By 2177 the Moon had five hundred thousand human inhabitants. At the same time, the first five thousand were brooding on Mars and the ISA was sending its first manned space vehicle to Jupiter's satellite Io. It would take the energy of a 50 megaton atomic bomb - or about 1% of the energy the Sun spends in a fraction of a second - to send five humans to a barren rock about 375 million miles away from the earth - the equivilant of driving from Houston to El Paso, Texas about a half a million times. But on the day the crew of Jovian I touched down on Io, the live televised transcultural phenomenon International Superstar was favored over the time delayed Ionian landing by a ratio of 3:1. Since advanced spaceprobes were able to transcribe the geography of all things within the solar system with such realistic precision, people already knew what to expect from Io. The power of such advanced computing machines had allowed man to conquest the known universe from his own desk. Wheather or not he knew this was real, he believed it enough.
And such defines the era. A time when fiction and reality was so successfully blurred by technology that time and place were no longer important to a person. Past generations had speculated that humans were incapable of living as pure telecommunicators, but the newer generations proved them wrong. Of course not all were like this - there were still many people who engaged in the classic, lo-tech face-to-face human conversation, but these people were known as liberals or hippies, and were regarded as extremeists to many. Alas the whole of the human race had been successfully hypnotised by the higher powers, even with an open source Internet, they were blissfully ignorant of what kind of side effects this would have on the evolution of humans.
A millennium later humanity found themselves at the crossroads of a new era: intergalactic space travel. It was not the kind that the humans had longed resisted - traveling in hypersleep for decades before reaching their destinations - but a new kind that was somewhere in between teleportation and virtual reality.
Quantum physics had long been the standard for transporting data faster than light. Though it was never used for transporting organic matter - as biometric frameworks were still too complex an unpredictable to be dissected and then properly rearranged by any machine - humans had found a way around this problem which was digitizing the human conscious. Once in digital form, the human conscious could be transmitted and re-assembled at the other end in an open framework environment. In this case, the environment would be an android on another planet.
In an instant, a person would find themselves in an artificial body on Gemellus, the Earth-like planet in the Gliese system, which is about 32.5 light years from earth. Of course, the system would only work if real humans pysically traveled there to set up the recieving components of this new system of travel. The spacecraft headed for Gemellus was Ericson I, a generation ship powered by a Bussard ramjet which made the ship capable of near-light speed towards the end of the trip - though it would take 209 years for the ship to arrive.
One might suspect that the crew would remain in suspended animation, but such a long time in a chryotube was dangerous and risky. The idea of a generation ship is that many generations of the crew birth and die during the journey. In this case, the ship started out with ten families. Half of these were trained experts in the components concerning quantum mechanics, the next three were physical scientists with respective expeirience in biology, geology and medicine, and the last two families were astrophysicists - exclusive to navigating and operating the ship. Ericson I was also equipped with five operating droids who carried out the housekeepings and general maintenances of the ship. They were Dale, Elvin, June, Kandra and Mossimo. Their names were called for by the humans more than any other.
The humans kept professional relationships. They understood that their good behavior was being depended upon by the whole of humanity, so they spent their brainpower on matters which were cohesive to those ends, not ends which involved daydreams and wonder. Though it was a fairly open truth that the closer the familys came to Gemellus, the more they wondered about the existance of an intelligent species other than their own. The most fervent wonderers of this were two boys in the last generation: Julian Delphi and Orion Kaminski. Even though Julian's parents were in quantum mechanics and Orion's were biologists - and both of them were destined to carry the same expertise - they still shared a similar interest, and that was the little green men.
By now the appearance of extra terrestrials as little green men was old legend, but the boys had discovered these relics on the network archives when they were only four, and since then, they had been relaying messages of images and accounts of how many humans in the past had claimed they were abducted by these aliens. It was all very fascinating to the boys, and now that they were twelve, it had become well known amognst the families of Ericson I that the boys hoped very sincerely that they would meet similar creatures when the arrived at Gemellus.
Ten years later and five after Ericson I docked in orbit around Gemellus, the Kaminski family, including Orion, had concluded after some extensive surveying of the wildlife that Gamellus had not been a harborer of intelligent life before they arrived. It was disappointing news, but soon enough, the families of Ericson I had long forgotten, for they would now be hevily involved in the process of establishing a reciever station on the planet's surface. After they were brought down from cargo, 100 androids with empty souls were activated and in such an unfair and unimaginable instant, the mind of a man 32.5 lightyears away was now brought into the android, and they were one. His name was Thom Essol, and he was the first of nineteen to experience quantum travel at such a distance. There would be many more.
Twenty years later the humans had established a small colony on the surface of Gemellus in a semi-tropical region that wasn't unlike areas of the Mediterrainian, but without the touch of man. The planet attracted some of the most rich and famous who could afford such an adventure, including heads of state who could afford it on the taxpayer's dollar. Before long, the colony looked more like a resort than a center of research and technology and the android bodies became more customized to individual appearances. Everything was going smoothly until some reports back on Earth began surfacing...
