My first time doing this so be kind!
This is the start of a short SF story. Sorry it's a bit long at 1257 words. I haven't really put a full plot together for the story but I have a couple of different possible directions it could go. However as this is my first attempt I thought I'd see what reactions I got before attempting to take it further. For the same reason I don't have a title yet.
**********
It all began over forty years ago…
"It's not fair, why should they be allowed to have babies?"
They had just finished watching a holovision documentary about life in Catholic families. And as always the presenters delighted in showing the extraordinary sight of dozens of children playing together. And as always Emma felt the need to vent her anger and frustration at the injustice of it. And as always Ian found himself producing his stock answer. "Come on, Emma, you know as well as I. They can will their lives to anyone they want and of course they are going to leave them to one of their own."
"But they have so many children, it's just not fair," she repeated.
"They forego rejuvenation for religious reasons, just like the Buddhists, so inevitably they have more deaths and consequently more children." This old argument had been repeated so many times now that Ian barely had the energy to state the obvious. Over a century ago the world governments had been forced into uniting behind the childbirth laws with the discovery of rejuvenation treatments. No one yet knows how long a life can be stretched but everyone knew the population couldn't be allowed to continue expanding as it had. One death, one birth. It was probably the most strictly enforced law since laws first began. You could leave your life to another in your will, but you had to die first. As a doctor Emma knew all this better than most but as a woman that didn't help.
"I know," she said, resigned, "but I can't help it, I want a baby. I want to feel life growing within me, I want to share the joy of my child's discovery of the world, I want to teach and guide her, lead her into the adventure of life." A pause, then; "It's all very well having rejuvenation but why can't we find a way to suppress this need?"
"There's always emigration." Again his stock answer but this time Emma didn't snap back but just looked pensive giving no answer.
This was a new twist; was she really seriously considering it, He wondered? To leave the soft civilised modern life for a colony. To be frozen for the decades it would take to reach one of the dozen or so star systems found to have habitable planets. Certainly, with Emma's vocation and his experience in the water treatment plants, they would have little trouble getting a place. But to leave everything behind just for the freedom to have children? It was a tremendous step to take with no chance of ever returning. Not quite ready for that argument yet, Ian chose to keep quiet himself.
The next morning all seemed forgotten. Cheerfully tripping over each other in the kitchen, each fixed their preferred breakfasts. Then, late as always, a fleeting kiss, before jumping into their eCars and racing off to their respective work.
When Ian got home that night, Emma was already logged onto the net. Thinking nothing of it, he pottered about in the kitchen. "Want a drink?" he shouted through whilst filling the kettle.
"Green tea, please" came the slightly distracted reply.
A couple of minutes later and a fresh, steaming mug sat beside Emma's netlink, Ian standing behind her sipping from his own. "What you looking at?" he said idly glancing at the screen and then did a double take; so it wasn't all forgotten.
"Look," she said "isn't it beautiful? No pollution. No over-population. With rejuvenation who knows what possibilities a family could create for themselves in such a place." Ah hah, a family, he thought.
Watching the slowly metamorphosing images of a slide show on the screen, he recognised them from a recent news report. They were from the first transmission just received from a new colony, so were probably only 10 years or so old. There were already fields in evidence and shots of a small, spacious town under construction. It looked like an idyllic rural scene on Earth but slightly out of kilter. Like crossing a border into a different country, everything was the same but subtly different. Ian considered what he knew about alien life in the colonies. Every compatible planet so far visited had been found to be filled with life developing along much the same lines as Earth. After all, the same evolutionary forces tended to produce similar solutions, though so far no other recognisable higher intelligence. It all looked enticingly attractive but he knew the reality; second and third wave colonists would become second and third class citizens. Unless they could afford to ship sufficient resources with them and, more importantly, guess what the most important and needed resources would be when they arrived, decades from now. "Do you really want to be a second wave colonist, Emma, maybe even third wave by now?"
"No, you've got it wrong; I'm only looking here to see what sort of standard of living the colonists can achieve after only a few years work." A couple of clicks and a new page appeared. "This is what I'm really looking at, it's a newly discovered planet and the transmissions from the first probes indicate a similar environment to Nuevo Latina." Ah yes, that was the name of the new colony. "They're already planning an arkship and will start recruiting next month…"
"You know they estimate it will take colonists over a century and half to buy back their indenture from the investors?"
