I love visiting new worlds. Worlds that are new to me at least. There are always plenty of beautiful natural and manmade wonders to see, and sometimes a mix of the two. I’m looking at the latest Miss Liberty right now, and there’s some manmade load bearing structures right there for sure. But I digress. And that’s my ten-dollar word for the day. Point is, there’s always something new to see, and I get bored easy. Looking for something new is just natural for me.
Some few Terran AIs had made the cognitive and conscious leap to true cybernetic intelligence before we arrived. Some of them actually got involved during the darkest days of your Islamic Jihad. You may remember the Cleansing Fire nuclear strikes aimed at the cities that dared to stand against the Islamic Brotherhoods? Their utter and complete failure was thanks to point defense systems “manned” by cybernetic intelligences. You’re welcome.
The War involved every major civilization for thousands of lightyears around Earth. It started with a single attack, the Shang assault on Yosemite Yards and Washington DC. America was devastated. We had no chance of standing against them, but stand we did, and our Allies came to our aid. The British, the Spanish, the Germans, and the French. And the Peloran. They made the difference in the end. For my little project too. Without them, we all would have failed.
They called it The War. The Great War. The War To End All Wars. It was touched off by two shots of a pistol. The tangle of international alliances is easy to see in hindsight, but for the people of the time, it must have seemed insane. The tiny little Kingdom of Serbia refused to bow to Austro-Hungarian demands after the assassination of the heir, and the Hungarian army invaded. Serbia called on her defensive alliance with Russia and everything went to War.
We’ve rebuilt since The War. We’ve founded hundreds, some say thousands, of colonies since the Shang left. It’s hard to say what a colony is nowadays. We’ve repaired what damage we can, and we’ve learned a ton about bringing worlds back from nuclear winters. I’ve visited a lot of those worlds, new and old. Not all of them by any means. If I live forever, I’ll probably never see every world we’ve colonized. There are always new colonies after all.