We Are Not Alone
Yushan Mountain Range, Shanxi March 12, 2157 AD
Michael Gross took a swig from his beer while glancing around. Michael was a driver for a small shipping company on Shanxi and was currently on his way to the astronomical observatory at the top of Mount Sanqing. The Pua Aloalo Observatory was a giant, mostly automated, facility set up by the University of Hawai'i as a counterpart to their Mauna Kea Observatories. Because Shanxi was so far from Earth the astronomers in Hawaii decided to set up an observatory here to compare and contrast data collected between the two planets. Originally, all of Mount Sanqing (as well as a good chunk of the surrounding land) had belonged to some farming tycoon but when he died his will stipulated that all the land be donated for scientific usage but the University of Hawai'i was the only organization to show any interest in land that was a three hour drive from the nearest settlement on the most remote colony humanity had founded. Unfortunately, during the transfer of ownership not all of the livestock was accounted for and several goats escaped. With no natural predators on Shanxi, the goats were quite plentiful on Mount Sanqing and were turning into dangerous driving hazards when navigating up the (too narrow) road to the Observatory. They were big enough that their corpses jostled the truck if he ran over them and Michael didn't want to risk tipping over, thus he had to keep a constant lookout for the damn beasts. There was also the danger of one of them slipping off one of the cliffs and falling onto his truck. It hadn't happened yet but Michael had found the shattered remains of enough goats to know that it was possible. Michael sighed, he was a running deliveries on a planet in the armpit of the galaxy, how had it all come to this?
The Borg Collective had sent shockwaves throughout the world when they announced that they had developed a way to travel to other solar systems. Suddenly, humanity wasn't confined to the Sol system. There was the issue that only Borg ships could leave the solar system, other groups had tried using the Borg blueprints (which the Collective had made public as a PR move) to make their own warp engines but none of them were ever successful. Most governments actually outlawed warp drive technology after a French ship exploded near Mars due to a breach in the warp core. The ship was a tiny proof-of-concept warp capable machine and yet the explosion was bigger than one from an atom bomb. A lot of people were worried that something like that could occur in a populated area so the public backlash after the explosion was enormous. It made perfect sense really, the Borg purposefully designed a method of transportation that was so dangerous no one else was allowed to do research in it to figure out how the Borg could do it safely thus ensuring the Borg's monopoly.
The announcement of a habitable planet in the Alpha Centauri system, which was given the name Chiron for some reason, was an even bigger shock. Unlike Mars and the Moon, atmospheric buildings weren't required. Drones didn't control how much settlements grew or not grew. Once people got there, they were free to move wherever they wanted. However, because of the Borg's lack of interest in governance the only people that initially settled on Chiron were cults, survivalists, fleeing criminals, and exiled governments; the vast majority of people didn't feel safe going there. As more and more dregs of society fled to Chiron various city-states began springing up on the planet. Then, everything changed when teenage heart-throb actress Kathy Greenwood and her production crew were kidnapped while filming a nature documentary on Chiron. The group was mistaken for spies as they were filming scenery in an area recently contested between two warring religious groups. While they were all eventually released unharmed this still caused a huge uproar back on Earth. Someone needed to step forward and establish some kind of peace on Chiron. The problem was that there wasn't a lot anyone could do. The only way to get to Chiron was via Borg ships and the Borg refused to send anyone over there that wasn't on the waiting list; government officials, peacekeeping troops, millionaires, none of them got special treatment. There was also the additional problem that no government trusted the Borg enough to give them that much control and power over whatever troops they decided to send to Chiron. The sheeple on Earth and Luna might trust the Borg, but the governments were smart enough not to. Probably recognized the Borg as kindred spirits seeking to control everyone and everything.
