Wake-up Call: 2035 Read online

  The galaxy itself comprised five independent galactic sectors: the central core and the four spiral wings that swirled into it. A decision was taken to divide the Galactic Federation’s governance portfolio according to these clearly-defined galactic sectors. Individual representatives of the super-intelligent races that had originated within each of these sectors, had been elected to preside over each of them.

  At the millennial celebration of the Galactic Federation’s inauguration, a highly anticipated entity was founded and named the Galactic Exploration Division. Its mandate was to explore, observe, chart and research the entire galaxy, with specific emphasis being placed on the discovery of both inhabited and habitable planets.

  9:12 a.m. Earth: Oxford University

  Payton continued with the lecture. “Now I have something very interesting to show you, which will demonstrate the true scale of this challenge.”

  He walked over to the desk and reached into his bag. He pulled out an orange and two pins, then explained, “If we were to shrink our Sun down to the size of this orange …” he handed the orange to a student in the front row and indicated she should hold it up in the air. He continued, “… then the Earth would be floating 10 metres away and would be the size of a pinhead.”

  He walked up the lecture theatre aisle and handed a pin to another student, who held it up for everyone to see. The smartboard registered keywords spoken by Payton during his lecture and followed them as programmed. It showed an image of the Sun, followed by a scaled image of the Earth next to it.

  “As we all know, it takes one year, or 365 days, for this pinhead to circumnavigate the orange … and to continue using this scale, our Moon is just two and a half centimetres away from the Earth and is a quarter of the size of a pinhead.”

  He handed the student another smaller pin, which was then held adjacent to the first. A scaled image of the Moon appeared on the smartboard adjacent to the Earth.

  Payton spoke, “Now I have a question for you. On this scale, where do you believe our Sun’s closest neighbouring star is? In other words, where is the closest orange in relation to our orange? Throw your answers out there and I’ll write them down.”

  A student shouted out, “Across the hallway in the next lecture theatre.”

  “Okay, anyone else?” asked Payton, encouraging participation.

  Another student spoke up, “At the end of the hallway.”

  Payton scrawled the responses onto the chalkboard, not giving anything away at this stage.

  Discussion and debate started amongst the students. Someone spoke on behalf of a small group, “We reckon a few hundred metres away, where the library is.”

  Payton wrote the answer down, then asked, “Any more estimates?”

  Another student shouted out loud, “I’m going to be crazy here and say London, 100 kilometres away from us here in Oxford.”

  There were a few chortles amongst the students.

  “Okay, thanks very much for those answers. Now, just for your information, our Sun’s closest neighbour is a binary star system called Alpha Centauri, which is just over four light years away. By light year, I mean the distance travelled at the speed of light in one full year, 9,46 trillion kilometres. In other words, a very long way. On this scale, our closest neighbouring star, or orange on this scale, would be over 2 500 kilometres away, in the grand city of Istanbul, Turkey.”

  Expressions of amazement filled the lecture theatre. This was why Edward Payton enjoyed lecturing so much: he was responsible for enlightening people’s generally myopic perception of the world and space.

  The smartboard then showed a map of Europe highlighting the distance between Oxford and Istanbul: 2 580 kilometres. Oranges appeared next to each city.

  Payton spoke, “Now to put this into perspective for you, humankind has never travelled further than Mars, which, at its furthest point from the Earth on this scale, is 26 metres away – twice the width of this lecture theatre. On this scale, imagine walking to Mars – just 50 steps, and then walking to Alpha Centauri – over five million steps: effectively 100 000 times further.

  “We should consider that NASA’s manned space shuttles, which travelled at 28 300 kilometres per hour, would have taken over 165 000 years to get to Alpha Centauri – and don’t forget that this is just our closest star system.” Payton shook his head at the thought.

  “Now let’s look at the most promising Earth-like exoplanet candidate discovered to date: Kepler-452b. It is 1 400 light years away from us in the Cygnus constellation, meaning that our scaled Kepler-452b pinhead would be located 880 000 kilometres away; more than twice the distance to the Moon from this orange.” He pointed at the orange still being held up by the student.

  “Let’s say we identified a perfectly suitable exoplanet circling a star on the opposite side of our galaxy. On this scaled demonstration, that pinhead and the orange would be well over 50 million kilometres away, on the surface of Mars at its closest orbital point to Earth. Remember that humankind has only travelled 26 metres at this stage! As a matter of interest, the farthest manmade object from Earth is Voyager One, which was launched into space back in 1977. Right now, on our orange scale, it is just over two kilometres away from us – after almost 60 years of travel.”

  Payton continued after a brief pause, “We are quick to underestimate the sheer size of our galaxy and the Universe. Perhaps it comforts us not to think of ourselves as so small and insignificant. But this aside, the suggestion of us flying off into space to find another habitable planet to colonise, if such a planet even exists at all, is at this stage, completely unrealistic.

  “Also, when we arrive there to colonise the identified planet, what in heaven’s good name would we do with the native species that are possibly already inhabiting it? Make sure you’re enjoying a strong cup of coffee when you consider that prospect!”

