Federation: Federation Trilogy, #1

Federation

Federation Trilogy Book One

Tony Harmsworth

I dedicate this trilogy to Frank Hampson, whose artwork and storylines in the Eagle, inspired my lifelong interest in science fiction

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Details can be found at the end of FEDERATION.

Introduction

This introduction is extremely relevant to the story which I am about to tell and the readers about to read it. There was no introduction to the original book but I began to get a series of one star reviews which accused me of being an atheist, anti-American, an ecological snowflake and a communist.

Only the first of those is true. I admit that once I escaped childhood religious indoctrination, at about sixteen years of age, I rapidly thought through all the lies I had been fed and gradually became an atheist. I try not to let it influence my writing but having now read both the Quran and the Bible, what I have learned inevitably comes across in some of my stories. As everyone who is not an atheist, believes in some sort of God or spiritual world – they should be able to forgive or pity me, but that does not appear to be the case as I have received hateful emails. It reminds me of a line in a famous sixties’ pop song called Eve of Destruction - ‘Hate your next door neighbour, but don’t forget to say grace!’ Don’t worry, though, I forgive them and hope their delusions will not harm others. In case you struggle with the British sense of humour, that was intended to be irony.

I am not anti-American, but I do have issues with the gun culture and a political system which can occasionally cause a popular president to be unable to get the plan upon which he was elected through the House and Congress. Like many people, I didn’t find number forty-five to be honest or trustworthy. Some say that President Spence, in this story is based on him. That is most certainly not the case, but you might find similarities between the Donald and the later President Slimbridge. I admit to him sharing some of forty-five’s faults. In general, however, I do like most aspects of America and have many friends who live on the far side of the Atlantic.

As for being an ecological snowflake, I follow the science, seeking out and reading a wide variety of scientific documents which reveal humankind’s influence on the environment. I am also seeing the actual effects of global warming on the place where I have lived forty-three years of my life. It seems to me that manmade global warming is not theory, but fact and this will be demonstrated to everyone in the decade we have just begun. I worry for our world if it does not see the light and take action.

Am I a communist? Not at all. My politics tend to be slightly left of centre – the left of Blair and Brown – but not the far left policies of Foot and Corbyn, nor communism, which never appealed. I do believe those of us in this world who are better-off, should help the disabled, disadvantaged and downtrodden. Where people are born should not mean that they have no prospects for a better future. I know that, in the USA, these views are sometimes seen as socialist and, some hate socialism almost as much as communism. Yet, in 2021, we have all seen the USA passing generous aid packages to those who have been made unemployed owing to coronavirus – that is socialism. In my country, Scotland, socialism has worked extremely well and that is also the case in the rest of Europe. If you cannot see the difference between socialism and communism, then it might be better if you do not read this trilogy.

Let me end this introduction by inviting you to now read my work of fiction. It is based upon automatons which are so advanced that they can perform any function and carry out any task. During your lifetime, whatever job you do or did, these automatons would replace you. No exceptions. My story is based on that principle. Imagine they took all of our jobs, throwing every single one of us into unemployment, except, of course, the owners of the great robot manufacturing conglomerates who created this future mechanical workforce. They will live lives of unadulterated luxury, but the chance of any person joining them is shut off – they have created a monopoly, the like of which will never have been seen before. The unemployed must starve or survive on some sort of government hand-outs. Can you imagine that scenario? If so, you will soon understand my Federation Trilogy and might even want to give a review which carries more than one star.

Tony Harmsworth; 20th May 2021

[Note for non-British readers – Tony writes using UK English spelling, punctuation, and grammar.]

[For the avoidance of doubt,  the story starts here.]

1 Thanks

FEDERATION by Rummy Blin Breganin

Thanks to:

Ambassador Hareen Trestogeen’s Family Files; The Central Galactic Library; The Orion Spur Archives; Estraine Gorachy (my tutor); Belarin Tlim Fleradoran (translator) and, of course, The Frame.

