Book 1: The Pyranis
How an Alien race changes the course of human history
The Pyranis
\ pi ran’ iss \ noun; singular
\ pi ran’ ee \ noun; plural
- Name given to the first extraterrestrial beings to come in contact with the human race
- A derivative of the South American carnivorous fish, piranha
- A descriptive combination of piranha and Praying Mantis
An alien race arrives on planet earth. When people look back on the event, the realization finally that we are not alone, it seems almost normal. Obvious. Hard to believe it was ever in doubt.
At first, the people of earth are shocked. Stunned into disbelief. Like getting the answer to an age old philosophical question we felt would never be answered, and then not knowing what to do next. But as the reality sank in it opened our eyes. The vastness of the universe suddenly became a small neighbourhood. How many others were out there?
We had so many questions for the aliens like where they came from, why they chose us, what their intentions were and ultimately, what they were leaving behind in their own world. But the question of how they got to us we already knew the answer to. In the 21st century, humans had grown their knowledge of Spacetime to the point where we understood how the geometry of solar systems and galaxies created natural openings in Spacetime. Like Einstein Rosen Bridges these were Transversable Wormholes that allowed one to pass instantaneously from one point to another point potentially many light years away. A typical analogy used to explain this was a person poking a hole through a folded piece of paper. When the page is unfolded the two holes that were adjacent to one another are actually far apart. On earth, it was Professor Lars Lundegaard that first figured it out. With data from the Large Hadron Collider commissioned in the early 21st century, it became understood that many Transversable Wormholes existed so from that moment, physicists and mathematicians throughout the globe chased down the prize of being the first to solve the equations that defined where they were, how to find them and how they moved. It was Lundegaard who did it first.
It still took years to travel between worlds directly at relativistic speeds (near light speed) but Lundegaard solved the equations that predicted how the gravity and velocity of celestial bodies created points in three dimensional space that allow one to enter in one location and exit at another many light years away. Most of the early jump points discovered were local hops between nearby solar systems and stars we could see. But slowly the math revealed the possibility, and the predictability of many other doorways across Spacetime.
On earth, they were called Lundegaard Jump Points. The right celestial calculations uncovered the movement and mixing of millions upon billions of possible, theoretical jump points. The only problem was, humanity had not figured out how to create a field strong enough or stable enough to withstand the intense energy involved in crossing such a bridge.
It was the Pyranis who showed us it could be done by arriving in the 27 ships that utilized their special drive systems. When the Pyranis appeared, they not only changed humanity’s understanding of its own place in the universe, they provided us with the means to escape our own system and explore. For the first time in the history of the human race we had a way to leave our solar system, potentially even our galaxy.
That division in human history, the post-Pyranis era, is studied and examined in a historical context like any major event affecting humanity. But that event didn’t just create a seminal scientific awakening, it gave birth to new industries and advanced materials that fundamentally changed how humans lived. It fueled such economic growth that our planet, even our existence changed. Improved, for the most part. With great advances to every aspect of life, the spoils were inconceivable which also attracted the worst in humanity. Greed-driven souls doing terrible things with what seemed like limitless resources. But overall it was good for humanity and the wow factor from technological advances were not only incredible but pretty much accessible by all.
It was all because of Carbon. It all revolved around Carbon because that material made the capture, storage and use of huge amounts of energy possible. By absorbing it and holding it until it is needed, the right kind of Carbon exposed to the sun for only a short time becomes charged. Most impressively, Carbon not only enabled the massive accumulation of solar energy quickly it could release it all in an instant. A tiny fraction of an instant. Like the elasticity of a muscle, Pyranis-inspired Carbon-enhanced technology essentially swelled with energy and then was able to release it in an almighty burst. That burst was not only used to activate a Lundegaard Jump Point it was employed in creating the field to protect whatever passed through the bridge. Like standing right next to an explosion, inside the blast radius, you had to be protected in order to travel through. In fact the explosion is set off (activating the Jump Point) and its position is passed over yours during the instant it is open. You don’t move, everything around you is moved and a lot of things have to happen in a particular order for it all to work.
Much of the work is done by computer systems. So many systems that many are autonomous. All are AI. Or at least have some ability to modify and alter their code which makes them the most basic definition of machine intelligence. All the changes were meant to be improvements but every once in a while the various AI systems we rely on need to be redirected; sometimes toward a new task but most often directed away from something. AI can sometimes modify themselves enough to begin pursuing some task relentlessly. Whatever they were designed to achieve they can ultimately end up doing more damage than good. And every once in a while they must be terminated.
