Chapter 17:

Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, Albus Dumbledore, created a new standing research committee on Muggle Advances in Technology and Interstellar Civilizations, or MATIC. Its charter was to research these areas and provide recommendations. There was some debate before the MATIC was voted in.

The Norwegian assistant Minister Gustav Johansen, somewhat dismissively said, "I can agree with keeping track of new muggle gadgets. In Norway muggles are building a railroad that will go 21 landmils or as the muggles would say, 210 kilometers, per hour. This presents all sorts of challenges to our Ministry, when you think through the implications. However, I do not understand the need to study interstellar civilizations, when there is no evidence of them. I think apparent muggle sightings of unidentified flying objects, could be our very own Quidditch team, the Karasjok Kites, practicing a little too enthusiastically."

The head of the American Department of Unidentifiable Magical Objects, Peter Quahog, answered, "I for one, would welcome international cooperation in tracking down these sightings. If there is nothing found, we can all rest easier. If there is something to find, we'll find it sooner with cooperation."

Albus Dumbledore said, "As Mr. Quahog points out, this committee will benefit us all, whether or not there is something to find. I would like to draw your thoughts to the possibility that there is something to find. What if there are advanced alien civilizations, magical or not, that have been visiting our planet?

In that possibility, I believe we have a planet wide responsibility to defend our planet from all external threats. We can do that most effectively if we combine the extraordinary advances in muggle space exploration, with magic. How that is done, what sort of cooperation would occur, are all questions to resolve at a later time.

Consider, that this is a unique era in international muggle cooperation. The main conflicts of this century appear to be ended. The two largest space powers, the United States of America, and newly named Russian Federation have just signed an agreement to jointly build a permanently occupied space station, orbiting over 250 miles or 400 kilometers above the surface of the Earth, a location that has no air.

Now that the muggle nations of Earth are no longer fighting each other, we might need to guide them to combining their technology with our magic to defend the Earth against any possible hostile aliens."

Meanwhile, I was helping our group, headed by Hermione, writing a paper to present to the ICW on emerging non-magical computing technology, by pointing out what technologies to look for, that will later become important.

I wanted to find a smartphone, but the best I could find was an IBM announcement in November 1993 about a soon to be released product called IBM Simon which was a phone that could send emails and faxes. However, it did not have a camera.

There were digital cameras in 1993, but expensive, not very high resolution, and while pictures could be published online, there didn't seem to be a practical threat to secrecy of magic from them, at least at that time.

I did direct Hermione to look at the World Wide Web. It was starting to become popular, but again, not yet a real threat to magical secrecy.

The Advanced Study Group had a brain-storming meeting to discuss space-faring civilizations.

I addressed them, "Luna and I know that there are space-faring civilizations in our region of space. Some are helpful to emerging planets, such as ours, some are suspicious and might act violently to preempt future threats, and some are predatory.

I am going to show you Luna's memory of her Boggart. She had thought about contacting the civilization that is currently watching us, the Vulcans. They are waiting for us to achieve faster than light space travel before contacting us. There is a weaker civilization called the Andorians, that conducts raids on the Vulcans, who show them patience."

They saw the memory, of the Andorians telling everyone in Hogwarts to get on their spaceships, saying that they will destroy the Earth, starting with London, if there is any resistance.

"After seeing her own fear, it became clear, that peace through strength is the approach Earth must take. Before we engage in open contact with any aliens, which means also before we invent and test faster than light travel, we must perfect space weaponry that can dissuade the Andorians or other further away alien civilizations.

Dumbledore, in his role of Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, has got an investigation committee started. What he needs to help bring about a combined non-magical and magical technology development, is to prove that these aliens exist, without contacting them."

I described the methods we thought of so far, and why each would not work.

Colin Creevey said, "There is an amazing telescope in space, called the Hubble Space Telescope. It can do a lot, but we can magically add to its abilities. What if we duplicate it, place it on the far side of the Moon, so it won't be detected, and enhance it. Maybe we can see Vulcan."

There was some discussion about that, and just how much stronger than it a telescope would be needed to see buildings 16 light years away.

George Weasley said, "The Vulcans seem to hide well. Without using magic, they can hide from muggle governments that are always worried about missiles from other muggle governments. Maybe we can see them with magic."

Hannah Abbot said, "So the reason why we cannot contact the Vulcans is not that they would be a threat, but that spies from other people like the Andorians would find out and then attack us?"

Luna said dreamily, "I do fear that, as my Boggart friend showed me."

I added, "There is also the factor, that the Vulcans might like to guide our development, and we might be better off being able to make our own decisions on our own planet."

The head of the American Department of Unidentifiable Magical Objects, Peter Quahog, called an emergency meeting of the new International Wizarding Conference Committee, MATIC, Muggle Advances in Technology and Interstellar Civilizations.

"Distinguished Gentlewitches and Gentlewizards of the MATIC committee. Our investigation took us directly to events in 1947. Our philosophy was follow rumors to find any facts. Nothing officially happened in July 1947 in Roswell New Mexico. There are no files or official information in the US No-Maj government to say otherwise. However, while the events took place 46 years ago, and noone involved are known to still be working for the US Government, many of the individuals working in the Roswell area at that time are alive. Since the entire operation was No-Maj, no obliviations were done. For that matter, the No-Maj government was not so ruthless as to kill the persons who were aware of the events.

None of the people we found ever disclosed the information they were told to keep secret. However, with magical means we were easily able to get ahold of everything they knew, and then prevented them from knowing that they revealed anything.