When the Borg announced that they were increasing production of ships to meet demand that simply created more problems because the United Nations still could not agree on what they were going to do about Chiron. Seemingly every country wanted to claim the planet but none of them wanted to send troops there to do it. Eventually, the Borg caved to popular opinion stepped in themselves when it became apparent no one else was going to do it. They established an extremely minimalistic government that was staffed almost exclusively by drones. While there were very few laws, breaking just about any of them resulted in assimilation. Surprisingly, their system worked, things calmed down (though the Borg had to forcibly assimilate three settlements before everyone realized they were serious). Once people on Earth realized that there was a garden world available to live on and that there was a stable, safe society with a fair rule of law already in place, a fairly large exodus from the Sol System occurred. The primary motivation for so many people leaving was (apparently) the fact that the economic laws on Chiron were so lax, which was just odd considering the Borg's collective nature and desire to know every little thing that occurred in their zone of control. While Michael thought the government should stay out of the economy the fact that he was agreeing with the Borg was enough to convince him that he was missing some part of the picture. Between the Borg's increased fleet size allowing for rapid trade and the influx of immigrants, Chiron quickly became an economic powerhouse which only cause more people to want to come to the planet (though that may also have had something to do with the Borg building a sister resort to the Celestial Maiden that they called Gaia's Stepdaughter).
Of course, the Borg made news in other, smaller, less societal-changing ways. The Russian and European Union collectives both defected into the Borg Collective within the same five year time span, leading to all sorts of accusations though there was never an official investigation against the Borg. It did result in numerous governments announcing that they were abandoning their own attempts at starting collectives. Couldn't justify the incredibly high expenditures if their own drones were just going to quit and join the Borg.
In an effort to save time, a lot of the ships the Borg had built to transport people and goods to Chiron had been done in basic geometric shapes, cubes and spheres, but now they continued making all their ships like that. Most people found it disconcerting, if not outright intimidating. The Borg were certainly capable of designing architecture that was pleasing to the eye, they owned two highly successful vacation resorts after all, the drones just apparently didn't seem to care about the appearances of their spacecraft.
There was the incident where the Borg assimilated a group of autistic savants. The savants had come together and made the decision that they wanted to be assimilated, they wanted the chance to be normal, to blend into the background like regular people. Of course, a protest to that was started with people claiming the savants didn't understand just what they were getting into, and that lead to the savants getting angry, 'just because we're autistic doesn't mean we're stupid' was the claim. In many places it was (and still is) illegal to stop someone from getting assimilated if that was what they wanted so even though they were autistic, no one was allowed to stop them. There had been some talk on the Internet of kidnapping them after they were assimilated and removing all the implants, but that was an expensive procedure and there was never a guarantee of success (though the odds were a lot better than they used to be).
In 2125 the Borg revealed that they had discovered several additional habitable planets and were going to set things up similar to Chiron in terms of governance, population brought over, ect. Whereas Chiron's discovery had been constantly discussed by every news station on Earth and Luna for a straight week, the announcement of Miranda, Abeir-Toril, Ego, and Klendathu being available for settlement didn't even occupy people's conversations for an entire day. That isn't to say that people didn't go to those planets, all four saw huge influxes of settlers looking to get away from Earth, but their actual discovery was treated as ordinary, normal. How did it come about that the discovery of habitable planets in other solar systems was given the same amount of time on the local news as a story about a woman who was so fat she killed her cat by sitting on it and was getting charged with animal cruelty? Society cared more about pointless fluff pieces than actual news, probably because of chemtrails from all the aircraft flying around on Earth. No reason the Borg wouldn't do the same thing to their planets either. Gotta keep the population docile so that way they won't get upset when their neighbors were assimilated for littering.
One of the Borg's subsidiary companies (though few people seemed aware of that fact), the Sirta Foundation, had been very successful in eliminating the majority of genetic diseases (in first world countries anyway) but then made an enormous breakthrough with the invention of Medi-gel. No one, not even Michael, could deny that Medi-gel was a wondrous discovery. Medi-gel was some kind of genetically engineered goop that acted as an anesthetic and clotting agent. Medi-gel was enormously helpful in stabilizing people that were critically injured until medical professionals arrived. Whether it was a broken bone from a fall or a wound from a bullet, Medi-gel would seal up the wound and prevent the victim from bleeding out.
More of the weird cyborg children (which were called Devas for some reason) were born to surrogate mothers which were then raised by the drones. For some reason, most people didn't see that as a big deal. They just accepted the fact that a group of hive-mind cyborgs would start experimenting on fetuses and the children resulting from that would be born with weird augmentations. Sure, when the first one had been born back in 2090 there had been a bit of an uproar, standard riots and protests really, but now it barely qualified as news when one of the creatures popped out of a woman.
