomes sufficiently advanced, to develop a form of true sentience.

At first, this view seemed absurd. They thought that surely a droid is either sentient or not and there is no way to change from non sentient to sentient. However, Jedi have reported discovering strange droids with a type of 'Force signature.' Of course, that's not to say that Force sensitive droids are possible. After all, a droid has no midichlorians or even living cells, and as a result, they are completely cut off from being able to draw on its energy. However, it is theorized that a type of nous could emerge in droid intelligences nonetheless, and that this consciousness could then continue to exist the same way that Jedi or Sith 'Force ghosts' are able to exist.

Needless to say, when this was first discovered, it created quite an uproar. However, it became possible to explain how sentience could fully emerge among inorganic matter. It is still unknown how exactly the droids have the potential for consciousness to emerge in them. The pervading view, verified by mapping quantum information patterns in droid computers, is that your average everyday droid is completely inanimate, that is to say, there is nobody 'looking back' or experiencing being embodied in it. However, it is possible for a sufficiently advanced A.I. to somehow become sentient. The exact process is still being investigated, but it is believed that the computer system must be sufficiently advanced and it must have enough data of performing various actions as a droid stored in it.

This should also not be confused with emerging sentience in animals. Animals have their own Force signature which separates them from inorganic matter. With droids, they are completely inorganic until they somehow gain a true state of consciousness.

This would explain how most droids are mindless machines, but can develop unusual tendencies. A droid developing quirks is not uncommon, but these are not full sentience until some unknown process happens that 'sparks' conscious experience. According to folklore, the easiest way to tell if a droid is sentient or not is to ask it to identify the truth value of the statement 'this sentence is false,' if the droid blows up, it's non sentient, but if it insults you, it's sentient.

Throughout history, there have been many droids who have claimed to have been sentient. Some of the more infamous ones are HK-01 and IG-88 who both wanted to provoke a 'droid uprising.' However, not all were hostile.

The Reapers:

The Xylan, while not believing in any type of Force interference, did believe that droids could become sentient. As a result, when creating A.I. units to command their superweapons in battle, they used the most advanced computing technology that they had and introduced these A.I. units to as many varied experiences as possible. Their goal was to find a way to develop a series of A.I. who could think in the same unpredictable manner as organics so that they could be fully adaptable and self sufficient.

To do this, they had the A.I.s operate the superweapons and command their droid armies. These were used to repeatedly annihilate native populations in random ways. This plan took a long time. For example, sometimes the droids visited their victims once every century, sometimes they invaded two or three times in a row, and sometimes they just waited even longer to let the population expand even more before killing it off again. To speed up the process, each A.I. unit was put in charge of multiple planets of varying degrees of technological advancement.

Additionally, they would attack the population in as many ways as possible. Often, they would invade with droid soldiers and other times a sustained orbital bombardment was sufficient. While this process was repeated over and over again, extensive data was taken. The droid A.I.s ran extensive mathematical psychoeconomic reports on the data to develop every facet of their victims psychology. In the end, it is believed that the Xylan succeeded and the droids became fully sentient. According to legend, their instinctual knowledge of psychology was so great that they could predict an opposing people's battle strategy just by studying their art.

This process took place over the course of close to fifteen millenia. When the process was complete, the droids were ordered to wipe out all life to hide the results of their experiments. The combined death toll through all fifteen millenia is horrifying. According to most estimates, as many as ten trillion beings were killed. For comparison, that's as much as the top ten most heavily populated planets in the Galaxy all wiped out in an instant or ten Coruscants worth if sentient beings- and that's terrible!

Xylan Society:

In the early days of the Xylan, that is to say not long after the fall of the Rakata, they were like most other species. While their population was still relatively small compared to the populations of most space faring species, they did spread to many planets with each one having a decent sized colony. However, as the centuries turned into millenia, their research into extending life was perfected. Once that became widespread, their population began to shrink. For comparison, around 22,000 BBY, the Xylan had a population in the tens of billions. However, circa. 17,000 BBY, it had shrunk to only a few tens of millions.

Their outlook on life was as mechanistic as their work. They believed that the minds of sentient beings were completely determined by the chance combinations of brain tissue and the random fluctuations in it. Furthermore, they believed that every conscious experience was unique. This followed from their random worldview of the mind. The brain mechanically produced sensation after sensation, but there was no underlying constant other than memories, which were fickle and subject to change. As a result, they had little sense of personal identity as there was no underlying identity behind the random combinations of consciousness. Because of this, they believed that when a conscious being died, conscious experiences would simply cease to occur and all the information contained in the mind would be lost with no way to back it up.

This influenced their species morality. As they believed that every mental experience was unique with no underlying self, they had no problem with killing their experimental species. After all, if every conscious experience was unique, there is no continuity from one day to the next, and each individual would be its own thing from each day to the next. They believed that the present and past had no more in common than one person and another. As a result, killing a lesser species was no more wrong than preventing it from having children- which they saw as a blessing. They saw it not as killing or as putting them out of their misery, but as simply saving future generations of 'selves' from having to suffer through life- all in the name of science.

However, they seemed to have a paradoxical fear of their own deaths. They saw their own deaths as the end of all future conscious experiences, and while this didn't logically scare them, they still seemed to have some type of phobia of it, although another possibility is that they were simply afraid of not being around long enough to finish up all their projects in life. This was one of the things that gave them the impetus to develop life-extending technology. Eventually, by around 18,000 BBY, their technology had developed enough to extend their life spans from around 100 year to over 1,000 years.

This, of course, came with huge social adjustments. For one thing, since most manual labor was done by machine, there was little for the highly intelligent Xylan to do. As a result, they simply had less and less children. This became less of a problem as they aged past their natural life spans as after about a hundred years, one would simply lose the ability to reproduce. Most Xylan in life devoted themselves to their technical work.

Demise of the Xylan:

As their work neared closer and closer to its completion, the Xylan realized that their species was becoming extinct. There were less than a million left and almost none still possessed the ability to reproduce. Rather than see this as a bad thing, they saw it as a blessing. After all, they saw death as inevitable and as a thing to be feared- at least from their own subjective point of view, so why make future generation suffer the same thing? No matter how good they lived their lives, death would come for each and every one in the end. Furthermore, life was far from being 'good.' As every Xylan was surrounded by technological marvels, they saw themselves as the most privileged species in existence. Everybody else had to struggle and fight just to stay alive- which they saw as a bad thing. They could not comprehend how these lesser species could go on.

As a result, instead of just committing themselves to extinction and saving everyone else the hassle, they had to turn their existential dread upon everyone else. Not wanting their superweapons to go to waste, they decided to share the 'blessing' of extinction with everyone else. They saw life as a fundamental imbalance in the universe, as it produced far more bad than good. This, combined with the infinite 'bad' of death came inevitably when none of this bad stuff even had to exist. As a result, by wiping out all life in the universe they were just doing everyone a favor by making all the bad equal to the good at exactly zero for each- perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

This is the possible death of the Force that Pall felt. Had their plan succeeded, their machines would have spread out exterminating all life in the galaxy. It seems that the universe has a sense of humor, for sure enough, Pall did drive off this invasion but only in the most indirect and luckiest way possible.