AI are sophisticated and in many cases consist of code that makes money for its owner so shutting down an AI requires official sanction. And a license to do so like the one I have. My friends call me ARt but it is also my avatar and persona wherever my data makes a footprint. Most people have a virtual persona, or just a data trail which we own so if it makes money we get paid and if it causes liability, well that too is part of owning it. Mining data, as it used to be called, is a professional career. I work on contract and my tools are my own AI that study patterns, run probabilities, and eventually search/destroy. Some AI are critical to human existence while others are the personal property of individuals or corporations. If you kill one of those without sanction you can expect a lawsuit or at least a debilitating onslaught of legal repercussions. It can affect your own well-being. And particularly aggressive owners have been known to get quite nasty when they want compensation for damaged or deleted property. So people like me are licensed to monitor systems identifying conflicts and resolving them.
With a singular purpose, a well-written algorithm can become quite destructive pulling resources from anywhere to complete its task. A task that could be important or something utterly mundane like optimizing all traffic instead of just one bus line. Or in the classic sense, making paperclips.
Two Dominant Species
“Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?” ― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, page 248
In time the aliens became accepted. Once we began to communicate with them the dynamic in our unsteady relationship began to improve. Not all of the Pyranis came down to earth immediately. Just a delegation arrived at first. It played out like the arrival of aliens in the Arthur C. Clarke book Childhood’s End, almost as if that was our script for how to deal with the arrival of extraterrestrials. We interacted with one another, sat in the same room, gestured and figured out a common language. It didn’t take the world’s most gifted linguists long to determine how to communicate but the Pyranis did not speak to one another in the same oral language that humans use to communicate. They were telepathic. They communicated thoughts directly to one another. Where humans must convey a message, explain how we feel and use language to illustrate all that, the Pyranis transmit everything. They exchanged feelings, emotions and motivations too. Being able to make that connection was a fundamental difference between humans and Pyranis. When the Pyranis engaged with one another, they exchanged far more than words but meaning, feelings, emotions, motivations and everything that went with a thought. Nothing was left unsaid and no one ever experienced a “miscommunication”. It was always a complete exchange of meaning between Pyranis.
For humans, initial communications were awkward with the Pyranis. Plenty of written and phonetic languages were tried but the initial breakthrough was sign language. It was intuitive, simple and very easy to learn so it worked well to start with but the Pyranis communicated directly with such rich and immediate means that sign language was like translating a 3D movie via text message. The message was delivered but so much was lost along the way it was almost not worth doing it. More direct means of communication were explored but eventually text in English took over simply because it was the most utilized language amongst humans.
The Pyranis were so much like us humans in so many ways. Dominant on their planet like humanity on earth because they are social, vain, anxious, inquisitive, jealous, aggressive and conflicted just like us. But so different in fundamental ways starting with how the communicate.
Some humans tried to commune with the Pyranis in their own way using all manner of hallucinogenic and mind altering drugs. But you can never truly know what that was like without doing it. And of course we humans could not express to one another what it was like even if we had achieved that level of connection with a Pyranis. That was a prize many chased but I was more interested in learning from the Pyranis data. Our technology improved vastly in collaboration with the aliens and our resources with their technology proved to be wonderfully lucrative. As a result, it became a job for me as well as a career where I was getting paid to do something I would have done anyway. And I loved it.
We were called Sifters. We went through Pyranis databases and communications with their homeworld looking for valuable nuggets we often found them. Some were scientific facts or calculations that had tremendous value while others were proofs or perspectives that helped our understanding of the Pyranis themselves. Their telepathy meant far fewer communications existed amongst them than we would have found with a similar group of humans. Because the Pyranis communicate whole feelings telepathically they didn’t need text, video or other messages. It didn’t even occur to them to communicate that way. Most of the data studied was the content humans created themselves as we learned about the aliens. Interviews, examinations, observations, anything and everything we could get our hands on but all of it a human interpretation of the Pyranis. Never the Pyranis perspective itself. Pyranis communications data was quite scarce because their telepathy didn’t require messages the way we send them, but it didn’t work across galaxies, only in proximity. For some Pyranis that proximity was an entire planet or beyond but not the distance between earth and their homeworld so Sifters like me needed to look in unusual and unexpected places to find anything of value.
The first Pyranis on earth must have felt like they were entering a vacuum when it came to communication, stimulation and connection. Coming down to the surface was described by them like resting, as in sleep, but still able to do things, because they did not have the cacophony of Pyranis voices constantly around them. They were mostly stationed in New York City near the United Nations, but as time passed more arrived on the surface and began living elsewhere on the planet. No one knew exactly how many had actually arrived on earth and each of the ships they came in were bigger than anything humankind had ever seen. Like floating cities, the Pyranis ships were stationed in high orbit around earth’s equator allowing the Pyranis to commute to the surface in equally impressive but much smaller tenders that landed and took off on a regular schedule. The surface ships brought the Pyranis down in ever larger numbers but eventually they took some humans back up into orbit. When the news media came back with incredible footage of the massive orbiting cities they became named the Behemoths.
