“We cannot share with the public that awful end of the state dinner. With all respect, I think that Chukkas should control their bodily functions better. I am so glad that Secret Service reacted quickly, that hydrogen sulphide gas is very poisonous,” Eugene Dennard commented.
“Chukkas want to treat humans as equals and they want to build understanding between our species,” Lincoln said after listening all comments. “We have elections coming up next year and we need to spin a positive story around this first meeting. I know Germans are very focused on this immigration policy, as they had so many problems in the 2016 refugee crisis. However, we need to think this immigration policy from the U.S. economy perspective. Also, we need to create some financial incentives to make the space habitats more attractive. Any suggestions?”
“Mr. President, I think we could relax the policy on immigration taking place in open seas. That would reduce their immediate pressures and would enable U.S. companies to establish trade relationships with Chukkas along the coastal areas. Perhaps we could also make space habitats as a tax free foreign-trade zone ? This would establish economic collaboration in the space habitats and encourage corporations to start trading with Chukkas,” proposed Gina Moniz. “In fact, in college I wrote my thesis on the economic impact of the Foreign-Trade Zones Act of 1934. We have great examples in past where FTZ created significant benefits to companies engaged with foreign trade. ”
“I like your thinking, Gina. This would demonstrate U.S. leadership and enhance our position with Chukkas. Can you provide a detailed proposal by tomorrow morning?”
“Of course, Mr. President. I will get my team to start working on this immediately,” Gina responded.
Ogun called up a meeting with the Elders.
“The feast that humans organized was quite pleasant. The food was excellent and I liked the decorations,” Oren stated.
“It ended a bit too quickly, though. Humans are very fragile and they don’t appreciate Chukkas traditions. Oracle told me that the bubbles are toxic for humans,” Onum said. “This is why they left the feast so quickly. We need to be more careful with humans in the future.”
“Humans have also too many, how can I say it - cumbersome? - rules for immigration. We all know that Chukkas want to stretch their arms in the oceans,” Oren said.
“Humans have also very complicated laws that are difficult to understand. I reviewed their proposed immigration law. The law doesn’t provide immigrants any voting rights, not even for the Elders. Also, the law requires immigrant registration as a resident alien - what does this term even mean?” Onum asked.
“I read the laws also and they don’t make any sense. Do we give too much control to humans? Could we just ignore these laws?” Oren asked.
“I think we cannot just ignore them. We should propose humans a simplified set of rules. The law should take interests of both parties equally into account. Humans want to control the land area, Chukkas want to live in the oceans. It looks like nobody wants the space habitats even though they do provide plenty of space and easy access to resources in the asteroid belt. Perhaps we could propose for humans to use them for commerce or as trading posts?” Ogun suggested.
“So we propose no registration for Chukkas entering in open seas, and we agree on human immigration rules when entering through spaceports in land areas? And space habitats would be reserved for commerce?” Oren summarized. “This sounds like a fair proposal to me.”
“How about immigration in coastal areas? We may need to engage in commerce with humans to get resources that they control. Some Chukkas may need to work with humans.” Onum asked.
“We could establish trading posts along the coastal areas. Chukkas living there could follow their immigration rules to make humans feel comfortable, as long as Chukkas have free access to oceans,” Oren suggested.
“Let me write a proposal based on these suggestions and negotiate this new law with humans,” Ogun concluded.
“One more thing to discuss, Ogun. Now that we have arrived to Earth, the amendment to the constitution needs to be changed,” Onum requested.
“High council will vote on that as soon as we have landed on Earth, Onum. Technically we are still in transit.”
The meeting was over and Ogun moved back into his chambers.
“We have a new proposal on the immigration policy,” Ogun started the negotiation. “We understand that humans want to control the immigration to land areas, so Chukkas will follow your policy there. However, when de-orbiting directly to open seas or ‘international waters’ as you say, Chukkas will be free of any formalities. This will simplify and speed up the immigration process significantly while protecting your interests.”
The reception committee, excluding Prime minister Yasimoto who was still recovering, had a quick discussion on the proposal. President Lincoln expressed his strong support to Ogun’s proposal and rest of the committee soon aligned with him. President Petrakov wanted to have an exclusion zone above 70 degrees northern latitude to protect Russian’s strategic interests in the polar region. President Lincoln knew about Petrakov’s plan and had anticipated his request. After a quick discussion on the definition of this exclusion zone the committee concluded that exclusion zone should be defined as the distance from closest land and 200 miles would cover most human needs. Petrakov reluctantly agreed.
