One year later: just outside the Forest system
“Sir, we are about to enter the system’s space,” a minor functionary from the ship’s crew conveyed the information to Clomonastik in his tiny office.
“Good. Inform the Task Group Commander that we will proceed directly to high orbit. If no alien ships are detected about the planet, we will deploy the power station satellite and begin landing operations immediately.”
“As you command, sir.”
A meadow high in the New Pyrenees
Forest’s orange-yellow sun rose in the west, striking light into the mountains, peeling back the shadows of the night. On a west-facing slope, facing the morning sunshine was a tiny cabin built of hewn logs.
Mike had built the cabin right in a tree line, overlooking a high meadow. The big ferns of the lower meadows and prairies didn’t grow up here in the mountains, just low, ground-hugging broad-leafed forbs. The trees were different, too. While the trees up here were similar to Earth conifers, as below, these pine and spruce look-alikes were smaller, more densely packed, with shorter, lighter green needles.
The local fauna included the ubiquitous grilfens, a creature much like a boser but only half the size, which traveled in small family groups instead of large herds, and small flyers the size of quail. Best of all, the rocs didn’t seem to come this high. The only local predators were small, arboreal creatures that looked something like a feathered pine marten, and a larger, catlike creature about the size of an Earthly leopard. Cautious creatures, they gave Mike and Jenny a wide berth.
Mike was in the meadow in front of the cabin, practicing with a new weapon. A small local tree proved to have a tight, close-grained wood suitable for crafting into an old-fashioned longbow and arrows. He had crafted a few arrowheads from a flint-like stone, and over the past few weeks had become an accomplished archer.
Drawing his bow, he sighted over the wooden arrow at a leather bag tied to a stump. He made his shot; the arrow thumped into the target, only a centimeter or so from four others. With a self-satisfied smile, he tipped his old, slightly beaten-up gray Stetson back on his head. Out here, ammunition for their two rifles was precious. The archery tackle would greatly extend their provisioning capability. Other than rifle ammo, they had everything they needed. The few provisions and supplies Mike had left in his old cave home, he’d retrieved on one three-day trek down and back, while Jenny had put their new cabin in order.
The rough door of the cabin swung open, and Jenny stepped out. Her pale blonde hair was longer now, hanging almost to mid-back. She kept it plaited into two long braids, which hung down either side of her pretty, heart-shaped face. She wore a simple dress of tanned leather, a one-piece, sleeveless affair that ended just above her knees. A U-shaped neckline revealed the upper curve of her firm, high breasts. She padded towards Mike on tiny bare feet.
Jenny had made the dress herself, from tanned skins provided by her pioneer “husband,” as she put it. While no legal authority had sanctioned the relationship, after a year together the two young lovers were as married as two hearts could be.
She had made his leather vest, leggings, breechclout and moccasins as well. The only clothing he wore now from before was a blue cotton shirt faded by repeated washings in the stream a hundred meters from the house. While Jenny had fashioned a new floppy leather hat for herself, Mike insisted on retaining his battered old gray Stetson. Out of habit, his grandfather’s ancient .45 still rode at Mike’s hip whenever he went outdoors. His hair was longer now, too, and he’d grown what he told Jenny was a “Zapata” mustache, although he used a small skinning knife honed to deadly sharpness to keep his beard shaved off.
Jenny had been experimenting, trying to grind flour from nuts gathered from the pines around the meadow. Smiling as she padded up to Mike, she had one hand behind her back. “Close your eyes,” she said, smiling mischievously.
“I bet it’s a Nutty Crunch Bar!” Mike teased, eyes closed. She reached for his hand, placing something warm and fragrant in his palm.
He opened his eyes. “Bread!”
“Well, sort of. I finally found the trick to grinding pine-nut flour. It even rises a little bit, without yeast or anything, if you just leave it in a cool place for a while.” She stood on tiptoe to kiss Mike’s cheek. “The stone oven you made works perfectly, too. Try it!”
The small loaf was delicious, nutty, and slightly doughy on the inside with a crisp, tasty crust. Eyes wide, Mike nodded enthusiastically. “Good!” he exclaimed, spewing out a few tiny crumbs.
A few meters away, in the trees, the familiar mimicking voice of a grilfen piped, “Good!” Jenny giggled.
Mike swallowed. “It’s your little friend again.”
Jenny called to the tree line, “Bongo!”
