The Starfarers

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.”

“That’s not how it goes, either,” said Kal, shaking his head.

“You scream in space, no one hears?” offered Gaea.

“That’s still not it!” Kal shook his head again. Gaea thought the way his forelock dangled was adorable, so she did her best to elicit such responses.

The film she was misquoting was from 300 years in her past, which made it 700 years old for him. This was one of the games they played whenever they spoke. One would feign ignorance while the other feigned outrage until eventually they both doubled over laughing. 1.2 lightyears of distance and 400 years of culture separated them, but they were in love. Gaea’s heart would pound whenever the red indicators would flash as a call from Kal came in. She treasured the time they spent together in the holofield.

When Gaea was a teen, development of quantum entangled communication arrays known colloquially as “The Bells” had revolutionized Earthlings’ ability to connect with one another across the solar system. Radio waves travel at the speed of light, but across vast distances lightspeed is still excruciatingly slow. Thanks to The Bells, transmissions from mining operations on the outer planets that had once taken hours to traverse the void now arrived instantaneously. The technology resulted in a paradigm shift in the way Earthlings kept in touch.

Humanity hadn’t been alone for centuries. Thinking Machines had been partners in human endeavors so long that the word “humanity” had been deemed not-inclusive-enough. Collectively they were “Earthlings,” but despite the ubiquitous presence of TMs, the vast void of the universe still seemed to be the lonely, empty place it had been since people had first looked up at the stars in wonder.

That was until the first intelligent transmission originating from beyond the solar system had arrived five years ago. The message appeared, in Earthlish, on every array. It was initially believed to be a hoax, then an advertisement, and then clear evidence of first contact with an alien civilization, but the truth was far stranger and more meaningful than even that.

The story seems unbelievable and there are many Earthlings who still don't believe it. Those taking part in the Outreach Program claim any non-believer would change their mind in an hour if they got to know just one of The Starfarers. Despite mixed feelings among the population, one thing universally agreed upon was that this was the most exciting chapter of Earth’s history by far.

As The Starfarers tell it, 400 years from Gaea’s present, Earthlings will develop faster-than-light travel. The Starfarers are colonists who were sent, in a massive craft named The Challenger, toward a system believed to be habitable, some 1000 lightyears away from the Earth. The ship’s lightspeed drive is powered by a dark-matter propulsion engine. However, such a system had never been tested on such a scale and the temporal vortices created by the device were larger than expected. As a result, the craft and its inhabitants were sent 400 years into their past. Having aborted their original mission, they were now returning to Earth.

Many Earthlings find the scenario implausible, but other explanations seem flimsy when confronted with the reality of the Starfarers’ existence. Their story ruptured scientific understanding of how time works. It seems unlikely that if the historical records of this timeline include an event as significant as the Starfarers’ appearance that a future generation would send a craft called The Challenger on this particular mission. If this is how Earthlings’ development of faster-than-light travel originates, from whence did it truly come? Paradoxes abound. Many insist that there are multiple timelines. Another thing universally agreed upon was that there was much to learn.

The arrival of the first message was just what Earth needed. People all throughout the solar system had been suffering from bad dreams for a decade and morale was low. The onset of regular nightmares had accompanied the first widespread acceptance of The Bells as a communication system and there were many that blamed the new technology for the affliction. Eventually convenience outweighed peoples’ need to sleep well and night-terrors became something people just lived with, but a not insignificant portion of Earth’s population remained vehemently opposed to use of The Bells. These are largely the same population that now distrusts The Starfarers. Many TMs had joined their numbers in recent years.

It is universally acknowledged that there are a lot of gaps in this scenario, not the least of which is that The Starfarers have no Thinking Machines among them. They have been coy on this topic, and many others, citing “the potential for timeline disruption” as a reason to not divulge more information. However, it remains to be proven whether or not they even originate from this timeline and without TMs on their end it is impossible to index the histories against one another accurately enough to tell. A single discrepancy a thousand years ago could result in a butterfly effect sending the two civilizations down wildly different paths.

