Darkworld: Earth

15.

Diego awoke feeling more rested than he had since he’d left Earth’s orbit months ago. He stretched, feeling some of his vertebrae pop, and looked around at the strange room that he found himself in.

It was brightly colored in scarlet, blues and violet colors. He knew from Eolai’s discussion on the matter that it was as close to a stateroom as the nameless ship possessed, and it was far more luxurious than his cramped quarters aboard the Seeker of New Discoveries. He hadn’t complained much about the living situation he’d been forced to accept to be one of the crew members on one of the first interstellar exploratory missions of mankind, but the fact that he hadn’t complained didn’t mean that he enjoyed it.

Except, he reflected, apparently the Seeker wasn’t as special as they had thought. Humanity had been in the stars since the time that cavemen had been hunting mammoths. He was still digesting that news, uncertain whether or not he was willing to believe it.

He went to the bathroom, then dressed and finally put on the device that let him speak with Bob, the Seeker , and which also apparently did something like an fMRI of his brain in real time. At least that was what he thought Bob had requested permission for the day before.

“Bob, you there?” Diego asked.

“I am. How may I assist you Diego?”

“Can you contact the Seeker for me? I need to give them a report.”

“I am hailing them now on your mission frequency. Hold please.”

Diego waited, and after a moment he heard “Diego this is Radio, come in Diego.”

Diego grinned. It was a different voice manning the radio, but he’d expected as much. “I hear you Radio. Just filing a report. I have had a restful night’s sleep in the Yonohoan stateroom. I feel refreshed and am currently unharmed and under no duress. I have detected no attempts to injure, infest, or impregnate me with alien spores or other lifeforms. The gum that Eolai gave me seems to cure morning breath, which is neat. Per the plan from last night, I expect to meet with Eolai shortly and undergo another medical exam to insure that I have not picked up any infection, after which we will make attempts at cultural exchange. Does the captain have any new instructions for me at this time?”

“Your report has been recorded, Diego. The word of the day is Pink.”

“I’ll keep an eye out for flamingos.”

“The captain instructs you to maintain an open dialogue with Eolai, the representative of the Yonohoan and Sullivan people. She reminds you that the exact location of Earth is at this time considered a classified secret, as are its specific military and strategic assets. The priority of your mission at present is building trust with the Yonohoans, as well as exchanging information and culture. She says to use your best judgment, but notes that the Yonohoans appear to have been open and honest with us so far. We are extending them a significant amount of trust and hope that they will reciprocate, but the security of Planet Earth comes before all other considerations.”

“Understood. Diego out.”

“ Seeker out.”

“What’s for breakfast, Bob?” Diego asked, walking around the room to help him wake up.

“Eolai has selected several dishes for you to try which should be compatible with your biology based upon the medical exams that you have consented to so far,” Bob answered.

“Great. Do Yonohoans have coffee? I could use a cuppa,” Diego said.

“Please define coffee, and ‘cuppa.’”

“Cuppa just means cup of coffee. Coffee is a beverage, usually served hot. Um, it’s black, and it contains caffeine, which is substance which promotes wakefulness?” Diego said.

“That does not sound like a beverage that I am immediately familiar with,” Bob answered. “There are a great many hot beverages which you may choose from, many of which could be colored black and dosed with a minor stimulant. If I could get a sample of this beverage I would likely be able to recreate it very accurately.”

“Damn,” Diego complained, “I don’t think that the shuttle has any coffee grounds on it. Just Turkey Butthole Surprise and other MRE goodness.”

“You are not required to eat the food Eolai serves you, Diego. If you would prefer to eat turkey buttholes that is your right,” Bob said.

“Are you being cheeky, Bob?”

“Perhaps I am. Is that a problem?” Bob inquired.

“Just don’t go skynet on me and we’ll get along fine,” Diego assured him.

“Define skynet and I will attempt to resist the impulse from doing it.”

“I think I’m going to pass on that request. Is Eolai awake? I’m hungry.”

“I have alerted Eolai that you are awake and seeking sustenance. He will arrive shortly,” Bob answered.

The door opened a moment later to admit Eolai, who was dressed the same as the day before and smiling broadly. “How was your rest, Sergient Cruz?” he asked.

“Restful,” Diego answered. “It’s easy to forget what it’s like having gravity to keep you in place instead of needing to chain yourself in place to keep from floating around and bumping your head on the ceiling.”

“Curious, is that how things are done aboard the Seeker of New Discoveries ?” Eolai inquired, leading him out of the stateroom and back towards the dining area, where a number of covered dishes were waiting for them.

“It’s better than it was aboard the international space station. Way more privacy and room to move around. That’s largely because we had so many scientific instruments to put into the ship, and some of them had standoff distances from other instruments or the reactors, so we ended up with a lot of empty space,” Diego commented. “The eggheads could probably tell you more. I’m more of a practical guy than a theoretical one. Say, something smells good!”

“Your peoples early spacecraft were smaller than the Seeker , then?” Eolai asked, pulling the covers off of the trays to reveal the steaming platters of something that looked a bit like chopped okra, except that it was blue. “This is likely what you are smelling.”

