For All Mankind

For All Mankind

Ares 1 \\ Mission Day 128 \\ Surface Mission Day 30 \\ 11/02/2018

Commander Anna Wilson gripped the United Nations flag in her hands and closed her eyes as she unfurled it. The camera Ari held was now rolling, and despite the isolation lending her the confidence to do this, she was still a bit nervous. The light-lag delay of mission control’s inevitable reaction wasn’t helping the anxiety bubbling under her conscious mind. What would they think? What would the world think?

She thought back to training, years ago, when the mission was still a young idea. She had confessed to her crew, in private, her thoughts about the inevitable flag-planting ceremony. To her surprise -and delight- they were in agreement: planting a flag would send the wrong message. It was an archaic practice too laden with negative symbolism, no matter the intentions. So for the next several months, in moments of free time away from the watchful eyes of NASA, they'd planned an alternative. And now, seven light-minutes away from Earth with no one to stop them, they could enact it.

Anna inhaled deeply, faced the camera with the flag, and spoke: “We do not claim this world.” She began rolling the flag back up to stow in her pack. “We will not plant here the flag of any nation or even all nations, because this mission -our presence here today- is much greater than the concept of nations. We came here, to another world, in peace for all mankind. So we cannot plant a flag. It represents arrogance and dominance.” The clock was ticking now. The video stream was hurrying back to Earth, but the whole ceremony would be over before the reply arrived. We’re on our own script now, she thought. Better not mess it up.

As they’d agreed, Oye produced a small aerosol can from his pack -spray paint, specially engineered by a friend to resist the environmental conditions of Mars. Their mark here would endure everything short of a direct meteor strike for millennia. He began to walk toward the rock outcropping nearby, with Ari and Ayami falling in behind him.

Anna brought up the rear, and continued to speak as Ari swiveled the camera back over his shoulder. “Instead, we leave behind only our footprints, which mark our journey…” She paused, and placed a hand on the ancient rock face, making sure Ari was pointing the camera at it. “…and our handprints, showing that we do not seek to claim this world –only to know it.”

Oye gently shook the can and blew the dust from the rock with an airbrush, normally used for geology sampling. Anna blinked a little longer than normal. Here we go.

He aimed the nozzle at her hand and pressed down. The paint sprayed out into the thin air around her suit glove, staining the glove and surrounding rock a deep, cobalt blue. The mission director and tech teams would be pissed, but the crew had taken precautions: covering the tools, wrist camera, and flashlight with tape. When Oye finished moments later, Anna lifted her hand and gazed at the blue stenciled outline on the three-billion-year-old alien sandstone.

As the rest of the crew created their hand stencils, Anna continued. “Maybe in a thousand years, Mars will have its own flag; its own nations. But the marks we leave here today prove to the future that we came not as envoys of nations, but as people, baring our raw humanity for all to see just like our ancestors a hundred thousand years ago. We are here today not only as representatives of our fellow humans, but on behalf of our oldest ancestors, who did not know of nations; they only knew how to be human. These markings are for them as much as they are for us.”

She took a step back as Ari passed her the camera, and aimed it at the four painted hands on the Martian rock. She zoomed in a little to emphasize her closing statement. “Across all of time and space, we are one people, forever.”

Arctos Celestian - reference sheet

Additional and more detailed on this guy and his whole story can be found here.

He's one of my primary and dearest OCs, it's only right I give him a proper ref haha.

Time is a tricky thing to keep track of, especially across vast interstellar distances. Every civilization uses its own relative date system, its own years and days. These are the major ones found across known space:

Hyperspace Era (HE): HE is the most commonly used system, based on the Klex discovery of hyperspace. Although hyperspace technology has been invented independently by most major starfaring civilizations, and the Tel Azor actually discovered it 2000 years before them, Klex are ubiquitous in the known galaxy and their system is the one that stuck. Year Zero is (coincidentally) 0 CE / Current Year is 5244 HE

Before/After Death of Azor (BDA/ADA): Used by the Azoradi –by far the oldest living civilization in the known galaxy, although the surviving pockets of it are mere fragments of its former glory. The Tel Azor homeworld, for which their species is named, suffered a terrible catastrophe at the height of the civilization’s history, though none alive remember exactly what happened. The world still exists, but the now-nomadic Tel Azor speak of the entire star system being cursed. Year Zero is 1206 CE / Current Year is 4038 ADA

Solar Era (SE): SE is the second-most commonly used dating system, based on the founding of the now-faded Solar Reach. Most human-descended starfaring cultures still use this, even if only in academic context. Year Zero is 2500 CE / Current Year is 2744 SE

Aeryne Unity (AU): Another stellar civilization long faded from glory, the aarakocra of many ancient settled worlds still mark their dates from the founding of their ancestors’ Aeryne Confederation. Year Zero is 3002 CE / Current Year is 2242 AU

Age of Tiamat (AT): Dragonborn of the many worlds of the great Vayenir date their calendars from the empire’s founding. Unfortunately, the Age of Tiamat seems to be drawing to a close, as the empire crumbles from the combination of house infighting and ineffective defense against the rising Kreth Imperium. Year Zero is 3424 CE / Current Year is 1820 AT

Kreth Dominion (KD): The newest galactic power to arise in the known galaxy is the Divine Imperium of Hexath, more commonly called the Kreth Imperium. Though small, it is a belligerent and power-hungry theocracy. The Kreth worlds mark time from the founding of the Imperium. Year Zero is 4537 CE / Current Year is 707 KD

Now of course, these are numbers based on an Earth year. These worlds all orbit at different rates, so the actual date number would be different in each system. Haven't figured that part out yet, but getting there.

Saw this license plate today and I'm still ugly laughing about it

It’s important to recognize the difference between “I’m nitpicking scientific facts because I’m willfully ignoring how suspension of disbelief, fantasy, and sci-fi work and just trying to be obnoxious about how unrealistic this is”, and “I’m nitpicking scientific facts because there are actually some intriguing worldbuilding possibilities if we use them that can add another dimension to the story”, and “I’m nitpicking scientific facts because considering the real-world implications of how this would happen are FUCKING HILARIOUS”