Christopher Nuttall - The Trojan Horse

And their words sounded suspiciously like Star Trek’s central credo…

“There are two ways in which we can encounter a new world of friends,” the Ambassador said. He had the attention of the entire chamber. Everyone was paying attention to his words, calculating how they offered advantages and threats to their particular nation. No matter how anyone looked at it, the aliens would change the entire world. Nothing before — not Korea, not Iraq — had ever matched the sheer significance of First Contact. The world would never be the same again. “We can encounter them in space, when they have developed starships to cross the gulfs of space and reach worlds that belong to the Galactic Federation. They have no difficulty in being integrated into the Federation, if that is their choice. The Federation has never had to force a member to join. All join willingly, convinced of the benefits of membership. Access to our vast database of knowledge about the galaxy, about the hundreds of races that flower out into space, is the least of it.

“Or we can discover them before they make the climb into space.”

There was a second pause, more chilling than the first. “In normal cases, a world is left to develop on its own until its natives start building starships for themselves. We have discovered that contact between an advanced civilisation and a primitive race, one unaware of atoms, or that their planets orbit stars, is utterly devastating for the primitive race. Everything they might have brought to the Galactic Federation — knowledge they might have developed, understandings they might have shaped, contributions to art and crafts… everything is lost forever. They become, at best, shadows of what they might have become.

“Your race has seen a similar process, although on a much smaller scale. Contact between the Native Americans, or Australian Aborigines, and the Europeans proved devastating for the weaker side. They were crippled by disease, by technology and — above all — by a worldview they could not match. The Galactic Federation has long determined that all contact between the advanced civilisations that make up the Federation and the primitive races that have not yet discovered the building blocks of science and technology is to be forbidden. This is the most powerful edict of our culture. We do not contact races below a certain level of technology.

“In rare cases, we discover a race that has developed a level of technology without advancing into space, or is on the verge of destroying itself with technology that it has not yet developed the maturity to handle safely. In such cases, it is the responsibility of the discoverers to attempt to guide the discovered through the bottlenecks that can destroy an entire race, removing its potential from the galaxy forever. Your race is unusual in that it has both failed to move into space in any meaningful way and has failed, as a society, to develop the maturity that would allow you to avoid being destroyed by your own technology. We have observed you long enough to know that the only thing that prevented you from destroying yourselves before we made contact was sheer luck.

“There is much we do not understand about your race. You are lucky enough to live in one of the most blessed solar systems in the galaxy, yet you have been almost childishly lax about moving into space. You could have started mining asteroids and the gas giants and placing your heavy industries in space, but instead you choose to continue polluting your planet and poisoning your environment. We will show you models that will illustrate the true danger of the situation you are facing. Total environmental collapse may well be possible within decades. You have even failed to produce defences in case of a natural disaster from space; there are asteroids orbiting near your world that may eventually intersect with your planet, slamming into it with a force that would shake your world.

“Put bluntly, your race is isolated on a single vulnerable world. You have been risking extinction for centuries… and not just through natural disasters or your polluting of your own environment. You pose a very real threat to yourselves.

“By the time most races reach your level of technology, they have developed governing systems that span most of their homeworld’s surface. They develop political systems that allow them to concentrate their efforts on reaching into space and ensuring their own survival. You have chosen to fragment your world into many disparate countries, each one scrabbling with its neighbours; the rich choosing to exploit the poor, the strong choosing to oppress the weak. You fight wars over religion, over skin colour; in over half of your countries, you allow your females to be brutalised by an oppressive male patriarchy that weakens their ability to contribute to the whole. Your governments have shown a sickening hypocrisy in allowing short-term national gains at the expense of long-term planetary development. Your global system has been trending towards disaster — an event that would shatter the foundations of your world — for the last four decades. Our models predict disaster within the next ten years, an upheaval of such power that it would dramatically reduce your population and destroy your governments.”

The Ambassador seemed to pause for a long moment. He was lecturing the Assembly, not debating with them, yet no one seemed inclined to object. Toby suspected that he understood; the alien, isolated from global politics, might be seen as a neutral observer rather than someone pushing a view for their own purposes. Or perhaps they were reluctant to risk the alien’s ire. If half of the speculated benefits from joining the Federation happened to materialise, angering the aliens could result in the benefits to their countries being lost — permanently.

“There are those among us who wonder if your race is… sick,” the Ambassador said. “Not seventy of your years ago, one of your nation-states attempted to exterminate millions of humans because of their religion, or ethnic origin, or merely because they wanted living space. The survivals of that terrible period have gone on to oppress others, who in turn have chosen to oppress themselves rather than learning to live with their fellow humans. Your race has produced some of the most evil regimes in the galaxy and yet many of your worst acts come from absent-mindedness rather than outright evil. There are even some amongst us who have considered establishing a permanent blockade of your world, fearful that you carry a mental disease that would spread into the galaxy. You are xenophobic to a degree we find alarming and almost unbelievable. How will you act if unleashed upon the universe?

“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.