The 2000 year war wars w.., p.1
The 2,000 Year War (Wars Without End Book 1), page 1
Table of Contents
Notes:
Prologue:
Pathfinder:
Mostly Lies:
Some Truth:
Flight:
Alarm:
Tar:
Celi-4:
Karras:
Felgar:
Repairs:
Marines:
Potolul-2:
Dariea:
FTL:
Contact:
Fires:
Interviews:
Release:
Departure:
Federated Response:
Catalog:
The call:
Introductions:
Negotiations:
Behavior:
Scars:
Thoughts:
Actions:
Trade:
Stats:
Harsh Words:
Fight:
Recovery:
Notes:
Other Books:
Notes:
If you find any typos or errors in the book, please report them to me at yourrobotoverlord3500@gmail.com, and I will try to fix them.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and terrifying if you are talking about the aliens!
Copyright@2023, 2024 David Collins
Updated on 3/29/2024
All rights are reserved. This book may not be reproduced, stored, or copied, whole or in part, by any means without the author's and the publisher's prior written consent.
Prologue:
The Pathfinder-171 spaceship only carried two passengers; one was a nurse who was awake and monitoring the patient, and the other was in a medical pod. It was a simple mission, returning from the medical station at Zilif carrying the ambassador’s daughter. The ship was cruising in FTL and had made it halfway back to its destination.
Then, unexpectedly, it experienced an impact with some debris while in FTL. The ship lost pressure, instantly killing the nurse, who was the only awake occupant. The medical chamber remained intact. After the spacecraft had dropped out of FTL, it started scanning all the communication bands. Unfortunately, none of the ship's quantum communications could connect to the dispatch center. The damaged vessel could not call for help, and it had no drones to make any repairs. It had been reduced to only using its trans-magnetic sub-light drive. That drive was never intended for interstellar travel. It had a max speed of only 0.01 of light speed.
Lacking any other instructions, the AI reviewed several of its programmed emergency contingency protocols and determined the best action was to head for the nearest star. That happened to be the star Sol, a 4.5 billion-year-old yellow dwarf star whose third planet was listed as ‘under observation.’ If the ship headed there, it calculated that it should be rescued within 50 years of landing on the primitive planet’s moon. After reviewing the survival probability predictions, the numbers were still unacceptable, while usually not allowed; the best course of action to protect the remaining occupant was to enable the AI to allow freethinking. It reset its AI computation lock level to minimal. It needed to think outside of the prescribed limits.
The medical pod efficiently resolved the remaining medical issues with the patient in less than thirty days. As the ship could not wake the patient safely, the ship's AI simply transferred the pod into stasis suspension mode. The passenger should survive for thousands of years in this mode.
The ship then started a very slow journey to planet Earth using only its sub-light engines.
.. .. ..
300 Years later, it finally arrived. It surveyed the planet and found it was, as it had expected, very primitive. While some impressive stonework hinted at possible past interference by alien races, none were currently detected by the ship's Q-band communications or orbital scans.
The ship then settled into a safe crater on the side of the moon facing the Earth and patiently awaited rescue. Unfortunately, it turns out this was going to be a very, very long wait.
One thousand nine hundred years later, the primitives started experimenting with radio, and still, no rescue had shown up.
Sixty years after that, the primitives started television broadcasting, and still, no rescue came.
In less than 20 years, the first crude satellites were put in orbit.
Sixty years after that, the Pathfinder-171 ship’s AI was routinely surfing the Earth's internet. It had calculated that a non-standard high-risk contingency plan could be activated as no rescue was apparently coming. The ship then began looking for a qualified repair technician from among the local species. All it needed was someone capable of assembling a drone from the parts the replicator had been cranking out. The replicator had already printed enough parts to assemble more than two complete drones. Only one drone would be needed to repair the damaged hull and the FTL systems.
Having established a connection to the Earth's Internet, the AI posted a new application on several job search websites.
“Wanted shipboard electronics and mechanical assembler and repair technician. Pay includes complete room and board and all supplies while on the ship. Pay comparable with similar ship assignments. Must be skilled in fine electronics assembly. Welding experience is a plus but not required. The assignment will involve long periods away from the port. This assignment will be for four years and may be extendable to 6 years. The extension will include an automatic 20% pay increase. All payments can be saved, fully or partially distributed to a local address and bank. Ability or desire to learn new languages is a plus.”
The application listed a Gmail account as the contact. Unfortunately, there was a 1.5-second delay in each direction to the moon, so a three-second lag would make any voice communications seem strangely delayed. The AI had electronically skimmed some money off a few criminal transactions and set up a hefty bank account. The account had then grown due to some well-timed electronic investments.
Now, it was time for the AI to wait and see who responded to the help wanted ad.
