Friday, July 3, 2015

Report from Planet Earth


MONITORING SHIP REPORT
Standard Form 665

SHIP: 46583

DATE: ERA 626 YEAR 4006 DAY 202

COMMANDER: Firp Citizen 9863463122

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SHIP STATUS: The ship successfully decelerated and entered orbit around the target planet. All systems are active and in good repair, with the exception of one atmospheric circulator in bay 14 and one power bypass in bay 16, both of which are under repair at this time. There was no holing of the ship and the external skin is intact, with four areas of ablation, which are being repaired by surface robots. None of the ablation is beyond nominal repair depth. The ship will be in perfect condition for the voyage back to Firp on schedule. De-hiberation equipment was fully functional upon completion of deceleration and operated properly, without failure. All command systems are operational. Probe launch and recovery equipment have been certified. Ship electromagnetic shielding is functional and operational over the full spectrum.

FUEL: Fuel level is at 0.73 of initial fuel load and fully adequate for the remaining portion of the voyage.

PROBES: All 16 non-standby probes have been launched to the target planet and have located themselves at suitable locations for observation of the planet. None have lost power or the ability to return to the ship on schedule. No probe recovery activities will be needed if this status continues, as it is expected to. Data returns are as planned.

CREW: All 24 citizens are aroused and active. Two reported symptoms of congestion after de-hibernation and four reported symptoms of vertigo. All six have been treated with medical dosages and none report further symptoms.

ACTIVITIES: As planned, three quarters of the crew will be in the solar atriums at any given time, re-energizing and monitoring their own health and the condition of other citizens. Mud supply is at full levels, and there have been no losses of nutrients. The remaining non-command crew is performing the biological backup to robotic checking of all systems. The non-solarizing command crew is performing the monitoring of the probe data returns as planned.

PLANET STATUS: The timing of the monitor ship voyage to this planet was a bit early, but within the normal bounds as predicted by the models of herbivore development, using the data collected by the last 15 monitoring ships sent to this planet. The chosen date of arrival of this ship appears to be approximately 125 years before peak activity of the herbivores, based on the data collected and analyzed by the on-board processors. This choice of arrival time is adequate to obtain sufficient data and it will not be necessary to schedule a special monitoring ship to be sent to the target planet before the next scheduled cycle in 4800 years.

The herbivores are following the same pattern for restructuring their planet’s surface as seen in the vast majority of planets that they infest. The natural order of vegetation has been utterly annihilated and replaced with vegetation to cater to their horrible tastes. Only a few small areas of natural vegetation remain and are being encroached upon at a rate that is even visible during the short time that our monitoring ship will remain on station. They have not restructured the natural vegetation of the water areas, but various forms of water-living herbivores destroy them. As typical of planets with large populations of these photosynthesis failures, there is no observable evidence of any evolution of the necessary predecessor traits for either directed mobility or intelligence. The populations of the various species of our plant brothers remain fully incapable, and in the small areas of natural vegetation remaining, there is no possibility of the evolution of these traits since the conditions for them do not exist. The planet will remain a failure for intelligent life, as is every one of the known inhabited planets where herbivores have evolved into existence and dominance.

The herbivores have discovered nuclear power and weapons, as indicated by the atmospheric sampling of the probes done during descent. The isotopic content of the upper atmosphere indicates multiple detonations within the atmosphere, but surface scans do not reveal any targeting of the population concentrations, except for two on some islands in one of the planet’s oceans.

The herbivores have discovered space flight, and have littered their planet’s surroundings with orbiting debris in numbers too large to tabulate, but it was no problem for our probes. There are some of their own primitive probes at various places in the solar system, not amounting to much. In other words, they are progressing at approximately the expected rate, and have made the technological advances typical of herbivore civilizations prior to their collapse.

COMMANDERS COMMENTS: As I have stated multiple times since I was drafted to lead this monitoring expedition, these ships should be fully automated despite the reliability and repairability losses that result. Every one of the command staff has been completely revolted when they fulfill the requirements to watch the herbivores actually engaging in mass slaughter of different types of plants, to watch them actually tearing plants apart with some hard portions of their bodies, to see them destroying countless billions of seeds and fruits before they had the opportunity to become new living plants, and even worse which I do not describe here. I have had to order extended breaks because some command staff members were so appalled they wilted after watching the probe recordings. I am sure that every citizen on every monitoring ship has the same reaction, but for ships which are sent to arrive during peak activity of the herbivores, the mental effects are by far worse.

I have had to schedule discussion groups among the command staff, and even to allow some non-command crew to attend, as the command staff has revealed some of what they have had to watch. In these meetings, I have repeated the standard answers to the question of why we cannot do anything to stop this, starting from the basic dogma of our own civilization and those of the other three planets in our galaxy that were also successful in giving rise to star-traveling plant populations. I have reviewed the impossibility of having more than a very temporary, passing effect on the herbivores, as once they come into existence on a planet, they evolve at a rapid rate to respond to any change of circumstances. It would take a hundred ships each larger than a monitoring ship to effect a large-scale extermination of the herbivores of the thousands of species that exist on the target planet, and shortly after it was over, they would be back as no extermination could be 100% successful.

I have tried to give comfort to the crew by letting them know that the herbivores will soon be reduced to a markedly lower level of destruction, although since they cannot photosynthesize, the residual will remain parasites upon the plant populations. On each of the over a hundred thousand planets where they have arisen, the results have been the same: their lack of the peaceful spirit of plant civilizations causes them to destroy themselves and as they develop the tools to do so, they do so. After all, many of the herbivores on the planet do not just destroy and consume our brother plants, they destroy and consume other herbivores, making them the only thing worse than a herbivore, an omnivore.

To repeat, watching their behavior is so repellent that I recommend monitoring ships be configured to a solely automatic mode. I cannot imagine any individual of any of the four space-faring plant civilizations voluntarily coming to one of these herbivore-ridden planets, and if the draft could be eliminated, no one would ever have to. Our fears that someday one of the herbivore planets will achieve star-traveling capability are justified by the incredibly horrible consequences that would ensue, and we need to monitor them to determine this, but this needs to be balanced against the effect it has on the monitoring crews.

Signed: Firp citizen 9863463122, Commander, Ship 46583

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