After a full-ish day of revision Elizabeth and myself put on some nice clothes and went out with the art people to celebrate them finishing their work for the year. While we were sat on the wall outside the Learning Zone I saw Sophie. I think I have mentioned before that four people from my high school came to Lancaster uni after going to different colleges than me, and that I've barely seen them. I saw Catherine Byrne in the first couple of weeks when we went for a meal at The Plough and she was waiting on. Much, much later in the year I saw Emily Phoenix in her wheelchair in the gap between lectures. It was only a week before the Easter vacation that I bumped into Michael Feeney at the Cartmel comedy night when I first saw Jon Richardson live. Finally, after just over 25 weeks of living on campus, I saw the last one. We were waiting for the rest of the art people to turn up and Sophie Taylor walked up the steps with her friend, said "Hi" when she recognised me (much sooner than I'd recognised her) and carried on, probably not to be seen again for another year.
Having said that, the guy from Superdrug, whom we said we'd never see again, is always in the same shops as us when we wander around Lancaster town centre.
Tuesday, 25 May 2010
Sunday, 23 May 2010
Get that picked up right away.
I've had a pretty awesome weekend so far. The end of module test for Series went particularly well; I only lost three out of the 50 marks available leaving me with 94% and a smiley face drawn on my work by the tutor. The end of module test for Statistics wasn't quite as good, but with cap at 40 marks of a possible 50 I can afford to lose ten before I even have to worry. I'll get that result some time next week. The UAAA essay I wrote a few weeks ago has been marked. I said I'd post it as a blog if it got a decent mark and with 73% here it is.
Yesterday the weather was a bit too beautiful and we were rather warm in our treks around Kendal through the art museum and the park while we wasted time before the comedy with Jon Richardson and Shappi Khorsandi. It was nice to see that Jon wasn't just doing the same set he had done at the comedy night at uni a few weeks back and, although some of the funnier jokes made a reappearance, it was mostly material we were unfamiliar with. More of Shappi's jokes had been heard before but enough of them hadn't for the second part of the gig to be well worth watching also.
The only bad part of the day was the journey back. We had to get a taxi all the way from Kendal to uni as the trains and buses stop running ridiculously early. The guy said it would be over £50 on the meter but he'd take us for £40. When we finally did get back the little display had a "6" at the front so we were happy to get a third off the price as we handed our notes over.
We went to bed in Slaidburn for the first time in a term and a bit and stayed up for a while chatting about teachers from our schools. No Tech. teachers were mentioned (althoughAgent Mr Smith was an absolute legend).
Yesterday the weather was a bit too beautiful and we were rather warm in our treks around Kendal through the art museum and the park while we wasted time before the comedy with Jon Richardson and Shappi Khorsandi. It was nice to see that Jon wasn't just doing the same set he had done at the comedy night at uni a few weeks back and, although some of the funnier jokes made a reappearance, it was mostly material we were unfamiliar with. More of Shappi's jokes had been heard before but enough of them hadn't for the second part of the gig to be well worth watching also.
The only bad part of the day was the journey back. We had to get a taxi all the way from Kendal to uni as the trains and buses stop running ridiculously early. The guy said it would be over £50 on the meter but he'd take us for £40. When we finally did get back the little display had a "6" at the front so we were happy to get a third off the price as we handed our notes over.
We went to bed in Slaidburn for the first time in a term and a bit and stayed up for a while chatting about teachers from our schools. No Tech. teachers were mentioned (although
Thursday, 20 May 2010
Evolution on Earth.
Prologue
After first contact in the year 2525, the Human Race united to repel the alien invasion. Despite the aliens’ more advanced technology the brutal, war-like nature of the Humans helped them to win the war and, with their dominance over the aliens, they spread out into the galaxy.
Millennia passed, and the Human Race grew stronger. The genome code was completely cracked early on and genetic engineering became the normal practice. With it every Human was made as close to perfect as nature would allow. The average lifespan climbed to over 200 years and the people were athletic genii. Disease was made a thing of the past.
Thousands of worlds had to be colonised in order for Humans to continue their growth. Eventually they had to colonise worlds that already had sentient life on them, but there was never anything powerful enough to challenge them. The Humans shared their knowledge with other sentient species and felt that they were a force of unparalleled good in the universe. They were blind. They had grown too quickly. True, they shared technology with others, but they never let them become too advanced. They wouldn’t let anything else grow enough to threaten their dominance. They had control over every species and had forced their way to the top of the hierarchy.
Eventually someone noticed.
1
The old Terran ship, Heracles, dropped back into normal space and moved into orbit around the white dwarf star, Sol.
“Cool those engines, Ensign,” Commander Jacobs ordered, “we’re going to be here a while.”
A young bridge officer tapped a few times on the display in front of him and a moment later the dull hum of the Alcubierre Drive, the engine the ship used for faster-than-light travel, ceased. As it did so a look of uneasiness crept onto the four faces that belonged to the crew. It was highly irregular to power down a ship that wasn’t docked – it made it an easier target for pirates, and rogue meteors or comets would strike the ship before it had chance to evade. This, however, was a highly irregular mission. That is if it could even be considered a mission. It hadn’t been issued by the council, nor did any Humans have knowledge of it.
The small crew was made up of what were, throughout the Human Empire, known as Progs. The first planet Humans colonised and made independent of Earth, while habitable, had a slightly thinner atmosphere and a weaker magnetosphere which led to genetic mutations that, over time and through the process of natural selection, gave inhabitants of the planet a certain set of traits that were different to the Humans from Earth. It was advantageous for the people on the so called New World to grow bigger lungs and, by extension, larger chests. Eyes evolved so that pupils could shrink to much narrower apertures to filter out the excessive amounts of light from the nearby star but not hinder visibility in low lighting at night time. These and other changes to their appearance, coupled with their slower advances in science, meant that other Humans who hadn’t evolved on that particular planet looked down on them as if they were a sub-race. The term Progressed, or Progs for short, was ironically coined to describe such less advanced people.
In the Empire, Progs rarely held positions of importance and in the military, known as the Terran Space Fleet, they had to work exceptionally hard to advance to the rank of Commander. Jacobs had worked exceptionally hard. If his ancestors had grown up on Earth he’d have been a Vice-Admiral. He also wouldn’t have been on this operation. He’d have been making sure no one was on this operation.