  The students laughed while appreciating Payton’s ingenious simplification of complex issues.

  He stressed his next point. “So, there is actually only one reasonable answer to the question that I asked at the beginning of the lecture and that is … we must absolutely not let Earth’s environment reach its tipping point in the first place! To do so would be catastrophic for all life on Earth, including human life. We may outlast other species with our isolation and space technologies, but the harsh realities of a collapsed environment and the inaccessibility of outer space would eventually claim every single one of us. Humanity would simply cease to exist.

  “Our planet should be regarded as our space station that keeps us all alive in space; so we should rethink our behaviour and stop treating it as though it’s dispensable.”

  Stellar System 413: Intra-Galactic Travel Network

  The awoken cylindrical object was known to the Galacians as an Intra-Galactic Travel Station, otherwise known as an IGT Station. This particular IGT Station, identified as IGT-413, was just one of a vast fleet of IGT Stations that formed part of the greater Intra-Galactic Travel Network. The IGT Network had been created by the Galactic Exploration Division, as part of their ‘Galacian Gateway Programme’. It facilitated instantaneous intra-galactic hyperspace travel across any distance within the confines of the IGT Network, thus removing the constraint of time when travelling between galactic destinations. It was used by the Galacians to both explore and govern the galaxy.

  The way IGT Stations functioned was relatively simple. A spacecraft would enter an origin IGT Station and emerge simultaneously from another predetermined destination IGT Station*.

  [* The paired IGT Stations’ distortion drives facilitated hyperspace travel by means of physically distorting the fabric of space and creating a wormhole-like spacial convergence. This was achieved through the calculated bending of the space-time continuum’s gravitational dependencies, which allowed for two different points in space to be conjoined by means of reciprocally converging spacial extrusions. During this spacial convergence event, the effective distance between the two reciprocating IGT Stations was
compressed to zero. It was at this precise moment that a spacecraft could be instantaneously hypershunted between the IGT Stations.

  The reality was that wormholes did not just exist randomly in arbitrary parts of space, as had been postulated for aeons – they had to be physically created between two points. This meant that two separate space distortion machines had to be positioned at each end of the intended journey, in order for spacial convergence to be achieved. Once achieved, the convergence had to be sustained for a brief time-window to allow an object to travel through it. It had proved impossible to hypershunt objects from an origin IGT Station to some randomly pre-determined point in space – they could only be hypershunted to another IGT Station that had been specifically positioned at the desired destination.]

  The Galactic Exploration Division’s headquarters, also based on Endurion, was where the IGT Stations were made and dispatched into space. Since the IGT Stations could only be transported via normal space travel means, at close to light speed, the Galacians had to wait for them to arrive at their pre-determined destinations before they could be put to use. This wait could be anything up to 100 000 years, depending on the proximity of the destination to Endurion. Only upon an IGT Station’s arrival at its destination could hyperspace travel be conducted to that point. This was an insurmountable constraint facing the IGT Network’s expansion across the galaxy.

  The Galactic Exploration Division’s scope of exploration was thus, initially confined to the galaxy’s central core and inner sections of its spiral wings, while the Galacian Gateway Programme was still in its formative years*.

  [* The limitations of the IGT Network’s reach had been partially overcome by the development of excelascopes. These were massive telescopes that could view stellar systems and their planets up to 50 000 light years away. Even though the technology was effective, it was equally antiquated in the sense that the research was all historical, rather than in real time. Looking at these distant stellar systems was like reading the deep history of the galaxy’s outer reaches. The research was invaluable however, since it identified the stellar systems that exhibited the highest potential for inhabited and habitable planets, thus defining the target destinations for the IGT Stations being dispatched at the time.]

  The IGT Network’s reach expanded dramatically tens of thousands of years later, as the dispatched IGT Stations began arriving at their destinations in the extremities of the galaxy’s spiral wings. The Exploration Division’s teams could finally travel to the destinations that had been studied from afar, for so long. They could research, in real time, the physical properties of the planets that were now within the IGT Network’s range, and confirm exactly how many of them actually supported life.

  The Exploration Division celebrated intermittent discoveries of inhabited planets, and documented those planets that were found to have supported life at some previous stage during their existence. But, after many millennia of further exploration work, it became disappointingly clear that the occurrence of life across the galaxy, especially intelligent life, was far rarer than had long been thought. The vast majority of habitable planets showed no sign of ever having been inhabited. Even on planets where conditions were perfect for life to flourish, only a miniscule probability existed that it would actually form there.

  They also could not overlook the fact that their exploration effort was a mere snapshot taken of the present and very recent past of the galaxy’s unfathomable 13,2 billion year history. How many intelligent species had come and gone during that time, only the Great Creator could know.

  IGT Station 413 had been state-of-the-art 115 000 years ago when it was first dispatched. Being a fourth generation DCGM-4 model, it had been revolutionary in its day but was now regarded as antiquated considering where the Galacians’ technological advancement was at present. The latest generation IGT Stations were five times the size of their predecessors, which allowed for the Galacians’ largest intra-galactic space cruisers and freighters to travel through them. The older generation IGT Stations were only able to facilitate the movement of the smaller Saurayan spacecraft models.

