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The following story was originally posted by "Someone Else" over at 4chan's /tg/ board on 16-09-2011.
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00:00Entry 1. The delegation will meet for the first time today. I'm keeping this record as ordered,
00:06though I don't see the point. The humans aren't exactly reclusive, but the hoops they made
00:10themselves jump through before they even returned our first contact message were absurd.
00:15I heard secondhand that they nearly went into a civil war over the possibility of our message
00:20being bait for some sort of trap. Are they just naturally paranoid, or have they run into some
00:26other species of non-humans that gave them trouble? I rather suspect the former. Their military,
00:31for just having one star system, is pretty numerous. Entry 2. The humans sent up some
00:37civilian diplomat instead of a military leader. I was surprised. They seem to value martial prowess
00:43fairly highly, so why do they have a civilian leader? Apparently this guy was selected after
00:49a brief voting period, which wasn't made open to the general population, but was only open to
00:54national leaders. That's troubling. National leaders in a spacefaring species? That can only
00:59mean delays in the future. Entry 3. A few more diplomats came up today with huge stacks of
01:05portable computers. Our translators already added the one language they have used so far to the
01:11universal system, so we didn't have any trouble deciphering the data from the computers. Apparently
01:16they want to know as much as possible about us, and in exchange they provided a bunch of information
01:21about themselves, their history, some more language dialects we didn't have covered yet,
01:26and some of their own star maps. I was stunned. Why are they being so trusting? They were on the
01:33verge of a civil war when we contacted them. No, it was because we contacted them. Entry 4. I know it's
01:40been several weeks since I last updated this thing, but the humans' data is taking up all of my time.
01:46Apparently they have been in a state of what we would consider constant civil war since their people
01:51evolved far enough to grasp fire. Over the dumbest things, too, from religion to territory.
01:58Nearly a fifth of all of their most important technology, including their relativistic drive
02:03technology, was derived from something designed to kill other humans. No wonder they're being so open.
02:10Our people wouldn't engage in an internal war on the scale these humans have, ever. They've killed
02:15more of themselves in the last thousand years than my people have ever died. Total. Entry 5.
02:22The ninth week of the contact meeting is ending now. The reactions from the humans on their worlds
02:27have been more interesting than all the data they gave us by now. They're starting to get back to
02:32routine. They have their own planet, another planet, and about five moons in their system colonized to some
02:39degree, and each has a distinct culture and way of life. The reaction on each when we made contact was the
02:45same. They flipped out and their peoples were seized by everything ranging from panic to joy. But now, their
02:52reactions have stabilized to the extent that I don't think we're going to get a reaction out of them unless we create
02:57some further provocation. The most read news articles on their electronic communication networks are more about
03:04domestic problems and entertainment and their economies than they are about us. Are humans just
03:09more comfortable in routines or are they frustrated with our lack of diplomatic progress? I'm confused.
03:16The humans I've met seem unconcerned, but I know the ambassador from our people is getting worried.
03:21Entry 6. I'm relieved. The human ambassador met me personally today, informally, here on the ship.
03:29He said that he could tell that I was getting worried about the negotiations,
03:32and he wanted to address me personally. I asked how he could tell I was worried when he had only met
03:38our species for the first time less than 100 solar cycles ago, and he replied that it was all part of
03:45being a diplomat. I stated outright that I was confused by the seeming lack of disruption on the
03:51part of the people below. He said that there were plenty of people who were disrupted, but that most of
03:56the humans in the system had already decided to wait and see what the outcome of the negotiations
04:01were before doing anything. After all, he said, even if my species becomes an active member of the galactic
04:08community, most humans will stay right here, living their lives.
04:13We'll be affected by galactic politics, new technology, and colonization, even assuming that we could find
04:20new Earth-type worlds out there, but most will want to stay right where they are.
04:24I asked him how he could say that when so many of his people had colonized the rest of the system,
04:31and he laughed. I think. It's completely different when you can see Earth out your window.
04:37Entry 7
04:38Things have picked up so much. We got our translators working to the effect that nuance of speech,
04:45not just content, can be translated appropriately. The human ambassador's speech and conversation were
04:50suddenly so much clearer. To his credit, he told us that he had been refraining from common speech,
04:56slang, and aphorism as much as possible. I wouldn't want to use a saying or phrase that had a clear
05:02meaning to another human, but made no sense or worse insulted one of your people. Now I can speak
05:08freely. I have to wonder if this faster-paced dialogue will negatively affect the negotiations.
