Twice upon a time
From Wormhole Sci-Fi MUD Homepage
For a million years, human beings had been colonising new planets. It was a characteristic of the race that they always seemed to hover on the brink of destruction. They flirted recklessly with various disasters, most of their own making. Colonisation was their hope. Spread the race throughout the planets, and it wouldn’t matter if some percentage of colonies were destroyed by nuclear war, ruined their ecosystem or (much less likely) were hit by a random asteroid.
In seeding such a large number of worlds, the settlers couldn’t be very fussy. One habitable world might be found for every ten stable suns that were visited. Minor unpleasant details such as desert or glacial conditions had to be tolerated. The generations that followed would adapt to some degree. Native life forms were not considered sufficient reason to leave a planet alone, and any primitive sentients who were in direct competition with the humans would soon be squeezed out.
One of the worlds which was found was ideal in many ways, but solar activity in this particular system produced a rare field that damped out communication beams. The colony that was planted there would be unable to communicate with any others. Carrying news by ship was not going to be a viable option in the long term because the spacecraft could be put to better use locating still more worlds and easing population pressure by transferring people elsewhere. It was decided that the backwater planet would be used, but that the colony should be a small one. Those who went to the new planet would have to be left in isolation.
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Consulting the colonisation records, this file intrigued a scientist called Dalrool. While others might be interested in the unusual solar activity or the psychological profile of colonists who were so desperate for lebensraum that they would accept this castaway status, he was much more interested in what might have happened since. This man was a socioarchaeologist. What he saw in the isolated world was the only known example of a human culture that had been allowed to develop independently. With all the other colony worlds, old and new, able to exchange news and ideas instantly via communication beams, there was never any real possibility that they would develop into something unique.
Dalrool sought funding for the use of a spacecraft, to visit for information. The Castaway Colony would probably give him enough material to publish for the rest of his life. Also... did he dare suggest this? They might have solved The Problem.
The colony had been isolated for something like 4000 generations, and the inhabitants could have no idea that there were humans elsewhere. They had just one planet, and no ships to carry the future of the race to a new world. They must think: if we fail, it is the end of everything.
Approaching slowly and quietly so as not to alarm the inhabitants, Dalrool entered the solar system and was able to pick up communications. Compared with communication beams the signals were of a very rudimental kind, but coarse enough to be largely unaffected by solar activity. The colonists' messages were stored and gradually sifted through until a picture of the situation on the colony planet could be built up.
That picture was disappointing; with a cultural system confined to only one world, the classic pattern of states had still formed, being confined to geographical areas rather than stellar groups. With resources limited to the crust of a single planet, the struggle for their control was even more desperate, and the harm caused by exploitation of resources that much greater.
It was sad to see that even when left for millennia to determine their own path, humans followed their destiny. Dalrool prepared to leave the system again, composing a report that could be dispatched to Central once they left the zone of damped communications:
Colony established. Humans have adapted to live in a variety of climates. Most regions now occupied. Population: Over five billion, rising. Technology: early atomic. Append file to feature local name for colony: Earth.
Author's note:
This is very, very old. And clichéd. Sorry. I was young... at least it was short, eh?