2
The corner of a screen flashed orange as a new message came through on an encrypted link. Private Joheness, fresh out of the Academy, opened it on his retinal display and read:
To outpost 17D, Sol System. Be advised that the TSF vessel Heracles is on an in-system vector.
Record and forward outbound vector data for further analysis when it re-enters Alcubierre Space.
TSF Comman.
“Jesus,” the Private thought to himself, “what could they be doing in this hell-hole?”
Joheness confirmed the receipt of the transmission and, knowing that alarms would sound as soon as anything came within one billion kilometres of the sun, closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.
3
Commander Jacobs looked through the viewport at the star his ship was orbiting. He was glad it was here – it would remind his crew why they were risking their lives. Throughout the history of the Human Empire the Humans had portrayed themselves to all the other sentient species they had discovered and assimilated as omnipotent, omniscient beings that had always existed. It was far from the truth but unfortunately the only ones who seemed to realise this were the Progs, and Progs had very little credibility. The Humans had seen to that.
The Humans had taken their lie so far that they destroyed, albeit unintentionally, almost all the evidence to show that they had once evolved in the same way as all the other life forms in the known universe. As soon as their technology allowed it they accelerated the fusion reaction in the Sun’s core and effectively made it die much faster than it should have done. They cut its life short by approximately eight billion years. They had been trying to cause the Sun to eject some of its energy in the form of a directed T Tauri wind that wouldn’t blow off the Earth’s atmosphere but could be used to send solar-sail probes deep into the galaxy. Unfortunately they lost control and the Sun exploded into a red giant and, just as quickly, collapsed into a white dwarf. The Humans had failed and destroyed the solar system of their origin in the process. In some ways it had been fortunate for the Humans that they had been at a state of technological advancement that had not yet entirely secured their place as the dominant species in the local cluster, and therefore they had kept Earth a closely guarded secret – just in case. When it had been destroyed all they had to do was delete the evidence that it had ever been there to begin with. With no place of origin the Humans pretended that they had always existed so that they could emphasise their God-like status among the less advanced sentient species, and after a few centuries they had all but convinced themselves of it too.
The Progs, however, could remember Earth. The stories of how their ancestors had left Earth and started a new civilisation away from other Humans had lasted for thousands of years. They could remember when they were treated as equals by the other Humans – when they were other Humans. Just because they had evolved on a different planet with different conditions and made slower advances in science they had become a race to be ridiculed while their cousins became a dominant elite. Commander Jacobs had brought his crew to the Sol System to remind himself and his crew that the dominant elite were, in fact, fallible.
“Take a good look ladies and gentlemen; this is where we came from. This is where we all came from.”
4
The Voyager 4 spacecraft dropped out of Alcubierre space at precisely the moment it was supposed to. Its onboard sensors slowly warmed up as they came online and scanned the surrounding space. It simultaneously began to broadcast what it had calculated to be its current location in relation to Sol back through the Alcubierre rip – the transdimensional hole caused by re-entry into normal space – before it quickly snapped shut as if it had never been there. When the scans for nearby life came back negative the main engine began to heat up, and in an instant Voyager 4 was back on its way hurtling through Alcubierre space.
5
“We’ve been sat here long enough. Prepare the engines for FTL, Ensign. Lieutenant, I want scans on every single bubble we come across – we’re due a message and I don’t want to miss it. Major, calculate probable vectors our message in a bottle would have used, based on the old charts we...,” Commander Jacobs paused for a moment, “...acquired.”
The crew quickly got to work inputting commands into the ship computer and checking and rechecking equations. The Heracles’ engines came online in a moment and the Major’s calculations appeared on the Ensign’s display. A quick tap to confirm them and the ship lurched into motion and headed away from the system at faster-than-light speed.
All four people sat on the bridge of the Heracles understood the implications of what they hoped to find. Prior to the colonisation of New World a fourth Voyager craft, equipped with an Alcubierre Drive, was sent out from Earth. It had information on all of Earth history up to that point stored in its memory banks. It had been thought to have crashed on its voyage thousands of years ago but Commander Jacobs had picked up a peculiar transmission whilst on his previous assignment on the Terran Space Fleet cruiser Titan. The transmission was weak and much of it had been lost in the transdimensional space but enough had made it through to catch Jacobs’ attention. He had uploaded the data to his neural pad before removing the message from the Titan’s mainframe. As soon as he was groundside he and three officers under his command stole the Heracles from the ship yard and began to search for Voyager 4 and the full transmission, and proof of the true origin of the Humans.
6
A green light began to flash on and off as the siren wailed. Private Joheness awoke at once. It took him a moment to realise where he was after dreaming about being at home with his wife but, soon enough, he had his bearings and was reading the text scrolling across his retinal display. Command had been right – the Heracles had dropped out of orbit and triggered outpost 17D’s alarm. Joheness trained the aft camera on the vessel in orbit around the Sun and began recording. He watched for almost 10 minutes as it slowly circled around the star in darkness before powering up and jumping back out of the system. The outpost’s equipment automatically scanned for the outbound vector and attached the data to the file that would be forwarded to command for further analysis. Joheness typed up a short report on the Heracles’ activity, attached the recording to the file alongside the vector data and sent the folder to headquarters.
7
“Commander, I’ve got something on long range. It’s a radio frequency consistent with 26th century transmission technology. The stamp on it also suggests it was sent by Voyager 4; given what we know about the craft.”
“Good. Try and get as much of the message as you can. I want to know where that ship is and where it’s going before it knows itself.”
“Receiving coordinates now, Sir. Sending them to you, Ensign.”
“Fantastic work. Set a course to take us on that heading immediately, Ensign. We won’t catch it on this break but if we’re quick we might make the next one.”
Commander Jacobs felt an excitement he hadn’t felt in a long time. He had seen Human after Human get promoted past him even though he had always been better at his job than them. Perfect marks in all his tests at the Academy and he still only left as a Private. 80% was enough for a Human to start off as a Corporal or even in some rare cases, a Sergeant. It had left him with a bitter taste in his mouth as he saluted to those he had scored higher than and beaten to the finish line. He’d never have to do that again. Tomorrow he would have Voyager 4 and with it he would crumble the Human Empire.