05:14The ambassador broached the toughest topic today. Faster than light travel. Entry 8.
05:19Generally, species are content to create FTL on their own before they even contact us or vice versa.
05:26Humans are the exception. They colonized their entire star system with seven inhabited bodies and
05:31over a thousand mined, explored, probed, or mapped bodies with no habitation in their system.
05:37So much of their population lives in their orbital platforms that their own homeworld barely even
05:43supports two-thirds of their species. They did this without FTL. Clearly, the fact that they
05:49have reacted peacefully to our presence rather than precipitously fighting or ignoring us indicates
05:55that they are mature enough to handle faster-than-light travel. But I am privately concerned.
06:01One of the human diplomats has already begun copying our speech and movement patterns.
06:06I found myself opening up to him without even realizing it until afterwards.
06:11He must be doing it on purpose to set us at ease.
06:13After 120 of their days, they're copying the behavior of their first alien contact.
06:19This is one of their finest diplomatic minds, of course. But still,
06:23if they can do it with behavior, can they do it with technology?
06:27I suspect they will ask for a working FTL drive to study in their next meeting.
06:32Entry 9.
06:33I am vindicated, it seems. I spoke my concerns to the ambassador today, and he agreed that there
06:39would be no gifting of FTL technology to the humans, that they would have to earn it on their
06:44own. The humans would react poorly, I guessed, but tactfully, as at least a few of them seem
06:50to genuinely care what we think. I was right, naturally. The human ambassador asked that their
06:56people be given a working FTL drive to reverse engineer in exchange for an unspecified piece of
07:02technology of theirs. Their technology, the ambassador quickly replied, was inferior to
07:08ours in every way save communications, and we had no need for their communications technology.
07:14Communicating faster than light is something we can do already. Communicating instantaneously
07:19anywhere in their system, as they do, is a wondrous piece of technology, but not necessary for our
07:25people. The human ambassador reacted with shock and surprise immediately, and then quickly became
07:31suspicious. I think he may have gleaned that we have discussed this amongst ourselves.
07:36How? I cannot guess. We spoke of other things, and the ambassador of the humans seemed mollified by
07:43the discussions that followed. Will he broach it again? Probably. Entry 10. The humans surprise us.
07:50It is exactly half of one year after first contact, and life, as I before noted, continues.
07:56They are fully one-third finished with another of their orbital habitation platforms,
08:01and we were given a tour of the construction site. Huge robotic construction devices smelt down
08:07chunks of ore from the many, many asteroid and lunar mining platforms the humans have throughout their
08:13system, ferried to them by relativistic drive-powered ore haulers. The slag is then fed into their forges and
08:20reduced to elemental purity, and the refined ore is then crafted, still in space, into modules, which are then
08:27attached to the frame of the space installation. The elemental slag is mostly hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and silicon
08:35in this system. They use these things to make air and computers, apparently, which are then used in the
08:41construction of their platforms. I am astounded. They have created the most efficient industrial complex we have ever seen,
08:48by necessity. They lack FTL, so in the absence of easily reachable resource deposits that they can mine
08:55on their colonies, they simply process asteroids into something useful. Another reason to deprive them
09:01of FTL? If they can prosper in such paucity, how will they react to plenty? Entry 11. Disaster.
09:08One of the probes that the humans use to drag the ores they extract from their asteroid belts slammed into
09:14our ship today. Our force fields held, but the drone was wrecked beyond repair, and the asteroid deflected
09:20towards Earth. It now moves only a few times faster than the speed of sound, leisurely by space travel
09:27standards, but it is colossal. It will depopulate the part of the planet it hits, surely. I am told that
09:34the probes and ore haulers use a computer guidance system to slip into Earth orbital slots with their
09:39payloads, where the ores are removed by the pace and need that the human construction schedule
09:44dictates. If we had not been in the path of these probes, this would have never happened. The humans
09:50provided us with a copy of the ore haulers' schedules to avoid just such a calamity. How did this happen?
09:56What will happen to Earth? Entry 12. We have come to a conclusion. The crew and diplomatic staff have
10:03decided that we will divert the asteroid into the Earth's sun, using our own ship to provide the
10:08stopping mechanism. Our fields are not recharged. The impact will kill us. We are not committing
10:14lightly, fully. Half the crew said that we should abandon the humans to their fate and continue on
10:20negotiating. Some of the rest said that we should do all that we can without destroying ourselves.
