Journal of an Alien Diplomat - Part 2
Journal of an Alien Diplomat - Part 2
Entry Eleven
Disaster! One of the probes that the humans use to drag the ores they extract from their asteroid belts slammed into our ship today! Our forcefields held, but the drone was wrecked beyond repair, and the asteroid deflected towards Earth! It now moves only a few times faster than the speed of sound, leisurely by space travel standards, but it is colossal. It will depopulate the part of the planet it hits, surely. I am told that the probes and ore-haulers use a computer guidance system to slip into Earth orbital slots with their payloads, where the ores are removed by the pace and need that the human construction schedule dictates. If we had not been in the path of these probes, this would have never happened! The humans provided us with a copy of the ore haulers’ schedules to avoid just such a calamity! How did this happen?! What will happen to Earth?!
Entry Twelve
We have come to a conclusion. The crew and diplomatic staff have decided that we will divert the asteroid into the Earth’s sun, using our own ship to provide the stopping mechanism. Our fields are not recharged; the impact will kill us.
We are not committing lightly, fully half the crew said that we should abandon the humans to their fate and continue on negotiating, some of the rest said that we should do all that we can without destroying ourselves, but I and the Ambassador disagree. We did this. Our misgivings about their technological level aside, the humans should not be driven to near-extinction by their own first contact
Bizarrely enough, all is well. The asteroid nearly hit the planet when the humans took matters into their own hands. We had maneuvered our ship into the path of the asteroid, ready to deflect the massive thing with our own ship, if need be. We did this. This was our fault. Except, the human diplomats were frantic, demanding that we move the ship at once. We were baffled. We were offering to solve the problem we had caused, so why were the humans demanding that we did not? They beseeched us to move, to let the asteroid move along its own path, directly towards the planet, saying that we did not deserve to suffer, to bear the brunt of this calamity.
Finally, we gave in, and moved out of the course of the asteroid. We were watching what we thought would be the end of the Earth below…but we were wrong. A blast appeared near the asteroid, and we realized what was happening: the humans had detonated a nuclear device in the asteroid’s path to divert it. Not destroy it, no, but divert it. A few dozen of their own drone craft slammed into the side of the asteroid which had just been hit by the bomb, propelling it into near-Earth orbit.
The human ambassador actually took me aside and explained that they had a contingency set aside for just such a catastrophe, dating back to when they had first created the mining drone and ore hauler network. He told me that the technology they had first employed to create the interplanetary ore haulers had originally been far more primitive, and unable to precisely calculate the appropriate course and speed to get the asteroids safely back to Earth.
The Asteroid Diversion weapons and drones had been created to reduce any risk. In total shock, I asked why they had done this, and almost as importantly, why they had been willing to risk such a mining venture if they knew such a potential problem existed. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” he replied.
Entry Thirteen
Fifty days have passed since the asteroid incident, and the human’s reaction has been alarming. Civilian populations – and not a few military – across the system are clamoring for attention, some demanding that the human diplomats apologize for what “they” have done – as if the humans caused this! – others demanding that we suffer for this transgression, others yet launching into wild speculation. Above it all, the human ambassador has changed the tack of these negotiations completely. Now, all he seems to ask about is the justice systems of the galaxy, where before he has inquired about everything from laws restricting invasive plant species in agriculture to FTL drives to the origins of our linguistic colloquialisms.
When asked what his official stance about the asteroid incident will be, by other members of his own species who are not part of his delegation, he replies cryptically. “Patience is a virtue.” “Never close doors you can not open.” “Invite no conflict where none exists.” “Yellow is most flavorful.” I have no idea what the last one means. Perhaps our translators are not as capable of translating euphemisms as we thought.
Regarding the possession of the nuclear devices they employed to divert the asteroid, he has hastened – quite uninvited – to assure us that it has been over a century and half since any nuclear device was used in war. This assuages my fears somewhat, especially since we discreetly scanned the complex on the planet’s surface that launched the “nuke” and found that even the most powerful of these devices is little more than six times the effective power of the ones they employed: strong enough to damage our fields, surely, but nowhere near enough to destroy us outright. But I should not be thinking of these potential new friends as potential new enemies, as he himself says.
Entry Fourteen
Again, I am amazed by the humans’ ability to ignore trouble. It is now two hundred fifty days after first contact, and the human media has actually greatly reduced their mention of us, and the asteroid incident. They are now beginning to return to what I am told (with vast disgust, interestingly) by the human ambassador is the norm for their media: music, banal daily news, and what I think may be some form of medical treatment, aimed at those who suffer reproductive isolation.
The fact that, in less than a year, the human species has been exposed to alien life and nearly been wiped out by the carelessness of said life seems to have been absorbed by the population with a genuinely amazing degree of blasé acceptance. I understand we will be going on a tour of Earth itself, tomorrow, though in full body-suits, naturally. We will have to be. Their atmosphere is breathable, of course, but their sun is so much more radioactive than ours in the spectra of ultraviolet and radio that to not wear suits would be downright stupid.
Entry Fifteen
What in the world are these humans doing without their own FTL drives?! I returned from a ten-day tour of their homeworld today, and I can say with certainty that I have never been more unnerved. These humans possess, I knew, massive space stations, tightly packed with their own, and their non-Earth colonies were barely at the level where abundant food could be harvested. I had made, naturally, the same assumption that the Ambassador did when we saw these places: that these were criminals being made to suffer, or volunteers who chose to live in these awful conditions because they had literally no choice, or the infirm and weak, who could be sheltered in a completely artificial environment because their homeworld was too harsh for them in some way.
What I discovered is that Earth is, if anything, nearly as badly overpopulated in its capitals and trade hubs as it is in their colonies and space stations! I saw towers of apartments, some with over two thousand people living in them, stacked so close together they looked like rows of molecules in a crystal, and the people there seemed as if this was the norm! The leaders and visionaries and great speakers of humanity spoke and feted and recited prepared lines, but I heard none of it.
These people are not a people in true squalor, not really, certainly not by their own standards, but I hear tell of truly shocking slums in the cities of the poorer continents. It seems a disparity of wealth and power exists here, and I am unnerved deeply. A population this large achieving the great works of their peoples, like the ore haulers and orbital platforms, is not impossible…but only a tiny fraction of their people are wealthy enough to have done it. A small percentage… without FTL.
Thanks to u/Prohibitorum for original transcription. Original Image