8
As Voyager 4 dropped into normal space for the second time that day it found itself unable to transmit through the Alcubierre Rip. The signal was crossing the event horizon of the short-living anomaly, but it was being bounced back as if there was a wall on the other side of the hole. A second later the rip expanded tenfold and a Terran Space Fleet vessel with the word ‘Heracles’ painted on the side of it hurtled out. Before Voyager’s engine could heat up for the next jump it was scooped into the port fighter bay of the larger ship and disabled. After being tampered with by something that was obviously intelligent, the craft shut down all its non-essential functions and ejected its memory core safe in the knowledge that its mission had been completed.
9
“Show me exactly what we’ve just picked up,” Commander Jacobs said quietly to his second in command.
“Linking the systems now. Here we are, it should be coming up on screen...now.”
All four crewmen watched the display in awe as text and pictures describing evolution on Earth showed up on the screen. The history of the planet – how it was once a ball of molten rock formed by the agglomeration of planetesimals which came from gas and dust that surrounded the newly born Sol, how the moon was made from part of the Earth’s mantle that had been blasted into orbit when the planet was hit by a large protoplanet, how cometary bombardment and volcanic activity had created the atmosphere and oceans, and most importantly, how all life that originated from Earth, including Humans, had evolved from single cell organisms in an environment no Human could ever survive in.
“This is it. We’ve got it.” Commander Jacobs could hardly believe the amount of data they had found that proved the Humans account of their history was false. He spoke slowly and deliberately so he could more easily retain his composure. “Ensign, take us to Terran Space Fleet Command; we need to speak to the council.”
10
The gigantic letters “T.S.F.C” decorated the southern wall of the colossal Terran Space Fleet Command building. The larger of the binary stars around which the urban planet, Eden, orbited was about to set. On the lower floors of the building people were getting ready to leave for the night while others were just starting their shifts. The council members had been on their way home when they had been called back for an emergency session.
Thellm, one of the few non-Human council members, took his seat in the shallow sea of people. He noticed a Progressed Commander standing on the podium in the centre of the large, suspended hall so that he was at the same level as the council members. The chamber had been designed to be intimidating for anyone stood on the pedestal. Thellm wondered what had been so important that it warranted bringing everyone back right away rather than being postponed until the morning. Then the Progressed began to speak. At first all he spoke about was the history of some planet named Earth. Thellm had never heard of Earth before and his attention began to wander. He heard phrases such as dust, gasses, agglomeration, meteor bombardment and others mentioned but didn’t know what context they were being used in; nor did he really care. The man went on to say something about the planet being 500 Kelvin and having a thick, mostly CO2 atmosphere that was about 30 or 40 times the standard comfortable pressure for Humans. Also that microscopic prebiotic particles arrived in vast quantities, but that wasn’t so special – prebiotic particles arrived on every planet in the Empire from tails of comets. What really irritated Thellm was that all of this happened just under four billion years ago. Had he really been called back to receive a Progressed’s history lesson on some insignificant planet?
Only when the lecturer mentioned the emergence of life on this planet did Thellm’s attention return. Up to this point it hadn’t been mentioned, or at least Thellm hadn’t heard, that this Earth planet was in the habitable zone of its system. If it was in the habitable zone, and if it had been four billion years since the harsh conditions the Progressed had spoken of, then by now it was entirely possible that a sentient species had evolved there. With this realisation Thellm sat forward in his seat and began to listen intently to the talk. A noisy shuffle in the hall indicated that everybody else did the same. Perhaps the life on this planet would join the Empire. A new race would surely be very exciting.
“By this time bacteria were multiplying in the oceans and did so until approximately seven hundred million years ago when multicelular organisms began to appear. Over the next one hundred million years jellyfish and trilobites made an appearance too. Four hundred million years ago stromatolites had multiplied into such massive quantities that the CO2 in the atmosphere had largely been replaced with oxygen, and an ozone layer was created that allowed arthropods to crawl out of the seas without being destroyed by the harsh Ultra Violet radiation from the Sun.”
Commander Jacobs could sense that the council members were paying more attention to him since he had mentioned life evolving on Earth. Good. He had one shot at exposing the Humans for what they really were and he wanted to make his story as plausible as possible. If a sufficient number of the alien races on the council were hooked by his recount of history then hopefully they would search deep enough into the Humans’ past and see that he was telling the truth.
“Now that it was safe for plants and animals to live on land, forests sprung up all over. These provided food for animals that would leave the water. The arthropods inhabited the forests. Fish from the seas evolved to use their fins and gills as legs and lungs so that they could survive on land rather than in the water. These evolved into reptiles such as turtles and lizards which, in turn, evolved into the dinosaurs – the dominant species on Earth for one hundred and eight five million years until they were wiped out by a cataclysmic meteor strike. The cometary dust thrown into the stratosphere blocked out the sun for over a year causing plants to be incapable of photosynthesis. With plants unable to photosynthesise they died and hence so did everything that fed on them.
When the dust had settled the dinosaurs had perished, allowing the mammals that had survived underground by eating roots and grains to come back to the surface and take over.”
A murmur ran through the council hall as the Progressed stated that mammals had become the dominant species. Humans were mammals. As the speaker continued to talk about the Tarsiers and the Lemurs that had evolved on Earth fifty million years ago, Thellm’s retinal display flashed on and showed images of the two animals. Their faces almost looked Human. Next up came an image of an ape, then another that was stood more upright and holding something in its hand, then another stood more upright still and with a larger head that obviously housed a larger brain.
More images showed on Thellm’s retinal display, each one of apes that looked more and more human until the final image in the set. This one was of two almost hairless apes stood next to each other and completely upright, with heads that could fit a more sophisticated brain that was three times larger than the ape in the first image. The two images began to rotate and morph. The one on the right morphed into a generic looking Progressed. Alone, all this would imply is that Progresseds evolved from ape like creatures similar to ones found on Earth. However, the other image, the one on the left, morphed into what was unmistakably the image of a Human.
Commander Jacobs delivered the final words of his speech very deliberately and very precisely.
“So you see, council members of the other races, the proof is here. The Humans encoded this data for aliens to find and now I invite you to find it. They have not always existed as they so confidently proclaim. They evolved from the same primordial soup as the Progressed, adapting to better survive in particular environments over a finite amount of time just like us, and just like all of you!”
Uproar.
