Notes from ISPV Rumoth Continued…
As Jennifer mentioned, I have experienced a few incidents of seemingly latent anger or xenophobia. Primarily from humans who appear to potentially be of age of first generation post-imperial (estimated age of 35-60 human years).
Given our surroundings, there don’t appear to be many of them (or many who are more open about it), this being an imperial passenger vessel heading for the human named ‘Alpha Centaur’, but it’s still present. The deceit among some of these humans appears to be most dropped when intoxicated.
As such, while I did attempt to keep tabs on the human intoxication zones as much as reasonable, I didn’t want to taint the results of this study overly by relying on it.
It was in avoiding these areas for a bit that I noticed a thin human with Anhkar bodyguards. It took a moment to actually pick him out as being their subject (the Ankhar being almost exclusively bodyguards and guardians of important imperial subjects), but to my careful eyes, they moved and swayed through the ship with him and his group, perhaps his family as it included small humans.
To that end, obtaining an interview required me to show my study pass and hand over my recorder to the Anhkar bodyguards before I could even ask the human if he’d be willing to talk to me. He was, but unfortunately, I’ve had to note down everything from memory.
[Begin notes on Simon Timonest]
Simon was one of the first post-imperial humans to be born star side, aboard the space elevator counterweight station which was one of the first imperial ‘gifts’ to the humans [note: elevator and strand arriving approximately 15 years after imperial control was established and in place approximately 5 years after that, owing to planet-side preparations]. Simon referred to it as a ‘gift’ as he did not appear to be fond of it or reflects that humans aren’t especially fond of the gesture made by the Empire, but that appears to be neither here nor there.
As such, Simon developed a somewhat different symbiotic internal culture, being semi-isolated from the more wild human environment, and so has never been to the surface of his own homeworld for anything other than brief visits. He was very clear from a young age that he couldn’t imagine living stuck in that kind of environment, even though less than a generation prior, he’d have almost certainly lived in that, creating a very different sort of person.
Simon’s mother was a scientist, specializing in biomedicine and being reasonably accomplished from a young age. She was invited, along with her husband, to work aboard the counterweight station in order to work with imperial scientists on understanding the human biosphere and the microorganism symbiosis. Naturally, she couldn’t find it within herself to refuse.
Simon’s father was a technician, specializing in human hardware intended for power generation. As such, since the counterweight station was based almost exclusively on centuries old Imperial technology, Simon’s father was retrained in order to take over maintenance of the counterweight station, his skill set being highly transferable into relevant technologies. However, Simon’s father was less than thrilled at being retrained and with being moved into orbit to support his wife.
Simon’s progenitor family group was one of matriarchal construction, so Simon’s father relented and supported Simon’s mother in moving to the counterweight station. By contrast, in the short time I interviewed with Simon, Simon’s family group (confirmed by this point) was more patriarchal in construction. When I remarked on this, Simon made a gesture with his shoulders that appeared to be some manner of dismissal.
Simon’s mate and offspring came and went over the course of the interview, one of the Anhkar bodyguards going with them.
Simon had two younger siblings, both of whom were void-side, somewhere in the Empire, but Simon had no idea what they were up to. Interstellar communications hadn’t caught up between the family group in recent memory.
When I prompted Simon as to why the bodyguard, he seemed a bit shocked that I noticed them and knew their function. I reminded him of my function to be aware as a journalist. He seemed to need a moment to process this, although I’m not entirely certain why.
After a moment, I decided to ask what manner of profession he was engaged in. He brightened considerable.
Simon is a primary contributor (his word) for a new interstellar communications network. Assuming it works the way it should, it can provide a much faster interlinked system between all the stations, ships, and planets, allowing also for a much more distributed system vice relying on more discrete networking as now.
In the current system, ships are commonly loaded with packets, data products, and other items heading a particular direction aligning with the ship and are on-loaded/off-loaded as the ships depart and arrive from various stations. Planets get updates from their local stations, but everything is routed and while the imperial computers are good at routing across the interstellar distances, it can be an issue with rapid responses or if there are vessels lost due to piracy or mishaps.
Simon’s system is based on a human concept of federated systems combined with the human ‘internet’ (a word that Simon had to spell out as close as he could in imperial script). Because of the set-up of how these worked, this would simplify the networking problem that imperial systems have had for years.
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But Simon wasn’t finished. He had also taken information from how imperial FTL systems work, converted the math to support data as a kind of carrier wave with messages and then managed to link two star systems together with near instantaneous message traffic. The bodyguard rumbled politely, clearly indicating that Simon shouldn’t talk too much about this, but said nothing specific.
Simon, having been very excited by all this, sat back a bit, cowed a bit by the bodyguard, but clearly relaxing as well.
When I asked if this system would become part of the general imperial messaging system, Simon simply said that it was over his head (a colloquial referring to it being above his decision making or his station in life) on whether his solution would be applied that way. Apparently, the imperial scientists and imperial military were up in arms over the whole invention, debating on keeping it as a prototype only vs turning it into a mass production system with every vessel, every station, every planet being a part of this mass network.
A small glimmer in Simon’s eyes made it seem like he had bigger ideas than even this, but that he couldn’t talk about them here.
When I asked about the dangers of having such a broad network, Simon waved his hands vaguely and indicated that some of the rather obvious protections had been baked into the prototype, since even humans had experienced their own challenges on that front pre-Empire.