It smelled like ambrosia, however, and Diego eagerly took a seat to start eating. It tasted like bacon had a baby with a cantaloupe. Strange, but pleasant.

“There were some people who jokingly called the Seeker project Deathstar while it was being built. You see, there’s this really old story back from when we were first building rockets to leave our atmosphere …”

Eolai listened attentively, noting the way that Diego was able to easily eat with one portion of his mind and continue speaking with the other. It wasn’t the best table manners, but almost all of Eolai’s attention was focused on absorbing the plot of one of Diego’s peoples cultural icons of fictional entertainment.

“And so then, despite turning off the targeting computer, he was able to use the force to fire the proton torpedo into the vent and destroy the Deathstar,” Diego concluded. “And that’s about where the first movie ended.”

“I would love to enjoy that story in its original medium,” Eolai admitted. “To try to imagine what it would be like to consume that sort of story from the eyes of a darkworlder unaware of the truths of the universe.”

“Yeah? You understand that it’s entirely fictional, right? Like I said it’s the product of someone’s imagination that was produced around the same time we were first sending missions to our planet’s moon.”

“The context of its origin only increases its cultural value, Diego. Do your people have many stories like that?”

“Well, yeah, we do,” Diego said.

“You should alert your captain that the most important resources your world possesses are not its gold, or its uranium, nor its water or its oxygen,” Eolai said. “It is your planet’s culture. Do you know why it is that darkworlds are allowed to remain dark? Why those of us who are connected to the interstellar infonets do not put forth more effort in order to convince them to join us?”

“Well, I thought it was because you don’t know where they are,” Diego said.

“That is the case for your world. If we knew where your world was, we would have long ago made contact with your people and taken steps to assure you were well cared for. But there are many worlds where humans have chosen to isolate themselves from the universe, withdrawing into one solitary biosphere. They do not do so to escape war or hardship. In fact, they often find that upon the surface of a darkworld once they turn their back on the technology which brought them there. But yet we of the universe at large do not intervene. Why would we allow such a thing to happen?”

Diego thought for a minute, chewing the okra-like tuber that tasted juicy and savory. “I guess if it’s their choice to be left alone, then it would be pretty rude to spy on them or force technology on them that they don’t want,” he supplied.

“There is that to consider, yes. But humanity at large supports the isolation of darkworlds and views Darkworlders as a very valuable resource. Not for the pre-scarcity reasons which you might be imagining like labor or materials. Darkworlders, in their isolation, produce something which cannot be found anywhere else in the universe except on Darkworlds. Do you know what that is?” Eolai asked.

Diego chewed as he thought. “Nope, can’t say that I can guess.”

“Culture. New ideas and perspectives that are uniquely and entirely human. And proof that we belong to be seated among the other masters of the universe,” Eolai explained.

“How does living in a deliberately primitive world prove that we are the masters of the universe?” Diego asked.

“Do you know how many times most species have discovered faster than light travel on their own, without any assistance from outside sources?” Eolai inquired.

“How would I know that?” Diego asked. “Until a few days ago I thought Earth might be the only planet with life on it in the universe.”

“And as quaint as that belief is, you have accomplished something which many of the master races failed to do,” Eolai said.

Diego blinked. “Wait, what?”

“Leave the planet that you were born on using only your own technology. Most species which colonize their star system do so without FTL. Those who colonize their star’s nearby siblings often do so using ships incapable of FTL. Eventually they were typically found by one of the routine scanning devices of the various empires and brought into the fold. They are given the technology that the ancients have passed down dogmatically for billions of years. Or at least, this is how things were before one hundred thousand years ago,” Eolai explained.

“Before the Liberation Wars?”

“Before humanity,” Eolai said. “You see, one of our first actions during the war was to destroy the greatest of the infonets to prevent it from being used against us any further. For many of the other races, this was known as the beginning of the universe’s great dark age.”

He paused.

“Some say that the dark age has not ended yet. They say that until all of the empires are reunited into one monolithic entity that the universe remains fractured. Others say, however, that life is better for everyone compared to what it was before humanity. Perhaps we are in a dark age, but we are also at peace. That is something that the previous monolith never managed to achieve in all of its billion year history. Before there was only expansion, integration, and subjugation. There was no innovation. There was one network. There were three methods of FTL travel. And that was all that was shared with the lesser races. The emperor races had more knowledge that they withheld, but all of that was lost when we destroyed their network.

“It was not just the humans who were liberated during the liberation wars, Diego. Many races still hate us for destroying the unified infonet. They hate us for destroying the ancient shipyards and confining everyone to the rock upon which they stood. However, the Swarm Lords were steadfast in their pursuit of the old technology which had been used against us. They did not stop, and some say that they will not stop even now, until it is all wiped from the face of this universe. And so trade in this universe ground to a stop. No new worlds were colonized. People lived and died on the planet where they were born for centuries,” Eolai said, his eyes bright with fervor and pride.

“Until the human darkworlds began to bring the light of civilization back into the universe.”

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