• Life as a Fundamental Variable of State for a Stable Universe

  • Life Beyond Three Dimensions

  • The Devolution from Faith to Religion

  • Primate vs. Other Evolutionary Progenitors

    • Pack vs. Predator Ancestry

  • Self-defense as a Basic Right and Responsibility of Life

  • Central Control Collectivism vs. Self-organized Individualism

World History from early 21st Century until the Discovery

From the early 21st century until about 2090 the world was struggled with rampant religious fundamentalism. A loose-knit Army of Allah attacked practically everyone, including themselves, until 2041 when the State of Israel, so long kept in check by the West, avenged the nuclear destruction of Tel Aviv with its own arsenal of nuclear weapons, taking out Tehran, Medina, Ridayh, Karbala, Duma, Qandahar, and, fittingly, Islamabad. While this silenced the Army of Allah, the world was outraged by the carnage and isolated Israel diplomatically and economically. True to their nature the Israelites persevered and survived by a combination of inventiveness and black-market savvy. However, the vacuum left by the reeling Muslims was quickly filled by the vast numbers of normally pacific Hindus who stormed like a monsoon out of the Asian subcontinent into the radiation-racked remnants of the Middle East, bifurcating India into ethnic East and West states. This population shift worried the Christian fundamentalists enough to prop up what was left of the Arab population to fight a proxy war that raged for two decades. By 2073 a truce was declared and by 2075 the country of Panistan was formed. It stretched from the Mediterranean to the Caspian to the western Indian Ocean and the Indus River and it acted as a barrier between the West and the once again peaceful India. Israel was not included in Panistan and now that it was over 50% Hindu a new world generation forgave or forgot the massacre Israel had wrought.

Asia, Indochina, and Africa weren’t immune to havoc either. The newly seceded Northern Chinese States and the Russian Eastern Republics had yearly violent but brief border skirmishes that never escalated into open warfare. Religious beliefs weren’t a major cause of these conflicts, but Indochina did on several occasions send troops into one African country after another in attempts to spread the word of Allah. Madagascar was annexed and occupied for half a century until Hindu troops from India ‘liberated’ it, replacing one theocracy with another. On the continent billions of Africans were killed in holocaust after holocaust to which the West turned a blind eye. In the end the people and countries of Africa were in the same condition in 2110 as they had been in 2010.

The United States survived these wars, although violence between Christians and refugee Muslims and Hindus forced Martial Law to be declared at least twice every decade until 2087. Supporting various sides in the religious wars had hurt the US economy, and the political landscape vacillated between ultra-conservatives and socialists. Civil war was not far from the mind of the faction not in power, but it never came to that. However, the turmoil did split California into South and North (Christian and ‘other’, conservative and socialist) and the country granted statehood to Puerto Rico and Guam. The generation that matured at the end of the century was pretty disgusted by the virulent politics of their parents, grandparents, and great-parents and found enough common ground to collect into a broad center. The country rediscovered the strength of embracing all and omitting none and entered the 22nd Century prouder and stronger than it had been in a hundred years.

The solidly Catholic countries of South America bickered with each other but remained sovereign for the whole century. Mexico got its act together by 2029, as uncertain conditions in the US slowed the influx of immigrants considerably. British Canada and Quebec wisely stayed out of everything.

By 2090 the world was exhausted. The development of controlled fusion in 2065 did much to eliminate ancillary energy reasons to commit warfare, although territoriality never does die. Computing power had hit quantum limits but was fast enough for just about any application, including artificial intelligence. However, fundamentalists around the world agreed on one thing: thinking machines were an abomination in the eyes of whatever god you happened to worship, so AI was not over developed and used in measured amounts throughout the 22nd century until the Church of the New Life swept the globe.

Life on Delta Eridani 7 was discovered 2098 with the 2092 deployment of the Trans-Jovian Interferometer, a linked set of astronomical devices stretching over an area of 500 square kilometers out beyond the Kuiper Belt. Expensive in the extreme, the project was hailed as a sign of international healing after decades of simmering and open warfare between the civilized world and religious fanatics. The latter had not been defeated per say--fundamentalism flourished around the globe--but the most violent sects had been put down for the time being. Cessation of hostilities allowed many nations to devote war funds to more productive activities; the TJI was one such peace dividend. The discovery of life outside the Solar System galvanized scientists around the world and in 2107 a probe was launched. Called Seven from Nine (being the seventh craft leaving the Solar System from the Nine planets) it was an act of confidence that the world would not again erupt in the violence of the 21st Century, for the little spacecraft would take 59 years to get to Delta Eridani (no exotic propulsion system or quantum short-cut through space had been found) and its transmissions would take another 30 years to make it back to Earth, given the distance to the life-bearing planet. The multigenerational nature of project said a lot about the mood of the world in the early 22nd Century.

