The Unasked Question

Slowly the great hall grew quiet as a myriad of muttered conversations died down. The various species that composed the audience waited expectantly as Flennish, the Chief Scientist of the Gyelri Science Fellowship, flowed to the podium and stood for a long moment, tentacles flexing slightly as he surveyed the multifarious variety of faces (or local equivalent) looking up at him. At last he sighed, consulted his notes and began to speak.

"Ladies, gentlemen, and others," he said. "Welcome to this extraordinary meeting. I expect you are wondering why I have called you all here tonight." There was a ripple of laughter, and the odd explosion from members of races whose reaction to humour was on the extreme side. "Between us, we represent the cream of the scientific community on a hundred worlds, so I hope you will forgive me if I spend some time going over what will doubtless seem to you the blindingly obvious.

"Our Galactic Federation has been in existence for roughly nine thousand years. By the miracle of transluministics we have forged a network of communications which spans the entire galaxy. We trade amicably with each other, we exchange knowledge, we manage--mostly--to live in peace with our neighbours. We help struggling emergent races to complete their maturation and join us as full members, as equal partners. We police the spacelanes and do our best to keep crime to a minimum, while recognising that if sentientkind is to enjoy any measure of freedom the possibility of crime is one that cannot be entirely expunged. Our philosophers have plumbed the mysteries of the universe and discovered, somewhat to our relief, that some of them remain forever unplumbable." Another murmur of laughter, but only one explosion this time. The being in question apologised, and Flennish nodded and went on.

"I see here among us Kuvalk, Osossen, Nordelli, Plath, Ugu, Mizzizzi, t'Trayzh, Gyelri like myself, and representatives of fifty-seven other species, all the principal partners in our great Federation. You all come from different worlds, from different cultures. Your histories have been long and frequently turbulent, but you have all, as species, attained enlightenment and civilisation unaided. Your cultures display great diversity--up to a point, but I'll come to that later--and you all deal with each other on a basis of mutual respect and fairness.

"Would you all agree with my summation of the position of affairs in our galaxy today?"

There was a mutter of general agreement.

"Good." Flennish sounded genuinely relieved. "Then, with the groundwork now out of the way, I would ask that you now regard the screen behind me."

On cue, the curtains parted and the huge screen flashed into life. On it, a smallish blue-green planet, veiled in wispy clouds, floated against the darkness of space, lit from one side by, presumably, its star.

A voice from the audience. "That's Earth." And again a rumble of agreement.

"You are sure?" Flennish said. "You positively identify this planet?"

The rumble was louder. More voices spoke up.

"Yes, that's it."

"Definitely."

"Everyone knows what Earth looks like."

"Very good," Flennish said. "Then my question to you, ladies, gentlemen and others, is this:

"Why?"

The Unasked Question, part 2

Not a rumble this time, not a murmur, but an excited babble. Flennish waited patiently till it had subsided a little, then held up his tentacles for silence.

"This planet's dominant species," he said, "is a primitive humanoid life form on the brink of space travel. It has been a primitive humanoid life form on the brink of space travel for as long as anyone has known about it. They have no unified government, they fight wars among themselves, they have not even recognised the futility of undirected 'progress.' They are, by any reasonable standard, millennia away from even being considered an emergent race.

"And yet. In each and every one of the last few interstellar wars that have afflicted us, this planet has turned out to be of critical strategic importance. Every would-be tyrant who has ever sprung up to threaten the galaxy, from Fraknab the Preposterous to the Great Grundlbunk, has felt it incumbent on him-, her- or itself, to invade Earth; every great hero our society has produced has been compelled, at one point or another, to defend it. When a master criminal is fleeing the forces of law and order with a vast treasure concealed in his cargo hold, where does he always crash his ship? Earth. When a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings visits our universe, where do they appear? Earth. One might be forgiven for thinking that Earth had been singled out by fate to endure a disastrous run of bad luck.

"And yet--again--once all the tumult and kerfuffle is over, the tyrant destroyed, the criminal caught, whatever...Earth simply settles back into its former obscurity. The most chaotic waves of change wash over it and leave it completely unaffected. How can this be? Why, moreover, has nobody ever questioned this state of affairs before?"

"Yes, why?" someone called out from the audience. Flennish peered out and identified the speaker.

