I wasn’t sure whether to post this on ~arts, ~books, or here, so I apologize if it’s in the wrong place. This morning I got lost in a Hacker News comment thread, as one does, and then a crazy idea...
I wasn’t sure whether to post this on ~arts, ~books, or here, so I apologize if it’s in the wrong place.
This morning I got lost in a Hacker News comment thread, as one does, and then a crazy idea for a piece of fiction came to me.
I’m sharing it here with you all. I don’t intend to do anything with this. It was just fun to write it out this morning. Feel free to copy or adapt it if you’d like. Also, feel free to discuss the themes of this story, which include the environment and warfare.
Title: Galactic Oceans
Thousands of years ago, on a distant planet covered almost entirely by an ocean, a space-fearing, aquatic, humanoid species arises.
They begin to colonize other planets across the galaxy that contain oceans on them, and soon discover the earth as they explore space.
The first alien colonizers arrive in 422 BCE and settle in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
In 398 BCE, while building new settlements in the Mediterranean Sea, they try to establish contact with a few Greeks.
They learn about the myth of Atlas. They are not only pleased by the human fables, but astonished to find a word in a human language that is exactly the same as one of their own—“atlas”, a verb meaning “to seed” in their language. They therefore decide to name the earth “Atlantis” (a noun declination meaning “seed”), and rename their now capital city in the Atlantic Ocean the same. They also name humans “Zemdzi” (plural of “Zemdzis”), meaning “land dwellers”.
Having learned of the Peloponnesian wars, however, and appalled by the brutality of the species, which seems to be constantly at odds with itself, they decide to cut contact with humans and completely isolate themselves. With the centuries, the existence of their capital city became a legend.
Part of the reason this was done, is because the aliens assumed that the human species was incapable of developing technology sufficiently advanced to detect their existence, and so the aliens left them to rule the land, continuing to peacefully expand their presence across all of the earth’s oceans.
On November 1, 1755, a tragic mining accident near their city of Atlantis led to a catastrophic earthquake taking place, which caused a lot of damage not only to the underwater city itself, but also many human cities across the coasts on both sides of the ocean, particularly Lisbon, which the earthquake was later named after. It was so cataclysmic to the land dwellers, that it sparked the birth of modern seismology and earthquake engineering.
In the late 1800s to early 1900s, American and British scientists were studying seismic activity within the Atlantic Ocean. The patterns that were recorded led some to theorize that “something” other than earthquakes was taking place at its bottom.
These discoveries were one of the reasons for the rapid development of submarines around this time. There was a large increase in these vessels traveling to and fro around the coasts of the American and European continents. Very many of them were secretly scouting the area for unusual phenomena. This drew the attention of the aliens, who began to monitor all human ships and submarines traveling across all of the earth’s oceans.
It was concluded that humans could become aware of their existence within the next few decades, so the aliens decided to take initiative and reestablish contact with the land-dwelling species. They began by collecting data on the humans. This they did through scouting missions using air-tight, water-filled, manned aircraft that they would fly over the land with.
It was during this period that some of the earliest UFO sightings took place. The Aurora, Texas, UFO incident of 1897 was the first time since the early 4th century BCE that humans laid eyes on a member of the alien species.
Once sufficient data had been collected, new technologies were quickly developed. These included suits, filled with water, yet flexible enough to allow for fluid movement on land. During night time, coasts of uninhabited islands across the globe would then be used as testing sites for suits, as well as training sites for the aliens to learn to walk on solid ground. Furthermore, devices for translation between the language of the aliens and human languages were developed. These would be attached to an alien’s suit and emit audible sounds in English, and dozens of other tongues, after an alien had finished speaking a sentence.
During the scouting missions, the aliens became aware of an elite group of people who called themselves “the Scepter”, all descendants of an ancient historical figure known as Nimrod, who secretly ruled all nations behind the scenes in almost complete anonymity throughout the centuries, strategically manipulating politicians, the economy, and the military, all with the goal of retaining their wealth and influence.
Choosing to therefore directly address the “leaders” of the human species, all members of the High Council of the Scepter received letters, inviting them to send delegates to a first meeting, which took place in Hanga Roa (Easter Island), and began in the late hours of December 28, 1901, lasting through the night.
