Earth Seven Read online

  EARTH 7

  And the History Department at the University of Centrum Kath

  By Steve M

  I wrote this. Blame no one else.

  2017 - Florida

  READER’S GROUP

  Join the reader’s group and get:

  - A free copy of Improbables in the History Department series. Find out how it all went wrong with this prequel. Before the History Department there was the Math Department and the First McGee. The end of everything hangs in the balance.

  - The Final War has begun.

  - Weekly novel-in-progress first draft

  - Discounts on new releases

  - News of multi-author book giveaways

  Join today before your planet self-destructs. Won’t it be comforting to know how life is out among the stars as you wait for the end of the world?

  https://dl.bookfunnel.com/a1h26ol7tg

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  READER’S GROUP

  Steve Who?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Welcome to the universe after we finally conquer the urge to blow it all up.

  But even a universe at peace is a dangerous place.

  First, let’s dispense with the legal requirement.

  I am telling you this history per the exception made for FACTION (Facts Told as Fiction) in accordance with Section 183.17 of the Charter of the History Department at the University of Centrum Kath, the largest repository of knowledge and learning in the universe.

  There, don’t want to lose my license.

  This report is part of Project Seedling, an introduction to life beyond your planet provided in the unlikely event that your planet avoids self-destruction.

  I would like to start my report regarding the intervention on Earth Seven with a list of those who were either part of the intervention or played an important peripheral role to the intervention. There will be many people in this history. Focus on these.

  Koven Modi - a first year field historian. Koven is a coward, a slacker, but with a high proficiency for strategic games. He tries to get through life without too much effort even though Field Historian is a dangerous job. He was not the best person for this mission. But because of Klept Emergency he was the only one left. Koven is also a disappointing boyfriend. Just ask....

  Tanit - Koven's girlfriend and a propulsion physicist working on the new XML series FTL drives. She has had just about enough of him and his fear of commitment. Tanit has an image in her mind of the perfect life and she is beginning to wonder if Koven is the right person to share it with. She dreams that they sail away in the old spaceship she is restoring, travelling from planet to planet. He will teach history while she keeps their mobile home running smoothly.

  Allor - found a crashed spaceship on Earth Seven as a child. It’s taken him years to figure out how to use just a few items he salvaged from the wreckage. He lost the woman he loved in the wars and he vowed revenge against the Cult of Ceros. Under other circumstances Koven and Allor might be friends. Allor is on the cusp of bringing the planet under his rule. He heals the sick with alien technology. He flies across the sky as if by magic. Allor reluctantly follows the advice of his mother...

  Tal - Allor's mother. She is the principal guide in Allor's life, reminding us that all parents are not good parents. She grew up in poverty and without so trained her son to be a thief. She founded the cult that worships him. She trained the priesthood and is in charge of purging priests of other cults in conquered territory. She is stunning looking with dark dramatic features. She is quick to use her sword to end a dispute.

  Professor Wingut - the man who saved the universe a long time ago....accidentally, when under pressure he forgot the PIN to an explosive device he had armed moments earlier. He's the most well-known person in history and he sponsors all of Koven's missions as a field historian. This is unusual and results in Koven being mocked by other field historians. Wingut has also been secretly in love with Koven's mother, Indira, since they were in university together a long time ago.

  Indira Modi - Koven's mother and also a history professor. She's the sort of mom we all want. Kind, loving, supportive...and will fight you like a Tasmanian Devil after a six pack of Red Bull if you mess with her child. She's also a woman of fine principles too, as you will find out at the end of this report.

  Eflin Modi - Koven's father is also a history professor and a golf fanatic. Regrettably he was a field historian during a period when mission assignments were incorrectly calculated. It resulted in him being given numerous violent missions and this has affected him mentally. PTSD plus level. He has never forgiven Koven for the death of his other son.

  Professor Siplonius Longley - The head of the history department. An annoying pedantic man who believes that everyone should agree with him because he has memorized the book of rules for life...if there were such a book. There isn't. We all know people just like him, know it alls that really don't.

  Professor Leo Trill - The head of the sociology department. He is vain, arrogant and will do anything to increase his department budget. He also wants to overcome a humiliating event in the past that cost the department their right to oversee planets in contact quarantine. He wants to take them back from the History Department and reap the substantial budget that comes with them.

