“And if left to your own devices, you will cripple yourselves — perhaps even destroy yourselves — within decades.
“The Galactic Federation has made the decision to try to help you. We will provide you with technologies that you lack — technologies you could have developed for yourselves, had you chosen to spend the effort you spent on developing weapons on developing ways to improve your lives instead. We will assist you in escaping the bottleneck that threatens your race; we will guide you towards a point where you will be mature enough to enter the Galactic Federation without posing a threat to your cousins among the stars. Over the next few weeks and months, we will enter into talks with your political and economical leaders that will attempt to ensure that the level of disruption caused by our technology — our mere presence — is kept to a minimum. But we must also issue one word of warning.
“Every race must decide — for itself — if it wishes to grow into a mature race, or fall backwards into barbarism. We cannot make that choice for you. The contact between the Galactic Federation and Earth may well result in political and social disaster for your race. And if that happens, we will watch without interfering. You must choose for yourselves if you wish to develop the ability to survive and reach into space — foresight, understanding and tolerance — or if you want to wallow in barbarism. It will be your choice.
“We do not come to bring advantage to one nation-state, or an alliance of nation-states, over the other nation-states on your world. We regard your political fragmentation as one of the prime causes of your headlong rush towards disaster and we will endeavour to avoid worsening the situation. Our gifts will be distributed carefully, with the focus on preventing disaster. Do not seek to misuse our gifts, or exploit us for your national ends. We will not tolerate such abuse of our presence.”
The Ambassador gave the Assembly one of his strange near-smiles and then stepped down from the podium. Toby watched as the Secretary-General struggled to find something to say, even as the aliens swept out towards the exit and the crowds outside. The political leaders were starting to chatter nervously, as if they didn’t quite believe what they’d heard — or as if they feared the effect on their populations. Toby knew that almost everyone in the USA would be watching as the aliens departed, glued to their televisions or computers. The other modern states would have the same problem; even China or Russia, which had powerful tools to censor international media broadcasts, would still have to confront the fact that much of their population would know exactly what the aliens had said.
Toby found himself reeling as the last alien exited the chamber — and the other wallflowers were clearly just as stunned. The alien Ambassador had lectured the Heads of State of almost every nation in the world as if they were nothing more than children… and their political masters had just accepted it. Shock would turn to anger soon enough, Toby expected, except everyone would fear losing access to the technology the Galactics had promised. And much of what the aliens had said was true. The human race could have spent the past fifty years developing the solar system. It might have earned humanity a little more respect.
He glanced down at his palmtop. Over the last two decades, political advisors and spin doctors had developed powerful tools to monitor public opinion, knowing that the winner of any election would be the politician who trimmed his sails to ride the winds of public feeling. Already, mere minutes after the aliens had returned to their craft, the internet was buzzing with anger and an almost feverish excitement. The aliens hadn’t pulled any punches — and neither were the commenters on the internet. They were making their opinions known… and governments were getting the brunt of their anger. The politicians who had turned NASA into yet another pork barrel for the distribution of political largess were taking the worst of it, but almost every political leader was being hammered. Toby knew that people were braver in cyberspace, where opinions and sentiment didn’t always blur over into the real world, yet it was hard to escape the feeling that the alien speech was about to set off a political earthquake. Entire governments could fall within the next few days.
The President was already being escorted out of the chamber by his security team, his face pale and drawn. He wasn’t the only Head of State to look shocked. The Chinese Premier, famous for his stereotypical inscrutability, looked as if he had been drinking. How would China’s population — increasingly angry at the old men who ran the country according to their version of communism — react to the alien speech?
And there were countries that had no tradition of peaceful changes in government…
Toby shook his head, remembering the brief moment when he’d glanced into the bright red eyes. The Galactics had crafted their speech very neatly, aiming it at the wider human population. And no one would want to be left out of the bounty they offered to the human race. After today, the Galactics would be embraced by most of the world. Toby wondered, as he rose to his feet to meet up with the President in a secure location, if he was the only one to be worried by their words.
He couldn’t escape the impression he’d felt when he’d met the alien eyes. The Galactics were predators. And what did that mean for Earth?
Chapter Six
Near Mannington, Virginia/New York
USA, Day 6
The Colonel disapproved of TV dinners. In his opinion, one of the many reasons for the decline in American communities was the ability to park the entire family in front of the television while stuffing their faces with some mass-produced foodstuff that — just maybe — bore a passing resemblance to food. He’d eaten MREs in the Gulf that had tasted better than some of the slop served up in brightly-packaged containers; it stunned him that people could actually buy and like the quasi-food. But then they knew no better. The decline in home cooking had convinced an entire generation that fast food was actually edible.
But no one was going to miss the alien landing. Sure, there was never any end to the tasks on the farm, yet he knew better than to insist that everyone worked during the single most significant event in all of human history. One military rule that applied to civilian life was simple; never — ever — give an order you know won’t be obeyed. It weakens respect for commanders among their subordinates. And besides, the Colonel wasn’t going to miss the landing himself.
As always, the media had surrounded the incident site with thousands of cameras. The raw footage was, in many ways, more affecting than the edited footage that would probably be streaming onto the internet by the end of the day. He studied the alien craft with considerable interest, feeling an odd kinship with the ship’s designers. It was impossible to escape the feeling that the boxy design of the craft — and a total absence of frills — indicated that it had been designed by or for the military. The aliens seemed to have a military mindset in both their starships and their smaller craft. And then there was the aliens themselves. There was something about them that made it impossible to believe that they were faked. Their movements were utterly inhuman, their bodily proportions chillingly different. They were real.