The aims and goals of the world community while the little probe was heading toward its rendezvous with Delta Eridani Seven were decidedly less belligerent and more productive than during the previous century. The fledgling settlements on the Moon were expanded and enhanced, the Trojan Plus 60 asteroids began to be colonized, and after several disastrous attempts five colonies were established on Mars.

In an effort to return to antebellum normalcy, the fallow governmental space program was revived. Not that there hadn't been private and state space ventures during the wars; fledgling colonies had been established on the Moon, but these were backed by an Asian consortium. Commercial robotic surveys had been launched to the Trojan asteroids. There had been a tragic failed mission to Mars by a Euro-Russo-American partnership before the religious jihads had gone global. However, no strictly US project had been undertaken that could capture the public's imagination like the first moon landings had well over a century earlier, so at great expense and effort an immense optical telescope array was placed in orbit beyond Jupiter.


On first glance it might seem unlikely that a robotic scientific instrument could inspire widespread public passion, but its mission was seductively sexy. Called the Trans-Jovian Interferometer or TJI, the telescope was designed to scan nearby star systems for the spectral signature of free oxygen in the atmosphere of orbiting planets, an indicator of extraterrestrial life. The Space Agency's Public Relations psychologists and public relations gurus correctly calculated that a renewed search for ET would captivate the population. Captivate indeed! When, after only a few years of searching, diatomic oxygen was found on a world bound to Delta Eridani, known as Rana, the course of human events was irrevocably set.


The staggering data and the intimation of life beyond the Solar System ignited a tired and jaded world. To cement the reconciliation of the exhausted pugilists and promote a new international camaraderie, the US spearheaded a multinational scientific enterprise to send a probe to the seventh planet orbiting Rana. If the TJI had been a mammoth endeavor, the effort expended in designing and building an interstellar spacecraft was gargantuan, colossal, Herculean. The probe itself was tiny, its transporter enormous. Seven from Nine, so-called since it was the seventh interstellar craft from the nine planets of the Solar System, was barely a kilogram of the most advanced and autonomous instrumentation of the era. The propulsion system that carried it across thirty light years of space was a modified Bussard Ram, ultimately capable of 0.5c, almost 100,000 miles as second, the most advanced fusion-derived rocket ever conceived.


Still, given the distances involved, the project was not only multinational but also multigenerational. The probe took sixty years to reach Delta Eridani Seven, named Grayse in honor of its discoverer's mother. Then the data required another thirty years to cross back to Earth across the interstellar void. The children of the scientists and engineers who initiated the mission would all be superannuated, if even still alive, by the time First Message was expected. Consequently, the undertaking was not only an expression of postwar bon ami, but also of faith that the civilization would endure.

The energy cost per kilogram of payload goes up only 1/2% for travel at 10% the speed of light over the non-relativistic calculation. However, at 0.10c Seventh-from-Nine probe (9-7) would take 300 years to get to Delta Eridani. At 0.5c the speed of light, travel time would be about 60 years, but the energy cost would be up 15%. For 0.8c the transit time would be 37 years, but the K/m would increase 67% over non-relativistic values. While 37 years for a scientific project might be doable, the energy cost was deemed prohibitive. Besides, the 30 year-time lag for 9-7's telemetry transmission had to be included, putting the experiment out of reach of most human's professional lifespans. Therefore, travel at one-half light speed was chosen for the transit velocity. Since the probe was robotic it could withstand enormous acceleration, and most of the trip could take place at 0.5c. But how to attain that incredible speed?


It would have been nice if some shortcut through the Universe had been discovered by the early 22nd Century. Modern space theory didn't prohibit warps and tunnels, but no technology had ever been developed that could do what the mass of a black hole could. Not that something wouldn't eventually turn up, but 9-7 had to use brute force to get to its destination. Fortunately, technology had allowed for incredible miniaturization of the payload, and 9-7 massed in at something less than a kilogram. Her huge antenna was only thirty grams despite its ten-meter diameter, and her power requirements were remarkably frugal. A correspondingly massive receiver dish was placed into orbit beyond Jupiter to pick up 9-7's feeble signal.


