Earth Fanfic (Post-Contact Hilarity II)

General Fanfic
101

Among the many things that Stellar Express have is a variety of test parcels, outfitted with gyroscopes and accelerometers and various other sensors, used to ensure that their own quality standards are being maintained, along with those of their delivery associates. And indeed, used in the selection of those delivery associates.

And so, scene:

Interior - FedEx Headquarters

StellEx Representative: Well, the trial period is over. Let’s see how you did.

Representative makes a command gesture.

Test Parcel (with huge anime eyes): You throw the parcel? You throw the parcel like the football? Oh! Oh! Jail for FedEx! Jail for FedEx for One Thousand Years!!!

4 Likes
102

Actually now living in one of aforementioned locales, I can speak to this one:

Possibilities include, I suppose, “Reduced flow for water conservation? One of the most common substances in the universe aside, you live on a garden world with over 70% hydrographic coverage‽ How in the name of the seventy sloppy-ass devils¹ of incompetence do you have a shortage of water?”

(Ongoing conversations may touch upon handy natural phenomena like evaporation and advanced space-magic technology like pipes, aqueducts, and canals.)

I present an overheard half of a conversation:

“Look, we have aqueducts. All over the state. Been building ‘em basically nonstop since we acquired title—“

“This is on top of all the water reclamation efforts. It’s not needed all the time, but when you need it, you don’t want to reengineer the entire distribution system on the fly—“

“Reservoirs are not the problem. Not everyone has weather-control satellites in place from day one, you know. There’s this phenomenon called drought.”

“Yes, we know about desalination. We’ll be on that just as soon as we have the cheap power at sufficient scale. This regulation isn’t meant to be permanent—“

“Yes, our local ecology interface matrix is grossly unbalanced. We know that. This is where we made the mistakes that taught us that, in fact.”

“Now you’re getting closer. The property rights schema for the first waves of development were misaligned to the water resources actually available—“

“We do indeed put the perverse in incentive. I’m glad you find so much amusement in our misfortune. Can we monetize that sufficiently to buy the paddles to get back down the creek? No? Then maybe—“

“Your gnostic overlay is quite right. That is a disgusting metaphor. Unfortunately it’s also appropriate, since we didn’t get rationality handed to us on a palladium platter. Welcome to Earth.”

3 Likes
103

“Well, then, you’re not building the right aqueducts, because -”

"- drought, yes, we have them too, is a local phenomenon. See this? It’s a schematic of the Integrated Water Grid. Designed so that in the event of a drought, a chap at Matter Management gets a call from Atmohydrosphere, pushes a couple of buttons, and a few cubic miles of water stream across the continent from too much to not enough.

“No fancy weather control required. Just regular industry - and we started building the IWG when pickaxes and steam engines were the new hotness.”

"You’ve had nuclear fission for more’n half a century - and armadas of power plants that boil water as part of their operation and just waste their evaporate - but more importantly, you’ve had nuclear fusion sufficient to this task for four and a half billion years. You’re trying to evaporate water, not smelt unobtanium.

“Although, looking at this and weather control together, you’ve had space-launch capability for almost as long as fission, and haven’t even tested a mirror to increase uptake rates in situ? Dashed poor show.”

“This isn’t amusement. This is wry outrage. I imagine if it was amusement my smile would be wider.”

“Okay, put the dark-cope away before you hurt yourself. All the universe handed us on a platter was an intolerable sense of fehlerschmerz; everything else is, at most, a downstream second-order effect of picking up the damn hammer and addressing it. The universe is kind enough to make clear thinking and competence available to anyone willing to strive for it. Even Earthlings.”

1 Like
104

“Which was a hundred fifty years ago in these parts. ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ – can your gnostic overlay handle that one?”

“First bloody helpful thing you’ve said so far.”

“Space-launch capability, sure. Cost-effective space-launch capability? Maybe ten years, if you’re generous. But more than that–”

“Well, face like yours, kinda hard to tell one from t’other. I’ll look for that next time.”

"- and having never lived without that sense, I’m certain to at least five nines that you don’t appreciate how much of a gift that was. Probably half the sophont-hours on this planet are wasted compensating for the lack thereof.

