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Aliens embedded in SO(2) visit þereminians living on an O(3)
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Space is big, actually. You might think it's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind, but that's still just peanuts to all the space that's out there.

The furthest þereminian-made object from the planet is the What Exactly is the Heliopause's Deal, a probe intended to understand the furthest reaches of the solar system. It weighed approximately as much as a cube of water half an armspan on a side at launch, although it has spent much of that as reaction mass. It still checks in with the Deep Space Network every time the radio receivers are pointed in the right direction, like clockwork radiation-hardened computer hardware running a formally verified operating system kernel.

It is also not headed in a particularly relevant direction, at the moment: up and out of the plane of the ecliptic, on a course that will see it floating through empty space for millions of years, once it actually manages to pass the last termination shock of the solar wind (which is sure to come any time now, the magnetohydrodynamic plasma specialists assure us).

The next furthest object (that wasn't deliberately dropped into a gas giant for Science!) is the paired set of the Red Planet Mapping Orbiter and the Red Planet Rock Taster, which work together to collect geographic and geologic information on, appropriately enough, the red planet. Putting things in space is expensive, and putting things on the red planet is moreso, so they mostly don't have any instruments they don't need — but when the orbiter needs a powerful radio transceiver to talk to home anyway, there's no particular reason not to have it do periodic sky scans and send the data back. Right now, it is trying to see if there's a change in the signal from a pulsar as the red planet moves around its orbit; the larger orbit means it has more parallax than earth-based telescopes, which helps it determine distances to astronomical objects more precisely, and therefore contribute to calibrating cosmological measurements.

A matching orbiter graces Poisonous Planet, although there has been no probe yet designed that can survive its surface conditions.

Finally, the Lunar Mapping Orbiter is the part of the Deep Space Network closest to home. Oh, there are various telescopes and communications satellites in geosynchronous orbit, but those hardly count — they're only a few millilightseconds away from the planet, and, as previously mentioned, space is big.

The Lunar Mapping Orbiter was the first proper space probe destined for another heavenly body that the people of þereminia launched. It has served well, providing detailed maps of the moon (which showed less water ice than hoped for — but the asteroid belt looks promising! Maybe some day!). It also serves as a critical component of the Deep Space Network, relaying communications between the RPMO, PPMO, WEHD, and mission control. It has served in that role for hexades, and in that time has never seen something quite like this.

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The first sign of anything strange are a set of relatively small (for space so still tens of meters across) telescopes that appear in distant orbits (far above geosynchronous) two for each of the planets and several more in the asteroid and outer cometary belts in the system to take pictures of space infrastructure.

There's a delay of about five minutes as those images are collected and evaluated. Then the next round begins, communication and mapping satellites are inserted in and among the various existing satellites all carefully placed to avoid collisions and hopefully to be able to snoop on EM communications that aren't transmitted in tight beams. These are far more likely to be noticed especially once they start transmitting a first contact package based on mathematical principles in their best guess at a compatible transmission range from a few seconds of observation.

A close observer may notice that simultanaity as evidence of superluminal capabilities.

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Space is big, and telescope coverage is spotty. But the Deep Space Network cannot miss an intentional radio transmission made from inside the solar system, actually.

Highly periodic transmission detected. 
No recognized packet header.
No scheduled transmissions expected.

Hey mission control I think you might want to see this. Relaying transmission ...

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Those are prime numbers!

 

A different civilization might panic, or have to race to come up with a response. But the thing is, Þereminia planned for this. There are festivals where people dress up in silly makeup and explore this exact scenario.

So Director Ŋaceta makes an announcement on behalf of Larger Continent Emergency Services and mathematicians and linguists and (not-so) speculative xenoanthropologists are woken by urgent phone notifications. A Network-wide protocol announcement goes out, and the Network shifts to 'oh shoot our encryption is probably broken' mode and suddenly all RF communication audible from space is encrypted with one-time keys.

And the Emergency Services of two continents compose a response.

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"Lunar Mapping Orbiter, stand by to relay a verbatim radio message at best power."

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New verbatim relay request acknowledged.
Destination coordinates acknowledged.

Standing by for relay.

Ready when you are, mission control!