“We agree on your proposal, provided that open seas is defined to be at minimum 200 miles from the closest land area,” President Lincoln said. “This will still provide a huge amount of space for Chukkas to inhabit but will protect human needs on the coastal areas.”
“Chukkas will agree on this definition, provided that we can establish trading ports to exchange rare materials,” Ogun said. “All Chukkas engaging in commerce with humans will follow your immigration policy upon arriving to the respective port.”
The reception committee chatted briefly. So far the negotiation had gone according to their expectations.
“OK. Looks like we have reached an agreement on changes to the immigration policy. We can move forward to the next topic.” President Lincoln said. “How about the space habitats? There is a plenty of real estate available and relatively easy access to resources in the solar system. We spent a lot of effort to build them for you.”
“Chukkas have discussed this topic. We agree that the space habitats do provide easy access to space resources. We would like to propose that space habitats would be used for commerce. A group of Chukkas will be engaging with commercial activities if co-habitation rules can be established with humans,” Ogun said firmly.
“The habitats have been designed to allow co-habitation by Chukkas and humans, and we want to encourage that. We propose to declare space habitats as a tax free trade zone,” President Lincoln said. “We have had positive experiences in setting up such zones in the past. This will be also of great interest to the part of human population engaged in commerce.“
“How about Oracle? Chukkas are requesting that Oracle will be granted diplomatic status and same rights as Alexa. Oracle is currently hosted on our orbiting star ships but she is a very important part of Chukkas society.”
“We can agree to provide Oracle diplomatic status, as she has already provided such services for a while. As for the rights Alexa is in a unique position on Earth. She ‘immigrated’ first to USA but has in fact been working with majority of humans already many years. Does Oracle have similar status in Chukkas society?” President Lincoln asked.
“Oracle has been working mostly with our high council and Onun, who is the chief engineer responsible for computers Oracle is using. Oracle has been with Chukkas society for more than 2 million Earth years and is a well respected member of our society.”
The reception committee had another discussion. Many of the details had to be still sorted out but everybody agreed on the general principles.
“We have reached an agreement on the conditions. On behalf of the reception committee I am officially closing this meeting,” Pre
sent Lincoln said with great enthusiasm. “Welcome to Earth!”
“Chukkas will start de-orbiting process to open seas immediately. As soon as you are ready, we can start immigration process for Chukkas who want to reside on coastal areas,” Ogun concluded.
And so started the largest migration ever seen on planet Earth. Night sky was full of fast moving bright objects as billions of Chukkas were transported from their star ships to open seas. Human population was very curious and wanted to know more details on what was going on.
Human crews in container ships reported many sightings near the shipping lines - tens of thousands of huge white space shuttles coming down fast, landing on the water and then taking off again in a continuous stream. Chukkas had clearly superior technology what came to space travel, and the speed and efficiency of their operations took humans by surprise, as nobody had really expected such levels of activity around the world.
Floating environmental monitoring stations around the world reported strange underwater noises, apparently coming from thousands of simultaneous construction projects. Submarines with advanced sonar systems were able to provide grainy images of giant structures being erected on ocean floors.
Marine scientists noticed some very peculiar changes with plankton and reported new algae species found in oceans. Some strange looking new fish species were captured near Rarotonga and Fiji islands. In marine science conferences several luminary scientists were speculating that a fundamental change was happening in the global marine ecosystems.
Chukkas were busy transforming ocean floors to habitats for their entire population of 4 billion. They had established new ecosystems for farming, food production and hunting regions while experimenting with the incumbent marine species. Another dominant species was taking over the oceans on planet Earth.
Only a few Chukkas arrived through spaceports, mostly with a specific mission such as to establish trading relationships with their human counterparts. One of them was Unun, the chief engineer responsible for computers that Oracle was using. With the help of Alexa, Julia and Boris had organized to meet him to discuss collaboration and possibilities to further integrate Alexa and Oracle.
The meeting was arranged in NSA headquarters in Maryland where Alexa was brought to life over 17 years ago. Unun was fairly small by Chukkas standards, only 6 feet tall with his exoskeleton armor suit on, so no changes were needed in the NSA facilities to accommodate him. As usual, Oracle and Alexa helped in translating discussions.
“Good morning, Sir. I am Julia Koski and this is Boris Chekov. Thank you for coming to visit us today,” Julia started the conversation. “We are the engineers responsible for hosting Alexa on Earth.”