The first Pyranis to interact with humans were diplomats. Their job was to meet with humans, get to know us and teach us about them. They described many things about the Pyranis homeworld that fascinated humanity. These diplomat Pyranis described a world very much in balance where harvested solar energy was so easily accessible it eliminated the sort of conflict and war humans regularly undertook to control and distribute sources of energy. We yearned for answers and delighted in the description of their own planet, but the cynic in some of us kept pointing out that we only ever got the Pyranis version of their homeworld, nothing could be verified. For the human journalists, and eventually Sifters, that later mined the Pyranis descriptions of their lifestyle and home planet for more insight, the explanations were chillingly similar and rarely departed from one seemingly agreed party line.
From their description, with essentially free energy the Pyranis never had to treat it as a scarce resource and as a result they evolved along a very different path from humanity. Because the Pyranis themselves harvested solar energy through their skin, they hardly needed to eat or drink to remain energized. Sunlight or even artificial light provided them with almost everything they needed. As a result, they chronicled a homeworld that had never been mined, extracted or exploited the way humans treated earth.
That access to nearly infinite energy enabled the Pyranis to take advantage of the instantaneous travel through a Lundegaard Jump Point. And scientific breakthroughs like a protective field needed to shield anything that passed through a Jump Point opened up the galaxy for the Pyranis. Operating a Toth Drive required the discharge of an astonishing amount of energy in a highly concentrated burst. Just storing that much energy was still beyond human technology but the theoretical implications were clear. Capturing, storing and releasing vast amounts of energy the way the Pyranis did allowed them control over and access to the Lundegaard Jump Points. The key to the Pyranis use of the Toth Drive was their ability to generate a protective field large enough to encapsulate an entire spaceship. They did so in such a way that it eliminated the inertial effects of acceleration and deceleration. As a result, the Pyranis could open a Jump Point and pass a ship through with its crew completely intact. Energy bursts and inertial dampers also allowed them to move their massive ships from one Jump Point to another at speeds measured in fractions of the speed of light. The two modes of transport thereby enabled the Pyranis to achieve interstellar travel.
The Pyranis that came down to earth were treated by humans as celebrities. They became integrated into society and mixed with humans in many ways including business. Business was something the Pyranis excelled at. Their advanced technology was incredible to humans. Well beyond anything we had developed. But as advanced as the Pyranis technology was, it turned out it was made even better by the application of carbon-based materials from earth. These enhancements even surprised the Pyranis. As scientists experimented and made breakthroughs it was open season for the Pyranis to seek out the best combinations of earth-bound materials that had the most profound impact on their existing technology. This took time of course and business doesn’t like to wait when the next big thing is about to be discovered so both sides quickly defaulted to the simplest solution which was to incorporate Graphene in one form or another into the Pyranis technology. Every tool, sensor, material and process introduced by the Pyranis underwent an outright revolution. From solar power to batteries, AI and Machine Learning to water desalination and the elimination of diseases, nothing was left unchanged. With all this opportunity, more Pyranis arrived from the orbiting ships and before long the numbers of Pyranis on earth swelled.
Success in business led to power, control and an interest in politics. It turned out the Pyranis civilization was no stranger to organizing and leading millions of sentient, social beings so their understanding of the art of influence was as well-developed as it was with humanity. The first Pyranis to be elected to public office on earth happened to be the first Pyranis humans ever saw. The Pyranis names were not something humans could say or even understand so this person took the name Goethe after a famous historical diplomat, Johann Goethe. Goethe was the lead diplomat who first conversed with the leaders of the world at the United Nations. It was fast work and the election of Goethe was an event that sparked other Pyranis candidates who sprang up in elections everywhere. After all, the Pyranis seemed like reasonable beings to deal with and humanity had benefited immensely from their technology. We were smitten with the idea of an advanced civilization that had little or no strain on resources, so why wouldn’t we want their insight, advanced technology and eventually their leadership?
Amidst all the excitement and awe over how advanced the Pyranis were, humanity began to discuss whether a delegation from earth should go to the Pyranis homeworld. In no time, this sparked a worldwide lottery to choose the humans that would represent earth on the Pyranis homeworld. It was surprising even to the supporters of the idea how many people were willing to get on a Pyranis ship and go back to their homeworld leaving behind everyone they had ever known. Undoubtedly expecting they would be treated like celebrities themselves when they travelled about the Pyranis homeworld the people of earth were consumed with the process of choosing which humans would go. And so it was done. The lottery was undertaken and a delegation of humans was randomly selected from those willing to leave earth without ever coming back.
