BABYLON 5: RAMBLING ABOUT IMMORTALITY AND OTHER FIRST ONE IMPLICATIONS...

"We were born naturally immortal"

     Lorien confesses this to Ivanova during the "Into the Fire" episode of Babylon 5. He goes on to say, "At first we were kept in balance by birth rate. Few of us were ever born, less than a handful each year. Then I think the universe decided, that to appreciate life for there to be change and growth, life had to be short. So the generations that followed us grew old, infirmed, then died. But those of us who were first went on..."

     I've wondered about this. Details about Lorien's race and the groups of ancient, powerful aliens collectively known as The First Ones were always scant and deliberately so as, in the words of the show's creator J. Michael Straczynski (who may have quoting someone else...haven't listened to that commentary in a long time), "To define is to kill." It's how movies like Jaws worked so effectively. By keeping the shark unseen, the impact of its horror increased because we instinctually fear the unknown. Once exposed to a fear, we can face it. Likewise, once exposed to an unknown, we can demystify it.

    This does not mean conclusions may not be drawn about them. One of the gimmicks in the show is the use of hyperspace to allow for interstellar travel in reasonable timeframes. Being able to access it is a game-changer for a species. Before that, a spacefaring species would be confined to its own solar system because space is VAST making travel between stars a generational consideration and not to mention a one-way trip. This was the fate of Earth prior to its encounter with the Centauri.
    And that is typically how a younger race "discovers" hyperspace: they are encountered by another spacefaring race who already has access and that access is sold or rented for a time until that race manages to reverse-engineer the technology of jump gates and becomes a full-fledged member of the interstellar community.
    The first conclusion drawn from hyperspace entry points called "jump points" is why they are colored orange for entry points and blue for exit points. This would be an example of the Doppler effect but applied to light rather than sound. If anything it shows how much faster hyperspace travel is because it is red-shifting the light of entry points and blue-shifting the light of exit points.

     However, where those gates came from in the first place is never mentioned outright in the show. The clue given is via the First Ones. Shadow vessels appear to phase into normal space seamlessly. The Walkers of Sigma-957 explode electrically into normal space. This unnamed First One jumps into normal space as though cloaked in fire.

Shadow Vessels appearing

The Walkers of Sigma-957

almost-as-old-as-the-Vorlons First One

     But when the Vorlons appear, they appear using the same funnel shape used by every other of the younger races depicted in the show.

Vorlon capital ships entering normal space

    The conclusion which may be drawn is that the Vorlons built the jump gates seen throughout the series and seeded them throughout the galaxy. It is probably fair to assume the Vorlons had intended them for their own use but others found them and made use of them. They built the highways and now others benefit from their pioneering work.

     Another thing I couldn't help but notice in the show is that despite the advanced age of the First Ones, the younger races seemed able to adapt to them quickly. Like, their technology was still far beyond our own but we could crack it. Maybe that's an effect of it being easier to reverse engineer something than it is to create it from scratch but I also wonder if it had anything to do with what Lorien had said about his race's initial immortality.
     Using his own words, one can infer that with long life, comes slow change and that with short life, comes faster change. We don't know how long-lived the individual beings of the First One races are. We only know that the Shadows are the oldest of them. Personally I would like to believe that the Vorlons are the youngest of the First Ones because the show has a way of rhyming (in addition to the main rivals, the Vorlons and Shadows, being diametrically opposed) and it would seem appropriate if they were.
     Lorien comments that the beings in the cloaked-in-fire ship are "almost as old as the Vorlons". The natural interpretation that statement in English carries the implication that they are younger than the Vorlons but it could just as easily be the other way around if you allow for it (and I am :-) ).
     It's the same as when they are given names. The name of the homeworld of the Shadows is Z'ha'dum but the name of their species is said to be over 10,000 letters long, unpronounceable by the human tongue. The name of the Vorlons is just that and while their homeworld is once referred to as "Vorlon" by Lyta Alexander, it is usually referred to as "the Vorlon homeworld". Unless Lyta was correct, I would like to think the name of the Vorlon homeworld, like the Shadows's actual name, is over 10,000 letters long and thus unpronounceable to the human tongue so as for their respective species to rhyme, so to speak.

