Empire Planets

Two days of workouts, sports and sex later, they found themselves orbiting a blue-green planet named Ardent. Slightly smaller than Earth, but it had 2 small moons and it appeared to only have one massive continent that accounted for roughly one-third of the surface area of the planet, although there were many fairly large islands in the ocean. The continent itself appeared to be split into 4 regions by either water or mountains, so despite being one continent, each region was probably quite independent of the others.

As they approached the planet, they weren’t hailed, so they proceeded with scans to assess the planet and to give anyone on the surface time to contact them. The scans revealed that the planet was not very advanced, with one region looking more advanced than the rest of the continent. The buildings in that region were larger and had more steel infrastructure. They also had far more pollution! Everywhere else on the continent appeared to be mainly wood or rock construction and only a couple of the islands closest to the continent appeared to be populated and even then it was a small population.

Overall, it looked like the planet was just on the verge of an industrial revolution. The bigger cities seemed to have electricity and radio signals, but didn’t appear to have much beyond that. The continent had quite a lot of rivers, so their electricity was primarily hydro driven, so at least it was clean energy, but the mines, factories and quarries were producing quite a lot of pollution in some of the cities.

It also appeared that they had steam powered vehicles such as trains and tractors, but it looked like the primary mode of transportation was either walking, animal drawn carts and carriages or, if you were near the water ... boats. The total population of the planet was around 500 million, so Mark guessed the planet was a lot like Earth in the early to mid 1700s.

Since they probably didn’t even have the technology to hail space ships, they decided to take a cloaked shuttle to the surface with the decision to just head toward the largest population centre on the planet, if there was some kind of leadership, that’s likely where it would be.

As they approached the largest city, which was on the eastern coast, Maren did a slow fly by as they looked for a building that looked like it might be a government type building. Seeing a large building on a rise, surrounded by green space and a ring road where many paths or roads connected, they figured that was as good of a place to try as any.

Maren landed near the building and exited the shuttle. The group seeming to appear out of thin air to the startled people near where they landed.

As a group of curious people gathered around the group, Mark said aloud, “There is no reason to be afraid, we come in peace.”

To allay their fears, Mark instructed Maren to reveal the shuttle, to a platitude of gasps. Since no one present seemed to be forthcoming with any sort of welcome or introductions, Mark took it upon himself.

“Greetings citizens of Ardent, we are representatives of the Atlantean Federation. Can anyone here direct me to where I might meet your leader?”

Mark was starting to think that maybe they didn’t understand them, until one guy in front just pointed toward the building they had landed near and said, “There.”

Relieved that they did understand them, they looked in the direction he pointed, where they saw a rotund man in a nice suit descending the steps and walking toward them, with a small entourage following close behind.

As he approached he asked, “Are you guys from the Empire?”

Mark bowed to the man and said, “No, we are representatives of the Atlantean Federation, although we did learn of your planet from them. We would like to sit down and talk with you about the possibility of Ardent joining our Federation of planets.”

“That’s what the Empire said as well, but if you’re just going to drag me through a couple days of meetings, telling me all these things you’re going to do to help improve things around here and then never come back again. I don’t have time for that!

I get that we aren’t very advanced compared to you guys with the flying ships and all the fancy gadgets and gizmos, and that we would look very primitive to you, but if you aren’t going to genuinely help us, just leave us alone.”

“The Federation has no intention of making promises and then walking away! In fact, if you would like proof, we can setup one of our outreach centres and leave personnel here to operate it! We aren’t going to abandon our own facilities ... plus, our meetings typically only take a few hours, not days.”

The man looked relieved, “That’s more of a commitment than we ever got from the other guys. Let’s go in and sit down. By the way, welcome to the city of Carston, my name is Benjamin Edison and I’m the President of the World.”

Mark extended his hand to shake as he said, “I am Mark Phoenix, King of the Atlantean Federation and with me is Annabelle, my Queen and my advisers and security, Liyana, Rayven, Solara, Athena, Gyges and Gaderius.”

The President then introduced the other people with him, George Imurshin, his vice-president, Jack Frieze, the mayor of Carston and Tom Connolly, the city planning adviser and the other two guys with the guns were security.

With introductions made, they followed the man up the stairs and into the 3 storey building made of stone and wood with a clock tower and bell.

Inside they were guided to a meeting room with a large table and wooden chairs. There were numerous windows along the exterior walls to provide light and the largest interior wall appeared to be a map of the entire continent.