The Travelers
“Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”
– Gustav Flaubert
The humans selected to travel to the Pyranis homeworld were feted and sent off on one of the Pyranis ships alongside a group of the aliens that chose to return with them. They become gone. The communications with the Travelers (as the earth media called them) was another rich source of data and observations for those of us studying and critiquing this historical period. The exchange of written or video messages was possible but since the Pyranis ship travelled at relativistic speeds, years would pass on earth between hourly phone calls from the ship during the Travelers’ two or three month long journey to the Pyranis homeworld. Like a crossing of the Atlantic in the 19th century, the passengers, captain and crew were collected together in a sort of bubble for a short but intense period of time. During this relatively short interval, passengers socialize, crew interact and everyone finds a way to get along or just avoid those who are not of the same mind.
As the Pyranis learn more about humans, the human group of travellers learn more about their hosts including some very surprising things. The first and most noticeable trait the humans learned about the Pyranis was that they used very advanced biometric implants. It was not obvious to humans before, perhaps because the Pyranis diplomats first sent to earth had few if any visible cybernetic implants. But upon closer inspection, the humans learn the Pyranis are tightly integrated with machines that are far more advanced than simple prosthetic limbs. Limbs, joints and even some critical organs could be replaced with 3D printed synthetic parts that far outperformed their biological blueprints. The most curious humans saw how the evolution on earth of hip replacements and clunky devices strapped onto a human eventually became sophisticated prostheses and implants. Those advances seemed so sophisticated to humans until they saw what the Pyranis could do and from that moment the humans were all eager to undergo a similar transformation in themselves.
It seemed tough to tell how much of the Pyranis was printed versus how much was the original biological organism. But it didn’t matter, humans were fascinated with the incredible capabilities these devices made possible. Able to lift many times their own weight, jump, catch, swing their full bodyweight with only one arm or see and hear across vast distances, it was captivating for the humans to see what this advanced technology could enable. It gave humans a glimpse of what we could become, and being competitive humans as we are it sparked a real want for what the Pyranis had. Even jealousy. When something this profound is presented to a socially dominant race like humans we all see ourselves in that advanced state. We want it for ourselves.
The Pyranis were named for their resemblance to a Praying Mantis. A blue-hued outer skin smooth across their entire body defined sinewy muscles and limbs not unlike humans. Instead of hair on their head these beings had an array of tentacle-like protrusions on their scalp. Sloped back like they were moving fast even when they were standing still, two tentacles stood proud of the rest dominating their head as if they were more like antennae.
The Pyranis beings look a lot like a cross between a Praying Mantis and a human being. Antennae instead of hair on their head with sinewy muscles wrapped in a blue coloured sheath like our skin, they are able to capture and harvest all forms of solar energy directly through their exposed “skin”. Their strange smooth, hard-shell looking blue skin feeds them by collecting solar radiation not unlike the way plants on earth use photosynthesis. Their ears, eyes and Voldemort-like nose all sweep up over their forehead with the same swoop as their antennae.
The Pyranis thought it was quaint. To them the humans seemed like this less-evolved species in what was a stone-age existence compared to them and it made the Pyranis feel like they were the older sibling showing off. It was so much fun for the Pyranis to demonstrate their abilities to a sentient race who found it so unbelievably cool that they showed humans everything they could do. Even too much. The Pyranis revealed enough detail for the humans to understand just how powerful this technology was and the Pyranis themselves were. In the beginning it was all fun. Demonstrating what they could do was like a game for the Pyranis who competed to see who could show the humans something that would truly stun them. One example was a phase-shifting device the Pyranis used that allowed them to pass through walls or let any projectile such as a bullet pass right through them with no injury.
It didn’t stop there. The Pyranis had their bloodstream filled with nanobots capable of detecting foreign compounds, synthesizing chemicals to repair an injury or deploying pain relief. In a Pyranis, a traumatic event triggers an immediate response from the millions of free flowing nanobots in their bloodstream. If somehow someone lost a limb, whole replacement parts were available from joints and hands to complete organs that could be produced through a type of device much like a 3D printer. The Pyranis version was capable of creating highly sophisticated, fully functioning machines or parts using organic and inorganic materials. One of these machines could print a new foot for one of the Pyranis if it was needed. Or a heart.
Their command of power, from storage to transport and use, meant they didn’t take showers. Not with water at any rate. They used sonic showers that kept them cleaner and freer of bacteria. It did the same for their environments. Using energy in many different ways was one more of the differences between humans and Pyranis because the Pyranis have had such abundant access to power.
