h u m a n – a s s i s t e d a i
© 2024 Jay Schankman
We make excuses for our human superiority. It took us so long even to unite a planet. In doing so, our human nature brought us close to extinction.
It’s the reason one planet was not big enough for all of us. We, this crew, are restless travelers and we are laying the past to rest. Each of us coping as best as we can. In science, with all this categorization and reducing everything into data, we miss really knowing who they are.
It is amazing how many underground societies exist on neutral exoplanets. Most are well organized, mostly hierarchical, and order is kept by a ruling class or autocrat. Through diplomacy, we can sometimes learn their structure and find our way to the top. We try to explore their condition, and evaluate their needs and wants.
My job, our job, is to arrange the most favorable agreements; mineral rights for water, technology for investment capital, and territorial rights for protection. I’m just a front-line negotiator. I work with a team of communication specialists. A negotiating team of 40 trained and seasoned veterans. Our mission is long-term, typically 5 years or more, some making a life on the new planet.
The longer we inhabit an installation, the more they learn to trust us. Establishing an installation is a difficult and expensive task. Very time-consuming for our team. We are mandated not to pursue them underground. That type of encounter is decided several levels up. So we wait.
As they emerge, we help them adjust to the environment where the surface is relatively earthlike and the air difficult for them to breathe. From there we gather intelligence and uncover mutual opportunities. There is an interdependency of environmental systems unique to each planet and we have no choice but to dedicate much of our lives to understanding how this works.
We also must learn all that we can about their governments, their strata of society, customs, laws and norms. All of the nuances of their communication. We learn about the food chain as we learn about the supply chain. This is why maintaining facilities requires the dedication of hundreds of Earther government contract workers.
Many of these societies have adapted so well and are so self-sufficient that they have remained isolated for tens of thousands of years. Their self-sufficiency and wish to remain unknown and undisturbed can make them hard to find within a planet’s often cavernous outer crust. We only see traces of them until they are ready.
We are all genuinely curious to know what drove them underground. There is a mix of catalysts; war, famine, political repression, diminished resources, and the pervasive natural events that occur wherever a planet is alive and has an active weather system.
On occasion, we see the same driving forces cause them to come to the surface of a planet to seek new resources or to escape the struggles and ravages of war below.
m u l t i m e d i a – a i
© 2024 Jay Schankman