Propulsion, however, was the major problem. Had some way to brake the probe once it entered the Delta Eridani system been possible, the launch vehicle didn't have to itself make the journey. But at one-half the speed of light, 9-7 would zoom through the whole system in less than 36 hours; no gravity braking was possible, and aerobraking was thermally undoable. So, the propulsion unit had to go the distance.


Carrying enough fuel to accelerate to, then decelerate from, 0.5c was out of the question. The decision was made to pick up fuel along the way; therefore, an Orion/Bussard Ram hybrid was deemed the best technology for the job. Space is pretty empty, but not entirely. Using a very large intake you can scoop up enough Hydrogen to provide thrust if you can heat it to fusion temperatures. The propulsion unit would first have to ionize the atoms in the space before it with a laser, then direct them via magnetic fields to the fusion engine's intake. Another laser would start the proton-proton cycle, and BOOM! Out the exhaust would come a miniature sun, pushing 9-7 at crushing accelerations (slightly less than 200 g's!) to its cruising speed.


The volume of space the Ram could swallow was dependent on the craft's speed, so for the first, relatively short distance out to the Jupiter 9-7's propulsion unit carried its own fuel, running as a more or less conventional Orion. From the giant's atmosphere it picked up enough Hydrogen to accelerate it to the Heliopause where its speed was sufficient ingest ambient gas at a suitable rate. When moving at one-half light speed, the probe would encounter any particle as lethal radiation, so its magnetic scoop would have to double as a shield for the sensitive on-board equipment.

Faith played another and unexpectedly ominous role in the near century between launch and First Message. In a war-weary world the old fundamentalisms, seen as the root cause for the slaughter and strife, fell into disfavor. Yet the human compulsion for the comfort of a belief in a divine father-figure hadn't diminished: it had demonstrably intensified. Into that vacuum stepped Dr. Simon Karpathian and his Church of the New Life.


The Church of the New Life grew out of an amalgamation of UFologists, cults, and ET-worship sects that had been around since the mid-twentieth century. Denigrated for the span of their existence by both established religions and mainstream scientists, the discovery of free oxygen and the life it implied gave the Church a legitimacy it had never before enjoyed. Its proponents professed that the aliens, when they inevitably revealed themselves, will be plainly more advanced and evolved than man and therefore Most Holy, closer to God. Prophecy said their arrival was imminent and offered spurious scientific theories as to the time and circumstances of the Visitation. People bought it. The new faith was ostensibly founded not on old mysticisms but on firm ‘scientific’ grounds and modern rationality. At least it was cannily advertised as such.


Where the "Reverend Pater" Karpathian received his ordination, and from what orthodoxy, was as nebulous as the source of "Doctor" Karpathian's PhD in Physics. However, it was an age in which appearance superseded credentials, and Karpathian's sunny charisma was more than sufficient to draw the faithful to him. Although the Reverend Pater hadn't actually founded the Church of the New Life, through his scripting and codification of the New Expanded Gospel he gave the new popular theosophy a set of bona fides that the established religions lacked. Enhancing the nascent religion's appeal was its liberal moral permissiveness. Personal behavior was pretty much up to the believer, as long as the requisite tithing was performed. The Church was a potent mix of easy morals, spurious-science, pseudo-rationality, and fashionable metaphysics; ignited by the TJI data, it easily won converts and grew.


And it quickly grew opulent. The lucre from the bottomless collection plate built seminaries and parochial schools all over the world and, among other projects, a compound in central Florida that was a combination spiritual retreat and theme park. Mysticism mingled with mirth as guests were treated to sophisticated dioramas of the TJI, holographic depictions of close encounters and alien abductions, space rides, stirring preachments, and of course, a magnificent multi-media passion play of First Contact, the day when the Most Holy would visit Earth and reveal First Revelations, as foretold in the New Expanded Gospel. It was all a Technicolor prophecy; audiences were enraptured, and the Church membership grew even more.


