Authors: Scott McElhaney

Dominion (18 page)

BOOK: Dominion

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Sci-Fi Note From the Author

All my stories spring up from a small and often obscure question. Then after days of that question floating around in my head, it starts to become a story. I even let the story float around for a while, adding bits and pieces to it long before I ever type a single word. Out of all the stories I’ve ever written, I’d have to say that this one deals with a question that almost never gets tackled in the science fiction community and I think we all can understand why. It’s a question that we don’t like to pose, but in my case and in this story, I embrace the question because I believe the answer to that question shows how important our role is in this universe.

So here it is – a question posed without a question mark: W
e’ve been listening to the stars for many decades now and we’ve been gazing upon them for even longer, but in spite of these efforts, we’ve found nothing. I believe there’s a reason and it has nothing to do with the fact that there isn’t life out there. I think there’s plenty of life out there but for reasons I’ll explain, the life hasn’t had much of an opportunity to become as advanced as we’d all love to believe.

In the 1800’s, H.G. Wells introduced us to the idea of an advanced civilization out there just
waiting to annihilate all of mankind. Since then, we’ve been blessed with a plethora of novels, movies, and television shows that always put forth the same concept – that there are others out there who are much more
advanced
than us and they will either share their technologies with us or they will use their advanced technology to force us into submission. But I put forth this possibility – that the universe is much too young for any civilization to have advanced much further than we here on Earth have. Don’t check out just yet - I’m going somewhere with this arrogant assumption.

Although the number 14
,000,000,000 sounds like a lot when referring to the age of the universe, you must keep in mind that the universe began with an explosion that mostly formed only hydrogen, deuterium, and a miniscule amount of larger elements. The abundance of hydrogen was drawn together by gravity into clouds of gas. Inside these gaseous clouds, gravity continued to rule as it still does today and stars were formed. I won’t drown you in a basic physics course here because sci-fi readers are usually quite intelligent and well versed in science. Basically, stars are the furnaces that create the heavier elements and it took the first and second
generations
of these stars to create enough matter to bring forth the universe we gaze upon today.

In order for life to come about as we know it, there obviously has to be
at least as much carbon, oxygen, etc available as we see today. No less. So even if a full generation of stars formed after the big bang, lived out their starry lives, then exploded, there wouldn’t be enough of the heavier elements. At least not as much as we see today. It took two or more generations of stars to get to the universe we see today. What if the Earth is one of the few dozen life-sustaining planets right now in our galaxy and what if humanity is one of the few forms of intelligent life that has come about so far?

Now, I’ll grant you that we’ve been somewhat slow in our progress at times in the past, so I’m not saying we are awesome and no one could be better. I’m posin
g this question in the novella you just read – what if WE are the advanced civilization who will eventually be visiting other planets in the universe?
Someone obviously has to be first
. Someone has to wake up in a quiet universe before all the civilizations fill the stars with radio waves and interstellar traffic. What if WE are the ones who will share technology, dominate other worlds, and be the aliens who abduct other species to learn about them?

While I pose this question in a fictional story, I must say that I believe in this possibility quite strongly. I find it very odd that our universe is silent and I think there will come a day, perhaps a million years from now, when the universe will be
beautifully noisy in all directions. You would be able listen to communications coming from various stars and galaxies not even meant for you to hear. There will be advanced civilizations everywhere and some of those will have been altered by own technologies – because we were the ones who woke up in a silent universe and started exploring the galaxy first.

I know I’m not the first to suggest this, but
it does sometimes feel that way in the novels I read. I offer this suggestion to others in the hopes that they will share in the concept and the dream that humanity may one day be the ambassadors to the galaxy. If taxes aren’t going to go to the advancement of our space programs, then we need to make a conscious decision to donate our own resources to the growing private endeavors. If NASA isn’t the way to go, then let us all focus on the private companies pursuing this. Either way, I think we need to consider where we will be in a thousand or in a million years. If we abandon all the space programs, we limit the future generations. I’m looking into donating what little I have to a couple private companies even now because if I get stuck in a cryo-tube and wake up some thousands of years in the future, I’d like to discover that we’re the ones making Death S
tars and not the Empire.

Please feel free to contact me at
[email protected]
or
www.facebook.com/curtisfiction
. I love to hear your opinions and feel free to offer constructive criticism. I know I’m not perfect and I have plenty of room for improvement, so I promise I won’t get upset. I’d like to believe I’ve improved greatly from where I was a few years ago and it’s because of people and their kind and not-so-kind words. It all helps and I appreciate it. I write for you as much as I write for me, so I truly hope that I didn’t disappoint.

Kindest regards,

Scott McElhaney

September 2013

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The Mystic Saga Omnibus (all
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