Reunion: Chapter 4

  Kathryn stood at attention in her dress uniform only two spots down from the president herself.  They were standing on a permanent stage in Sengupta Park, the large public green space across the street from the presidential residence.  When this venue was used for concerts or plays the open space in between would be for the audience, but today it was kept clear as a landing pad for Jaren’s ship.

  Along with everyone else Kathryn kept looking expectantly at the sky, knowing the ship would come into view at any moment.  One of the president’s aides pointed up into the sky, and Kathryn tried to follow her finger but couldn’t spot anything.  But then there it was, at first just a spec barely even there.   Once she was definitely able to detect it, the craft fell so fast that many became alarmed at the possibility of a crash and started looking around for where they could dash to for cover if it became necessary.  Kathryn was amused knowing that if it came down ballistically like that there was nowhere for any of them to hide.  Before anyone’s bodies formally betrayed their fear, the ship noticeably decelerated down to a near hover.  

  It was silver and round, a flying disc which was wide in the middle and narrowed out towards the edge.  It was clear that whatever propulsion technology they were using, the business end was in the middle of its underside, which inched ever nearer to the ground.  A hundred meters above the ground, three panels retracted from the underside of the ship, and out of the voids revealed extended silver legs jointed in the middle, poised to assume the weight of the spacecraft when it landed.  It hovered just above the ground and inched lower and lower until the three legs all contacted the ground at the same time, and then bent at the joint under the weight of the craft as it settled.

  As it came to rest the myriad strange sounds emanating from it began winding down until it became eerily quiet.  Nobody on Haven had ever seen any vessel or technology even approaching that level.  At the full original height of their technological power, the near mythical founders of their colony had never come even close to this level.  Kathryn noted her own concern at this.  Her military instincts couldn’t help but take note of how helpless they’d be if their guests suddenly decided to be hostile.  She shook her suspicions away, allowing herself to presume them to merely be healthy paranoia.

  Another panel slid away from the underside, and a ramp extended down from within.   Once fully extended, Jaren emerging form inside and stood on the threshold.  He seemed to be taking a moment to survey the scene and soak up the moment, then began walking down the ramp with remarkable confidence.  As he came down the crowd began cheering loudly and Kathryn could tell that how startled he was by the sudden noise of the crowd.  He then seemed to understand, and a grin broadened across his face.  He waved to the crowd with both arms over his head as he stepped off of the ramp and onto the green grass.  Looking behind him he saw President Sato and Kathryn on the stage and crossed under his ship towards them.

  Not content to wait, the president walked across the stage towards the stairs, motioning for Kathryn to follow her as she passed.  She dutifully followed behind the president’s chief of staff and head of security.

  Laying the diplomatic charm on thick with her practiced smile, President Sato extended her hand to Jaren as they met just beyond the stairs to the stage.  He took her hand and she put her other hand over his as she had to Kathryn, and then he did the same.  Kathryn lowered her head and smirked in quiet amusement to herself.   ‘Politicians…’ she thought.

  “Greetings, Mr. Jaren.  I offer you the warmest of greetings from all of the people of Haven.”

  “Likewise from the people of Kobol Madame President.  And it’s Snow, Jaren Snow, but do please feel free to call me Jaren.”

  “Oh, and you must likewise call me Aoi, I insist!”

  “As you wish,” he answered with another respectful bow of his head.  “May I address the crowd Aoi”?

  “Oh, I insist!” President Sato answered.  She motioned the way towards the stairs with her hand and Jaren obliged, followed closely by the other four.  He ascended to the stage and stood in front of the podium.

  The crowd was abuzz, but when he stood before them and raised both of his hands everyone hushed to a near silence.  “I bring you greetings from all of your brothers and sisters on my home world!”  The crowd cheered with greater volume than they had at any point so far.  “I thank you for your warm greeting.  I say today that our species has been divided for far too long.  Today we take the first step of a new journey together, a journey of reunification…”  

   

  “Please, tell us about your planet Jaren, we’re all so very curious,” President Sato urged.  A few hours after his arrival, Jaren and his three shipmates were enjoying a state dinner hosted by the president and her top secretaries.  Kathryn was also in attendance, along with the team she’d selected for their mission.