While the book has been written in Galactic Standard language, many sections have required translation, particularly material from the working notes of the ambassadorial team during their meetings with the people of Earth. This is the English version.

I’ve registered this work with the central registry and acknowledge that I’m using other registered work as part of the book. Mostly this is with permission of the families, but there’s also material for which I have no permission. That material is used under the rule of fair criticism.

Rummy Blin Breganin has asserted his moral rights.

First Published: GSY(new era) 745,822 New Era

Category: Modern History

Sub-category: Earth

Style: Dramatised non-fiction

Dedicated to: Perfect Okafor and Jack Spence, for reasons which will not become clear until the Trilogy is complete.

Glossary: See https://harmsworth.net/glossary.pdf

2 The Author

The author is Rummy Blin Breganin. He’s a Daragnen and was born in 745,783 in the city of Glas.

He was schooled in Glas to age fourteen when he was invited to Dinbelay University. A brilliant student, he left Dinbelay in 745,804 with multiple qualifications and five published works to his name.

His interest in the events which led to Earth’s notorious attempt to join the Federation began after a visit to the Orion spur of the galaxy.

Now aged thirty-nine, his work is recognised as of galactic importance, particularly this recently updated account of Earth’s interaction with the Federation. His three-volume work provides a fascinating insight into a species which exhibits an extremely high level of intelligence yet failed to meet the Federation’s membership criteria.

In addition to studying, writing, and historical research, Rummy enjoys shossball, boarding, sailing, and dimplert.

Today, the author lives in Dinbelay, where he’s a professor of modern galactic history at the university. He has a wife and two teenage children.

3 Forward

When I began my tour of the Orion galactic arm, there were the usual must-see attractions including the palaces of Tirrell and the argoshalt herds of Doranel. There were also lesser-known places of natural beauty. The golden rings of Trastel 3 and two unusual features in the system of Sol: the amazing red spot storm on its fifth planet and the phenomenal reappearing hexagon of the sixth. I was unlucky with the latter on my arrival but witnessed it during a later visit. How can such a geometric shape appear in nature? Apparently, it’s caused by the interaction of the jet streams in the clouds, but it looks, for all the world, like something nature could never have had a hand in.

During my visit to Sol, I stayed in the outpost on the fourth planet; a dry, dead world known locally as Mars. It was cold, had no atmosphere, and no obvious attractions other than a very long, deep canyon. Why the Federation had a settlement here was a mystery to me until, one night, after too much beer and a successful game of dimplert in Bar Maximus, I got a ship’s first mate, a Vestal, to open up to me.

He told me the beautiful third planet, known as Earth was being watched, to ensure it wasn’t infringing any of the Federation’s prohibitions.

I’d never heard of Earth or, for that matter, of the Federation prohibiting against any world. Prohibiting what? I was immediately intrigued. What were we stopping them from doing?

I probed for additional information, but I think he’d already divulged more details than were strictly allowed. No one else in the bar would talk about Earth at all, so I could get no confirmation or denial of the first mate’s claim. I resolved to hunt him down the next day.

Late morning, I managed to find the Vestal, but he refused, point blank, to say more once he’d sobered up. I went to the local spaceport and asked a freighter operator if I could get a ship to Earth and was looked at as if I were insane. The answer was no. It was illegal.

Trying a different tack, I asked if I could get a close look at the planet from orbit? The answer was yes. He said it was a beautiful planet, but wasn’t on any direct route used by the operator. I offered to pay for the fuel, and he said he’d take me in four days’ time when he’d nothing else of interest on his agenda, as long as I didn’t mind being stuck on the freighter while it collected supplies from a nearby star system.

I was impatient and spent the intervening time trying to discover more about the planet. There was very little information. Actually, that wasn’t true. There were lots of files, but almost all had been redacted, leaving just the file name on the Frame but no content.

One file I could download was a video. It called itself a documentary and was presented by a person called David Attenborough. Although I couldn’t understand the language, the images were fascinating. It dealt with the ocean life of the Earth and the diversity was quite extraordinary. This enhanced my curiosity about this mysterious world.

