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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.
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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).
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