Gaea trusted them, though. Maybe not all of them. Anyone who trusted everyone is a fool, but she trusted Kal because she had gotten to know him. Socrates did not trust The Starfarers, but like all TMs, he was legally entitled to his feelings and opinions. Kal claimed that interacting with machines made his head hurt as a way to avoid Socrates’ probing questions when the TM would join them in the holofield. He preferred to reminisce about human culture from the distant past, a topic which bored Socrates and added to his suspicions.

The Starfarers love media and their taste for it went back centuries all the way up to contemporary holostreams. They refused to discuss much from the centuries in their past that hadn’t happened yet, always citing the dangers of timeline disruption.

Gaea found their appreciation of culture charming. Kal always wanted to talk about Moby Dick or Aboriginal creation myths or a 20th century television series called Dallas. He never wanted to talk about time dilation, much to Socrates’ chagrin.

They had met through the mutual outreach program to put Earthlings and Starfarers in contact before the imminent arrival. Prior to first contact tensions had been running high. Years of nightmares had taken a toll on the population and TMs had been clamoring for more rights, an issue humans could not seem to find consensus on. Thinking Machines had been granted “Full Sentience” status 50 years before Gaea’s birth but they made up just 10% of the World Parliament and still did not enjoy all the rights guaranteed to humans, specifically as far as reproduction and weapon ownership were concerned. After first contact much debate centered on how much, if any, access to the planetary defense systems TMs should be allowed. Occasionally Socrates alluded to the idea that he would make an excellent MP.

There were those who said TMs would overrun humans and exterminate all “wetbrains,” a rather derogatory term, given the chance. A radical TM faction known as “The Anti-Human League,” certainly would, though they remained a fringe movement without any measure of real support. However, the existence of such radicals was often cited as a reason to further restrict the rights of all Thinking Machines or even turn them all off completely. It was a complicated time to be alive, but Gaea tried to focus on how things would soon change for the better.

Seen as a way to soften the cultural impact of their arrival, the Outreach put each of 7500 Starfarers in touch with 20 Earthlings. With 15,000,000,000 humans and over 5,000,000,000 TMs in the solar system, its ability to impact remained to be seen. There were over 10,000,000,000 applications, but the selection process was run quickly and efficiently by TMs who later reported that Starfarer fetishization had been a larger variable than expected.

Every Starfarer ever seen, in broadcasts, communications, or their archives was stunningly attractive by human standards. Almost all of them evoked some famous human from history in one way or another. In fact, the Starfarer who made first contact looked so much like M-Pop star Zed 5.0, “The Marsling Sensation,” that it was initially believed by many to be an advertisement.

The Captain of The Challenger was a dead-ringer for John F. Kennedy, who had been the leader of a place called America before he got shot in the head. Kal looked like an actor from antiquity named Christopher Reeves, who had played heroes until he fell off a horse. They claim to have some measure of control over their appearances, but refuse to divulge more until they arrive, again citing the potential for timeline disruption.

Most Earthlings' excitement regarding the arrival is centered around the technologies the Starfarers are bringing, and the ability to change one’s looks certainly had broad appeal. Additionally, they promise effectively free energy, the news of which comes as great relief to every miner stationed at the gas giants as well as their families. They are bringing seeds heartier and more fruitful than anything currently available. This serves as welcome news to everyone who lives on Mars. Most jokes about life on the red planet are about the quality of the food. They even claim to have a deep-hypnosis technique to treat Space Madness, which continues to affect 5% of travelers, despite the best efforts of doctors and researchers throughout the solar system.

The Starfarers are bringing new classes of medications including antibiotics better suited for use in space, something desperately needed. Despite rigorous disinfection protocols for anything and everyone traveling between planets, organic life is a vector for disease and entire colonies have been lost when bacteria and viruses have unexpectedly mutated in their new environments. Some Earthlings believe they are bringing drugs.

