July 2050
Nicosia, Syria-Thaumasia, Mars
Levi Barlow stood in the crowd as the second group of colonists landed not too far outside the colony. This would bring the population up to just shy of a million people living primarily in Nicosia. Most of the rest of them were setting up a new city called Cairo. Apparently the names had something to do with some books or movies or something that were written a long time ago, Levi didn’t really know or care that much to be honest. His arm reflexively raised to shield his face as the Oregon got low enough to start kicking up dust, not that his arm would do anything that the visor on his environmental suit wouldn’t do. The thing that struck him the most about the dust, and everything on this planet for that matter, was that it was no where near red but rather a light brownish color. He felt a little sad for these people though, current policy was to cryogenically freeze people for the trip even though it was only a couple of days. The memories of what it was like to wake up from the freeze were still fresh in his memory, he could almost smell the bile still.
Levi checked his watch noting the time. He would have to leave here before the 300,000 people had fully disembarked and long before they shuffled off to the immigration office. On Earth Levi had built computers for a living, but here on Mars that was not an option, at least not yet. He was part of a team that built the electronics for the new construction factories being put up. A couple had been brought from Earth but many, many more would be needed if Mars was ever going to be a productive colony. He didn’t complain too much though, he was not one of the people actually putting together the factories or one of the poor blokes who worked in the mines. Really he was solidly part of the very small middle class that existed on Mars, and considering that most of what could be considered high class worked for the Republic directly, he was sitting pretty.
The Hague, Earth
“Maki-san, I have news about the Morrical Freight Company.”
Ichiro looked up at his manservant with heavily lidded eyes, “Yes? What is the news?”
He was hoping the news was not another rise in Morrical’s stock prices. His company, Postlewaite, had launched a freighter much larger than Morrical’s freighter but the stock prices had remained at $2 a share, and now Morrical had just launched another ship just a couple days ago. It was a fuel harvester of all things, its job was to stop at a gas giant and collect sorium and refine it before bringing it back to Earth to sell.
“The ship has laid in a course. It is heading to Neptune.”
“Really? That is an odd choice. Neptune has less sorium than Earth does and its harder to get. I would imagine they would go to Uranus where over 25 million cubic tons of sorium exists.” This was interesting. There were seven bodies known to contain sorium in the solar system and Neptune had the forth largest, though he did have to admit that the scans showed that sorium could be rather easily harvested from Neptune’s atmosphere.
Perth, Oceania, Earth
“Religion has a long history of disputes it has had with science, one of the most notable examples is Galileo, but in the 1920s the game changed. Starting with State of Tennessee vs. Scopes, religion has been increasingly against science. I would argue in all this time science has only had one real dispute with religion, this dispute started in 1984 by Thomas Pierson and Dr Jill Tarter. In 1984 these two incorporated the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence Institute, better known as either SETI or the SETI Institute.
“Bayesian Logic, also known as Occam’s Razor or Occam’s Principle, is the foundation of scientific thought and when on the subject of life outside earth it would postulate that we are not alone. Not only can we postulate this but mathematics, astrophysics, and astrogeology all support this by proving that the Sol system is a rather average system and is one of uncountable systems in existence.
“Yet with all of this being true, religions around the world refused to accept the possibility until earlier this year when we made contact with the Bilos. In response to this there are people who are claiming that the Bilos must be the angels and such that are written in holy texts despite the lack of jump point knowledge of the Bilos. As of right now we do not know much about the history of the Bilos and most of that is still classified by the government. That being said for the Bilos to have visited Earth before they would have either had to had jump point knowledge and then lost it in some sort of dark ages, which there is no record of or even records of the after effects of such a time. Or they would have had to use generation ships, and given what I know about the speed their technology is capable of now it would take them approximately seven thousand seven hundred years to travel from Alpha Centauri to Sol, though interstellar space none the less.
“I think that using math we can say with a fair amount of certainty that it is very unlikely that the Bilos ever visited Earth. And if that is the case then we know that there is no mention in any text we have, religious or not, of how many intelligent species are out there. Therefore it should be of critical importance that we assume we are not alone and that other, possibly greater threats, exit in the cosmos. Thank you all for attending, remember your papers are due on Friday and I will see you next week.”