NOVEL NEXT Stupid Imaginary Lines
Excerpt from “Of Shells and Stars: My time as ambassador”, Authored by ZssXuS, published in 38 PST (Post Stasis Time)
Chapter 8: The Terran Alliance.
In order to understand the Terrans, you have to understand “The Point”.
Borders don’t really mean much on a galactic scale. Everyone, from the most laid back species to aggressively territorial herds, all quickly learn one thing when entering the universe: Space is big. Really big. Really, really big.
Sure, there is an official ‘line’ where your legal influence starts and ends under various treaties and agreements, and while mapmakers will draw beautiful 3D representations of such territories, the simple fact is that maintaining any useful control of this space is near impossible.
Now and then it becomes relevant as a meteor of rare metals might travel between such borders, but territorial influence is ignored most of the time. So what if you travelled through space technically owned by another species? It wasn't like they would even notice.
No, the actual borders are a mess of system influences, beacons, and trade routes, all shifting and moving around in a messy motion as solar systems continue their eternal universal dance. Not that we tell the mapmakers that their beautiful maps are wrong: You should never anger a cartographer, they know where you live.
We and the Terrans share a border, a border which intersects at an area with an interesting location: It is the single point with the most different neighbouring areas of influence, at a staggering eleven. It used to be nine, but the Terrans did two very strange things. In retrospect, we really should have known they were up to something.
The first was with my species. The Terrans gave us the XK-77P0A1 cluster. It was a small starless grouping of rocks, nothing exciting or special: A basic mining community of a handful of Terrans had been removing some rarer metals, nothing to shake up the galaxy about. We of course accepted, as nobody should reject a gift shell, and we technically gained a few galactic neighbours.
The second was more complicated. The Galori Syndicate and The Phalgor Republic had always been at some form of war with each other, but the Terrans, as the ever peaceful diplomats, pushed them towards peace as galactic neighbours. The end deal involved the Galori providing planet Obreditia to the republic. It was a strange request, since Obreditia was an ice planet of zero importance, but the amount of financial aid the Terrans were offering made it a no-brainer. However, the Terran’s reaction of absolute joy upon completion of the deal nearly caused the entire thing to fall apart.
Both sides assumed they were getting the worst shake of the deal, that there was something they were missing. Obreditia became the most analysed planet in the area, with both sides spending significant sums of capital to try and tease out the secrets of the planet. In the end, it turned out to be nothing more than a ball of ice, with no importance or impact on the universe as a whole. Well, apart from the reduction of military aggression by The Galori Syndicate after the amount of funds spent on analysing the planet.
Oh, and the border change.
Eleven different sovereign groups now all shared a border with each other, eleven different cultures all intersected at one point. This…. Changed nothing. We were already galactic neighbours with heavy interactions between each other, the fact we now all shared a border didn't… Do anything.
The Terrans cared however, and even offered to build a trading post at the exact point where they intersected, in exchange for free rein over the few square miles of territory in each other's space. We all accepted, of course, it was a simple choice. The Terrans were offering to pay for the whole thing, and the introduction of a new refuelling station along with a trading route would have immense economic gains.
The only real delay was that a few of us didn't realise that the Terrans were waiting for our approval. The idea that they'd want approval for a few square miles of useless empty space was laughable. Again, in retrospect, we should have known they were up to something, that this mattered to them.
So it was built, and each of the eleven governments sent diplomatic representatives to man their embassies, which was how I found myself on “The Point”. I was young in my diplomatic career at that point, newly hired and ready to represent the ZZXuBBi on the galactic stage, so a perfect choice to be placed in what was at the time an unimportant role.
Upon arriving at the ZZXuBBi embassy at “The Point”, the first thing I noticed was just how… magnificent the structure was. No expense had been spared in building the station, with the central plaza representing the eleven joined nations being a magnificent spiralling path going through all eleven government’s areas of influence and ending at the point where they met, in a grand gesture of unity.
The ZZXuBBi’s area was also better than anything I ever expected. We were a species of shelless gastropod mollusc, or as a Terran might describe us, “Giant bright purple slugs”. Most non-ZZXuBBi constructions are all cold, harsh metals and plastics, uncomfortable to slide across and easy to dry out on. Nothing like what the Terrans built for us: everything was soft, moist, comfortable, almost as if we had built it ourselves. Every piece of furniture in the multi story embassy was either imported from ZZXuBBi space or built to the same specifications.
Clearly the primates had done their research and taken utmost care to make us comfortable, a far cry from every other embassy I had the misfortune to spend my time in. I almost felt guilty that I was the only member of my species on this team for such a luxurious accommodation: Others were to arrive in time, but since no trade routes had been created yet, we weren’t expecting much actual use of these facilities for a great many months.