  “Kolob?   Oh, it’s absolutely beautiful.”   He seemed positively wistful.  “If you make me talk about it too much, you’re going to make me homesick…” he playfully complained.  “My people live on a mid-latitude southern continent which is blessed with a great mountain range spine running along the middle of it.   Below this divide is a cooler and wetter climate while the territory to the north is somewhat warmer and drier.   Most of us live in the north where we originally landed, though now there is a significant city living on the southern coast.”

  “Did you find any sentients on your planet when you arrived?”

  “No.”   He seemed surprised she would even ask.   “Wait, why did you?” The possibility had clearly never occurred to him.

  “We found that there used to be an intelligent species here long ago.  Records indicate that there were no traces of them in the original scans from Earth.  Whatever civilization they clearly once had, it collapsed long before we ever arrived.”

  “Amazing!” Jaren’s male associate exclaimed.  “As far as we knew humans were still the only sentient species known to have existed!  What were they like?  Were you able to find out what happened to them?”

  “Indeed,” Elim Terey explained.  She was the biologist, biochemist, and medical officer Kathryn had selected for her team.  She was on the heavier side but carried it well.  She had brown skin and eyes, with round glasses matching her round face, and dark hair always combed back.  “Yes, it was quite a surprise to the original colonists themselves.  Our archaeological efforts suggest that they never developed to any sort of industrial level, but we have found evidence of agriculture, stonework, and a rudimentary written language we have so far been unable to decipher.

  “As for what happened to them, we at least have a strong theory.  We believe that they fell victim to a brain parasite.   Our ancestors were able to diagnose the contemporary effects of their condition quite readily.  We tried to help them; we hoped that perhaps their original glory could be restored if we unburdened them of the parasite, but it appeared that their brain had evolved in the interim around the parasite making such a thing impossible.  We considered going one step further and attempt to restore them genetically, but… our founders didn’t feel it was right.  We don’t question their wisdom, and regardless we no longer have the technology to do so ourselves.”

  “Are you in any kind of contact with them?” Jaren excitedly asked.  “It may be old hat to you now, but up until this moment as far as we were concerned humans were the only known sentient species to have ever existed.  I know a lot of people on Kolob who would give their left arm for the chance to know everything you can possibly say about them.”

  “Although we have recently begun investigating the possibility of starting a new colony elsewhere on the planet,” the president offered diplomatically, “up until now we’ve restricted ourselves to our territory here to limit our incursion on them and so far, the Squiddies seem content to leave us alone if we do the same.”

  “Squiddies?”

  “Yes, that’s what we call them,” Elim continued.  “When we arrived the dominant types of animal life according to our founders was reminiscent of Earth cephalopods and reptiles.  Interestingly they encountered nothing which seemed in any way like mammals.”

  “Fascinating…” one of Jaren’s people remarked.

  “What kind of life did you find on Kolob?” Kathryn asked.

  “Kolob is almost entirely populated with life reminiscent of mammals, from the small irritants underfoot to the giant keraziks which fly overhead.  There are insects and such, but any species larger than that are all like mammals, though the limited paleontology we’ve been able to conduct suggest that there used to be far stranger and more varied types.  Some planet wide calamity seems to have occurred several hundred million years ago which we still don’t understand, but after that point, only the one kind of large animal life persisted.  Like yourselves, our research has been limited by our commitment to limit ourselves to our colony continent.  Our authorities have deemed the rest of the planet a nature preserve; only low impact scientific expeditions are permitted.”

  “We have a similar policy here on Haven,” one of the president’s secretaries commented.   “In fact, that’s something we wanted to ask you about.  There is fairly universal excitement on Haven about you.  We are curious how many people on your world share your enthusiasm for contact with us, for recovering the archives.”

  “Mmm,” Jaren said as he finished a sip of his drink.  “Broadly we have support.  Our presence here is fully sanctioned by our government, though I’m afraid I couldn’t say it is their top priority.  We,” he gestured to his crew, “are essentially of a community of academics who want to study our history.”

  “Are any of your people opposed to your efforts?”  Both President Sato and Jaren shot mildly annoyed looks at Kathryn for asking.

