Kuftinkoorfith-thuktun I
After arriving at Amadioha-1, I depart almost immediately afterwards, switching to a human transport. I have already been pre-screened for weapons or other forbidden materials, and so the shuttle is allowed to immediately rendezvous with the Thuktun Flishithy, located in geosynchronous orbit. The three warships guarding it authenticate our signal and permit the final approach, after which I am thoroughly scrubbed down and made to wear a hazmat suit.
Once the preparations are finished, I am finally ushered down the long curving hallways of what had carried a people across the stars. It remains by far the largest spacecraft in history, dwarfing even human orbital habitats. Eventually, I am escorted to what has been nicknamed the Ninth Wonder of the World. A smooth-cut stone of size comparable to a skyscraper, shining like silver in the ship's internal lighting.
I am so preoccupied staring at it that I fail to recognize my interviewee until a quartet of tentacles wave in my face. I turn to see a younger-looking fi', though still bearing the distinct features that is found in all spaceborn.
A: Loremaster?
Q: I apologize, Loremaster Kuftinkoorfith-thuktun. It is simply an astounding sight.
A: It always is. You are here to question me, yes?
Q: Indeed. Now, how was it that you came to be involved in the international research of the thuktunthp?
A: I had served as an apprentice to Loremaster Fistarteh-thuktun as an adolescent, starting two years before the war. When the war ended, and the Nation was established, however, my teacher found himself mated to different endeavors. Advising the Herdmistress, reforming the education system, and other such projects. As such, he was unable to attend to his duties regarding the thuktunthp, and he named me his successor.
When the herds of Winterhome made the agreement to study the stones together, I therefore became the fithp representative to the project. After all, I was the second most qualified researcher for the job- the scientists that came here were reliant on me to educate them.
Q: When did the international research begin in earnest?
A: Two years after the end of the war. I had continued my work during that time. It was tedious, but ultimately calm work, to meticulously translate the etchings and pull upon images from earlier stones in order to develop a working understanding.
Soon, however, it became hectic. Instead of an octuplet of assistants, I had twelve octuplets' worth of researchers who thought themselves my equals, or even superiors. The silence of the room became a cacophony of squawking and bickering, with at least eight octuplets worth of Winterhome-made computer screens open as they pored over the images and bickered over how to solve our many issues.
Q: Issues?
A: It took many days to overcome the compatibility issues between human machines and our own. A... what was it? Pisi? Pisis and Fruits were not made to download files from an alien machine.
Then, some tried to argue for taking the stone itself apart, or at least engage in intrusive probing, once they had gotten all the photographs and microscopic analysis completed. They were quite irreverent of the thuktunthp.
I voiced my disagreement.
Q: I presume you won?
A: One of them made the mistake of denigrating my role, calling me a glorified witch-doctor who had never heard of the scientific method. I responded by sitting on him.
He makes an amused snort.
The scientists coordinated more closely together after that, and I must admit they were respectful from thereon. Who says the old ways don't have their uses at times?
It was when I asserted myself as the proper Loremaster that we finally made progress. I must commend human computers for their absurd processing power. It had been painstaking to analyze the stones beforehand.
Q: How so?
A: Nearly every single diagram, every symbol, every last bit of information on the thuktun requires intensive keys and legends from the prior thuktun, which in turns require keys and legends from the previous thuktun, and so on. An unending chain, from first to last. We had discovered eighty thuktunthp before this last one, and considering the sheer amount of information even one can hold, we had been faced with up to a century of research before the war.
Human computers, however, could utilize the keys far faster than our own. They had done more to unearth the stone's secrets in six weeks than what had taken me my entire career to accomplish.
Q: Is that what made the Ramesses-Hatušilliš mission possible?
A: Interstellar travel had been possible the moment humanity got their hands on a Race starship. They wanted to build their own, however, to show just how far they had advanced from the sword-swinging savages the probe had seen. But yes, the research was what allowed for the higher performances of the engines, as well as sufficient radiation shielding for such relativistic travel, even if the deathsleep technology and other such systems were independently human-made.