Then, in 2148, everything changed. The Borg discovered alien ruins on Mars. At first there were accusations of the discovery being fake (similar to how NASA faked the first Moon landing) but the Borg were willing to bring anyone to Mars that wanted to examine the ruins. They were, in fact, legitimate alien buildings. Humanity was not the only sapient species in the universe. Granted, these were just ruins and the entire race could have died out long ago but still. . . aliens! The drones were their normal inexpressive selves but so many other people were excited. Heck, even governments were excited because of a rather unique discovery in those ruins: element zero. Michael didn't understand all the science behind element zero but he knew that it allowed for space travel that, while not as fast as the Borg's warp cores, was a lot safer to use. Not even a full year after the discovery on Mars, someone translated enough of the alien data to discover that Pluto's moon, Charon, was not actually a moon. It was actually a colossal alien device (shaped like a tuning fork) that could transport ships to an identical device in the Arcturus system instantaneously. Not even the most advanced Borg warp core was capable of that. Of course, that wasn't all discovered in a single day. It took a week of checking and rechecking the data before anyone even bothered going to Pluto to see for themselves. Once they got there all of the ice around the alien phase gate had to be melted. Once it was all melted they had to figure out how to turn the damn thing on. Once it was on it was another week of sending probes through (none of which returned or transmitted data back) before a ship decided to go through. Surprisingly, it wasn't a Borg ship that went through (they claimed they wanted to wait until they translated more information from the cache on Mars before traveling through). The European Union chose John Grissom to captain a ship through the Charon phase gate and back, which he managed to do successfully.
The realization that space exploration no longer hinged on the Borg's willingness to transport people caused quite a shakeup on Earth. Almost every country started pouring massive funding into their space programs and the space firms that transported people around the solar system saw huge capital investment and their stock shot up, practically overnight. The discovery of the phase gates was the final blow in a long series of problems for the United Nations. The UN was a bloated, corrupt bureaucracy that had long since stopped obeying its purpose as laid out by its charter. It hadn't done anything when the United States had started annexing countries back in the 2020's, hadn't done anything when the other superpowers started annexing countries in the 2030's and 40's, hadn't done anything when the Kaaba was destroyed in 2040, hadn't done anything when the Borg created their Luna base, hadn't done anything when the Borg established Chiron. The United Nations dissolved as various countries realized that it simply wasn't even capable of doing its job anymore. In its place the Systems Alliance was born, in some ways quite literally; the Systems Alliance refurbished and occupied many United Nations buildings on Earth for its use. Eventually however, the Systems Alliance decided to set up their headquarters in the Arcturus system (that was where the Charon phase gate went). Michael assumed it was because several other phase gates were discovered in the Arcturus system and the Systems Alliance (somehow) had someone competent working for them and knew to plan ahead seeing as how keeping the organization based on Earth would be too limiting for a governing body that ruled over multiple planets in multiple systems.
The collapse of the United Nations gave the gave the Borg the excuse they had no doubt been waiting years for. After the UN fell apart but before the Systems Alliance formed the Borg declared themselves a sovereign entity. Brunei on Earth, as well as all of their extraterrestrial real estate were under the official, exclusive governance of the Borg Collective as opposed to a 'temporary' interim government that the Borg ran. Whereas before drones maintained citizenship of their original country and were thus subjected to their home countries laws, now all drones became citizens of the Borg Collective and so were subjected to things like work visas and the like. In some ways the declaration made things far more complicated than Michael thought the Borg would want but apparently the pros outweighed the cons as evidenced when the Systems Alliance was established. The Borg did not actually join the SA, they did not want to be subjected to the SA's laws which did not surprise Michael at all. The Borg had no regard for human life and they finally had no legal obligations to hold back, they weren't going to give that up. Surprisingly, the Systems Alliance did not challenge the Borg on their refusal to join. Not that the SA had the authority to force them but still. . . a group as technologically capable and ethically lacking as the Borg were the type you wanted close so you could keep an eye on them. You didn't want them running off to go do whatever they wanted.
