A HISTORY LESSON

Earth had verifiable proof of intelligent alien life back in 1967 when an alien race known as the Styf had attacked. Intending to enslave and colonize the planet, the Styf dropped asteroids on numerous cities world wide in an effort to intimidate the species into submission. The attacks had quite the opposite effect and as a result the Styf were defeated, their ship plundered for useful technology. One would have thought this would have kickstarted Mankind into space colonization and a new Golden Age, but it was not to be. Greedy, short-sighted politicians and bureaucrats hoarded the technology. Oh there were advancements such as electric cars, a few trips to Mars, but an event that should have unified the planet had far less impact than it should have.

What was discovered later was an organization known as E.C.L.I.P.S.E. had been at least partly responsible for stunting the world’s forays into space. Tasked with finding alien life on Earth, it also hindered plans for Mankind leaving it, thinking that the species wasn’t ready to deal with the wider universe.

So it wasn’t until the early 21st century, after E.C.L.I.P.S.E. was exposed and disbanded that serious efforts to reach out into space truly began. To this end the United Nations created the Global Interstellar Space Exploration Agency (GISEA) with a mandate to seek out intelligent alien life and interact and learn from it. Many nations disbanded their space programs in favor of concentrating their manpower and resources to the new agency, but a few nations still have their own. The United States still has NASA, there is also the RFSA (Russian Federation Space Agency) and ESA (European Space Agency). On top of that private corporations were making serious headway into colonizing and exploiting space.

GISEA AND THE OTHERS

GISEA’s mandate is to reach out beyond the solar system and develop ways to defend it, while the various national space agencies is tasked with exploring “local” space as well as developing colonization programs for local bodies as well as the construction of orbital habitats and other facilities. With strict rules regarding how much time GISEA personnel could spend in deep space and with bunk space limited on interstellar craft it is quite common for men and women to be “loaned out” to national space agencies and corporations between voyages. Employees of private space corporations and national space agencies attempt to jump ship to the “majors” all the time; the number of applicants to GISEA is far greater than the number of available positions.

Some feel that having agencies outside of GISEA is a waste of resources and political posturing on behalf of nations too proud to give up their “redundant” programs. But national and corporate organizations do play important roles; as one politician put it, while GISEA reaches out to deep space to see what’s out there, others are insuring Mankind’s survival and growth by making all of the Solar System its home.

AND WHAT OF THE GALAXY?

So far GISEA has focused it’s attention on the principle political body in this part of the galaxy: the Confederacy of Civilized Worlds. Most expeditions are fact finding tours to meet new races and to get a better feel of the political and military situation of the galaxy as a whole. A series of consulates can be found on Earth; one is in Lagos, Nigeria, another in Beijing, China, and one in Science City, USA. While some view “Earthers” as backward barbarians who “lucked out” on finding and somehow figuring out how hyper space technology works and hence view them as little more than curiosities, others see humans as bold mavericks, take-charge adventurers. Human forms of entertainment are eagerly sought after across the Confederacy. It is not uncommon to find aliens wearing human fashions, sometimes correctly, other times combining them in strange ways.