Even more effective drives may be possible yet. We have still not even decoded a third of the stone, even after twenty years. Some of what we have seen promises something astounding, but we must not arrive at conclusions.
Nevertheless, the bounty has been fruitful. It is because of our research that much of the fleet's weapons have been made possible, as well as the probes scattered across the stars.
His ears droop, and his trunk curls towards his mouth.
Including my own.
-/-\-
Paulson III
Q: To my knowledge, space telescopes meant to replace the Hubble were in Lagrange points as early as 2023. Were they with the express purpose of finding Hearth and the Race's worlds?
A: No. They were for the express purpose of continuing our research of the cosmos. Not everything had to be related to the war, you know.
She purses her lips.
Of course, considering that their worlds are part of the cosmos, it was only natural that we also studied them. Still, I wouldn't call it finding them. Harpanet spilled the details as soon as we got our hands on him, and we'd had a good idea of where the Race was coming from even before the war began, let alone after we accessed their navigational charts.
Still, it was a good idea to confirm their positions. It'd be important to know if we could precisely locate their planets, considering that you'd need very good aim to maintain communications with probes or crewed starships over that kind of distance. Plus, we were keen on seeing if we had any more, ah, neighbors.
I mean, seriously. Four species within twelve light years of Earth, five if you count the Precursors or Forerunners or whatever you want to call the guys who lived on Hearth before the fithp did. That is insane. Hell, if it weren't for the fact that it happened, the idea of two of those species invading us at the same time would be fucking ridiculous. It's like winning the lottery a third time in the row while getting struck by lightning levels of unlikely.
The fact that we'd somehow missed an intelligent civilization at our closest star system showed just how blind we must have been. We needed to rapidly improve our understanding of our celestial neighborhood. Not just because of aliens, you see. But to answer all the questions the war raised.
Q: How effective was the program?
A: Well, we managed to find all four worlds, as well as a glut of terrestrial planets in their stars' habitable zones. Not that it was easy. Finding planets around other stars isn't like finding planets in our solar system, in that you can't just directly look for the planet. Trying to find Hearth directly would have been like trying to find something the size of a period between two lightbulbs. Oh, and the lightbulbs are in Washington DC while you're in Boston.
You have to look indirectly, noting the faint shift in brightness as the planet passes in front of the star, which also allows us to analyze the atmosphere via spectrometers. We'd found lots of exoplanets even before the war, but our new telescopes made the work considerably easier. By the end of the year, we'd found Hearth, and even confirmed the existence of water vapor and oxygen in the atmosphere. Finding Home, Rabotev, and Halless took another three months.
Q: Was that when the Schiaparelli mission was approved?
A: They were already building the probes; it's just that we finally knew exactly where to aim it. It only launched a year before the big one, actually. I was involved in tracking it and maintaining communications as it made its way to Hearth. Took eight and a half years to get there, and another four and a third to get information back. It's a drain, waiting close to thirteen years to get pictures back.
Still, it was important. Fithp populations were apparently much smaller than ours, considering that they managed to fit an entire nation's worth into Flishithy, but their technology was more than enough to make us worry. A herd in a single ship, with tech at least sixty years behind the winner back home, was able to fight an entire planet. We had no idea if the winning herd had found any more of those stones, or were even sending their own invasion fleet with souped-up weapons our way.
That's why we went full Race in terms of probing. Orbiting satellites, rovers, drones... we wanted to make sure just what we were dealing with.
Q: What were your reactions to the results?
A: Horror. I don't care about the warmongers who were actually disappointed they couldn't get payback, or the sickos who were happy. When we realized what had happened, I got plastered that night.
I mean, what sane person wouldn't be, when they found out an entire world had died? The probes spent two years recording data on that planet, and we couldn't find any signs of a surviving fithp civilization. Not a continent spanning civilization, not countries, not cities, not even nomadic herds. Just abandoned settlements and what may have been farmland.
Q: What are the prevailing theories on what happened?