  Jaren collected his thoughts for a moment.  “Like all human societies we exist in a spectrum. I can confidently say the vast majority of our people are at best enthusiastically supportive of our efforts, and at worst ambivalently disinterested.  That is why our government supports us but not as a top priority.  It is the same for most purely academic endeavours; they value what we contribute, but the dedication of limited resources to it has a political cost.  I’m certain the same dynamics exist here.”

  “I would dare say that the spirit of our founders grants us significant latitude to invest in research,” President Sato offered.  “They were explorers, their primary mission was discovery and it’s kind of in our DNA as a people.  But yes, even for us that commitment is far from a monolith.”

  “I’m curious about those who are more vocally opposed,” stated General Kim, the head of Haven’s military and Kathryn’s ultimate superior.  “Are they merely opposed to the devotion of resources to your efforts, or more ideologically opposed?”

  “I’m afraid you’ve been doing your research on us haven’t you?” Jaren softly accused.   President Sato began to apologize for him, but Jaren dismissed him with a raised hand.  “It’s alright, Aoi.  It’s perfectly fair for you to have any number of suspicions and concerns about us.   After our first encounter I tried to put myself in your position.  We come offering peace but also come with the capacity to be a threat.

  “As I said we are not a monolith.  I gather from what I’ve learned of Haven you largely speak with one voice.  You have a military but have never fought a war nor have any enemy to make war with.”

  “We call it a military but really it’s modelled on the paramilitary Peacekeepers from Earth,” Kathryn explained.  “Our missions very rarely involve applying force.  They are more typically disaster relief, aerospace research, a sort of armed and well-resourced public service.”

  Jaren nodded.   We have a similar organization on Kolob.   We ourselves are part of a broader research organization which focuses on recovering what we have lost.  You see,” Jaren put down his glass, “as in most things, most of our people have typically immediate concerns and purview.   Most people just want to get on with living their lives as they are presented to them.  Some of us have deeper, more… spiritual ambitions.

  “You point out that your founders came with a more exploratory spirit, well in the same way ours arrived with a more spiritual ambition.  As discovery is in your DNA, spiritualism is in ours.  We are here to understand ourselves better through understanding you better.  We seek, for lack of a better term, enlightenment.  And while most of our population benignly ascribe to old beliefs and go through the motions, we do have a more fundamentalist, more fanatical part of our population.”

  “Jaren.” one of the women on his team seemed to try to stop him.  She was about a foot shorter than him, quite slender, and had long straight platinum blond hair which paired unnaturally well with her pale blue eyes.  He placed his hand over hers on the table in a way Kathryn found almost intimate.

  “It’s alright Irvina,” he said.  “We need them to be able to trust us.  They deserve to know what they’re getting themselves into.”

  “You were saying?” General Kim insisted.

  Jaren took several moments to compose his thoughts.  “We are… met with active resistance.  Nothing violent, but we frequently have protest outside the various research facilities we have.  They are a legitimate political faction though, and that is why our government only supports our efforts to a certain degree.  They don’t wish to antagonize them any more than necessary.”

  “Although we are quite peaceful today, we have not always been.” Sato sympathized.  “I dare say if we had maintained our cohesion and things had gone according to the original mission parameters, we would technologically be your equals at worst today.”

  “Oh?” Jaren asked.

  “There was an incident on the ship which brought us here.  One person made some dubious choices which led to deaths.  It created a rift the colonists, some supporting what was done, others condemning it.  When we arrived, there was a violent breakaway movement.  Many lives were lost and much of our technology and resources.   We were considerably set back developmentally.  That’s why it has taken us this long to recover.  The brokered peace resulted in two separate cities, one for each side.   They were wisely founded close enough to be in contact and today we have grown to only our one large city.”

  “I am very impressed with what you have accomplished, especially having had that setback.”  Jaren seemed genuine in his praise.  “Despite waxing and waning tensions, we have been fortunate enough to never suffer any outright violent conflict.”

  “How did your arrival go for your people?” Felix asked him.  You landed with a much larger population, is that right?  Our founders underestimated the importance of a larger population for complex development.”

