Beau Tino always had his eyes pointed to the skies—further than mere sky—the stars; further still, alien galaxies innumerable. His Science Educator, Det James, took notice early on of Beau’s astronomical interest and gave him special attention in the form of testing-tidbits of information, demanding further research, and experiments in which to test that research. Often, they would find themselves “in study”, quite literally, out in the fields of their small planet, or on the highest modest hill within their horizon, just to observe the planetary neighbors, their satellites, and the stars of systems unknown.
Beau wondered a great many things in these periods of observation, he relished the time with this fellow human, so much his senior, who valued curiosity and amazement such as astronomy forces upon all of its participants. Their time in the fields was, before all other purposes, to be amazed.
“Wow!” They would equally exclaim. “I can make out... two, three... five rings! And the Cassini Division is obvious. Switching now to Rhea.”
“She’s too dark, now. Titan is just there though; only a few degrees 2-o’clock of Saturn.”
Det would himself relish in the silence of pure amazement from this pupil of sorts, so much his junior, who was so concerned with the world outside of himself. He felt refreshed in his own right by the association.
Although agedly disparate, they found much common ground in the problems of the world. Despite Det’s foundation being built upon principles retrieved from the Old Religions, he found no cause for contradiction in his tendency toward the scientific and open-minded. The combination certainly made him more of a humanist than his fundamental neighbors in religion.
One shining truth that they could both share in, that always remained prominent in Beau’s mind, even after Det’s sudden death: “Meet the world and her problems with honesty, in totality.” Beau ascribed it to be his primary recollection of the memories of those days; two mentoids amongst a universe, staring longingly and with wonder at stars they only dreamed of knowing intimately.
Although the world moved ever slower toward it, the trend was indeed leading to a World Integrated Union—a formal epitomization of our connectedness as a species, and which was present and true all along.
In the meantime, injustice abound. Still the fixation is on the ever-apparently-empty pursuit of nominal economics, the current manifestation of which is, distinct from interchange, much more rightly described as idolatry of economic medium—the valuably ascribed tender for whichever era you find yourself in.
Due to this fixation on economics as such, the same age-old problems of class division, poverty, and slavery remained and thrived on our cultural laziness and worldly malpractice. Moreover these problems continued only by our persistent and active self-dishonesty.
“No, no; you’re mistaken,” the privileged would debate themselves, “we do not have power over our own cultural trajectory! Nor the prosperity of others! We simply honor our fathers and love our mothers, by carrying on the way that they had carried on. An affront to that would be an affront to their lives and an affront to mine own life! And what a preposterous question… creditless….”
And so we people carry on, pursuing this and pursuing that—all to increase a mighty social tension that must, it is certain by natural law, be broken at some very near point in the future. The only question is what shall serve as its crux.
Anyway, Beau, per usual, found himself out again among only sand dunes and her unique inhabitants, scurrying as they will under stars they know not. He remembered confessing his dream to Det one long night, of seeing some spectacular cosmic event actually unfold—like our Moon breaking apart like a pistachio’s casing; although, that would not end so much interestingly as it would fatally for us. No, something far-off and cosmic would serve to excite this desire he harbored. But alas, the likelihood, Det would continually remind him, among lifespans of stars and planets in the billions of years, to actually see an animated transition would be… astronomical!
Just then he heard the radio whispers of Arturo Nivell Ph.D., the Popular Scientist of the Decade, and he motioned for the volume to increase. Dr. Nivell was making his world-circuit of lectures and the like on Solar Echolocation, an experimental new field in Astrophysics and Astronomy dealing with the ostensible “language” between stars.
It was theorized that all stars between x and y magnitudes Kelvin and b and c magnitudes density would share a morpho-synergetic connection, across all space, as they serve their life-giving and energy-producing purposes throughout the Universe, locally. This was only fortification for the already boisterous theory of panspermia: whereby living organisms travel through space on the currents of momentum, waiting to encounter some far-off environment that might foment their evolution of form from cellular to molecular and then animal.
As these connected stars live and die, they emit loads of ultraviolet radiation, while spitting out a menagerie of molecules from its primordial furnace of a surface, out into space.
Additionally, it was being purported, these dying stars might actually emit observable sonic pulses tuned just so, yet imperceptibly to us, during these phases of major transition. These pulses might come out of three respective stages of the star’s lifecycle: Birth, Cooling, and Death.
At birth, these likeminded stars are popping and sizzling as it were like the grandest fireworks display you could ever imagine, and on physical scales unthinkable; during this time, quick and highly paced pulses wave outward with photonic speed from the fusion reactions of hydrogen into helium within the star. The beginnings of star-speak.
As these reactions stabilize in kind, the pulse frequency slows incrementally until the stars imploding death—a spectacular display spanning thousands of lightyears, thus, appearing to our star borne telescopes as being totally still. Not only are these explosions immense in size and beauty, it is apparent upon closer inspection by Nivell and his team what rich activity is actually afoot, hidden within these formerly only picturesque “events of progression” in the Universe. Their effect is in fact, and far reaching.
Nivell made the connection to the animalic phenomenon of echolocation precisely by comparison to the almost sonic characteristics of communication of star between like star; and thus theorizing mentoidal—‘thinking being’—commonality. Though as a cosmic event it was surely not shackled to the conceptions of man, Nivell argued that we likewise are cosmic events, and may look on one another as of the same basic origination—infusing so much philosophy into a formal scientific suggestion.
