For the longest time we’d given up.
Not on the prospect of finding other life, for
life was abundant. Under the ice seas of Europa, nestled around the thermal
vents of Serteni IV, and even floating through the upper atmospheres of the
great gas giants of Halicose Minor. Life was all around us, if we just took the
time to look, but there was nothing like us.
This was not entirely unexpected. Since the early
days we’ve known that the consecutive chain of miracles and happenstance that
led to our birth was afforded only the most remote of chances. Everything from
our development as a sapient race and the luck to escape our self destructive
tendencies, to the very formation of our world.
***
For a long time we thought our home unique.
As we searched the night skies, in ages past, we
marveled at the wonders of the universe. We found other planets around other
stars; so many of them large and close, or barren and cold. We thought that if
only we refined our instruments, then the other Earths would present
themselves. There were many candidates, many hopeful and promising contenders,
but they were too far, and we could not be certain. Slowly we expanded, filling
our local system with stations, outposts, mining operations and even a few
small colonies. Eventually we’d thought ourselves sure.
Three planets, all within fifty light years. All
possible matches for our own biology. Great ark ships were constructed.
Millions heeded the call. Cryogenic technology was still unreliable, unsafe, so
the ships were built as cities and farms, taking with them vast stores of
biodiversity from the homeworld. One by one they left. Communication remained
feasible for a long while, but years passed, then decades. Their journies
dragged on through centuries, and each nearly forgot the other.
The date of first arrival passed, remarked on by
academics and enthusiasts, and the Sol system took note. Decades later, when
the relevant transmissions were to be expected, the people of Earth and her
colonies listened.
The world, 'Haven' it was to be called, hardly lived
up to its name. It was uncomfortably warm, and with only a trio of small moons,
its poles shifted erratically. There was life, the oxygen rich atmosphere
attested to that, but where trace CO2 had hinted at a developed carbon cycle,
the reality was a planet beset by immense tectonic activity. The colonists set
down all the same. They had little choice after all. Underground cities were
built, and eventually extended to the surface under great domes, much like the
colonies of mars. The introduction of various terrestrial life forms began and
slowly, so very slowly, the world began to change into a place that was merely
unpleasant. At some point in the early years, the colonists renamed the planet
Crucible, much to the dismay of idealists everywhere.
A scant decade later, the second expedition began
reporting the results of their own journey. Like the first, their findings
were… less than ideal. The planet Xinshijie was largely covered in oceans and,
though temperate, suffered from an underdeveloped magnetosphere, which allowed
high levels of radiation to reach the surface from its parent star. Further
complicating matters was the discovery that the world’s oceans played host to a
staggering variety of highly aggressive bacterial life. Progress was slow but
steady and in time Xinshijie would thrive, though few would be convinced to
immigrate to that hostile world.
A full century passed before the final group made
planetfall. Surprisingly, the most unfortunate feature of that new world was
its name. After the disastrous (or hilarious, depending on your view) decision
to crowdsource the name, multiple rounds of voting, rewriting of rules, focus
testing, committee hearings and more voting, it was decided that the third
planet would be named 'Backup Earth Two: Terra Strikes Back', or 'BET' for short.
Most astronomers simply stuck with the tried and true designation XB-377-Y. For
all the controversy surrounding its name, BET itself was rather mundane. A
little cool, and a little thick of atmosphere. More stable than Crucible and with
a bland biosphere of bacteria and algae analogs that were quickly displaced by
imported life. It was no Earth, not by a long shot, but in time BET would come
close.
Such was the history of man’s early attempts at
extrasolar colonization. The mixed results of the first wave were enough to
encourage a new generation of explorers, and further expeditions were prepared.
Still others chose to focus on space-born habitation, taking station
architecture to new heights.
With space travel being what it was, there was no
incentive to search each and every star system. We leap-frogged vast stretches
of space to colonize every remotely habitable world we could find. Each new
system became a self contained nation.
***
For a time, our dreams had died.
Millenia passed. The core worlds grew, ever
prosperous, ever advancing. Science continued to advance the inexorable march
of progress, but after so long, it was a slow and steady march. Advancements
came in fractions of a percent. More efficient energy sources. More compact
electronics. Here or there a trick would be discovered; a clever way of getting
around some facet of engineering that had vexed designers for centuries. The
limits, however, were known. Nanotech, while useful, was not the all powerful
solution the futurists of old had thought it could be. Likewise, true sapient
machines, while technically feasible, were little more than a curiosity. They
found use as expert systems, automating the mundane tasks that once required
legions of administrators, but they could no more bend the laws of physics than
man. They could think faster, but they could not think better. The miracles of
bioengineering cured many ailments, strengthened the human form and extended
the human lifespan, but there was no functional immortality, no end to disease.
People survived the age old spectres, only to fall to the things we still could
not cure. Energy was cheap, but not limitless, not in the grand sense. And
still, after all that time, we were beholden to the limits of light. The
systems of humanity beamed their happenings to one another mostly out of
courtesy and a sense of companionship. Occasionally, some world would make a
novel discovery and announce their findings to the void. In decades or
centuries it would reach the others, and they could be better for it.
And then, something remarkable happened. An
expedition to a distant world had stumbled into an unexpected spacial phenomenon. In
the brief time they were able to study it, everything changed. Their findings
toppled a thousand theories about the nature of the cosmos, and created a
precious few new ones to take their place. The theoretical implications were
many, but practically, the application was one. They could not share their
findings immediately, ship based communication being what it was. Once they set
down and established an infrastructure, they shouted to the heavens, to any who
would hear.