A grilfen’s pale-dun face poked around a tree trunk, three meters off the ground. “Bongo!” it piped. The squirrel-like Bongo dropped to the ground, advancing cautiously towards the two.
“I know what you want, Bongo, don’t I?” Jenny asked.
“Don’t I?” Bongo replied, cocking his head to one side.
She reached into a pocket in her dress, extracted a handful of pine nuts. “Here you are, Bongo!” she called, holding her hand out.
“Bongo?” The grilfen approached, cautiously, to within three meters, but would come no closer. “Bongo?” it asked again. Giggling, Jenny tossed the handful of seeds a meter away, and she and Mike backed away a little to let the grilfen claim his breakfast. Leaping forward, Bongo used his agile front paws to stuff his mouth full of the pine nuts before bouncing back into the trees. “Bon-o!” it called back, voice muffled by pine nuts.
Mike retrieved his arrows and the two walked slowly back to the cabin, with his arm over her slim shoulders and her arm tight around his waist. As they walked, she leaned against him, pressing her hip and the side of one breast against him, moving rhythmically together. The effect on Mike was devastating, aggravated by her habit of wearing nothing at all under the thin, soft leather dress. He moved his arm closer about her shoulders, his hand wandering down the neckline of her dress, playing gently with one taut breast, teasing until he felt the nipple perk up in his hand. Jenny giggled, rubbing catlike against him. Mike began to have a strong physical reaction. He looked forward to getting back to the cabin. Breakfast, it seemed, was to be followed by a warm, amorous dessert.
In the distance, slowly growing louder was an odd whine. Mike stopped in mid-stride.
“Do you hear that?”
“Yeah, I hear it – a skimmer or a droid from Settlement or Outskirts, maybe?”
“I’ve never seen anyone else this far out. The provisioning droids don’t come up this far, remember? My beacon doesn’t even reach this far. Remember the time we tried it?”
Jenny nodded. “It must be somebody in a skimmer or something, then.”
“Funny sounding skimmer,” Mike replied, frowning. “It’s getting closer. Let’s get back in the trees, until we see what’s what.”
From the tree line, they watched as the craft came over the trees, hovering for a moment over the meadow before drifting off to the south. The flying vehicle was bright silver, spidery, with a small oval central pod between four long, thin silver arcs, each with a brightly gleaming orb at the end. The central pod was about six meters wide by ten long, Mike figured. The silver arcs stretched out perhaps ten meters on either side. Suddenly cautious, Mike and Jenny hid themselves in a waist-high clump of woody brush just inside the tree line.
“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Jenny whispered.
Mike nodded. “It’s not an OWME ship or any kind of droid I’ve ever seen,” he agreed.
The strange flying machine hovered, drifting slowly, aimlessly over the meadow for a few moments, finally coming to a stop over the cabin. A series of tiny lights blinked underneath the central orb, and then, finally, the weird-looking ship drifted away up the ridgeline above the meadow.
“Let’s get in the house,” Mike whispered urgently. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
They darted into the cabin. Jenny crouched down beneath a window, pulling back the leather curtains. “It’s still moving away, Mike,” she reported.
Mike went to the shelf on the far wall where his old frame pack stood next to Jenny’s battered leather knapsack. “Keep an eye on it, baby,” he said. For some reason, the strange ship had him spooked.
His carefully maintained Parks double and Jenny’s antique Remington hung on pegs on the wall. Mike took them down, checked the actions, and grabbed all the ammo they had, loaded both rifles and stuffed the ammo boxes in his pack. He took the Remington .338 to Jenny where she kept watch. “Here, take this.”
She took the rifle, eyes wide. “You think its trouble?”
“Honey, I don’t know what I think,” he said, bending to kiss her, “All I know is that this thing is giving me the creeps. Nothing wrong with being ready, is there?”
Jenny shook her head, turning her attention back to the meadow.
Mike went back to their stores, loading his backpack quickly with extra clothes, dried meat, leather bags of pine nuts, canteens. He grabbed his locater beacon, useless as it was, and stripped their bed of blankets for bedrolls. He paused a moment, looking at the bed he’d fashioned from saplings, the mattress of soft leather filled with leaves. There had been many happy wrestling matches on this bed he’d made, giggling, scratching, passionate catfights ending in an explosive, joyous release.
But something was out there, now; something he hadn’t expected, and wasn’t sure how to deal with. All his instincts were screaming “flight,” at him, and a lifetime spent in the wilderness had taught Mike to trust his instincts.
