Lightship
Page 8
“Thank you, Commander of the Ship. I am honored to represent the Research Group at the initial Presentation of Findings for this planet.”
She took a breath and began her talk.
“The history of interstellar space travel has produced one finding of overwhelming significance. To state this finding somewhat informally, it is that the Mother of Worlds is a hard taskmistress.
“In our small region of space there are hundreds of stellar systems, many of which include planets that are habitable by some form of life. Over tens of thousands of years, it is our belief that hundreds of civilizations have been born and have died in explored space. Of these hundreds, only two now-extinct civilizations beside our own survived long enough to travel to the stars. At this time, based on hundreds of Homeworld years of exploration in our local region, we have found that we are the only starfaring civilization currently in existence. We are in fact the only surviving civilization in our region of space.
“In terms of our own survival, our historians have documented a long and troubled history in which we have navigated a narrow, hazardous path to enlightenment. Even we have struggled against our own violence, arrogance, and greed. Still, as far as we know we are the only species in local space that has managed to escape self-destruction.
“The fact of our rarity as a species and civilization leads us to one inescapable conclusion. We must always be wary of the failings of life. We have come far, but there is no guarantee that the Mother of Worlds will tolerate weakness of the soul or the intellect in the future. Too many species have failed for us to ignore the hazards of our existence. We travel a narrow path of evolution and enlightenment, a path bordered on each side by bottomless chasms. A few false steps, and our civilization, like all the others of which we are aware, will perish.”
The Chief stopped for a moment, perhaps to take a breath, perhaps to organize her thoughts. Then she began again.
“I will now begin the summary of findings with elementary facts about the planet that we are orbiting, as well as a brief overview of research theories and estimates related to technical species. I will include a few comments on Research Group methods and procedures. Many of you already know much of what I will cover in the next few minutes, but the brief introduction will provide a foundation for the presentation of findings.”
From the middle of the audience a male raised his hand. “About how long will the preliminaries take? I’m only interested in the recommendations.”
The Chief grimaced and her color changed somewhat. After all, the questioner was on her staff. She made a “what can you do?” gesture; everyone knew what she meant. Her staff was known to be the most dedicated, but also the least polite, inhabitants of the Ship. The crew as a whole, and the Chief of Research especially, made allowances. Sounds of humor came from the upper decks of the Atrium, quickly followed by a number of gestures to silence from the older members of the audience.
“I would say that the preliminaries will take approximately two standard hours.”
The questioner responded, “My gratitude,” waved, and made his way to an exit. Once he was gone, there were more sounds of humor from the audience.
The Chief of Research did not share the humor; she followed her staff member with her eyes, a look of grim resignation on her face. She looked down at her tablet on the podium and began the presentation again.
“As you may know, the parent star of this planet is a Yellow Class One based on its physical characteristics. It is a Class One due to its similarity to our own home star and the likelihood that this star’s planetary system would include Homeworld-type planets capable of supporting carbon-based life. Evidence of intelligent life has been found on the third planet of the system. As we would expect, the planet lies within the Green Zone of this star. The findings of the Research Survey to date suggest that few if any high-technology species will be found outside the Green Zones of parent stars. While there appears to be some small chance that intelligent life will someday be found on a planet outside its star’s Green Zone given the verified existence of primitive life forms in a variety of exotic locales, none have been found to date.
“The Research Group followed standard procedure, evolved over centuries of interstellar exploration as the Commonwealth has grown, to begin investigation and research on Planet Three. Although the likelihood of an intelligent species still inhabiting the planet was low, satellites cloaked to avoid detection were launched into orbit around the planet. These satellites dropped microdrones into the atmosphere to begin the development of geographical and ecosystem profiles while searching for signs of intelligent life.
“Once it was ascertained that no intelligent life form was active on the planet, the Ship was moved into near-planet orbit. Our initial landings on the planet were delayed by discovery of native microbiologicals that turned out to be deadly to our species. It took my medical teams nearly a year of research to arrive at a mitigation plan. During that time only medical resources and construction teams were allowed on the planet’s surface.
“Once our medical teams arrived at a solution to the epidemiological problem presented by the planet, Research Group teams were activated out of cold sleep, vaccinated against the native microbes, and landed to begin the next stage of investigation. At this stage, physical geographers, ecological specialists, biologists, and archeologists began in-depth research into the history of the planet and its current condition. A small number of exploration-qualified personnel from the Ship’s New World settlers were also roused from cold sleep to assist with the investigation of the planet due to the extensive remains of the extinct culture.
