AN: This prologue is just to set the scene. The format will be significantly different in future...
Human Machines
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We Just Write
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AN: This prologue is just to set the scene. The format will be significantly different in future chapters.
Ultimately, the 21st century was a technological race between several major innovations that would completely redefine humanity, and the environmental devastation our previous carelessness had wreaked on us. The release of pollutants into the atmosphere would have been bad enough on its own, as it induced raising sea levels and toxicity-based mass extinctions, but they weren't the only problem. No, the phenomena that would ultimately be our doom was the Methane trapped in the arctic permafrost, which was rapidly melting. The chances for baseline humanity surviving such a global catastrophe with civilization intact were rated as dismal, but fortunately there was a solution.
Sometime around the 2030s, several technologies that previously only existed in science fiction finally came to fruition, offering hope to humanity.
The first of these major innovations was nuclear fusion power, developed by several initiatives simultaneously. While renewable power had already come into its own by this time, there were distinct limits on where it could be built, and when you could rely on the power renewables provided. The new fusion power plants on the other hand were safe, reliable, easy to mass-produce, and cheap to run.
Then, there was extraplanetary colonization. For some time now, there had been a trickle of people moving to the incredibly harsh environment on Mars, but there was a distinct bottleneck on who could afford a ticket due to the limits of chemical rocketry. However, the new fusion power quickly was adapted into a large variety of deep space propulsion techniques and methods for cheap orbital launching. Almost immediately, a flood of colonists evacuated Earth in favor of the Red Planet, eager for an environment that at the very least would guarantee clean air to breathe. The fact that going outside without a suit would be a death sentence dissuaded far fewer people than one might imagine.
Fortunately, a tragedy of the commons with Mars colonization was averted. Yes, the number of people who wanted to go to Mars greatly exceeded the infrastructure to support them, but those running the colonization initiatives came up with a solution to prevent disaster. Namely, the ticket supply to Mars was kept artificially low until there was enough infrastructure to support the population arriving there, but conditions still quickly became crowded as people flooded onto Mars as quickly as tickets became available.
Then, in 2037, the very nature of what it meant to be human was called into question by the development of Whole Brain Emulation-Consciousness Transfer, colloquially known as uploading in the present day. At roughly the same time as the environmental devastation on Earth reached its worst, the very first instance of a human mind being uploaded into an inorganic brain was successfully completed. The volunteer for the experiment was a terminally ill woman named Caroline, who afterwards took up novel-writing as a hobby.
And then, with the development of uploading, the last barrier holding humanity back from colonizing the entire solar system was simply gone. Uploads didn't need life support to survive in the depths of space, a virtual habitat space consumed far less volume than a physical one of equal apparent size, and a server running several uploads took up a lot less mass to boot. Colonization ventures of all descriptions hurtled out into the solar system, ranging from corporate missions to melt down asteroids into pure profit, to various groups who pooled their wealth to create their own little world far from the troubles of Earth. Quite a large number of these colonies built and maintained a physical habitat space for those who preferred to use an android body rather than simply stay an infomorph, but just as many others were pure machine, with no concessions for organic inhabitants whatsoever.
This continued for some time as humanity expanded into the solar system, setting up colonies on any solid body worth colonizing, getting into the occasional minor war over this or that, and generally doing what humans did. Then, in 2089, another major innovation broke down the barrier to spread beyond the limits of Sol's influence. This innovation was the creation of stable negative matter. For some time now, there were theoretically proven ways of sneaking around Einstein's speed limit, such as the Alcubierre Drive and traversable wormholes. Development of these methods had been stymied for decades because every last one of them required access to negative matter, but that was now readily available. As a convenient side effect, producing negative matter output massive amounts of positive energy as a byproduct, which could readily be put to work for whatever task was desired. The newly feasible space-warping tech could easily be put to work disposing of excess negative energy and waste heat, by simply shoving it into an isolated pocket space, and closing it off when it was full.
Almost immediately, the first colony missions to adjacent stars were planned, with particular emphasis on a confirmed Earthlike exoplanet a mere forty light years from Earth. When the ship arrived, it was determined that the biosphere would be suitable to support biological humans. Given that this would save greatly on infrastructure in the colony's initial phases, the colonists decided that for the time being at least, they would inhabit mostly organic bodies.
In retrospect, this was a very wise decision, since it kept the Rallik from realizing the truth before humanity stood a chance of surviving their wrath.
Ultimately, the 21st century was a technological race between several major innovations that would completely redefine humanity, and the environmental devastation our previous carelessness had wreaked on us. The release of pollutants into the atmosphere would have been bad enough on its own, as it induced raising sea levels and toxicity-based mass extinctions, but they weren't the only problem. No, the phenomena that would ultimately be our doom was the Methane trapped in the arctic permafrost, which was rapidly melting. The chances for baseline humanity surviving such a global catastrophe with civilization intact were rated as dismal, but fortunately there was a solution.
Sometime around the 2030s, several technologies that previously only existed in science fiction finally came to fruition, offering hope to humanity.
The first of these major innovations was nuclear fusion power, developed by several initiatives simultaneously. While renewable power had already come into its own by this time, there were distinct limits on where it could be built, and when you could rely on the power renewables provided. The new fusion power plants on the other hand were safe, reliable, easy to mass-produce, and cheap to run.
Then, there was extraplanetary colonization. For some time now, there had been a trickle of people moving to the incredibly harsh environment on Mars, but there was a distinct bottleneck on who could afford a ticket due to the limits of chemical rocketry. However, the new fusion power quickly was adapted into a large variety of deep space propulsion techniques and methods for cheap orbital launching. Almost immediately, a flood of colonists evacuated Earth in favor of the Red Planet, eager for an environment that at the very least would guarantee clean air to breathe. The fact that going outside without a suit would be a death sentence dissuaded far fewer people than one might imagine.
Fortunately, a tragedy of the commons with Mars colonization was averted. Yes, the number of people who wanted to go to Mars greatly exceeded the infrastructure to support them, but those running the colonization initiatives came up with a solution to prevent disaster. Namely, the ticket supply to Mars was kept artificially low until there was enough infrastructure to support the population arriving there, but conditions still quickly became crowded as people flooded onto Mars as quickly as tickets became available.
Then, in 2037, the very nature of what it meant to be human was called into question by the development of Whole Brain Emulation-Consciousness Transfer, colloquially known as uploading in the present day. At roughly the same time as the environmental devastation on Earth reached its worst, the very first instance of a human mind being uploaded into an inorganic brain was successfully completed. The volunteer for the experiment was a terminally ill woman named Caroline, who afterwards took up novel-writing as a hobby.
