Isolation Earth.

President Elizabeth Levy was busy taking in the huge stack of paperwork when a knock came from her door. "Yes?" She called, her voice extremely abrasive even though she was understandably curious about who her visitor was. It was becoming increasingly hard to get an appointment with the President.

Levy just didn't have the time to speak to everyone, and her time was precious so she didn't often meet with anyone else. Much of the paperwork in front of her was extremely important for her to view. Much of it was just a number of preliminary reports of the damage inflicted on the planet and the other worlds that had human colonies and settlements which the Minbari had no problem destroying. Levy's heart went out to the poor souls as the pressurised domes had been punctured like they'd been thin sheets of plastic that were blowtorched open.

It had been seven months since the end of the Earth-Minbari war, and in that time humanity was working hard to try to rebuild the damage the planet and the fleet had sustained. Senator Santiago, Senator Quantrell, General Franklin and General Lefcourt walked into the office suite, making Levy sigh partly in relief that she could give her eyes a rest, but it was a distant relief. She knew she would have to go back to it again soon, but she was glad that even though it had been a brief time since the Battle of the Line where the Minbari had surrendered, some progress was being made.

The President studied the faces of her visitors closely. "Are we ready?" She asked.

Senator Quantrell nodded. "We are."

"Jump Gates and tachyon beacons are being recoded as we speak, Madam President," General Franklin still carried the hard face of a hardened veteran in the GROPO section of Earthforce, there was more frown there than ever since the man had seen many die for Earth. Levy could hear the pleasure in his voice, but she wasn't surprised. Franklin was well known for his distrust and wariness of aliens, and now he had proof of it. He was one of those people who believed humanity should focus on their own problems, and not those of others to the point where he didn't care. Whenever he was confronted with a situation he didn't like, Franklin didn't rant and rave like a politician; he just become more of a hardened soldier who did his duty and kept his replies and expression curt and cold. She admired him for that, but she knew him well enough to work out that while he welcomed what they were doing, he was uncertain of what the consequences would be when the other races discovered this.

Levy nodded. "Have all ships and colonies we've resettled received the latest codes?"

"Yes. They will be in widespread use within the next few days when we put the isolation into effect," Franklin answered.

"Once the computers receive the new codes, they will work only for us and not for any of the other races," Lefcourt added.

Santiago looked distinctly uncomfortable, but he was keeping quiet since he knew better than to speak since it would do no good. Levy knew and understood what the problem was. Before the invasion, Levy had been all for strengthening the ties with other races in the galaxy following the Dilgar war. It had been part of her plans to usher in a new age, but she hadn't imagined she would take this step. Santiago was one of a handful of people in the Earth Alliance senate who didn't like the way they were going, but they had no choice.

The Earth-Minbari war had been truly terrible for humanity, for their worlds, for their homeworld. When they'd misinterpreted the Minbari's traditions and fired on the Minbari flagship carrying their leader, an important figure of near Messianic influence, the Minbari had launched a holy war on Earth with the long-term aim of exterminating the human race for good. And they had very nearly succeeded; many of the colonies had been razed to the ground, and there were bodies floating in space exposed to the vacuum and they were killed instantly, either because their escape pods had been destroyed or their ships and star bases had suffered from explosive decompression, sucking them out of the ships they were on. Ships that tried to surrender because they were so heavily damaged that fighting back was proven to be impossible were destroyed with no survivors, but there were a few - not many - who had somehow survived, either because they were too small and insignificant and they had managed to make their own escape, either to the planets or they had found a way of getting to a jump point where they made it back to Earth and gave them their accounts.

The war had gone very badly for Earth. They were losing and for months, despite Earthforce's efforts to make the Minbari fight for every square inch of space, making the cruisers fight even harder even if they didn't have the means to truly fight the Minbari on a higher level, the Minbari were drawing closer to Earth. Earth Gov had come up with a plan to scatter their civilisation to random parts of the galaxy, knowing the limitations of jump point technology would make it very hard to be found in different parts of space. The Minbari had attacked and the battle had gone, much like the others, in the Minbari's favour.

And then, for no explicable reason, the Minbari had surrendered. But humanity was in no shape to do anything. Millions had died, soldiers and civilians. Within a few months, they had retaken their colonies, but a desire to return to the galaxy had died out like an ember of a dying fire. Earth had looked inward at itself and realised their desire to spread their manifest destiny throughout the stars had nearly gotten them exterminated by another, more powerful race when they didn't have the right. Levy and her senate had been in discussion for a long time, and plans for the Babylon project where a large space station designed to host diplomatic conferences and maintain the peace were scrapped. Levy knew many in the senate were relieved at the plans because it meant they wouldn't have to deal with alien problems.

They didn't want to do it.

They didn't want to deal with aliens.

But most of all, they didn't want to have anything to do with them. Levy knew how they felt, but even so, she had originally been reluctant to get rid of the plans and cancel them, but she realised like the others, she didn't want to be bogged down with trivial problems in the galaxy when Earth had many more.

And so plans were drawn to isolate Earth from the rest of the galaxy to the point where human ships would leave the solar system and resume exploration of the galaxy when the fleet was large enough again once leftover Minbari technology was salvaged from the fleet engagements over the past few years were reverse-engineered and understood, and when IPX and other exploration teams discovered ancient technologies they could use to prevent their race from being threatened ever again. There was much to be done; new alloys, new technologies, new weapons, but most importantly, Levy planned on furthering their knowledge of the galaxy. War bred terrible things where destruction ran amok and left scars too deep to heal properly for a long time, but there was no denying that war brought benefits. Namely technology, advanced technology where old technologies were made better or yielded something new. But she had already put in orders for their jump gate technology to be improved to help them navigate the rest of the galaxy.

"Good. Put it in place, please," she ordered.

A few days later, Earth received several protests but they were otherwise ignored. The human race had isolated itself from the rest of the galaxy. Now it was time for them to work out their own problems, instead of helping aliens deal with theirs.

Author's Note - In many of the Babylon 5 episodes, I saw evidence that humanity truly didn't care about the alien's problems, and I felt when I wrote this story they just became tired of the prospect of actually building the Babylon stations.