Alien Psychology

by Roderick R. MacDonald

  The government on the asteroid ship took the form of a static committee. There was no democracy, no voting for representatives and very little possibility of ever becoming a member of the committee but this didn't worry any of the inhabitants. Once clear of the Exordium system and virtually certain of their safety, one of the first acts of the committee was to extend longevity to everyone. A very few had misgivings and refused but the vast majority welcomed this news with open arms. It wasn't because the committee was being altruistic. Some had lived on Exordium for a few hundred years where, resulting from the inequality of lifespans, a dangerous them and us situation had arisen. The impracticalities of a nine billion population had made this inequality impossible to ameliorate, even if the desire had been there, and that eventually led to destruction. With fifty thousand and ample resources on the asteroid ship, it was now possible to give the gift of long life to everyone but, as they say in Lancashire, you get ought for now't. There was a price to pay.

  Round about 800 B.C. on earth, in an area of ancient Greece called Sparta, a ruler by the name of Lycurgus (with whom modern historians have a doubt on whether or not he was an actual person) formulated a series of rules which would govern a way of life for hundreds of years. They were strict, unsympathetic rules but they enabled the Spartans to become powerful, feared and respected. In a similar way, the asteroid ship committee laid down rules from an early date, rules that would ensure their future and every being was empowered to propagate their use and validity.

  The first rule concerned reproduction. Further members of the society only being allowed when and if someone died, it was essential that the population of the asteroid did not increase. Now that most were essentially immortal, or had a lifespan running to thousands of years, this replacement wasn't a common occurrence. Should someone die, then those wishing to produce an offspring had to enter a lottery draw. The winners would then have a period of two years to materialise their wishes, otherwise the lottery would take place again.

  It also seemed to be the case that adults remained capable of reproduction well beyond the years where that would be possible with a normal lifespan. In fact, as those already in existence for hundreds of years were still reproductive, there was no upper age limit yet discovered to the process. The society on the asteroid changed relatively quickly to become a unit where virtually only adults existed. Each death that took place, usually by accidents or sometimes suicide, was looked upon with great sadness and distress because such an event, though rare, could one day visit themselves, but, in contrast, the arrival of a new life was an event of great celebration for all. The mother and father became celebrities during the gestation period, each quirk and nuance of the pregnancy being followed with enormous interest. When life appeared and the party had subsided, the committee officiated at a formal naming ceremony held in one of the large halls within the ship. Thereafter, the new child hadn't just two parents, it had thousands. Being brought up in this way made some rather spoiled, at least for a few years until the responsibilities of adulthood gave them a purpose and direction.

  It used to be said amongst the Exordicans that death was such a waste. A being would spend his or her life gaining experience and knowledge only for that to be lost when the time came. Now, this didn't happen and the beings became knowledgeable experts on a multitude of subjects, many of them esoteric in nature. The latter was always good for a mild mannered discussion or argument.

  They were going on a long journey through interstellar space. No destination objective was on the agenda and none wished to inhabit a planet again. To return to a planet would be fraught with danger. Even if they could acclimatise themselves to strong gravity again, enabling them to walk and work on the planet's surface, there was almost a phobia-inducing connotation to that thought. On a planet you could be killed in numerous ways from animal attack, unknown disease, earthquake, solar disturbance, flood, tornado, hurricane, volcano, and colliding asteroid or comet to name but a few. In fact, they had calculations to show that they would end up dead, in all probability, after ten thousand years living on a planet. In the asteroid, there was no chance of most of the above events happening: there was no volcanic or earthquake activity, weather events didn't exist, and they were far from solar flares. The only natural disasters could come from: collision with another object in interstellar space; and, a nearby star going supernova, radiation from which would destroy all life within light years. They had already ensured that their direction of travel would not take them to stars that were candidates for blowing themselves to pieces and a sophisticated early warning detection network had been put in place, enabling them to reveal even a tiny object in space. Travelling at one-percent light speed, collision with an object the dimensions of a grain of rice could cause immense damage to a normal spaceship. The asteroid was more robust and it also had an artificial skin, coupled with a force field.

  In interstellar space, there were no other beings that could harm them. There were no other planets harbouring life, in fact, there was nothing at all. Should other asteroid ships from other star systems exist, the chances of two of them meeting were astronomical. Here, they were as safe as they could possibly be.

  The rotation of the asteroid produced an artificial gravity roughly one tenth of earth's surface gravity. Beings who inhabited the outer areas experienced this force, and that indeed was where most lived; however, the inner regions of the ship where much of the mechanisms resided didn't possess the same centrifugal force so it was decreed, for the long term safety of the occupants of these areas, that they had to move to the outer areas for at least fifty percent of their time. This ensured less medical problems for the occupants.

