First Contact is a complicated profession. · By
We are not alone in the hood and yet, the galaxy does not give a damm f*ck about us. Follow the First Contact Protocol and may you return in one piece. Screw up understanding a cryptic alien message and you've f*cked, with some luck, an entire extrasolar habitat, somewhere, at sometime… no pressure.
Welcome to The Bureau, agent.
You will find six fields to apply:
We are humanitarian and chivalrous; we don't want to enslave other races, we simply want to bequeath them our values and take over their heritage in exchange. We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors.
-Stanislaw Lem, Solaris.
[Agent Boricua]:
You may think these words are so deep, in this case you better apply other fields. Knights are the gentle and elusive face of the Bureau. Sending one Knight to a First Contact Event is to assume a great failure or a great success, for all mankind. If the Bureau were a centralized agency, you can be sure that they would be expected to act as imperialists. Luckily, even with a huge amount of classified funding from governments and particulars, we are a minutiae in the universe and we, the Knights, wear that heavy burden for all of us, for all of humanity of course. Knights are capable of a great amount of cynicism.
Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, or miscalculation, or by madness.
-John F. Kennedy, Address before the General Assembly before the United Nations (25 September 1961).
[Agent Mercy]:
Some Events require quicker and more accurate judgment, and by quicker and more accurate I mean a reliable weapon and defense systems that can withstand the first surprise hit. Luckily they end up being the majority, I still remember that raid, where we had to split our forces between the two opposing alien sides because there was no winning option that was useful to us. In the end we had to opt to release an electromagnetic viral storm from another alien mission, sentencing our own troops to death. I was there and I made that decision. The First War never happened, but vengeance lurks behind every Gate.
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.
-Paul of Tarsus, The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans.
[Agent Pebble]:
There is potential interest in taking a team of physicians and biologists on a mission. The first is to serve as a guardrail for the newcomers, but the veterans already know that if something wrong happens, nothing and no one can save them, unless holding them in agony guarantees them a fate worse than death itself. We are a beacon of light and hope. And the second reason to bring some Epistolars is that we are also a bastion of understanding. We analyze the fauna, the flora and, with luck, the corpse of some deceased intelligent alien specimen. We bring a greater understanding of their body and, with that information, we hope to have an advantage to better understand their soul.
You were not there for the beginning. You will not be there for the end. Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative.
-William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch.
[Agent Shifter]:
I once read that if this universe seemed scary, I should try to get to know the others. The really scary thing is that there is no need for multiverses, no need for non-Euclidean lucubrations, we just wrongly assumed the whole foundation of reality and as soon as we started scratching on its surface, pieces of shrapnel shot out violently. Aliens also have these problems, but that only adds to the difficulty of the equation. The only thing to hope for is to retain the lost knowledge of other civilizations until humanity shares the same fate in Oblivion.
Silence is a lesson learned through life’s many suffering.
-Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger.
[Agent Mist]:
A great tactician creates plans. A good tactician, recognizes the soundness of a plan presented to him. A fair tactician, must see the plan succeed before offering approval. The greatest victory is the one acomplished without a battle. Those with no tactical ability at all, may never understand or accept it. Nor will such people understand or accept the Silence as a tool. There's no spirituallity in this, only cold minded protocols and the capability of the etymologists to operate alone, deepn inside the darkness, isolated at dozen of light years away, making trembling the pillars of an alien civilizations before they make the same with us. Beacuse they are already between us, friend or foe. Silence is a journey, not a destiniy.
Retouch me. Repair me. But let it be known
that when you see me, I will be restored.
-Diana Brebner, The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems.
[Agent Carthage]:
There is nothing more human than the ability to cope with adversity, not flesh and bone, but the diligent use of technolog, that's what transhumanity principles stand for. It is true that on numerous occasions it has been the trigger for great dangers to humanity itself, just as it has been the interface with which to understand and manipulate the very nature of the universe. We haven't vanquished ourselves of the fate of the galaxy yet as some ancients civilizations already did. Their remnants will help us to understand and improve our tools, as we are the guardians of the Gates. We are the best las hope of the exo-colonies and the first and last stand of the Solar System. If the Gates fall, we will be ashes to ashes.