However, the first, profit-oriented generation of Church elders inevitably died off, and their successors were less interested in the bottom line than in the power to be found—and  favorably interpreted—in prophecy. They formalized ecumenical ceremonies and decreed spiritual edicts, emphasized the teachings of the Gospel, and began to tighten and control the daily personal behavior of their congregations. In laying claim to the righteous moral high ground, the new Sacred Congress sowed the seeds of zealotry. A 22nd century version of the Great Awakening sprouted, and its evangelists fanned out over the globe, declaring divine insights and seeking converts. Membership became mandatory for the politically ambitious; the Church, rich with wealth and converts, grew immensely powerful, superseding and subsuming the older established religions. By the time of First Message, a collision of cultures was inevitable.

De Velasquez never lived to see his Great Enterprise fulfilled; in fact, he died suddenly only a few years after the launch and was succeeded by the man who had been Fitzroy’s replacement, Charles Boykin. Upon ascending the throne, Boykin proceeded to consolidate the Church’s holdings on the Moon and attempted to rein in the colonies on the irreligious Trojan Asteroids and Mars. Holy General Ahmed Husami was dispatched to subjugate the Belt while Boykin himself went to Mars to bring the lost sheep back into the fold. Husami was successful in destroying three of the heretic colonies, and the rest fell into line with little opposition. However, Charles Boykin, along with the Martian leadership, was apparently killed in a mysterious explosion during his peace mission. Boykin’s Prelate, Joseph Davis, assumed control of the Church of the New Life immediately after the Martyrdom and continued the good work of cleansing the Solar System of infidels. In addition, plans were begun to send a second, larger Arc to Grace, as well as to find a more practical mode of propulsion, using data from the inexplicable disappearance of the third asteroid Husami attacked, assumed annihilated but without leaving any residue at all.


The jihad begun by Charles Boykin and continued by his minion Davis raged. No one who wasn't a devout member of the Church died of old age in the Holy Terran Empire in the 23rd Century. As a violent reaction to the Martyrdom of Reverend Pater Charles Boykin, the Indignation burned across Earth as well as her off-world colonies, a ravenous Cthulhu that fed on the scraps of those few who were not openly and overtly pious. Vengeance boiled the blood of all New Lifers, heated by constant reminders of the treachery of the Martian heretics that took the life of the most revered man who had ever lived, an infinitely generous and forgiving demigod who had gone lovingly to the Red Planet to bring lost lambs back home and suffered for his graciousness. Would that he could come back from the dead…


Inevitably the number of potential infidels dwindled by attrition, and to compensate the ledger of sins against God necessarily grew longer, but eventually the supply of victims ran low. As the Faithful purged the last heretics from the Solar System, like a phage the Indignation turned on itself. Without a helpless enemy to crush, the Church Military turned on its rival, the Stone Guard. The Holy Army was primarily space-borne, fiercely loyal to their General Husami; on Earth Joseph Davis inherited from his predecessor the unquestioning obedience of the Stone Guard. It proved to be an interesting game, but Davis had a trump card: shortly after he assumed the mantle of Reverend Pater he had an agent introduce one half of a binary poison into Husami's bloodstream. Should the general ever become a threat to his reign Davis could dose the commander with the other reagent, causing a quick but painful death. Husami knew this, having extracted the information from a spy; his plans for dominance would require constant suspicion of those around him, patience, and supreme subterfuge.


By the time the Indignation had sputtered out, and the confrontation between the Holy Army and the Stone Guard flared into open conflict, both Davis and Husami were tired old men. The general's weary bellicosity was fueled by decades of frustration and denial, but the RP defended more than his life and his reign. Joseph Davis was tasked with remaining alive until the return of Charles Boykin as the Messiah, as prophesized in the recently revised New Expanded Gospel. This rebirth was not to occur in some vague hereafter: Davis knew to the day when Boykin's technological resurrection was planned, and it was his holy task to supervise it. He could not let Husami defeat him and endanger the most momentous and hallowed event in the history of humanity.


In the end, the Holy Army was brought to heel. Pitched battles had never broken out; only a series of brutal but localized skirmishes flared on Earth and in orbit in what actually was more of a sibling rivalry than unrestricted warfare. After three years of conflict Husami was successfully poisoned, and with his death the army ceased attacks. Tribunals were held for a few of the officers, but since neither side actually surrendered, retribution was minimal. Davis placed one Tiberious Manbow in charge of the Holy Army, now an arm of the Stone Guard, and got on with the job of living a very long time.