Epilogue
Jacobs scraped his index finger across the scanner so it could read his unique DNA to confirm his identity. A green LED lit up and the Senior Chief Petty Officer on duty gave him a nod. At the end of the corridor an alien was waiting.
“Welcome back to the universe, Jacobs,” said Thellm, “I think you’ll find a lot has changed while you’ve been in prison. Your speech had quite an impact. When the clusters found out that Humans were nothing more than what they could potentially one day become, hundreds of races left the Empire. Too many for the Humans to even begin to stop. What remains of the Empire is totally reformed. Every race is independent of the Humans and can advance at its own rate. Of course in reality every race has inherited the Humans level of technology so there is no longer an unopposable species at the top of the hierarchy; in fact there is no longer a hierarchy. We’re all equal.”
“That’s all I could have hoped for,” Jacobs said with a slight grin, “equality.”
“What will you do now?”
“I supposed I’ll rejoin the Fleet. I’m sure there’s a lot for the military to do now everyone can walk on their own feet.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Thellm replied. “Since you were discharged by a biased party I have been given special permission to give you this.”
Jacobs let his eyes travel over the piece of metal he was being presented with.
“Thank you,” he stuttered in disbelief.
“Not a problem at all. Congratulations, Jacobs. For the work you carried out on exposing the Humans and discovering the history of evolution on Earth, I hereby promote you to the Terran Space Fleet rank of Admiral.”
After first contact in the year 2525, the Human Race united to repel the alien invasion. Despite the aliens’ more advanced technology the brutal, war-like nature of the Humans helped them to win the war and, with their dominance over the aliens, they spread out into the galaxy.
Millennia passed, and the Human Race grew stronger. The genome code was completely cracked early on and genetic engineering became the normal practice. With it every Human was made as close to perfect as nature would allow. The average lifespan climbed to over 200 years and the people were athletic genii. Disease was made a thing of the past.
Thousands of worlds had to be colonised in order for Humans to continue their growth. Eventually they had to colonise worlds that already had sentient life on them, but there was never anything powerful enough to challenge them. The Humans shared their knowledge with other sentient species and felt that they were a force of unparalleled good in the universe. They were blind. They had grown too quickly. True, they shared technology with others, but they never let them become too advanced. They wouldn’t let anything else grow enough to threaten their dominance. They had control over every species and had forced their way to the top of the hierarchy.
Eventually someone noticed.
1
The old Terran ship, Heracles, dropped back into normal space and moved into orbit around the white dwarf star, Sol.
“Cool those engines, Ensign,” Commander Jacobs ordered, “we’re going to be here a while.”
A young bridge officer tapped a few times on the display in front of him and a moment later the dull hum of the Alcubierre Drive, the engine the ship used for faster-than-light travel, ceased. As it did so a look of uneasiness crept onto the four faces that belonged to the crew. It was highly irregular to power down a ship that wasn’t docked – it made it an easier target for pirates, and rogue meteors or comets would strike the ship before it had chance to evade. This, however, was a highly irregular mission. That is if it could even be considered a mission. It hadn’t been issued by the council, nor did any Humans have knowledge of it.
The small crew was made up of what were, throughout the Human Empire, known as Progs. The first planet Humans colonised and made independent of Earth, while habitable, had a slightly thinner atmosphere and a weaker magnetosphere which led to genetic mutations that, over time and through the process of natural selection, gave inhabitants of the planet a certain set of traits that were different to the Humans from Earth. It was advantageous for the people on the so called New World to grow bigger lungs and, by extension, larger chests. Eyes evolved so that pupils could shrink to much narrower apertures to filter out the excessive amounts of light from the nearby star but not hinder visibility in low lighting at night time. These and other changes to their appearance, coupled with their slower advances in science, meant that other Humans who hadn’t evolved on that particular planet looked down on them as if they were a sub-race. The term Progressed, or Progs for short, was ironically coined to describe such less advanced people.
In the Empire, Progs rarely held positions of importance and in the military, known as the Terran Space Fleet, they had to work exceptionally hard to advance to the rank of Commander. Jacobs had worked exceptionally hard. If his ancestors had grown up on Earth he’d have been a Vice-Admiral. He also wouldn’t have been on this operation. He’d have been making sure no one was on this operation.
2
The corner of a screen flashed orange as a new message came through on an encrypted link. Private Joheness, fresh out of the Academy, opened it on his retinal display and read:
To outpost 17D, Sol System. Be advised that the TSF vessel Heracles is on an in-system vector.
Record and forward outbound vector data for further analysis when it re-enters Alcubierre Space.
TSF Comman.
“Jesus,” the Private thought to himself, “what could they be doing in this hell-hole?”
Joheness confirmed the receipt of the transmission and, knowing that alarms would sound as soon as anything came within one billion kilometres of the sun, closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.
3
Commander Jacobs looked through the viewport at the star his ship was orbiting. He was glad it was here – it would remind his crew why they were risking their lives. Throughout the history of the Human Empire the Humans had portrayed themselves to all the other sentient species they had discovered and assimilated as omnipotent, omniscient beings that had always existed. It was far from the truth but unfortunately the only ones who seemed to realise this were the Progs, and Progs had very little credibility. The Humans had seen to that.
The Humans had taken their lie so far that they destroyed, albeit unintentionally, almost all the evidence to show that they had once evolved in the same way as all the other life forms in the known universe. As soon as their technology allowed it they accelerated the fusion reaction in the Sun’s core and effectively made it die much faster than it should have done. They cut its life short by approximately eight billion years. They had been trying to cause the Sun to eject some of its energy in the form of a directed T Tauri wind that wouldn’t blow off the Earth’s atmosphere but could be used to send solar-sail probes deep into the galaxy. Unfortunately they lost control and the Sun exploded into a red giant and, just as quickly, collapsed into a white dwarf. The Humans had failed and destroyed the solar system of their origin in the process. In some ways it had been fortunate for the Humans that they had been at a state of technological advancement that had not yet entirely secured their place as the dominant species in the local cluster, and therefore they had kept Earth a closely guarded secret – just in case. When it had been destroyed all they had to do was delete the evidence that it had ever been there to begin with. With no place of origin the Humans pretended that they had always existed so that they could emphasise their God-like status among the less advanced sentient species, and after a few centuries they had all but convinced themselves of it too.