Once everyone was seated, he asked, “Do you mind if the news sits in on our meeting?”

Mark agreed, as Tom opened the door and shouted, “John! Come sit in on this.”

A few seconds later, a man carrying one of those old exposure cameras and a flash stick came into the room. He set the camera and stick in the corner, sat down in a chair and pulled out some paper and a writing utensil.

Benjamin started off the meeting, “So tell us about this Federation of yours and how you can help us.”

Mark then gestured to Liyana, who pulled out her holocube and did her presentation.

After about an hour, all of the Ardent men were sitting there with their mouths agape and their eyes wide.

After collecting himself, Benjamin laughed, “Well you certainly have a much better sales pitch than the other guys. It was well rehearsed, which means you’ve made the pitch often and add the fact that you have quite a few planets that are already part of the Federation ... that tells me you also have the experience and infrastructure to actually do what you say.”

Mark looked at the map on the wall and asked, “So you are the elected leader of the entire world?”

Benjamin said, “Uh yes, during the Great War about 25 years ago, we invented boomers, which gave us the advantage and we won. So we’re all just one nation now, there’s still some renegades out there, but with your security system I think they could be easily managed.”

Mark looked at Liyana, who he could tell was likely thinking the same thing, but everyone else seemed oblivious to their concern, so Mark changed his tactic a bit, “If I’m understanding this right, you would like for Ardent to join the Federation? Is that correct?”

Benjamin nodded his head, “Of course, we can bypass all the mistakes other civilizations have made and enjoy a better world. Right now, we could really use your medical beds and your transportation, the population is so scattered and our transportation system is so slow, there is little to no medical services in most of the world. Plus I’m sure your education system is far better than ours, we could advance our whole civilization by hundreds of years in no time.”

Mark said, “Exactly! Maybe we should begin by setting up one of our outreach centres in your city? If we can start construction today, it’ll be finished and ready within a day or two, by then we will have come up with a plan for the rest of the world.”

Benjamin agreed as he went to the window that overlooked the city on that side. With most of the buildings being simple single level buildings, from the top of the small rise and the third level of the larger government building offered quite the view. It wasn’t an overly large city, but it did have a population of nearly 20,000.

As he looked at the remains of an old burned out warehouse, he asked, “Do you need a bare site to build on, or can you build on top of the remains of other things?”

Mark said, “We can build pretty much anywhere, but if you have something with lots of rubble, that is actually preferable. Why?”

“Last month, a fire broke out at the textile factory over there. We haven’t had time to demolish and clear the land for reconstruction. If you want you can build there.”

As pretty much everyone got up from the table and went to the windows to see what they were looking at, it was easy to see the blackened remains of the large wooden factory building.

Mark said, “That location will work. Shall we go out and get started?”

Benjamin said, “Let’s go!”, as he led everyone out of the building and they began walking the two blocks over to the lot.

Cricket directed one of the drones to the site, to get a scan of the lot and start developing some plans that would fit that lot shape and size. Solara stopped by the shuttle and grabbed a construx device. Then as they were walking she watched Cricket designing the outreach centre on her wrist console.

Annabelle had noticed the looks that Liyana and Mark had shared and picked up on the subtle change in tactic, so during the walk she whispered to Mark, “I saw the look you and Liyana gave each other at the same time, so I obviously missed something, what was it?,” but Mark just whispered back, “I’ll tell you as soon as we’re back on the Poseidon.”

Once they reached the site, Solara loaded the design Cricket had made into the construx and tossed it toward the middle of the rubble and, within seconds, a holographic representation of the outreach centre they were going to construct. Solara then turned and asked, “Is everyone happy with this design and placement for the outreach centre?”

The President and all of his men were all standing there in awe and her question shook them from their reverie, as they looked at each other and all nodded, so she activated the construx from her wrist console and the building started to construct itself, albeit slower than what Annabelle was expecting.

With the building now under construction Mark said, “The building will be ready in two days time, we will return on the morning of the third day and give you a tour of the facility,” as they shook hands and vowed to meet on the morning of the third day.

Maren had flown the shuttle to where they were building the new outreach centre, so they were all able to board and leave without having to walk back to the government building. As soon as the ramp was closed and the shuttle was in motion, Annabelle looked around at everyone and asked, “You all know the building could be complete by tomorrow morning, yet none of you even so much as raised an eyebrow! What’s going on? What did I miss?”

