Spacefarers – A History

Spacefarers – A History of the Terran Alliance in the Warp Age
by Bede Venable

Introduction

The history of a people is made up of a series of events. Some of these events are pivotal, and some are more mundane, but they all come together to show where a culture started, and give clues as to where it may be headed.

The rarest of historical events are those that transcend races and cultures, and affect the universe as we know it. One such event was the Big Bang, in which our universe was created. Without this event, there would be no history. Second only to this event was the appearance of the Warp Lines. The Warp Lines brought our galaxy into a new era of history. Gone were the days of a Terran universe. The Warp Lines brought us into contact with races which had their own histories, and allowed us to move beyond our own corner of the galaxy. It allowed us all to learn new and wonderful things, and see sights we had never even considered. It also brought horrific tragedy and pain at times as well.

In this work, I shall attempt to tell the story of the Terran Alliance from the start of the Warp Age until the present day. Using personal interviews with eyewitnesses to events, as well as the testimony of the AIs of long-past historical figures, I will try to breathe life into the history of our people and to carry the audience through the events that shaped us. The journey may not always be pleasant, but in the end, it is my hope that we can remember who we are, and how hard we have fought to keep our history from reaching a nadir.

Interview with AI of Dr. Rudy Gund, Astrophysicist

Doctor Rudy Gund was the Director of the Terran Observatory when the Warp Lines appeared in 2400. An interview with his AI seemed like a natural place to begin the history of the Warp Age, as he was the first person generally credited with discovering them.
In case the reader is not familiar with AIs, I will explain them. An AI is an advanced information cache that pertains to a certain individual. Each AI will gather all possible knowledge of a person; from newsclips and government records to personal diaries and even actual memory dumps taken from the subjects. Usually, the AI renders itself in the image of the person, which allows a searcher to converse with it in real-time, gathering information easily. The AIs will use as much information as it can to render itself in the image of the subject.
For the more prominent historical figures, the AI renderings can be quite lifelike, and in some cases even make rudimentary assumptions as to how the person would react to a new situation, allowing the audience to find out how the subject would react to events that happened long after they had pased. They are really quite invaluable to the study of history, and I encourage the readers to go and seek out these AIs and hear the stories first-hand.

Bede: Greetings, Doctor Gund. My name is Bede Venable, and I would like to talk to you about the discovery of the Warp Lines.

Gund: Very nice to meet you, Bede. I hope I can help you find what you are looking for.

Bede: Doctor Gund, can you recall how you first learned about the Warp Lines?

Gund: I recall it exactly, as it is well documented. It was New Year’s Eve, and a special one. New centuries are so exciting! Although a new year is always a chance for a person to wipe the slate clean and start over, it felt to me that a new century would be a chance for the Terran race to start anew. The 90’s were such a hard time for Terra; we had political squabbles between the north and south, famine in the equatorial plains, and the issues on Garnet as well. I remember drinking my campaign as the new year count- down rolled on, looking at my friends and colleagues and hoping that the future would be kind to us.

Bede: It seems your wish came true!

Gund: To say the least!

Bede: Please go on about that night, sir.

Gund: Around 2am, the party was winding down. My wife and I were starting to think about turning in when the observatory sent an urgent message to my perscomp. All it said was that it was urgent that I get to the observatory immediately. Since the lead technician on duty that night was not the type of person to fool around, I immediately set out for the observatory.
When I arrived, the lead technician filled me in on the findings. Sometime near midnight, four anomalies had appeared at the edges of our solar system. He told me that during a routine sweep of the telescope, the first one suddenly appeared on the screen, shining with a blue luminescence and pulsing. He checked the instruments and confirmed that there were no malfunctions to be found, and so he called the rest of the crew to the deck and had them start analyzing it. As the telescope sweep continued, the other three were found. This was the first appearance of the Warp Lines.

Bede: Doctor, did you have any idea what they were?

Gund: No idea. From a scientist’s point of view, this is something that should never, ever happen. Large glowing objects do not just appear from nothingness and show up on your instruments. I would liken it to opening your bedroom door and finding an elephant curled up in your bed. Not only would you be upset about needing to purchase a new bed, but you would probably disbelieve what your eyes had just told you was plainly real. We spent the better part of the next three days confirming what we were seeing, and comparing notes with other observatories.

Bede: How long was it before news got out?

Gund: Hours, I would say. Anyone with high-powered optics could see them. It was fortunate that we were able to spend a few hours at least verifying their existence before the media frenzy began.

Bede: How did Terra react?