The Systems Alliance had discovered several habitable planets without any assistance from the Borg in a two year period. Terra Nova had been the first, quickly followed by Eden Prime and Shanxi. Shanxi was actually an unusual case, most people looking to get off of Earth preferred Terra Nova or Eden Prime to Shanxi, they were closer to Earth (and therefore cheaper to get to), they had better climates, they had more job opportunities, they were just generally better choices for most people. That's not even counting the dozen or so planets that, while not having breathable atmospheres, had enough raw materials on them to be worth setting up colonies on. Because of that, Shanxi was mostly populated by people looking to get away from Earth and the Systems Alliance. That wasn't to say the Alliance didn't have a presence on Shanxi, but it was pretty minuscule and they didn't interfere too much with how the planet was run.
The population of Shanxi was primarily composed of Chinese immigrants, Michael didn't really remember why. A law in China was passed that allowed for the persecution of some groups because. . .someone farted in the parliament and never apologized or something. Since China was one of the biggest funders of the Systems Alliance (being one of the most economically powerful countries and all) the fleeing people picked the farthest planet to go to. They could have just picked a Borg controlled planet to go to but it was a rare Chinaman that could stomach being in the same room as a drone. A group of drones had tried to blow up the Chinese government at some point years ago so there was little love between the two groups, even if they were fleeing from that government, the people still didn't trust drones. That was actually specifically why Michael had moved to Shanxi. He had grown up in the Appalachian Mountains back on Earth; hunting, skinning, making moonshine, and generally staying off the grid. Michael knew it was only a matter of time before the government or the Borg came in to take everything from him. When Michael heard about Shanxi, about how it was founded by a bunch of anti-Borg working class folks, he knew that was where he had to live. Living off the wilderness was fine and all, but Michael wanted more social interaction. Only interacting with people once a month when he went into town to trade just didn't do it for him anymore, sucked getting old but you can't turn back time. So Michael came out here to Shanxi and got a job that limited his exposure to people (just because he wanted more social interaction didn't mean he wanted to deal with people all day). Michael would have been perfectly happy with his lot in life if he didn't have to drive all the damn way out to the Observatory and back to make these deliveries. While it would have been quicker to use something that could fly it was apparently too expensive for the bean counters back on Earth so they decided to pay for ground transportation.
Michael set down his beer and tried cycling through the radio stations. His wrist computer had gotten a virus a couple days ago so while it was in the shop Michael was using a backup which he hadn't bothered to load with his music (something he was very much regretting right now). While there was a station that could technically be consider 'country' it seemed like it only ever played that new crap that was basically club music with a banjo in the background, damn Taylor Quick for starting that trend. Michael preferred real country music, songs like Titties and Beer, I'm At Home Getting Hammered While She's Out Getting Nailed, Mississippi Squirrel Revival, I'm My Own Grandpa, Honky Tonk Badonkadonk, Achy Breaky Heart, Pick Em Lick Em Stick Em, and Built For Blue Jeans. Unsurprisingly, most of the music Michaelwas picking up was from that weird Victorian era-inspired genre that had become popular about a year ago. Michaeldid not understand why kids nowadays wanted to listen to music about steam powered calculators but at least it wasn't as bad as the Caribbean pirate themed rap groups from a decade ago. Maybe one of the talk radio stations would have something worth listening to.
"Lemme just read the headline of this article for you. 'Man complains to police of prostitution price hike.' Think about that for a second. A man complained to the police that the illegal act he was going to do cost more than it usually did." Michael rolled his eyes and changed the station.
"Former Rookie-of-the-year Glenn Hetrick was killed in the Chiron Auto Polo championship yesterday bringing this season's death toll to six, a new record. One wonders why a sport banned by the Systems Alliance is still legal on Borg planets. It's almost like they're encouraging their citizens to kill themselves. More on that after a word from our sponsors." Auto polo as a professional sport, another weird situation created by the Borg. It was legal to watch it in Alliance space but illegal to play (which was probably why it was so popular, allure of the forbidden and all that). People driving around in rickety, fast moving vehicles while swinging giant hammers at a heavy ball and only six of them died this time around. . . that's natural selection asleep on the job right there.