The message reached their nearest neighbor, twenty
years after the first ship.
***
For a moment, everything old was new again.
The discovery of a new addition to the annals of
physics led to astounding jumps in a select few fields, and renewed interest in
many others. The high soon settled as researchers discovered which dead ends
were still dead ends, and which areas had yet to be fully realized.
Faster than light space travel didn’t
revolutionize the galaxy overnight as many had hoped. The new drive system
worked on the principle of warping spacetime around the vessel, a feat that for
millennia had been considered an engineering impossibility. Long distance
sublight ships had been creeping closer and closer to their theoretical limits,
but now, a journey that took an ark ship centuries could be completed in a few
years. There were limitations of course. The technology of warp travel required
the ships that used it to be massive. The first such vessels were ovoid in form
and tens of kilometers in length and width. As such, they operated mostly as
bulk transports, moving from system to system, ferrying goods and people as
they went. Calls to form a unified government were largely ignored, and the
systems of humanity went on as they had, albeit spurred by new trade and
cultural exchange.
Perhaps the greatest side effect of this new
technology was our newfound ability to explore our own backyard, so to speak.
As previously mentioned, planets that could be called even remotely earth-like
are few and far between. Our colonization efforts thus left much unexplored
space between our claimed systems. Where before, sending an ark ship to a
nearby system devoid of even semi-habitable planets was a non-starter, now
there was a chance to have an actual return on investment that didn’t measure
in decades or more.
Resource extraction enterprises led the way, often
accompanied by research contingents. In an old system like Sol, very little was
left unclaimed by this or that conglomerate, but these nearby systems were
suddenly open for the taking, and with no regional governments in play it
really was first come first serve. The commissioning of such a venture could be
ruinously expensive, but they could also be unbelievably profitable.
So it was that one such enterprise made the second
great discovery.
***
For a moment, we thought we might not be alone.
It was on a very large rocky planet that the
discovery was made. A so called super-earth, wrapped in a thick dense
atmosphere and sitting just far enough from its sun to not be an oven of a
world. We’d never encountered such a world in one of our systems. It goes
without saying that there is only so much room in the habitable zone of a star
system, and such a large planet is not kind to the sort we’d be interested in.
As for the planet itself, it was too massive to hope to land a ship and return,
and the air was too thick to get a signal through. Machines were sent down.
They explored, they studied, and when they’d found all they thought useful,
they passed that knowledge to a device attached to a balloon. It floated up
until a signal could be sent out, and what it showed was incredible.
There was life under the clouds. Fantastic life.
Life almost like us. There were no signs of civilization, of thinking beasts,
but under that dense blanket of air, amongst crushing pressure and gravity,
there was complex life. Large sedentary organisms, similar to the trees of our
homeworld, covered many of the plains. Creatures large and small moved slowly
and deliberately through the undergrowth. There were rivers and seas, and in a
way, it was the most earth-like planet we’d ever come to know.
News of this discovery set the scientific
community ablaze and new expeditions were financed to explore far and wide.
Many more worlds were found like the first, and a surprising number were home
to complex creatures. It seems that such planets can’t help but foster life.
Samples were studied and catalogued; each strange new form of life expanding
our understanding of the wonders of biology. And then we found the ruins.
Nestled within the unexplored borders of our own
core systems was yet another super-earth teeming with life. And on this one, we
found them; our vindication that the search was not in vain. We studied the
ruins relentlessly. We’d missed them by only a few tens of thousands of years,
but they were there. By all accounts they were advanced, almost as advanced as
us in some regards, but they never strove for the stars. We could only guess at
why. It would be very hard for such a species, from such a planet to leave their
cradle, but it would not be impossible.
On and on we searched, spreading farther and
faster, always taking care to check those systems we passed. Decades went by,
and then centuries, and a few more tombs were found.
Finally, after centuries of searching, we found
one, and then another only a few decades later. Species who were intelligent,
who were our contemporaries. One was industrial and warlike. Our efforts to
communicate were rebuffed and so we waited, hoping that given time they would
develop and seek us out. We watched them rise and we watched them fall to their
own machinations of war.
The other was an old race. Like us they had
advanced far and discovered much, but they were on the decline. We offered our
knowledge and aid, but their mindset was captivated by a sense of fatalism.
They had been declining for centuries, and saw no use in any other path. It was
disheartening to say the least.
There would be more. Time and again we were forced
to watch as planet-bound civilizations faltered and died. We’re still not
entirely sure why, but there is something about those races and their worlds
that breeds a sense of inevitability. Maybe it’s because they can’t see the
stars through the sky.
***
For time unending, we feared we would be alone.
Our Earth really is unique, but not in the way we
thought. We’ve still not found another like her. Every planet like her is one
we’ve made, and none yet has been her equal.
Life, as well, is everywhere. We are not unique
and yet somehow we are, for we alone have dared to travel the stars. For so
long we have been resigned to our eternal solitude. Millennia are heaped upon
millennia and still we spread, still we advance, still we search. For no other
reason than because we can.
And then... we found you. We have seen hundreds
like you, but you are unique in a way they were not. You are advanced yet
hopeful, civil yet curious. We see in you ourselves, if only you could be given
the chance.
So I ask you…
For the time being, will we have company among the
stars?