And then, with the development of uploading, the last barrier holding humanity back from colonizing the entire solar system was simply gone. Uploads didn't need life support to survive in the depths of space, a virtual habitat space consumed far less volume than a physical one of equal apparent size, and a server running several uploads took up a lot less mass to boot. Colonization ventures of all descriptions hurtled out into the solar system, ranging from corporate missions to melt down asteroids into pure profit, to various groups who pooled their wealth to create their own little world far from the troubles of Earth. Quite a large number of these colonies built and maintained a physical habitat space for those who preferred to use an android body rather than simply stay an infomorph, but just as many others were pure machine, with no concessions for organic inhabitants whatsoever.
This continued for some time as humanity expanded into the solar system, setting up colonies on any solid body worth colonizing, getting into the occasional minor war over this or that, and generally doing what humans did. Then, in 2089, another major innovation broke down the barrier to spread beyond the limits of Sol's influence. This innovation was the creation of stable negative matter. For some time now, there were theoretically proven ways of sneaking around Einstein's speed limit, such as the Alcubierre Drive and traversable wormholes. Development of these methods had been stymied for decades because every last one of them required access to negative matter, but that was now readily available. As a convenient side effect, producing negative matter output massive amounts of positive energy as a byproduct, which could readily be put to work for whatever task was desired. The newly feasible space-warping tech could easily be put to work disposing of excess negative energy and waste heat, by simply shoving it into an isolated pocket space, and closing it off when it was full.
Almost immediately, the first colony missions to adjacent stars were planned, with particular emphasis on a confirmed Earthlike exoplanet a mere forty light years from Earth. When the ship arrived, it was determined that the biosphere would be suitable to support biological humans. Given that this would save greatly on infrastructure in the colony's initial phases, the colonists decided that for the time being at least, they would inhabit mostly organic bodies.
In retrospect, this was a very wise decision, since it kept the Rallik from realizing the truth before humanity stood a chance of surviving their wrath.
Part 1: Contact
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Sometimes, Chausiku reflected to herself, it simply did not pay to get out of bed. Yes, as an upload sleep was strictly speaking unnecessary, but when you were sleeved into a biomorph it paid off to take good care of your body. The cause of Chausiku's current consternation was the alien space-ship at the edge of the system, which had just emerged from a warp jump a few minutes ago.
A normal person would either be going about their day as normal or completely freaking out at this news. Either way, they would be able to let those in charge of such things deal with it without needing to get involved with the nitty-gritty of the negotiations themselves. Chausiku G. Otieno on the other hand, did not have this option, as she was the recently established colony of Opal's security chief. This meant that after several rounds of frantic delegation within Opal's provisional government, the job of talking to the aliens in a rational manner and trying to prevent a war fell to her.
Thus, as Chausiku hurried to get her physical body to the command center, she was already shouting at her various subordinates over the local network to get a proper contact team through the comm hole from Sol.
Almost immediately, she got a reply from Private Marcos, as he said "We've got them on a server already, now we just need to print bodies for them, and that's not anywhere close to an instantaneous process."
Chausiku made a snap decision, firing back "We might need them physical sooner than that, depending on if the aliens want to meet in person. Ask if they're willing to borrow someone's body for the time being, and get them sleeved ASAP!" She only hesitated for a second as she flung open the door and added "I am willing to volunteer my body for temporary occupation, if needed."
On one of the command center's screens, the avatar of a young man nodded, before saying "Hello, Commander Otieno. I'm Jared Stevenson; I'm with the contact negotiators that just got ported over. Anyway, the first stage is going to just be kludging together some basic communications in all likelihood, and in all likelihood I can just stay put in this server for that."
Chausiku nodded, before saying "I'll leave you to that then." secretly glad that at least for a little bit, this didn't necessarily need to be Her Problem.
Jared, meanwhile, was busily working with dozens of other minds in the server banks of Opal City to figure out a communications strategy for the alien ship, which was currently a couple light minutes away from Opal.
If anything, the conundrum reminded him of the ancient proverb of the Chicken and the Egg. It was hard to figure out a reliable way to talk without being able to either send pictures or a physical person, and they couldn't do that until they knew enough of each other's languages to come up with either a compatible video format, or a plan for docking.
Eventually, Jared proposed to symposium of minds "Maybe we could use analog radio? Raw audio in, it gets transmitted, and then they either spend all of thirty minutes figuring out the dirt-simple modulation, or they can de-modulate it right off the bat."
A vote was called on Jared's idea, and after a bit of refining, the plan was settled. An AM-modulated analog radio signal would be humanity's first ever message to a sapient being of extraterrestrial descent. The only question now was what message would be sent. Eventually, it was decided that if the aliens weren't likely to understand the first message sent anyway, they might as well send something that would be incredibly obvious to the aliens as an intelligently created signal when demodulated.
Thus, they began with the Chinese(1) words for "This is Humanity speaking", before they began correlating the numerical quantities of beeping tones with the words for each number, continuing onwards.
Meanwhile, on board the alien starship a heated discussion was taking place between its captain Fraz-Therati-Gos and the Colonial Leader Holland-Prett-Stenbet regarding the fact that Opal was occupied. For your convenience, the following dialog has been translated.
It had begun when the ship, simply known by its function and serial number, had emerged from warp a mere twelve minutes before. Very quickly, the sensor technicians had reported that the dark side of the planet known as Whiteflower had significant concentrations of artificial light, and there were several channels of radio emission coming from the obvious settlements. Other tell-tale signs were extremely high-frequency gravity waves, commonly used to prevent unauthorized warp traffic from ramming into a planet or other installation.
Captain Gos had immediately stated "Well, I guess I'm not going to be dropping you lot here then. Orders were that we should only colonize a place where nobody was living yet, so that the colony would have time to build up defenses before it was found."
To this, Colonial Leader Stenbet retorted "You honestly think that after two months stuck on this ship, that I and the other half-million colonists are going to let you just, just TURN AROUND!?"
Captain Gos hesitated for a few moments, before replying "Yes, that is exactly what will be happening. The official contact policy as dictated by the Centai Party is that first negotiations with an alien species should only be conducted by an officially sanctioned military vessel, not a simple colony ship."
Stenbet hissed in disapproval, his fur straightening up, before he fired back "it's too late for that Captain Gos! This ship wasn't built for stealth, and any colony-planner with even the slightest amount of security sense would have had sensors up to spot us when we deflated our warp field. I can absolutely guarantee that the aliens already know exactly where we are, so we might as well try and talk to them and hope for the best."
