the arrival

The Arrival

The Earth, a blue jewel sitting in a precarious position near a Yellow Sun. A planet with so many questions and struggling for answers. Through wars, political upheavals and disasters both manmade and natural, there was always a hope that someone or something would save us from ourselves, unfortunately that never materialized. For the first part of the 21^st century, humanity struggled with the same old familiar problems, then in 2030 there was finally a breaking point. The breaking point was both in scientific advancement and civil discourse. Scientist in the West and the East almost simultaneously made breakthrough in energy, communications and other areas of science through intellectual cooperation outside of normal governmental channels. At the same time, the poorer nations of the earth had become frustrated with what they felt were colonial powers taking advantage of them and their resources. So, in a act of defiance and frustration, several of the poorer countries engaged in using bio terrorism. A plague was set loose on the earth that would test the resolve of humanity, cost millions of lives and set the world on a 10-year journey. After the worldwide purge was over, 900 million people were dead in both the East and the West, governments had been reformed and ideological walls had collapsed forcing old enemies to openly work together. By 2041 a new world cooperative government had formed giving everyone a voice. This was humanities darkest hour, but also the moment that some of our most unanswered questions would be put to bed. For in the wake of the manmade cataclysm, unity had been found and in one moment of clarity we reached out beyond ourselves and began to truly explore. Working together humanity began to fix our planet and began to reach out to our nearest celestial neighbors. The Moon was colonized and then Mars. We began to look beyond the limits of our petty squabbles and to seek to broaden our horizons. By 2070 our planet was a pristine jewel that it had once been and we had established ourselves in our own right as an extra planetary species, at least in our backyard. As satisfying as this was, many still wondered if there was more than what we were. We would soon find out the answer to that question as well.

In the year 2073 a group of amateur astronomers and scientist working on a private space platform just beyond the Asteroid belt began to detect certain spatial anomalies that couldn't be explained. With great care and wanting to be sure before they decided to report their findings, a probe was launched to get a closer look at the astrological phenomena. 9 months after the probe was first launched, data came back that confirmed what the team on what would come to be known as platform one for it was the first place that any hope of leaving our solar system was found. The probe identified spatial anomalies that scientist on earth confirmed were naturally occurring worm holes. In one instant humanity and science was polarized. If these were actually doors to other places in our universe, then we had to find out how they worked and if we could use them to move beyond our own solar system and possibly find other intelligent life in the universe. With the confirmed discovery of jump points from our solar system to other locations in the universe, all of Earth's scientist and government organizations devoted to space exploration and colonization began to focus their efforts on sending a team to the location of the wormholes. In the earth year 2078, the mission was launched. Using Platform one as the jumping off point, the ship was built on the moon and sent to Platform for final outfitting and checkup before heading out into the vastness of space. The ship dubbed simply EE or Earth Explorer was a culmination of combined scientific ingenuity and engineering prowess never before seen on earth. A crew of 52 members of humanities best and brightest from various nations were placed on the ship. It took nearly a year for it to finish its final phase of deployment. When it reached the location where the probe first confirmed the existence of wormholes in our solar system, they began deployment of an orbital platform. The assembly of the per-constructed structure took over a month. It was then that the real work of observation and examining the phenomena was undertaken. All the while, a second autonomous craft had left earth via Platform one to bring new supplies to the Earth Explorer project. The plan was for the crew to be out there for at least 4 years with a possible crew change after that. Humanity waited with bated breath as we began to probe the universe beyond our own doorstep. How we could not imagine what would happen and how it would forever change what we believe and how we thought of ourselves.

It was July 2083 on earth and the scientist and engineers on EE had been busily analyzing data from the anomalies known as wormholes at the outer reaches of our solar system. Using the most advanced detection technology and actually sending probes through the wormholes, we soon discovered that there was a pattern to each wormhole's appearance and the stability of how it functioned. Some were very stable and appeared with regular intervals while others were unstable and would appear and collapse not to reappear or would not open to the same place twice. From the probes that were able to transmit back information, new planets were discovered and for the first time, we confirmed that planets existed beyond our own that could possibly sustain life. The revelation that we could possibly leave the celestial cradle and voyage beyond our own world to set foot on an alien planet shook the very fabric of humanity, but in a positive way. A new sense of hope seemed to resonate with all of the earth. Not since the great catastrophe that took so many lives had we felt this hopeful.

It was January 2084 when the station known as EE was engaged in routine monitoring of the wormhole anomalies. The station was in the throes of preparing for the arrival of a new crew and transition to a more permanent and stable situation. A new ship with upgraded facilities and equipment designed to be added to the old platform were only a few weeks away and the people who had been so far away from home for so long were looking forward to getting back to earth. Then it happened, the unthinkable, the improbable, but it happened! One of the wormholes that we had sent a probe through began to give off strange energy reading, then in one moment, it blossomed like a new flower and out came the answer, the answer to the question are we alone. It was a spherical object approximately the size of a tanker truck. At first it moved in a sluggish manner, and it was thought to simply be some kind of space debris or unusual asteroid. The the object suddenly began to change shape, then it started broadcasting a signal. The whole station panicked but was excitedly curious but with a cautious optimism. At first the team of Earth Explorer couldn't make heads or tails of the information being sent. Then they relayed it back to earth via a series of communications arrays station throughout the solar system to allow for quicker transition of data. After a few days and two of humanities most powerful supercomputers, the message was translated. It was simply scientific problems, base mathematics and chemistry but in an unfinished form. Humanity had been given a homework assignment. After a few more days of processing, the problems were solved, and a quantitative set of answers was formulated and sent back. Then material data was then sent back to the alien probe that was now in a geosynchronous orbit with EE station. Upon receiving the message, the probe closed up and went back the wormhole it had come from. Suddenly our anticipation changed to bewilderment, what had we done wrong. Had we made our visitor from another part of the universe angry. All humanity could do is wait.

