Translator’s note: For those species reviewing this document not endowed with the ability (natural or technological) to review live image / video / sound / sensation in line with text, descriptions of the aforementioned have been supplied in an effort to make the simultaneous experience comprehensible.
If a full immersion experience is desired, please consult your local adaptation bureau at your earliest convenience.
Session 001: Opening statement
The hall of delegates is filled with the overlapping chatter of comfortable comrades. Perhaps an expert might discern the slightly too loud laughter of a nervous friend at a mediocre joke, or note the ways heads turn a little too fast to the sound, and diagnose a collective sense of unease. These delegates are experts, long used to the bare benches and unfurnished walls of their austere authority, and such a diagnosis, therefore, would surely be mistaken. No case could make these veterans of law and politics tense.
Besides, they have the calming authority of Ceilmis Galb-ern, half-buried in his time-measuring knick-knacks, to lean on. To his left the stone sundial with floating miniature sun lights his desk even as the shadow precisely tells the time down to the minute. On the right an inverse hourglass bubbles slowly, with lighter-than-air ink dripping drop by drop upwards. Little beeps from flickering semi-digital clocks, swinging pendulums and biological timepieces litter the desk in chaotic order.
Elderly in body, his sharp eyes flash with a brightness reflecting a glimmer of the fire within. Unlike most Arbiters, he has become more, not less, radical with age. His most recent ruling on the oversight and care of semi-sentient machines was driven more by personal morality than precedent. Should make for an interesting case, if nothing else.
With a sharp cough, he heaves himself to his feet and says, plainly and clearly “I call this quorum to order”, bringing silence down like a heavy blanket on a smouldering fire. His eyes meet the defendant’s and, with a nod and a sweep of his hand, gestures to her to begin.
Mebalksin Crolayon couldn’t be more different from the Arbiter sitting in judgement over her. Where he is sharp and irascible, she is conservative and precise. Where his gown sits loosely and informally over his broad, pigeon chest, her sharp and formal uniform has been dry-cleaned, polished, starched and pressed to within an inch of its life. His age, worn like armour, contrasts her youth, which only emphasises her substantial successes to date. When she starts speaking, the differences are extended to the statistical limits of their tensile strength.
"Delegates, Arbiter. I am accused of violation of Statute 7 Sub-section 4.1, which states:
“No ecumenical citizen shall interfere with the development of any sentient species without express permission of the Uplift and Advancement Institute (UAI) granted, in triplicate, by a majority of those holding Trigologis rank or higher”
The room microphones struggle to detect her dull and raspy monotone over the background whispers of rustling cloth and tapping fingers dancing over hardlight keyboards. Back straight, face impassive, she continues her impassive oration:
“As evidenced by exhibit A-013, I was given permission as part of the UAI Advanced Contact Brigade directed at SOL-03, a hydro/teral mid-zone with bipedal hominids at a pre-agricultural inflection. Thanks to my leadership, development accelerated at pace across all appropriate zones, exceeding the mean progression rate by 2.3 standard deviations.”
The hint of pride in her voice is reinforced by the images which decorate her speech – the Nile, rising and falling in its annual, sighing rhythm, feeding ever-increasing crowds. Corn springing up on carefully cultivated terraces within a throbbing, noisy jungle. A desert, brought into bloom between two rivers as a marsh is drained and the Yangtze tamed by farmers wading through dense rice fields, trousers bunched around their knees to avoid the damp.
“This excellence continued as we introduced the themes of Teotl and The Twelve Truths. Animal-human hybrid divinity was readily embraced and the three spheres of Nature, Star, and Time formed the trinity of their development within four generations of agricultural establishment”
The murmurs of approval temporarily drown her out as gold top pyramids and towering animal-headed gods mingle with stone and wood-henges at the summer and winter equinox. Crude star charts, with crabs and archers scratched on them are bookended by smiling, fat children giggling amongst stepped towers and a mathematician scratching his chin as he proves a^2 = b^2 + c^2
“…as per protocol. Genetic samples across time and space stored on ice… recombinant foetuses and volunteers numbered over”
The gavel sounds, firmly and definitely, once. The muttering voices die down as the Arbiter gently replaces the still trembling tool into its official rest.