A: We knew they had experimented with bioweapons meant to kill feed grass, and we knew their planet's ecology was far from the best, but we still don't know what exactly killed them. Precisely because A) we don't know the extent of ecological damage the old owners had done before they went, and B) it's been a good sixty, seventy years since they died. If it was a bioweapon, it probably died out with the grasses it killed, and if it was ecological collapse, then it must have recovered somewhat during those long years.
All we know is that the fithp there were dead long enough to completely decompose, the planet has no sign of nuclear war or outside attack, and it's empty. There's still a working ecosystem, but no sign of intelligent life.
People have their crazier theories, of course. Some say they ascended to another level, following the Predecessors. Some say they packed up shop as well and are probably en route to Rabotev. Some say Jesus.
Me? I think they died from going down the same path they'd been walking for all their history. People sometimes forget that the herd that came here were basically bronze age people with nukes before they were hit with the greatest culture shock in, well, ever. They may have been smart enough to decipher the stones and make wonders, but they weren't wise enough.
We developed naturally with our tech, and we nearly offed ourselves through pollution and the threat of nuclear war. Now imagine what a species with the sensibilities of hunter gatherers would do, especially on a planet that was already damaged. The specifics will probably never be known, but I don't think you need to know them to understand why they died.
They died because their cleverness exceeded their wisdom.
-/-\-
du Jonchere IV
Q: When exactly was the diplomatic mission to Home agreed upon?
A: Technically speaking? I can't say. There'd been talks for a long while, even as early as the December negotiations. The idea of making the long flight to another star was mainly considered a pipe dream, a distant goal that we wouldn't have to seriously work towards.
But as the war went on, a diplomatic mission to Home hit the table with more force when Atvar defected. Now, we had a chance of friendly access to spaceflight technology wildly beyond our own. I wasn't part of the meeting, you understand- it was more of an executive and military matter. I don't know when it was suggested, and I don't know who was behind the wartime agreement.
Q: When did you become involved?
A: The project was officially ratified by the UN, the Fithp Nation, and the Race during the Manhattan Conference. By then, we knew that radio news of the war's outcome would be hitting Home in twelve years, and there was no telling how Home would react. There was a fear that the Emperor, due to the extreme detachment from the issue, might order the war to resume without really understanding the implications.
Q: The Race would have continued the war if the Emperor commanded them, even two decades after the Armistice?
A: There's no telling. The Emperor seems to hold a place in the Race's psyche even greater than that of the Japanese Emperor had before WWII. The Emperor is the embodiment of all that is good in the Race, the ultimate voice of authority. In a culture without families, without parents, the Emperor is the closest thing they have to a father.
But, this war was nothing like they'd seen before. I have no idea the extent of their disillusionment, especially after twenty years here. Some may ignore the Emperor. Some may fight, even knowing their odds, just so they can die without disobeying him. But they allacknowledge that they would die if the Emperor gave the word to continue. So, they were naturally keen on convincing the Emperor to not give that order.
Q: What did the ratification detail?
A: Firstly, that the mission to Home would be peaceful. A diplomatic envoy, not an invasion. Secondly, that the project would be a multinational one, with all who signed the Armistice contributing to the project, much like the Force. And thirdly, the delegation sent would also be a multinational one. When Humankind arrives at Home, they will not speak as Americans or Chinese or Nepali. They will speak as one voice, just as the Race speaks as one.
Q: What about the Race and Fithp?
A: It was agreed that the Race would send some of their own along with the delegation, to show that we had made peace with the remnants of the Conquest Fleet. Likewise, as a signatory state, the Fithp Nation would also send representatives. They're here to stay, after all, and what affects us will affect them as well.
The delegation matter took a while to resolve. I was considered to represent my nation, but I ultimately declined. I have a family here, after all. Leaving them behind for decades did not sound appealing to me.
Still, I kept a close eye on the developments. I'm a diplomat, after all- how could I ignore the greatest diplomatic mission in history?
-/-\-
Johnson IV
Finishing the last of his vegetable smoothie, Johnson slides the glass away and tents his hands.