The Progs, however, could remember Earth. The stories of how their ancestors had left Earth and started a new civilisation away from other Humans had lasted for thousands of years. They could remember when they were treated as equals by the other Humans – when they were other Humans. Just because they had evolved on a different planet with different conditions and made slower advances in science they had become a race to be ridiculed while their cousins became a dominant elite. Commander Jacobs had brought his crew to the Sol System to remind himself and his crew that the dominant elite were, in fact, fallible.
“Take a good look ladies and gentlemen; this is where we came from. This is where we all came from.”
4
The Voyager 4 spacecraft dropped out of Alcubierre space at precisely the moment it was supposed to. Its onboard sensors slowly warmed up as they came online and scanned the surrounding space. It simultaneously began to broadcast what it had calculated to be its current location in relation to Sol back through the Alcubierre rip – the transdimensional hole caused by re-entry into normal space – before it quickly snapped shut as if it had never been there. When the scans for nearby life came back negative the main engine began to heat up, and in an instant Voyager 4 was back on its way hurtling through Alcubierre space.
5
“We’ve been sat here long enough. Prepare the engines for FTL, Ensign. Lieutenant, I want scans on every single bubble we come across – we’re due a message and I don’t want to miss it. Major, calculate probable vectors our message in a bottle would have used, based on the old charts we...,” Commander Jacobs paused for a moment, “...acquired.”
The crew quickly got to work inputting commands into the ship computer and checking and rechecking equations. The Heracles’ engines came online in a moment and the Major’s calculations appeared on the Ensign’s display. A quick tap to confirm them and the ship lurched into motion and headed away from the system at faster-than-light speed.
All four people sat on the bridge of the Heracles understood the implications of what they hoped to find. Prior to the colonisation of New World a fourth Voyager craft, equipped with an Alcubierre Drive, was sent out from Earth. It had information on all of Earth history up to that point stored in its memory banks. It had been thought to have crashed on its voyage thousands of years ago but Commander Jacobs had picked up a peculiar transmission whilst on his previous assignment on the Terran Space Fleet cruiser Titan. The transmission was weak and much of it had been lost in the transdimensional space but enough had made it through to catch Jacobs’ attention. He had uploaded the data to his neural pad before removing the message from the Titan’s mainframe. As soon as he was groundside he and three officers under his command stole the Heracles from the ship yard and began to search for Voyager 4 and the full transmission, and proof of the true origin of the Humans.
6
A green light began to flash on and off as the siren wailed. Private Joheness awoke at once. It took him a moment to realise where he was after dreaming about being at home with his wife but, soon enough, he had his bearings and was reading the text scrolling across his retinal display. Command had been right – the Heracles had dropped out of orbit and triggered outpost 17D’s alarm. Joheness trained the aft camera on the vessel in orbit around the Sun and began recording. He watched for almost 10 minutes as it slowly circled around the star in darkness before powering up and jumping back out of the system. The outpost’s equipment automatically scanned for the outbound vector and attached the data to the file that would be forwarded to command for further analysis. Joheness typed up a short report on the Heracles’ activity, attached the recording to the file alongside the vector data and sent the folder to headquarters.
7
“Commander, I’ve got something on long range. It’s a radio frequency consistent with 26th century transmission technology. The stamp on it also suggests it was sent by Voyager 4; given what we know about the craft.”
“Good. Try and get as much of the message as you can. I want to know where that ship is and where it’s going before it knows itself.”
“Receiving coordinates now, Sir. Sending them to you, Ensign.”
“Fantastic work. Set a course to take us on that heading immediately, Ensign. We won’t catch it on this break but if we’re quick we might make the next one.”
Commander Jacobs felt an excitement he hadn’t felt in a long time. He had seen Human after Human get promoted past him even though he had always been better at his job than them. Perfect marks in all his tests at the Academy and he still only left as a Private. 80% was enough for a Human to start off as a Corporal or even in some rare cases, a Sergeant. It had left him with a bitter taste in his mouth as he saluted to those he had scored higher than and beaten to the finish line. He’d never have to do that again. Tomorrow he would have Voyager 4 and with it he would crumble the Human Empire.
8
As Voyager 4 dropped into normal space for the second time that day it found itself unable to transmit through the Alcubierre Rip. The signal was crossing the event horizon of the short-living anomaly, but it was being bounced back as if there was a wall on the other side of the hole. A second later the rip expanded tenfold and a Terran Space Fleet vessel with the word ‘Heracles’ painted on the side of it hurtled out. Before Voyager’s engine could heat up for the next jump it was scooped into the port fighter bay of the larger ship and disabled. After being tampered with by something that was obviously intelligent, the craft shut down all its non-essential functions and ejected its memory core safe in the knowledge that its mission had been completed.
9
“Show me exactly what we’ve just picked up,” Commander Jacobs said quietly to his second in command.
“Linking the systems now. Here we are, it should be coming up on screen...now.”
All four crewmen watched the display in awe as text and pictures describing evolution on Earth showed up on the screen. The history of the planet – how it was once a ball of molten rock formed by the agglomeration of planetesimals which came from gas and dust that surrounded the newly born Sol, how the moon was made from part of the Earth’s mantle that had been blasted into orbit when the planet was hit by a large protoplanet, how cometary bombardment and volcanic activity had created the atmosphere and oceans, and most importantly, how all life that originated from Earth, including Humans, had evolved from single cell organisms in an environment no Human could ever survive in.
“This is it. We’ve got it.” Commander Jacobs could hardly believe the amount of data they had found that proved the Humans account of their history was false. He spoke slowly and deliberately so he could more easily retain his composure. “Ensign, take us to Terran Space Fleet Command; we need to speak to the council.”
10
The gigantic letters “T.S.F.C” decorated the southern wall of the colossal Terran Space Fleet Command building. The larger of the binary stars around which the urban planet, Eden, orbited was about to set. On the lower floors of the building people were getting ready to leave for the night while others were just starting their shifts. The council members had been on their way home when they had been called back for an emergency session.
