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[andy_t_roo]

i had assumed someone with a telescope pointed it at us and noticed the big blotch on the moon with a shiny thing in the middle, and someone tasked a space based telescope to get a high-res oic or 2 and someone said "ooh, shiny, i wonder if it will talk back?"

[Kashyyk]

I wasn't aware we were on the moon, I thought we were on an asteroid or something

edit: Then again, how long have we been here? (As in, the ship on this rock)

[forsaken1111]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A little bit of OOC before I update:

I wasn't aware we were on the moon, I thought we were on an asteroid or something

edit: Then again, how long have we been here? (As in, the ship on this rock)

You're not on THE moon, you're on A moon. Both of these questions have been answered. You're latched to a moon of saturn.

Before doing that, what detectable emissions is our ship giving off? If they've only just got space flight, how do they know we are here in the first place?
Also, where is here? Does this system have an asteroid belt, or is it a lone piece of rock that we are on?

You released the protocol and began scanning the system. You're giving off quite a bit of emissions.

Andy, for all the stats you're asking about each country: this is near-future earth so assume nothing has changed significantly. I'm not going to go rate every country by 6 criteria when you can just wiki them. Instead we'll ask the AI for a recommendation on who to contact and it will lay out options.

Staring at the video windows, you sigh. You're not used to dealing with several governments. Its almost like dealing with squabbling Imperial nobles, but each one of these governments represent more people than the sum total of the Imperium. Some several times over! Who could stand such crowding? In some places they have more than 40,000 people per square kilometer... the combined industrial output of this world would be tremendous if only they were unified. You shudder to think what they could accomplish with Imperial technology. Under no circumstances should you let them take the Arc.

"Okay, parse all available information on the various origin countries and narrow this down to two or three choices. I want one which has the best technological/industrial base to service the ship and one which might actually help us rather than attempting to seize the ship. Remove from consideration any countries which don't themselves possess space travel."

"Yes Commander, one moment..."

Several seconds pass, which is rather surprising considering the information parsing ability of the AI.

"Is there a problem?"

"No Commander, I am simply very limited by the ongoing activities. 75% of the remaining computational capacity is taken up by the diagnostic. The remaining 25% is split between my own logical processing and the system survey underway. It will take a few moments to parse all of the incoming data and intercepted signals. An interesting note, Commander... the general population is not yet aware of our presence. All of the governments have witheld the information from the population, though several copies of classified documents have been leaked out to a global information network that they call the Internet. The only exception is China, which has isolated its portion of the worldwide network. No such reports have leaked there, and all incoming information is filtered. Keep in mind Commander that we are several light-hours distant so significant changes may have occurred already of which we are not aware."

"So that demonstrates a willingness to censor information, but an inability to do so. Nothing new there, but why even try? Surely they would welcome contact with a species which may be able to help them off this planet?"

"I cannot speculate on their motives Commander, but I have finished my projections. Of the countries which have contacted us, only America, Russia and China have significant space programs. The Russian space program shows an alarming error rate, and the American space program is entirely commercial at this point with no government involvement. Of the three, I would recommend contacting America. My projections indicate that the Chinese government would more likely attempt to take control over this vessel, and I do not think Russia could meet our needs when it comes to space travel."

"Alright. I will begin composing a message. While I do so, please check and see if you can do something about the rogue repair robot outside, and look for any others. Purge their systems and reboot them from shipyard backups if you must. 200 years is a long time for smart systems to develop quirks and errors, the bot may have thought I was an intruder considering it had no contact with the shipnet."

"Yes Commander."

You blank the other video windows and stare at the face of the man known as Boyd. The image is stilled, but you call the video up for playback again.

"This message is for the signal source orbiting Saturn. I am Colonel Boyd of the United States Military and on behalf of my government I wish to open up a dialogue between us. I am authorized to negotiate on behalf of the American people. Following this transmission is a short databurst containing information about our culture, lands and people as well as a frequency and location should you choose to respond. Message repeats."

The man's face is open and honest. Now that you look closely, these people do not resemble your own to any significant degree beyond macroscopic features. They have a very rugged bone structure, rounded ears, and their eyes are smaller and much closer together. His hair is cut short and is a dull shade of brown with grey at the edges towards his ears. Were he the same race as you, you would say he was in his mid 250's. As it is, he is likely barely out of his fourth decade. A child really, in your culture. Remarkable... what sort of environment could have produced these people from your own genetic line?

And now you must represent the Imperium to these people... how will you proceed?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So far people have voted for being honest and open. Are you all okay with something simple like "This is commander Ford of the Imperium Destroyer Ark. My intentions are peaceful, primarily concerned with self-repair. What are your intentions? Who is your representative? Could you please describe your relation to the other 6 nations who have contacted us."?

Discuss an opening message and decide what to go with. It will greatly affect where this game goes from here.

[Kashyyk]

I personally would leave out the notion of self-repair, and just ignore his question of what we are doing. If he presses it, then I guess we can tell him.

[10ebbor10]

What happened to the ESA? Oh wait, our defenition of nation of wrong. See if there are any major alliances/groups of nations that posses a common spaceprogram. The ability to work together means that those will be less likely to immediatly open fire on us. Coming to think about that, see if there are any nations working toghether. Also look for signs of possible anti space weaponry.

I think we should present ourselves dumber as we actually are. Also, immediatly talking in their language won't be good. Try to reply a message, coded into a language which we estimate should be decipherable. Just have it contain basic information, as if it were an automated emergency beacon or reply system. We will have plently of time, as the average Earth Jupiter flight time is 10 years. The Americans probably won't have any spaceprobes, and I suppose the Russians wouldn't too*.

((*Note: Historically the Russian spacefleet was in fact quite a bit safer then the american one. Or maybe it just seemed like that because they launched from a desert and hushed up all mistakes.))