A: You look like you have more questions.
Q: I was hoping to ask you about your participation in the Homeward Bound project.
A: Ah. I do suppose I have a lot to offer there. Now, you must remember that I'm an astronaut, not a physicist or engineer. I may be pretty well-educated in those fields, but I was not involved in the technology department of that project.
It was about three months after the war that I got approached for the project. After all, I'd been part of a highly classified and important project for six years with superb results, and I was trained in the key fields.
Q: What were your contributions?
A: Similar to Project Archangel- think tank member and honorary guinea pig. I consulted with the engineers who were designing the habitable sections of the Ramesses-Hatusillis, particularly the cockpit and landing craft, and I even did test flights for the latter. I was also in the running-up for the crew, actually, and so I was doing mock mission runs with the other potential candidates.
Q: Why weren't you selected for the mission?
A: About three years into the project came the testing with the suspended animation technology we were developing for the flight. As it turns out, I had a bad allergy to something in the antifreeze they basically replace our blood with. Thank god they found out during the blood work, otherwise I probably wouldn't be here.
I stayed on the project afterwards, of course. Even if I wasn't going, I was still valuable as an instructor and consultant. There was even a hope that a new drug could be developed, but that proved to be too late. The mission was two years in when they finally developed an alternate antifreeze for people with my kind of allergy.
I must admit, I wonder to this day whether I'm disappointed to go, or relieved.
-/-\-
Khosarani II
Q: Were you involved in Project Homeward Bound?
A: Not for the first three years- I was still in training. But yes, I worked as a tug pilot as we built the Ramesses-Hatusillis. By then, most of the framework had been completed in lunar orbit, but there was still a lot more to go. We needed to finish building the habitable sections, the solar arrays to gather power, the laser, and a dozen other things.
I spent a lot of time on the Moon during that time. The fithp had left a handful of solar energy collectors and processing plants on the surface, which was where they had manufactured more flying crowbars for the war. We expanded on those considerably, and rapidly. The Moon's rich in titanium, helium-3, and plenty of other materials vital to spaceflight.
Q: How was any of this possible, so soon after the war?
A: Well, it wasn't like we were doing this on our lonesome. We had fithp digit ships doing a lot of the grunt jobs at first, and the Race was helpful with work in Earth orbit. We could move tens of thousands of tons worth of material daily with those starships, and premade at that, instead of having to piece them together bit by bit via small rocket launches. The old ISS took, what, sixteen years to make, despite being only 419 tons. You could literally fit a dozen of those in an old Conquest Fleet ship.
And the developments were only getting better with time, as we took apart fithp and Race tech and studied the Big Rock. We could have increasingly more advanced tech made with increasingly greater degrees of automation, and in increasingly greater quantities. Getting our hands on effective fusion power tripled global energy output in a single year, and again the year after that. We went from a handful of sites only launching chemical rockets to dozens of spaceports that could send massive laser-propelled craft up.
So, to answer your question, it wasn't as impossible as it seemed. I cannot stress enough the advances we were making. It wasn't just copying down the Race's homework while borrowing the Fithp's textbooks. It was applying their knowledge and theories to our own sciences, sciences whose funding skyrocketed. In essence, something greater than the sum of its parts, creating a snowball effect.
Q: How much did Project Homeward Bound rely on independent innovations?
A: Much more than some might suspect. If we wanted to send a mission that matched the initial goals we set up in Manhattan, just using a Race starship wouldn't have cut it. Ignoring the fact that we wanted to make our own ship to impress a message on Home, a twenty year flight would have meant only getting a reply back from Home by 2056 or so, and that's ignoring the fact that we'd have to repurpose almost everything in a Race ship, since they weren't designed with large clawless apes that can only look in one direction at a time in mind, which would probably extend the mission to 2060 or even 2065.
We wanted to shave as much time off as humanly possible, and so we needed to outperform either the Race or fithp's ships. If not in every way, if not consistently, then at least in a way that would allow a swift diplomatic mission. From what we had gathered from the Big Rock, plus our own research, we had found a way to make a ramscoop that exceeded the fithp design.