In July 1947, three aliens from another planet crashed a spacecraft in Roswell, New Mexico, USA. In 1947, none of the No-Maj's had spacecraft. The first No-Maj launched object sent into space was in 1957, and the first person in 1961.

These aliens resembled people, but had very large ears, and brow ridges, and different head shape." Peter Quahog, showed sketches of what they looked like, along with sketches of their spaceship, and continued, "They were interrogated and given a No-Maj truth potion, which had no effect on them. Then they were threatened with torture, and gave several contradictory statements, which are therefore useless."

Peter paused, and then continued, "Here is where it gets murky. They were apparently helped to escape by at least two of the personnel at the base, and got their spacecraft flying again, and headed right into a test of an atomic bomb, and disappeared.

The speculation of the No-Maj investigators was that the timing was too exact to be a coincidence. That they might have destroyed themselves, so their information and spacecraft could not be used. Another was that somehow the atomic explosion refueled their spacecraft. In any case, there have been no known return visits, and the conclusion was that the initial contact was unintentional on their part. However, they were doing something in flying near Earth, probably observing, and maybe specifically observing No-Maj development of atomic bombs. Questions?"

Albus Dumbledore asked, "Would you please tell us what were the contradictory things they said?"

Peter replied, "One that they were time travelers in addition to space travelers. Another that they were the vanguard of an invasion, with an army of what they called Klingons. Another that they were a trade delegation and wanted to sell technology to Earth. One of the staff said that the one who offered that sounded like a used car salesman, a type of No-Maj vendor that he associated with dishonesty."

This was the break we were looking for. The next days Daily Prophet had this as the main story.

A spaceship from another planet visited Earth in 1947.

3 Extra-terrestrials were captured and escaped.

Contact thought to be accidental.

Extra-terrestrials secretly watching atomic bombs.

There were articles describing atomic bombs and their effects. Other articles gave a thorough history of the non-magical space programs up to the planned international space station.

There was an editorial.

Could we prevent spacecraft from throwing atomic bombs at us?

Then there a description of ways to try to defend against it, and a conclusion that combining non-magical space technology with magic would be best.

The ICW was called to a meeting. Supreme Mugwump Albus Dumbledore asked, "There will come a time when Earth will need to deal with aliens. Hopefully, we can do this from a position of strength and therefore peace, where alien civilizations will choose peaceful contact due to our ability to fight. When that happens, the non magical governments and the International Confederation of Wizards should speak with one voice, and there should be no possibility of alien civilizations applying divide and conquer against our planet, by appealing to one group or the other, against the other.

We will have long term discussions about whether and how to modify the Statute of Secrecy. I would like to propose putting a committee together with the goal of substantially easing that statute within the next 30 years. There will be some information about how the anticipated advances of non-magical computer and data communication technology will make the Statute less tenable over time.

Meanwhile, we can start preparing our space abilities without any such changes. Until a few years ago, there were two major non-magical governments with space capabilities, the United States of America, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also called the Soviet Union. In 1991, the Soviet Union divided into 15 different republics, with the Russian Federation keeping most of their space assets. In the course of the recent upheavals of that society, they no longer have the budget to keep employing many of their military and space scientists. Their is also a great deal of corruption and lack of attention towards safeguarding the assets of those 15 new republics.

What I am proposing is that the ICW found a research and development effort to create a hybrid of non-magical and magical abilities to create a program to be called Starfleet. The program will hire Soviet scientists and engineers. They will be well paid and treated, by their standards, and be magically bound to the program. It can also hire qualified persons in other nations.

The same operation can acquire physical assets from the former Soviet Union, and perhaps a hidden base of operation there. Magical means would hide this operation from non-magical governments until such time as they might be informed about it.

Another part of that operation would be to acquire technology that was designed, but not yet developed, in America, to create high powered beam weapons. MACUSA can acquire these technologies and scientists in a way that does not cause attention or difficulties with the American government."

The reaction to the speech, included some outrage about the possibility of ending or modifying the Statue of Secrecy, but then a generally attitude of OK, towards a secret project with recruited and magically bound non-magical personnel. By being upset at the first proposal, they sort of considered the second proposal a reasonable compromise.

The magical newspaper, The New York Ghost printed a long series on No-Mag Science Fiction and Science Fact. Describing Star Wars and the fictional technologies shown there, and then the 1980's public discussion of the Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as Star Wars, and their similarities.

The New York Ghost and the other wizarding world newspapers reported on the Starfleet project that was approved. There were also job ads for the magic side of the project. MACUSA, the wizarding government of the United States, had eased many of their restrictions on non-magical connections to wizards in 1965. Many of the job ads were specifically looking for Non-Maj raised wizards who have a good Non-Maj technical background.

In a later meeting the German representative argued successfully to expand the scope of the recruitment of scientists and acquisition of assets of the former Soviet Union. "Until a few years ago, the muggle weapons systems were dangerous, but stable. Two power blocks each afraid to fight each other, due to their frightening weapons. Now, there are weapons systems and scientists that are unemployed. At the same time, there are non-state actors that could acquire these weapons, and even use them, due to the lack of an identified base from which they would have been issued. All information would point to the former USSR.

I propose that the project to acquire space technology and weapons, also acquire any of these other assets that are not under the firm control of stable governments."

This was also agreed to.

That same meeting was discussing how to hide future space and weapons tests from non-magical detection means. The basic solution was to acquire copies of their sensors and test magical means of non-detection.

The delegation from India offered a location under the Indian Ocean, 1,200 km southwest of Kanyakumari, where ancient Indian wizards created a huge space under the ocean floor. It hadn't been used much in the last few centuries, but it contains a huge volume of space where even large scale weapons could be tested.