“Come on, baby, this way,” he called to Jenny as he pulled open the shutters on the window above the bed. This window faced the trees, away from the meadow.
“Mike!” There was a note of panic in her voice now. “It’s coming back this way!” A bound took her across the cabin. Mike tossed both packs out the window, took Jenny’s rifle and helped her out. He passed her both rifles, and then, remembering suddenly, passed out his longbow and quiver of arrows. Then he climbed out himself. They shouldered their packs, checked their rifles; Mike loaded a hi-ex and a solid in the two barrels of the Parks as Jenny chambered a round in the ancient .338 Magnum.
“Let’s head back into the trees a way, scout along back this way. We’ll get a couple hundred meters away, find a spot to hide and see what this thing is up to.”
Jenny nodded and took a moment leaning against the cabin wall to tug on her own knee-high moccasins before they headed for cover.
Behind them, the whine of the weird spider-like craft grew louder as it settled a hundred meters to the front of the cabin. Hurrying along through the trees, the two came to another high clump of woody brush and crouched down to watch.
The ship dropped down, down, to the ground cover that carpeted the meadow; the four glowing orbs touched the ground, dimming to reveal dull gray metal. The craft was larger than it had looked from below; as the two young lovers watched from the brush, a panel slid open in the side of the central orb, dropping down to form a ramp to the ground. Two incredible figures emerged.
“Mike!” Jenny whispered urgently.
“I know, Hon,” he assured her, wrapping one arm tight around her. “I know – they aren’t human, whatever they are.”
The two aliens were twice as tall as Mike, but stick-thin. Their arms and legs looked no thicker than the shaft of one of Mike’s arrows. Mike watched them, moving nothing but his eyes with a hunter’s practiced stealth, as they walked a few paces away from their ship. As they walked, they kept up a steady stream of conversation in a strange, high-pitched, flowing, oddly musical tongue. They wore jet-black uniforms, polished black boots, and hooded black capes; beneath the hoods, their faces were snow-white, narrow. They had an almost-human face; two jet-black, lidless eyes glittered under a high, gleaming white forehead. No noses of any kind were visible, but they had narrow mouths with thin, black lips that contrasted sharply against the stark white faces. Their hands were long-fingered, white, with claws instead of nails on the fingertips.
“Geez,” Mike whispered, “they’re really aliens. They really are.”
“What are they doing? Why are they here?” Jenny asked, somewhat rhetorically.
Mike shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m not taking any chances. We don’t know if they’re friendly or not and we sure can’t go up and ask them. Listen to that chatter,” he whispered.
One of the aliens raised something to his mouth and spoke into it. Almost immediately, three more ships, identical to the first, appeared from the west. Two of them landed within meters of the first, while the third hovered overhead.
A gray head appeared from behind a tree. “Bongo!” Jenny hissed, fear in her voice. “Get out of here!” Bongo let out a string of mimicking calls, imitating the alien’s speech.
The two tall, skinny figures looked at each other for a moment. One of them raised a small, rod like object, pointed it and a flash of green light shot from the weapon and crashed into the tree. As bark chips flew everywhere, Mike and Jenny saw Bongo drop from the tree and flee for the deep forest. The two aliens grinned at each other, showing evenly spaced, pointed white teeth against black gums. “You bastards,” Mike muttered.
“Mike,” Jenny hissed, close to panicking, “Let’s get out of here!”
“Wait, honey, just hold on for a few minutes,” he whispered back, “If we panic and run, they’re sure to hear us. You stay here, I’m going to scoot ahead a few meters, see if I can get a better look.” He raised his head a little to get his bearings, but never got the chance to move.
One of the aliens was speaking into the little object in his hand again, gesturing with the other towards the cabin. The hovering ship slipped in closer and from the central orb, a beam of white light lanced out suddenly, playing against the side of the house; it settled, finally on the front door.
Then the hovering ship spat out a jade-green bolt that shot down the white guide beam and slammed into the cabin, blasting it into splinters. Flaming wreckage fell hundreds of meters away. Mike grabbed Jenny, pressing her to the ground as a shock wave rolled the earth sickeningly under them. In a moment of rage, Mike made the biggest misjudgment of his life.
