Chapter 51:
[2026 Vulcan visit to Sol]
At the end of 2026 the Vulcans had a stable government and governing philosophy not that different than the one seen towards the end of the Enterprise series.
Andorian intelligence briefed us as to what the Vulcans were deliberating about.
"Logically any previous plans to lead our neighbors by keeping them dependent on our technology and protection is no longer viable."
"We still have a significant technology advantage that took us centuries to achieve. However trends indicate an average guess of 34.8 Earth years for the Alliance to reach the equivalent level."
"An Orion led area would not be a favorable outcome. There is a viable hypothesis that the while the Alliance thinks that they are influencing the Orions, in fact the opposite is occurring."
"If we joined the Alliance, there would be an immediate shift in power with the Orions becoming the lesser partner that the Alliance believes them to already be."
"Vulcan society would likely change with the assimilation of Earth knowledge of magic. It is unknown what the Vulcan population's magical potential is. Our guiding philosophy is to use the abilities that Vulcans have. This belief has evolved from our earlier understanding before the reintroduction of Surak's works, when we thought that such practices were to be avoided. We recommend if we were to assimilate magical knowledge, and had magical ability, to carefully manage that process to keep Surak's ideals."
"The Alliance has the traits of appearing war-like, while having never engaged in wars. Perhaps their engagement with the Orions shows a way to preserve peace, while not insisting on orderly behavior on the part of others. In fact their approach has been more successful than our approach has been with the Klingons, or earlier with the Andorians."
The Vulcans sent a delegation to meet with the Alliance.
T'Vol was the leader of a faction that had earlier tried to recreate the true teachings of Surak. She rose by consensus to be the top Vulcan High Council leader. As in Canon, that council replaced the Vulcan High Command.
T'Vol asked "How are Alliance decisions made?"
Tellarite leader Zhullus said, "Khan and Lucius take the lead. The group operates by consensus. We each have full knowledge."
Khan said, "We will provide the secret information to two of you. You will be able to make decisions based on what you'll learn, but not be able to reveal it, even indirectly."
The Vulcan leader T'Vol and Vulcan external relations director Solk joined the secret and remained in the discussion, all other Vulcans went elsewhere.
The two Vulcans were shown several hours of video related to Q.
T'Vol asked "So the motivating factor of Alliance decisions is to follow Q's directives?"
I answered, "In a sense yes. Q has created this timeline, based on other timelines, and has a goal for how I will help the Human species to evolve. In a later response to the Andorian Bynil, Q said that the evolution he is looking for is possible for far future Andorians, perhaps after genetic engineering."
T'Vol asked "Would Vulcans even want this type of evolution and would Vulcans be suitable for Q's goal?"
Q popped in and said, "Perhaps not. There is an emotional component to the qualities that a Q needs. Conversely Vulcans have a potential for very volatile emotions if they were to lose control over them, which would also be unsuitable for Q membership.
Like I told Mr. Andorian, one's background, including genetic engineering would not be held against one if they qualify for the Q. Even so, Vulcans should be satisfied with their potential and not try to force that development where it does not fit. It is not a reward to join the Q, nor a way to gain something. No-one with that sort of thinking would be accepted.
Vulcans have a significant future evolution if things proceed well for them. They have a path that they would find logical"
T'Vol asked, "Would you advise Vulcan to join the Alliance?"
Q said, "It would present endless amusement to have your point of view as a foil to the rest of the Alliance. This collection gets along too well and agrees on almost everything, which I find boring."
Q then disappeared.
Daphne said, "There you have it. Vulcans can be our foil, taking the role of disagreeing, which I note that the Tellarites sadly did not fill."
The Tellarite leader Zhullus started laughing uncontrollably.
Hermione said, "I am fairly certain that there are instances in Canon of Vulcans demonstrating humor."
Solk asked, "What is the logical purpose of humor?"
Daphne said, "I studied this one. Humor actually helps with logic, by bringing in disparate logical conclusions and then having a laughter reaction at finding that they result in an absurdity. That reaction helps us to learn about faults of our logical understandings.