The guard rumbled again and I steered the conversation to why Simon was out with his family group.
Apparently this was the first vacation in several (human) years that Simon had taken and they had wanted to get out and see the stars. This passenger vessel, while not a ‘cruising’ vessel dedicated to passing by particular stellar and planetary phenomena, was along one of the safer routes and did include some stop-overs in various areas which provided learning experiences for Simon’s offspring, something which Simon’s mate had insisted upon.
Simon was very dedicated to seeing the project through and because of the importance to the Empire, he had been issued (against his preference) bodyguards until a formal decision was made regarding the future of the communication prototypes. Simon apparently had to specifically leave out certain formulae from his designs so that neither the military nor the other contributors/scientists could produce their own without an official decision.
(Such a decision could go as high as the imperial family, but would more likely be decided by the regional lords.)
While awaiting an official decision, Simon had found this to be a perfect time for a vacation (and Simon’s mate had insisted).
Simon’s offspring, like Simon, had never spent more than a few imperial days planetside, but were being brought up in the ways of the Empire. Simon noticably winced a little, saying this, but appeared to be open about it.
At this point, I decided to ask about it.
Simon wasn’t a happy citizen of the empire, but he appreciated what it had done for him, his family, and humans at large.
His father had rather openly despised the Empire, but never committed to anything of particular note. The reasons for this weren’t clear to Simon, other than perhaps old prejudices, but Simon was certain he had his reasons.
Simon on the other hand was very certain as to his reasons. If the Empire had simply remained at a decent enough distance and attempted communications and allowed for time and attitudes to shift, there might have been no war at all and no need for imperial intervention. Allowed the humans to simply come to terms with there being a universe that was awaiting them.
Given my own information with regard to the self-destructive nature of the humans in that time period and the associated secrecy and propaganda of the age, I questioned whether the humans of the time might not have made it a secret or claimed it to be some manner of propaganda created to divert people’s attentions. Simon acknowledged this as being a problem, but countered that parking a long term probe or even observational vessel near an adjacent planet or near the star even would have ensured that the secret or dismissals of propaganda would have been broken sooner rather than later and been far less confrontational than moving a warship into close enough orbit for the militaries of the humans to have easily launched weapons at it.
I conceded this point, but countered that no civilization, save the Hibbucks, had reacted violently to the presence of the Empire. With deep suspicion and paranoia, yes – many species had reacted that way, but a violent reaction to a clearly spacefaring group was almost unheard of, so there was almost nothing in the Imperial Void Corps regarding dealing with a barely contacted species who responded violently.
Simon appeared to dislike this, apparently finding this ‘lack of future planning’ inadequate, and believing that the Imperial Void Corps should have plans for every eventuality.
I pointed out that such plans would require the consideration of species never met and attitudes and reactions that were impossible to comprehend. I drew upon the precedent of the Wizithic, who were so foreign a species to most of the Empire, that communication with them was almost exclusively a mix of script and elemental. Verbal and visual communications have been so unsuccessful as to have nearly set off embargoes and a closure of ports.
Simon still wasn’t happy with this and suggested that perhaps his next challenge should be in improving the imperial translators if they are that poorly prepared, along with drafting a decision tree to support the Imperial Void Corps, to avoid a situation like as happened with the humans. I simply nodded as a human might (and as I had seen Jennifer do).
Simon appeared a bit worked up over this and so I turned to where Simon and his family group would go after this voyage. Simon relaxed a bit and indicated that he and his mate would be going back to work at one of the nearby systems and his offspring would be returning to their schooling.
His mate was a technician, like Simon’s father, but of one training from the start on imperial systems, being a shipyard technician, supporting the calibration of FTL drives, power systems, and even life support (a comparatively specialized area). It was a very portable job, almost every system worth going to (and even some that weren’t) needing shipyard technicians and there always being a demand for them.
The shipyard technicians union was comparatively weak relative to the CCU that Lilith was in, but they were in constant demand vice a flux with the shifts in product demands, so they were not as organized. Additionally, a refusal to service Imperial vessels of the line was tantamount to electing exile or risking arrest. So the shipyard technicians union was only as strong as it needed to be.
When Simon had first taken this opportunity, he’d been worried about his mate and offspring, but they’d found their new home aboard their new station readily enough and so Simon had stopped worrying. Simon smiled at the apparent thought of returning home.
And it was at this point that one of his offspring came up and requested Simon join them in a particular activity. This signaled the end of the interview and the return of my recorder from the guard.
Simon was perhaps not the ideal case, but one that provided a good deal of insight into the human mentality with regard to the Empire, seeing it as having interfered unnecessarily in the affairs of humans rather than allowing them to make their own choices in coming into the stars.
In a way, I could not blame him for wanting to believe in his species’ collective decisionmaking. But at the same time, I am reminded of exactly why the Empire has directly interfered and the worlds that were broken as a result of their failure to intervene.
We have another few days to our port in Alpha Centaur, where I will be spending some time among the local humans, it being the nearest star to the human homeworld, and I will attempt to gather more inputs. In the meantime, Jennifer has invited me to join with her and another human for a meal and she has requested that I ‘preen my feathers adequately’. To what end, I’m uncertain, but I am please to have been invited.