“The Commonwealth’s Stellar Survey has identified roughly one thousand planets within Green Zones of stars local to Homeworld, of which one hundred eighty-nine have been found to have supported civilizations at one time or another. The most important common feature of these civilizations, unfortunately, is that all are extinct. Another important feature is that until this expedition, all of the civilizations identified have been extinct for at least five thousand years. The majority of the civilizations discovered have been dead for ten thousand or more years.
“Archeological efforts by Research staff throughout our Local Region have found that, of all the civilizations we know of, ours is one of only a very few that have reached what we have come to call the Interstellar Age. We believe that only two other civilizations, both long extinct, reached a similar plateau. The other one hundred eighty-six civilizations in the area of our Local Zone, whose life spans are distributed over roughly one hundred thousand years, did not survive long enough to become starfaring.
“Of the oldest civilizations, we know little more than that they existed. We can make educated guesses as to their level of technological sophistication based on remnants of artifacts. That is about all we know of these ancient civilizations.
We have more information about more recent civilizations, but up until this expedition the best information we had concerned a civilization that disappeared over seven thousand years ago. Even for that civilization, we have little more information than population estimates, some guesses at level of technological sophistication, a reasonably good idea of the appearance and biology of the lost race and a variety of theories concerning the cause of the civilization’s demise.
“The civilization that we have discovered here, the one hundred-ninetieth identified so far, has been extinct for only a thousand years. As such our discovery is enormously important. It is likely to be the most valuable resource for understanding the collapse of civilizations that has been discovered to date. Not only is the death of the civilization fairly recent but there was relatively little damage to relics during the decline. It has been our great good luck to find what amounts to a vast treasure of information about an extinct civilization. Without such a find, we might never be able to progress past educated guesswork concerning the causes of the extinction of civilizations, as well as the causes of our own cultural uniqueness.
“We are similar enough, however, to be susceptible to some viruses found on Planet Three. You may know that this is another rather unique feature of the planet- there are diseases here that have been found to be harmful to us. This is another quite rare feature of our situation here. Our medical researchers have informed me that this is the only planet on which has been found a microbiological organism that could have been deadly in the first few months of our research and settlement efforts. We are close enough in genetic makeup to the extinct natives of this planet that we could have shared diseases.
“Fortunately, our surveyor drones were programmed centuries ago to identify potentially dangerous microbiologicals. That programming has been maintained over the decades, and now we have benefited from its presence. The dangerous diseases were identified, we were alerted to their presence, and my Group was able to assemble a team of medical researchers and epidemiologists that developed resources to counteract the new diseases and eliminate them from the planetary environment over the long run. They have also modified our species genome to make it more resistant to the new diseases. The modifications will be retrofitted into Crew and Research staff, and applied to New World settlers as they are brought out of cold sleep.
“This description is enough for the purposes of this meeting. Our primary purpose is to review the state of the planet and the likely causes of the extinction of the dominant species that resided there. I will describe our findings concerning the likely causes of the extinction, and then proceed to findings about the condition of the planet and the likelihood that it can be efficiently reclaimed for the use of our Community.
“Planet Three appears to have followed a pattern generally familiar to Stellar Survey researchers. The circumstances here appear to support some of the more complex of the current Survey theories concerning the extinction of technological species. There have been conflicting theories about primary causes, most of which have centered upon a single major event or process. We have much more detail for this planet concerning the downward path the civilization took to its ultimate demise. While there appears to be a primary cause, its secondary effects seem to be what resulted in the demise of this civilization.
“At this site, we believe that the direct causes of extinction were the result of a long-term problem. This sustained problem resulted in a number of trends of rather moderate duration, combining to create truly dire circumstances. Any one of these short-term issues may have been enough to bring down the native civilization. While the time frame might have changed depending on which factor was the most critical, the end would have been the same.
“This may be one of the major findings that contribute to the current research on civilization demise- that is, a civilization may suffer from a number of major problems, all of which contribute in some degree to decline and ultimate death. It may be that this explains the high extinction rate of civilizations- the dangers become obvious only in the latest stages of decline, and if one problem doesn’t drag a civilization down, one of the other issues facing it will. Clearly our culture has been somewhat unique in its ability to avoid or solve the many problems that face all technologically advanced species.
“The current theories about the causes of civilization decline may first be separated into two major groups- those causes that are a direct result of a civilization’s activities, and those that are inherent in the planet itself or in the planetary environment. To an extent this division is arbitrary, and some theories posit issues that are both environmental and a consequence of sentient activity.