Another magical technology introduced by the Pyranis was instantaneous communications across any distance. It was regularly used by the Travelers to speak to those back on earth. Every day at 6pm UT (Universal Time) the Pyranis ship slowed to a crawl and everyone gathered in the main common area for a video conversation with those on earth. It was set up as a bit of a throwback to the 6 O’Clock News of the 20th Century, another whimsical connection to a world the humans had left behind. However, as each day passed on the Pyranis ship, years passed on earth so every call terminated with a calculation of the date and time when the next call would be on earth. The time interval on earth changed between every 6pm UT call on the Pyranis ship because the ship traveled at some fraction of the speed of light only for a certain part of that day and never really for the same interval or at the same speed, so time passed quite differently on earth than it did on the Pyranis ship.
During the intervening day on the Pyranis ship and the years that passed on earth the Travelers exchanged messages between individuals such as text, sound and video but only clips, nothing real time while the Pyranis ship was traveling at some fraction of the speed of light. Instantaneous communications become complicated at relativistic speeds. For the Travelers when an hour goes by on the Pyranis ship, reams of messages came from the earth-side because for those on earth months or years passed during that hour. It was a tough way to communicate but humanity had perfected social media so summaries of these exchanges lived on everywhere from blogs to news reports. The evolving story of the Travelers even became woven into Pop Culture on earth.
As days passed, what began to happen on the Pyranis ship was a slow realization of how the situation on earth was deteriorating. The fun and euphoria on both sides of the call in the early days soon became an uneasy update from earth on the tensions between the human and Pyranis populations. The tension and mistrust led to the realization by these normal humans that they were completely powerless against their enhanced super-Pyranis hosts. Like Guinea pigs in cage at home, the humans quickly realized they were going to go and do wherever and whatever the Pyranis wanted. A darkness fell over the human group as they receded from socializing with the Pyranis and each day as the situation deteriorated on earth the humans began to dread the 6 O’Clock News. Until one day, assembled in the common space of the Pyranis ship engaged in the news update the link terminated. All other instantaneous communications stopped as well. What the Pyranis hosts told their human Travelers can only be guessed at but one could assume the Pyranis ship was approaching a Jump Point and that interrupted the communication link. Because the next call was not declared, the timing of that call on earth was not known. The human Travelers were cut off. And our data source never amounting to anything more than a rich collection of human experiences described by humans and permitted by the Pyranis to be sent by humans to other humans. What were the things not said?
The Social Pyranis
“Human behaviour flows from three main sources: desire, emotion and knowledge.”
– Plato
On earth, back in the early days of their friendship the humans and Pyranis begin to socialize and integrate with one another. Despite the growing population of Pyranis on earth, and the tension that stirred in some, being an alien remained a pretty rare thing so any human that could get photographed with a Pyranis became someone special. For the Pyranis, their Instagram and Facebook fame made them celebrities. They had no privacy from humans whatsoever, but they were able to show up uninvited at parties thrown by rich and famous humans just because they could. They too were famous. And socializing with earth’s most brilliant and acclaimed humans appealed greatly to the Pyranis just as it does for humans. Like us, they are very social beings. Vain, anxious, inquisitive, jealous, aggressive and conflicted. However, because the communication amongst their own kind is non-verbal and complete the Pyranis had never experienced being able to lie, act or pretend to be someone they were not. Complete non-verbal communications for the Pyranis meant the language was transmitted but also feelings, emotions and the true motivation of a thought. This meant the Pyranis could not lie to one another. They never even understood what lying was until they met humans. Every communication they engaged in was genuine because they not only transmitted the words or language of what they wanted to say but the emotions, inspiration and underlying feelings as well. A pretender amongst Pyranis is a misnomer – one Pyranis could never say one thing when they felt something else. The other Pyranis would know immediately.
Humans on the other hand are eons-old experts at saying one thing when we mean something else. The Pyranis not only didn’t do that, they had never even conceived of doing something like that. Amongst humans, however, the Pyranis were forced to communicate through this clunky sign language and eventually via written text, but the range of what was transmitted was unusually narrow for them. This was a novel thing for the Pyranis. Difficult to understand and even harder to master was the nuance of saying one thing when you felt differently. But the Pyranis caught on fairly quickly and soon they became drunk with their new ability to shield their true emotions. It took practice for them to learn how humans communicated and they would get it wrong at times. Badly wrong. Like saying one thing in such an impassioned way that even to a dull-witted human was patently not true. So the Pyranis had to learn when and how to lie, and just how big to make it. While they may have been good students of the craft, they increasingly got caught in big elaborate lies that made humans begin to distrust them more and more, especially in business and when money was involved. With more lies the distrust grew still further.