  “That is correct.  While yours was more of a research expedition, ours was more of a mass exodus of religious people from a secular world.  Our ship was a massive hollowed out asteroid as opposed to a purpose-built vessel like the New Horizon.  Our records show that our arrival was in fact relatively unremarkable.  We found a good spot to settle at the base of the northern side of the continent where the great river Moroni flows into a vast flood plain.  It was there that we made our home.”

  “And what is your population today?” Elim asked.

  “Our last census counted over 18 million souls.”

  “Wow…” Elim uttered, his glasses nearly coming off his nose with his surprised expression.

  “And you here on Haven?”

  “Just under four million, split between our two beautiful twin capital cities,” the president answered with pride.  “We have so many questions Jaren, you said you were in contact with the other colony as well?  What can you tell us about them?”

  “Of course Aoi, of course.  The Romans are… different from us.”  It was clear that he was trying to be diplomatically fair, but that he didn’t hold them in especially high regard.  “They are not focused on technological development the way our peoples are Madame President.  We have perfectly amicable relations; we maintain embassies on each other’s planets, and we collaborate where our mutual interests align, but we have starkly different philosophies in a variety of respects.  

  “You could say they are our inverse.  Where the vast majority of Koboli are forward thinking, people like us are in the minority on Roma.  They have on the whole rejected the high technology which we have embraced in favour of a more ascetic disposition.  We have amicable enough relations for sure, but we don’t have much common interests as peoples.

  “And they were the Calothic's mission, right?” Keri Reed asked, Kathryn’s anthropologist, psychologist, and historian.

  “Very nearly Miss Reed, but they call themselves ‘Catholic’, not Calothic.  I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting Roma myself, but I understand it to be quite lovely where they settled.”

  “Can you elaborate on the differences between you?” Keri asked.  “If you don’t mind of course.”  

  “Oh certainly not my dear.  They are an… introspective people.  They concern themselves with harmony and balance, and this leaves them with little interest in what we would consider development.  Their priority is to exist in a productive and mutually beneficial partnership with their natural world.”

  “Do your people not have the same respect for the natural world?” Elim asked, with some deliberate provocativeness which elicited a side eyed glance from Kathryn.

  Jaren sighed as he pursed his lips and considered the question.  “I can’t say that that is an entirely inaccurate thing to say.  We generally have the attitude that the natural world is there for us to use to better ourselves and advance our culture, but we maintain a keen awareness that we are inseparable from it, and that our healthy survival is contingent on a healthy natural environment.  I would say we greatly value the utility of the natural world to our ambitions.”

  “The utility of it?” Kathryn asked.  “And that’s all?”  She didn’t like the sound of that.

  “No Commander,” he answered.  For the briefest of moments he seemed insulted, the first negative emotion she’d sensed from him.  “The possibilities for the relationship between humans and nature exists on a spectrum of impact.  We seek to harness the power of nature to our own needs to a far greater degree than the Romans do, and as you likewise do from what we’ve observed.  For us it may be a legacy attitude from our religious beliefs that the worlds were created specifically for us.

  “Our view is that danger only creeps in when we forget that we as humans are ourselves an inseparable part of nature as well.  We must not exploit it so far that it begins to harm us more than it benefits us.   So yes, we value the utility of nature for us, yet we respect that our continued existence is by its grace alone, and that our exploitation of it must come with all due caution and respect.  A pure state of nature provides us with a starting point, something we can take and improve upon, to perfect.”

  “Does that include your own bodies?” One of the president’s secretaries asked. 

  “No,” one of Jaren’s team answered sharply.  It was the first time Kathryn had heard him speak all evening.  “God created us in his perfect image.  To attempt to improve on our form would be a blasphemy.”

  “Yes.” Jaren conceded in a thinly veiled tone of placation, clearly unmoved by the sentiment himself.  “A blasphemy,” he repeated.  “That is indeed what our people have traditionally believed.  However, there is a growing movement amongst our people who question that particular interpretation or our scripture.  I for one count myself among them.”  His teammate shot him an indignant look, but it was so brief as to seem involuntary.

