REUNION - V - Education (a)
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sometimes details are hard to make out in the big picture, and sometimes closeup too.
CATEGORY: FICTION TIMES READ: 1772 RATING: 0 (G) SERIES: FIREFLY
After much searching, Mal and his group come to realize that the only places within reasonable flying distance of Oasis are the ‘Verse, where they will be harassed at best, and more likely jailed, or - - Earth! They are startled to realize that may be their best option!
Simon and Diana have been reading of human history since the exodus in UniWiki, and although it’s very difficult to know what Earth’s situation is today, as the encyclopedia is very fuzzy on that topic, it seems there is still some degree of human presence there.
Mal is not surprised. “I always thought there were holes in the story of Earth-that-was that we learned in school. It was just too tidy. Even if Earth couldn’t support all of humanity, it must have been possible for a few people to survive.”
Simon muses, “Even if there’s only a handful of people on Earth, they would have a very different perspective on history. With all those centuries of information, maybe we can learn where else to go in the Deep, find other planets to visit…”
When River joins in; “We should be able to discover what other lies we were taught by the Alliance.” Mal and Zoë finally agree with ill grace – that might be worth learning, and besides, there’s just no other alternative.
The eight weeks in the Deep cement the family relationships even further, and provide a lot of time to learn about the entire human – populated Galaxy. There’s great deal of material to be absorbed, all unknown during their time in the ‘Verse.
The story they all learned of the ‘Verse’s colonization has a root of truth – outward colonization was started when Earth became heavily populated, but in fact it was only because of many peoples’ dislike of city life, not because Earth and its planets couldn’t support them.
Mal comments; “Somethin’ very ironic about the first colonists escaping Earth only to build the same kinda thing all over again.”
It turns out there are many colonized planets. Many people wanted a different life than what was envisioned for the ‘Verse, and the
Perhaps UniWiki is only updated once a week or month?
Or perhaps it's using a frequency/modulation method unknown/unused in the 'Verse?
Or it's a narrow beam that wouldn't be detected unless Serenity happened to be orbiting over that particular beam?
Or some combination?
Worth thinking about - thanks.
Originally I had considered FTL travel for spaceships, and instant communication over Galactic distances, which of course Serenity wouldn't know about.
But as I began to write this section in detail, I decided that was too big a change in Whedon's Firefly universe, and rewrote it.
Live and learn.
So near light speed is difficult with hydrogen fusion.
But assuming it can be done or some type of space folding and fast communications, if you had a galaxy calling home by any means communications would be busy.
But I've made no claims as to what sort of energy or engines, or perhaps some combination of those, is driving the ship to near light.
And I'm proposing for purposes of this tale that there's no more than 1000 populated solar systems, many of them fairly backward, and that incoming data is via some sort of tight beam from a single source in each solar system.
So other than occasional scientific breakthroughs, major historical updates, and the personal histories of the Books, there would be little information traffic coming toward Earth, and even that would be from a limited number of sources.
In addition, there would be no real responses to any incoming data, except for the occasional updating of those sources with UniWiki articles. (The concept of true two way communication over perhaps hundreds of light years is daunting under any circumstances.)
Under this scenario, the load would not be too severe.
Whether the whole thing is a reasonable scenario is open to question, I suppose.
But questions that searching would soon collapse the entire of Whedon's 'Verse, I would think.
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