Q: How so?
A: The Flishithy's design was a more primitive type of ramscoop. They had managed something more along the lines of a RAIR-type engine, which circumvented the issue of trying to accomplish proton-proton fusion, but they still had to deal with drag. It's why it took them more than sixty years to get to here from Alpha Centauri.
The ramscoop we managed to develop managed to defeat the drag problem, basically turning it into a scramjet rather than a ramjet. From what I've heard, that development had plenty of scientists in conniption fits. Whoever the Predecessors were, they sure did know how to make starships.
Still, we wanted faster. Since getting there was more important than the return trip when it came to time-crunching, it was decided that the greater part of the initial acceleration would be done more early into the flight.
Q: Is that why the laser was built?
A: Yes. It was a way of ensuring both a lower degree of mechanical failure, as well as speeding the flight up. Plus, it could be constructed to be gradually larger, rather than all at once. Still, the power requirements were absurd, hence the need for the orbital solar arrays. I cannot stress enough the power requirements- if we had gone wholly for a sail-based flight, we would have required a sail the size of Texas and a 43-terawatt laser.
All in all, it's quite a complex mission. First, you had the booster stage, which was essentially a higher-thrust but lower-impulse version of a Race fusion engine turned to full throttle, followed by the sail pushing it all the way to the Oort Cloud as the ship's fusion drive powered on, then the ramscoop activating.
Complex? Yes. But faster? Definitely. I'm sure it's going to give the Emperor quite the scare when he sees it coming. Allah willing, I'd give both kidneys for a picture of that moment when he realizes that we just became the Outside Context Problem.
-/-\-
Joshi XI
For a few moments, Joshi stares at the night sky, her gaze focused on a single bright point among the stars. Her eyes glisten, and she looks away, wiping away with the back of her hand.
Q: I'm sure this is a difficult discussion matter.
A: I'm fine. I've dealt with worse, trust me.
She inhales deeply.
It was something we talked about for the longest time. As Herdmistress, I kept tabs on construction daily, and was an active participant in the think tanks. After all, the thuktun was technically kind of, er, mine. I knew that, eventually, I would need to select the delegation, even though I was desperately hoping that I wouldn't have to send the delegation I sent.
Q: Why didn't you go with him?
A: I still had a nation to run, remember? Even if I was already in the process of preparing the transition of power, I couldn't just go gallivanting off to Tau Ceti, not when I had ten million constituents to protect from a world that still had the scars of the war.
She snorts.
Besides, they were worried that having the woman who technically ended their invasion and broke a Fleetlord's ribs wouldn't be good for easing relations. Someone even made a political cartoon of me stomping on the Emperor's chest and loudly yelling that I was now to be called Super-Herdmistress-Empress Joshi.
Q: So why did Chris ultimately join the fithp delegation?
A: I needed someone I could trust on that ship. Someone I knew as well as I knew myself, and someone who had the chops for it. It's why Atvar sent Kirel to lead the Conquest Fleet's representatives. That particular Shiplord may be as flexible as a stick bug, but he's a high-ranking officer that can be trusted.
I know Chris better than just about anyone- I should be, considering I married him. And he's an amazing diplomat when it comes to the Race. Not only is he sharp, but he can get inside their head and understand them, without all the pain of the war getting in the way. He managed to get us to work together when we were POWs on the Flishithy, and I'm sure he can get us to work together at Home.
But another reason was that Chris is human. There will certainly be subtle power plays when they get to Home, and my fithp are at a disadvantage when it comes to that. Plukoolinginth and Chipitimnang are good diplomats, but I fear that they would have been metaphorically eaten alive if Chris didn't go with them. He had to go to Home with them, to ensure that a fair agreement between all of us is reached.
And yet... and yet... if I had the power to have him back in my arms again, right here, right now...
She falls silent, studying the ground at her feet. Then, after some time, she looks back at the sky.
-/-\-
You have been reading:
Worldfall, Chapter Twenty: Reaching Out