GALACTIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: TERRAN

United Earth

When the major powers on Earth united in the early 22nd century I don’t think anyone would have thought the reasons would have been as mundane as they were.

 

Figure 1 Terran Colony ship. In length it could cross Lake Michigan.

As you know, the Internet combined with the elimination of trade barriers in the 21st century helped connect people together.  Many books and articles, even today, are still written on the downside of having a united planet. The thousands of unique cultures that once existed are largely gone. A visitor from the 19th or 20th century would not believe how homogeneous our worldwide culture has become. A blend of Western culture with sprinkles of Eastern cultures in for good measure.

Of course, radicals would still say that Earth isn’t truly united. There are still over 35 independent “nation states” in the world that are not party of the United Earth but given that they are dependent on trade and have no realistic independent military capacity, they are effectively part of the UN Federation Organization.

That’s not to say that there aren’t still “nations”. Citizens of the United States or France or Australia would certainly claim they belong to sovereign states. And smaller states complain bitterly of the influence and power that the US, China, Russia, UK, France, Germany, Japan and others wield but it seems to have worked out in the end. No major war has occurred in over two centuries.

And two centuries without war starts to create some assumptions about how other races are. Surely, if humans could live together in peace on a planet with billions of people then any other united planet must have mastered peace.

When the Arcean probe arrived it was greeted with much excitement. And when it transmitted data on how to construct a star gate the $6.7 billion needed to create it was quickly approved despite the tax increases required.  And when the first Arcean communications probe arrived through the star gate it never occurred to us that it could just have easily been a battle fleet.

Because that’s what happened to the Torians when the Drengin Empire found them and told them how to construct a star gate.  And we quickly learned that the galaxy was a potentially violent place.  The Arceans and Drengin star ships bristle with electric death. We’ve quickly had to learn how to adapt.

Now, as you know last year the first hyperdrive was used to propel an unmanned probe from here to Alpha Centauri in a relatively short amount of time (only a few weeks).  In our excitement, we told all the other races about our accomplishment and even sent them plans on how to construct their own hyperdrives.

Needless to say, last November the politicians who made that decision were all thrown out.  Because within a month after sending our plans and our news, all of the known star gates self destructed!

Having read through the documents we have had to make some sketchy assumptions and learned some frightening things:

It is quite possible that the Arceans were planning to enslave us. We did not have direct control over the star gate – we couldn’t turn it off and given its distance from earth and that our ships have no weapons, we probably wouldn’t have been able to destroy it quickly enough to stop an invasion force.

What would have stopped this from occurring was that apparently, Terrans have historically advanced much faster than the other races. We just got off to a much slower start as we only decided to come down from the trees less than a million years ago.

 The other races we think have identified the reason why we advanced quickly for the same reasons why they have advanced slowly – we don’t “beta test” our stuff very much. Once a technology is ready, we put it to use without thinking of the social ramifications (just like using the Star Gate plans we quickly figured out how to create a hyperdrive and sent everyone the plans – we didn’t consider the ramifications).  Therefore, we can assume that they will be prepared to be more risk taking in putting advances into effect. Odds are, all races advance at relatively the same rate.

The other races have had probes throughout the galaxy for thousands of years. They already know where the good planets are.  We don’t. This is very bad. We don’t even know where the home worlds of the other civilizations are! But they know where we are.

 From your perspective, this has been a political windfall. You have been granted extraordinary powers as President of United Earth and any future colonies. Obviously administering people that are light years away is going to be a real challenge so we will want to look into finding more effective ways of doing that. You also have been given the job for as long as the current crisis exists or until death (and given that those of us who can afford “HealthCareX” can live thousands of years that could be a long time).

We only have one colony ship available but it’s a real work of art. It’s huge. One of the problems we’re quickly seeing is how much resources it takes to build these things. The colony ship is massive beyond compare. It can fit over 20 million people on it! It took us many years to construct it and that’s the problem we’re facing, building anything that has to compete technologically is now taking many years of our considerable manufacturing abilities to build now.

But it’s not all bad news. There are no wars. No threats of wars. We will want to have a defense of course as soon as we think it’s appropriate. None of the races have even threatened us.  The galaxy is a big place and we assume there are plenty of planets for everyone (though in actuality we have little idea though we do know that Alpha Centauri, for lack of a better word, sucks).