Four days later, I transferred the promised afeds to the skipper and the freighter, an ancient D-class rust bucket, set off from Mars. Its intermittent quantum drive and failing artificial gravity meant an uncomfortable and slow trip. What should have taken a few hours dragged into almost three days.

Eventually, the freighter hung above the Earth, in a low orbit, and the view explained why the title of the Attenborough video had been translated as Blue Planet.

It really was a stunning blue and white world, probably more than fifty per cent water. The operator gave me six orbits, and as we passed over the night hemisphere, I was staggered to see the magnificent network of lights illustrating the coming and going of the species which lived here. Jewel-like clumps were cities and towns. The population must be in the billions. The seas were dark, apart from occasional dots of light. How I’d have loved to be allowed to sail this planet’s huge seas and oceans.

After a delay while produce was loaded at Wierala, a week or so later, we returned to Mars. Further research on the Frame led me to discover the name of the last Federation ambassador to deal with the planet. He was Hareen Trestogeen and lived on Pestoch. I immediately booked a flight.

Pestoch was in the same system as the Federation capital, Arlucian. It was a very busy world, packed with universities and engineering colleges on the land as well as in the oceans. I had trouble tracking down the ambassador, the reason being that his species had a short life-expectancy and he’d sadly died at quite an early age. However, Ambassador Trestogeen’s family threw open his files to me. Even better, they allowed me to work in the ambassador’s office. I was faced with hundreds of papers, video and audio recordings, plus lots of personal notes, which would help me fill in gaps in my knowledge. A researcher’s dream environment. Among it all, I discovered souvenirs of an earlier diplomatic team’s time on the planet and many photographs of the residents; a bipedal called humankind.

During the first year on Pestoch, yes, I was there that long, I did little but try to understand the sequence of events. The more I discovered, the more fascinated I became. I took two months out to concentrate on learning English and that opened up my understanding of more of the files. Most Federation languages could be esponged into the mind within an hour but searches of the Frame for the program for the language called English drew an absolute blank. Puzzling, because it was obvious from the files that ambassadorial staff all spoke the language. Once I’d learned it the old-fashioned way, I found correspondence, videos, and audio recordings in the planet’s language. Ambassador Trestogeen had apparently done everything in his power to be inclusive with this species. Why had he failed?

Humankind comprised a warm-blooded animal with one head, two arms and two legs protruding from a central torso. There were two sexes and several gender and colour variations. In addition to a variety of skin shades, they had hair or fur of even more colours, although some, like purple, pink, bright blue, and green, were apparently unnatural. Strangely, while some males had a little body hair, the bulk of it was on their faces and heads. Females, however, had virtually no body hair but sported the most extravagant, flowing locks on their heads, manipulated into amazing styles. They reproduced by females being impregnated by males and giving live birth nine months later. The other genders seemed to not have reproduction systems. Females used artificial insemination, but male couples were restricted to adopting unwanted children from others.

Humans spoke in a huge number of tongues, but Federation interaction was usually in English or French. The latter being a beautiful sounding language which I might try to learn if I found more material written or spoken in it.

What follows, I decided to write as a dramatised account of events. I wanted to bring it alive for the reader. Inevitably, this meant that much of the dialogue had to be reconstructed from stories, minutes, documents and, to be honest, a hefty dollop of guesswork. I tried to look at events from various points of view and to recount individual’s stories from their perspectives. My research into species and individuals has helped me do that, but the process is likely to be imperfect. However, I’m confident that I’ve correctly pieced together the overall story of the only planet I’d ever heard of to be denied Federation status.

4 Encounter

Earth had long been known to the Federation, but there was a policy of non-interference until observed worlds reached a certain level of technology. Cloaking techniques prevented Federation ships from being seen by people or detected by the military. Usually contact was made once the new world achieved interstellar travel, but humankind had not reached that stage. Instead, they had invented a technology which involved the same principles as interstellar travel. Humankind had missed one of the stages.