"Professor Treugenth of the Revamba," he said. "Bear with me a little longer, Professor, there is more.

"I mentioned cultural diversity a little while ago. It is true, indeed, that our cultures are highly diverse. Each world has its own unique forms of art, of music, of literature, and very wonderful some of them are.

"Tell me, though..." He paused. "From which planet, from which species, do we derive this language which we are all speaking?"

The babble was confused now. Phrases such as "common galactic tongue," "lingua franca" and "how else are we supposed to communicate with each other?" rose momentarily above the noise. Flennish waited. It was Treugenth of the Revamba who, once again, took the initiative.

"You're going to tell us it's an Earth language, aren't you, Flennish?" she said, fluffing her tail aggressively.

"Indeed I am. This language was developed on Earth, over a period of several centuries. The form in which we use it is the form in which it has been spoken on Earth for--again--as long as anyone can tell. Not only the language itself, but even the idiomatic phrases, many of which make no sense at all in the cultures of our various planets. Treugenth, how would you colloquially describe something which performs to specifications? Quickly, without thinking?"

"It does exactly what it says on the tin," Treugenth said promptly.

"Do you have tins on your world?" Flennish asked in a gentle tone, and Treugenth looked confused. "Exactly. Ladies, gentlemen and others, your biologies are wildly at variance, your reproductive methods range from simple binary fission to a complex ritual involving up to fourteen participants, and yet I address you as though a bisexual, viviparous, mammalian system were somehow the norm. You find nothing strange in this. Need I mention that on Earth, for their dominant species, it is indeed the norm?"

Arguments had now broken out all over the hall as various beings hotly debated the concepts Flennish had just brought to their attention. He waited patiently, remembering his own confusion when the thought had first occurred to him, his frenzied search of the Fellowship's archives, the blinding simplicity and utter wrongness of it.

At length the various disputes ran out of steam (another Earth idiom, Flennish thought ruefully; on many of the Federation's worlds steam was physically impossible) and he held up his tentacles for silence once again.

"You will be wondering," he began, "how this situation arose, whether it is the result of deliberate manipulation from Earth itself or from some other agency. Some of you will no doubt feel angry, resentful. I did myself. The conclusion to which I have finally come, however, implicates no being or species in this universe. It is even stranger than that which it purports to explain.

"On my own world of Gyel, we have a flourishing industry producing works of fiction for the entertainment of the people. In the nature of things, the writers are Gyelri, and while the influence of the Federation has created a good deal of diversity, it is still true to say that the majority of the stories take place on Gyel, involve Gyelri protagonists in conflict with Gyelri antagonists, and end with the status quo on Gyel largely unchanged. While many of these fictions involve alien races, it is around Gyel and the Gyelri that they largely revolve. And yet in the fictional universe created by the writer, there must be many other planets with their own dominant species. How would they feel, I wonder, to discover that the most important world in their galaxy was a small and insignificant planet known to its inhabitants as Gyel?"

Treugenth stood up again, her tail at full extension, its tip nodding over her head. Flennish fancied he could see the gleaming sting concealed among the russet fur.

"Flennish, this nonsense has gone far enough. We can all see where you're going with this, and it isn't funny. You're not seriously going to tell us that we live in a fictional universe created by some writers on Earth?"

"Can you find another explanation that fits the available facts, Treugenth?" Flennish countered. "If you can, please believe me when I say that I shall be the first to rejoice. It is by no means a comfortable thought for me either. I would far rather it were rays, or a virus, or something explicable that we could combat. This--this, by its very nature, is a problem beyond our very limits of perception.

"Ladies, gentlemen and others, I think it would now be a good idea to break for refreshments. I will see you back here in--" He consulted his chronometer, fastened, as was usual, on his left tentacle just below the tip. "In twenty minutes, at which time I will explain some of the strategies I have devised for exploring this phenomenon further, and then throw the meeting open for discussion. I think you will agree that it is a matter of the first importance that we establish--if possible--the truth about this, and how we shall deal with it, if indeed we even can. Thank you for your attention."

He turned without another word and undulated off the podium. This had been the easy part. How would they react when he tried to explain to them the concept of the Fifth Wall?

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That's it. I've been mulling this one for a while now. I have no idea--as yet--how to continue it. What do you think?