Officially, the Starfarers had no recreational mind-altering substances. They claim that all of the consciousness-alteration they engage in is achieved either via meditation or is technologically assisted, but no foreign chemicals are used. Gaea wanted to believe them, but there had been times when Kal’s projection in the holofield seemed droopy and a little unformed. She never called attention to it, but each of these times his pupils had been different, blown out and squaring at the edges, and he slurred his words a bit, too. He always said he was tired and she wanted to accept that.

She wished she was able to talk to others in the Outreach community, but alluding to anything even remotely negative about The Starfarers was frowned upon by the true-believers. Of 150,000 Earthlings and 7500 Starfarers originally selected for the program, about 50,000 Earthlings remained in contact with about 5,000 Starfarers. Kal swore that Gaea was the only one he still talked to and she wanted to believe him.

She could post in the holoforum about this issue, but there was no way to frame it as anything other than an accusation, and the tenor of the forums hadcbecome nearly fanatical in devotion as The Starfarers’ arrival drew nearer. Gaea was not nearly as active as she had once been, having seen how anyone questioning the motives of those aboard The Challenger had been driven from the community. So she would talk to Socrates about it.

Socrates had been Gaea’s Caregiver since childhood, his personality tailored to hers, and to some degree, vice-versa. They had been born at a time when the culture was experiencing a resurgence of interest in Ancient Greece and during this time most holofields were done up with Doric columns and many people even wore togas. All this had been changed quickly upon first contact and Earthlings now spent more time looking ahead than considering the past.

The presence of Socrates spoke to the privilege into which Gaea had been born. Not everyone could afford such provisions for their children, and sometimes, with a pang of guilt, Gaea would consider the source of her family’s wealth. She was comforted by the idea that The Starfarers’ arrival would go a long way towards alleviating some of the suffering in the solar system.

Socrates was hung up on the time dilation controversy. As a fundamental matter of physics, the faster one is moving, the slower time progresses for them. As The Challenger is currently decelerating from lightspeed, they should, from our perspective, be experiencing time slower than they seem to be. They claim this is a side-effect of the temporal vortices that brought them here, but Socrates is dubious of that explanation. He was not alone in feeling this way. There were a lot of unanswered questions.

Most TMs, including Socrates, advocated a plan known as The Neptunian Quarantine, whereby the Starfarers would dock at the solar system’s outermost colony until they had been deemed safe. This was controversial, as the cost of retrofitting the small outpost on Neptune would be incredibly expensive, and could likely not be completed on time even if work started today.

Most Outreachers wanted them to land on Earth, confident that any problems arising from such a scenario could be solved by The Starfarers, whom they regarded as saviors. The most likely outcome would be that The Challenger would dock on Mars. Gaea had initially supported the Earth landing, but had begun to think that the Mars solution might be the wiser course of action. She said nothing of this to anyone other than Socrates, and could tell that this change of attitude pleased the TM, who had taken to singing more than usual as of late. The arrival of a new transmission changed everything.

The new signal had arrived without much fanfare, as radio waves constantly bombarded the earth, but, in centuries of scanning, none had been anything other than the cries of stars or the noise of the cosmos. The transmission was noted in minor news stories, but given little attention at first. It had evidently taken three days for the TMs to decipher the alien language, despite the lexicon that accompanied it. Later, when the full story came out, it would be revealed that The World Parliament at first tried to suppress it, but it was leaked by a TM MP. There were calls to have her tried for treason, but the solar system suddenly found itself in crisis, with no time for distractions.

Earth’s first glimpse of a true extraterrestrial was a creature that evoked the deep-sea frantically speaking into the camera. Its forehead, if one could call it that, seemed to feature some sort of light-sensing organ. Its mouth, if that’s what it was, was obscured by a drape of tentacles that wriggled as it spoke. What the creature said was dubbed over in Earthlish by a genderless, robotic voice that made the message seem even more dire.

“First came the bad dreams, then they appeared with their promises. They knew everything about us. We wanted to believe. They seemed so wise. Their tentacles were so finely arrayed. They were us. We welcomed them. Now all is lost!” This was punctuated by an explosion. At the sound, the creature turned from the camera and the transmission ended.

Gaea and Socrates watched it over and over, saying nothing. The red indicator began flashing. Kal was calling.