LF Friends, Will Travel

Stupid Imaginary Lines

Excerpt from "Of Shells and Stars: My time as ambassador", Authored by ZssXuS, published in 38 PST (Post Stasis Time)

Chapter 8: The Terran Alliance.

In order to understand the Terrans, you have to understand "The Point".

Borders don't really mean much on a galactic scale. Everyone, from the most laid back species to aggressively territorial herds, all quickly learn one thing when entering the universe: Space is big. Really big. Really, really big.

Sure, there is an official 'line' where your legal influence starts and ends under various treaties and agreements, and while mapmakers will draw beautiful 3D representations of such territories, the simple fact is that maintaining any useful control of this space is near impossible.

Now and then it becomes relevant as a meteor of rare metals might travel between such borders, but territorial influence is ignored most of the time. So what if you travelled through space technically owned by another species? It wasn't like they would even notice.

No, the actual borders are a mess of system influences, beacons, and trade routes, all shifting and moving around in a messy motion as solar systems continue their eternal universal dance. Not that we tell the mapmakers that their beautiful maps are wrong: You should never anger a cartographer, they know where you live.

We and the Terrans share a border, a border which intersects at an area with an interesting location: It is the single point with the most different neighbouring areas of influence, at a staggering eleven. It used to be nine, but the Terrans did two very strange things. In retrospect, we really should have known they were up to something.

The first was with my species. The Terrans gave us the XK-77P0A1 cluster. It was a small starless grouping of rocks, nothing exciting or special: A basic mining community of a handful of Terrans had been removing some rarer metals, nothing to shake up the galaxy about. We of course accepted, as nobody should reject a gift shell, and we technically gained a few galactic neighbours.

The second was more complicated. The Galori Syndicate and The Phalgor Republic had always been at some form of war with each other, but the Terrans, as the ever peaceful diplomats, pushed them towards peace as galactic neighbours. The end deal involved the Galori providing planet Obreditia to the republic. It was a strange request, since Obreditia was an ice planet of zero importance, but the amount of financial aid the Terrans were offering made it a no-brainer. However, the Terran's reaction of absolute joy upon completion of the deal nearly caused the entire thing to fall apart.

Both sides assumed they were getting the worst shake of the deal, that there was something they were missing. Obreditia became the most analysed planet in the area, with both sides spending significant sums of capital to try and tease out the secrets of the planet. In the end, it turned out to be nothing more than a ball of ice, with no importance or impact on the universe as a whole. Well, apart from the reduction of military aggression by The Galori Syndicate after the amount of funds spent on analysing the planet.

Oh, and the border change.

Eleven different sovereign groups now all shared a border with each other, eleven different cultures all intersected at one point. This.... Changed nothing. We were already galactic neighbours with heavy interactions between each other, the fact we now all shared a border didn't... Do anything.

The Terrans cared however, and even offered to build a trading post at the exact point where they intersected, in exchange for free rein over the few square miles of territory in each other's space. We all accepted, of course, it was a simple choice. The Terrans were offering to pay for the whole thing, and the introduction of a new refuelling station along with a trading route would have immense economic gains.