Presently, Beau engaged himself again with his telescope, at the moment trained on the ice moon Europa, of Jupiter, with all of its shimmering valleys and gorges. Europa was on the list of favorites for the Satellite Observatory Commission of NASA. We had yet to establish a permanent observatory on any significant celestial body, including our Moon and our shadow moon, Cruithne, both well within our technological means; waiting only for economical gumption. Initially hoping to achieve this on our Moon, the benefits to visibility were, incorrectly, deemed negligible, measured unevenly against the trillions or so that it would cost in world market credits to achieve such a milestone. After all, a large chunk of that expense is literally burned in the rudimentary while still troublesome task of breaking the surface tension of our atmosphere. After that hurdle, the requirements for propulsion and navigation while in space, and correspondingly the cost, are minimal; traversing space is less, then, about resources and capability as it is about ambition and time allowed. Thus, the SOC was adjourned until such time as we may “increase potential output and returns”on any observatory; a time when we might make that last mile journey from our atmosphere, not just to our Moon or the closest asteroid, but to the Outer Planets, and on the way to the stars themselves—but that would be some time coming, and we needn’t worry.
Beau very much enjoyed contemplating these spacial possibilities… And so close at hand they seemed! It was only a shame that his mentor had not the chance to share in the spoils of such long-awaited exploratory ambitions. Still, Beau knew that Det lacked not the mental faculty to imagine such spoils implicitly in their inevitability. Undemanding of explicit proof in his own life, he was satisfied with discovery in its own right, today; and knowing that the process will live on. This was, it occurred to Beau, likely Det’s purpose in his own life: giving him the message to carry on the work, the curiosity, the wondering…
Just then, a slight aberration in the spectrum of light caught Beau’s eye through the telescope and he went to investigate; for a moment, nothing. But as time went on he began scanning faster, until feverishly combing the endless night sky for a glimpse of the event, until… wait a moment…
He stepped away from his ‘scope, almost staggering away in disbelief, scanning now the vastness with his bare eyes—half in attempt to prove himself a fool, and half in hopes that his wildest ambition had just unfolded before him. The sky was now too bright for his eyes to do any good locating anything but the event in question
Faraway in a star system he could not name was happening an event which Beau dreamed would change the face of his small world completely—he never guessed that he would be dreaming smaller than reality. And how spectacular the show it gave!
Report after report from the orbiting SatNet started filing in, telling of a mighty shockwave, composed of dust and light, whose source likely originated in the undulation of a star’s planetary nebula, destroying a nearby system and carrying with it by panspermia innumerable microbial influences from that alien system. There would be no way to stave off their ingratiation into our own system; it was only a hope that Earth would keep us sacred. Despite it, the transmission and download to humanity of a great many alien morphogenetic thought patterns, was about to be undergone.
This last, the transmission, seems to be the dying gift from a race unequipped to escape their star’s fate. Nevertheless, they seemingly had other, more biological and genetic, talents. Boosting their own genetics into spores, not unlike our own mushrooms, and downloading the rudimentary chemical compounds of their worlds into microbes fit for the harsh temperatures of space; they ensured the continuity of their existence.
Many historicities of this race were contained within and became apparent, post-transmission. All peoples on our small world—indeed all living things of our small world, and our world itself!—had been affected by the pulse in some correspondingly small way. Naturally, according to some old protocol, Space Defense councils were gathered together to report at the United Nations of Earth; though there seemed to be little rush to the order. They seemed merely, again, to be following the call of protocol enacted long before their time.
Upon assemblage, no leader could exactly discern, personally, what the worry or danger was that they were supposed to be addressing, beyond scientific intrigue and sensoring of the Event, as it was so innocuously called. Conversely, in mingle talk among leaders, there was a marked increase of interest and proactivity in regards the general exploration of outer space without expectation of return; other than incidental.
There was, curiously, no undue fixation on the pursuit of Event Origin, in retribution of what normally would have surely been perceived as an assault on our homeworld. Rather, the designs in mind were much more grand; toward a general expansion of mentoidal knowledge and experience, by exploration of unknowns and the unknown of space.
Moreover, all worldly conglomerates and federations were, in general feeling and by general vote, in agreement that:
“
the evolutionary and scientific,
but importantly the survival benefits,
of further dedication,
economically, socially, and technologically,
to the exploration of space
are impossible to ignore at this most compelling stage
of human evolution.
Thus
it is the agreement between Nations and of the whole of the Commons that
expenses in the aforementioned fields be always tangentially beneficial to this most pressing endeavor for all humankind.
…
Panspermia … reaches out its hand … to our unique evolution. To deny the implications it confers—Nations and Commons has agreed—would amount to … omnicide.
…
It will be so.
“
Indeed, it was all quite apparent—what had to be done throughout the world to accomplish this goal—after the Event became visible to most and felt by all. (For after all, this star’s transition actually occurred many lightyears away and many years ago, when it expanded and contracted from red super giant to white dwarf; to an outburst of particles and dust so strong it decimated, as nothing, the 91 known celestial bodies in a nearby system, leaving, in its wake, a pulse of intensely rich shockwaves charged with the morphogenetics of an entire system’s life evolution. After so many years traveling through desolate space, this life had found a new host as it were, in which to ingratiate themselves and their knowledge—unbeknownst to us: just as planned.)
…
Nevertheless, no ill fate befell humankind, up until and continuing beyond this moment of inscription; we have now fully acquainted ourselves with our own home system of planets, and in fact have been reborn into our universal purpose of being witness to more than just ourselves, now not locally but cosmically—a rebirth stimulated by the influence in death of a people that evolved lightyears away, downloading themselves now through the pulsing of space-fabric itself.
There will be much to learn, and the know-how can only increase.
Very interesting.