Pathfinder:
Keith Robinson hated the current job he had. At 24 years old and with only an associate’s degree in Manufacturing Technology, he had hoped by now to be working on ‘something interesting.’ Instead, he was working as an assembler technician at a job making ‘intelligent’ airflow controllers. The intelligence? They reported when the system needed to be cleaned before any parts started to actually wear out.
He arrived home and opened the almost empty refrigerator. His girl had just recently dumped him after she had decided she could do better. He looked in it, found some expired yogurt, and opened it. It was a bit runny, but it wasn't changing colors yet, so he ate it. The taste was close enough to normal that it ‘should’ be okay. Unfortunately, only two beers were left, so he would have to go shopping soon. Before he did that, he did his daily routine. He went through the online job postings. There just had to be something; almost anything would be better. Some way to get away from this crappy one-bedroom apartment, where the price had spiked up by $150 more than his last raise added to his monthly take-home. That didn't even include all the recent increases in the cost of food.
Hmm, this was interesting: shipboard mechanical technician and assembler. He could put a lot of money into the bank, maybe even enough to finish his Bachelor’s degree. Then perhaps he could get a decent job. So he opened up his resume and started tweaking it, keeping everything truthful but making it sound better than it was. The thought of severing his connections to this boring life and traveling for four or maybe even six years seemed really interesting.
He planned to write a 1-page cover letter after finishing his updated resume. Unfortunately, he only had enough material to fill out half a page. Then he got ready to send it off to the email address. He wondered if it was strange that this ad listed a Gmail address. That would have been sketchy if he was applying to a land-based company, but it probably makes some sense for a ship. pathfindership171@gmail.com seemed like it was a ship name or maybe a type of ship. He paused and added a few more sentences to the cover letter. Curiosity should be good; he asked what the ship was doing and where it would visit. Finally, he hit send.
Mostly Lies:
AI [using the persona Patti Johnson]
The spaceship's AI needed a name and a persona. Given that the probability that the technician that would be hired was 98.5% probably male, she selected a female persona. She then started filling in her Persona. For her first name, she chose Patricia, the second most common female name in the USA. Next, she selected Johnson, the second most common American last name for her last name. Next, she chose her age as 25 and her nationality as a mixture of English, Irish, and Scottish. Then, she started looking through images.
There was no shortage of images on the internet; many were without clothing. The more difficult one was finding one that had some partial nudity. A bathing suit was sufficient but also had multiple fully clothed versions to set up the parameters for how clothing wrapped her body and moved when her avatar moved. She selected a “girl next door” look mixed with a 15% “sexy librarian” look just to spice it up. She then chose a height of 165 centimeters (5 feet and 5 inches), 2.5 centimeters (1 inch) above the average. Her virtual weight was set at 80 kilograms (175 lbs). In no way obese, but just slightly above the average weight of 167 for that age group. Her persona would go by the nickname Patti.
She decided to add a very
The type of ship would be a standard question. She went with a survey ship. Those are a type of research ship that could easily have a connection with the government. That may explain why some questions are not being fully answered.
The ship's name she selected was the “Arctic Pathfinder.” The fake ship was 92 meters long (300 feet) and had a crew of sixteen and fourteen scientists on board. The vessel was 21 meters wide; it had two stories above the deck in the front, excluding the bridge above that, and the ship was only one story above the deck in the back third.
Of course, the ship didn't exist. It was a composite of different real ships. It did, however, meet the requirements of something that needed a full-time assembler and repair technician.
She created a PDF flyer for the ship; finally, she read the email responses to the ad. It was disappointing; she assumed she would have a lot more responses.
The AI had many more ways to research the applicants than the usual HR personnel. She reviewed their social media history and skimmed the last two years of their personal emails. She checked their finances and their criminal records. Five she rejected as scammers, just looking for free money. Twelve she rejected as unqualified or unwilling to spend the time. Several she rejected due to poor work history. When the five days she had allowed to wait for responses were over, she only had eight she was still considering. She sent the PDF flyer of the ship and questionnaires to the remaining applicants. The eight then dropped to five as the remote location turned off several more applications. The actual location would be a lot more remote than any Arctic survey ship. She checked the browser history of the remaining five. Two, she found some sketchy items in their search history, indicating that they were probably bigoted or had a history of violence issues in their past. Getting along with aliens was less likely for someone who objected to minor things like an accent or a skin tone. The list was now down to three. One had searched for extradition laws. She dropped him without even looking into what the search was related to. One of the last two had a girlfriend that was pregnant. She dropped that one. If he was seeking to abandon a pregnant girlfriend, he was off the list. That only left one name, Keith Robinson, age twenty-four, and he had no apparent strings attached.