Interestingly, there’d long been stories of aliens arriving at Earth in spaceships and flying saucers, even leaving markings on mountains in South America, and aliens themselves in ancient artwork. None of that was related to actual Federation visits, but was part of humankind’s particular love of conspiracies, monsters, and other non-existent beings.

Let me begin the story.

I reached eighteen, in 745,801… or, I suppose I might as well use Earth years, as it’s an account of Earth. So, let me start again. Earth years are so similar to galactic years as makes no real difference.

When I was aged eighteen, in 2029AD, the first experiments with QE (quantum entanglement) transmitters were taking place on Earth. One of the machines was put in a habitation on the planet’s moon and the other was installed at Jodrell Bank in England. Jodrell Bank was home to a huge radio-telescope. England was a province of the world, part of a small island area, near one of the larger continents.

The QE devices worked on the principle that electrons can be in more than one location at the same time. That made it possible to send a message to the moon instantaneously. When the inventors of the system realised that it worked, they were delighted. It also opened the door to technology which would eventually lead to interstellar travel and matter transmission, although it is important to understand that the people of Earth weren’t aware of that at the time.

The QE transmitters were connected to computer monitors in the same manner as email and other transmission devices. A message was typed into the machine, it organised the data into strings, which then excited the electrons at the receiving end. The message was decoded and appeared on the destination computer screen.

So, in general terms, it didn’t look dissimilar to email, messenger or text, but the transmission was instantaneous, as if faster than light.

What the inventors didn’t expect was to suddenly get a message from an unknown location, telling them to desist using the QE transmitter. The first simply stated, ‘DESIST USING DEVICE’.

They wondered if it was some kind of practical joke, but each time they used it, a similar message came in telling them to stop. ‘DESIST TRANSMISSIONS’. ‘STOP USING DEVICE’ and other brief variations. The messages often contained spelling mistakes.

Who could be sending them? Was some alien race telling the world which experiments it could or couldn’t conduct? If so, how could it be in English? Could it be some illiterate juvenile hoaxer who’d managed to hack the system?

The operators spoke to their supervisors, supervisors discussed it with managers, managers told their politicians. In no time, the messages were being discussed in the corridors of Earthly power. Scientists insisted hoaxes could be ruled out, but politicians didn’t believe them. At the very least, there was considerable doubt. More discussions about the demands to stop transmitting took place, and eventually they came to the attention of people at the highest level.

It was decided that if, whoever it was, could transmit in English, then they should be able to receive English. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Ken Hood, authorised the following reply:

‘We don’t know who you are but have no intention of shutting down our transmitters without good reason. If you wish to discuss the situation, come and talk to us.’

If, as many still believed, the messages were the actions of an innovative group of hoaxers, nothing more would be heard. If they were real aliens, the response might take years. The message was sent and those in power tucked the incident away in a file which could be all but forgotten.

Science got back to its main purpose and it was actually a few days before the QE transmitter was used again. There was no message to desist. Had the hackers been exposed for what they were? It seemed so.

The response came the next day and it took the people of Earth totally by surprise.

««o»»

Earth was a space-faring planet, but only in recent decades. Two astronauts were living in the small Chang space station. A further group of eight inhabited an orbiting device called the International Space Station. This wasn’t, however, a colony. It was more the temporary home of scientists trying to understand the trials and tribulations of living outside the protection of the planet’s atmosphere. They’d also built a moon habitat after a fifty-year absence and were preparing to visit the neighbouring planet, Mars. Ten astronauts lived and worked in moonbase and in a factory area which had been created near the South Pole where water was being used to produce both fuel and oxygen.

The species was very innovative. Their ingenuity was amazing. They had achieved so much yet were still utilising primitive rocket and jet technology. Their achievement of visiting their moon with the huge, explosive technology they’d had nearly sixty years previously, had been quite extraordinary and was to be admired.

On the day Earth received its response, two astronauts, Darren Goodman and Annette Playell were conducting a spacewalk, as they called it. Two people in miniature environments, moving around outside the ISS, carrying out repairs and replacements.