10:26But I and the Ambassador disagree. We did this. Our misgivings about their technological level aside,
10:33the humans should not be driven to near extinction by their own first contact. Entry 12. Addendum.
10:41Bizarrely enough, all is well. The asteroid nearly hit the planet when the humans took matters into
10:45their own hands. We had maneuvered our ship into the path of the asteroid, ready to deflect the massive
10:51thing with our own ship, if need be. We did this. This was our fault, except the human diplomats were
10:58frantic, demanding that we move the ship at once. We were baffled. We were offering to solve the
11:04problem we had caused. So why were the humans demanding that we did not? They beseeched us to
11:10move, to let the asteroid move along its own path, directly towards the planet, saying that we did not
11:16deserve to suffer, to bear the brunt of this calamity. Finally, we gave in and moved out of the course of
11:23the asteroid. We were watching what we thought would be the end of the Earth below. But we were wrong.
11:29A blast appeared near the asteroid, and we realized what was happening. The humans had detonated a
11:35nuclear device in the asteroid's path to divert it. Not destroy it, no, but divert it. A few dozen of
11:42their own drone craft slammed into the side of the asteroid which had just been hit by the bomb,
11:48propelling it into near-Earth orbit. The human ambassador actually took me aside and
11:53explained that they had a contingency set aside for just such a catastrophe, dating back to when
11:58they had first created the mining drone and ore hauler network. He told me that the technology
12:04they had first employed to create the interplanetary ore haulers had originally been far more primitive,
12:11and unable to precisely calculate the appropriate course and speed to get the asteroid safely back to
12:17Earth. The asteroid diversion weapons and drones had been created to reduce any risk.
12:23In total shock, I asked why they had done this, and almost as importantly,
12:27why they had been willing to risk such a mining venture if they knew such a potential problem
12:33existed. Necessity is the mother of invention, he replied.
12:38Entry 13. 50 days have passed since the asteroid incident, and the humans' reaction has been alarming.
12:45Civilian populations, and not a few military. Across the system are clamoring for attention,
12:52some demanding that the human diplomats apologize for what they have done. As if the humans caused this.
13:00Others demanding that we suffer for this transgression, others yet launching into wild speculation.
13:06Above it all, the human ambassador has changed the tack of these negotiations completely.
13:10Now all he seems to ask about is the justice systems of the galaxy, where before he has inquired about
13:17everything from laws restricting invasive plant species in agriculture to FTL drives to the origins of
13:24our linguistic colloquialisms. When asked what his official stance about the asteroid incident will be
13:30by other members of his own species who are not part of his delegation, he replies cryptically,
13:36Patience is a virtue. Never close doors you cannot open. Invite no conflict where none exists.
13:43Yellow is most flavorful. I have no idea what the last one means. Perhaps our translators are not as
13:50capable of translating euphemisms as we thought. Regarding the possession of the nuclear devices they
13:56employed to divert the asteroid, he has hastened, quite uninvited, to assure us that it has been over a
14:02century and a half since any nuclear device was used in war. This assuages my fears somewhat,
14:08especially since we discreetly scanned the complex on the planet's surface that launched the nuke,
14:13and found that even the most powerful of these devices is little more than six times the effective
14:18power of the ones they employed. Strong enough to damage our fields, surely, but nowhere near enough
14:25to destroy us outright. But I should not be thinking of these potential new friends as potential new
14:31enemies, as he himself says. Entry 14. Again I am amazed by the human's ability to ignore trouble.
14:39It is now 250 days after first contact, and the human media has actually greatly reduced their mention
14:45of us and the asteroid incident. They are now beginning to return to what I am told, with vast
14:51disgust interestingly, by the human ambassador is the norm for their media, music, banal daily news,
14:57and what I think may be some form of medical treatment aimed at those who suffer reproductive
15:02isolation. The fact that, in less than a year, the human species has been exposed to alien life,
15:09and nearly been wiped out by the carelessness of said life seems to have been absorbed by the
15:14population with a genuinely amazing degree of blasé acceptance. I understand we will be going on a
15:21tour of Earth itself tomorrow, though in full body suits naturally. We will have to be. Their atmosphere
15:27is breathable, of course, but their sun is so much more radioactive than ours in the spectra of ultraviolet
15:33and radio, that to not wear suits would be downright stupid. Our own ambassador told me that he thought it
15:39was to prevent any sort of insult, but I was not sure. Some of the human ambassadors seemed outright angry at our
15:46presence, and several were apparently restrained from outburst only by their peers' angry gestures.