"Yes of course, but we have time; with rejuvenation, as much time as we want. And a family Ian, we could have a family." The yearning in her eyes as she looked up at him, standing behind her, twisted something deep inside. And if the truth be known, he had the same longing, just better bottled up. Didn't everyone? She was right, of course, even though the limits are not yet known there have so far been no rejuvenation failures. Geoff turned seventy last year but his biological age hadn't changed from his first treatment at twenty five. They did have time.
Seeing his hesitation Emma followed up. "We could do it, Ian. We have the skills, we've enough savings. We really could do it…."
Forty three years later, with a two way communication lag of over twenty years to the nearest human government, several thousand humans established their base camp in a beautiful sheltered valley. The arkship dismantled and rebuilt into the core of a new town. Bridges truly burnt; the arkships are purposely designed to be one way tickets. It had only taken a week and everything was moving forward perfectly. Construction of the first residential houses was already starting, the first plant trials ready to start.
They had with them all the normal mix of colony survival skills; engineers, farmers, xenobiologists, doctors, teachers…
But no diplomats…
And now, silently standing just ten metres from Ian and Emma, calmly looking at them with what can only be described as open curiosity, were ten bipedal creatures that simply should not have been there. They were nowhere in any of the probes' records. Their soft mottled fur perfect camouflage for the nearby woods. Maybe that's why the probes never spotted them, or maybe they just aren't very widespread. Whatever, they stood there now and were clearly social, cooperative and organised… intelligent. And the colony had no one with diplomacy skills, no language specialists, only a few doctors like Emma had secondary psychiatry skills. They simply weren't equipped to deal with something like this.
**************
I can think of two ways I could take this. One (the original) would be to examine the problems and ethics of first contact with an alien species whilst being so far removed from any authority or expertise. I see the aliens as primitive but intelligent, maybe comparable with cro-magnon which gives scope for all kinds of ethical issues.
The other would be to drop the colony bit completely and explore the issues of childbirth with rejuvenation on Earth. In particular (inspired by one of Paolo Bacigalupi's short stories) to look at what happens when someone breaks the "one death, one birth" law or maybe a vice underground of people starting rejevenation on pre-adolescent children. Just a couple of thoughts.
This is the start of a short SF story. Sorry it's a bit long at 1257 words. I haven't really put a full plot together for the story but I have a couple of different possible directions it could go. However as this is my first attempt I thought I'd see what reactions I got before attempting to take it further. For the same reason I don't have a title yet.
**********
It all began over forty years ago…
"It's not fair, why should they be allowed to have babies?"
They had just finished watching a holovision documentary about life in Catholic families. And as always the presenters delighted in showing the extraordinary sight of dozens of children playing together. And as always Emma felt the need to vent her anger and frustration at the injustice of it. And as always Ian found himself producing his stock answer. "Come on, Emma, you know as well as I. They can will their lives to anyone they want and of course they are going to leave them to one of their own."
"But they have so many children, it's just not fair," she repeated.
"They forego rejuvenation for religious reasons, just like the Buddhists, so inevitably they have more deaths and consequently more children." This old argument had been repeated so many times now that Ian barely had the energy to state the obvious. Over a century ago the world governments had been forced into uniting behind the childbirth laws with the discovery of rejuvenation treatments. No one yet knows how long a life can be stretched but everyone knew the population couldn't be allowed to continue expanding as it had. One death, one birth. It was probably the most strictly enforced law since laws first began. You could leave your life to another in your will, but you had to die first. As a doctor Emma knew all this better than most but as a woman that didn't help.
"I know," she said, resigned, "but I can't help it, I want a baby. I want to feel life growing within me, I want to share the joy of my child's discovery of the world, I want to teach and guide her, lead her into the adventure of life." A pause, then; "It's all very well having rejuvenation but why can't we find a way to suppress this need?"
"There's always emigration." Again his stock answer but this time Emma didn't snap back but just looked pensive giving no answer.
This was a new twist; was she really seriously considering it, He wondered? To leave the soft civilised modern life for a colony. To be frozen for the decades it would take to reach one of the dozen or so star systems found to have habitable planets. Certainly, with Emma's vocation and his experience in the water treatment plants, they would have little trouble getting a place. But to leave everything behind just for the freedom to have children? It was a tremendous step to take with no chance of ever returning. Not quite ready for that argument yet, Ian chose to keep quiet himself.