“You son of a bitch!” Mike roared, coming to his feet, Parks rifle rising to his shoulder; with sure instinct, he laid the sights on the central orb of the hovering ship and fired the hi-ex round at the alien craft. The exploding 15mm round may as well have been a spitball, the ship was shielded. With a shower of sparks, the round glanced off the invisible force shield surrounding the ship, exploding in mid-air a hundred meters above the orb.
OK, that was a wasted shot, Mike thought, instinctively switching his aim. The alien with the communicator was waving a hand in Mike’s direction and shouting. The white guide beam from the hovering craft flickered towards him. Ignoring it, Mike took careful aim and shot the shouting alien in the head. The tall, angular head exploded in a spray of black and white with the impact of the huge 15mm solid. The second alien raised his hand, and a jade-green bolt missed Mike’s head by half a meter. Mike broke the Parks open, reaching for two fresh rounds, thinking, I’m not gonna make it as another green bolt shot past, closer this time.
A loud bang erupted to his left, and the second alien slammed to the ground clutching his chest. Jenny stepped forward, chambering another round in her Remington.
“Got you!” she spat.
Mike reached down, grabbed Jenny’s arm, and almost before the thought could form, they were running, back into the thick forest, making for a narrow ravine formed by their tiny stream where it dropped down to a wide, open valley three kilometers away. Mike knew of several deep caves towards the bottom of the ravine. If they could make it that far, the caves would make an ideal place to hide until nightfall.
Jenny fought back tears as she ran, having just witnessed the loss of a second home. But this time, the man she loved so desperately was not in the stomach of an alien beast but running beside her, dunking fresh rounds in the twin barrels of his monstrous rifle, encouraging her, “Come on, baby, down the ravine, we’ll get into the caves at the bottom, they’ll never find us in there.”
Mike gave himself a couple of mental kicks as they ran. If we had stayed hidden, they would have thought they’d killed us! Why did I shoot at that ship?
The hovering ship followed them only a few hundred meters, sending a few jade-green, explosive energy bolts down to impact harmlessly on the forest floor, before suddenly rising up and racing ahead. Mike and Jenny could hear the whining drivers increasing in pitch as the ship shot ahead, screaming down the side of the mountain. They stopped for a moment under a giant pine to catch their breath. At least none of the other ships, or any dismounted aliens, seemed to be following them. So far, anyway.
Mike caught Jenny up, hugging her ferociously; then he held her at arms’ length, his hands on her quaking shoulders.
“Ok, baby, here’s the deal. We’re in a tight spot, but we’ve got the edge; we know this country, those gomers don’t. They know we’re dangerous. We already got two of them, so now they’ll be careful. We should be able to run faster than they can hunt. We’ll get down the slope into those caves, wait for nightfall, and move from there.”
“Where will we go, Mike?” Jenny wasn’t shrinking away from the challenge. With her father’s ancient Remington in hand and blood in her eye, she was ready to avenge the destruction of her home, knowing even so that the only rational tactic was to run, as far and fast as they could.
“Baby, we’ve got to get back to Outskirts, and then to Settlement,” he told her. “We’ve got to let the Company know about this. You saw how they blew up our house! They don’t want anyone to know they’re here, and they’re willing to kill us or anyone else to keep them from telling anyone. We’ve got to let someone know so they can get some security troops out, get some folks up for a militia or something.”
Jenny nodded, still breathing hard. She grabbed Mike suddenly, kissed him once, hard. “I love you, Mike,” she breathed, leaning against him for a moment.
“I love you too, honey,” he replied, hugging her to him. “Now, let’s get out of here!”
They slipped into the ravine a kilometer downhill, creeping carefully down the steep side to the bottom. At the floor of the narrow canyon a tiny stream trickled over thick boulders, brushy trees grew from the sides combining with the larger pines on the sides to almost completely enclose the ravine from overhead observation. Moving slowly now, they made their way down the streambed in silence. Once or twice, they heard the screaming drivers of the alien ships overhead, following the ravine. There was only one possible conclusion to be drawn from this.
“They’re hunting us,” Mike told Jenny as they paused to refill their canteens from the trickling stream. “Let’s just keep our heads. We’ve got to get to the bottom of the ravine. I don’t think they can see down through these trees, so let’s just watch out for the open areas. We’ll have to cross those fast.”
To see more of Animal’s writing, visit his page at Crimson Dragon Publishing or Amazon.
What can I surmise from this?
The aliens behavior is much like our own so likely they are the top critter at their home.
Being such they have the arrogance to think other critters are no threat to them so they attack, kill, destroy with abandon.
