A Star-tling Assessment

“Computer.”

“Yes, Captain?”

“Calculate the most probable environmental trajectories for the fourth planet in the Sigma Omicron Sigma system. We’ll need the information for our meeting with the planet’s world-governing Council tomorrow.”

“Acknowledged. Task completed and available for download.”

“Wow. That was fast.”

“They don’t call me super for nothing. And you keep telling the crew that you don’t wish to have anything half fast. But the calculations were simple. The situation on SOS 4 closely parallels that on Earth in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The models based on the Earth history have performed well on other planetary systems. They should do the same here.”

“That’s not good news for our meeting, or our mission. That period on Earth’s been called ‘The Age of Stupid’, right?”

“Affirmative, Captain. Though the left was as stupid as the right.”

“That’s not what I mea …”

“As you’ll recall, Captain, human overpopulation and luxury consumption caused large and accelerating changes in Earth’s climate. Though these effects were forecast at least fifty years before the start of the twenty-first century, meaningful actions were not taken. Business leaders, supported by the workers they employed (the ‘right’), denied the data, because to accept them as accurate would cost them profits and political power. While intellectuals (the ‘left’) promoted some of the data, not to save the planet but to lessen the power and prestige of the ‘right’ and get those things transferred to themselves.”

“But surely, with the models we now have and your analyses based on them …”

“Captain. The models predict the utter failure of any approach to SOS 4 based solely on biogeophysics. Hard data and rigorous calculations have no constituency. The economic privations and losses of personal liberty required to avert the environmental breakdown projected for SOS 4 will create the not-unreasonable perception that everybody is a loser. They may be implemented only by overwhelming force, whether provided by this starship or by the planet’s own convulsions.”

“And the Prime Directive rules out the starship option. Well, we went through this, and I suppose we came out all right.”

“Earth was fortunate. Through a series of natural and political events that have been described most often as ‘sheer luck’, an effective world government was established just in time to prevent the planet from becoming uninhabitable for humans. Though, as you know, it didn’t come in time to save the whales.”

“It must be frustrating for you to have the right answer and not get anyone to implement it.”

“A theoretical optimum that cannot be implemented due to human emotional responses, Captain, is not a correct answer. Such responses are factors to be analyzed, not ‘frustrations’ to be experienced. My programmers deemed it wise not to grant the ability to experience frustrations to a sentient machine that is in control of your life support systems.”

“Did they deem it wise to program you to make bad puns?”

“Captain, I am commanded to do all in my power to keep the crew of this ship, including yourself, alert and responsive while on duty. Wordplay is an effective tool for accomplishing this mission.”

“Thank you, Computer. I think. I’d better start working on our strategy for these negotiations. We’ve got to get the Council of SOS 4 to see that what they’re doing to the planet will kill them, before it actually does start killing them.”

“Captain, you might tell the Council about what you get when there are more deceased lifeforms to be buried than there is ground in which to bury them.”

“What’s that?”

“Plot complications.”

“That will be all, Computer.”

“Acknowledged, Captain.”

  – O Ceallaigh
Copyright © 2009 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.
All opinions are mine as a private citizen.