     Anyways, what if the First Ones are mortal, but especially long-lived naturally? Another feature the First Ones have in common is that they are unlike the younger races in that they are not walking meat sacks like we are.

Lorien

Vorlon

Shadows in their raiment - they're ultraviolet, thus invisible to the human eye as energy beings

     They're all "energy beings" and while it is implied this is a transcendent state any species in this universe can achieve in time, quite personally I like to think of it as the First Ones came from a time when the Universe was different, more magical if you will. Lorien would be from the immortal "Golden Age", the First Ones would be from the long-lived but increasingly body-bound "Silver Age", and the younger races are from the short-lived, very mortal, meat-sack bodies "Bronze Age".

     To take a page for J.R.R. Tolkien's lore, I would say the immortal Lorien race could choose to cloak themselves in bodies as though raiment if they so chose but that they did not need such bodies to survive and could survive the loss of those bodies. However I'm assuming that they would need to use physical bodies in order to work the substance of the Universe but were slow to do so being immortal.

Lorien's raiment

     The First Ones were also born without bodies and could choose to have them or not but unlike Lorien's race, they were more limited, appearing to be limited to a single physical form with which to work the Universe and which each species of First One had in common with others of their kind. They were also weaker. A Vorlon, for instance, cannot survive in the vacuum of space whereas we see Lorien doing so just fine. The Shadows seemed especially vulnerable to being killed by explosions or simply being shot.
     If I had to venture a guess, I would say the First Ones were born that way and were not the product of evolution like the younger races are.
     As for the younger races, being one of them yourself, you know how vulnerable we are to death. It's like our bodies can't wait to die and that our souls, if they exist at all, appear inseparable from, and thus likely die with, our bodies.


    But the thing is, for races millions to billions of years older than humanity, they're not inscrutable and I wonder if this has to do with them living longer. Human generations are only about 25 years long. Imagine if our generations were 1,000 times as long or even 10,000 times? You wouldn't be in as much a hurry to do things, now would you?
     Human civilization is about 6,000 years old coming from 20-25 year generations. 250 generations built this city. But if those generations were a thousand times longer, just getting to the Moon would've taken millions of years. Maybe that's how it was for the First Ones: never in a hurry to get shit done because there wasn't one. Even more so for Lorien's race, thus his surmising that for there to be change and appreciation, life must be short.
     And because human, Narn, Centauri, Minbari, Drazi, etc. lives are so short, they've gotten a lot farther in the short lifespan of their civilizations than the First Ones ever could have done in the same period of time.

     I think it would at least explain how beings so old could be beaten by creatures so young as us as well as outmaneuvered in thought.

    As for the charge that the Shadows and Vorlons who took it upon themselves to nurture the younger races like shepherds had become rigid and inflexible, perhaps (also an allusion to the Lord of the Rings), it is because they were cheating death.
     The Vorlons did so directly. A rough draft script for a never-produced Babylon 5 movie stated that the Vorlons were not always immortal implying that they are now and thus weren't always. The Shadows are known for hibernating in-between their wars which may have been their trick to prolong their lives beyond reasonable measure (perhaps even doing so as a response to the Vorlons becoming immortal...if you're going to cheat, we're going to cheat too!). You could extend, say, a thousand year lifespan considerably if you were only awake for it twenty or so years at a time and in stasis for hundreds to thousands of years in-between.
     The lack of change the Universe once corrected for by creating mortal intelligences would thus come into play again and need to be dealt with. Creatures living long beyond their natural lifespans, however long they already were naturally, would disrupt the natural flow of life and growth in the Universe.
     Thus, they and the remaining First Ones had to go which was finally able to happen thanks to Sheridan and the Vorlon Kosh.

     I've really lost my place but I'll publish this nonsense that you might enjoy it...somehow.