Gyges just said, “Mark is the single smartest person I have ever met, even without Cricket, everything he does has a purpose, if he says it is going to take a couple of days, there is a reason why it is going to take a couple of days ... I will never question anything he ever says.”

Liyana took over explaining, “The ‘President’ as he calls himself, is not a true president. With the level of technology of this planet, there is no way he was voted into the position by a majority of the population. From what he said, it sounds like he gained power after winning the Great War, so he was likely a high ranking military person that has self-proclaimed himself to be the president, and is probably more like a dictator. Those renegades that our security system will take care of ... they’re likely what’s left of his enemies from the Great War. He thinks our security will take care of them and he’ll just automatically become the leader of the whole planet.

I seriously don’t think he listened to the part about holding elections and the citizens voting their senators into office, or he’s blinded himself with power and has convinced himself that all of the world loves him. While it may actually be true, it sounds like a weapon innovation is what turned the tide of war in their favour. Winning a war simply because you had better weapons, tends to NOT gain you the support of the general population, in fact it often has the opposite effect.”

Mark then added, “We’re going to need to visit some of these other population centres and see if we can’t find more leaders. With the entire planet so limited for transportation, as they are, we are going to have to setup outreach centres in every town.

More or less, make them a probationary member without having the support of a government, but I think we may need to set the vote date out a little further than a year. They’re going to need time to get educated a bit, plus the lack of broadband communication means that any serious candidates for the senate positions will have limited exposure to the public, except in the population centres.

This planet seems to be on a similar developmental path as Earth, and we all know what a mess Earth turned out to be! So, we have the opportunity to help them avoid all of Earth’s mistakes, but it’s going to be a very steep learning curve for them and we need to get the right people in the senate races. This is going to take some time, and we’re going to need a lot of personnel!”

Once they were back on the Poseidon, they all met in the common room of the residence, where Cricket had a holographic map of the entire planet on display with a number of coloured dots scattered amongst the white dots. Each of the islands in the ocean had a green dot, even those without any white dots.

Cricket then said, “The white dots represent the population distribution of the planet, just like every other planet, the densest populations are near rivers, oceans, lakes or mountains. I would build the red dots first, then the blue dots and finally the green dots. That would put an outreach centre in easy reach of over 90% of the population. The locations with red dots are the highest density populations and will likely require multiple centres, but no city seems to be big enough that they should need more than 10 centres.”

Solara then said, “We would need a lot less centres if we developed a public transit system for them.”

Mark nodded, “I agree! They’re pretty simple ... how much technology do we want to give them? If we give them too much and then they decide NOT to join the Federation, the loss of all those amenities could throw this entire planet into civil war. Yet, the more we provide to them, the better chance they would vote to stay in the Federation. The one advantage is that they are primitive, so they don’t really have any large established governments with a lot of laws, so in essence they’re kind of like an infant we would be raising.”

At the mention of raising an infant, Annabelle thought about the child growing inside her, as she put her hands to her belly and said, “If we’re going to raise a child, I think we should afford them all the luxuries we can provide. More or less, mould them into an educated, productive member of society.”

Mark smiled at her, “While that is fine for a child that we get to raise from birth, this situation is more like inheriting a pre-teen step-child. Not quite an adult and still very impressionable, but not wanting to be overprotected or contained. They have some education and are eager to experience new things, but don’t necessarily want to be learn in a traditional setting, they would like to learn on their own. They also might start to think they know everything and don’t need our help, but they definitely don’t realize the amount of responsibility that comes with being an adult and might need to be straightened out every now and then. So we need to make careful steps, because if we push a bit too hard, it could drive them down a path of resentment, which in this case, would most likely be a civil war.”

Annabelle had the biggest smile on her face, “That’s a beautiful analogy, you’re going to make a wonderful father!”

Athena then said, “That was a beautiful analogy. So what’s the game plan then?”

Mark then looked around the room at everyone as he smiled and pointed, “Gyges, Gad, you do short crossing routes at 10 yards. Solara, you’re on a deep post slant. Liyana, do a short stop and go in the middle of the field. Annabelle, you block for her. Athena, you drop back on my left as my emergency outlet. We go on three. OK? Break!”

Everyone looked at Mark with a what-are-you-talking-about look on their faces, as Annabelle started laughing.

Mark smiled, “What? It’s a good game plan! I think Liyana or Solara would have a shot at scoring!”

Athena picked up a nearby pillow and threw it at Mark, “The game plan for THIS planet, you weirdo!”