  “What about Earth,” Kathryn asked, no longer able to contain her curiosity.  “All our people know is that they stopped transmitting halfway through our journey here and were never heard from again.  Have you been there?  Do you know what happened?”

  “Earth… is gone,” he answered with somber finality to gasps and looks of shock around the table before he clarified.  “Everything it was anyways.  We don’t know exactly what happened.  The nature of our mission meant that it was several hundred years before there was enough politically palatable to reach out to Earth, but when we finally did, we received no responses.  When we finally established an Escher rift in the Sol system, we found that there was nothing left.  We didn’t bother to land because our observations from orbit showed that every city had succumbed to several centuries of decay.  We were able to detect some inhabitant with ship borne telescopes, but… they were sparse and had returned to a primitive state, barely human by our estimation.”

  His callousness towards the people left behind, his indifference to their plight, the way he could just write off people of no utility to them, was the first thing she found herself genuinely disliking about him.

  “You were there but you didn’t bother to land?  You didn’t make any attempts at all to contact those who were left there?” President Sato exclaimed with great surprise. 

  “We really didn’t see the point,” Jaren answered with a shrug.  “They’re stone aged at best.  There was nothing we could learn from them culturally.  We had surpassed any remnants of technology we might find there, and any cultural artifacts of value to us, unlike your persistent archives, would have degraded beyond repair long ago.”

  Uneasy looks circulated between the Havenites at the table.  What happened to Earth was the single greatest mystery for their people.   It was a focal subject of so much of their art, a driving force behind their technological development to be able to find out.  Beyond needing to solve the mystery itself, none of them could imagine getting there and finding themselves uninterested in the people left behind or wanting to figure out how to help them.  Kathryn herself had often daydreamed about returning.  She’d even imagined finding what Jaren had described.  Setting up research facilities, anthropological missions, archaeological digs were always what followed on.  Moving on disinterested was the first truly alien thing she’d felt about Jaren, and she found herself unable to stop fixating on it.

  A savvy politician, President Sato felt the growing tension and sought to avoid delving deeper into this divide between them.  She raised her glass in toast to change the subject. 

  “To our reunion!” she cheerfully offered.

  “And to a new story Madame President.  A whole new era for the Human species, finally united again at last.”

  “To reunion!” they all repeated as they raised their glasses before taking a drink.

   

  A few hours later, Jaren and Kathryn found themselves alone in one of the museums near the presidential residence.  It was well after regular hours, but special arrangements were made for their unusually high-profile guests.  Her and Jaren’s teams had paired off to explore the exhibits and get to know each other better in anticipation of working closely together.  There had been alcohol served at the state dinner and they were both under the effects, a little buzzed but nothing more.   It left them on the verge of flirtation, but with a professionally appropriate plausible deniability.

  “And this is the main shuttle exhibit,” Kathryn informed him as she turned on the lights to the large open room which housed the remaining ancient shuttle.

  “Wow…” Jaren uttered.  He seemed genuinely impressed.  “And this thing allowed you to go back and forth to New Horizon?”

  “Oh yes.   It did so for years and years after our arrival,” she said as she looked up with at it with proud reverence.  She reached out and caressed the hull sentimentally as though it were some sort of faithful pet who’d been respectfully put to rest a long time ago.  It was an indulgence she’d been longing for since she was a girl; ordinarily touching any exhibit in the museums was strictly forbidden.  “You didn’t have anything like this?”

  “Oh no, our means were… well, much cruder.  Your mission was much more methodically planned and crafted.  Our people hollowed out a massive asteroid, slapped some engines on it and just hoped for the best.  We only had crude one-way landers when we arrived, and many of them failed after the long journey.  We still commemorate every year all of those lost in the descent.”  He was clearly saddened at the recollection.  

  “Our strategy was overwhelming numbers as opposed to high technology.  We made no provisions for maintaining technological proficiency once we arrived, just tens of thousands of people dumped on the planet to homestead and make an honest hard go of it.  Ironic perhaps that we have now so enthusiastically turned to technological solutions.”