Gund: I could give you some of the headlines if you wish.

Bede: No thank you, Doctor. I’m more interested in your personal views.

Gund: Very well. Most of the people didn’t know what to think. I believe everyone was confused. You have to remember that even we scientists had no idea what they were. We could not provide any immediate answers. Speculation was rampant. The religious groups had a field day with them, and we knew that we had to get some real information on them before things went bad. Sudden lights in the sky tend to upset the natural order of things.

Bede: I understand. How long did it take to figure out what they were?

Gund: Mostly what we had was more information on what they weren’t, rather than what they were. <slight pause here> I can see that we still don’t know much more about them, even 300 years later. HA!

Bede: No, Doctor Gund, they are still quite mysterious.

Gund: Ahem. Sorry, I was gloating a bit there, I guess.
Well, we first figured out that although they were giving off their own light, they were generating no heat. They resembled the form of black holes, with what appeared to be an accretion disc and a central body. However, the objects did not appear to have any mass and also did not seem to have a gravitational effect on any nearby objects…such as Terra. So we were dealing with something quite unknown. 

Bede: How long was it before you figured out what they were capable of?

Gund: Once we were able to convince the government that the anomalies were not a direct danger to Terra or Garnet, they were in turn able to get the population to calm down a bit, and we were able to take our time and plan out how best to learn about our new neighbors. We were given previously unheard of support from the TWC (Terran World Council), which is another way of saying they threw money at us. We designed some probes that would fly by the objects and gather as much data as possible. Six months later, the probes were launched. From these missions we learned that all four of the anomalies were identical in observable makeup, which meant we learned nothing extraordinary, but we were able to confirm that they had no gravitational field, gave off no heat, and had no mass. It was like they existed as an image in space, but their physical properties existed “elsewhere”.
Once we prepared our report for the government, they seemed satisfied that they weren’t alien bombs or other paranoid nonsense, and they did what governments always do when faced with the unknown…they wanted to poke at it.

Bede: I’m sorry?

Gund: They demanded that we find out what was inside of these things. Also, they demanded that we stop calling them “anomalies” and come up with a better name for them. After much infighting between the staff, we came up with “non-interactive luminescent benign space phenomena”. The government decided to continue to call them anomalies. Six months later, we had a series of probes pointing at the heart of the anomalies.

Bede: That must have been quite exciting.

Gund: I guess it was. There is no record of what happened at that moment at the observatory, but I imagine I was quite anxious. So after a few dramatic hours of shots of each of these boring probes and a lot of experts on the infowave talking about what should happen next, the President nodded and the probes launched themselves at the heart of the anomalies. They traveled at best speed, but it took hours for them to reach their target. I imagine I was thinking they would pass harmlessly through them, since based on everything that we knew they didn’t really exist, but of course I was wrong. The probes disappeared. No flash of light, no bang. They were just gone.
I have more information on what happened next; would you like to hear it?

Bede: Please.

Gund: At this point, I expected the probes to come straight back. If they lost contact with our signals, they were programmed to reverse course and return home, but they didn’t. What they did do was start beaming signals back from where they were, and these signals traveled out of the anomalies as if the probes were just a few hundred kilometers away, which of course they were…and weren’t. The probes tried to figure out where they were in space. The signals beamed back through showed us pictures of where they were, but the return signals were useless for triangulation. So we tried to find identifiable celestial objects from the probe’s view, and figure out where it had gone. The probes had traveled light years away to entirely new solar systems!
The government went crazy. Everyone went crazy. We had to explore these new realms of space. Control for the missions almost immediately moved into the hands of the military. I guess I should have expected that, but it still hurt my pride. They consulted with me on many occasions after, but I was not making the decisions anymore. The first Terran steps into deep space would be made by those with the biggest guns, I suppose.

Bede: I’m sorry Doctor. You sound sad.

Gund: Well, it was my dream to explore space. As the government took over the operations, I knew that what I had experienced up to this point was as good as it was going to get.

Bede: So you never made a trip through the warp lines?

Gund: No, never. We explored the wormholes for a year, mapping the new solar systems. Then we ran into the lizards, and civilian travel on the Warp Lines was postponed until the war was resolved. Three years later, I died in a vehicle crash. Isn’t that sad?

Bede: Very sad. I’m truly sad that you were never able to make the trip.

Gund: Well, maybe someday, right?

Bede: Yes, maybe. Thank you very much for your time, Doctor Gund.

Gund: My please, Mister Venable. You will come and see me again, won’t you? I don’t get many seekers anymore.