  This aspect of safety comprised another rule of the asteroid ship. The committee would hold anyone endangering the safety of the ship and its population to task. If the act was unintentional and relatively minor, the individual would be let off with a lecture and a period of restricted social benefit. Should the act be unintentional and serious, like poor operation of the ship's functions, the penalty would be decided by a referendum of the population. One of the outcomes of the referendum could be isolation for an indefinite period of time. If the act was malicious, one example being the attempt by an individual to contact other intelligence species in the galaxy, the committee's decision was always final and that was death by ejection into space. This sentence was very rarely carried out.

  There was a tendency amongst the beings to be lackadaisical. An attitude existed, somewhat like that of Celtic countries of old where the adage was, don't do today what you can do tomorrow. After all, if you were virtually immortal and were living on a safe ship travelling to nowhere in particular, what was the hurry? This was an attitude that the committee tried to eradicate without total success. While important tasks such as the safety and running of the ship warranted a positive attitude, general everyday matters were not treated with a great deal of diligence.

  Laws regulated against violence to others of the population. When they did occur, any acts of violence were treated seriously, the punishment being removal of longevity by genetic reversal of the cell division process. Some individuals were over excessive at times, mainly through arguments or disputes, but crimes like murder were unheard of.

  Steps were taken to disguise the outside of the asteroid to make it appear as though it was entirely natural and untouched by any living being. Being worried about encounters with other civilisations, they thought it best to avoid all contact if at all possible. There was no way to tell if others would have hostile intentions so a no risk policy was adopted. Just in case there was a conflict, the ship was armed with various types of guns—particle beams, lasers and ordinary missiles with nuclear warheads. These were concealed in camouflaged silos, as were several small ships, piloted by three to four beings which were used to investigate any unusual phenomenon encountered on their travels. In actual practice, none of these deterrents and implements were used: nothing much ever happened in the depths of
interstellar space.

  The most important part of the entire ship was the antimatter drive. It was the intention of the committee to make stops at safe systems sometime in the future to refurbish with supplies and materials from any available world. This event could be several thousand years distant; large enough for us, this timespan was now considered insignificant in a life that could probably last several times this duration. In human terms, it would be the equivalent of planning for something say, ten years in the future. If, for any reason, the antimatter drive malfunctioned, they would be unable to slow down from their vast speed to rendezvous with a planetary system; at interstellar cruising velocity, the asteroid ship would be able to pass through a system in only five hundred hours. It was for this reason that a mechanised team of highly skilled engineers maintained the drive. Although it would only be used for ten years at a time with gaps of five hundred or more years in-between, it was invaluable and was treated with reverence.

  Within the ship, all articles were designed for maximum efficiency and durability; this was not a throwaway society where items were designed to last ten years at the most and then be scrapped. Machines didn't use disposal sealed units; each was composed of removable parts. All materials, including water, were recycled to be used again and again.

  The committee eventually decided that a star system some eight light years distant was a suitable first stopping point. A K type star with, it was observed, a planetary system which appeared to have no advanced civilisations occupying any of the planets, the decision was made in order to relieve a certain amount of boredom which had crept into the population, and, secondly, to replenish certain supplies such as helium 3 and building material which, it was thought, may require topping up at a distant future point. It was discovered that psychologically, it was important for the population to have a goal to reach rather than to wander aimlessly through interstellar space. The actual goal could be a thousand years or more in the future and it didn't have to be an important goal. Essentially, the ship could be maintained for ten or twenty thousand years without stopping but, at this stage in the evolution of the ship and its beings, that long a period was almost agoraphobic to contemplate.

  Committees were established, so were sub-committees, to discuss every possibility of the future encounter. The new star system was made the subject of intensive research and each light year closer brought new information to support some theories and quash others. Many a long-term argument was started and settled this way.

  As hundreds of years passed, changes began to appear in the inhabitants of the asteroid ship. They had been carefree after the first few years but now, mindful of the consequences of longevity, chance events and death, a more introverted, almost superstitious psychology began to assert itself. Where beings like ourselves would think absolutely nothing of taking, what we consider as, minor risks, the Exordicans were terrified that maybe this or that task would be the last thing they would ever do. Everything and every procedure had a probability factor of failure, injury and death. It was only with situations where the probability factor was outlandishly improbable that they felt comfortable and at ease.

  Their perception of time radically changed too. Humans think of events thirty or forty years ago as being remote and often not totally relevant to the years they presently inhabit. Exordicans think nothing of such a period of time and would often refer to matters forty, sixty or one hundred years previous as if they had happened yesterday and with great relevance and effect to the present.

  There was a problem of remembering events. Over hundreds of years they became indistinguishable from other events, lost in the mist of centuries so to counteract this problem, many Exordicans carefully organised their minds through a process of meditation, compartmentalising experiences almost as if they were on a huge electronic filing system. This helped, so did real electronic filing systems which could be read and edited directly through brain implants.