To the astonishment of the delegates sent by the aliens, who identified themselves as “Esmi” (plural of “Esmis”, from their Esmian language, derived from the verb “esmu”, meaning “I am”), the delegates of the Scepter (all members of their varied families themselves), admitted to being aware of their existence since the 4th century BCE, their ancestors having kept all records of that time until now. They further revealed that many of the expeditions undertaken during the Age of Discovery, for example, were partially done for the purpose of reestablishing contact with the alien species.
Another meeting with the High Council took place on the Midway Atoll (Hawaii), on August 14, 1902, also beginning in the evening, at which the High Council of the Scepter met with the so-called “Inner Command” of the Esmi, the leading officers of their colony on earth. The latter formally asked for permission to continue to reside within the earth’s oceans, for support from the Scepter in order to keep their existence a secret and prevent any conflict, and also for them to steer humanity’s further technological developments in such a way as to prevent the pollution of the oceans that they dwell in.
The meeting took a turn for the worse, when the High Council revealed to the Esmi that they were aware that the 1755 Lisbon earthquake had been caused by their mining operations. Therefore, in exchange for all the requests that they made, the High Council demanded that they share some of their scientific knowledge with them. The negotiations took several days, as the Esmi struggled to make the High Council comprehend, that simply offering their knowledge to humans would not result in the immediate development of advanced technologies, as they were not yet capable of comprehending more advanced science. A compromise was made where. For a limited time, a small number of elite human scientists (all members of the Scepter) would study low-level physics under a handful of Esmian mentors. They were promised that this knowledge would eventually enable them to develop sources of energy more efficient and less harmful to the environment (such as through nuclear fission), rather than using fossil fuels.
What this group of scientists (who eventually became known as “the enlightened”) learned, and later published papers on, led to a rapid development of humanity’s understanding of physics.
For much of the 1900s, communication between the Esmi and the High Council was limited to signing agreements for sea-based resource extraction, primarily of oil and natural gas, and later the laying down of submarine communication cables. The former lived with these conditions as best as they could, because simply wanted to live in peace within the earth’s oceans, and the latter felt that they were not in a position to demand anything more from the high advanced, alien species.
After the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and especially the nuclear tests involving underwater detonations of nuclear bombs, however, the Esmi became once more concerned about their safety and resumed their covert scouting missions above land, resulting in a reassurance of UFO sightings in the mid-1900s, after the end of WWII. The High Council closely monitored these but attempted to keep them a secret from the public, while also managing the post-war redevelopment of the world economy.
The rapid industrialization of the late 1900s to early 2000s on land began to severely impact the quality of life of the Esmi, whose water they lived in became increasingly more polluted. Natural disasters also became more frequent, and led to mass casualties among them.
On the night of March 17, 2000, at the Lajes Air Base in Terceira Island, on the archipelago of the Azores (Portugal), the High Council and the Inner Command met for the first time in almost a century, to discuss the matter of the environment, not only from their perspective as ocean dwellers, but also the destruction that humans were causing to their own living space.
Once more, the meeting turned for the worst, as the High Council could give no guarantee that any effort on their part to lead humanity on this matter, would actually convince the species as a whole to make the drastic societal changes necessary for them to focus on developing more environment-friendly methods for generating energy, exploiting the earth’s natural resources less, and properly disposing of garbage. The Esmi then offered the High Council further scientific knowledge that would specificly help humanity to develop the tools to tackle these three problems in a relatively short amount of time (a few decades), with few significant drawbacks to their standard of living, as they now had become able to understand more advanced scientific concepts.
The High Council, fearing that a significant shift in society (especially towards renewable and clean sources of energy, could severely impact not only their wealth, but also further destabilize global politics and the global economy), turned all of the Esmian’s offers down, stating that the planet belonged to humans, and that they were the ones solely responsible for how it was managed. At the end of the meetings, the two parties became suspicious of each other.
From that point on, the High Council began to divest its attention to the development of the worldwide military industrial complex, inciting new conflicts around the globe, beginning with the staging of the September 11 attacks of 2001, which led to many conflicts in the Middle East. Other wars that broke out in parts of Africa, Asia, and even a war in the east of Europe, were all strategically fought to further develop military technology, in preparation for a potential assault by the Esmi.
