Civilisation could be the greatest achievement of the human race. Humans’ ability to communicate complex ideas and a willingness to cooperate in large numbers, not all related to one another, has lead to huge progress in agriculture, technology, science and art. Today’s world is no utopia but a thousand years of development has enabled the human population to grow to about nine billion and increase average lifespan by decades. Perhaps I am writing from the perspective of a comfortably-off, western retiree but I think many people in the world today live generally satisfying lives. At least that has been the case for the last fifty years or so. Can it last?
Civilisations rise and fall. An article in last week’s New Scientist discussed the fall of a number of civilisations in the eastern Mediterranean (modern day Greece, Turkey and Palestine) at the end of the Bronze Age, over 3,000 years ago. These collapses had been put down to invading “sea-people” but where they came from and why they were so overwhelming was unknown. Now, archaeologists have decided it was a less apocalyptic event. The collapses were more drawn out than originally thought with a variety of causes. Drought and famine definitely contributed – civilisations then were less resilient than ours today – but another cause could simply have been popular risings to overthrow greedy, authoritarian rulers. The replacements gave lower priorities to writing and recording events, to building and maintaining monumental buildings and to making artefacts in rare metals and other materials. Eventually new civilisations grew up with a new wealthy and leisured class.
Our civilisation has certainly reached new levels of technology and of concentration of wealth in the few. Is it due for collapse? We face huge threats from climate change, environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, pollution etc. We have huge disparities between the poor and the billionaires. While most people are happy to live and let live there is a growing atmosphere of hate fed by the media. It is seen in the growth of right wing political movements claiming to speak for the “people” all over the world, with populist but authoritarian leaders dismantling democratic restraints on their actions. We see it in the demands by factions to reduce diversity and remove rights from minorities.
The Tories are planning on accelerating the collapse. They talk of the next five years being a period of increasing conflict while doing nothing to counter the environmental disasters that await. Meanwhile they introduce measures designed to hinder the acceptance of diversity in public office and elsewhere. The latest, a restriction on what teachers can discuss with pupils about identity.
As an SF fan, I have read many stories about the collapse of our civilisation and the dystopias that take its place. I’ve written a few myself. I don’t want to live through one and I think any fall in today’s world will be far worse than occurred in a few relatively small areas 3000 years ago. Perhaps it is just a consequence of getting old but the signs are worrying. Many humans are no longer prepared to communicate calmly or cooperate with others of slightly different views. The glue of civilisation is weakening.#
The topic for writing group this week was “a few days away”. I decided to make it an SF story as I haven’t done one for a few weeks. Here it is.
A Few Days Away
“They’re just a few days away, Director, closer than the orbit of Jupiter,” I said, “The aliens will be here by the weekend.”
The Director of NASA had a look of panic in her eyes. She’d lobbied the President to get her job, saying she wanted to reduce waste. She wasn’t expecting an interstellar invasion.
“Why weren’t we given more notice, Professor?” she asked, distracted as usual from the important questions.
I tried to explain again without too much impatience creeping in to my voice. “Firstly, because the five vessels come from the direction of Polaris, overhead if you like. Most of our probes and telescopes exploring planets and watching for approaching asteroids are looking in the plane in which the planets orbit the Sun. Secondly, the aliens were, still are, travelling very fast. There was nothing to see until they began decelerating. That’s what told us that they are alien craft, not lumps of rock.”
The Director still looked like a rabbit caught in headlights. “We’ve got to do something.”
“What?” I said with a snort. “We couldn’t get a rocket to the launch pad and ready to go in the time we have. Neither could any of the other space nations. And anyway, we couldn’t get further than the ISS before the aliens come calling.”
“The Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, they’ll all be planning something,” she said.
“They can’t do any more than we can,” I replied, “All we can do is to send messages of greetings and watch what the aliens do.”
“Is there any response from them?”
I shook my head, “None at all. Mind you I doubt whether our radio signals can get through the cloud of exotic particles that their rocket engines are spewing out. Not even a laser will penetrate that energy vortex. The particle physics guys are going mad at the strange stuff they are seeing.”
The Director looked bemused, but I went on, “We know that whoever built these starships must be far more advanced than us. They were travelling at three-quarters of the speed of light before they started to decelerate. The energies and forces that they are using are so far beyond our technology we don’t even know how they are doing it.”
Her shoulders dropped. She looked tired. I guessed that the politicians had been giving her a hard time. Not surprising since the media had gone berserk when the news leaked out. Now there were crowds filling the places of worship of all the gods people had faith in, besieging government offices, stripping shops of food, loo rolls and other essentials. It was the same all over the world. We’d be lucky if we still had a civilisation by the time the alien ships arrived.
“We’ll keep on trying with the communications,” I said, trying to sound calm and helpful. “Perhaps when they’ve slowed down a lot more, they’ll respond. The aliens probably aren’t belligerent. They could be explorers or tourists on a sight-seeing cruise.”
“But, five spaceships,” the Director said.
I shrugged and almost commented that Columbus had three ships when he discovered the New World, but perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to be reminded of the effects on indigenous peoples by the European voyages of discovery and colonisation.
“We’ll keep trying,” I repeated.
The Director frowned. “The Security Council has told all members with nuclear missile capability to be prepared to launch if the aliens threaten us.”
“Nothing to do with me,” I said. “I’m an astronomer not a military expert.” I hoped that none of the countries with missiles at the ready would do anything foolish, but I wondered if hope was a reasonable emotion given the state of anxiety that everyone was in.
I returned to my office and sat watching the screens feeding me messages, data and pictures from all the land and space-based telescopes and instruments. A day later, the five alien starships were still slowing but were now closer to the Sun than Mars. I stared at one of my screens more closely. It was showing the projected route of the flotilla of alien vessels. Previously they had seemed to be heading vaguely for the Sun and we assumed that Earth was their target. Now though it was obvious. Venus, the Morning Star, was between Earth and the Sun, as close to us as it gets. Venus was where the aliens were headed.
Another day passed and the media carried the news that the ships were now inside Earth’s orbit, still slowing and headed for the second planet. Conferences of scientists and governments discussed what it meant. We kept up our signals across as broad a band of the spectrum as possible, even sending coded bursts of gamma rays, but response there was none.
The ships stopped their relative motion on the Saturday. They were huge vessels, each an ellipsoid over 100 kilometres along their long axis. They were in orbit around Venus. Well, four of them were. I watched as the fifth separated from the others and descended into the thick air of the planet. It seemed to be orbiting within the atmosphere.
“What’s that craft doing,” I said to Lucy, a space scientist in the James Webb telescope control room.
“It appears to be hoovering up the atmosphere,” was the reply. The ground level air pressure on Venus is forty times what it is on Earth and is over 90% carbon dioxide.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Everyone’s talking about it,” Lucy replied, “One suggestion is that they need the carbon and the oxygen. Venus is a good source since gases are easier to pick up than solid rock.”
“You mean they’re feeding on one of our planets?” I said.
“Looks like it,” Lucy replied.
It didn’t take long, just a day. The alien craft sucked in the whole atmosphere leaving the surface of Venus exposed for the first time in billions of years. The craft rose to re-join the other four starships. Then all five fired their engines and accelerated out of the Solar System. They never did reply to any of our signals. In a few days they were gone just leaving a wake of exotic matter. Across Earth, people returned to their homes, exhausted but subdued. I felt the same. We knew now that we were not alone in the universe but apparently of no interest to other beings whatsoever. That was going to take some effort to absorb.
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ellifont 