Thellm, one of the few non-Human council members, took his seat in the shallow sea of people. He noticed a Progressed Commander standing on the podium in the centre of the large, suspended hall so that he was at the same level as the council members. The chamber had been designed to be intimidating for anyone stood on the pedestal. Thellm wondered what had been so important that it warranted bringing everyone back right away rather than being postponed until the morning. Then the Progressed began to speak. At first all he spoke about was the history of some planet named Earth. Thellm had never heard of Earth before and his attention began to wander. He heard phrases such as dust, gasses, agglomeration, meteor bombardment and others mentioned but didn’t know what context they were being used in; nor did he really care. The man went on to say something about the planet being 500 Kelvin and having a thick, mostly CO2 atmosphere that was about 30 or 40 times the standard comfortable pressure for Humans. Also that microscopic prebiotic particles arrived in vast quantities, but that wasn’t so special – prebiotic particles arrived on every planet in the Empire from tails of comets. What really irritated Thellm was that all of this happened just under four billion years ago. Had he really been called back to receive a Progressed’s history lesson on some insignificant planet?
Only when the lecturer mentioned the emergence of life on this planet did Thellm’s attention return. Up to this point it hadn’t been mentioned, or at least Thellm hadn’t heard, that this Earth planet was in the habitable zone of its system. If it was in the habitable zone, and if it had been four billion years since the harsh conditions the Progressed had spoken of, then by now it was entirely possible that a sentient species had evolved there. With this realisation Thellm sat forward in his seat and began to listen intently to the talk. A noisy shuffle in the hall indicated that everybody else did the same. Perhaps the life on this planet would join the Empire. A new race would surely be very exciting.
*
“By this time bacteria were multiplying in the oceans and did so until approximately seven hundred million years ago when multicelular organisms began to appear. Over the next one hundred million years jellyfish and trilobites made an appearance too. Four hundred million years ago stromatolites had multiplied into such massive quantities that the CO2 in the atmosphere had largely been replaced with oxygen, and an ozone layer was created that allowed arthropods to crawl out of the seas without being destroyed by the harsh Ultra Violet radiation from the Sun.”
Commander Jacobs could sense that the council members were paying more attention to him since he had mentioned life evolving on Earth. Good. He had one shot at exposing the Humans for what they really were and he wanted to make his story as plausible as possible. If a sufficient number of the alien races on the council were hooked by his recount of history then hopefully they would search deep enough into the Humans’ past and see that he was telling the truth.
“Now that it was safe for plants and animals to live on land, forests sprung up all over. These provided food for animals that would leave the water. The arthropods inhabited the forests. Fish from the seas evolved to use their fins and gills as legs and lungs so that they could survive on land rather than in the water. These evolved into reptiles such as turtles and lizards which, in turn, evolved into the dinosaurs – the dominant species on Earth for one hundred and eight five million years until they were wiped out by a cataclysmic meteor strike. The cometary dust thrown into the stratosphere blocked out the sun for over a year causing plants to be incapable of photosynthesis. With plants unable to photosynthesise they died and hence so did everything that fed on them.
When the dust had settled the dinosaurs had perished, allowing the mammals that had survived underground by eating roots and grains to come back to the surface and take over.”
*
A murmur ran through the council hall as the Progressed stated that mammals had become the dominant species. Humans were mammals. As the speaker continued to talk about the Tarsiers and the Lemurs that had evolved on Earth fifty million years ago, Thellm’s retinal display flashed on and showed images of the two animals. Their faces almost looked Human. Next up came an image of an ape, then another that was stood more upright and holding something in its hand, then another stood more upright still and with a larger head that obviously housed a larger brain.
More images showed on Thellm’s retinal display, each one of apes that looked more and more human until the final image in the set. This one was of two almost hairless apes stood next to each other and completely upright, with heads that could fit a more sophisticated brain that was three times larger than the ape in the first image. The two images began to rotate and morph. The one on the right morphed into a generic looking Progressed. Alone, all this would imply is that Progresseds evolved from ape like creatures similar to ones found on Earth. However, the other image, the one on the left, morphed into what was unmistakably the image of a Human.
*
Commander Jacobs delivered the final words of his speech very deliberately and very precisely.
“So you see, council members of the other races, the proof is here. The Humans encoded this data for aliens to find and now I invite you to find it. They have not always existed as they so confidently proclaim. They evolved from the same primordial soup as the Progressed, adapting to better survive in particular environments over a finite amount of time just like us, and just like all of you!”
Uproar.
Epilogue
Jacobs scraped his index finger across the scanner so it could read his unique DNA to confirm his identity. A green LED lit up and the Senior Chief Petty Officer on duty gave him a nod. At the end of the corridor an alien was waiting.
“Welcome back to the universe, Jacobs,” said Thellm, “I think you’ll find a lot has changed while you’ve been in prison. Your speech had quite an impact. When the clusters found out that Humans were nothing more than what they could potentially one day become, hundreds of races left the Empire. Too many for the Humans to even begin to stop. What remains of the Empire is totally reformed. Every race is independent of the Humans and can advance at its own rate. Of course in reality every race has inherited the Humans level of technology so there is no longer an unopposable species at the top of the hierarchy; in fact there is no longer a hierarchy. We’re all equal.”
“That’s all I could have hoped for,” Jacobs said with a slight grin, “equality.”
“What will you do now?”
“I supposed I’ll rejoin the Fleet. I’m sure there’s a lot for the military to do now everyone can walk on their own feet.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Thellm replied. “Since you were discharged by a biased party I have been given special permission to give you this.”
Jacobs let his eyes travel over the piece of metal he was being presented with.
“Thank you,” he stuttered in disbelief.
“Not a problem at all. Congratulations, Jacobs. For the work you carried out on exposing the Humans and discovering the history of evolution on Earth, I hereby promote you to the Terran Space Fleet rank of Admiral.”
Tuesday, 18 May 2010
PeOpLe On TeH iNtErNeT,
I have just received this email:
"Dear James,
Temporary Clerical Assistant Accommodation.
I wish to thank you for your application for the above post. Due to the large number of applications for this we have just completed short-listing.
I am sorry on this occasion you have not been unsuccessful in your application. However, may I take this opportunity to wish you luck in finding suitable employment shortly.
Regards,
Geraldine"
It clearly states that my application was not unsuccessful. Now, if MATH111-Logic has taught me anything, it's that
not not successful = successful.
Of course I realise from the rest of the message that two wrongs don't make a right and I didn't get the job. However, just in case it was a test to make sure only the best people were offered the placement, I replied to point out the mistake. A minute later I had another email at the top of my inbox telling me that it should indeed have said "not successful".
Not put off by this I asked for a job as a proofreader.
This was the reply:
"Hi James,
I like your style, I was just in such a hurry don’t like to keep people hanging on to long for an answer!
