Prison Planet The Professor NOBODY REMEMBERED THE PROFESSOR'S REAL NAME LET ALONE HIS GENEALOGY, BUT HE DEFINITELY SPORTED AN ASIATIC APPEARANCE. According to the archives, he was born in 1942AD, during the turmults and firestorms of World War Two, and later collaborated with NASA before the collective technological efforts of the "free" (that is, Atlantean) world were consolidated to form the Terran Space Agency. He died of natural causes from some antiquated disease in 2104, or 88Terran Reckoning, but had had the good sense to invest in cryonics, which at the time offered the best shot of attaining immortality. He had intended to continue work as a scientist upon his revival, but like many revivees, he found it difficult to adapt to advances in technology and knowledge. He became a spectator instead, a tourist, a traveler on a way tour of time. Ages came and went, new calendars and the leaps in consciousness that they usually represented, but they had little impact on the Professor. Strangely, he never seemed to age at all. He did die periodically from some ailment or accident, but was always successfully frozen for resurrection at a later date, when such damage could be reversed and healed. The ravages of existence, so eloquently described by Shakespeare in his sonnets, had no effect on him. He was eternal. As you might expect from his vintage, his tastes were oldschool. He had a fondness for nicotine (smoked, not vaped), detective novels, raw fish (wild, and preferably netted in the Pacific Ocean, if possible), business suits (woven from wool sourced from a real sheep - no replications please!), as well as other prehistoric products, now only found in museums. Ral had met him at one of his crazy parties, and became entranced. He was particularly interested in hearing about his many near-death experiences. He was well aware that he would die one day himself, and the prospect was unsettling. While numerous plagues had been eradicated by the Age of Utopia, mortality was unfortunately not one of them. Nonetheless, cryonics offered Ral an escape clause and he had resolved to become a timelord following in the Professor's footsteps, confident that the future would be even rosier than the present. In fact, he pledged to join him somewhere significant on News Years Eve, 9999 to celebrate the decamillennium. The Professor warned him that calendars normally did not last 10,000 years, there was always a reset sooner or later - some prophet or Messiah, or a cataclysmic war. And furthermore, 10,000 was not the true start of the 11th millennium, that should be in 10,001. Forever a pedant he remained, but he could be quite witty when was in the mood! He had a habit of turning up at the most inopportune moments and wreaking havoc when he arrived, that much was true. Nonetheless, both Ral and Lela were stunned to see him weaving through the holographic warriors as if they were just salarymen on the way to the office on a crowded Tokyo street. <<What's going on?>> Lela asked, mystified. <<Is something wrong?>> <<Nut'n's wrong - now dat I found you, dat is>> the Professor said, lapsing into some obscure kind of period dialect. <<I got ta Neercedes just as you was leaving. Did ya realize dat your apahtment is undawatta ahlready?>> <<Pro, that's the king tide>> Ral retorted, chuckling to himself. <<You don't need to worry. The apartment complex was designed to withstand it. It happens whenever the three suns line up.>> <<As a matter of fact, you should feel privileged to have witnessed it>> Lela added. <<It is one of the wonders of the universe.>> <<If it is so wonderful>> the Professor asked suspiciously, switching back to Standard Galactic English <<why aren't you there right now witnessing it?>> <<Well, we've seen it before, haven't we>> Ral said sheepishly. <<You know, seen it, done it.>> <<You kids have such short attention spans, it blows my mind>> the Professor declared, gobsmacked. <<Anyway, it took me close to an hour to find you, in this maze.>> <<You were lucky to catch us, to be honest" Ral acknowledged. <<We were just about to leave. What exactly do you want?>> <<Listen, is there somewhere we can talk - in private?>> the Professor pressed. <<I don't think so>> Ral said doubtfully. <<Not with the number of people in the museum. What's wrong with this cafe? What is you want to tell us?>> <<A matter of great importance>> the Professor replied evasively. <<And secrecy, to boot. Oh well, I guess I can drop you a few flies, to grab your attention. Since you're both thrillseekers, how's this for a hook: I offer you the thrill of a lifetime, and an adventure which few in this jaded and pampered age are able to experience.>> <<That's a tall order, considering our lives>> Lela said. <<Let me just ask>> the Professor continued, undeterred <<have either of you ever heard of Tungarra Four? Are you intimate with ancient history?>> <<Oh, please - no more history lessons!