"Are you going back and forth on where to do the bogeyman boogie? If so I have a secret message for the glutton inside of you. Use your imagination for a moment and forget about the fibonacci sequence or whatever you happen to be thinking about. Picture this: you're an atomic superstar getting directions to the bohemian grove. You meet up with a spaceboy on the run from a schizophrenic that is trying to jumpstart a conspiracy that is a prelude to domination from the singularity! The two of you drop da bomb so that they can't build the robots to make everyone into marionettes, are we having fun yet? If so, don't be greedy, tell your friends. Just remember Planet X marks the spot where you can buy all the best legal hallucinogenic drugs, located just north of the Dr. Steel Medical Clinic in New Beijing." That commercial didn't make a lick of sense, next channel.
"You don't have a soul, you are a soul, you have a body." Were they broadcasting a sermon on the radio? When did that become a thing? What other stations could the radio pick up out here?
"And we're back, I'm Patrick Tatopoulos and our next news story is this: the bottom had dropped out of the diamond market. Experts are blaming this on the influx of cheap diamonds from the Borg Collective. Whereas the Borg used to create diamonds using nanites, those were exclusively sold for industrial usage as few people wanted, quote, 'fake diamonds' for their jewelry. However, the Borg recently began mining planet. . . uh, where did I put-AH found it, planet PSR J1719-1438 b. Wow, that's a mouthful, wonder why it hasn't been given a proper name yet. Anyway, the Borg began mining said planet, which is apparently made entirely of diamond. These new space diamonds were so popular that the Borg decided to flood the market resulting in the huge price drops. Let's go to the phones to hear your thoughts on the now dirt-cheap diamonds." Ugh, lets not. Jewelry was pointless, frivolous, and girly. Michael did not need to hear people's thoughts on it.
"My pain may be the reason for someone's laugh, but my laugh must never be the reason for someone's pain." Michael didn't know what that chick was talking about but he didn't want to listen to any of that touchy feely crap. He sighed and turned the radio off. He was at the Observatory, maybe once he unloaded the cargo and took whatever needed to be shipped out something better would be on the airwaves.
Michael hopped out of the cab and walked over to hit the buzzer by the door and then sat down to wait. The entire Observatory was staffed by a grand total of two dudes, if they were on the other side of the compound it could be a couple minutes before they showed up to open the door. Michael did not understand how the astronomers back on Earth could get any meaningful data from the machines. The two people that worked here, Fred and Kevin, were not scientists. They were handymen hired to keep all the tech working correctly. The machines were remotely controlled by whoever was in charge back on Earth. That just seems like it shouldn't work. It would be like a doctor on Shanxi using a robot to perform brain surgery on someone in Arcturus Station. Still, Michael couldn't really blame the lemmings for not wanting to come to Shanxi. All the reasons he liked it, lack of strong Alliance presence, primarily agricultural-based economy, very out of the way resulting in long travel times, were perfectly legitimate reasons why the automatons of the Alliance didn't want to come here.
Michael's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door behind him opening. Michael stood up and turned to see who it was. Before him stood a man with short salt-and-pepper hair. He was wearing blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and cowboy boots. "Fred, good to see you. You were here awfully quick, I was expecting to have to wait longer." Michael said as he shook Fred's hand in greeting. Michael respected Fred. He used to own an ostrich farm in Mexico but found running it to be too much of a headache so he sold it to a land developer and moved to Shanxi for his semi-retirement.
"I convinced Kevin that if we planned ahead and did our work early then we would get done quickly and so wouldn't be stuck working late into the night," Fred said proudly.
"Really?" Michael asked, surprised. "How did you manage to convince him of that? Normally it takes nothing short of a cattle prod to get him out of bed before he's ready."
"I may have 'accidently' broken his television and told him that he could only watch the release of Revenge of the Radioactive Mutant Space Dwarves on mine if all his work was done first."
"Revenge of the. . ." Michael couldn't even finish saying the title. He could only sigh. "You've gotta be kidding me. They actually made a sequel?"
Fred shrugged. "The first one wasn't that bad. OK, the romance was forced and the special effects were horrible but it had some funny lines."
"Which made everyone who saw the movie think they were comedians and they repeated the lines ad nauseum. 'And they say frogs don't like cheese,' 'Was that a gun or a shoe?' 'That dwarf isn't radioactive, he's horny!'" Michael said, glaring at Fred.