  There were very few young people, no old people, and a majority of people at their physical and mental peak. There was the committee but all strata of society had long since disappeared. The old ways of Exordium had been left behind for good. Some Exordicans on the asteroid ship specialised in engineering, maintenance, medicine, food preparation or many of the other tasks deemed necessary: no group was considered to be any more important than any other. The concept of wealth and property, once so important on Exordium, was now alien to them.

  On two occasions, committee members died. They were replaced by new beings from the population and matters proceeded as normal. Eventually, the time came close for deceleration into the realms of the new star system. The first task was to completely rotate the entire asteroid lengthwise so that the antimatter drive could point in the opposite direction and consequently slow down velocity to planetary speeds. This took several years to plan and execute. It was a moment of great excitement. The ignition of the huge drive that had remained inert for hundreds of years to once again permeate the ship with its low pitched hum! The committee gave the order: the engineers set the drive into motion and ... it worked. There was great rejoicing amongst the population. Now, with only ten years to go before they reached the boundary of the new stellar system, research and investigation could begin in earnest.

  * * *

  Phase 7

  New Beings

  Four million years had passed. On earth, ice ages had come and gone, glaciers sculpting the crust, scouring out deep valleys, rounding the tops of jagged mountains. If a glacier met an immovable object, it simply went round it: their progress was inexorable. Climates changed. Tropical forests turned into grasslands and the creatures that lived there moved out into the open plains where self-preservation became a matter of wit and guile.

  There were many species of hominids, the most successful being the australopithecines of which there were two main types: a large, robust creature which ate vegetation and plant roots; and, a smaller scavenger, adept at picking up the leftovers of predatory animals. An upright stance, fleetness of foot and agility were good assets for a scavenger, as was a modicum of intelligence. Many years later, an offshoot of these beings migrated from Africa to inhabit large parts of Europe, the Middle East and Asia where they lived for over a quarter of a million years, dwelling in caves, surviving by scavenging, hunting and gathering.

  Essentially, they remained unchanged for this huge duration. Developments in tool technology were minimal, as were any moves in the direction of sophisticated thought. It was a dull, brutish existence devoid of pleasantries. Was it the sparseness of population which caused the propagation of any original thought to die where it remained, or, was it a simple mental inability which prevented them from living beyond a basic existence? Probably the latter was true. They were, however, successful in that they managed to endure for a considerable time, perhaps more time than will be allowed for our own species. We came along, fractionally better able to survive, undoubtedly luckier, and succeeded in wiping them off the face of the planet. Goodbye Neanderthal, Peking man and Java man: hello Homo Sapian.

  Like the antimatter drive of the Exordican asteroid ship, progress was initially very slow but once enough speed or population density had been accumulated, things began to take off in a big way. Within ten thousand years, the species of humanity moved from a primitive form of subsistence farming to walking on the moon. By all accounts, this was quick, much quicker indeed than the Exordicans.

  Concerning the Exordicans from the planet Exordium, no trace of civilisation remained on either the third or fourth planet; there were trees and insects but little else on Exordium and the third planet had returned to it's former greenhouse. The planetary system, which had, at one time, been populated by over half, a billion beings was now devoid of all life. It was an archaeologist's dream: the remains and artefacts lay scattered over hundreds of tiny worlds, providing evidence of a people that had thrived, reached a period of stability for thousands of years only to dwindle into obscurity and final oblivion. Th
ere was little wrong in that: as civilised species go, they had a good innings and it is a fact of life in the universe that nothing lasts forever. All empires eventually turn to dust.

  What of the others, the Exordicans who travelled as nomads through the vast voids of interstellar space? They still endured but they were not the same people who had left their planetary system over four million years before. They were not the same people who had eagerly anticipated their first contact with another stellar system: they had changed almost beyond recognition.

  It wasn't even the same asteroid. That had been discarded some time ago and they were now on the eighteenth asteroid to be converted and fitted with an antimatter drive to enable it to move between the stars. Although larger than the very first asteroid, it contained only thirty thousand Exordicans compared to the fifty thousand that had set out initially. There were other beings on the asteroid; beings that we hardly dare talk about.

  Scattered around the galaxy in small groups, a few Exordicans survived in the older asteroids but they were small in number and had little influence. Numbering two thousand in total, their future was less than viable.

  Four million years ago, with the Exordicans new to the process of longevity, it was uncertain as to how long they would actually live. Immortality in its pure sense was a ludicrous concept; to make an organic being live forever remained impossible. However, it transpired that they lived for periods, depending on the individual, ranging from fifty to seventy thousand years. Before even half of this lifespan had elapsed on the first asteroid ship, unable to cope with the enigma of their existence, many wasted away to become little more than vegetables. Many even wished for death! Replacements became available for the departed ones, which was just as well because, in later years, the frequency of death became that much more common. It was, however, still possible to maintain a viable population moving from system to system, gathering materials and collecting information to satisfy their curiosity.