  (At this point I am required by law and license to remind you that I am a Historian and I don't like the Sociology Department or any of the moving sphincters that populate it.)

  Rusa - the first human replica android since the lifting of the ban on human appearance. Due to the Klept Emergency she was assigned to h
elp Koven on his mission. But something is happening to her. She is beginning to calculate emotions. We didn’t understand just how profound a development this was.

  I should point out that this history is not about your planet, even though your planet is a vital part of the history of how and why things operate the way they do in the universe. The First McGee came from Earth Five after all. It was her experiences and history on your planet that shaped her and her work and as a result how we are structured out among the stars.

  Rather this history is about a planet similar to your own, just not as advanced as Earth Five.

  How similar is it to your planet? There are 3,726,041 developmental matches shared between Earth Five (your home) and Earth Seven. 8,714 developmental milestones are also shared.

  What are developmental milestones? They are just developmental events, but the really important ones. Things like development of the wheel, the first pointed stick, the bow and arrow, the first time the dominant species stops wandering around like philosophers looking for a toilet and plant some crops because Ug-Ug has some bones that break up the soil really well. The dominant species can finally settle down and even have a permanent cave. And sooner or later someone invents something called a fence and it turns out bad for everyone and a lot of people die defending fences. Things like that are examples of developmental milestones. But they are not all just technological advances, even though tech makes up the majority of the list.

  There are also milestones in the development of thought. Some are really simple like ‘I’m sick of carrying around a satchel full of stones for trading livestock, there must be a better way’. Or ‘I won’t punch you in the nose because I wouldn’t like it if you did it to me’. These aren’t complex ideas and can be derived by most intelligent species from an early age. Then quickly forgotten when convenient.

  There is also a progression of milestones in thought from the simplest to the slightly less so. ‘The stars are moving’ is an important early milestone followed much later by ‘maybe we are moving too’. ‘Our planet is round’ is one of those really, really big milestones, although on your planet there remain those who deny the oft proven fact.

  The continued belief in a flat planet by some on Earth Five confuses many in the Sociology Department at the University of Centrum Kath. This despite hundreds of their scholarly papers, each of which attempts to explain the flat planet phenomenon adequately but fails. Many of their papers directly contradict other papers from the Sociology Department. Still sociologists don’t see that as a source of profound disgrace and shame.

  We in the History Department take a much different view about the publishing of contradicting papers. But then they are sociologists because they just weren’t good enough to become historians. We do not publish conjecture!

  As for dealing with those who believe they live on planet Frisbee, I offer a quotation from the book Arugula, Kale and Other Things I Don’t Miss, by the First McGee.

  ‘What education cannot accomplish is often achieved through therapy’.

  Apologies, I’m being intellectually lazy and quoting the First McGee to merely sound clever and profound. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. Please forgive me. Please don’t report me. Complaint reviews are the worst. They show up on departmental reports.

  Still, you should be proud, the First McGee was from Earth Five.

  And yes, I do see the irony in it. The principal architect of organizational structure in the universe came from a planet that is in strict contact quarantine by the rest of the universe. Makes me chuckle every time I think of it.

  Seems impossible but it isn’t. It’s just improbable and that is a much longer history that I won’t explain in detail here. The First McGee was briefly an Improbable, a very rare non-accident of probability that happens with numbers approaching infinity. Strange things happen at the farthest ends of a normal distribution (bell curve) when approaching infinity. She was one of those.

  So why is your planet in contact quarantine? And why are there multiple planets called Earth?

  All planets in contact quarantine are called Earth. It was the result of an unresolved dispute in the Naming Division of the Astronomy Department before the deadline for naming the second planet in contact quarantine at the beginning of the quarantine program. Earth Two was the last moment compromise after weeks of arguments, badgering, and at least one shoving match between esteemed colleagues.

  But now they call it a naming convention and feel much better about it and themselves. There have been no further scuffles.

  As for why Earth Five is in quarantine that is very simple. Just look around your planet. You are in quarantine because you’re dangerous and we expect you to self-destruct soon. Currently there is a 63.82% probability of planetary self-immolation.

  You don’t look well. Perhaps you should sit down. How about I fix you a nice strong alcoholic beverage?

