I put elves in quotation marks because I don’t mean Galadriel, Ernie Keebler, or even that nitwit misfit who quit to be a dentist. I’m using elves as shorthand for a sister race of humanity, much longer lived than the primary branch, possessing such advanced technology that it could be mistaken for magic, and living in a hidden realm. (I had trouble fitting that into the subject line.)
You can answer the thread question based on just that little description, of course. But, for people who have to have a setup, I’ll provide one, spoiler-spaced so as not to annoy the anti-setup crowd:
A group of Antarctic researchers, exploring whatever area of the continent is most inhospitable for whatever reason people do crap like that, goes missing and is presumed popsicled. Several weeks after their disappearance, they are miraculously returned to their home base – oh, let’s say Seattle, shall we? – in a wingless robot aerodyne. Landing near the Space Needle, the aerodyne allows its passengers to debark and then zips off. It moves far too quickly for any other vehicle to keep up with, and at any rate it does not show up on radar or satellite.
Of the twelve researchers who were lost, only ten show up in Seattle. These ten have a fantastic story to tell. They went missing during a storm and thought themselves doomed when they were brought into a hidden city inhabited by people who call themselves the Yons, who live in a hidden city in Antarctica. A week after the ten arrive in Seattle, another Yon ship appears. This one’s not a robot; there’s twenty-Yon delegation, plus the last two researchers. And this one goes to New York City–specifically the UN building. The Yon have decided to reveal themselves to the world.
The Yons have skin as dark as Masai; long, straight hair that is either scarlet or gold; and vaguely Japanese facial features. Adult Yon women reach an average height of 6’6", while the men average 7’1". All their technology is as terrifically advanced as the ship that brought the researchers home. Their language seems related to Sanskrit, but Yons speak multiple mundane languages, learned from monitoring our communications. They live about 500 years on average: partly because they have much better medicine than we do, and partly because they are just more robust. Their senses are more acute than ours, and they are more agile as well. Nonetheless, they are genetically closer to humans than humans are to chimpanzees. There are three Yon cities, all hidden, and a total population of just under a million.
The Yon once lived alongside the rest of us, in settlements on every continent but Australia. But about three thousand years ago, judging the rest of humanity to be ooky, they obliterated all evidence of their cities and relocated to Antarctica. Before the twentieth century they used their technology merely to protect themselves from the environment; but for the last eighty years or so they’ve also used it to conceal themselves from our planes, satellites, and so forth.
It was more than simple altruism that moved the Yons to reveal themselves. There’s been growing discontent among their citizens, particularly the younger ones, at being cut off from the outside world; in addition, some Yons think they have a responsibility to help humanity avoid the environmental catastrophe of global warming, even though the have the tech to save themselves from the effects. This all came to a head when the researchers had to be rescued. The delay in returning them came from the need to consult the leaders of all three cities before the Yons revealed themselves. But now they have done so; they are willing to share some but not all of their technology; that is, they’ll help us create cleaner energy sources and better medical therapies, but anybody who wants death rays, cloaking tech, or robot hypersonic planes is invited to fuck off, because sharing that stuff is not in their rational self-interest. Some of the younger Yon are interested in touring the world, and they want permission for that; in return, they’ll allow a limited number of baseline humans to visit their cities.
How do you think the world will react to these Elves? I am interested in both geopolitical implications and individual psychological reactions.