They a technological and industrial sophistication.
They cant be too stupid so they may take a step back and think naked aggression is not a good idea. War will be costly.
I’m guessing they are unused to anyone or anything being able to contend with them and haven’t fought a serious war in a very long time, so they will blunder into one and receive a rather unpleasant surprise.
Precisely.
They evolved in the same universe we did, under the same laws of nature we did….they are likely to be very much like us psychologically. Same stupid shit everywhere you look.
Let the record show that I did not use the above as a springboard to criticize the US military. Instead, I will post this video of a lengthy and amusing Captain’s Mast:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqpaC20_bR4
Something similar as portrayed on The Simpsons:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcKWGJlhtxY
I can’t speculate — because I’ve indulged in reading ahead. Wouldn’t be fair.
Just a civvy — so all my Captain’s Mast stories are fictional… but the best one of those I’ve come across is in the JAG in Space series. Book 3, Chapter 3.
thanks for the story
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-allows-trump-revoke-protected-status-thousands-venezuela-rcna205657
Supreme Court allows Trump to revoke protected status for thousands of Venezuelans
The high court granted an emergency application filed by the administration, meaning officials can move forward with reversing a decision made at the tail end of the Biden administration to extend protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans under the federal Temporary Protected Status program.
“…a decision made at the tail end of the Biden administration…”
The problem is that there was no Biden administration. Someone/someones were acting in his stead. Those people were not elected nor vested with the president’s power in any fashion. We dont even know who that was. (It was Obama and his people)
Every act done in his name is not law nor policy but a crime. What crime that is shouldn’t be hard to figure out. What to do about it? That is a different story.
This is potentially the biggest scandal in US history. I’m hearing that his cancer, or some of treatments, can cause or worsen symptom of dementia. But as you said, what do you do? Everyone involved will deny it, including Biden. And if people were to come out and say “Joe wasn’t at all there and we just took turns putting whatever we wanted into the auto pen”, is there some process to declare all of it invalid?
TOK:
Reagan, FDR, far from the first time, and likely far from the last time.
It is hard to believe that impersonating a president and exercising that power by deceit is not a crime, but what crime? Usurpation is classified how? I am not seeing much that would apply to this case. It is such a monstrous act that perhaps no one dared try it before or even envisioned the possibility.
Would it tear the country apart to expose and bring justice to those who did it?
Perhaps something along the lines of pardons for ex-confederates would be more civilized and save the country? Of course everything done in the name of Biden would have to be erased.
Yes, this is the biggest scandal in our history.
Yes, this is a stone Nobody Who Matters wants to turn over. The Constitution has a mechanism for dealing with an incapacitated President. That mechanism failed, for completely predictable reasons.
Ordinarily, an incapacitated person can’t make legally binding decisions. You typically need a medical determination that someone is legally incapacitated. One was not forthcoming, again for completely predictable reasons.
So, there is no practical recourse. Everything with his “signature” on it is legally effective. It’s an open door to rule by, well, conspiracy. It was walked through, nobody can do a damn thing about it, and don’t think the People Who Matter haven’t taken note.
Suthen –
Woodrow Wilson’s family and medical staff covered up his incapacitating stroke in 1919, which left his wife and private secretary nominally in charge of the country.
So yes, it has been tried (and gotten away with) before.
Nothing can be done about it….and when all credibility is lost and people begin ignoring them? That may not much matter in a lot of other places but here the population is armed and any all out attempt to disarm them will be met with resistance.
There may not be any way to deal with it but we should probably deal with it anyway
Ah. I forgot about Wilson.
Hmmm, and there are questions about Roosevelt also.
California-based U.S. District Judge Edward Chen blocked the move, citing concerns that the decision was based in part on racial animus.
When Ds exercise executive power it is out of love.
Sounds like Eddie’s a racist and should be removed from the Bench.
“Venezuelan” is a race I guess.
How long before the cavalry arrives?
How long do our intrepid heroes need to hold out?
We dont know if they blew up the cabin just for fun or spite and we dont know if they knew it was unoccupied.
If they didnt know they may not know that other humans are around. If they are from another planet altogether they may not have the technology to detect such things. That would seem unlikely so they probably knew it was unoccupied and just blew it up for spite or to deprive the people of shelter before hunting them.
Tune in next time….
They detected the settlement of Settlement before they sent the Occupying Force, so the Grugell are well aware of other humans. And if they thought the cabin was uninhabited — having their scouts killed and chasing Mike and Jenny disillusioned them anyway… so all kind of a moot point.