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The þereminian first-contact package has its own set of math problems and carefully built physics-based translation. But if the aliens made it here, they might be Sufficiently Advanced, so it also contains a plain-language message. In text, audio, and video, in LCTL and SCOL:

Three diplomats in black and purple uniforms stand behind a podium. One has a beaming smile. One needs to keep surreptitiously wiping their eyes.

"Greetings, on behalf of the people of þereminia. To one who has come an incredible distance: we[ex] convey our[ex] sincerest greetings and well-wishes. It is our[ex] utmost hope to come to know you and greet you as friends, and to arrange for peaceful contact and mutually beneficial trade between our[in] civilizations."

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Them deciding to switch to one time keys is inconvenient. It will make learning about them take longer and they might need to consider more... invasive actions eventually.

But for now it's more important to act in good faith. They'll work through the mutual first contact packages and try to get to mutually intelligible conversations as soon as they can. With only a couple minutes of corpus that's all encrypted there isn't much acceleration so it'll be around a full rotation of the planet before they can respond in kind.

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"We[ex], the people of the rings, greet you in turn and convey our[ex] own sincere greetings and well-wishes. We[ex] share your hopes for peaceful contact and mutual benefit and learning. Our people seek to offer infrastructure and biological maintenance support once we[ex] are confident these will benefit you."

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"Okay — Jarnegh, you said that the linguists have a report on their probable computing power based on how long it took them to reply? Let's go through that."


"So we[in]'re dealing with FTL-capable ships, with orders of magnitude more computing power than our[in] whole planet. How does that impact the contingency plans?"


"Damn it, I know that you swore to — no, head Archivist, I don't want to see an uncoordinated release — look, there are security concerns ..."

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If the visitors had not demonstrated FTL capability, then Emergency Services would have executed the planned contingency and sent out a last warning, to any other alien civilizations listening, before fully committing to cooperation. But it looks like their understanding of physics was even wronger than expected, and þereminia will not have a chance to get one last word in.

Instead, the head of the Archive, the world's oldest (and probably most soft-power-having) institution, sends a message via the Deep Space Network.

"Hello, people of the rings! I am Head Archivist Zamerast, the coordinator in charge of ensuring that our civilization's written and creative works are preserved in the long-term. I have gotten an agreement to share our[ex] corpus with you. I would be immensely grateful if you were to store a copy. Please stand by for a transmission of the index, and protocol documentation on how to make prioritized requests. Transmit bandwidth on this frequency is somewhat constrained; are you able to pick up the test broadcast originating at the attached coordinates?"

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"Greetings Head Archivist and associated team. We[ex] would be pleased to store such information. If it would be more efficient and desirable we[ex] could retrieve a physical storage medium if you specify its position and dimensions in this same coordinate system. If EM transmission is preferred, we[ex] are receiving the transmissions from the specified sites."

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"Thank you. What are your limits on lifting capacity to orbit? You could take the entire Smaller Continent Secondary Archive, located at the attached coordinates. It is quite large, however, because it's optimized for storage durability and not for storage density. If it would be more efficient, we can prepare a site with denser physical storage, although that will take approximately 10 days to arrange. In the meantime, we will continue transmitting in that same band from available sites."

With most Network traffic having gone to physical links, the Archive has no particular difficulty bidding on the unused radio spectrum and getting volunteers to set up planet-wide transmitters for better bandwidth.

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"Our[ex] lifting capacity is sufficient to relocate that complex but we[ex] do not presently have a suitable location to place it and according to your own archives it is an inhabited complex. We[ex] would be happy to arrange a transfer of denser storage media.

"We[ex] could also offer higher bandwidth transmission interfaces capable of transferring up to 1.3 TBs over optical feeds or electrical feeds per second, full specifications attached. We[ex] can supply as many such interfaces as you can make use of up to a limit of 3 million. We[ex] will leave it to your discretion what combination of methods we[in] will use for this process."

The promised technical specs show small devices about ten centimeters cube that have an internal power feed and no discernable antenna that can have a number of data lines attached at the specified ports.

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It's going to be a lot faster and less expensive to just hook a box into the Archive's existing high-speed Network connection, compared to purchasing and transferring enough high-density storage media.

The head archivist requests 20 such boxes (a primary and a backup for each of the six Archive sites on the planet), and can get them hooked up in short order.

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The boxes appear at the specified coordinates promptly after the request comes through. There's no sign they can easily detect heralding their arrival, they just become present where previously there was empty air.

