When a civilization has moved on from the 'conquest and occupation' stage and has decided that the smouldering wreckage of its past is worth preserving for posterity and the education of the foolish, then these charred artefacts can be found in austere, dusty buildings that are the source of much amusement for alien tourists.

Museums, usually taking pride of place in 'advanced' urban centres, are an endless free source of boredom for local schoolchildren who are so disinterested in the exhibits that they completely fail to notice the small groups of off-world beings clustered around the exhibits.

Science museums especially are a particular favourite.

When historical transmissions from a newly civilised world are intercepted they are broadcast non-stop on the galaxies comedy channels, usually with silly sound effects and a ultra glib host pointing out how ridiculous the upright monkeys are as they attempt to fly, 'improve' the ecosystem and try to get into space.

The success of these shows is one of the primary reasons for interstellar contact.

The nascent species in question will look in wonder as their sky fills with wondrous alien craft, welcome their new neighbours with cautiously open arms (after attempting to coax them down with discordant tuba music and an out-dated lightshow), then grumble incessantly as all their guests do is howl with laughter as they tour our cutting edge laboratories, solar farms and exhibits of "steam through the ages".

The annoyance this causes is one of the primary reasons for interstellar conflict.

There are, of course, no museums in the more advanced galaxy, as any proof that the fabulous alien species were also once nuclear wielding amoeba can cause a great deal of diplomatic embarrassment.

However, when the Beltreans, a smug bunch of post-corporeal energy beings, arrived on the wrong planet to have a good laugh at some particularly useless tax legislation, they discovered Simplicity.

Simplicity, a technology so advanced that it is all encompassing and incredibly easy to grasp, was discovered by accident during the 'hitting each other for gold' stage on the planet Tafoon.

Rather than building their civilisation up though millennia of technological advancement, the Tafoonians had bypassed the entire process via a sequence of brilliant individuals making wild, lucky guesses about electricity, magnetism and the interatomic forces.

The results, endless energy from two rocks held a microscopic distance apart and charged by the sun, was a revelation to the Beltreans, who immediately quarantined the entire planet to prevent any outside contamination from the other galactic sciences who were still twisting space-time with entangled trees and powering their worlds with artificial micronova.

This quiet, rural planet instead sold their inventions to the Beltreans as curiosities, while the Beltreans in their turn patented everything and eventually made more money than actually existed in the universe at the time.

Of course the Tafoonians eventually blew themselves up in a land dispute with a mega-weapon built from three marble cubes, a lens and a bucket of water, leaving nothing left for future generations to study except some chunks of slowly orbiting, radioactive slag.

Interstellar contact is now a serious business with maximum interference, especially on worlds where it looks as if the upright monkeys might get the science right the first time.

Also, since the Tafoonian cataclysm, no one laughs at museums anymore.

Entry ends.

This entry is completely unaltered from its original publication date in July 2011 and is thus suspiciously prescient and proof that the author is probably up to something.

The Lost Transmissions Archive

Tim Stevenson

20.02.12 Front Page

Back Issue Page