That is just one category of humor. Humor also helps with social cohesion, sharing jokes and things to laugh about it. Sometimes that is done in a hostile manner about those not in the in-group, finding others to be absurd."
T'Vol said, "If we join this group, we shall study engaging in humor. We would want to, as you would say, fit in better. I have observed however, that your species can use humor as a method of hostility to so-called haze newcomers to groups. I do not believe that would be an efficient manner of interaction."
Khan said, "Getting back to the Alliance. It is not a voting society. Nevertheless we try to get full agreement when making decisions. I will preemptively address one concern you may have. We do not allow the starting of wars without agreement. That should not be considered as a veto to be used reflexively. When we encounter the Romulans, we will endeavor to find a peaceful way to interact with them. However, as soon as we conclude that war will inevitably occur, we might decide to strike without waiting for sufficient cause. Do not join if you cannot agree to that."
T'Vol answered, "Our philosophy would allow that. I can find examples in Canon where Spock considering himself to be following the philosophy of Surak advocated fighting Romulans. I have observed that the Alliance has actually been more successful in avoiding wars, while claiming to be warlike, than Vulcan has, while claiming to be peaceful."
Khan said, "It is a big step to be joining the Alliance. We have a full exchange of technology and knowledge, including magic. We build the same ships, we cooperate in colonization ventures. We are also driven to expand and rapidly increase our technology. We know that there are filters that civilizations will need to get through for long term survival. The nearby empires, yes, but beyond that the Borg.
I would also like to clarify another aspect of Q's direction. He has never asked us to do something against what we already would agree with.
I'll show you Lucius' memory of Q's original instruction for him when he merged his memories with Canon. He added a directive that he should use as the basis of decision making, the qualities of cunning, ambition, resourcefulness, leadership, and caution. Lucius intervened with my original plans to rule Earth to make use of these qualities. In Canon, me and all Human magicals would have been defeated and mostly eliminated in wars, mostly due to me not being cautious enough.
In summary, Q is asking us use these traits, which many of us normally use, as a sort of experiment, not as the most efficient means for a goal. He indicated that there was another timeline he created, where he asked for interest in knowledge to be the guiding trait.
So, you should also consider these constraints as your decide whether to join the Alliance."
After viewing additional memories of interactions with Q, T'Vol said, "I will return to the Vulcan council and recommend joining the Alliance. My arguments will be limited by my lack of ability to discuss Q and the secret parts of Canon."
Khan answered, "We very much look forward to Vulcan membership."
T'Vol said, "I suppose I need to learn about those houses at the school, Hogwarts, to understand Q's references."
Hermione silently handed T'Vol a thick book entitled, "Hogwarts: a History."
T'Vol said, "Thank you. I'll also need to reflect on the idea that Q is running an experiment, not just aiming for the most logical way to achieve a goal."
[Throughout the Alliance, 2026]
The various colonies had populations from all of the Alliance members. The Denobulans only went as short-term visitors and residents, preferring to live long term on their home planet. They did however build genetic engineering centers to help couples of different species have viable children. There were now many infant hybrids.
Some of the planets and moons started to develop their own culture, not a direct copy of any of the home planet's cultures. Berengaria 7 had a unique culture of dragon enthusiasts. There were native dragons over 200 meters long who breathed fire. Some dragon handlers learned how to convince the dragons to give people rides.
Draylax and Lorillia were still starting to build starship factories. They had a lot of technology to assimilate from the Alliance. Pyrithia formally joined, with the Alliance stationing five NX startships there until they can start building their own. They were a little too far from any other part of the Alliance for rapid reaction fleets to reach them in any reasonable time, being limited to warp 4.1.
The Aenar from Andoria established a village in Tibet, learning from the Tibetan magicals who lived there and also in India.
The Axanar indicated that they would wait for the Vulcans to join the Alliance before they would.
Subspace repeaters were setup everywhere in the Alliance area. Various methods were used to increase bandwidth, and internet gateways were setup for a combined internet. The bandwidth was still not sufficient for a true Alliance internet. Ships actually carried data storage to bring video and other data that didn't get prioritized enough to use the gateways.