But you have put me in mind of another impediment, one that you’re more inclined to appreciate. I redirect your attention to a core reality of our existence: this is the greenlife rootworld. Even before the stargate arrived, we managed to realize what a treasure that was - and how easy it was to destroy value accidentally. We don’t know much, but one thing we know well is that we don’t know what we’re doing. The aqueducts, the reservoirs, the hydroengineering, the fission plants, the weather control pilot testing, all of it - with each one we tripped on ecology problems we hadn’t known about. Makes one a little hesistant, trying to light a crude furnace while locked in a warehouse of priceless flammable treasures.

It’s in both our interests not to fuck this planet up any further, yes?"

105

From today’s reading of relevance, particularly to the Orangeverse scenario, this from Scott Sumner’s Substack:

Integrity boosts productivity - by Scott Sumner

This, not rationality, is where they’re going to have a primary problem with us, and US¹.

I mean, it includes rationality inasmuch as a commitment to seek and know the truth and behave accordingly is a part of integrity, but so is honesty and pride in one’s work and commitment to endeavors and truthfulness and authenticity and conviction and honor and pretty much the rest of the Nine Excellences, and that’s the yardstick they’re inclined to be using. There are “rational” things we do that are nonetheless not Excellent, and as has been said, one should always be excellent.

  1. It does not help, in the Orangeverse in particular, that we have democratically chosen to be led by² someone who exemplifies exactly none of the Excellences, except possibly a corrupt form of ambition.

  2. Remember, we’re talking about people who come from a strict meritocracy where “leading people” has to correlate extremely well with “being very excellent indeed”, or else you’re likely to find yourself leading no-one but Jack and Shit. And Jack left town.

106

Well… at least they’re not anywhere near the point of going, “the only thing that is salvageable/worth salvaging on this planet is the biosphere, and even that’s a stretch?”

I don’t know, I feel like after interacting with humanity for a while, they’d become disgusted by just how subpar everything is compared to Elieria(spell?)/ the Empire. The only thing Earth really has that the Empire doesn’t is the biosphere, and possibly some paleo archaeology type stuff.

Like, “Wow, you live like this? How can you even tolerate it?” and that sort of thing.

107

Well, to be fair to humanity and Earth, those likely to be out and about in the galaxy are well aware that they’re shipping out from Utopia and set their expectations accordingly. And most of those amount to “you’re an emerging market/primitive planet by virtue of maybe 6,000 years of development”, and as they say themselves, primitivity per se isn’t a sin. (Relishing it may be, however.) Everyone has to pass through it at some point on the way to greater things, and offering a hand up in this department is a great opportunity for cultural exchange and mutual profit.

Barbarity, on the other hand, that’s s an issue, and this just happens to be one of those unfortunate times in history where Certain People are determined to find that particular hot button and hammer on it really hard. Possibly with some nitro.

So, y’know. Views are mixed, and at least many problems are soluble by being very selective about exactly which Earthlings they’re prepared to deal with. Either the others will figure out the issue, or the elect will end up richer than God and dominating the offworld trade, and in either case, the issue is solved to their satisfaction.

1 Like
108

Aye, and we have not been particularly good stewards of it, have we? How many animals and plants have gone extinct because of human actions? How displeased would they be with humanity for the damage that they have done to the original homeworld of greenlife? Not accounting for (in the Scorchedverse) the damage done by the GRB, but that’s only the most recent insult that has been borne by the environment.

109

California building codes are an issue in the base Contactverse and in the Orangeverse, but not the Scorchedverse…

110

Are there even still any extant physical examples thereof in the Scorchedverse? On the one hand, the damage to physical structures isn’t too serious AIUI.
OTOH, wildfires.

111

Based on “Life After People” (which I have been watching lately) quite a few buildings are going to survive the initial scorching. In a very damaged state, but modern architecture suffers far more from things like freeze-thaw cycles and moisture than it does from radiation.

A very big question mark will be what sort of firestorms occur. Prolonged high heat is bad. Interior furnishings are likely to catch based on radiant heat. But! If ALL the stuff like cladding goes up at the same time there’s actually less structural damage because the heat doesn’t have time to penetrate.

I’d need to research, but very broad assumptions:

  • Freestanding homes and apartments are rubble
  • Many shops and industrial buildings are rubble
  • A surprising number of office towers and recreational buildings are gutted but repairable or structurally sound
  • Anything made of non-reinforced concrete, LARGE stone blocks, or mortarless stone needs a good scrubbing but is otherwise okay. (Contents of such buildings very much a mixed bag.)