“The clearest example of a natural cause might be a resource-poor planet that ultimately cannot sustain a civilization of any size. In this circumstance the planet may support a civilization for some period of time but in the long run even stringent resource management and conservation, practices which appear to run counter to the instincts of most civilizations, will not prove adequate to preserve a civilization, let alone permit evolution close to starfaring or even interplanetary development.
“Another less subtle natural cause, completely out of the control of a civilization, might be an asteroid impact of major proportions. A large meteorite is likely to be a devastating problem even to civilizations in advanced stages of interplanetary exploration. While small on an interplanetary scale, a large asteroid is a very massive object traveling at very high speed relative to planets in a star system. Between large mass and high speed there is quite a bit of energy- enough to do significant damage to any planet’s ecosystem. The destruction of such an object is seldom possible; even diversion is often not within the capability of even an interplanetary race.
The universe is a dangerous place, and not all causes of extinction are the result of civilization. We have seldom found, though, that natural disaster, like a major meteor strike or eruption of a large volcano, is the cause of the death of a civilization. The reality is that in the lifespan of a planet’s existence, most civilizations last only a few seconds. Hardly enough time to face the unlikely coincidence of a planet-killing natural disaster.
“Then there are the problems that a civilization brings upon itself. A variety of difficulties may be the result of a civilization’s own acts. The research on other planets has provided ample evidence that advanced species most often destroy themselves. Our work on Planet Three has lent substantial support to the idea that the root cause of civilization demise is likely to be overpopulation worsened by technological advancement. Typical symptoms appear to be such things as global warming, a rather insidious issue which may not be addressed in a timely way. Another rather stark example of civilization-induced demise might be a nuclear war resulting from competition for increasingly scarce resources. A third problem might be a combination of disease and famine, resulting from high population densities in cities and exhaustion of lands suitable to agriculture.
“The investigation we have conducted on this planet supports the idea that there are a variety of issues facing any civilization, especially a technological one, which dramatically reduces the possibility that a culture will mature and evolve to become starfaring. Here we have found a civilization that did not face significant natural barriers and was not affected by significant natural disasters. Yet the civilization was unable to overcome a number of dangerous cultural behaviors, all of which were potentially fatal. These cultural behaviors led to its ultimate demise.
“As I have said, we believe that there was a long term, primary cause of the decline on Planet Three. That problem was overpopulation. As the population increased and technology made increases more supportable in the short run, intermediate problems sprang up. Factors such as heavy use of organic compounds to generate energy (with resulting warming of the planet’s atmosphere and damage to ecosystems), mismanagement of farmable land and overutilization of natural resources in general probably led to scarcities that induced significant political tensions. These pressures ultimately led to competition for resources among subcultures, mismanagement of advanced technologies, and ultimately nuclear warfare, doing the damage that destroyed civilization on this planet.
“Population growth was a persistent problem that appears to have been unaddressed as the civilization grew and evolved. The Research Group estimates that the maximum population of the planet was between six and eight billion individuals. Such a large population might have survived for a few more centuries if stringent population control measures had been applied to stabilize growth. Left unchecked, population
growth would have completely stripped the planet of resources needed for survival.
Combined with elimination of organic fuels to control global heating, strict population control might have enabled the civilization to survive at least long enough to begin exploitation of interplanetary resources. Our simulations show that under assumptions of long-term population planning and effective management of resources, both on the planet and in the solar system as a whole, the civilization might have survived far into the future.
“Our research suggests, however, that even with a technology advanced enough to produce nuclear weapons little if any effort appears to have been committed to long-term survival issues.
Replacement of organic fuels as the primary source of energy was not effectively implemented. Our simulations indicate that under assumptions of continued use of organic fuels and uncontrolled population growth, the civilization would have collapsed in due course. We estimate that this collapse would have occurred not much more than a few hundred local years later than the actual demise, as global warming continued.
Given the state of the atmosphere and the damage already caused to lower life forms, considerable effort would have been necessary to return the planet to a viable equilibrium and avoid catastrophe. Above all, the planet’s technologically advanced species had to stabilize, and if possible reduce, its own population. Toward the end, only a massive reduction would have saved the species.
“As we found in our own culture centuries ago, local overpopulation often led to warfare. Once the problem was identified, we took steps to manage population growth, first on a regional basis, and then on a global basis on Homeworld. On this planet, global overpopulation was not addressed. This led to political conflict. That led to global nuclear war.