>> Ral retaliated, raising his hands. <<Enough is enough." Lela, however, ignored her boyfriend's tantrum and answered with more respect: <<I don't think I've heard of Tun-Tungarra Four. It sounds human, almost Balronian.>> <<That's an amazing assumption, as Tungarra Four was discovered and named by the Balronians, and governed from Balrone for many centuries," the Professor replied, quite impressed. <<It was an obscure planet, 130,000 lightyears from Terra, a tiny island of humanity in a sea of Standtian territory. Surely you must have seen in one of the halls something about the Fractal Imperialsm policy adopted after the Terra-Soosagin War, which led to the embrace of Galactic Consciousness?" <<We didn't get that far>> Lela confessed <<but I think I know a little anyway. The first stage of the colonization of space, beginning in the first century of Terran Reckoning, was an outward one in all directions, like a ripple in a three-dimensional pond. Then mankind discovered that he was not alone in the universe, and the galaxy was in fact teeming with intelligent life, each in the process of carving out their own private spheres of domination. The Human Empire was rapidly running out of room; pushing up against it was the young Soosagin Empire, also eager for further expansion, and remarkably at a similar stage of development. The aggressive rivalry on the part of both species culminated in the Terra-Soosagin War of 2594-2599TR, which left both civilizations ravished, but mankind the victor. However, the devastation wrought by the war forced the Anthrosphere to reassess its colonial strategy: it could either settle for the territory that it had accumulated in the past, add to it a sizeable slice of Soosagin systems which it had acquired in the war, or blindly resume imperial expansion even if that led to conflict with yet more aliens. From more advanced civilizations in the region, humanity was introduced to a fourth possibility, that of Fractal Imperialism. Instead of just possessing a tiny speck of the cosmos, containing just a few habitable M-class worlds, and thousands of hot Jupiters and methanic moons highly prized by Soosagin-type species but useless to us, we could do a trade, thus expanding our range exponentially. The concept was thankfully accepted, and we soon began acquiring all of the Earthlike planets from non-water solvent civilizations, in exchange for planets which were livable for them. The Human Empire - and, for that matter, the Soosagin Empire too, after they cashed entered the game - was diluted and scattered out to the far reaches of the galaxy.>> <<Wow! And you said you knew only a little>> the Professor remarked, beaming. <<That's modern education<< Lela said, returning the Professor's grin. <<You don't need to put a silicon chip in your brain, as the Ancients did. The human mind can remember anything!<< <<Indeed. Also known as the Patchwork Dominion policy, Fractal Imperialism was a very Utopian solution," the Professor continued. <<We decided not just to coexist, but to coinhabit. That's why terraforming is now an outdated practice. Planets like the original Mars or Venus are rare resources, and could be valuable in a transaction. Teleportation has made space redundant anyway, the only dimension that matters now is time. <<Nonetheless, you obviously seem to be ignorant of Tungarra Four, which is understandable. Few in this age are aware. But even today you have prisons for those few poor souls whose criminal instincts were not corrected before birth. In the first millennium of Galactic Reckoning, during the wild colonial days, there were considerably more of these rascals: pirates, outlaws, thieves, ruffians of all colors, sexual deviants, smugglers, murderers, violent revolutionaries. There were simply not enough jails to hold them all, and the most powerful of the cartels had a knack for breaking out. On Balrone, the second most populous world in the empire by this stage, the problem was particularly acute, and a solution was desperately sought. One day, as the story goes, a government official was reading a historical account of English convicts being exiled to Australia. He thought to himself: could Balrone do something similar to deal with its teeming underclass? That is, transport them to an open-air prison where the they could redeem themselves by tilling the fields and building a new civilization, instead of wasting away in a subterranean hellhole. As you might recall, Balrone was originally developed on an Australian model, down to the eucalyptus groves and feral koalas. At the time the proposal was rejected as barbaric, a gross violation of human rights, but the official persevered, and finally saw his idea accepted twenty years later.<< <Gosh! Balrone was brutal << Lela said. <<No wonder they had a revolution there.>> << FIRST CONTACT (c)opyright Rob Sullivan 1988-2023. Contact the author for all your criticisms and feedbacks.