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"People of the rings, we should have everything hooked up on our end in another few hours. Thanks!"

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"People of the rings, I am Diplomat Tatenika. My job is to facilitate coordination and understanding between people of different polities and cultures. I have a number of people here who are worried about the implications of your arrival, and have been working to put together a single question packet," a different transmission comes.

"Could you please elaborate on what you mean by 'infrastructure and biological support' and what criteria you would be using to decide whether it is good for us[ex]? And could you share a copy of whatever rules of engagement you have for interacting with us[ex]? I have attached a copy of our[ex] Global Minimum Standards (the rules to which every person of our[ex] civilization is subject, and that we[ex] hope to be able to continue to enforce planet-wide, although the relevant standards body is capable of renegotiating them), and our[ex] Standards for the Behavior of Diplomats and Ambassadors, to which I am bound (but that we[ex] don't expect you to follow unless you choose to become a signatory)."

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"We[ex] hope to offer improved infrastructure to facilitate space travel and space habitats to be scaled based on need and preference. We[ex] may also offer planetside infrastructure for scaling food, sanitation, power production or housing structures as needed but the intervention standard for those is higher as there's a greater risk of unduly destabilizing or reinforcing existing power structures.

"Biological support consists of using our[ex] imaging and computer modelling capabilities to make breakthroughs in extant adverse biological conditions and to facilitate changes to individual's body plans where such changes are sustainably scalable and again are not unduly destabilizing or reinforcing existing power structures.

"Our[ex] standards for engagement are to avoid deliberate deception except where necessary for information gathering purposes or to prevent early disclosure of advanced technological capabilities, and to minimize it when needed for those purposes.

"In addition, we[ex] should avoid destabilizing any existing power structures to the point of prompting large scale interpersonal violent conflict, with certain exceptions where the existing actions of the power structures are evaluated to have similar harm profiles to such conflict.

"Further, we[ex] should avoid substantially reinforcing power structures which are causing substantial harm if possible and avoid if possible incentivizing peoples we are in contact with towards becoming substantially more homogenized or otherwise making it less likely for new opinions and patterns of life to emerge.

"We[ex] have no substantive objections to our best understanding of your provided Global Minimum Standards and will take your standards for Diplomats and Ambassadors under advisement."

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Well, that is a pretty promising response, all things considered! It makes sense that the aliens must like something about the status quo ante, since they have teleporters and yet the planet remains unconquered.

Tatenika workshops responses with her colleagues.

"It sounds like one of your biggest concerns, that informs your other priorities, is not interfering with existing power structures. Could you elaborate on why, please? Is it that those kinds of interferences tend to provoke other harms, or is it that you prefer governmental systems to remain stable as an intrinsic end?"

"Also — we[ex] are curious about more details of your culture and language. Do you have a general civilizational history, or some set of relevant popular cultural outputs that you would be willing to share so that we[ex] can get a better understanding of your culture, purpose, and attitudes?"

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"Social structures are potentially delicate. Yours have most likely been substantially impacted by our arrival in ways that won't be clear for quite some time. It isn't our[ex] goal to make no change to your social and power structures it is to allow you collectively to continue to choose your path rather than forcing you to assume a shape to our[ex] liking or to empower one or more groups among you to claim an unassailable position of control over all others.

"We[ex] are not inclined to share cultural outputs at present, the majority of those we possess are generated by other civilizations like your own that we have made comparable contact with. To the extent that we can be said to have our own language it is challenging to translate as we share experiences and knowledge in lieu of more compressed concepts such as those used in your own language."

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Well, in the presence of actual aliens and absence of actual facts, the speculation is going to be wild. This, too, is something that þereminian authors have prepared for, even if writing alien-abduction slashfic is not, maybe, the most adaptive response to this situation.

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"I believe that I understand. Thank you for sharing. If your worry is about exerting undue influence on our[ex] culture, would it be helpful for us[ex] to try generating our[ex] own suggestions for how you might go about providing space-based infrastructure, so that we[in] end up building something primarily shaped by our[ex] designs?"

Diplomat Tatenika can't actually stop some enthusiastic people with software defined radios who are listening in on their conversation from chipping in with links to various designs for O'Neill cylinders, even if she wanted to. Hopefully the aliens just interpret it as willing.

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"We[ex] would welcome such inputs."

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