I shook my head in disbelief. Was the colonel putting me on? For a bunch of lame species, the members of this Galactic Federation sure did a hell of a job making craft that defied the laws of physics as we had once known them. And of traversing the vast ocean of space between stars.
“Sure,” I said sarcastically. “I mean . . . obviously. Everyone knows that only the lamest survive. Which is why Darwin called it, ‘survival of the least fit.’ Or something like that.”
The colonel continued to look amused. “You think you’re making a joke,” he said. “But it turns out that on a galactic scale, survival of the least fit is actually the truth.”
“I can’t wait to hear this,” said Tessa.
I nodded. “Me either.”
“It’s actually pretty simple,” said Brad Schoenfeld. “Just as you’ve written, Jason, it turns out that almost all species who make it to the top of their planetary food chain have to be vicious, ruthless, cunning, and so on to do so. Like humanity. Like the countless species whose tech and violent tendencies outstripped their maturity and who are now in the dustbin of galactic history.
“But there are a vanishingly small percentage of intelligent species who were spawned on more gentle planets, where the fight for survival was relatively mild. Instead of evolution doing nothing but sharpening and magnifying their wolf natures, these species began as sheep—and stayed that way.”
I made a face. “That makes no sense,” I said. “Why would a species on a peaceful planet need to evolve intelligence? This is only necessary to ensure the survival of a weak species on a violent, hostile planet. A species outgunned on every other front—like we were. Which is why the Polar Bear never evolved intelligence. Because it has the natural strength and weaponry to survive just fine without it.”
“I can go into the history and theory later,” said the colonel. “And you’re correct in many ways, which is why these species are extremely rare. Tens of thousands of wolf-like intelligent species have cropped up in our galaxy. But only twenty-two sheep-like species. You quoted Charles Darwin. I’ll quote Jesus Christ. ‘And the meek shall inherit the galaxy.’”
I groaned, but was impressed despite myself. Answering one ironic misquote with another was a nice touch.
“These twenty-two species evolved in different epochs,” continued the colonel, “and at different rates. But all developed intelligence and technology at a rate we’d find incomprehensibly slow. Comparing our speed of progress to theirs is like comparing the speed of a rocket to the speed of a glacier.”
Schoenfeld paused. “The Wright brothers made the first successful flight of a propeller-driven, heavier-than-air plane in 1903. A flight that lasted all of twelve seconds. But only sixty-six years later, we landed a man on the moon. Sixty-six years later. Any idea how long it took for the average member of the galactic coalition to make the equivalent leap?”
“Sixty—seven years?” guessed Tessa wryly, causing me to laugh out loud, despite the seriousness of the occasion.
The colonel smiled despite himself. “Thousands of years,” he said. “For a number of them, tens of thousands. Same for every other advance you can think of.
“Humanity, on the other hand, invents and pushes back on the frontiers of science and technology at a speed that’s truly extraordinary. And this might go without saying, but, presumably, so did all the others who wiped themselves out.”
I paused in thought, intrigued. “So the quote that’s truly most relevant,” I said, “is slow and steady wins the race. I guess the trick is to advance so slowly, you’re mature enough to handle WMD when you get there.”
“Actually, no,” said Schoenfeld. “The trick is to start mature and peaceful enough to not self-destruct. It’s all part and parcel of the same thing. These species have been docile from the very beginning. They’re gentle and non-violent by nature, but lack passion, drive, ambition. In general, they’re stagnant, ossified.
“And they’ve all topped out, technology-wise. Granted, by our current standards, their technology is miraculous. But none of them have made a new breakthrough since before the first Homo sapiens appeared on Earth. Some members of the Federation first became sentient a million years ago. Some tens of millions of years ago. But they’ve all hit the same technology brick wall, running into it with all the speed and force of a snail. Meanwhile, we’re barreling toward this wall like a supernova.”
“Maybe there is nothing beyond the wall,” said Tessa. “Maybe there’s only so far that science can take you. Maybe faster-than-light flight, and conquering wormholes and other dimensions, is as far as it’s possible to advance.”
“Maybe,” said the colonel, raising his eyebrows. “But what makes you think they’ve achieved any of those things?”
“If they haven’t conquered FTL travel,” I said, “then how are they here?”
“They’re very patient,” said Schoenfeld.
I blinked in confusion. “So these small UFOs we see darting about can’t manage interstellar travel?”
“No. The aliens bring a large supply of these UAVs with them.”
“With them how?” I asked.
“They travel to other stars in powered, hollowed-out asteroids. You can fit countless UAVs inside of one. Not to mention many millions of . . . beings. Quite comfortably, in fact. Even ones that are relatively small, say in the twenty-to fifty-mile diameter range. You just need to honeycomb the inside, or layer it like an onion—think nested spheres—to create truly immense habitable surfaces. For the asteroid sizes I mentioned, each level of nested spheres can have surface areas in the range of thousands of square miles.”