Gos retorted as he folded his foremost pair of limbs "If we simply leave at warp, the aliens will not be able to prevent our escape. There is precisely no way that a properly configured warp field can be tracked, and interdiction gravity fields only propagate at light speed."
To this, Stenbet scoffed before saying "We know nearly nothing about these aliens, save that they exist, and they are at least advanced enough to have warp interdiction technology. For all we know, they are so advanced that they make us look like Shavka(2) in comparison. Far better to send them a message now and try to communicate than get blasted out of the void if we try running."
Gos remained unconvinced, replying "That is pointless fearmongering. If the aliens really were that advanced, our actions here literally would not matter in the slightest. Therefore, the most logical solution is to turn the ship around, and get the military to come over and handle contact properly."
Then, in a corner of the command pod, a technician called "Honored Superiors, the aliens are sending us a message!"
With that, the two bickering officers turned to the technician and asked "Well, what are they saying?"
The technician clicked their mandibles twice^(3), before they replied "I really have no idea. As far as I can tell, they sent us raw audio through the most dirt-simple encoding scheme they could think of and hoped for the best. Thankfully, the actual signal is in our audible range without further tampering."
Captain Gos almost broke down right there at the thought of what the Centai Party would do to him if word of this got out. Meanwhile, Stenbet simply asked the technician "Could we please hear it?"
And with that, a strangely smooth alien voice began to speak, saying first "Zhè shì rénlèi de shuōhuà." before they continued.
(1) The most commonly spoken human language when First Contact was made in 2137, with around 4.7 billion speakers. Most of this popularity came from it spreading among the spacer population, who commonly intermixed with a very sizable off-world Chinese demographic.
(2) The nearest living relative to the Rallik, Shavka are commonly described by humans as looking a bit like furry ants the size of a large dog. Shavka are about as smart as a Chimpanzee, save that they have figured out basic flint-knapping and firestarting.
(3) The Rallik equivalent of a shrug.
A normal person would either be going about their day as normal or completely freaking out at this news. Either way, they would be able to let those in charge of such things deal with it without needing to get involved with the nitty-gritty of the negotiations themselves. Chausiku G. Otieno on the other hand, did not have this option, as she was the recently established colony of Opal's security chief. This meant that after several rounds of frantic delegation within Opal's provisional government, the job of talking to the aliens in a rational manner and trying to prevent a war fell to her.
Thus, as Chausiku hurried to get her physical body to the command center, she was already shouting at her various subordinates over the local network to get a proper contact team through the comm hole from Sol.
Almost immediately, she got a reply from Private Marcos, as he said "We've got them on a server already, now we just need to print bodies for them, and that's not anywhere close to an instantaneous process."
Chausiku made a snap decision, firing back "We might need them physical sooner than that, depending on if the aliens want to meet in person. Ask if they're willing to borrow someone's body for the time being, and get them sleeved ASAP!" She only hesitated for a second as she flung open the door and added "I am willing to volunteer my body for temporary occupation, if needed."
On one of the command center's screens, the avatar of a young man nodded, before saying "Hello, Commander Otieno. I'm Jared Stevenson; I'm with the contact negotiators that just got ported over. Anyway, the first stage is going to just be kludging together some basic communications in all likelihood, and in all likelihood I can just stay put in this server for that."
Chausiku nodded, before saying "I'll leave you to that then." secretly glad that at least for a little bit, this didn't necessarily need to be Her Problem.
Jared, meanwhile, was busily working with dozens of other minds in the server banks of Opal City to figure out a communications strategy for the alien ship, which was currently a couple light minutes away from Opal.
If anything, the conundrum reminded him of the ancient proverb of the Chicken and the Egg. It was hard to figure out a reliable way to talk without being able to either send pictures or a physical person, and they couldn't do that until they knew enough of each other's languages to come up with either a compatible video format, or a plan for docking.
Eventually, Jared proposed to symposium of minds "Maybe we could use analog radio? Raw audio in, it gets transmitted, and then they either spend all of thirty minutes figuring out the dirt-simple modulation, or they can de-modulate it right off the bat."
A vote was called on Jared's idea, and after a bit of refining, the plan was settled. An AM-modulated analog radio signal would be humanity's first ever message to a sapient being of extraterrestrial descent. The only question now was what message would be sent. Eventually, it was decided that if the aliens weren't likely to understand the first message sent anyway, they might as well send something that would be incredibly obvious to the aliens as an intelligently created signal when demodulated.
Thus, they began with the Chinese(1) words for "This is Humanity speaking", before they began correlating the numerical quantities of beeping tones with the words for each number, continuing onwards.
Meanwhile, on board the alien starship a heated discussion was taking place between its captain Fraz-Therati-Gos and the Colonial Leader Holland-Prett-Stenbet regarding the fact that Opal was occupied. For your convenience, the following dialog has been translated.
It had begun when the ship, simply known by its function and serial number, had emerged from warp a mere twelve minutes before. Very quickly, the sensor technicians had reported that the dark side of the planet known as Whiteflower had significant concentrations of artificial light, and there were several channels of radio emission coming from the obvious settlements. Other tell-tale signs were extremely high-frequency gravity waves, commonly used to prevent unauthorized warp traffic from ramming into a planet or other installation.
Captain Gos had immediately stated "Well, I guess I'm not going to be dropping you lot here then. Orders were that we should only colonize a place where nobody was living yet, so that the colony would have time to build up defenses before it was found."
To this, Colonial Leader Stenbet retorted "You honestly think that after two months stuck on this ship, that I and the other half-million colonists are going to let you just, just TURN AROUND!?"
Captain Gos hesitated for a few moments, before replying "Yes, that is exactly what will be happening. The official contact policy as dictated by the Centai Party is that first negotiations with an alien species should only be conducted by an officially sanctioned military vessel, not a simple colony ship."
Stenbet hissed in disapproval, his fur straightening up, before he fired back "it's too late for that Captain Gos! This ship wasn't built for stealth, and any colony-planner with even the slightest amount of security sense would have had sensors up to spot us when we deflated our warp field. I can absolutely guarantee that the aliens already know exactly where we are, so we might as well try and talk to them and hope for the best."
Gos retorted as he folded his foremost pair of limbs "If we simply leave at warp, the aliens will not be able to prevent our escape. There is precisely no way that a properly configured warp field can be tracked, and interdiction gravity fields only propagate at light speed."
