The Galactic Collective

No one rules the galaxy.

This is the official position of the organisation that rules the galaxy.

The Galactic Collective has existed for approximately four billion years. It comprises over four thousand member species, and it oversees every trade route, communication network, and fuel station between here and the galactic rim. It is the largest bureaucracy in the galaxy.

It is also, by its own definition, not a bureaucracy at all.

A bureaucracy implies rule. But the Collective does not rule. It facilitates. It standardises. It certifies.

It just so happens to facilitate, standardise, and certify everything that every species in the galaxy needs to survive.

To be fair, they started with the best intentions.

When different species built different engines that ran on different fuels and docked at different ports, ships would inevitably explode. More often than not, contact between civilisations was fatal, not because they were hostile to each other, but because they were simply incompatible.

The Collective started by standardising propulsion, fuel, and docking systems. The ships stopped exploding.

This was, indisputably, a great thing.

And when a painkiller prescribed on one world killed six million patients on another, the Collective built a cross-species pharmacological index and certified every practitioner against it.

This was reasonable. Necessary, even.

Then came communication standards. Navigation protocols. Trade classifications. Agricultural quotas. Atmospheric regulations for shared stations. Packaging requirements for interstellar freight. Mandatory font sizes on Collective warning labels. Filing procedures for filing procedures.

The pattern was always the same. A real problem prompting a seemingly sensible solution that leads to universal adoption. And then, quietly, no way back. Each standard would replace whatever came before it, and whatever came before it stopped being manufactured, taught, or even remembered.

No one was forced. The alternative simply ceased to exist.

The Collective does not consider this power. They merely administer the essential services that no one else provides. To everyone, everywhere.

This, they insist, is completely different.