Zircule squinted at the holo projection in concentration. He was having trouble visualizing an overall project path. How to interact with the humans of this water world to encourage progress by galactic standards?

It was always hard to know with an alien culture what would be mutually beneficial. Synergy was always required to thrive and grow in stature relative to the perceived universe. At least that was a founding assumption of his own Sentient Galactic Society. How this could be achieved with fledgling and uncivilized species was the art and duty of the pathfinder’s discovery efforts when dealing with juvenile species. Different skills were required with more advanced, mature, or powerful species.

This seemed an unusually difficult case. The variety of human interests and skills boded well for the future. The dismal (worse even than the callous disregard of others, or active damage inflicted on others for self benefit) inability to organize to apply these talents and abilities for mutual benefit implied a possibility of a species wide deficiency. Perhaps evolution had left out an ability required by modern Sentient Galactic Society, collaboration. Typically such species destroyed themselves and their environment shortly after reaching the civilization stage of industrialized warfare. Humanity seemed to have avoided this fate but retained many of the characteristics that made it possible.

No wonder this species had been left fallow, uncontacted, for so long. Their attitudes and skills would be potentially destabilizing through wide swathes of Sentient Galactic Society, if concentrated pockets were allowed to leap out of system untutored. Being a tutor had responsibilities, of course. It would be highly unpleasant and disastrous for the coalition who sponsored his pathfinder efforts, if he had to bomb these savages back to the stone age. There were also other strange anomolies in this world’s cultural development. He would have to skirt and probe them very cautiously, the potential existed that these anomalies would distort and ruin standard efforts patterned off of previous successes.

Zircule exhaled a breath he was unaware of holding. The time for contact was now or never for a few millenia, he thought to himself. They are preparing to leap into space while still uncivilized savages. The pathfinders do not deal with unlicensed starships or interstellar communications. That is the realm of the military. Mobilization of the military was highly disruptive. It was also damaging to our Sentient Galactic Society purposes and overall rate of progress, at least that was the official party line of the faction currently in charge. In essence, this was the original charter of the pathfinders. Apply a rational approach to finding interspecies interactions that are mutually beneficial for the greater good of Sentient Galactic Society overall.

It is clear, Zircule thought. There is a lot of remedial work to be done and individual shock therapy required even to just get some attention. Their own religious leaders have been extolling the benefits of synergistic behavior for millenia with insufficient progress.

Possible approaches:

  • 1. Offer longevity treatment only to those who can afford it. Use the local funds to finance other activities.
  • 2. Longevity treatment only to those who will provide decades of indentured service. Something money cannot buy! Oh no! That would shock the technology leaders.
  • 3. Cancer treatment .....see longevity treatment.
  • 4. Lunar settlements -- Sell water, nitrogen, and carbon
  • 5. Mars settlements – Sell nitrogen
  • 6. Terraform Venus – To be divided in land grants to each individual of human species upon completion. Land reverts to a Venus Collective upon death. Half in trust for human beings at large, half in trust for members of Venus Collective
  • 7. Alternative – Use terraformed Venus as a bargaining chip
  • 8. Make contact and work opportunistically.
  • 9. Establish first aid clinics and begin charging for cancer and longevity treatments, setup rate structure such that everyone can be aided.
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