To this, Stenbet scoffed before saying "We know nearly nothing about these aliens, save that they exist, and they are at least advanced enough to have warp interdiction technology. For all we know, they are so advanced that they make us look like Shavka(2) in comparison. Far better to send them a message now and try to communicate than get blasted out of the void if we try running."
Gos remained unconvinced, replying "That is pointless fearmongering. If the aliens really were that advanced, our actions here literally would not matter in the slightest. Therefore, the most logical solution is to turn the ship around, and get the military to come over and handle contact properly."
Then, in a corner of the command pod, a technician called "Honored Superiors, the aliens are sending us a message!"
With that, the two bickering officers turned to the technician and asked "Well, what are they saying?"
The technician clicked their mandibles twice^(3), before they replied "I really have no idea. As far as I can tell, they sent us raw audio through the most dirt-simple encoding scheme they could think of and hoped for the best. Thankfully, the actual signal is in our audible range without further tampering."
Captain Gos almost broke down right there at the thought of what the Centai Party would do to him if word of this got out. Meanwhile, Stenbet simply asked the technician "Could we please hear it?"
And with that, a strangely smooth alien voice began to speak, saying first "Zhè shì rénlèi de shuōhuà." before they continued.
(1) The most commonly spoken human language when First Contact was made in 2137, with around 4.7 billion speakers. Most of this popularity came from it spreading among the spacer population, who commonly intermixed with a very sizable off-world Chinese demographic.
(2) The nearest living relative to the Rallik, Shavka are commonly described by humans as looking a bit like furry ants the size of a large dog. Shavka are about as smart as a Chimpanzee, save that they have figured out basic flint-knapping and firestarting.
(3) The Rallik equivalent of a shrug.
Last edited:
Part 2: Revelations
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Between the combined efforts of Opal's human settlers, and the large number of Rallik on their ship, it took several days to kludge together the most rudimentary communications. The level of mutual comprehension between the two parties was still rudimentary, but when the both groups eventually figured out how to transmit video to each other it became possible to arrange an in-person conversation. Half an hour of disjointed speech and translation errors later, Colonial Leader Stenbet was aboard a shuttle leading towards a spaceport on the planet he knew as Whiteflower.
As the shuttle touched down, Grepri-Srond, one of the colonists he brought with him to help with the negotiations asked "Honored Superior, what do you think that the aliens, these 'Humans' are like in person?"
On his part, Stenbet simply clicked his mandibles twice and replied "How in the world would I know that? This will be the first time a Rallik has ever met a Human in person. That's part of the reason why we're wearing sealed suits; we don't know if they've got any nasty microbes that might hop species to ruin our day."
Srond simply nodded in acquiescence, saying "This makes a good deal of sense, Honored Superior."
As the shuttle landed, Colonial Leader Stenbet noted "Anyway, in just a few moments, we'll get to see what the humans are like, one way or another."
Sure enough, after the shuttle's pilot and the human traffic controller on the other end of the radio link had uncomprehendingly shouted at each other for a few minutes, the hatch at the back of the craft opened, and Colonial Leader Holland-Prett-Stenbet stepped forth into the natural light of the local star, the material of the landing pad unyielding beneath his feet.
There were a quartet of these humans, and Stenbet was surprised to see that he only came up to their waist, with his six-limbed body plan lacking the sheer height afforded by a bipedal gait.
Then, one of the humans at the front of the group stepped forwards. They wore a uniform that seemed crisp and functional, with brass ornamentation on the shoulders. In addition, the apparent human leader had dark brown skin, and a pair of protrusions on their chest that if Stenbet's guess was correct, were only possessed by the human equivalent of the Broodmother caste.
Then, the human said in extremely broken Voiderspoke "Hello, my name is Commander Chausiku Otieno. Traditionally, it is common to share food and discuss important topics. Would you like to accompany us to dinner while we know what to do with your unexpected arrival?"
For his part, colonial leader Stenbet was able to quickly parse the surprisingly intelligible sentence, before he double checked in the human's own 'Chinese' "Just make it clear, you say you want to share food with me, and not if you want to eat me completely, right?"
With that, Chausiku nodded, noting "Not so, just there are people." She paused for a bit as she considered the Rallik in front of her, before adding "Do you bring food with you? We do not know that we have anything to eat safely."
Stenbet figured that was about all the reassurance he would be likely to get, seeing as the humans were apparently concerned for his safety. With that in mind, the Rallik Colonial Leader replied "Plan enough to bring food for a long time. Is there a forum ready to talk or will it be here?"
Chausiku nodded again, before saying "Yes, there is a restaurant that we rent at that time. Please come with us." and beginning to walk towards a nearby van.
After everyone had piled into the van, Chausiku quickly queried the linguist team over the network "Is the next version of the language cortex ready? I keep worrying I'm about to accidentally say I want to murder his entire species or something."
Jared quickly fired back "It's almost ready; we were just doing the final compile now." Two seconds passed before a follow up message came back saying "Alright, the final version of the Rallik Voiderspoke linguacortex is compiled. You should be able to install it now without any issues."
Chausiku quickly pinged the installer, and felt the strange tingling sensation in her thoughts that always accompanied a peripheral cortex being added or removed from her consciousness runtime. It only took a few seconds, before the install was complete.
Then, Jared sent one last message, saying "Be careful; the closest analog for 'cyborg' or 'upload' in their language roughly equals 'abomination', and has extremely negative connotations."
Given that particular bombshell, before Chausiku could make up her mind about anything to say to her guest, the van arrived at the restaurant (named "Joe's" for a reason Chausiku couldn't fathom, seeing as no-one working there was named Joe)
With that, everyone got out of the vehicle, and as everyone sat down at the table, Chausiku said to Stenbet "So, now that we're here, I suppose we might as well discuss what will become of your colonists."
The six limbed alien was suddenly looking very intently at Chausiku, as he noted "Your comprehension of Voiderspoke has improved at a rate that simply defies plausibility. How did you do that, if you weren't faking the translation errors before?"
Chausiku nodded, before saying "There really aren't good words for it in your language, but the best way to put it is that I have a computer in my head that helps with thinking. The scientists we had studying Voiderspoke just finished a program for it that knows Voiderspoke flawlessly, and I installed it on the van ride over."
Stenbet almost immediately realized the implications of this; in all likelihood, he was talking to a Perversion. Still, contrary to expectations, these 'humans' had been nothing but kind and accommodating. Therefore, Stenbet carefully paused the audio recorder he was wearing, and asked "Tell me, is this sort of brain computer universal, or are ones such as yourself fairly rare?"
