Sometime in the near future a rather unusual and dramatic news story breaks. It turns out that humanity is definitely not alone in the universe.
A few days ago an alien spacecraft about the size of a house has touched down in Botswana, of the first people to approach it one was somehow pulled into the ship and released several hours later. He is apparently unharmed but is being used by the ship to communicate with the people of Earth.
He states that the ship appears to be uncrewed and controlled by a computer or machine, this AI has done something to his brain so that it can talk through him. He states that its strange and confusing but what he has been able to understand is that the ship was somehow damaged and landed on Earth as the closest inhabited planet. It has requested some materials to effect repairs on itself and then it will continue its journey, these materials are mostly common with some more exotic but nothing that is not available somewhere in the world.
The AI can be spoken to through the ‘Avatar’ but it only occasionally answers questions and there seems to be no real rhyme or reason as to what will and will not get a response, but mostly it just repeats its pro-forma request for materials so that it can continue its journey.
A further problem is that all communication is being mediated through the mind and brain of the Avatar, he is unable to describe or explain concepts he himself doesn’t understand and he is not an educated man. The communication process is not unpleasant for him but somewhat disturbing, he describes it as trying to force an ocean through a hose.
So how should humanity react?
I’ll leave my own ideas until later, I’m interested to see what other people suggest first.
They should give it the equivalent of a tire iron and a spare, along with the equivalent of a AAA TripTik, all the while asking probing questions couched in easy-for-avatar-to-understand language, in the hopes of getting as much out of the thing as possible.
"We’d be glad to help in any way we can. In return, can you tell us about your power source? Do you have any encyclopedias lying around you could spare?
Joe here has a Ph.D. in engineering - it might go easier if you zap his brain so he can talk to you. Can we come into your spaceship and look around? We won’t touch anything. Can we take pictures?
Here’s some of the stuff you asked for - what do you need it for? Can I watch?"
I could go with some very minor extortion. “Sure, you can have the copper sheeting. But, you know, that’s very precious to us, so we would like to trade for it, rather than just give it away.”
But in the end, that’d have to be a bluff, and we’d give away what it wants.
In my mind, this is what is morally right. But, for a lot of people, the clincher would be, What if its owner shows up and demands to know why we weren’t helpful?
What? The knowledge, information and technology this thing has could lead to an entirely new age of humanity. We might be able to cure disease, aging, solve our energy issues, etc. Can’t let that opportunity go to waste. It may signal its builders and they might not like us anyway. Might as well steal the technology and prepare for a potential invasion. We might be able to conquer them.
I’d start with quid pro quo as an initial bargaining position. He might be a prospector with a 100 pounds of gold dust in his backpack! But I’d definitely fall back from that position rather than stick to it as a hard line.
There’s nothing immoral in asking for payment for goods, only in demanding, or in scaling the price too high. (Hurricane profiteering, for example.)
Note that there is nothing in the OP to say that the traveler needs to resume its journey urgently. Considering that even the tiniest nugget of information or simple trinket (from its POV) could completely revolutionize our world and understanding, it’s worth at least trying.
If the AI says it must go very soon, it’s dying, whatever, then let it have the stuff. But still make it clear we’d appreciate anything it could do for us in the future.
This is the first alien encounter scenario in a long while where I haven’t needed to repeat the same boilerplate stuff (e.g. about why a “war” with ETs would be suicidal), and actually leads to interesting questions. Hats off to the OP
I’d give it what it wants and send it on its way, asking politely if it wants to give us anything like tech specs etc. before it goes but leaving it at that.
Or if it doesn’t like that it can defend itself. Which defense might be *just a tad *over the top from our POV.
Interstellar travel presumably requires a metric (do aliens use metric?) shitload of energy & power, so the AI will have that in abundance. Whether it has weapons or features that can be improvised as a weapon is unknowable. Until it tells / shows us.
Well, we could always setup a “fall guy” for the dismantling plan…so if or when any other AIs show up in force, we could say, apologetically, that the dismantlers were evil renegades acting without the knowledge or authority of the rest of the world, and that although we were too late to save the Traveller, the culprits were apprehended and made to pay for their crimes/killed themselves rather than face righteous justice.
Well AI’s have no rights here but they may very well have where it came from. In fact if its originating society is like The Culture by Iain Banks then it has full citizenship rights. So you’ve basically just tortured, dismembered and killed a citizen of a vastly more powerful society. And even if it isn’t sentient and is nothing more than a machine then when it gets back to its owners and they check the logs they might be pleased at humanity being fundamentally decent by repairing it and sending it on its way.
Basically there is no reason apart from paranoia to assume that it or its originating society is hostile, and you might be making an enemy when you could have made an ally.
Thank you!
While coughing and making frantic gestures behind our back to hide all the sweet tech we’ve reverse-engineered?
I’d try to help the alien in whatever way it wants, hoping that our generosity will pay us back in the future. I would NOT try to take anything without its permission or re-engineer anything without asking it first. Humanity has much more to lose in hostility towards our traveler than missing out on the chance of getting new technology by force.
I mean, people who think we should just take it. Have you thought that through? To us, this spaceship and its technology is the top of the line advanced stuff. To these aliens, they probably have a dusty warehouse full of them. Whatever we learn from this, if we piss them off, do you really think humanity, with like half of us living below poverty wages, can fight back an alien invasion? Hell, if they had just one other ship and just stood in orbit zapping us with lasers, there is nothing we can do at all!
Don’t piss off the aliens, is what I’m saying. Do what they ask, hope for a reward. We are but ants to them, and ants don’t demand a payment for not getting stomped