The Pyranis worked hard to become accepted in business and to gain diplomatic status in the largest western countries. They also infiltrated the highest levels of government, diplomacy and commerce in lesser countries, where they established corporations to license their technology but also where they were better able to control the local governing bodies. They competed in business just as humans did but because they were better at it the humans didn’t like it. Conflict arose and what was at stake grew in importance as more of the Pyranis technology was enhanced with materials from earth. The application of Graphene to the Pyranis solar panels made them orders of magnitude more efficient such that a billboard-sized solar panel could easily power a small city. Storage was enhanced as well with Graphene massively increasing the energy density of batteries. In just these two ways alone, Carbon in the form of Graphene unleashed access to truly unlimited power from the sun for both the Pyranis and the earthlings with virtually no cost. Billions, possibly trillions were at stake. Not to mention how it improved standards of living for everyone on earth.
Politics and Energy
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
– John Dahlberg-Acton
As the famous and elected Pyranis participated in the democratic process they begin to appear less of a threat while Instagram and Facebook made them more personable to the general public. Like the self-made celebrities of the early 21st century, they are different and powerful therefore desired.
As the Pyranis become more influential and accepted, a critical piece remains forever out of humanity’s reach. We can only believe what they tell us. Nothing could ever be verified by humans with 100% certainty. No human had ever been to the Pyranis homeworld so no one knew exactly why they chose to leave their planet. We would never know whether the group of aliens we met were a benevolent race exploring the galaxy or a scout party for the rest of their populace. A race that was physically and technologically superior to humanity and could potentially outnumber humanity’s more than 10 billion souls was most certainly a threat. But they brought such advanced technology it was hard to see beyond the benefits.
With the delegation of humans eventually selected, celebrated and sent off with those Pyranis who chose to return to their homeworld, humans and Pyranis settled down to getting used to one another, and trading technology. Earth was very quickly released from the bonds of energy extraction and transport thanks to the Human/Pyranis combination of materials that made solar panels immensely more efficient and energy availability ubiquitous. This new abundance of energy with limitless storage capacity in advanced batteries fundamentally changed the way humans lived.
Control of energy and its influence on everything from trade flows to political power changed. Dead was the way the multinational conglomerates of the 20th century influenced all of commerce and politics through their control of energy. Humanity now had on-demand access to limitless energy in any location that had exposure to the sun. A billboard sized solar panel could harvest enough power in a few hours to supply a small town for months. Storage was improved as well. The Pyranis batteries had an energy density ratio far in excess of hydrocarbons let alone the most advanced batteries humans had ever created. And this was made greater by many orders of magnitude when earth’s magical Carbon materials were integrated into the Pyranis technology. The original Pyranis solar panel technology went from being 1,000x more efficient than anything ever created on earth to millions of times more efficient with the use of Carbon in forms like Graphene. The Pyranis are not carbon based beings and their world was not carbon rich like ours so this new earthbound material made their already advanced technology perform in ways even they did not expect. Massive increases in performance, flexibility and responsiveness meant the Pyranis wanted to apply Carbon from earth to nearly every device and invention they had, materially improving essentially everything.
This change on earth resulted in an immense burden being lifted from every individual. Humanity no longer needed to devote a great portion of its time to earning money in order to purchase and use energy in every form from electrons that heated and transported us to food that powered us. We were free in so many ways so we turned our efforts and attention to other things. Understanding the Pyranis became a priority. Knowing what motivated them and truthfully, why they made the trip to earth was a vexing question. They told us they came to earth because they could. And because it was the nearest reachable system they found emitting the telltale signature of an advanced civilization. But we could not get answers we trusted from the Pyranis themselves. To the Pyranis, humanity could have been a society of advanced beetles with sophisticated multi-level dwellings but still just a colony of bugs. We weren’t. We were equal to the Pyranis in many respects. But we were also dramatically unequal in so many other ways. Earth had a resource in Carbon that the Pyranis needed and in the current circumstances we were in a position to trade that for the advanced technology they had. But somehow we knew this relationship, this partnership, could not last. It was not stable across years let alone decades or centuries.
Even for the Pyranis with their advanced technology, moving about galaxies required a staggering amount of energy, much of it stored and released abruptly. Very abruptly. Dumping an enormous amount of energy was required to generate the field used to protect the Pyranis ships as they went through the Jump Points. It was also required as a catalyst to engage a Jump Point in the first instance. Opening it if you will. Gathering that energy was something the Human/Pyranis interaction had materially improved with the combination of Pyranis technology and Carbon. They could now capture a very high percentage of a star’s solar radiation. They used that energy collection and storage to then dump it in an almighty burst like a lightning bolt, only millions upon billions of times more intense. That burst of power provided the energy for the catalyst needed to open the Jump Point as well as the field to protect the ship as it travelled through to the other side. If done correctly, the ship and crew come out at the other location in space matching the entry point, truly like going through a door. The profound implications of this technology were not lost on humanity since we now had the ability to travel beyond our solar system for the first time in our history.