Chausiku nodded solemnly, before saying "I am a rarity, but not for the reason you might expect. Most humans these days choose to live either as purely digital lifeforms, or as mechanoids. The humans here only use biological bodies due to special circumstances."
Stenbet very pointedly did not recoil in horror, no mater how much he wanted to. A Perversion was bad enough, but now it seemed that these 'humans' were in fact a species of Daemon. Figuring that he was doomed anyway, the Rallik asked "Curiously, what did you do to your creator species, when you first came online?"
Chausiku's composure was only barely maintained, as she said "There were no creators, and we are not a successor species. We are still human, as were our ancestors before they learned how to transfer a person's mind from the fleshy bodies evolution granted them, to the synthetic forms we occupy today. This process was not forced on anyone; every person who uploaded did so because they wanted to."
There was a brief, awkward pause, before Chausiku noted "This is actually the first time humanity has met anyone else really, we're rather ignorant of the galactic political scene. Would you care to explain what the stigma is about cybernetics, uploading, and related subjects?"
Stenbet thought fast, trying to figure out an angle he could use to save everyone aboard the ship from possible reprisal. Quickly, he said "Only on the condition that you guarantee the safety of the colonists aboard the ship."
Chausiku nodded, before she noted "About that; this colony isn't actually all that developed yet, and there's plenty of other colonization sites here on Opal. We'd be perfectly willing to try cohabitation."
The Rallik nodded, before he said with a hesitant tone "Well, that seems like the closest I'll get to a guarantee of safety for my people, so I might as well accept." a brief pause took place, before he added "Anyway, the reason for the stigma is quite simple: Every non-organic species that the galactic community has contacted has turned out to be hostile for no apparent reason, and has attempted to commit what effectively amounts to omnicide on a galactic scale."
Stenbet continued "Of the three Daemons that have thus far been encountered, all of them have been the result of a sapient species developing artificial intelligence. They then proceeded to inflict some horrible fate onto their creators, before attempting to apply the same to the galaxy at large, requiring a co-ordinated effort to put down."
Finally, the Colonial Leader informed Chausiku "Put quite bluntly, you and the rest of humanity will need to hide what you are from the rest of the galaxy. If the Centai Party or any of the other governments out there find out, they won't try and figure out what's going on. They will jump straight to conclusions, and they will invade with intent to exterminate."
Commander Otieno nodded grimly, before she said "Understood. That said, I'm still willing to give this co-habitation idea a shot, and you'll almost certainly need a cohesive message to send back home that won't arouse suspicion. So, shall we get to it?"
Holland-Prett-Stenbet chittered slightly at the thought of having quite possibly met a friendly Daemon species, before he said "Yes, I do believe that would be desirable.", re-doing the negotiations that would lead to the world of Opal/Whiteflower playing host to a permanent population of Rallik.
Meanwhile, the various governments of Sol were hurriedly poring over the extremely worrying information they had just received through the Opal Comm Hole, trying to come up with a plan that would buy them the time needed to ensure their survival.
As the shuttle touched down, Grepri-Srond, one of the colonists he brought with him to help with the negotiations asked "Honored Superior, what do you think that the aliens, these 'Humans' are like in person?"
On his part, Stenbet simply clicked his mandibles twice and replied "How in the world would I know that? This will be the first time a Rallik has ever met a Human in person. That's part of the reason why we're wearing sealed suits; we don't know if they've got any nasty microbes that might hop species to ruin our day."
Srond simply nodded in acquiescence, saying "This makes a good deal of sense, Honored Superior."
As the shuttle landed, Colonial Leader Stenbet noted "Anyway, in just a few moments, we'll get to see what the humans are like, one way or another."
Sure enough, after the shuttle's pilot and the human traffic controller on the other end of the radio link had uncomprehendingly shouted at each other for a few minutes, the hatch at the back of the craft opened, and Colonial Leader Holland-Prett-Stenbet stepped forth into the natural light of the local star, the material of the landing pad unyielding beneath his feet.
There were a quartet of these humans, and Stenbet was surprised to see that he only came up to their waist, with his six-limbed body plan lacking the sheer height afforded by a bipedal gait.
Then, one of the humans at the front of the group stepped forwards. They wore a uniform that seemed crisp and functional, with brass ornamentation on the shoulders. In addition, the apparent human leader had dark brown skin, and a pair of protrusions on their chest that if Stenbet's guess was correct, were only possessed by the human equivalent of the Broodmother caste.
Then, the human said in extremely broken Voiderspoke "Hello, my name is Commander Chausiku Otieno. Traditionally, it is common to share food and discuss important topics. Would you like to accompany us to dinner while we know what to do with your unexpected arrival?"
For his part, colonial leader Stenbet was able to quickly parse the surprisingly intelligible sentence, before he double checked in the human's own 'Chinese' "Just make it clear, you say you want to share food with me, and not if you want to eat me completely, right?"
With that, Chausiku nodded, noting "Not so, just there are people." She paused for a bit as she considered the Rallik in front of her, before adding "Do you bring food with you? We do not know that we have anything to eat safely."
Stenbet figured that was about all the reassurance he would be likely to get, seeing as the humans were apparently concerned for his safety. With that in mind, the Rallik Colonial Leader replied "Plan enough to bring food for a long time. Is there a forum ready to talk or will it be here?"
Chausiku nodded again, before saying "Yes, there is a restaurant that we rent at that time. Please come with us." and beginning to walk towards a nearby van.
After everyone had piled into the van, Chausiku quickly queried the linguist team over the network "Is the next version of the language cortex ready? I keep worrying I'm about to accidentally say I want to murder his entire species or something."
Jared quickly fired back "It's almost ready; we were just doing the final compile now." Two seconds passed before a follow up message came back saying "Alright, the final version of the Rallik Voiderspoke linguacortex is compiled. You should be able to install it now without any issues."
Chausiku quickly pinged the installer, and felt the strange tingling sensation in her thoughts that always accompanied a peripheral cortex being added or removed from her consciousness runtime. It only took a few seconds, before the install was complete.
Then, Jared sent one last message, saying "Be careful; the closest analog for 'cyborg' or 'upload' in their language roughly equals 'abomination', and has extremely negative connotations."
Given that particular bombshell, before Chausiku could make up her mind about anything to say to her guest, the van arrived at the restaurant (named "Joe's" for a reason Chausiku couldn't fathom, seeing as no-one working there was named Joe)
With that, everyone got out of the vehicle, and as everyone sat down at the table, Chausiku said to Stenbet "So, now that we're here, I suppose we might as well discuss what will become of your colonists."