So… anything that’s lasted two thousand+ years is probably fine. I wonder if old-fashioned castles and underground/cave dwellings might come back into fashion?

1 Like
112

Thinking of “cost-effective space access”, it’s gonna be real awkward once NASA and the Spaceflight Initiative compare their early histories and the former, getting to space via multi-billion-dollar government-funded national program, realizes that the latter was basically a bunch of guys in the desert playing a crowdfunded, live-action game of Kerbal Space Program.

(With, admittedly, the “over-the-counter plutonium purchasing” mod.)

1 Like
113

Specifically, in this case, it’s not all that hard to figure out who - especially given that the situation on Earth has changed and not for the better since these threads began - if you think about it from their cultural perspective.

The Empire is notoriously in favor of order (harmony), progress, and liberty. Says it right in the motto.

So look down from the orbital viewpoint. Europe, especially in the west, in its dedication to stasis, has taken a firm position against all of those things. Africa is the basket-case hell-hole it’s been for the last long damn time. The Middle East is a low-rent junior-league version of the Theomachy of Galia. Russia, OMFG. India is not covering itself with glory right now. China is a ghastly authoritarian blob, albeit one with the slight virtue of not being run by nutcases. And the US’s recent democratic choices are showing a distinct preference for idiocy, lunacy, treachery, and classlessness, all of which are things they hate with the fires of a thousand suns.

tl;dr most of the planet is buggier than a cockroach sandwich, in their opinion.

The West Pacific Strategy isn’t just pulled out of my noncanonical hat: it’s the IES contact-beta team figuring that deliberately-accidentally encouraging the creation of the Greater West Pacific Co-Civility Sphere out of the nations along a curve starting at Japan and South Korea, passing through Taiwan and Singapore, and ending up at Australia and New Zealand, picking up a few occasionally-mentioned incidentals along the way, is probably their best hope for salvaging anything worth having out of this mess.

Yes, there are exceptions. This is the view from geosync. No need to write letters. There are maybe-probably some plums to pick up in Eastern Europe, and I didn’t mention South America because I don’t feel confident enough in my knowledge to do so. Individuals and smaller regions than you can see from geosync will inevitably vary, of course.

1 Like
114

Not run by nutcases?

115

I come not to praise China for their achievement, but merely to point out that against this current background, the old normal (with all its flaws) looks like an achievement.

To expand, on further thought: Xi Jinping is superior because he (a) knows when he’s lying, and (b) is ashamed enough of it to try to hide the fact.

1 Like
116

“It wasn’t built in 150 years, either. Would you like a list of your major infrastructure projects that were built in less than 150 years, or just the continent-spanning ones?”

shrug

"Self-inflicted issue. That’s what you get when you decide it’s not worth the bother if it’s not to beat the other guy, muck around with, ah, pork for decades, then have more recent developments carried out by a man with no discernable memetic immune system who got pwned by a virulent strain of intellectual dysentry.

“But you could have lofted a workable test mirror on a Titan, maybe even a late Atlas. That might have provided some incentive for further development in that area - if you could find someone interested in solving problems.”

“What makes this ironic is that you’re saying it in California, which is the planet’s and possibly the galaxy’s leading center of catastrophically not doing things.”

1 Like
117

Actually, just as a note relevant to a couple of points up there:

I should be very clear that in any version of the post-contact 'verse, no rocket company/vehicle company/battery company/any other company in the Empire will be taking Elon Musk’s calls. They don’t do business with crazy, and holy fucking shit, did he get real post-reality crazy, real fast.

(They may still be taking calls from SpaceX and/or Tesla, but in those parts it’s considered perfectly reasonable to write “if we have to deal with the whackjob in the corner office, ever, the deal is off and the clawback goes into effect” into the contract.)

1 Like
118

Crud, it’s considered perfectly reasonable to write that into contracts here.

Seems to happen most often in the Oil Patch, which is admittedly one of the most aggressively open-market capitalist chunks of economy on Earth.

2 Likes
119

Man, I read a whole thread on methods for emergency workers to remove idiots who have used quick-set concrete to attach their hands to major roads, and not one of them figured out that you can remove almost all of the idiot in, oh, under a minute with an axe, tourniquet optional?

For shame.

Odocorp security would have figured that out straight away.

1 Like
120

Counterpoint: The hand’s still stuck there.