The next morning all seemed forgotten. Cheerfully tripping over each other in the kitchen, each fixed their preferred breakfasts. Then, late as always, a fleeting kiss, before jumping into their eCars and racing off to their respective work.
When Ian got home that night, Emma was already logged onto the net. Thinking nothing of it, he pottered about in the kitchen. "Want a drink?" he shouted through whilst filling the kettle.
"Green tea, please" came the slightly distracted reply.
A couple of minutes later and a fresh, steaming mug sat beside Emma's netlink, Ian standing behind her sipping from his own. "What you looking at?" he said idly glancing at the screen and then did a double take; so it wasn't all forgotten.
"Look," she said "isn't it beautiful? No pollution. No over-population. With rejuvenation who knows what possibilities a family could create for themselves in such a place." Ah hah, a family, he thought.
Watching the slowly metamorphosing images of a slide show on the screen, he recognised them from a recent news report. They were from the first transmission just received from a new colony, so were probably only 10 years or so old. There were already fields in evidence and shots of a small, spacious town under construction. It looked like an idyllic rural scene on Earth but slightly out of kilter. Like crossing a border into a different country, everything was the same but subtly different. Ian considered what he knew about alien life in the colonies. Every compatible planet so far visited had been found to be filled with life developing along much the same lines as Earth. After all, the same evolutionary forces tended to produce similar solutions, though so far no other recognisable higher intelligence. It all looked enticingly attractive but he knew the reality; second and third wave colonists would become second and third class citizens. Unless they could afford to ship sufficient resources with them and, more importantly, guess what the most important and needed resources would be when they arrived, decades from now. "Do you really want to be a second wave colonist, Emma, maybe even third wave by now?"
"No, you've got it wrong; I'm only looking here to see what sort of standard of living the colonists can achieve after only a few years work." A couple of clicks and a new page appeared. "This is what I'm really looking at, it's a newly discovered planet and the transmissions from the first probes indicate a similar environment to Nuevo Latina." Ah yes, that was the name of the new colony. "They're already planning an arkship and will start recruiting next month…"
"You know they estimate it will take colonists over a century and half to buy back their indenture from the investors?"
"Yes of course, but we have time; with rejuvenation, as much time as we want. And a family Ian, we could have a family." The yearning in her eyes as she looked up at him, standing behind her, twisted something deep inside. And if the truth be known, he had the same longing, just better bottled up. Didn't everyone? She was right, of course, even though the limits are not yet known there have so far been no rejuvenation failures. Geoff turned seventy last year but his biological age hadn't changed from his first treatment at twenty five. They did have time.
Seeing his hesitation Emma followed up. "We could do it, Ian. We have the skills, we've enough savings. We really could do it…."
Forty three years later, with a two way communication lag of over twenty years to the nearest human government, several thousand humans established their base camp in a beautiful sheltered valley. The arkship dismantled and rebuilt into the core of a new town. Bridges truly burnt; the arkships are purposely designed to be one way tickets. It had only taken a week and everything was moving forward perfectly. Construction of the first residential houses was already starting, the first plant trials ready to start.
They had with them all the normal mix of colony survival skills; engineers, farmers, xenobiologists, doctors, teachers…
But no diplomats…
And now, silently standing just ten metres from Ian and Emma, calmly looking at them with what can only be described as open curiosity, were ten bipedal creatures that simply should not have been there. They were nowhere in any of the probes' records. Their soft mottled fur perfect camouflage for the nearby woods. Maybe that's why the probes never spotted them, or maybe they just aren't very widespread. Whatever, they stood there now and were clearly social, cooperative and organised… intelligent. And the colony had no one with diplomacy skills, no language specialists, only a few doctors like Emma had secondary psychiatry skills. They simply weren't equipped to deal with something like this.
**************
I can think of two ways I could take this. One (the original) would be to examine the problems and ethics of first contact with an alien species whilst being so far removed from any authority or expertise. I see the aliens as primitive but intelligent, maybe comparable with cro-magnon which gives scope for all kinds of ethical issues.
The other would be to drop the colony bit completely and explore the issues of childbirth with rejuvenation on Earth. In particular (inspired by one of Paolo Bacigalupi's short stories) to look at what happens when someone breaks the "one death, one birth" law or maybe a vice underground of people starting rejevenation on pre-adolescent children. Just a couple of thoughts.
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