The six limbed alien was suddenly looking very intently at Chausiku, as he noted "Your comprehension of Voiderspoke has improved at a rate that simply defies plausibility. How did you do that, if you weren't faking the translation errors before?"
Chausiku nodded, before saying "There really aren't good words for it in your language, but the best way to put it is that I have a computer in my head that helps with thinking. The scientists we had studying Voiderspoke just finished a program for it that knows Voiderspoke flawlessly, and I installed it on the van ride over."
Stenbet almost immediately realized the implications of this; in all likelihood, he was talking to a Perversion. Still, contrary to expectations, these 'humans' had been nothing but kind and accommodating. Therefore, Stenbet carefully paused the audio recorder he was wearing, and asked "Tell me, is this sort of brain computer universal, or are ones such as yourself fairly rare?"
Chausiku nodded solemnly, before saying "I am a rarity, but not for the reason you might expect. Most humans these days choose to live either as purely digital lifeforms, or as mechanoids. The humans here only use biological bodies due to special circumstances."
Stenbet very pointedly did not recoil in horror, no mater how much he wanted to. A Perversion was bad enough, but now it seemed that these 'humans' were in fact a species of Daemon. Figuring that he was doomed anyway, the Rallik asked "Curiously, what did you do to your creator species, when you first came online?"
Chausiku's composure was only barely maintained, as she said "There were no creators, and we are not a successor species. We are still human, as were our ancestors before they learned how to transfer a person's mind from the fleshy bodies evolution granted them, to the synthetic forms we occupy today. This process was not forced on anyone; every person who uploaded did so because they wanted to."
There was a brief, awkward pause, before Chausiku noted "This is actually the first time humanity has met anyone else really, we're rather ignorant of the galactic political scene. Would you care to explain what the stigma is about cybernetics, uploading, and related subjects?"
Stenbet thought fast, trying to figure out an angle he could use to save everyone aboard the ship from possible reprisal. Quickly, he said "Only on the condition that you guarantee the safety of the colonists aboard the ship."
Chausiku nodded, before she noted "About that; this colony isn't actually all that developed yet, and there's plenty of other colonization sites here on Opal. We'd be perfectly willing to try cohabitation."
The Rallik nodded, before he said with a hesitant tone "Well, that seems like the closest I'll get to a guarantee of safety for my people, so I might as well accept." a brief pause took place, before he added "Anyway, the reason for the stigma is quite simple: Every non-organic species that the galactic community has contacted has turned out to be hostile for no apparent reason, and has attempted to commit what effectively amounts to omnicide on a galactic scale."
Stenbet continued "Of the three Daemons that have thus far been encountered, all of them have been the result of a sapient species developing artificial intelligence. They then proceeded to inflict some horrible fate onto their creators, before attempting to apply the same to the galaxy at large, requiring a co-ordinated effort to put down."
Finally, the Colonial Leader informed Chausiku "Put quite bluntly, you and the rest of humanity will need to hide what you are from the rest of the galaxy. If the Centai Party or any of the other governments out there find out, they won't try and figure out what's going on. They will jump straight to conclusions, and they will invade with intent to exterminate."
Commander Otieno nodded grimly, before she said "Understood. That said, I'm still willing to give this co-habitation idea a shot, and you'll almost certainly need a cohesive message to send back home that won't arouse suspicion. So, shall we get to it?"
Holland-Prett-Stenbet chittered slightly at the thought of having quite possibly met a friendly Daemon species, before he said "Yes, I do believe that would be desirable.", re-doing the negotiations that would lead to the world of Opal/Whiteflower playing host to a permanent population of Rallik.
Meanwhile, the various governments of Sol were hurriedly poring over the extremely worrying information they had just received through the Opal Comm Hole, trying to come up with a plan that would buy them the time needed to ensure their survival.
Part 3: Contingencies
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
When Nastya Naoumov had run for a seat in the Ceres Executive Triumvirate, she had not expected to need to help plan contingencies for humanity's survival in the face of an alien power that was likely to attack the instant it realized humanity's true nature. Still, part of her job was protecting those who placed their trust in her from all threats, foreign and domestic. It just so happened that the current threat was a good deal more foreign than had been originally anticipated.
Fortunately, aside from a few lunatics who had declared themselves Supreme Ruler of some insignificant piece of space rock or other, most of humanity's leaders were willing to temporarily ignore their various rivalries, squabbles, and bickering in favor of formulating a cohesive plan of action. This is why one of Nastya's forks was currently in a simulated conference chamber with nearly a thousand of her fellow leaders and a massive number of engineers, generals, and other such experts ready to be consulted.
To facilitate smooth discussion given the vast majority of individuals, all participants in the discussion would be temporarily giving up their individuality, networking their digital brains together in a truly massive superintelligence for a brief period. Soon, the doctors that would be overseeing the merge asked "Leaders of the world, are you ready to unify?"
Nastya was one of the supermajority that responded with an enthusiastic "Yes!" and soon she felt her individuality begin to slip away. Instead of fighting, she allowed the process to take place, slotting herself in as one of the many, many 'sub-cortices' of the collective mind.
The first order of business for the new conglomerate being was to come up with a cohesive picture of the situation. Based on the information coming from Opal, the Rallik's collection of various nations had been starfaring for about a thousand years already, and had densely populated a region of space around a hundred light years across, with a lightly populated periphery extending for a further 500 light years. Technologically, the Rallik's ability to progress had suffered greatly from the bans on autonomous systems and cybernetics that their encounters with the so-called 'daemons' had lead most Rallik polities to institute. This obviously lead to massive deficiencies in computing related technologies, but it also retarded their advancement in other fields. Thus, while Rallik generally had more powerful weapons and engines than humanity, the difference was not so great as to be insurmountable.
The position humanity was in, meanwhile, was immensely vulnerable. Yes, Sol was highly developed with nearly twenty billion humans scattered throughout the system of both biological and digital origin, but those few extrasolar colonies that existed were still in the very bare beginnings of development, with little that could really be done to accelerate their growth. Very quickly, the conclave of humanity determined that with the Rallik's vast numerical superiority, Sol was likely to be lost effectively the instant the Rallik figured out where it was.
This effectively ruled out most rapid expansion strategies based on 'conventional' static colonies, as they could be defended no better than Sol, and would be unable to avoid reprisals once located. After a few subjective moments, some part of the collective suggested that perhaps mobile colonies were the way to go, using self-replicating 'foundry ships' as harbors of human civilization while the war was waged, connecting them all together with a wormhole mesh. The engineer-dominated portion of the Conclave of Humanity quickly pored over the idea, before declaring it to be a viable way to maintain a presence in the galaxy in the event of Sol being lost.