15:52I think it has something to do with the nearly groveling request the human chief ambassador gave
15:56to us on the very first day, not to even decrypt, let alone translate, a single one of the millions of
16:03messages sent to our ship, directly or otherwise, that did not bear his signature.
16:07Entry 19. 300 solar days have passed since the humans replied to our communications.
16:15We hold meetings on their planet as often as we do in space now. I am pleased by this, in all honestly.
16:21There is a strange appeal to these people that was simply not there when we first met.
16:25One particularly unguarded conversation with a human diplomatic aide produced an interesting result.
16:32The young woman said that she and many others were raised on fiction involving humanity,
16:36playing the defender against unexplained or meaningless alien invasion, or playing the victim
16:42of some horrible, incomprehensible force of destruction, and the thought that life beyond
16:47their own system would be friendly and share the virtue of self-sacrifice was a vast relief.
16:54I had never considered this. Most species in this galaxy, we find, are very open with us immediately,
17:00or at least after a very brief period of distrust. These people did not trust us beyond discussion.
17:06until we had offered our lives to save their planet, yet it seemed that we had achieved
17:11more in that act of proposed sacrifice than we had realized. These humans do, however,
17:17place too much emphasis on propriety for the sake of propriety. I do hope this woman does not come
17:23to reprimand because of our entirely unofficial exchange. The ambassador of the humans has certainly
17:28been making more and more of an effort to control what we see and hear of these people the more time we
17:33spend with them. Entry 20. I understand fully now why the human ambassador was trying to restrict
17:40our communications. The ship's crew, not a part of our diplomatic efforts, have been covertly compiling
17:46and translating vast amounts of the messages directed to our ship without our approval. We have been
17:52exposed to their indirect communications, of course. We discovered them through the presence of their first
17:57radio transmissions after all, and we have tapped their system-wide information networks, but the
18:03unauthorized communications directed to us specifically have been politely ignored and
18:09untranslated, thanks almost entirely to the human ambassador's fervent pleas. The crew of the ship,
18:15however, have found that some of these signals contain messages of such hate and vitriol, such murderous
18:21rage and terrorized accusations, that had I not spent over three hundred local days immersing myself
18:26in their culture, I could have mistaken it for a declaration of war. The human ambassador has much
18:32to answer for. Entry 21. The human ambassador was confronted over the messages we have received today.
18:39I asked him to meet us aboard the ship, not our own ambassador, such as to put him at ease.
18:44He met us without his various aides and diplomats, with nobody but him, his second, the ambassador,
18:50the ship's captain, and me present. We tried a tactic that I suggested myself,
18:55placing transcripts of the communications before him with no comment. He picked them up, curious,
19:01and riffed through them, displaying a chemical reaction that drained much of the blood from his face.
19:07His second could stand to look at the communiques no more than he. He looked through a few pages before
19:13seemingly getting the gist, dropping them on the table and looking at us blankly. Our ambassador asked
19:19him what he had to say on behalf of the people who sent the messages, and he replied only after a few
19:24seconds of staring at the table. I wish they did not exist. Imagine the room, the three of us,
19:32sitting across from two human diplomats who looked so nervous they could have been taken for gravely ill.
19:37Not one of us even saying a word. I do not know how long we sat like that.
19:42Finally, the ambassador asked the obvious, just to ensure no meaning was lost.
19:48The people, or the messages? The people, the ambassador replied sadly. People so afraid of
19:55what they're unfamiliar with that they hate it. It's an instinct we should have shed by now.
20:01Entry 22. The human ambassador seemed disarmed, even resigned. Why should he not be? He'd been caught
20:07in a lie of omission. The ship's captain spoke next. Some of these people are threatening violence
20:13against the diplomats under my protection. Why should I permit that? The human ambassador's
20:19second looked rather sullen at the word permit, but did nothing. The human ambassador acted as if
20:26he had not heard. Humans are a tribal people by nature, and we did not evolve as the pinnacle predator.
20:32So, we treat cultures we have not experienced, and potential threats we have not faced before
20:38with great skepticism. Why do you think we suddenly allowed you to visit Earth after the incident with
20:44the asteroid? You showed a virtue we share, willingness to sacrifice. It's easier to relate
20:50to someone who acts like you. Then why did the hateful messages not cease entirely? I asked.