As humanity waited for further contact from our extraterrestrial visitor, the business of changing out the crew of EE was underway. The new modules were being added and the new crew were being brought up to speed on everything they had been studying about. New equipment was being tested and more advanced probes were being prepared to go through the wormholes. It was nearly a year before the old crew departed back to earth and the new one was fully integrated into the new station. It seemed as if we had forgotten about our visitor, but on earth that was anything but the case. Plans had been enacted from day one surrounding the fact that we were no longer alone in the universe. The earth unified government was engaged in both scientific, philosophical and yes military discussion about what first contact with a new species could mean. Some of the old fears and biases that had almost led to humanities undoing earlier in the 21^st century began to rear their ugly heads, but they were quickly quashed by higher reason and diplomacy. Despite this, apprehension and a certain uneasiness abound on earth. On EE, people were simply waiting for the next event.

On February 3^rd, 2086, the wormhole now known as Gateway 1 began to flutter again. After a about one earth hour, it blossomed again and the spherical object that had previously emerged seemed to reappear, however, this time it wasn't alone. It was accompanied by several smaller spheres and once it was in near proximity to EE, meaning a paltry 4 million kilometers, it began to change. The spheres began to shift their shape and interconnect. When finished, they looked something akin to a spider's web with a indention at the center. The object then moved slightly to align itself with EE and began to broadcast a message. At first the computers on the upgraded space station were overloaded. The amount of data coming in was more than they could process. When the alien object was done transmitting, the data nearly took up all of the available space in the station's computers. The data could only be measure in Tera flops and it was found that the data was in blocks but was still encoded. So, while some of the data was fed into a new supercomputer on EE, other parts were transmitted back to earth for decryption. After nearly a week of work on both earth and EE, a picture began to form. The object had basically sent out a alien version of an encyclopedia. It was simply basic message of hello this is who we are. It contained biological science data, historical data, and reams of other material related to the alien societies existence. It was carefully analyzed and after nearly 6 months a response was formulated and sent back to EE. From there it was put back into the original formatted encoded language which we could now readily decipher with the help of modern AI systems. Then it was transmitted back to the array. As quickly as we sent the response, a signal went out from the array into the wormhole. Then silence, for several weeks in fact. Then all of a sudden, another message came back. This time it wasn't encoded in the alien language that we had previously had to decode, but it was formatted in our own language(s) . It was to show us that they understood us. That they could relate to us. It was both exciting and terrifying at the same time, with reluctant anticipation humanity began to accept the new reality of talking to another race of beings.

The long-distance communication project went on for several more months. Eventually humans built a communications array of their own and sent it through the wormhole. It was designed around the linguistic principals of the new alien language. Message were now being sent approximately every 7 earth days. We figured out that our near-earth neighbors had at first sent the probe out through another wormhole and it had encountered one of our probes and reported back what it had found. As best as humans could figure, this was some kind of safety net. Send out a probe but don't let the other planet know exactly where it came from. We found out from the exchange of ideas, that the other race lived on a similar world to ours but that their environment was vastly different being highly nitrogen enriched. They looked similar to humans in basic physiology, but with distinct difference in their ability to use nitrogen and process other elements that would be toxic to us. We thought that perhaps that all we would ever do was exchange ideas, but then it happened. We received a message that was very clear, they wanted to meet us. The very fact that they now felt comfortable enough to meet us was to say the least unsettling. There were so many things to work out, so many details. Luckily for humanity, our near-earth neighbors only 300 light years away were happy to help out with this.

It took a few years to build, a habitat on earth, but one built to specifications of an alien race. It was unlike anything that humanity had ever undertaken. Our celestial neighbors had sent us biological samples of plants from their world. They gave us the technological specifications to build an ecosystem conducive to their survival. Based on the mathematics, it would take them approximately 5 earth months to circumnavigate a few wormholes to reach our solar system. We as humans still had some of the old proclivities of who will do what and how, but one mutual consensus was reached, the first person(s) to greet our near-earth neighbors shouldn't be either politicians or military. It was elected that certain scientist would be the welcoming party. A cross section of representatives from among the best and brightest minds on earth. They would be our representatives.

The earth year is 2091 and on earth as well as EE and the rest of the solar system we have inhabited, a still silence has taken hold. A message was received two days earlier giving a precise time for the arrival. Humanity will finally know life beyond our own. What this means is any one's guess, but with great care we have waited for this moment and as the wormhole blossoms and all of mankind views, the moment of destiny is finally here, they have arrived.