My first day’s tasks were just unpacking my office. All the great many things that an embassy provides require a great many little things: information dumps, forms, videos to upload to screens. A hundred and one tasks required to make the area a full diplomatic station. I’d have plenty of time before I needed to attend to actual work.
‘Plenty of time’ translated to a mere three hours. Three hours into unpacking and I met my first Terran. At that time, we hadn't really had much interaction with the strange omnivorous primates. Their propensity for AI and general unsettling visage caused us to remain distant, if cordial, with them.
My first impressions were not good. The Terran was brash, skipped all formal greetings and acted less like a diplomat and more like a tourist trying to book a holiday, asking questions such as ‘So what's the deal with you slug guys?’ and ‘Anything fun to do on your planet?’.
In retrospect, a tourist was exactly what they were. At the time I presumed the primate standing in front of me, with the concerning bipedal wobble they all have, was a member of the Terran embassy. Either that or a family member of one.
I responded politely, even with a lack of formal greeting and the Terran’s disregard for decorum. I provided an info dump on my species and a little plastic representation of our flag, which seemed to make them happy.
Being a member of the diplomatic team meant you needed a nice viscous slime, and couldn't let such things offend you. Perhaps it was a cultural misunderstanding, perhaps the diplomat in question was just incompetent. It was no hidden secret that while vitally important, embassies were filled with “someone's nephew who needed a job”. It wasn't worth starting a war over.
What did offend me was the next ten times, each Terran appearing in my embassy without warning, asking the most random questions about my people. These Terrans were known for being diplomats, so having them appear in front of me in dishevelled dress asking inane queries was… insulting. One of them asked me what I was, showing a complete lack of research!
After that interaction, I stormed out of my office as fast as I could crawl, leaving a small trail of slime behind as I headed towards my destination: I was going to talk to the Terran diplomatic team directly and demand some God-damned respect…
That intent disappeared in an instant as I turned the corner into the main lobby and saw… chaos.
Thousands of Terrans were milling about, a general sense of primate glee among each one of them. There was an air of festivity as everyone seemed excited to be here, but at the time I couldn’t explain why! They were just walking around and along the paths that cut into each section of the eleven nations. They couldn’t be traders because the routes weren’t ready yet, and they couldn’t be here for diplomatic services because why would you travel in the middle of nowhere for that.
Even stranger, the Terrans seemed to be here specially for The Point. Various Terrans were buying souvenirs and T-shirts with “The Point”’s logo on it, which didn’t make sense! This was just a refuelling post, with nothing for light-years around. It confused me so much that I accosted a random Terran in a manner that could have cut short my long diplomatic career. I demanded to know why and what was going on. Why were so many random Terrans here at this random point in space?
“Well, it’s not random, is it? It’s the largest number of connected nations in the galaxy, that’s kinda cool.”
That was the Terran’s response, as if this area was sacred somehow. Then using those strange bipedal legs he had hopped between 4 different borders at once, calling out each government in turn before returning to the place in front of me, as if any of that meant anything at all.
It was then I saw the true meaning of this facility. Why they had given away territory to my species, why they had worked so hard for the diplomatic efforts of The Galori Syndicate and The Phalgor Republic. They wanted this point to be theirs to build upon, because for some reason this strange oddity of intersecting borders… excited them?
The winding pathways weren’t symbolic of the joining of eleven nations, it was the entire purpose, allowing Terrans to walk between border to border, running around them with glee as if moving through the imaginary line meant anything at all, accumulating in people queuing to take a picture of themselves at the point where the eleven borders intersected. None of it made any sense at all!
“Why!” I had asked, aghast and confused. “Why build all this here, why spend so much effort on something that means nothing? These borders are just… fake lines. We could have chosen to draw them anywhere else at all!”
His response is now seared into my brain, even after these many years, a lesson on Terran mentality.
“Well, if they were somewhere else, we would have built the station there instead.”
It was at this moment I understood the chaotic primates of Sol, allowing me to work rather beneficially with them in the years to come, up to and even after we joined their “Terran Alliance” much later. Terrans are a species of falsehoods. I do not mean that as an insult, but it is the core of who they are. The universe is filled with lies and fakery that the Terrans keep sacred. Atoms of loyalty, pitchers of honour, kilograms of traditions and fairy tales are the very essence of what makes up a Terran.
For this is what a Terran is built from: Unobservable concepts, handed down behaviours…
And Stupid Imaginary Lines.