The Esmi, becoming aware of the arms race that the humans began, reached out to the Supreme Command in their home world Udenis (meaning “water” in Esmian). For the next few years the leaders of their home world raised an army of three billion soldiers, gathered from all of their colonies. They trained them on land-based combat, further developing their special suits. They then made plans to invade, occupy, and take control of the earth, to prevent humans from further polluting it, as planets with oceans are rare in the galaxy, and vital to the survival of their species.
Dubbed the Galatic Oceans Fleet by the Esmi, it was first detected by humans within the Solar System on January 24, 2035. The news of this finding was leaked to the press and led to mass hysteria among the population. The fact that the oceans were occupied by the Esmi was then accidentally revealed to the public, since the High Council did not have time to deal with the issue.
The next day, the High Council contacted the Inner Command to demand that the Fleet do not invade the earth. The Inner Command warned them that the Fleet was comprised of three billion soldiers, and that they planned to take control of the planet by force if humans did not immediately agree to stop polluting it. The High Council cut communication with the Inner Command and ordered all military leaders to prepare for the earth’s invasion from space and by sea. The weeks leading up to the beginning of the war, neither side on the planet confronted the other, as preparations were made.
The High Council decided against the use of nuclear bombs to target the underwater cities of the Esmi, as that would threaten to destroy the earth’s environment, and instead planned to use them to annihilate the Galactic Oceans Fleet. The latter, becoming aware of the plan, began to slow down their approach as they passed the moon’s orbit. All of humanity’s space-capable, nuclear arsenal was fired towards the sky on what became known as “Nightless Day” (because the sky was kept alight by thousands of nuclear explosions), on April 17, 2035. The Esmi fleet allowed the missiles to get close enough to them that they could be safely, remotely detonated by them, so that neither the earth’s atmosphere, nor their ships would be harmed.
The invasion began on the afternoon of the following day. The fleet quickly overwhelmed the ground and air defenses around humanity’s major cities. While many hundreds of millions of humans were captured and subdued, the chaos still led to the death of dozens of millions of others. And despite the Esmi’s highly-advanced suits for land-based combat, humans, being much better trained in land-based combat, were still able to kill hundreds of thousands of the alien species. The Esmi completely dominated on the oceans, however.
The war was fought for 14 days, until the High Council agreed to a cease fire due to the inconceivable and historic loss of human life. The following day, on May 2, mankind surrendered. The “War for the Oceans”, as it later became known, was over.
The Esmi began to formerly occupy the planet. They did not enslave humans but enforced a completely new order on their society. Frivolous consumerism was discouraged. Adult humans were, as much as they were able, required to do some kind of manual labor for about four hours a day, mostly in the afternoon. Mornings were spent educating them. The human population quickly adjusted to its new reality.
The Esmi then began to mingle in human society in order to simmer down the hostilities, using newer, civilian-class versions of their suits, and setting up “water residences” in major cities, which were mostly buildings dug a few stories into the ground, filled with ocean water and connected with diverse systems, similar to those found in aquariums, that allowed them to keep their environments clean.
While the curfews and the surveillance continued for decades, the slaughter caused by way led both sides to generally desire to maintain the peace. This resulted in cultural and scientific exchanges that completely upended human society, and led to the development of entirely clean sources of energy and resource extraction. The living standard of humans diminished for a short while, as they aided the Esmi in building better, more environmentally-friendly infrastructures and processes. By the 2050s, however, it hard recovered. The concept of “wealth” began to wade, as the Esmi passed on their egalitarian principles of government on to the land dwellers. One’s reputation became one’s currency. Hoarding material wealth was almost made a criminal offense. Spending one’s time working, learning, or socializing in person was what this new society expected.
Small insurrections would take place throughout the next decades, but those became rarer as the 22nd century approached. The environment of the planet also began to recover. And now, having acquired superior technology and scientific knowledge from the Esmi, the two species worked together to help humans to expand their frontiers and become stewards of the land in planets across Galaxy. The first human-led expedition to a habitable, earth-like planet named Gradus (Latin for “step), uninhabited by Esmi because it mostly had shallow lakes and underground water basins, took to the stars on September 7, 2125, marking the transition of mankind to a space-fearing species. On that same day, as the human spaceship left the earth, so did thousands of Esmi ships, ending the occupation period. The earth was now not just the home world of the humans, but also another home for the Esmi. And the two species began to cohabit many more planets throughout the coming centuries.