Group of Gemellus visitors say they saw 'little green men'
Secretary Kennedy concedes he saw green beings on Gemellus
The President denies he saw alien life on Gemellus
As the Kaminski family reviewed the evidence, the ISA immediately sent a team of biologists to confirm the reports, but they all came back empty handed.
ISA reconfirms: 'No aliens on Gamellus'
Sure there were wild species that inhabited the air, the water and the land, but none were intelligent and certainly none were little green human-like creatures. So the ISA told the public that the cause of these sightings was the human imagination, and the similar accounts were due to a psychological contradiction caused by the presence of the human mind in a foreign world coupled with past stereotypes concerning these worlds being inhabited by such creatures.
Of course, the ISA had no idea why this was happening, but they fearly suspected that it had to do with a problem in the transmission process. Did something happen during reassimilation with the human body? Or was it an obscure side effect of the mind being separated from the body?
The answer was known to those two boys who were so obsessed with the idea of aliens in their youth. Julian and Orion had never forgotten about their little green friends, and they had never forgotten the searing pain of depression in finding that these beings didn't inhabit Gamellus or any other known planet. They had so hoped it was true, but it wasn't. And for that, they had been ridiculed by their peers for quite some time until Julian had come up with a devilish plan...
With their combined expertise in quantum physics and biology, both Julian and Orion knew that it was possible to trick the human mind with the right technology and brain clearance. Because the human mind was in digital form, all Julian had to do was write a program if he wanted to change things. Orion helped him with the biology.
In their youth, they imagined a race of aliens - Chlorophoeyple - who were small, human-like, tree-habiting creatures. Their skin was green because of the chlorophyll in their skin - a photosynthetic creature which drank water and absorbed the sunrays. A perfectly harmless creature who's intelligence and dexterity was its only strength. When it died, it was eaten by a herbivor, who was eaten by a carnivore, who was eaten by another carnivore. But in its death, a chemical reaction would cause the release of vitamin F, a neuro deficient substance which upon consumption, prohibits the DNA of its consumer from evolving, trapping it in an evolutionary cul-de-sac. This is how they became more intelligent than others.
Julian and Orion had so hoped that a creature as exquisite as this one could exist, and now, in a way, it was existing in the minds of some. Though there was no evidence to suggest they were right, there also was none to suggest why they were wrong. So there was a silent speculation amognst the community, and for a short amount of time, Julian and Orion were treated with a little more respect by those whom had questioned them in the past. But it was only for a short time.
One day all the androids, the humans, and some of the animals of Gamellus looked up into the sky to find a giant asteroid streaking across the atmosphere in a firey blaze. The impact would surely end man's existance on the planet, and if they did not think quickly, it would end their lives.
The detonation in the distance was brilliant, and a dome of geography spewed into the atmosphere. A shockwave knocked down the humans, while the androids stood in amazement. Julien and Orion watched the scene from behind a window, which shattered in their faces. They would surely have to leave as soon as possible.
Hundreds of androids rushed to the transmittors - it would be impossible for all of them to go at once - there were only twenty transmission stations for the androids. But who would send them? Certainly the humans had no time for that, so Dale, Elvin, June, Kandra and Mossimo would stay to operate the transmittors.
Now the humans had a fairly extraordinary situation, for once they transmitted themselves, they would have to remain in their android bodies on earth indefinitely, as their bodies here would be destroyed. Julian had only seconds to select an android body. There was a catalogue of them, but when Julian started to feel the ground shake violently, he selected...
Turko-Scandinavian-Male-25
Julian woke up moments after he thought he was dead. He thought of what happened. He saw the explosion, and before that the asteroid streaking through the sky. And before that he saw Gamellus as it was before that. He saw the beach, the alien sky, and in the trees he saw - what was this? Little green men. He saw them distinctly. An operator approached and asked his name. Julien nodded. The operator looked down at his tablet and asked him a question:
"Carnivore is to herbivor as herbivor is to what?"
Julien had to think for a moment why the operator was asking him, but then he remembered that it was a security precaution, and that he had written down this question as a passcode years ago. Of course the answer was "Chlorophoeyple". Of course - that's what the little green men were! Yes, it had worked more vividly than he had ever imagined. He remembered the program he wrote and implanted in the system. It was a program that made people think that they saw little green men when they returned to earth. Yes, the Chlorophoeyple were more magnificent than he had ever imagined. He wondered what Orion would say...
Julien looked around the room. There were anderoids all over - he recognized noone.
"Orion?" Julien called out.
Some of the androids responded with blank stares, and some of them didn't respond at all. Julien walked around the room. He didn't know what Orion looked like. Julian began to wonder if Orion had made it back. Surely he did.
Once Julian collected some clothes and checked out with the company, he stood in the terminal with a sign that said ORION on it. As he stood there he once again felt that searing depression of loosing something. But then he closed his eyes and tried to remember the Chlorophoeyple. They might not have been as real as Orion, but they made him feel better.
