Chapter 21 - Ancient History

   In the morning, the relaxed and slightly sleepy atmosphere continued. It reminded Joe and Ben both, of the morning after a big party. Tired and calm, talking light or deep. Partying was some kind of truth serum in its own right.

   Joe had about given up on his desire to learn a few words, as he liked to do when around anyone that spoke a foreign language. He always did maintain, that if all you could manage was thank you, that was enough. And a name. But their language deemed impossible. It was guttural and quick. Odd inflections up and down. Their vocal cords and throats and sinus shapes and whatever else went into their language and the sounds that made it up? He couldn't get anywhere.

   He settled on the beginning sound from his host's name. A throaty "Brack-a-", well? Something. He started calling him "Brack".

   Brack in the morning did as he promised. They were going to take a few days break, in light of the breakthrough with units and preparing the units for the math now able to come. Where had all the assholes gone. Ancient history now.

   As it turned out, they had like any race? Once been less than they were now. Humans had once been cavemen. Primitive versions of what humans now were. They were no different in that regard. All adults were once children, and all races had their origins. Actually, the story sounded vaguely familiar to Joe.

    They were once hunters and gatherers, before any technology had begun. They hunted for food, they gathered for food. The planet was not quite a jungle, but it was warm. The winter was what Joe thought of as warm. The tilt of the planet was less than earth, so winter was a much milder temperature swing.

   As the population increased over time? Fights erupted over access to things. They fought over resources and territories. Ideologies. All that stuff. The periodic wars grew with technology. Peacetime technology turned to wartime technology. Then? He described the last conflict a long time ago. He did it the way he translated everything. A brief explanation, followed by a list of words to convey his meaning explicitly.

   "A big war. War. Fight. Struggle. Conflict. Millions dead."

   Brack seemed... what. Apologetic, or ashamed. That his progenitors were capable of this.

   Joe understood. From all he described slowly? They had their great wars. And as anyone that survives a "great war" can tell you? Nothing great about it. You maybe had good guys and bad guys, but it kind of depended on who was telling the story, didn't it. The "good" guys had to fight like the "bad" guys did, or there was no chance. It sounded very similar to earth's history. Wars, conflicts. Over and over. Until you had that big, knockdown, drag out fight. No holds barred, the war to end all wars. Hell, on earth Joe thought? We had it twice.

   All told, world war one had claimed up to six million lives. When you included soldiers and all civilians dead or unaccounted for. World war two not long later? Estimates ranged up to sixty million all told. Christ, Joe always thought. Look at that progression of death, would you? We're stupid enough to do this again, we're looking at probably 600 million this time around. We always seem to go for a factor of ten increase in total deaths.

   They had done it. They had their world wars. Humans had the atomic bombs, a new step up in killing technology. You could get right to the point, of wholesale slaughter of innocent lives who were unfortunate enough to be civilians born on the wrong side of the imaginary line on the map.

   They had their own "ultimate weapons" as well. Anti-matter. Technology had brought doomsday weapons. And just like the first use for fission on earth had been as an ultimate weapon of war? They later turned it to civilian peacetime use. Nuclear power. Its easy to release fission in the form of an atomic bomb, a crude use for a new technology only recently understood. Harder was to control the nuclear fission, and release the power slowly, and get useful generated power out of it.

   They were the same. Matter colliding with anti-matter? Produced nuclear bomb style detonations. The thing was, though. Where kilograms of fissionable material were required for first atomic bombs and the later thermonuclear bombs? A mere gram of anti-matter touching absolutely any regular matter released something an order of magnitude higher in yield to even thermonuclear bombs. Yet, no radiation.

   Wow. You could "win" now.

   You could take over the enemy's land. Problem was, with holes blown down to the bedrock? You were trying to live on no topsoil, the water seeped into the cracks and was gone. There was nothing left. There was no way to farm. No way to hunt. There was nothing to gather. They had all but destroyed their own planet. The people that had survived? Were thrust back to low technology. They got it back quicker, but it had been a hard lesson to learn. Then? They slowly decided.

   Never again.

   Where had all the assholes gone? They had gotten rid of them. They fought another way, without a shot fired in anger. They bred them out. It had become a cultural norm, to only breed with people that had desirable characteristics. People that had propensity for serious violent crimes? Were avoided as breeding stock. They practiced animal husbandry, on their own race.

   It worked, too. Generation by generation? IQ rose, crime fell. Nothing is perfect, but... it was light years ahead of their past. Then, came the genetic technology. Genetic engineering. And? The ability to produce copies of people from trace DNA left behind.

   Cloning. They were able to clone people they thought were worth it. The way it was described to Joe? It sounded like Einstein and Ghandi were cloned and put out into the general population wholesale. For better breeding stock. Prize bulls, put out in the pasture to service the dairy herd. And the result? What had started with animal husbandry, continued. Now, with cloning people thought to be the smartest and the most peaceful and logical? Their program kicked into high gear and continued for a very long time.

   This was ancient history. Joe and Ben were seeing the end result a zillion years later. High technology. Perpetual peace. Intellectualism all but worshiped. Whatever is was that you did? You wanted to do it as well as you could. And pass it on to others.

   Joe realized he was right when he started thinking of them as human. They were very, very human. They had in their past, all the best and worst of human nature. He thought he had found something close to utopia, for a fellow intellectual. But, it rested on the ancient foundations of the usual. War and conflict. It took them several world wars, and weapons more terrible than the atomic bombs to learn their lesson and they almost destroyed themselves in he process.

   Then? They took radical solutions. Animal husbandry on themselves, followed by next genetic engineering.

   Eventually, technology reached a certain point and they were contacted from without. What they were doing with Joe? They were passing on what had been done for them. Allowing them to advance even quicker than they were already, to survive the collapsing of their own universe... and to escape into a younger one.

   Understanding the big bang and what went on before there was matter and gravity, the pure energy state of that compression and the first precious tenth of a second after? The math and physics of that, was the key to it all. It led to anti-matter, and understanding it better. Then, the ability to bypass the instantaneous release of energy when matter and anti-matter collided. To control its speed of release.

   He showed Joe example after example. What looked like little lithium ion battery packs? Never needed recharged. Electrical power once this technology was mastered? Was naturally not limitless, but... you could do things never before possible. The crafts he saw? Ran on electrical power ultimately. Magnetic ion drives, was how it translated. A flashlight, a battery powered tool or even heater or air conditioner? Would last till long after your children were dead. A bank of what looked similar to big car batteries? Powered the big craft they used.

   If they were smart enough to avoid killing themselves, with yet another "ultimate weapon"? This, was their future. Joe sighed. The governments? Would likely start fighting over who had this technology and could control it and make their own country superior and richer. At first, Brack said? Probably. Its what they had done way back when. But... as the technology got more common, the need to go to war over dwindling resources? Would be pointless.

   Once mastered, the slow release of anti-matter power could be channeled into heat or electricity. There would be a few big explosions, early accidents. It was unavoidable. But? No radiation. Joe thought about it. Chernobyl. It had been a set back. But progress continued and they got better over time. It would be the same thing.

   Joe finally got around to asking, in this awake and relaxed morning after truth serum atmosphere. Like kids the day after a sleepover, lounging around talking. Where had his race came from originally. Joe explained his own race, humans? Had evolved from primates originally, slowly over millions of years of time.

   Once he got Brack to understand what he meant, he was led over to the big computer workstation he so marveled at. The language meant nothing, but the graphics showed him what he had to see to have his question answered. Their old original ancestor? Had been a sort of primate. But it was very cat-like in many ways.

   They had evolved from what looked like a small monkey crossed with a cat.