"OK, OK," Fred admitted. "So the first movie got over quoted. Back to your reason for being here, I assume you got some delivers to hand over?"
"Right yea, some pretty big stuff this time. You know the drill. Open up the loading bay, I'll go pull the truck around."
Fred walked back into the building while Michael went to his truck. Michael hopped in the cab and started the engine. He drove around to the other side of this wing of the Observatory. Who designed the layout for this compound? The road approached the Observatory from the south-west but the storage warehouse and loading docks were on the northwest side. Michael was the only person that ever drove up here. On the rare occasions when someone else visited the Observatory, they would just charter a shuttle to fly them over here so its not like the Observatory needed its fancy side facing the road. There wasn't anyone that needed to be Michael backed the truck towards the loading dock he saw the door rising up and noticed Kevin was standing beside Fred. Kevin was half Fred's age with long, blond hair. He was wearing the leather jumpsuit getup that was becoming popular with a lot of blue collar workers. Michael didn't understand why the leather jumpsuit was replacing denim overalls as the go-to working man's outfit but whatever.
"Yo Mike, you're running late today," Kevin shouted as Michael killed the engine and stepped out of his vehicle.
"Since when do you care about my being on time?" Michael asked with a raise of his eyebrow as he unlocked the back of his truck.
Fred let out a big laugh and spoke, "Space Dwarves gets released for viewing at 9:00 and unpacking everything that you deliver is part of his required work, so he's got a schedule to keep."
"Not allowed to watch my movie until all this basic work, that a mech could do I might add, is done," Kevin grumbled, just loud enough for Fred and Michael to hear him. "I have a college degree, you know. Mike, I ask you, is this a job for an intelligent man?"
"I dunno. Show me one and I'll ask him," Michael said as he walked into the cargo container of his truck.
"Ouch Mike, I'm standing right here," Fred said with mock hurt in his voice.
"I noticed. An intelligent man would have known that the only delivery I have all the way out here is the Observatory and would therefore have realized everything in here is for this one stop and so would have started unloading things as opposed to waiting for me to bring out the Grav-lift," Michael said as he began unhooked the Grav-lift from where it hung on the wall of the cargo container. "Not everything here is so heavy it require a mass effect field to move, some of this stuff can actually be picked up the old fashioned way, you know, with your muscles."
"Yea yea yea. Come on Kevin, start grabbing something."
The three of them worked in silence as they unloaded all the cargo which took approximately fifteen minutes. Once they finished Fred had Kevin begin unpacking and cataloging everything while he and Michael loaded up the few things that needed to get shipped out.
"Well Fred," Michael said as he began putting the Grav-lift back on the wall. "That should be everything. I'll see you guys in two weeks."
As Michael walked out of the cargo container and began pulling the door down Fred slapped him on the back. "Take care of yourself Michael. Don't do anyone I wouldn't."
"Yea, because that narrows down my options," Michael said as he rolled his eyes.
Fred laughed as he went into the warehouse and closed the door. Once he locked the cargo door in place Michael walked around and hopped into the cab of his truck. As he turned the key and gunned the engine, the radio flared to life and began saying something Michael found much more interesting than anything he had heard on the way up here.
"Repeat: This is an emergency broadcast to everyone on Shanxi. Yesterday evening the fleet stationed here was sent to the nearby phase gate and was destroyed by hostile ships. What information we have points towards aliens, not the Borg. Everyone should arm themselves, seek shelter, and prepare for a possible invasion. Repeat: This is an emergency broadcast to everyone on Shanxi. . ." Michael listened to the message several more times to see if there was any new information but it was just repeating itself. He flipped to other channels but they were all saying the same thing. Michael weighed his options. He could stay at the Observatory which, while certainly not of any strategic importance and was therefore unlikely to be a target, was so far away from civilization that he doubted it would receive any support from the defending troops should it get attacked. He could take the long drive back to his house, which was a veritable fortress stocked full of guns, ammo, and food, but he would be on his own until he got there. Deciding he would rather be in his well hidden, underground house than a compound with giant telescopes at the top of a mountain Michael put his truck in gear and began the long drive home.