“Fine! I think we should grab some more construx and follow the sun and visit one or two of the red dots in other parts of the planet ... maybe one red dot in the central region and one red dot in the western region before nightfall.”

The first city they went to, was a city named Durham, which was roughly a third of the way across the continent, along the base of the northern mountain range and on the northwestern edge of a very large lake or inland sea. There were numerous rivers that fed into it from the northern mountains and one major river that flowed out to the southern ocean.

The leader in that city was Patrick Boseman, who seemed like a good compassionate leader and he was very receptive to the Federation. He suggested building an outreach centre in his city and then tomorrow, he would go with them to visit the leaders in many of the other cities.

While visiting with Patrick, he told them all about the Great War, “It wasn’t really much of a war at all, the East developed ships armed with boomers (which they learned were basically cannons) and they sailed along the southern coast, up the rivers and around the inland seas, attacking all the port cities. Sure we’ve had some small battles using weapons in the past, but no one could defend against their ships, so they left a regiment of people behind at every city they conquered to do their bidding as the ships reported back that they had control of each city. The people they left at each city have all since been killed or captured, but it’s unlikely that Benjamin even knows he no longer has any influence there, he still has the ships, so we’re expecting he’ll eventually send them back to check on things.”

The continent was split into 4 regions by either mountains, inland seas and large rivers. The eastern region was the largest in population and size and pretty much extended from the northern mountain range to the Green River, which flowed from the inland sea east of Durham and out to the ocean. Then the central region was between the Green River and the Blue River that flowed from another inland sea out to the ocean. The western region was everything from the Blue River to the ocean and north to the mountains. The fourth region was the northern region on the other side of the mountain range that extended across almost the entire land mass, with only a half dozen valleys allowing passage through. Patrick said the northern region was sparsely populated due to the land being riddled with rivers and deep fjords that made travel difficult, but he did know the leaders from two of the settlements up there that he could introduce them to.

The meeting with Patrick at Durham took longer than expected, so after Patrick and his city planner showed them where to build their outreach centre. Similar to Carston, the site they were giving them to build, was atop the ruins of an old fort that was destroyed during the Great War. It was a much larger site than the one in Carston, and the more they talked to Patrick, the more they were leaning toward Durham becoming the central city for the Federation, so they decided to build one of the larger outreach centres there, since it was a logical choice for a Federation hub from a logistics standpoint.

They started the construction and went to dinner. The restaurant was actually quite decent, it was down on the pier and featured mainly seafood, but they also had lots of other produce and vegetables, so there was something for everyone.

After the meal, they walked back and although the outreach centre wasn’t quite done, the outer shell was complete, they went inside and gave Patrick a quick tour, even though they couldn’t actually go into some of the other areas yet. He and his men were astonished at the speed of the construction and all the advanced technology.

Promising to meet them tomorrow morning, they left the building and returned to the Poseidon.

Upon returning to the Poseidon, they called Kaleb and asked him to organize a transport of security and personnel to staff the outreach centres on this planet. He also started the construction of 4 more Sentinels, which were going to be sent to each of the planets the Empire had found. He wasn’t sure of the status of the other planets, but they would know soon enough.

Mark had a restless sleep that night, considering the various options for Ardent and speculating of what to expect from the other planets that the Empire had found, but never really did anything with. He did however have their Sentinel deploy a drone dropper over the planet to begin distributing security drones.

The next morning, they returned to Durham with a second shuttle full of people to staff the outreach centre. Patrick saw the shuttles fly in, so he soon met up with them at the outreach centre. They gave him a more in-depth tour, now that everything was operational. He was even more impressed to see the public already in the facility and using the services.

After seeing the bustling outreach centre, Patrick suggested a change of plans, “Rather than going to visit the largest cities, maybe we could bring them here, so they can see for themselves. Plus it would give everyone a chance to sit down and talk.”

The outreach centre did have a couple of the 50 passenger shuttle bus lifts on the roof, so Cricket piloted one as they visited 10 cities in the central region, collecting the leaders, and then visiting the 2 settlements that Patrick knew from the other side of the mountains. Then they headed back over the mountains and across the other inland sea to the western region, visiting 12 more cities with their leaders eagerly boarding the shuttle bus for the trip back to Durham.

Once back at Durham, everyone got a tour of the facility and were amazed that the public was wandering around as happy as could be, talking about all the wonders they had seen. Apparently word had gotten around that the medical centre in the outreach centre could cure anything, so there was a lineup of people waiting for medibeds, while many others were telling people about the free food that was available.