I really do wish you all the best in finding something shortly.
Best wishes,
Geraldine"
It should probably say "too long".
This is a Fab lolly.
I walked about 10 miles on Saturday to, around and back from Williamson Park. SSAGO had a trip out to do orienteering and I decided to tag along for a day out and an excuse to avoid revision. It was really good and our group finished first out of the non-cheating groups. It was a lovely day for walking around the park too; much nicer than the last time I went with the boat club and had to run around for two hours in the freezing wind, rain and hail. The only bad thing was the fact my headphones have broken so I couldn't listen to my audiobook while I was making my way there.
The revision avoidance continued through Sunday when I was busy with laundry, tidying my room, not getting gassed in my room from all the chemicals I'd used to make the bathroom sparkle, and a nice midday nap. To make up for it I did a full day of work on Monday, although that was only because I was so stuck on the maths homework I decided to make some revision cards instead.
The revision avoidance continued through Sunday when I was busy with laundry, tidying my room, not getting gassed in my room from all the chemicals I'd used to make the bathroom sparkle, and a nice midday nap. To make up for it I did a full day of work on Monday, although that was only because I was so stuck on the maths homework I decided to make some revision cards instead.
Friday, 14 May 2010
High school seemed like such a blur.
I've just had a chicken sandwich for dinner. Sainsbury's Basics chicken. It is 61% chicken. The next two most abundant ingredients are water and chicken skin. Yummy. It has the same texture as that plastic cheese you can get. Fortunately I remembered the leftover apple pie afterwards so I've been left with a nice taste in my mouth.
My laptop just tried to commit suicide. All the windows I had open flashed up and then closed, before the machine restarted itself to install updates. I wish it had given me some warning. I'd better not do any work in case it happens again; I don't want to lose anything.
I've got a UAAA lecture in half an hour and then after that we need to go and put our groups project object in the room it needs to be in so it can be marked next week. We also need to retrieve the tennis ball Elizabeth has painted planet colours and somehow try to stop the star from rolling off the board when it's tilted.
My laptop just tried to commit suicide. All the windows I had open flashed up and then closed, before the machine restarted itself to install updates. I wish it had given me some warning. I'd better not do any work in case it happens again; I don't want to lose anything.
I've got a UAAA lecture in half an hour and then after that we need to go and put our groups project object in the room it needs to be in so it can be marked next week. We also need to retrieve the tennis ball Elizabeth has painted planet colours and somehow try to stop the star from rolling off the board when it's tilted.
Thursday, 13 May 2010
Apple Pie.
Our Wednesday afternoon trip into town for a bit of exercise turned into a proper food shop. The bags were very heavy. My fingers hurt because somebody forgot to bring the bent plastic handle things again.
The Statistics lecture was boring as ever. We don't seem to be learning anything. This is made obvious when it comes to the homework that only people who took A-level Stats seem to be able to do. I was very close to getting the right answer on my own though; if only I'd used 'x' instead of 'p' I'd have had it.
The Series lecture was just difficult.
My lab group met up after lectures to get the project done in 45 minutes. Once again Scott just started typing and then, when he was soon done, it worked perfectly. I'm rather glad he's in the same group as me because I didn't have a clue what was happening.
Now I have to get to my workshop. It's the one I missed last week because I was in the queue to vote. Seems like ages have passed since then.
The Statistics lecture was boring as ever. We don't seem to be learning anything. This is made obvious when it comes to the homework that only people who took A-level Stats seem to be able to do. I was very close to getting the right answer on my own though; if only I'd used 'x' instead of 'p' I'd have had it.
The Series lecture was just difficult.
My lab group met up after lectures to get the project done in 45 minutes. Once again Scott just started typing and then, when he was soon done, it worked perfectly. I'm rather glad he's in the same group as me because I didn't have a clue what was happening.
Now I have to get to my workshop. It's the one I missed last week because I was in the queue to vote. Seems like ages have passed since then.
Tuesday, 11 May 2010
Thursday.
I had the final lab100 quiz of the year this morning. It was the hardest one yet but most of it was still doable. It helps that my friends all have their quizzes before I have mine so they can tell me their answers. At least then I can have a decent guess if I get completely stuck on a question. I usually just go for it on my own though because my friends aren't exactly whiz kids when it comes to 'R' code.
My two Tuesday morning lectures were fairly uneventful beyond being told twice that the end of module test for Series will be at 10pm. Still, I think I'll turn up early for the 10am lecture just in case. The UAAA seminar time was spent watching and listening to presentations by the three groups that didn't have chance to go last week. The first one was full of information and was well presented, but it suffered from the same problem as every other group (apart from mine) in that the people giving the presentation were reading it straight from the sheet in front of them. Hopefully there will be big marks for groups that clearly know the subject well enough not to need a preplanned speech to read directly from. If so then ours is looking even better. On the other hand the first group of today did speak clearly and the whole thing fit well into the time allowed despite being 40ish minutes in the practice two weeks ago.
The next group up was quite terrible in my opinion. They spoke very briefly about exoplanets before showing us a short video that they had made. The idea was that a guy wants to learn about exoplanets by visiting one. Obviously limited to the university and its surroundings, it ended up being 10 minutes of a random guy who isn't even in their group (or on the UAAA course as far as I'm aware) sitting in a bathroom talking to a MacBook that had the iTunes visualiser on full screen, then a tiny cardboard box spinning around as if it was trying to be a TARDIS, and finally the random guy being amazed at trees, ducks and pigeons in front of the Fylde Statistics building. The one thing that did make me smile was the part when they asked what aliens might look like and then showed some extraterrestrial creatures from Hollywood along with a picture of the guy, Matt, from their group. He didn't look out of place among pictures of ET and the like. However, in my opinion, one funny second of video wasn't enough to make up for the lack of science and general correctness in the whole presentation.
The final group was slightly better, but only slightly. Of the three people, only one spoke and he sounded very nervous to be stood up talking in front of about 15 classmates whom he has never been too shy to speak in front of when sat down at the back of the room. The other two people did no more than click for the next slide and hold up a representation of atoms at different stages of a nuclear fusion reaction.
Overall it was an hour that could have been spent on breakfast but I'm glad I went to the seminar just to see how much better my group was.