Mebalksin doesn’t seem to have noticed as she continues describing the protocols and their successes. “FTL observation satellite launched upon departure and cultural-social education began while relativistic travel engaged. Observation data compressed, collected and analysed, both with and without subject species engagement on 10-year cycle, as standard.”
In the silence, the tone of her next breath seems to foreshadow a change in tone. No listener could have said why, in that moment, their pulses quickened and their windpipes dried, the anticipatory adrenaline surging in the body before the mind knew why.
“The data was a statistical surprise.” Breath. “All seeded cultures were assimilated, exterminated, degraded or otherwise rendered non-viable within.” Breath. “2000 years per non-relativistic galactic calendar”. If blinks of surprise and frowns of concern could be heard, the room would be in an echoing uproar. As it was, her dull tone enhanced the gravitas of her report even as it took a turn for the worse.
“This was the last image we received before…” pause. “before non-standard procedures were implemented.” The blooming of a mushroom cloud, seen from above, looks less like a mushroom and more like a strange, monochrome flower. Radiation, heat, atmospheric disturbance all impassively graphed in the bottom right of the image can’t hide the inhuman scale of the man-made tragedy unfolding. The second, outrageous affront can barely be understood by the overwhelmed, short-circuiting satellite. Pixels greying out, the image clouds over like fast-forward cataracts in a sandstorm.
“Non standard procedures?” a delegate asks. Hardly protocol but, then again, hardly the moment that protocols were written for.
“Three changes to the usual flight plan were implemented. First, FTL drive was disengaged and unsealed for use by all onboard personnel. Second, all research, archive and educational material was unsealed for use by all onboard personnel. Third, the entire UAI team boarded emergency shuttle 001 and set course for home”
This, perhaps, was the moment protocols were written for. Not that anybody adhered to them in the barrage of confused yelling and exclamation
“Abandoned ship! But…”
“…centuries, millennia of research handed over? The risks are…”
“…one of our most advanced vessels handed over to a bunch of tribal savages”
There is a movement, or maybe the idea, the memory of a movement in Mebalksin right hand. On seeing it, one might see visions of misty moors, pistols at dawn, the crack of shot at 30 paces with seconds stood by and the burn of gunpowder. Perhaps the hairs on the back of your head stand up, hearing the rasp of a sword drawn in anger and pressed, pointedly, at an offending mouth, drawing a single drop of blood. A ghostly gauntlet thrown down, an invisible glove struck across a face, a lance lowered and a middle finger defiantly raised - all contained in that subliminal movement.
“Savages sir?” The final article of evidence is introduced into the morning’s proceedings. “Savages who, within 3 hours of evacuation halted the ship relative to the galactic centre? Savages who defrosted their colleagues from deep cryo-sleep with zero point zero percent casualties?”
Where is the tremble of emotion we’ve learned to expect at times like this? The soaring background music, a passionate point emotionally made and decorated with evidence, as one always imagines in legal cases. Yet here, somehow, here, in this room, the powerful inverse is true. The evidence is the starting point, the foundations, the topsoil, from which emotions burst forth like flowers at first rain.
“Savages whose vessel stayed perfectly static for 14.7 days. Savages who accessed our archives on average 43.7 times per day per person. Savages who wrote anonymising software to permit totally, truly blind voting 3.4 hours before engaging thrusters full speed towards a shell-shocked, atomised world, a hard world, a world filled with strangers and anger, with war and despair, because they knew there were people there who needed their help.”
“Savages who, as we now know, voted unanimously to reject the comfort and safety of our civilisation. Savages whom you might well learn from, sir.”
And when, after an appropriate pause, the Arbiter called for the first recess of the morning, you could almost see the smile he was struggling so desperately to hide.