And spoiling a fraction (Animal cites this later), if I recall correctly.. the cavalry is at a minimum months away (next cargo ship arrival / turnaround), likely more. That’s assuming you didn’t mean Settlement as the cavalry… because there’s not really all that much there (I meant contact with Earth). I haven’t gotten all that much farther, so now I can speculate… but I didn’t really get the impression Earth’s built interstellar war ships yet (just the civilian transports), so I don’t think they’d be able to send much until suddenly ramping up a Black Space Navy.
the federal Temporary Protected Status program.
“Temporary”
Nothing so permanent as a temporary government program, example #2,678,991.
The Spanish American war tax was not ended until 2006.
Buuuu… How are we supposed to pay for the war?
Have you forogt the Maine?
Also, after that war, we gave Cuba and the Philippines back, but not Puerto Rico for some reason.
But at least the telephone tax was ended. For a while.
***
Although in popular belief the telephone excise tax has been in place continuously since the Spanish–American War, it has actually been repealed and reinstated several times, usually in times of war or economic crisis. Because of this connection to war, the tax has been a frequent target of war tax resisters.[1]
***
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_telephone_excise_tax
Taxing telephones? That’ll show that greedy Mr. Burns the next time he tries to send a parcel to the Prussian consulate in Siam via aeromail.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHH9vWZ27Nc
I wonder if Grugells taste good to Rocs.
Honestly, from Animal’s renditions… it doesn’t seem like Rocs savor their food much… toss it right down the gullet, lickety split instead.
Not sure why they would bother hunting down two stranded and lightly armed humans except spite.
I am reminded of this scene from Coneheads:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfzKPLLSuC0
Beldar got sent to conquer earth as an easy job from a relative but still managed to skrabnar it.
I can help but think of Adam’s grumpy, war-like aliens that learn of earth’s existence and put together a mighty fleet of warships to come here and conquer us. Due to a miscalculation of scale immediately upon their arrival the entire fleet was swallowed by a small dog.
There was a tribe that had good deal trading beaver pelts to the English, but thought they could do better by selling them to the English and other Europeans directly. So most of the tribe got in canoes and started paddling across the ocean to England because they figured if the English got here in boats, how hard could it be?
Long story short, they never got there, and the tribe went extinct.
In sci-fi, aliens are often depicted as monsters but sometimes as angels. I suspect meeting real aliens will be a disappointment, as just like many humans, a lot of them will be stupid, ugly, violent, and/or racist.
When civilizations meet, the result is generally mutual contempt, though there is always an element of curiosity.
Universal principles of the universe – all living things live at the expense of other living things, i.e. either other species are a resource or competition for resources.
No species competes for resources so fiercely as your own species, with humans it is worse because we see others as a resource as well as competition for the exact same resources.
Meeting another species much like ourselves would probably be on par with that.
War would be inevitable. Like I said, the same stupid shit everywhere you look.
Suthen,
“Meeting another species much like ourselves would probably be on par with that.” If we meet another species in the next 100+ years, we would likely be of little use to them other than a curiosity or exotic food. The power required to get here makes our technology look like stone knives and bear skins to them. In other words we would be at their mercy.
“War would be inevitable. Like I said, the same stupid shit everywhere you look.” In the case of the civilizations in the Chronicles, they appear to be evenly matched in technology with some differences, so yes war will be inevitable. Especially as we will be competing for similar resources and habitable planets for colonies.
If we encounter AI or robots, we would be likely left alone as we have little they would need barring some buried imperative in programming from their creators (see Bezerkers or other similar doomsday devices)
There is also the Star Trek possibility where aliens ignore humans because they want to talk to some other intelligent lifeform here.
So long and thanks for all the fish!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFg6Y7zbRg4
Of course, I was left wondering how alien whales figured out how to make starships.
Yes, there is that.
If they can get here they likely have access to all of the resources they need and we have nothing they want.
“We came here to steal your oceans! We must have water!”
“What? You cant make water? There is a whole moon made of ice over by Saturn, you idiots. Nobody is using it. Go hook a tow rope to it and take it home with you. “
Ah, V…. when all rationality of rationales is ignored because We Must Set Up Our Metaphor….