Anything conducted in the vacuum of space was dangerous. Crews were never sent outside the space station without hours of preparation. One mistake could cause instant death.

Darren, a recent arrival on the ISS, was enjoying his first ever EVA. He stole glances at the beautiful vista of his home world between his intensive work on the current project. He manoeuvred an inspection panel back into its original location. Once it was in position and ready to be secured, he looked towards his fellow astronaut to see why she hadn’t begun attaching the bolts.

It was strange. Annette was by far and away the most experienced crew member on the space station and had carried out over ten previous space walks. She was ultra-efficient and absolutely reliable, yet here she was staring past his shoulder and exhibiting an expression of total shock.

‘Look!’ she said, pointing at something behind him.

Darren grabbed a handhold and turned himself. What he saw took his breath away and almost doubled his heart rate.

It wasn’t enormous, like the giant saucers which appeared in the science fiction film Independence Day, but it was just as spectacular compared with Earth’s small manned capsules.

Stationary, about quarter of a mile from the ISS, it had the shape of two side-plates glued face-to-face. They were made from what looked like gleaming chromium or similar metal. Red stripes ran around the circumference and there were hieroglyphs on the side – a name or designation, presumably. Annette later estimated its diameter at about two hundred metres, so its overall size dwarfed the space station. The top central section of the ship, for that’s what it must be, was raised and glazed. Inside, things – maybe people or animals, were peering out towards them. They were watching the most advanced, mobile, humanmade device ever constructed, but by their gaze, in fact by their very presence, they were announcing to the Earth that its space station was hopelessly primitive in comparison to their own ship.

The space-walkers’ suit radios crackled into life. ‘Think you two had better come in,’ said Brett Pinner, the ISS commander.

‘Right. On our way,’ said Annette, helping Darren secure the panel before the two of them headed for the airlock.

Brett watched the alien device and the watchers within it, watching him. He’d already told NASA, who, in their inimitable manner, said, ‘Stand by, ISS.’ as if such an event was commonplace.

By now they had video of the machine too, and not just NASA, for the live ISS feed also showed the device. In short measure it went viral and everyone with an Internet connection was seeing the flying saucer and discussing their thoughts about it.

‘What do you think it is?’ asked Brett’s deputy, Fiona Ferguson.

‘A flying saucer! How’d you describe it?’ was his rather condescending response.

‘I know that, but why’s it here?’ she asked, rather put out by his attitude.

‘Heaven knows. Hope it’s peaceful. Look at the figures in the dome.’

‘Yes, aliens. Real aliens.’ She lifted a pair of binoculars. ‘I can see a green one and a tall yellow one with four arms and what looks like a small black one with wings. It’s beyond science fiction.’

‘It certainly is,’ said Brett.

‘NASA here. Can you please transmit, Welcome to Earth. Please advise reason for visit, on all frequencies?’

‘Will do,’ said Brett, and he floated over to the communications console to complete the action.

Within a minute there was a response.

‘Ken Hood requested a meeting.’

‘Who the hell is Ken Hood?’ asked Fiona.

‘I think that’s the name of the British Prime Minister,’ said Brett, scratching his head.

To NASA he said, ‘NASA, did you see that reply?’

‘Yes. Stand by ISS.’

‘But what do I tell them?’ asked Brett.

‘Just say, Message received, thank you, and leave it at that.’

‘Will do.’

Brett sent his reply and waited, in awe of the machine which just sat there, unmoving, its occupants continuing to observe the ISS and the planet beneath.

««o»»

Down on Earth, stock markets and currencies joined the space station in freefall and supermarket shelves were soon reflecting the vacuum of space as frenzied buying set in. Humankind, educated by myriad space invasion movies, knew exactly what to do when a real close encounter was about to take place – panic!

««o»»

When the Prime Minister of Great Britain was told about the alien visitor, he was, to use the parlance of the time, absolutely gobsmacked. He’d truly thought the scientists had been dealing