20:57The human ambassador shook his head. Because, sir, the human race is a fractious one.
21:01We do not think with one mind, or share one opinion. Why do you think we still have the
21:06United Nations around? The more humans there are in a room, the more inevitable the disagreements are.
21:13He actually smiled. It's about the only thing that makes normal human diplomacy bearable.
21:19The educated mind likes nothing more than a disagreement. But these messages are not invitations
21:25to a debate, I pressed. Some are open messages of hate. And many humans are stupid,
21:30the human ambassador replied with disgust. Products of intolerant upbringing or ideology.
21:36Suppress them then, the captain said with equal disgust. Never, the human ambassador said with
21:42sudden vigor. All humans of any importance agree on this. Everybody has a right to be wrong.
21:48Anyway, he said with somewhat less passion. Nothing is more attractive to the dispossessed
21:53than an officially sanctioned bad idea. Entry 23. Eleven lunar cycles, just over 300 local days,
22:01have passed since I arrived. The humans have given up pressing for FTL drive technology completely now,
22:08seeing that it will get them nowhere. We have addressed the humans directly, without a buffer of
22:13diplomats at the UN headquarters, or through proxies like the ambassador. We spoke on their
22:19interplanetary data network, using their admittedly superior instantaneous broadcaster.
22:25The human ambassador has recovered quickly from the shock we gave him, much to his credit. It was,
22:31in fact, he who suggested that we address the people directly. He told us people would react best if we
22:38broke down our speech to the simplest possible elements, explaining why we made each decision.
22:43I thought that that would be interpreted as an insult, but he assured me that if there was one
22:48thing that humans resented in unison, it was having people talk as if everybody in the audience
22:53understood exactly what was going on. So we told them what the ambassador had told them already,
22:59that we were representatives of a large confederacy of species who agreed to mutual defense in the case
23:06of extragalactic invasion, constantly invoked, refusal of FTL drive technology to those who did not already
23:12have it, blessedly a rare concern, and integrating new species into the galactic community.
23:18Humanity was one of less than a dozen. The people of Earth were then permitted to ask questions of
23:23us directly, screened by a human diplomatic team on Earth and sent up to us. They ranged from the
23:29banal, what's your homeworld called in English, to the probing, from what stems your desire to keep us
23:34from FTL, to the disturbing, do your people ever invade others? I wonder what use it could do,
23:41but the human ambassador seemed to think it was a success. Entry 24. Only a few days left in our
23:49Earth diplomatic exchange. The ambassador of the humans seems to have taken ill somehow he has been
23:54more and more uncomfortable in his dealings with us, in the physical sense. At the advice of his
23:59cohort, we have taken to keeping all of our meetings on Earth, so that he does not have to abide by the
24:05discomforts of the quick but rough transit from the surface to the ship. Here he seems more familiar,
24:10if not more comfortable. He has explained to me the reason for his sudden change of topic all those
24:16days ago, after the asteroid incident. He said that he had wanted to know how our people treated its
24:22criminals, not in punishment for their crimes, but in our leniency to the excused. If someone commits a
24:29crime, for instance, but saves another's life, do we let him go, or punish him fully, or punish him
24:35less? We told him then that generally it depended on the severity of the crime, for some crimes cannot
24:42be uncommitted. He explained that he had relaxed upon hearing that, because it was a value we shared,
24:49though not all of the nearly 200 nations on Earth, let alone the six colonies, had justice in common.
24:55Entry 25. The ambassador worsens now, his health deteriorating. Our meetings last only a few hours,
25:03with the rest of our time spent poring over the larger and larger amounts of information his staff
25:08have been releasing to us. Information about their militaries, mostly, knowledge regarding their
25:13capability to adapt to warfare in space. Our talk of extragalactic threats, it seems, has startled
25:19several of the species' military leaders, and they wanted to know how much they would have to change if
25:24they agreed to be part of our confederation. We took one look at their military history and realized
25:30that they would have to retool their entire military from the ground up. Over nine-tenths of the armed
25:37forces they had available to them were tied to the ground, with most if the remainder comprising
25:42obsolete oceanic navies and aerospace forces that couldn't seriously threaten our escape pods,
25:48much less our juggernaut-tier defender ships. One thing that was actually somewhat surprising to me
25:54was the data regarding their nuclear weapons. One file stated that at one point, one of the now-dissolved
26:00nations of their people had possessed a nuclear weapon called Bomb of Kings that could have produced
26:06a yield over two hundred times that of the bomb that diverted that asteroid. A blast like that could
26:12have reduced our diplomatic cruiser to a fine, radioactive powder. Yet, it seemed that all such weapons were
26:19decommissioned and turned into power plant fuel decades before our first contact. What was surprising
26:25to me was that these very warlike people could have displayed the restraint needed to make weapons such
26:30as that and not use them. There were well in excess of twenty-four thousand nuclear weapons in humanity's
26:36history, detailed in two global arms races in two centuries. Yet only two had been used.