And yeah… anyone with any familiarity with the hard SF of the ’60s and ’70s knows that if you’re interstellar (well, and understand your technology as opposed to inheriting it from the actual race that made it like the Fithp, yeah… a non-interstellar civilization isn’t going to be any meaningful challenge. You very much have both the high ground and immense kinetic energy, after all…
Oh, I expect that in the unlikely event that we live in a universe where intelligent alien species encounter each other, “racism” won’t even begin to touch it. On account of the “others” are of completely different species. 19th century hunters clubbing baby seals will look positively benign.
–Witches Abroad, PTerry
I think first contact would go down a lot like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RPeQxjqDb8
They’d be interested in our weapons if we have better ones, and vice versa.
Would they be guided by the beauty of our weapons?
I pray that if we ever meet an alien civilization we are the ones who find them and not the other way around. It seems vanishingly unlikely that we would encounter a civilization with technology and resources that made us peers, and if the power is to be unbalanced it is best to be on the dominant side of the inequality.
There are a lot of reasons to think were alone (or alone for all practical purposes) in the universe.
My personal favorite is that it just takes time to create enough and the right kind of heavier elements (see the rare phosphorous hypothesis), and then they have to be gathered back up in a protostellar gas clous that winds up making the right kind of star — stable enough and with a wide enough habitable zone. The sun is apparently one of the very first dwarf G stars made.
Another possible reason is that while simple life seems relatively easy, intelligent life might be much harder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abvzkSJEhKk
I lean that way — for intelligent life we’d have any chance of recognizing, you have to have the magnetic field to keep the atmosphere / avoid being killed by cosmic rays and happen to evolve intelligence. So not just the collision that made the Moon (which I think is pretty rare in and of itself)… but something to wipe out the dinosaurs… who were stable for millions of years and not needing intelligence of the sort we have. (Obviously birds have their own intelligence… and dinosaurs / early birds probably did too… but would they ever be tool users beyond “stick in beak?” The indications are that they wouldn’t… and you’re not going to get radio or spaceflight or anything as a result…)
We probably aren’t unique but it is probably rare enough of a cumulative chance that we’re out of range of anything even if we do somehow break light speed some day. If we don’t break light speed… absolutely no way.
The universe is likely full of planets with life. The vast majority would be non-intelligent life. It seems to me there is no need to compete for them because if an alien race can get here or us to them then technology would have made distance irrelevant. Intelligent species with that level of technology would have their pick.
This is ignoring the problem of a universe full of potential pathogens.
Eh, there is no such thing as non-intelligent life, just non-industrial life.
Humpback whales have been around for about 10 million years longer than people, so what does that tell you about intelligence?
And in all that time, no wars, slavery, or genocide from them. Just singing.
How do you know those aren’t war chants?
More realistic first contact scenes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o8185JUA7E
The Martians carrying their ray guns and shoulder arms is a good sign. When the general offers a handshake, the Martian ambassador interprets it as an assassination attempt, as shown later in the film.
It’s like the old joke about the debate between the pope and a Jew. The pope wants to clear out all the Jews in Rome, but lets it be a debate. So the Jews search high and low for man willing to speak for them but end up picking some rando idiot because no one else wants the job or the shame of losing. Also, to even the odds, the Jews get the pope to agree to a silent debate of 3 rounds with just gestures.
On the day of the debate, the pope and the Jew are on a stage before a crowd. First, the pope points up. The Jew responds by pointing down. Then the pope holds up a finger, and the Jew responds by holding up 3 fingers. Then the pope takes out bread, and the Jew responds by taking out an apple.
After a dramatic pause, the pope announces that he has lost debates, and so the Jews can stay in Rome. There is much rejoicing.
A cardinal asks the pope what happened, and he says: well, first I pointed skyward to show that God is omnipotent, but then the Jew pointed down to say that man makes his own fate on the earth. Then I held up 1 finger to symbolize the oneness of God, but he responded with 3 fingers to emphasize the seeming contradiction of the Trinity with monotheism. Then I took out bread as symbol of Christ’s sacrifice which atoned for the sins of the world, to which he responded by taking out an apple, a symbol of the original sin which made that sacrifice necessary.
The Jew’s wife also asked what happened, so he said: first this guy holds up his finger, like he’s saying all us Jews gotta go. So I point down to tell, we ain’t goin’ anywhere, pal. The he holds up a finger so I hold up 3, just to show him. Then he took out his lunch so I took out mine.
A holy man attempts parley with Martians:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5H4yK_tiGI&rco=1