Insertion 10.
I.
O.
Counsellor 10,
Like all other counsellors,
And especially Counsellor 5,
Favoured his insertions being in plain sight,
Yet as being unrecognisable.
His brief was to seed Universe 7 with Level 10 awareness.
Levels,
By the way,
Are comparative.
So a typical Epoch 5 human has,
On average,
7 levels,
And a counsellor has 13.
11 of the counsellors did not know that Septima,
Counsellor 7,
Was a Level 15 awareness.
Even Septima forgot this from time to time,
As happens when you get surrounded by others operating differently.
Now and again,
A lower level intelligence spots something out of the ordinary,
Or previously unseen,
Which gives a clue that strings have been pulled from elsewhere.
Being able to tune into soul waves helps in this regard.
Back as far as 364 BCE,
The Chinese astronomer Gan De allegedly spotted one of Jupiter's moons,
Probably Ganymede.
Then,
In 1610,
Four of the most massive of the moons were independently discovered by Galileo Galilei,
And simultaneously by the lesser-known German astronomer Simon Marius.
Thirteen more moons had been detected from Earth by the time the Voyager space probes flew by in 1979.
The Voyagers detected three smaller inner moons as they flew onwards to the outer solar system.
They also spotted that detritus from these moons had generated a ring of dust around the massive nearly star.
By the time All Life on Earth and the Epoch 5 experiment was terminated in 2109,
The number of moons detected was well over a hundred,
And four ring systems had been discovered in the orbit of Jupiter.
Ever since humans looked up at the night sky and wondered if they were alone,
Jupiter had caught their eye.
For some,
Jupiter caught their third eye,
And they attributed god-like status to the wandering star,
As planets were referred to in those times.
The ancient Greeks named it Zeus,
And for the Romans,
Jove was the god of the skies and thunder.
Gustav Holst called it the bringer of jollity when he composed the Planet Suite.
This brought a smile to Counsellor 10,
Not that he had a face or a mouth.
It was just a smile as a concept,
As Holst had perhaps unwittingly tuned in to the real essence of Jupiter as a level 10 awareness.
Like all planets and stars,
Its dense core was a tiny black hole connected directly to the void.
Everything we see in the known universe possesses this first and base level awareness.
The second level awareness is memory,
Both past and future,
Of the karmic path.
In a gas giant,
This is largely held in the vast clouds and vortices beneath the surface.
The third level is the face Jupiter showed to the world.
The Joybringer rotated on its axis every 10 hours,
Hoping that someone on Earth would see this as a clue that it had 10 levels of awareness.
Most of the time,
Its upper atmosphere displayed 10 bands too.
It was the vortices of the upper atmosphere with which Jupiter expressed its fourth level of awareness.
Through its great spots,
Most noticeably the red one,
It could both beam energy out into the universe and also see far into space.
The Counsellors had used the red spot in the vaporization of Limu at the end of Epoch 3.
It was from the conglomeration of these fourth level displays of awareness whereby Jupiter informed the universe that it was fully conscious.
Jupiter was broadcasting its fifth level of awareness to anyone who was really looking.
The upper cloud structure was a visible sign of how Jupiter was feeling inside about what it observed outside.
The occupants of the inner rocky planets of Limu,
Mars and Earth never knew of the planet's role as their physical protector and spiritual guide.
When affairs on the inner planets were tumultuous,
So were the clouds of Jupiter.
When war and strife abated,
So did the jet streams.
The four rings and many of the outer moons of Jupiter were quite literally its sixth sense.
Just like the hairs on the back of our neck,
The rings would jangle and the moons wobble on their axes if the space weather was overly energetic.
These alarm bells would inform the core to increase the magnetosphere to protect the planet and the moons it was shepherding accordingly.
Epoch 5 humans were well aware that the sphere of electromagnetic radiation they started broadcasting in the early 20th century,
Travelling at light speed,
Might alert alien life to their existence.