26:42Entry twenty-six. Three hundred sixty days have passed. The human ambassador is dying. Neither their own medical
26:50technology, nor ours, even if offered, could save him. He is suffering from a massive, systematic organ failure
26:56that his staff has privately informed me to be symptomatic of heavy metal poisoning. I am in shock.
27:02How? Why? We have done no such thing to him. The hate-filled messages aimed at us from the surface have
27:10not changed in volume or content either. So who has done this? Entry twenty-seven. The human ambassador
27:18has contacted me privately from his deathbed. Not the ambassador, not the captain, me. He has told me
27:24privately that he knew he had been poisoned when he had taken us on one of our tours of the United Nations,
27:29when someone had slipped a poison in his drink. He hadn't figured it out until his doctors had told him
27:35roughly what day it had occurred, and had no idea who, specifically, was responsible. He told me to
27:42contact the ambassador and captain on his behalf, and tell them, and instruct them to tell nobody else.
27:48I asked him why I was to keep it secret, and he told me that he wanted us to make a decision.
27:54He then broke the connection before I could ask him what he meant. Needless to say, I am apprehensive.
28:00The man knows he's been poisoned in the final days of the negotiations,
28:04so keeping it quiet when the culprit is unknown, I can understand. But why would he distrust the rest
28:10of our crew and diplomats? Had he suspected us, he would never have told us. Entry twenty-eight.
28:17The human ambassador is perhaps the boldest being I have ever encountered in all my centuries of life.
28:23Surely he cannot have planned for every single outcome of this venture. Surely he cannot have
28:27predicted what we would do. Not now, after less than a year of knowing of our existence,
28:33after forty days of crippling illness. Surely he could not. And yet here we are.
28:39Now on the final day of the conference, he announced,
28:42live to the whole species, that he had less than a day to live, and that he knew that one of the
28:48diplomats on his trusted staff had poisoned him in the UN. He then cut the three of us into the
28:53transmission, streaming from the bridge of our ship. I can only thank goodness that we have
28:58been in front of live humans beyond the diplomatic corps so infrequently, else they would have seen
29:04our shock and horror at the sudden recording. The human ambassador then went on to state that he
29:09had told the aliens, had told us, that he knew that we were innocent, and that it was time for us to
29:15make a decision. Entry 29. He said that if humanity was to become a trusted and valuable member of the
29:22galactic community, capable of upholding the responsibility of the Confederacy's laws and
29:27mutual defenses, that we had to do the same. We had, he said, the means of depopulating Earth
29:33right before us. The asteroid we had accidentally diverted towards Earth. He smirked through the drugs
29:40and pain and said that trust was a two-way street. We needed to be able to trust humanity, but humanity
29:47needed to trust us. And so, I leave it to you, my faraway friends, he managed, to render unto us the
29:55just desserts of this betrayal. I trusted. You can inflict the punishment of the arbitrary, dropping an
30:01asteroid on our entire population, almost certainly killing the one responsible, and demonstrating what
30:07humanity has in excess, or you could not, and demonstrate what I think I see in you. He cut his
30:13channel. Entry 30. There we sat, three aliens before the entire human species. I couldn't see them, but I
30:21could see their world. An entire planet, ten billion people, with three aliens controlling them all.
30:28Every single one of our communications channels, from radio to data stream to the instant cast relay we
30:34were using to broadcast was active, with unheard hails from across the solar system.
30:40Three aliens and a year of diplomacy to decide the fate of a species. The ambassador broke our frozen
30:46state of shock. Choosing his words carefully, he spoke to the instant cast. We have just seen the
30:53closest thing to a human leader killed by one of his own aides. This reflects rather poorly on your
30:59species' ability to think ahead. You have had two periods in your history when you collected nuclear
31:04weapons, in case you might have had to use them. Half of your people live in untenable squalor,
31:10the other half travel the planets. He leaned forward, obviously dreading his next words.
