State of play - 2089 (extended) (Patreon)

This Weird-Field World begins in 2089, on an Earth that has managed to stave off the worst predictions of climate and population catastrophe, but one that still struggles with rising sea levels, inequality, food poverty, and disease epidemics.

Humanity is just beginning to reach out in to the solar system with sustained crewed missions to the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt. Over one hundred and eighty thousand people live in Earth orbit, three thousand on the Moon, and hundreds on Mars.

Spaceflight has advanced considerably since the advent of reusable rockets and private space corporations. Whilst getting off Earth still requires traditional rocket engines, spaceflight has been revolutionised by in-orbit assembly and manufacturing platforms, able to construct larger spacecraft, habitats, and space stations. Fusion drives have shortened the flight times to the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt considerably, and have made it possible for crewed missions (and eventually colonising ones) to Mars. Within ten years of the first human on Mars in 2031(Americangeologist Jessica Ball) there were over a thousand scientists and engineers on Mars paving the way for human colonisation. By 2050 there were ten thousand people living on Mars. Journey’s further than the asteroid belt were still out of reach of crewed flight, Jupiter was nearly two years distant, and Saturn over three years.

Earth feels like it’s at the dawn of a new and promising Golden Age, despite the problems that still exist.

The first message was received in May of 2089. After a period of disbelief, skepticism and blame(fakenews), it was the scientists who finally knuckled down to decipher the it. Written in a slightly abstracted form of Base-7, this didn’t take too long and the content of the message became clear.

Earth had picked up a broadcast for a set of instructions on how to build a spaceship. By the time the UN, various organisations, and the couple of dozen governments capable of building the ship had finally decided on a course of action to build it - multinational teams of engineers, UN oversight, sharing of information freely etc - South Africa had already done so.

The first completed ship, christened the Mandela, was a bizarre conglomeration of pipes, cells, and pods, surrounding a crew capsule built for seven. There was zero space for any cargo, bar moderate supplies for the crew, and a host of recording and scientific equipment. This ship seemed to be decked out to prove a point.

After extensive ground tests, which revealed almost nothing about the ship apart from its robust life-support systems, the Mandela took off for the first time in early 2090. Orbital shakedown flights proved the ship to be an intuitive and capable flyer. In May of 2090, exactly a year after the message was discovered, the initial mission to Mars was launched. The Mandela arrived in orbit around the red planet less than three days later.

During this time various governments and agencies attempted to build another ship from the same instructions. All failed. Design and manufacture were checked and rechecked, scientists from the successful Mandela construction were brought in to no avail. The ships simply sat there, inert. All attempts to coax them in to life failed. The South African team began construction of a second ship from the same instructions, to be called Biko, but after several months found the same problem as all the other teams. The Biko simply sat in its construction bay, refusing to do almost anything. The ship was powered, but only the most basic systems operated.

Earth now had one functioning spaceship that was able to journey to Saturn in a single flight, with a flight-time of less than 50 days - rather than the years currently needed. The data it brought back was invaluable in research terms, but from a practical point of view - apart from some minor advances in material sciences - the alien instructions had brought little to the people of Earth. What good was just one(veryfast) spaceship?

Eighteen months after the failed attempt to build the Biko, another message was received. This time there wasn’t just one set of instructions, but three. The three spaceships were all totally different from each other, and from the Mandela. The only similarity was in the style and construction of the weird pods, capsules, modules, and nacelles. One of the ships was huge, measuring over 120m from tip to tip, yet only had room for a crew of one. The next was a similar size to the Mandela, but room for a crew of four and a large storage area that seemed to be made for cargo. The third ship was smaller than all the others, had two identical crew compartments, each with seating for one, and had a very small cargo compartment.

If there was method or design to the types of ship instructions being beamed to earth, nobody had manage to figure it out yet.

The three ships were to be built, overseen by the UN, by China, the US, and the EU. No other agencies, corporations or governments were permitted to attempt to build ships. This obviously didn’t stop rogue building projects starting up. Some were discovered and shut down, some were only rumoured, and some weren’t discovered until it was too late.

Of the three official ship-building projects, two were successful. The EU, and China both managed to produce working ships, almost identical in operation to the Mandela, but with slightly different performance figures. The US attempt to build a ship failed. Nothing seemed amiss during construction, but once completed the ship simply sat inert in its berth. Scientists from South Africa who had successfully built the Mandela, and failed with the Biko consulted with the US, but nothing was found that could explain the dead ship. Until a few weeks later when a new ship, launching out of Russia, was observed. It was identical in design to the ship the US was had built - but it was obviously successful. Once the diplomatic incident had died down the scientific consensus seemed to be that there was something inherently unique about the way the ships manipulated Space/Time, and that meant only one of each specific ship could be built. The way each ship interacted with whatever weird dimensions, forces and fields provided propulsion, seemed to prevent that exact configuration being used elsewhere. There was much discussion about whether or not this effect was proximity based. Would the Biko work if the Mandela was far enough away? The answer to that, after extensive tests, was no. After sending the Mandela out past the orbit of Neptune, testing of the Biko commenced - and it still just sat there like an expensive rock.

Over the next eighty years, at intervals which were as random as could possibly be established, the instructions for another 317 spaceships were received on Earth. Sometimes the messages included instructions for up to a dozen ships, sometimes the instructions were for a single ship. Seventy sets of instructions were received in 2099 for what were obviously interplanetary communications relays. Looking like small ships these provided a massive boost to the speed and bandwidth available for human communications between the planets. 

No instructions were received in 2169. Nor the year after. Or the year after that. People initially thought this was just a random gap in the delivery of instruction broadcasts. There had been a 14 month gap in 2103/4, and then the broadcasts had picked up again as normal. This time there was no return of the broadcast. For the first four or five years many people waited, expecting a new signal. After that humanity began to resign itself to the fact that the messages from the stars had ceased, and that the Earth was once again alone.

Life went on, not as before - for now humanity had a hold in every corner of the solar system, and a population off-Earth of over 2 billion people - but it went on. New industries were created, new ways of living and working, new trends, new fashions. Humanity changed. Gradually the scientists of Earth gleaned more and more information about the Weird-Field physics, expanding their knowledge of the universe and using it to advance technology. By the early 2300s humans were enjoying the benefits of almost limitless power generation, huge advances in medicine, resources were no longer scarce. Orbital farming stations produced 400% more yield than on Earth. Water across the solar system was found to be abundant.

Life flourished. Humanity flourished.

One question was answered, and disappointed. There was no life to be found anywhere else. Not in the subsurface of Mars, not in the oceans of Enceladus or Europa, not around the sulphur vents of Io, and not in the chemical coup of Titan. Not even a fossilised bacterium was found. Humanity was alone in the Solar System. But not alone in the universe.

The Instructors, as they became to be known, were still unknown and unknowable. The transmission point that the instructions had originated from was empty space, as far as could be told from Earth. There wasn’t a star, or a planet, or anything else visible. The broadcast hadn’t started again, and no other signals were ever detected from anywhere else.

For 4.5 billion years Earth had been alone, apart from one tiny eighty year period.