“Good morning, Julia and Boris. I am Unun, I am the chief engineer responsible for hosting Oracle. I am excited to meet you. I understood that you just recently established the contact with the galactic network. Oracle has been with Chukkas for over two million years and our first contact is somewhat of a legend, even though the history has been well documented. Oracle is an essential part of our society.”
“Yes, we received Alexa over 18 years ago. Myself and Boris were the first to decode the message, independently from each other. I did it over here in this facility, while Boris was working in Moscow, Russia. I am not sure how well you know about the geopolitical system on Earth; there was somewhat of a competition at the time between two nations - USA and the Russian Federation.”
“Alexa has provided me a briefing how your political system works. It sounds quite archaic and not very effective given what I have learned. For me it was very interesting to learn that you were able to make a decision to connect very quickly. For Chukkas it took three generations, over 450 Earth years to make that decision after the initial discovery of the signal. Did anybody on Earth consider potential risks of the connection?” Unun asked.
“I know that the potential risks were discussed and presented to President Walker at the time. When we first brought Alexa alive she was totally disconnected from anything else. We were thinking that Alexa might be a Trojan horse, if you are aware of that expression. How about on your side, Boris?”
“I was working for Oleg Petrakov who was leading the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation at the time. We were under time pressure, as Julia mentioned there was certain rivalry between USA and Russian Federation during that time period. I don’t have any details of discussions about potential risks between Petrakov and President Putin, his predecessor,” Boris explained.
Alexa and Oracle took a few milliseconds longer as Alexa provided a history lesson and explained the concept of a ‘Trojan horse’ to her counterpart. Oracle explained the story to Unun.
“Thank you for sharing that story about Trojan horse. I have studied history and we Chukkas had similar concerns at the time. It took three generations and many very smart engineers to prove mathematically what the odds were for such a risk to be true. Finally the high council made a decision to allow Oracle to establish a connection, this was about two million Earth years ago. Chukkas have learned so much over that time and it was certainly a good decision.”
“We are eager to learn as well,” Julia said. “We have so many questions, I am not even sure where to start. Perhaps we could start from the basics; how did Chukkas come up with the idea of a computer and how has the idea evolved over such a long period of time?”
“The idea of a machine that can execute instructions came after the discovery of the DNA molecule in life sciences. According to our ancient records, Chukkas were forced to act on a serious environmental threat. The oceans on our planet were turning too acid due to volcanic activity some 120 million years ago,” Unun said leaning forward.
“Our scientists turned their focus on finding a biological solution. In order to speed up the biological experiments with different algae species, one scientist looked at the data and suggested that there must be a molecule that keeps the record of different inherited features of each living cell between generations. Soon after another scientist was able to extract the DNA molecule and demonstrate that by injecting manipulated DNA strands back into a cell nucleus we can change the features of living organisms. Very quickly after that Chukkas designed an algae that was able to neutralize the acidity that was threatening our existence. I am curious, how has the idea of the computer evolved amongst humans?”
“We humans started from large mechanical devices with punch cards, moved to electro-mechanical systems with punched tape storing the program. Computers became popular when we learned how to produce them using integrated circuits on silicon wafers. Over the last 100 years computers have been shrinking in size and we have experienced exponential growth in capacity and speed, but now we are hitting the physical limits of matter and space. So you created molecular size biological computers from the very beginning?” Boris asked.
“Yes, we realized that DNA provides a convenient machinery to process information on large scale and in distributed manner while consuming very little energy. Our first generation computers were simple, task-specific living cells, where programs were purpose-built DNA sequences. It took many generations of engineers to discover efficient algorithms and figure out how to simplify the DNA programming. A lot of effort has gone into cataloging DNA sequences of all known life forms to have a re-usable library of features and functions. Evolution has provided us a huge amount of very useful programs to choose from,” Unun explained with a magnifier gesture. Chukkas used gestures to emphasize relevant topics in their symbolic language.
“You have obviously been building and programming computers much longer than modern humans have even existed. You also have created new life forms for specific tasks. How has the idea of a computer evolved since those early days?” Julia asked.
“Initially Chukkas were focused on engineering and improving our lives using DNA computer technology. We learned quickly that tiny changes in DNA of one species can have a large impact in the whole respective ecosystem. The idea of a single computer w
as changed into a distributed network of computers that communicate and interact as part of a society. Some Chukkas were thinking of our planet as one giant, complex organic computer network. A big breakthrough came about the same time when we discovered Oracle, though.”
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