31:17I have read your history, steeped in blood. Your own ambassador admitted in shame that tens of
31:23thousands of communications, with which we have been bombarded since we arrived, represent a substantial
31:29portion of your population and their mindset. Ignorant, fearful, theocratic. You actually have
31:36the nerve to make war on yourselves, even as you petition for the ability to spread to other star
31:42systems and join our defense against the enemy from beyond the galaxy. He sat back, looking drained.
31:49Now, your ambassador, without even so much as warning us, forces to decide whether or not your people get to
31:56exist or join the Confederacy, even if you do. It is not, to borrow a phrase, what I signed up for.
32:03Entry 31. Then he turned to me, and his thoughts must have echoed my own, and the captain's. He looked back at the
32:12camera and grinned. Yet, the very person who just entrusted you to us clearly thought that you were
32:19worthy of us. He has spoken at length about the virtues we share. Compassion for the family,
32:26sacrifice when needed, curiosity. He said that nothing we had done or said or shared could have
32:31achieved as much as our willingness to divert that asteroid did. He showed us the monuments to progress
32:37your people have made. Your people achieved powered flight less than 300 years ago, yet you
32:43have colonized six bodies in your system, two terraformed from little more than rock and methane
32:49ice. You show a drive and an adaptability we have never seen before. After less than a year of meetings
32:56when one year ago he did not know we existed, your ambassador decided that not only were you deserving of
33:01our trust, but we were deserving of yours. About your culture and mindset, I know only what I can
33:08learn in one year, and already your ambassador chose to think that I knew enough to judge you favorably.
33:14The ambassador stood, the camera tracking him. The captain and I joined him. The ambassador faced the
33:20instant cast and spoke. He was right. Our greeting lasted a year, humanity, so now let me welcome you to
33:26the galaxy. Entry 32. Life has become rather hectic of late. A new human ambassador has been chosen and
33:33the UN is busily streamlining their voting bodies to make it easier to make decisions on behalf of the
33:38species rather than opposing political ideologies. I understand that the process was eased by the
33:44discovery of the one responsible for the poisoning of our friend, the former ambassador. He died mere
33:51minutes after hearing our decision. I didn't think I would be capable of getting so personally involved
33:56in an alien diplomatic affair, but I felt emotionally drained when the diplomat responsible for slipping
34:02the poison to the ambassador was caught. Representatives from the other 28 members of the
34:08Confederacy that have attained spaceflight have arrived to officially welcome humanity into the
34:13greater galaxy, but the UN Security Council was most direct in their demands that our ambassador take
34:18point. The negative backlash against the decision to leave the entire species' fate up to the ambassador
34:24was disheartening to behold. I understand that entire regions of the planet nearly rose in arms over
34:31the human ambassador's choice. I am led to understand that his appointment had not been uncontested,
34:37as he was apparently very rich in his own right, and some did not think that he would represent humanity
34:42faithfully. I am glad he proved them wrong. Our own ambassador has been the subject of rather angry
34:49commentary from the human press of late. Apparently those few moments wherein he looked like he might
34:55really drop the asteroid on the planet, and alongside the litany of complaints against humans,
35:01including theocratic, were enough to convince some elements of humanity that the choice had been a loaded
35:06one. More than a few people in our own staff grumbled that we had been saddled with an unfair burden,
35:13now having the responsibility of leading a foreign race by example, and they are not wrong.
35:19Entry 33. Still, I can think of worse men to lead by example than one who has had centuries of
35:26experience in diplomatic patience, and made the correct choice given the opportunity to blunt such
35:31an apparently threatening species as humanity. As for myself, I have tabled the recommendation that we
35:37use one of our freighters to drag the largest asteroid we can to the orbit of Earth,
35:42and have it be used to create another of their space platforms, and use that a truly neutral
35:48ground as the base of operations for future participation in the Confederacy.
35:53Certainly the easily preventable death of their previous ambassador helped to convince the new
35:58one of the idea's merit. The galaxy is a convoluted place, and the diplomatic tactics embraced by the
36:04humans since we met them, poisoning, ultimatums, etc., whether these are the norm or not,
36:10will not be greeted with anything even remotely approaching enthusiasm by the rest of the galaxy.
36:16But I am confident that, in time, the rest of the Confederacy shall see as we do,
36:22that humanity has a place among equals in the defense and enrichment of the space-faring people.
36:27End journal.
36:29End journal.
36:29End journal.
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