One of the innovations that Commander Northrop and the crew of the Cleito had made on Maaku, was the creation of autonomous outreach centres. They featured public washrooms, showers and recycling on the main level, along with a communal meal pavilion they had redesigned for the locals to organize their own communal meals, with the food synth menus only having a selection of basic meals with easy to follow recipes that anyone could follow. It still only operated during the breakfast and supper times and whoever volunteered to organize each meal was the only person that could activate the food synths, although the drink stations were public access at any time, offering water, milk, juices, teas, coffees and hot chocolate. They even had a donation box so the volunteers received some compensation.

The second level of the outreach centre featured the transit stop, library and a holographic concierge to identify people and allow them access to the transit and library. Then the bigger outreach centres offered all the amenities, including being the hubs for space transports. More or less they created a hub and spoke network of outreach centres that significantly reduced the amount of time and personnel needed to get a planet started on their probation period, plus got the population thinking and working more as a community, rather than for themselves. The main staffing requirements were security, which even then was mostly supervising existing local security.

Another interesting feature they had made was that in lieu of the missing amenities on the second level, they had created some office spaces and meeting rooms, so the town council could relocate their offices into the outreach centres. Making them more accessible to the public, and giving them access to computers and the communication network so they could talk to the leaders of other cities and to their governors. The computers, of course, offered guidelines for efficiently running a city the way a federated planet would. Then, depending on the footprint of the building, they could always build higher to add more offices.

Finally, to ease the strain on the community from having to care for criminals, the levels below the surface were a prison, one that was far more secure than anything the locals could build, plus it was more sanitary for the prisoners and each cell featured a clothing synth which provided scrubs, a bed, a sink and a toilet, as well as they were provided basic food and water without taxing the local community. Each cell also included library access, so they could read the laws, learn about the Federation and there was a language course that was available for free to help people learn the common language, in case they natively spoke something else.

When they finally got the leaders into one of the meeting rooms, Liyana did her Federation spiel for all of them and they were all eager to welcome an outreach centre in their city.

The meeting room featured a wall that could display various maps. By default it displayed the map of the town or city, but they could also zoom out to show the surrounding area and region, and out to display the world. The city map showed a two dimensional view of the city with lines representing the roads and as they zoomed out, they eventually saw the regional lines and dots with names representing municipalities.

Martin Jameson, the leader from Wardington, the largest city on the western coast, asked what all the coloured dots on the regional and world maps were for, since they had never seen such an accurate map of their world, nor had they ever seen a complete map with all the islands in the ocean.

Mark explained, “The dots represent population centres the Federation is considering building outreach centres. The red dots indicate the largest cities where we want to build the larger outreach centres, like this one. The blue dots are medium sized cities and the green dots are small towns, villages and islands, which would get the smaller outreach centres. The larger centres with the red and blue dots will eventually also get a transit service to get people from various points in the city to the local outreach centre.”

As expected, all of the leaders knew of Benjamin, but few had ever met him and no one had anything good to say about the man. Most called him a war monger, and none recognized him as the leader of their world, which brought on the questions of what the Federation hierarchy was.

So Mark explained the political hierarchy, “Towns, villages and cities have mayors as their top ranking official, anything they can’t handle, they would relay to the regional governor, then anything they can’t handle, they would relay to their senator, who then make decisions as a committee. Any issues the senate committee can’t decide, get presented to the king and queen, which is rare. There would likely be 4 to 6 senators total for the entire planet. All positions are elected by the general public and we offer our voting system via our libraries.”

Patrick then got a huge smile, “So you would be the ruler of our world?”

Mark said, “In a manner of speaking, Yes, but there’s a lot of levels of government before I get involved, unless it’s a security issue, which is the only part of the Federation that I directly oversee.”

Martin and many of the other leaders, just had big smiles as well, “I’m OK with that, it just means that Benjamin will NOT be our leader.”

Mark then said, “No he wouldn’t. I’ll visit with the eastern region tomorrow, I think we’ll do kind of the same thing there as we have done here, since this seems to have worked out pretty well. Does anyone know any good leaders in the eastern region?”

Richard, the leader from Portland, a city near the delta of the Green River, said he knew several leaders in the eastern zone, so he offered to go along and introduce them tomorrow.

One of the other leaders then asked, “How long does an elected position hold that office?”

Mark said, “That is to be determined by your senators, but the Federation does recommend 5 years between elections.”