  “Not ironic,” Kathryn suggested as she motioned with her hand for him to follow her through the shuttle hatch.  He followed as she made her way past the flight deck bulkhead into the large rear section which was designed to carry either fuel of personnel depending on which direction it was going.  She sat down on one of the rows of plastic seats and pulled from a pocket a small bottle of the wine she’d stashed from dinner.  “It makes all the sense in the world actually.  Your people no doubt had remarkable hardships resulting from your lack of appreciation of technology and that must have left a mark.  You all remembered all too well how valuable technology is, and as a result have a cultural imperative to vigorously pursue it.   So far that’s something I deeply respect about your people.”

  She took a drink from the bottle as he sat down beside her, and she passed it to him.   “And you only just met us,” he remarked thoughtfully before taking a drink himself.

  “The president and I were very skeptical of you, you know.  It all seemed too good to be true.  Honestly, it still does.”

  “I can understand you feeling that way.”

  “But you’re for real, aren’t you?  You really do come in peace and all that, right?”

  “As far as I’m aware,” he said with a wink before taking another drink.  “We may dazzle you with our technological prowess Commander, but my people are far from perfect.”

  “So I’ve gathered,” Kathryn responded a little more icily than she’d meant to.

  “Oh?” he asked.

  “Well,” Kathryn let out a long sigh.  “I think we were all taken aback at your total disinterest in Earth.”

  “I see.”   Jaren shifted in his seat.  He’d clearly registered it was an issue and knew it was going to come up.

  “It sounded like you had no interest in the people there because they couldn’t be used in any way.  It makes us worried about how you might intend to use us.”  She was trying to tread lightly while getting across an important point. 

  “My people are naturally insular Kathryn.”  He seemed to be attempting to explain without meaning to apologize.   “We have a long memory of persecution.”   He paused to consider his next words.   “We don’t pursue knowledge for its own sake as readily as you seem to, we tend more to pursue it for what it can gain us.  I am a bit of an outlier in that respect, though I am not entirely divorced from that attitude.  I would personally support an anthropological mission on Earth, but I’m not inclined to fight for it given all of the other important things we can be doing.”

  Seeming to sense the need to pull back a bit, he added: “That being said, I don’t see any problem with our people having divergent interests and priorities.  Learning from each other will enrich us both.”

  “Well said,” Kathryn said almost accusationally of his apparent political prowess.

  “We enjoy making good, honest, and mutually beneficial deals but no, we are not particularly charitable outside of our own circle.  We have a long memory of being ostracized and left to fend for ourselves.   That is in our cultural DNA as well.   If you have nothing to offer in return, it will be hard for you to get anything out of our government.  It’s not that we’re hoarders or anything, we just place a lower priority on things that do not benefit than things that do.  I don’t think that is particularly unusual.   The flipside though, is that what does benefit us is considered very high priority, which is why you can expect this operation to go very quickly and smoothly.”

  “And then?”

  “And then like the Romans you can expect to be left pretty much to yourselves.  You’ll be welcome to exchange embassies, likely even have access to the rift system if you like.  While we won’t ask much of you, unfortunately we will likewise not have much interest in helping you develop and advance.  It’s not malicious, it’s just who we are.  The archives give your people a lot of leverage.  I suggest you try to extract as many concessions from us as you can with your only card to play.”

  Kathryn tipped the bottle towards him.  “Well then I appreciate the warning Jaren.”

  “What about your people?” he asked.  “Anything I should know about that I might not readily pick up on through standard diplomacy?”

  “Yeah, we’re coming for ya,” she said with widened eyes which feigned seriousness and made Jaren chuckle.  “But seriously, the real thing is we’re not a people who will be content to remain junior partners indefinitely.  I guarantee somewhere tonight there are already wheels in motion to figure out how we can capitalize on this, how we can learn what you can teach us.  We’re ambitious and we already want what you have.”

  Jaren took the bottle from her as he nodded with somber understanding.

  “I’m not talking about aggression of course,” she felt the need to add.

  “Of course not,” he said, seeming only marginally less than one hundred percent convinced.

  “I just mean we’re going to want to develop for ourselves what you’ve shown us is possible as rapidly as possible.”

  “Well we may not have much enthusiasm to help you do so Commander, but I can assure you we will at least respect your initiative.”

  “Also good to know…” Kathryn reflected with a thoughtful nod.