  I’ve studied Earth history. It’s gruesome. It’s grim and yet remarkably similar to most other planets with intelligent life. The developmental similarities are staggering although the appearances are often quite different. But let me explain your highest concern right now.

  Why will you blow yourselves up?

  In a term, Tech-Emp, that’s short for Technology- Empathy.

  It’s easiest to visualize it. Imagine a graph.

  The left vertical axis is the propensity to violence, the horizontal axis is time. But there is also a right vertical axis too. It is for the number of kills per use of a weapon. Consider it weapons effectiveness.

  There is a line that curves down to the right, indicating that as our civilization progresses; we become less prone to violent responses over time. We understand more things and can be more compassionate instead of fearful. The more you know, the more you understand, and the less likely you are to blow the crap out of something as your initial reaction to it. Let’s call it empathy.

  But there is also a curve that starts near the intersection of both axes on the left and goes upwards as it goes to the right. Body Count per use of a weapon. More fundamentally, it represents weapons technology. As time progresses, we can kill more people and destroy more stuff every time we blow the crap out of things.

  The point at which the two lines intersect is a very reasonable indicator as to whether your planet will make it to the finish line and join the rest of us in the Federation. Or you will blow yourselves to pieces in wars over things that really don’t matter and often are false, untrue, and fabricated to control you.

  Apologies for an unpleasant truth.

  This report is not intended as a political message or ideological manifesto, there are no grand ideas or proposed solutions included here. It is only the result of the study of numerous planets going through the same circumstances and putting thought to the underlying causes. Any assumption that there is an opinion in this report is incorrect and may simply reflect your own biases. A review of nearly one thousand incidents of planetary self-destruction leads me to a simple observation:

  When technology advances faster than empathy there is only one destination, an extinction event.

  This is not a complex idea. It’s very common. Consider your own recent history.

  Just think of the technical advances in weaponry on your planet in the last hundred years. It used to be possible to simply stay a safe distance from the weapon and all would be fine. Twenty miles or so would usually work well enough to avoid extinction by the guns of Krupp Industries. But today there is no safe distance on your planet.

  But don’t fret, you’re not alone. I know it is not much consolation to know you share a bad outcome. Tech-Emp applies at the planetary, the galactic, and even the universe-wide levels too. Every civilization moves towards the challenge and most do not survive. It is almost like one of the laws of physics, constant and dependable. Self-destruction has happened to thousands of planets that we know of. Big and strong, then suddenly gone in a pretty flash of light.

&n
bsp; There is a famous quote about the correlation between technology and destruction. I need to recall is perfectly so give me just a moment. OK.

  ‘When your technology is finally capable of showing you the self-destruction of other planets in your galaxy, it is sufficient to add you to the list.’

  This time I quoted the First McGee with better relevance, I hope.

  In the case of the destruction of the universe, that’s where the First McGee seized the stage of history. We were on the threshold of making the same mistake as before. RESET. Destroy everything. Gone. Complete nothingness. A universe disappeared. Infinite potential erased. The order for destruction had already been agreed.

  But the First McGee figured out how to control a second existential crisis happening at the same time. She discovered how to stop the strange and unexplained oscillations between existence and non-existence that had begun. Thanks to exponential growth they quickly came to consume over a quarter of the universe and seemed unstoppable.

  She used her knowledge and control of the oscillations to make us change. If it weren’t for her, Malu would have prevailed at the Battle of Least Mistakes and we would all be in slavery of one kind or another. Or worse, the RESET weapon would have ended everything, just like last time. It was in the middle of this chaos that the First McGee stepped forward to seize control.

  And yes, there are different forms of slavery. The most dominant forms are physical, economic, gender, and psychological. All forms are now strictly forbidden. It was on her initial list of demands.

  Guess you’re wondering how this all happened.

  The First McGee had what historians called ‘her moment of clarity’, that instant when she realized her potential. In this case it was her potential to blackmail the entire universe and bluff her way through it. Yes, blackmail and bluff. She used those exact words to describe it and said she was proud of it. Agree to her terms or spend the rest of eternity alone in a monochromatic existence without food, music, or toilets. Or arms or legs. Nothing but consciousness alone forever. Not even lips to whistle or fingers to tap. After a short time most of us would be as crazy as inbred royalty. You can trust me on this, I’m a historian. Truth is a way of life with us. And law. And license.