My two Tuesday morning lectures were fairly uneventful beyond being told twice that the end of module test for Series will be at 10pm. Still, I think I'll turn up early for the 10am lecture just in case. The UAAA seminar time was spent watching and listening to presentations by the three groups that didn't have chance to go last week. The first one was full of information and was well presented, but it suffered from the same problem as every other group (apart from mine) in that the people giving the presentation were reading it straight from the sheet in front of them. Hopefully there will be big marks for groups that clearly know the subject well enough not to need a preplanned speech to read directly from. If so then ours is looking even better. On the other hand the first group of today did speak clearly and the whole thing fit well into the time allowed despite being 40ish minutes in the practice two weeks ago.
The next group up was quite terrible in my opinion. They spoke very briefly about exoplanets before showing us a short video that they had made. The idea was that a guy wants to learn about exoplanets by visiting one. Obviously limited to the university and its surroundings, it ended up being 10 minutes of a random guy who isn't even in their group (or on the UAAA course as far as I'm aware) sitting in a bathroom talking to a MacBook that had the iTunes visualiser on full screen, then a tiny cardboard box spinning around as if it was trying to be a TARDIS, and finally the random guy being amazed at trees, ducks and pigeons in front of the Fylde Statistics building. The one thing that did make me smile was the part when they asked what aliens might look like and then showed some extraterrestrial creatures from Hollywood along with a picture of the guy, Matt, from their group. He didn't look out of place among pictures of ET and the like. However, in my opinion, one funny second of video wasn't enough to make up for the lack of science and general correctness in the whole presentation.
The final group was slightly better, but only slightly. Of the three people, only one spoke and he sounded very nervous to be stood up talking in front of about 15 classmates whom he has never been too shy to speak in front of when sat down at the back of the room. The other two people did no more than click for the next slide and hold up a representation of atoms at different stages of a nuclear fusion reaction.
Overall it was an hour that could have been spent on breakfast but I'm glad I went to the seminar just to see how much better my group was.
Friday, 7 May 2010
Moar Roflcopters plz!!1!one
Yesterday I queued up with Liz and some other Bowland people to vote for the Lancaster and Fleetwood MP. I was in the queue for ages and ended up missing my workshop. I've just looked on the BBC news website and found out that Conservatives won here. There's a lot of blue on the big map too. Oh well, now I'm going to go back to not caring about politics until next time I can vote.
The Princess and the Frog was on at the cinema last night and it was rather enjoyable. I had some trouble understanding what certain characters were saying though due to the Louisianan accent. I looked that particular demonym up on Wikipedia because I thought Louisiananian looked wrong. It was.
I didn't really want to go because I was quite tired but Elizabeth insisted. It was a nice change from Pokémon, however. We've started watching the original series and it's good in the way that it's terrible. Ash is really annoying though and he's a terrible Pokémon trainer who, it seemed, could only win by losing.
The Princess and the Frog was on at the cinema last night and it was rather enjoyable. I had some trouble understanding what certain characters were saying though due to the Louisianan accent. I looked that particular demonym up on Wikipedia because I thought Louisiananian looked wrong. It was.
I didn't really want to go because I was quite tired but Elizabeth insisted. It was a nice change from Pokémon, however. We've started watching the original series and it's good in the way that it's terrible. Ash is really annoying though and he's a terrible Pokémon trainer who, it seemed, could only win by losing.
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
Prove. Result.
I lost three marks on the homework I said I should get full marks on. I sort of understand why I lost a mark on the last question but the two I lost on the first question don't make any sense. The comment said that I'd get NaNs (not a number) when x < 0 but x wouldn't have been less than or equal to 0. Robbed. I didn't want my new tutor to think I was going to be awkward all term though so I kept my mouth shut and accepted 17/20.
My parents came on Saturday and we ate at Weatherspoons in town. It was a nice meal considering the cheap, cheap price. I especially enjoyed the waffle I had for pudding.
The weekend also saw Lancaster beat York in the Roses - the annual sporting competition between the two rival universities. I didn't get to see any of it and campus didn't even seem busy although I suppose everyone was down on the fields or keeping out of the rain.
I decided that bank holiday Monday would be my final day of dossing around and after that I would clamp down on revision for exams. Exams that are now only five weeks away. I'm going to try and get six hours of work in every day, including lectures, seminars, workshops and time spent doing homework. That's just so I don't have to do as much revision on days when I've got a lot of lectures.
In yesterday's UAAA seminar we had to give a presentation to the group about our chosen topic; Exoplanets. We were the second (and final, due to a late arrival by the person supposed to be marking us) group to go up and we had to follow a well presented talk on the same topic we were doing. It went well though, considering we hadn't even had a practise run through. One criticism we had of the other group is that they read straight from a sheet and hence didn't look at the audience, whereas we only had bullet point notes because of our lack of effort and were able to look up most of the time while we blagged our way through two minutes of talking each.
In the three hours before my 5 o'clock lecture I tried the maths homework but I only managed to do two questions. The notes are particularly useless this week so I'll have to meet up with people later today and hopefully get it done in time.
My parents came on Saturday and we ate at Weatherspoons in town. It was a nice meal considering the cheap, cheap price. I especially enjoyed the waffle I had for pudding.
The weekend also saw Lancaster beat York in the Roses - the annual sporting competition between the two rival universities. I didn't get to see any of it and campus didn't even seem busy although I suppose everyone was down on the fields or keeping out of the rain.
I decided that bank holiday Monday would be my final day of dossing around and after that I would clamp down on revision for exams. Exams that are now only five weeks away. I'm going to try and get six hours of work in every day, including lectures, seminars, workshops and time spent doing homework. That's just so I don't have to do as much revision on days when I've got a lot of lectures.
In yesterday's UAAA seminar we had to give a presentation to the group about our chosen topic; Exoplanets. We were the second (and final, due to a late arrival by the person supposed to be marking us) group to go up and we had to follow a well presented talk on the same topic we were doing. It went well though, considering we hadn't even had a practise run through. One criticism we had of the other group is that they read straight from a sheet and hence didn't look at the audience, whereas we only had bullet point notes because of our lack of effort and were able to look up most of the time while we blagged our way through two minutes of talking each.
In the three hours before my 5 o'clock lecture I tried the maths homework but I only managed to do two questions. The notes are particularly useless this week so I'll have to meet up with people later today and hopefully get it done in time.
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