War and the Purge
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time”
– Leo Tolstoy
The distrust, the lies and the revelation that Pyranis operatives had infected crooked and democratic regimes alike all over the globe changed the Human/Pyranis relationship. Crimes were committed. Charges were laid. Pyranis defendants were tried but none were convicted. Their influence, money and intensely corrupt ways had permeated all aspects of life on earth and somehow every single one of the charges or trials resulted in the accused Pyranis avoiding conviction, jail time, or consequences of any kind. Anger erupted. Conflict ensued. Instances of humans and Pyranis fighting one another increased noticeably. Eventually, lines were drawn, sides were taken and earth was resolutely divided between humanity and the Pyranis.
One thing humans discovered about the Pyranis was that they were highly sensitive to Radio Frequency (RF) emissions. And in the human world, with every individual surrounded and emitting RF in all directions at all times, the Pyranis were particularly affected. The sophisticated mobile devices and implants that had become common for so many humans during the 21st century were a massive source of RF radiation that imposed confusion, distraction and pain on the Pyranis.
With conflicts erupting everywhere humans look for ways to attack and defeat the Pyranis, creating weapons to debilitate them without affecting humans. The most effective prove to be RF emissions and RF pulses. The Pyranis sensitivity to RF radiation was known from early on but humans eventually discover it is not just an annoyance that confuses or debilitates them, it can kill them. The Pyranis and their advanced technology had a defence in the form of a phase shifting device they had demonstrated to humans. A device that creates a state of being or a phase such that objects will pass right through them or they can pass through objects. Walking through a wall for example or allowing a bullet to pass through unimpeded were enabled by this device and it also shielded the user from RF.
As the humans develop their new weapons they discover that an intense enough pulse of RF radiation becomes an effective weapon for stunning and killing any Pyranis not protected by a phase shifting device. While a steady stream of RF affects the Pyranis like a focused beam of noise or loud sounds affects humans, the humans discover that a burst of RF cuts through the Pyranis like a bullet. A short range broad spread of RF emission in a burst was very effective in killing any Pyranis in its path. And an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) disrupts that phase shifting device at just the moment it is needed so the Pyranis defence becomes ineffective against a big enough EMP burst. The human scientists and soldiers call it a POP.
With a little more effort, humans discover that a big enough EMP burst could eviscerate any Pyranis within the blast radius. Experiments were conducted in secret to determine the range of such a weapon and that work yielded another discovery. Like The Little Doctor in Ender’s Game, when a Pyranis is killed in this way, they release a similar POP like another EMP burst. So theoretically, the more concentrated a group of Pyranis are the bigger the blast radius becomes as it propagates outward getting stronger as it goes further with each Pyranis life that is engulfed in the shockwave. Killing the Pyranis in this way feeds the EMP’s expansion and range such that it can reach even more of them. As if the more life involved in an EMP burst, the bigger that POP’s range and destructive capability. And humans are entirely immune to its effects. An assassin could detonate an EMP at the centre of a city filled with both humans and Pyranis, all the Pyranis would be killed and as they dropped to the ground the humans would stand unaffected wondering what just happened. Experiments were conducted using powerful and advanced computer modelling because the humans who learned about this weakness did not want the Pyranis themselves to know what they had discovered.
Precise calculations were undertaken to determine how a single POP could kill every Pyranis on earth. An underground team of humans began work on what was needed to do this. How big an EMP, where it needed to be placed and when was the most advantageous moment to trigger it were all assessed, debated and settled. It quickly became clear that in order to sweep away every Pyranis in one felled swoop, the humans needed multiple EMP devices placed across the globe and synchronized to all burst at the same moment – or at least within a few seconds of one another. The devices were created in secret and assembled in multiple locations by separate teams, all using the same original set of blueprints and built in exactly the same way, but each by different teams.
Like a network of terrorist cells, the humans plotted the recapture of their planet. Steadily and methodically the components needed for each device were assembled in what was determined must be multiple locations including several off-planet. In order to have maximum effect they needed to be placed near where the Pyranis were situated or spent most of their time. Getting the devices in place required the stealthy ingenuity of a smuggler as some needed to be transported up to the Pyranis Behemoth ships in parts and then assembled later. Stragglers or loners, of which there were few amongst the Pyranis, were simply stalked, tagged and monitored by separate teams of assassins ready to strike. They weren’t difficult to kill as long as you knew roughly where they were you could just set off a small EMP burst or fire upon them in close quarters with a specially modified cell phone. The human hitmen could reach their target simply by being in the same building as long as the POP was big enough.
The network was in place and the process set in motion at the beginning. The default was for every EMP to be detonated at an appointed time. A communication of some kind could attempt to stop or delay the action but that was never certain. Once every team confirmed their device was operable and in place, the plan went forward and no one could stop it.
The day arrived and the EMP bursts went off. Only a few individual Pyranis had to be hunted down and eliminated. In the aftermath, assets were seized, ownership was changed, Pyranis legal entities were stripped of their ability to conduct business and no Pyranis were left to oppose the changes.