  IGT-413 had originally travelled for 65 000 years before reaching its final destination on the outskirts of a stellar system in a remote part of the galaxy’s fourth spiral wing. It was stationed six light hours away from its designated star of interest. It had become instantly famous after facilitating the discovery of a Miracle Planet – a planet that brought the entire Galactic Federation to a standstill in wonder and amazement. It was an unmatched treasure, given the far-reaching exploration work that had already been conducted up to that time.

  Having at that stage, observed and charted over 50% of the galaxy’s stars and planets, this was without any doubt the most magnificent discovery ever made in the known history of the galaxy. But the discovery had become equally infamous shortly thereafter, when, for some unknown reason, IGT-413 had malfunctioned after the safe return of the exploration spacecraft that had discovered the Miracle Planet.

  It was assumed that a software problem had caused its inoperability, but whatever it was, it could not be fixed remotely since all communication with IGT-413 had ceased. It was as though it had simply vanished. The consequences were utterly devastating since a return visit to the newly discovered planet would not be possible until the IGT Station had been restored to operational status.

  A software restoration module had been immediately dispatched to the closest IGT Station (IGT-547) in the vicinity of the dysfunctional one, which had reduced its travel time by 15 000 years. But the stark remoteness of IGT-413’s location had meant that it would still take some 50 000 years for the module to travel the immense remaining distance, before carrying out the repair. There was simply no other way.

  The Galacians’ plans to observe and research the planet had to be placed on hold for 50 000 years … a lengthy delay and an unexpected tragedy.

  9:25 a.m. Earth: Oxford University

  Payton moved on, keeping his students in keen suspense. “Okay, next question. What do you think the most populous mammal on Earth is?”

  The students considered the question.

  A student shouted out from the back row, “I reckon dogs … or cats.”

  “Okay, good start. Come along, give me some others,” said Payton.

  Another student spoke up, “It must be some kind of domesticated farm animal, like pigs or cattle, maybe even sheep.”

  “Yes, good ones there. Any others?” asked Payton as he scrawled the responses on the chalkboard.

  “What about bats?” came another response.

  “Excellent, you’re getting close now,” said Payton.

  He pointed to a student in the front row who had her hand raised.

  She spoke, “It must be some kind of rodent, like a rat. Cities all over the world are filled with these pests.”

  “Ah, well done!” said Payton giving a complimentary salute to the student. “It is very interesting that you mentioned that specific species, because you are in fact correct, or should I say … you were correct. The most populous mammal on Earth right now is in fact the human being.”

  The students looked at one another, almost surprised by what Payton had said, but on brief reflection, recognised his logic.

  He continued, “It is estimated that the number of human beings actually exceeded that of rats five years ago. Today there are probably half a billion more humans than rats on this planet. The problem arises, however, that the overall consumption and environmental impact of a human being is over a thousand times that of a rat.”

  Payton elaborated, “We humans are quick to define what the acceptable population size should be of other species that inhabit this planet with us. When a species’ population grows beyond our defined acceptable size, then swift and often brutal action is taken to curb it. For instance, if rats proliferate beyond an acceptable point in a city, they are exterminated en masse. Every rat that can be found is destroyed to ensure that their numbers are kept under s
trict control.

  “This also happens to certain species of ‘megafauna’ – mammals that weigh more than 40 kilograms. Africa’s remaining elephant population, which currently numbers just 50 000, is still controlled via a process scientifically referred to as ‘culling’; to preserve the fragile flora within the few remaining wildlife reserves where elephants still occur. The same is done with bison, also numbering 50 000, to prevent overgrazing in their enclosed reservation areas.

  “What I find most fascinating of all, is that we human beings are conveniently exempt from these inflexible population control rules that are enforced on so many of our fellow species. This is the case even though we vastly outnumber them and have a much higher environmental impact.”

  The students sat silently, riveted by the stimulating notion.

  He went on, “Each day, one human being living in the developed world uses twice the resources and has three times the ecological footprint of a single elephant. Yet we feel the need to manage their population, rather than our own. Think about this: 3 000 years ago, or in 1000 BCE, the rhinoceros population is estimated to have been 50 000 000 worldwide. Now there are just 18 000 left in the wild – a 2 800 times reduction. During this same time period the human population has risen from an estimated 50 000 000 to a staggering 9 000 000 000 – a 180 times increase.

  “To illustrate the scale of this population disparity, consider the following: if the current human population was to be represented as a skyscraper, it would be nine kilometres tall – 150 metres higher than Mount Everest. On this scale, the elephant or bison population at 50 000, would be equivalent to the height of a lowly mushroom – just five centimetres tall. The rhino population would be the height of a grasshopper – less than two centimetres tall. The Siberian tiger population, at 200, would be no more than the thickness of a sheet of paper lying next to the human skyscraper.”