It was noted that in Canon that voice and video communication over subspace seemed to be limited in quantity. It looked roughly equivalent to the use of international telephone connections in the mid-20th century.
Cargo ships traveled throughout the region since piracy almost never occurred. The Nausicaans were warned of severe reprisals if any piracy would occur from any of them, authorized or not by their government. They were also in talks with the Alliance to be hired as infantry and security personnel. There was a possibility of them joining the Alliance at some point.
Each member of the Alliance were seeing their societies rapidly changing with new technologies, foods, music, building methods and styles, being adopted from elsewhere in the Alliance. Some members liked to move around to different planets, either short term or long term. Some made a living by buying a private warp capable ship and trading, taking on passengers, introducing cultures from different worlds to each other, usually faster than the limited internet could introduce new trends.
Speculative mining was another popular business. They would pay for a claim and see if they could mine something with commercial value. Often claims were rented or sold for a small fee plus a percentage of what was mined.
Spell casters were in extreme demand everywhere. Besides Human magicals, the Aenar were now producing anything they regarded as being completely peaceful.
[Research into magic]
There was a fairly large effort, for a secret project. Dr. Soong, Dr. Flox, a group of other Denobulan genetic researchers, other genetic researchers mostly from Earth, Andoria, Tellar, and finally magical experts on Earth.
The co-leaders of the project, Dr. Soong and Dr. Flox presented the status of the project.
Dr. Soong started. "It is a more complex question than I had initially thought. Our working assumption is that a large number of genes need to be present together, and not other collections of genes that would counter-act them, in order to have magical ability.
Genetic engineering experiments take years before magic might be seen, and many years before concluding that magic would not be seen. The children all are in homes where they are very much wanted, whether they turn out to be magical or not."
Dr. Flox said, "While our groups work together, mine specializes in non-Human magic, while Adam Soong's specializes in Human.
For Andorians the emphasis is on adding Aenar genes. We are sensitive to the requirements of the Aenar who participate in this project. We also expect eventually to introduce Human magical genes to Andorians, who have a greater magical ability than Aenar, except in a few areas such as seeing the future. I have to say that I am personally looking forward to being able to work with Vulcans, when that might be possible.
For Denobulans and Tellarites and the newer members of the Alliance there is the need to add many human magical genes. All the experiments are with hybrid Humans. We think that over time we will be able to further isolate a set of genes that would work fully within their species."
Dr. Soong said, "Now I will get into some technical detail. One key factor of success in the genome is the enhancer element at a chromatin point. That and its interaction with the transcriptional apparatus can determine whether a particular so called magic gene is expressed or not.
You can easily see from observing Humans that magic is neither a dominant nor a recessive trait, but far more complex. That has led Human magicals, untrained in scientific methods, to conclude that magic itself decides who is born with magic. Some also conclude that those born to two spell casting parents, but do not have that ability themselves, somehow had their magic stolen from them, perhaps by those who were born with the ability but with neither parent having it. We have disproven that belief.
Does magic itself influence the expression of this apparatus that leads to magical ability? That would be the most likely mechanism if it were true. We have not disproven that belief, but found no supporting evidence after extensive analysis of those born with and without magical ability.
Our research has also branched into that of magical strength, which can vary quite a bit. Again, we find complex genetic factors, and some environmental. Your English super-villain, Tom Riddle Jr., had a non-magical father and a mother with a fairly weak magical ability. We believe that his mother had magical ability suppressed due to a harsh upbringing. We note that is not typical. We analyzed everyone in this room with magic. Harry Potter had a harsh upbringing but has considerable magical strength. His mother had non-magical parents, and yet was one of the most powerful of her generation.
Essentially this project will also try to determine how to increase magical strength, and also how the traits of what is called family magic work."
Khan said, "Thank you for the updates. Let me know of any resources you need. In addition, you should prepare for the possibility of Vulcan participation soon. I do not know to what extent they'll want genetic modification of Vulcans, but they will need to agree to you testing Vulcans for magical ability and analyzing their genomes, when and if they join the Alliance, which might be soon."