Shortly after the densification of the solar system,
The counsellors had put the level 10 awareness of Jupiter in place,
Both as joy bringer and guardian.
Many other star systems had a similar watchman and they all gave each other updates from time to time on how everything was going with the planets they were nursemaiding.
So Jupiter's seventh sense was its ability to beam out and receive radio waves.
Humans had actually detected this output and named the radio bursts.
They were called decametric as the wavelength of the radio bursts were in the tens of metres.
The clues were there for anyone who was paying attention.
Humans had no idea that Jupiter could detect as well as emit these bursts.
They had no idea either that the receiving mechanism relied on the eighth sense bestowed on Jupiter by the four large moons of Ganymede,
Callisto,
Europa and Io.
In the same way we can sense the direction of a sound by which ear detects it first.
These moons gave Jupiter an idea of which other nursemaid planet was talking.
They acted as an interferometer and a differential tuning fork.
As they orbited the planet,
Each of them would receive the incoming signals at a slightly different time.
This allowed Jupiter to pinpoint which star system had sent the message to an amazing degree of accuracy.
Each of the moons also had a different resident frequency,
Which gave Jupiter a sense of the severity of the message.
Most of the time they were messages of joy though,
As the seeds of life took hold on more and more inner rocky planets.
Jupiter thought it was probably alone in this galaxy though at reporting the trials and tribulations of looking after a planet harbouring sentient life.
Jupiter was also the only level 10 intelligence on its side of the galaxy.
Most of the other nursemaid planets operated at level 9.
The only other level 10 intelligence was hidden by the galactic centre and was busy managing affairs on aqua 9.
It too knew nothing of Jupiter.
As it happened,
It was the ninth level of intelligence of Jupiter that led to the seeding of sentience in its solar system in the first place.
The volcanic moon Io was a neuron factory.
In fact,
In its centre was a huge self-aware brain that led Jupiter to having its ten full levels of awareness.
Io's brain was not only aware of itself and its role,
But it was in direct communication with counsellor 10,
And it kept all of Jupiter's other nine levels informed and in check.
Through its vents,
It spewed piles of its own neurons out towards the inner rocky planets,
Just as replicating life on each planet needed to acquire the next wave of senses.
Limu was the nearest and first planet where life became aware.
Io helped multicellular but brainless organisms like sponges to leave the seabed and evolve into jellyfish by the acquisition of the senses of direction and taste.
Such primitive brains were self-evolving,
And this led to an explosion in biodiversity.
Around the time of the division of the sexes,
Neurons migrated away from the brain to other senses.
It was vital life had a sense of danger,
A knowing of where to find food,
And eventually the ability to love and to nurture their offspring.
This required Io to spew a different class of neurons towards Limu.
Io intuitively knew when it was time for hominids to gain self-awareness,
First on Limu,
Then on Mars,
And finally on Earth.
It was only on three occasions that it spewed out a mass of glial cells.
These cells have only one function,
And that's to connect neurons to other neurons,
So that brain size is only limited by the cranial cavity.
It would always be lost on humans that cetaceans and elephants had larger brains than they did,
And that their consciousness might be at a different yet unrecognizable level than theirs.
Jupiter's role in conferring level 7 awareness to other planets in its system brought it great pride and joy.
This joy was the essence of its 10th level of awareness.
The planet knew its role and fulfilled it with passion.
When a group of humans finally left the solar system in 2109,
Jupiter gave these sentiences one final gift by way of a massive gravitational slingshot boost.
Jupiter knew that they were off on a mission to find life on the other side of the galaxy,
Although the six humans were unconscious at the time.
After the pulse hit,
Jupiter's role would be to nurture a new breed of Martians,
And to help them gain level 8 awareness and beyond.
Jupiter is smiling now,
Basking in the joy that you have brought to it by reading these words.
You can bring Jupiter even more joy the next time you see a bright star after Venus is set,
And if you wonder if it is Jupiter.
Then,
As you admire its brilliance and yellowness,
That you might think that it is winking back at you.
