Danger In The Dark Forest

Sandbox Earth #3

INDEX| Episode 2 | Episode 3 | Episode 4

Enemies In High Places

“Mr. Delacruz, did you tell your son anything about the two ships?”

“What could I say? I knew next to nothing, I am no astronomer just a backyard observer. I told my son everything was in God’s hands and what God intended to happen would happen.

“I regret those words, now. I wish God had not intended to take my son away from me. He could have had a good life, you see. All that I have done, for myself, for my wife, for Cuba—I would give it all up to be able to share life with my son.”

Here Señor Mateo Delacruz took a brief pause to collect himself. His eyes filled with tears at the memory of his son, who died during Hurricane Omega. Living conditions in Cuba were poor in that time, and Señor Delacruz tells me that his house was little more than wood panels propped together against a wood frame, with a tin roof. When Hurricane Omega hit—the largest hurricane ever recorded, given it’s cause—there was little they could do to prepare.

“Mr. Delacruz, I am sorry for your loss. I cannot imagine. Yet, what you managed to achieve despite your setbacks—”

“Trivialities, Mr. Broaddus, compared to the will of God. I try, I do try, to rejoice in the will of God. It is hard to find joy in the death of my son—yet I know in some way God willed it for my son’s own good, and for my own. My works are ashes and dust in the hands of God.

“My son’s imagination and intuition proved to be useful—such gifts as God blessed him abundantly in his short life. Blessedly, my wife and I did not see the event begin, but one night we were watching for the two ships as usual and there was a conflagration as they came into view. The two ships were fighting like Galleons of old, broadside to each other, firing unknown weapons of unspeakable power at each other. Both ships seemed to be taking incredible damage; we didn’t know who to root for either. Who were the good guys? Who were the aggressors? Why did they choose to fight here, above our meager planet? We watched the battle from horizon to directly overhead. It was about that point when the second ship fired a brilliant white laser beam from somewhere deep within, and the first ship was gutted. We watched it splinter and fracture, it begun spinning and chunks began flying off and entering the atmosphere, it looked like shooting stars were falling from the damaged ship.

“You see, my son intuited that the two ships were not the same race, and the two ships may not even be friends. Have you heard of the Dark Forest solution to the Fermi paradox? It says that the vastness of space is as a Dark Forest—we have been dropped in the middle with naught but our wits to survive, and uncertain if any stranger we encounter is friend or foe. It was intended to caution us against reaching out—making ourselves visible. We didn’t expect for two strangers to fight and kill each other right in front of us—all while we remained hidden.”

The Fermi Paradox asks the question—if life should be abundant in the universe, why haven’t we encountered any? It is a paradox because the conditions for life should be plentiful, but up until Contact we were the only race we knew of. The Dark Forest analogy is one of many proposed solutions to the paradox.

“The battle fell silent, after the laser blast. The first ship began drifting away from the second ship, burning and exploding. A flurry of small lights emerged as they presumably tried to repair the faltering ship, but it was clearly—from my vantagepoint—a lost cause. The ship was split in two, and shedding material. The second ship’s engines roared to life after that—clearly, it’s mission complete, they were about to leave. It is unclear to me if the second alien race is even aware of what world they were hovering over, or how these races found their way here. Perhaps we seemed an oasis in the dark—a resource rich, temperate world for repairing and retooling. Perhaps we were just a convenient stop on a long journey. Perhaps they knew we were there and hoped we would help one side or the other.

“In any case, the second race seemed unaware of the 9 billion observers watching from below. Because they were unaware of us, they were unaware of this odd quirk of human nature: We love an underdog. We love to help fight for the losing team. We love Davids and hate Goliaths. So as soon as that laser fired, and the battle was ended, the second ship became the bad guys, the villains, of this story; the first ship became the tragic heroes.

“The upsetting thing is that the second ship did one thing that helped me tremendously. They hyperspace jumped away—to God knows where. Right there from orbit. It was a brilliant lightning flash again, only this time, it was so close to the planet it generated an Electromagnetic Pulse. The lights went out in my home, and I could see the lights in Santa Clara were out as well. I learned later that the power was out in the whole Hemisphere, and all the satellites on that half of the world went out of service at that time. It has been explained to me that the hyperspace jump generates a gamma ray burst, which caused the electromagnetic pulse effect. This helped me tremendously, because without power, everyone in Cuba was now equal. I only needed to contact the Free Radicals to see what we could do.

“These thoughts did not enter my thinking, though. My wife and I watched the wreckage of the first ship drift over the horizon, with that sinking, uneasy feeling that our world had changed forever. How it had! We had little idea of the drama that was about to unfold in the rest of the world.”

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Thank You For Reading!

This concludes the first part of my Sandbox Earth prequel series to the Adventures of Tylus Worran. This is the deep lore of the infancy of humanity’s life among the stars!

I hope you enjoyed! Thank you for reading, and God bless you!