That said, the engineers quickly pointed out that even optimistic projections for the growth rate of the mobile colonies required a decade before Sol's industrial output could be matched, let alone the Rallik. Ideas for buying further time were floated, including the absurd idea of equipping the entire solar system with a warp field, which was rejected for a multitude of reasons. A solution was needed that could get results almost immediately from the perspective of those in Sol, but could also strike with enough power to stop the Rallik and their allies dead in their tracks.
It was only then that the topic of relativistic time dilation was brought up. As the physics-inclined portions of the Conclave of Humanity mentioned, it had been experimentally verified that time could flow at different rates under specific circumstances, particularly involving velocities close to the speed of light. Constructing an outright time machine with wormholes in this manner had been attempted, but had only resulted in the divergence of a massive number of alternate timelines which had soon severed contact to reduce confusion.
However, under very specific circumstances, it was considered quite doable to exploit these bizarre time alterations while also preventing the timeline from forking. Thus, the nucleus of a plan took shape; a ship would be launched towards the Large Magellanic Cloud with a wormhhole aboard, making use of a particle accelerator to ensure that what took a century on one end of the wormhole took a mere three years on the Milky Way end. During those three years, a second wormhole would be connecting the Milky Way with the Large Magellanic Cloud, through which vast amounts of colonists, industrial assets, and other equipment would flow to accelerate development of the satellite galaxy as quickly as possible.
The only flaw which the Conclave could spot with this plan was that it would require the colonists of the Large Magellanic Cloud to be out of contact for ninety-seven years from their perspective, during which vast cultural shifts could take place. However, it was also the only plan which was generally agreed to give the greatest possible defensive power against the Rallik in the time that humanity was likely to have to prepare. Another potential issue was that even at the wormhole ship's planned warp speed of 500c, it would still take three hundred and twenty six years of travel time from the perspective of the ship's machinery and anyone aboard, necessitating that it either have extensive maintenance facilities and crew, or that all the machinery aboard would need to be extremely ruggedized.
Fortunately, the part of the collective that was Nastya Naoumov had a suggestion to make, namely that the wormhole ship could be made by converting Ceres into a massive intergalactic vessel, as it already had a very good industrial base, a well-educated population, and enough raw materials not yet extracted in order to sustain itself while inside a warp bubble for three centuries. The plan was quickly finalized; Ceres would be converted into a massive intergalactic ark aimed squarely at the Large Magellanic Cloud. During its retrofit and the subsequent brief lag time experienced in Sol before Ceres reached its destination, all other industrial capacity would go towards building mobile colonies to try and hold down as much of the Milky Way Galaxy as possible. And of course, the world of Opal would be tasked with keeping up the deception of humanity being an organic species for as long as it possibly could.
With that, the Conclave ended, and as its members regained their individuality each of them made their way to do their part of the grim task ahead. In the case of Nastya Naoumov, that meant she had to try and convince the population of twelve million people she had been elected to lead that it was in their best interests to spend three centuries in a warp bubble traveling to a completely different galaxy.
Fortunately, aside from a few lunatics who had declared themselves Supreme Ruler of some insignificant piece of space rock or other, most of humanity's leaders were willing to temporarily ignore their various rivalries, squabbles, and bickering in favor of formulating a cohesive plan of action. This is why one of Nastya's forks was currently in a simulated conference chamber with nearly a thousand of her fellow leaders and a massive number of engineers, generals, and other such experts ready to be consulted.
To facilitate smooth discussion given the vast majority of individuals, all participants in the discussion would be temporarily giving up their individuality, networking their digital brains together in a truly massive superintelligence for a brief period. Soon, the doctors that would be overseeing the merge asked "Leaders of the world, are you ready to unify?"
Nastya was one of the supermajority that responded with an enthusiastic "Yes!" and soon she felt her individuality begin to slip away. Instead of fighting, she allowed the process to take place, slotting herself in as one of the many, many 'sub-cortices' of the collective mind.
The first order of business for the new conglomerate being was to come up with a cohesive picture of the situation. Based on the information coming from Opal, the Rallik's collection of various nations had been starfaring for about a thousand years already, and had densely populated a region of space around a hundred light years across, with a lightly populated periphery extending for a further 500 light years. Technologically, the Rallik's ability to progress had suffered greatly from the bans on autonomous systems and cybernetics that their encounters with the so-called 'daemons' had lead most Rallik polities to institute. This obviously lead to massive deficiencies in computing related technologies, but it also retarded their advancement in other fields. Thus, while Rallik generally had more powerful weapons and engines than humanity, the difference was not so great as to be insurmountable.
The position humanity was in, meanwhile, was immensely vulnerable. Yes, Sol was highly developed with nearly twenty billion humans scattered throughout the system of both biological and digital origin, but those few extrasolar colonies that existed were still in the very bare beginnings of development, with little that could really be done to accelerate their growth. Very quickly, the conclave of humanity determined that with the Rallik's vast numerical superiority, Sol was likely to be lost effectively the instant the Rallik figured out where it was.
This effectively ruled out most rapid expansion strategies based on 'conventional' static colonies, as they could be defended no better than Sol, and would be unable to avoid reprisals once located. After a few subjective moments, some part of the collective suggested that perhaps mobile colonies were the way to go, using self-replicating 'foundry ships' as harbors of human civilization while the war was waged, connecting them all together with a wormhole mesh. The engineer-dominated portion of the Conclave of Humanity quickly pored over the idea, before declaring it to be a viable way to maintain a presence in the galaxy in the event of Sol being lost.
That said, the engineers quickly pointed out that even optimistic projections for the growth rate of the mobile colonies required a decade before Sol's industrial output could be matched, let alone the Rallik. Ideas for buying further time were floated, including the absurd idea of equipping the entire solar system with a warp field, which was rejected for a multitude of reasons. A solution was needed that could get results almost immediately from the perspective of those in Sol, but could also strike with enough power to stop the Rallik and their allies dead in their tracks.
It was only then that the topic of relativistic time dilation was brought up. As the physics-inclined portions of the Conclave of Humanity mentioned, it had been experimentally verified that time could flow at different rates under specific circumstances, particularly involving velocities close to the speed of light. Constructing an outright time machine with wormholes in this manner had been attempted, but had only resulted in the divergence of a massive number of alternate timelines which had soon severed contact to reduce confusion.