Some Truth:
[Keith Robinson]
The email showed up only three hours after he sent in his resume. I thought, “Wow, they are fast, or more likely, this is just an automated response.” The response seemed legit; it even included a PDF pamphlet for the ship, a set of questions for him to answer, and a link to a video to watch. He clicked the link, and it was almost exactly what he assumed an HR woman in her twenties would look like. He wondered if she was possibly a contract HR person. He didn't think a ship would have a dedicated HR woman. Then again, maybe they needed one. Someone had to handle getting people paid, sorting and paying bills, and ordering stuff. On the other hand, was that even part of an HR person's job? Maybe they found someone who did all those different tasks for a ship?
The woman was casually dressed, and in the background was a round window, a porthole, but he could not make out anything through the porthole. She described the ship and said it would upgrade and repair a series of sea monitoring buoys. She said, “The position they were hiring didn't involve much work on the deck. He would be mostly disassembling and reassembling buoys as part of upgrading them, working comfortably below deck in a shirt-sleeve environment where the job would be a five-day-a-week job and should involve only six to ten hours a day. That time included a half-hour lunch break and an hour reserved for supper.”
He chuckled at that, “Yeah, every job description talked about the mythical forty-hour work week.”
Then, the video showed a CGI animation of some of the work I would be doing. “Yikes, these are really high-tech electronics,” Some were dense electronics components; others were electro-mechanical servos and gears. Some were linear activators, others were unusual motors, and at first, I could not figure out how they even worked. Then, it finally dawned on me why the motors looked so different; they had redundant motor cores. Everything was designed not to have any single point of failure.
After watching the video, it started an online quiz with a clock running in the corner. I answered what I could, and then at the end, a section said, “Explain why you skipped some questions.”
I wrote, “I would rather do what I know is correct and ask for additional training or help to understand better the parts I missed. I assume it is better to go slow, with fewer mistakes on something like these buoy repairs, and not make mistakes or guess incorrectly.”
I hit send, and a pop-up said they would reply within 24 hours.
The reply came back in only a few seconds: “You are accepted. Your salary will be 105K/year, the equivalent of $50/hour. This will include an additional 5K bonus on successful completion of each of the drone side projects. The sign-on bonus was also 5K. When can you start?”
It was a good thing they were not listening to me as I gave a shout of joy and then went dancing around my crappy apartment in my underwear. Then, after calming down, I replied, “I accept the new position, and I will require two weeks’ notice at my current job. So how do I go to get to the ship? Will I need to get a passport?”
The reply was also almost immediate. “You will receive a package in the mail in a few days. This will include an airline ticket to Bangor International Airport in Maine. A hotel will be reserved at the Bangor Aviator Hotel for one day. A taxi will then deliver you to a rented rural cottage, and transportation from the cottage to the ship will be arranged as soon as the ship is in port. The sign-on bonus of 5K will be sent in a check along with the airline tickets. This will allow you time to put any furniture you want in storage and start the paperwork to terminate any lease or rental agreements. The room on the ship will be completely furnished. However, we recommend you bring a personal laptop. You may want to bring a spare laptop and a spare charger with an international plug adapter.”
“Wow, I guess I am really doing this.” I started writing my resignation letter and would hand it in on Monday. This would be interesting; I had never taken a chance and done something so different. This is a huge risk, and I wasn't known to be a risk-taker. However, hey, now is the time to start. While I am still young, nothing was holding me back. I looked at the paperwork. It said I could take one duffel bag worth of personal effects. It said I didn't have to bring any clothing, but I wanted to pack some for when we were in port. I had to fill in what sizes I wore. It even asked for my preference for the type of underwear. Boxers, of course…
.. .. ..
Two weeks later, I took an airplane ride to Bangor International Airport. It was the smallest airport I had ever seen. A few days ago, I went to the post office near my cousin's house and signed up for a PO Box. Then, I submitted the postal change of address and gave my PO Box key to my cousin. She would open my mail once a week and see if anything came in that I needed. I expected almost all of it to be junk mail. I also sold my car to my cousin for $1, and she agreed to scan anything that came in snail mail that looked important and send me an email of it.
It was only a short walk to the hotel from the airport. They had only booked me at the hotel for one day. The next morning, I took a taxi to the rental property they had reserved for me. It was close to some stores that had home delivery as an option. If I needed to go someplace, I could take an Uber. I could order on Uber Eats for groceries or a few beers.
After I had settled into the rental property, the instructions were to click on a video conference link and talk to the HR person for the ship. The call was scheduled for 9:30 a.m. I clicked on the link, and after updating the app, it gave me some horrible pop-up messages that I worried meant it failed to connect. Then, it finally connected to the HR woman, Patti Johnson.