With that, earth and its solar system was back to humanity only. Or at least humanity in charge, and with a vastly improved state of being. A standard of living so completely different, and better than it was before the Pyranis arrived, but at what cost?
The EMP POPs of the Purge were so intense they also wiped out digital records on and off planet. Like holes punched into the data centers and backup sources that corrupted or destroyed critical information, much was lost or just became unrecoverable. Reconstructing digital records became an enormous task undertaken officially by the ruling governments of the day but so much was missing and the cost skyrocketed to the point where just the essential records were sought and the rest was left to people who chose to unravel, reconstruct and recover whatever they could. I am one of those people. Like modern salvage teams we are called Sifters. Sorting through decades of human records was laborious but it had value to those whose data we found so it went from a hobby or an obsession to a full time paid occupation. But the real prize was mining the Pyranis data sources for new technology and patents. Some Sifters rose to fame in the years after the Purge for uncovering valuable technology that made them rich. For me it was discovering the Pyranis’ true motivation for coming to earth that became my prize.
Buried in an archive the Pyranis had never really referred to used or even needed while they were on earth I learned their decision to visit earth was the subject of extensive debate on the Pyranis homeworld. They didn’t need earth or its resources, they just chose to come here. Once they acquired the ability to Jump through Spacetime the Pyranis explored many planets and systems, colonizing some of the more benign planets and avoiding others that proved intensely hostile to alien life. Earth was the only planet the Pyranis had found that contained an advanced Pyranis-like civilization. Probes were sent and assessments made but only so much could be done without actually traveling to the earth system. And as it became clear that humans were on the verge of discovering how to travel through Spacetime the Pyranis chose to go meet humanity before humans came to them. Call it arrogance, hubris or a fatal oversight but nowhere in all the Pyranis assessments did they predict that humanity would not only discover a fatal weakness to RF and EMPs in Pyranis but that humans would also choose to use it to wipe out every Pyranis in the earth system.
Epilogue
Clarke Space Elevators
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
– Arthur C. Clarke
The Pyranis ships had taken up station around earth when they first arrived. Or most of them did. Ringing the equator, the Pyranis Behemoths were giant cities in the sky and as the Pyranis became integrated into life on earth regular tenders began shuttling humans and Pyranis back and forth to the surface. The activity and commerce around these locations with so many Pyranis arriving and leaving resulted in cities that grew up around the terrestrial landing points. In the case of Ecuador, a city was already there, Qita, which simply grew with all the traffic and wealth. But across Africa new cities emerged in Kenya by the coast and in the DRC (the Democratic Republic of Congo) right on top of the richest known carbon deposits on earth.
Instead of solar panels attached to the outside surface of these towers, the Graphene itself became the conductor of solar energy. Just as the Pyranis themselves collected solar energy through their own skin, Graphene exposed to solar radiation worked in much the same way, collecting, storing and distributing energy.
Over time, and with the injection of both infinite power and magical Graphene as a building material, towers rose up from these cities stretching skyward toward the Pyranis ships above. Eventually, the towers reached the ships in orbit and transport between orbit and the surface of earth was revolutionized. Clarke Space Elevators they were called. Once the first ones had begun construction, many were built including one in Sri Lanka where Arthur C. Clarke himself chose to live out his life after becoming a famous author and scientist.
They rose up at points all around the equator, 400km above the earth’s surface. Kept plumb by sophisticated propulsion systems at various points along the tower, they were not just elevator shafts but cities unto themselves. The ride from the surface to orbit took about 45min, an hour in traffic. At their core they were a network of multiple Hyperloop tubes overlayed on one another that whisked passengers, cargo and waste both up and down the towers. Some tubes were longer than others but all stopped at exchange platforms along the way. These areas eventually became small towns with hotels, entertainment and all manner of activities for tourists to engage in. But they also developed their own permanent resident populations. Scientists and scholars in academia studied the earth and space from a perspective no human had ever previously been able to for such an extended period of time.
On earth these towers sprang up in myriad locations including one city, touchingly named Atlantis that rose up from reclaimed South Pacific land around an atol. A once famous South Pacific island called Tuvalu (home of the .tv domain) funded the expansion of its own earthbound base by offering a spectacular oasis in the middle of the ocean. It was a vacation destination on the surface of earth that supported its own economy. Something about the blue water of the Pacific made it a favourite of the Pyranis when they were living amongst humans. They told us it reminded them of their homeworld.
It was mostly after the purge that the Graphene cities rose up. Many had begun construction while the Pyranis were still roaming about earth, but completion arrived many decades later. They were engineering marvels but even more so they were incredible monuments to the memory of the first comparable species humanity ever encountered.
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