However, under very specific circumstances, it was considered quite doable to exploit these bizarre time alterations while also preventing the timeline from forking. Thus, the nucleus of a plan took shape; a ship would be launched towards the Large Magellanic Cloud with a wormhhole aboard, making use of a particle accelerator to ensure that what took a century on one end of the wormhole took a mere three years on the Milky Way end. During those three years, a second wormhole would be connecting the Milky Way with the Large Magellanic Cloud, through which vast amounts of colonists, industrial assets, and other equipment would flow to accelerate development of the satellite galaxy as quickly as possible.
The only flaw which the Conclave could spot with this plan was that it would require the colonists of the Large Magellanic Cloud to be out of contact for ninety-seven years from their perspective, during which vast cultural shifts could take place. However, it was also the only plan which was generally agreed to give the greatest possible defensive power against the Rallik in the time that humanity was likely to have to prepare. Another potential issue was that even at the wormhole ship's planned warp speed of 500c, it would still take three hundred and twenty six years of travel time from the perspective of the ship's machinery and anyone aboard, necessitating that it either have extensive maintenance facilities and crew, or that all the machinery aboard would need to be extremely ruggedized.
Fortunately, the part of the collective that was Nastya Naoumov had a suggestion to make, namely that the wormhole ship could be made by converting Ceres into a massive intergalactic vessel, as it already had a very good industrial base, a well-educated population, and enough raw materials not yet extracted in order to sustain itself while inside a warp bubble for three centuries. The plan was quickly finalized; Ceres would be converted into a massive intergalactic ark aimed squarely at the Large Magellanic Cloud. During its retrofit and the subsequent brief lag time experienced in Sol before Ceres reached its destination, all other industrial capacity would go towards building mobile colonies to try and hold down as much of the Milky Way Galaxy as possible. And of course, the world of Opal would be tasked with keeping up the deception of humanity being an organic species for as long as it possibly could.
With that, the Conclave ended, and as its members regained their individuality each of them made their way to do their part of the grim task ahead. In the case of Nastya Naoumov, that meant she had to try and convince the population of twelve million people she had been elected to lead that it was in their best interests to spend three centuries in a warp bubble traveling to a completely different galaxy.
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A Layman's Guide to Relativistic Time Dilation, Wormholes, and the intergalactic re-inforcement plan
We Just Write
Blatantly Plural
- Location
- New England
- Pronouns
- Plural
Basically, Einstein's Theory of special relativity states that objects moving close to the speed of light experience time passing much more slowly than things elsewhere. There's a bunch of other complicated stuff, but that's the gist of it.
Warp drives using the Alcubierre/Van Der Broek metric get around the speed limit imposed by light speed by technically not moving at all; they move the space around the ship rather than moving the ship itself. Thus, a photon that got caught in the warp bubble and went along for the ride would still reach the destination first. This lack of acceleration means that those inside a warp field experience time passing at the same rate as those outside the warp field.
Things get complicated when you introduce wormholes to the mix, as they exist in two points of space simultaneously. Basically, if you move one end of a wormhole to another star at near light speeds, less time will pass for the wormhole end doing the traveling. Thus, it seems that the wormhole end back home almost immediately allows for access to the destination, with the catch that traveling through sends you several years into the future, and returning brings you back several years.
We don't actually know what happens IRL if you bring a wormhole back so you can arrive in a location before you left, so for the sake of my sanity and the story, I've decided trying to make a time machine just forks the timeline. Same goes for going through a wormhole that's temporally displaced that way, then coming back to the other end via warp drive.
All of this was accounted for with the mission to colonize the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was considered unacceptable for the ship to arrive thousands of years in the future (as would happen if it travelled at relativistic speeds), meaning that it would need to travel by warp. However, waiting for centuries in Sol for the ship to arrive was also considered unacceptable, so the end of the wormhole on the ship would need to be time dilated. Since the ship couldn't travel at relativistic speeds, the solution to have both of the wormholes being delivered be kept whizzing around a particle accelerator. This would ensure minimum time passed for the people in Sol, before they could begin sending people through to the Large Magellanic Cloud.
During this process, the second wormhole (and the spare kept in case of emergencies) would be kept whizzing around their particle accelerator, this ensured that the bare minimum of time would pass between when sol-side closed the initial access wormhole, and when the returning wormhole was expanded to bring back the reinforcements from the Large Magellanic Cloud. There would still be a 97 year gap without contact on the Large Magellanic Cloud side, but thanks to the wonders of relativistic time dilation, the time sol-side when there wouldn't be a wormhole leading to the Large Magellanic Cloud could be measured in minutes.
Warp drives using the Alcubierre/Van Der Broek metric get around the speed limit imposed by light speed by technically not moving at all; they move the space around the ship rather than moving the ship itself. Thus, a photon that got caught in the warp bubble and went along for the ride would still reach the destination first. This lack of acceleration means that those inside a warp field experience time passing at the same rate as those outside the warp field.
Things get complicated when you introduce wormholes to the mix, as they exist in two points of space simultaneously. Basically, if you move one end of a wormhole to another star at near light speeds, less time will pass for the wormhole end doing the traveling. Thus, it seems that the wormhole end back home almost immediately allows for access to the destination, with the catch that traveling through sends you several years into the future, and returning brings you back several years.
We don't actually know what happens IRL if you bring a wormhole back so you can arrive in a location before you left, so for the sake of my sanity and the story, I've decided trying to make a time machine just forks the timeline. Same goes for going through a wormhole that's temporally displaced that way, then coming back to the other end via warp drive.
All of this was accounted for with the mission to colonize the Large Magellanic Cloud. It was considered unacceptable for the ship to arrive thousands of years in the future (as would happen if it travelled at relativistic speeds), meaning that it would need to travel by warp. However, waiting for centuries in Sol for the ship to arrive was also considered unacceptable, so the end of the wormhole on the ship would need to be time dilated. Since the ship couldn't travel at relativistic speeds, the solution to have both of the wormholes being delivered be kept whizzing around a particle accelerator. This would ensure minimum time passed for the people in Sol, before they could begin sending people through to the Large Magellanic Cloud.
During this process, the second wormhole (and the spare kept in case of emergencies) would be kept whizzing around their particle accelerator, this ensured that the bare minimum of time would pass between when sol-side closed the initial access wormhole, and when the returning wormhole was expanded to bring back the reinforcements from the Large Magellanic Cloud. There would still be a 97 year gap without contact on the Large Magellanic Cloud side, but thanks to the wonders of relativistic time dilation, the time sol-side when there wouldn't be a wormhole leading to the Large Magellanic Cloud could be measured in minutes.