07:26 (Adjusted Universal Time)
Unknown date, Ninth Century
Imagery analysis center, H.S.S. MARCO POLO
Holding position near the Main Asteroid Belt
Henry Ferguson grew increasingly impatient as successive specialists kept contradicting each other, while about everybody around him was proposing a range of ideas about what had exactly happened to Earth and the fleet. Finally having had enough, he got up from his seat in the imagery analysis center’s briefing room and walked briskly to the lectern, waving the specialist that had been speaking back to his seat before facing his assembled staff officers and Madam Tsu.
‘’I believe that we are going nowhere here, ladies and gentlemen. I personally have no doubts left about our fleet having been projected back to the past by that mysterious Morg weapon. Too many indicators show that to us. We however have too little data to accurately fix the present date, except to say that we are most probably in the Ninth Century, 32 centuries before our time. In my opinion, we won’t be able to decide exactly what to do until we know for sure about the date we are in now, so that we know what we are facing exactly. However, I am sure that, like me, you all probably know little or nothing about this obscure period of history. Professor Douglas, could you give us a quick exposé on the Earth of the Ninth Century, please?’’
The director of the History Department of the MARCO POLO got up from his seat but didn’t walk to the lectern, instead speaking from his current position.
‘’If you don’t mind, Commodore, I will leave the floor to one of my esteemed colleagues who is better qualified than me on that historical period. Doctor Shelton, on top of her diplomas in history and human sociology, is the author of a thesis on the High Middle Ages, which she embraced as her specialty in history.’’
Ferguson nodded his head, satisfied.
‘’Doctor Shelton, if you may please step forward to the lectern.’’
Feeling a bit like someone being thrown into the proverbial snake pit, Ann got up and walked to the lectern, with Ferguson giving his place to her before returning to his seat. With over forty senior officers and department heads now watching her, she chased her nervousness away as best she could before starting to speak at a deliberate pace.
‘’Ladies and gentlemen, you could hardly find a period of history more dissimilar to our own concept of human society than the High Middle Ages. Much of the splendor and culture of the Roman and Greek Antiquity has vanished, replaced by barbarism, religious obscurantism and intolerance. Wide scale slavery is legal around the World, while what we call democracy doesn’t exist yet…anywhere. The vast majority of the population of Earth is illiterate and lives in utter poverty and in precarious conditions under the rule of a multitude of various monarchs, aristocrats and tribal leaders who too often couldn’t care less about the common good. True technology is close to unknown, with religious intolerance often blocking the progress or even the dissemination of what little science there is. To give you an example of that, in Christian countries in the Ninth Century, most people believe that the Earth is flat and that it is the center of the Universe. To say otherwise publicly would in most cases get you in front of a religious tribunal under the accusation of heresy, to be tortured into confessing your errors before being burned alive at the stake.’’
Horrified looks and exclamations from many in her audience greeted her words, making her pause briefly before continuing.
‘’There are however some good points, for us at the least. One of them is the low population density in most places on Earth. Also, and most importantly for us, some lands that are very favorable to human habitation are either completely unoccupied or are very sparsely populated. One such land presently unoccupied is New Zealand, which will be first visited by Polynesians only during the next century. Other unoccupied territories are Bermuda, the Azores, Easter Island, Cape Verde and Madeira, to list only a few of them. Australia is presently very sparsely populated by Stone Age nomads and I am sure that we could negotiate a fair deal with those nomads if we wanted to do so. Some major food resources, like the fishing grounds of the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, are not being exploited yet, or only in a minimal way. We thus in my opinion could easily find sufficient free living space for our refugees without causing prejudice to anyone on present Earth.’’
‘’What about some possible interaction between us and the present people of Earth, Doctor Shelton?’’ Asked Lynn Tsu from her seat. Ann gave her a sober look as she answered her.
‘’Such interaction will be both tricky and complicated, at least at first, and we will have to be on our guards when doing so, Madam Tsu. Please understand that individual human rights is a notion that is nearly non-existent in this century, while armed banditry and piracy is an omnipresent plague. Most local rulers do pretty well as they please and often use brute force to impose their will on their people and on their neighbors, while the death penalty is a common punishment for many crimes we would consider rather petty. Some rulers are worse than others, but we could still find a few relatively moderate ones worth speaking to if need be. I would however need to know first the exact year we are now before I could tell you who would be worth contacting. Then, there is the problem of language. Nobody on today’s Earth can understand any of the modern languages we used in the Human Expansion, and certainly not Modern English. We do have a few classical languages that were still taught to scholars and historians in the Human Expansion and that we could use on today’s Earth, like Latin, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Mandarin. We thankfully have the mnemotronic teaching packs for those languages, thus our people could easily and quickly be made to assimilate them via mnemotronic sessions. Before coming to this briefing, I took the liberty to quickly check in our mnemotronic data banks to see which ancient language teaching packs we had, if any. Luckily for us, I found a lot more teaching packs than I had expected. Once we know for sure the date we are, I will then be able to select the packs that would be useful to us. One last point: the Ninth Century was well known in history for the depredations of Scandinavian pirates called ‘Vikings’, who looted, burned and massacred their way across most of Europe in this century. However, please do not think that those Vikings represented the worse to be met in this century, far from it. Those Vikings could also be shrewd merchants and first class sailors and engaged as much in peaceful commerce as they did in warfare.’’
‘’Doctor Shelton,’’ said Henry Ferguson as Ann paused for a second to drink some water, ‘’all that you said up to now only reinforced my conviction that one of our priority tasks will be to establish the precise date we presently are. That information will be crucial for us to be able to take informed decisions on what we will do next. How would you suggest that we obtain that particular information?’’
‘’I believe that only a direct contact between an educated person of this century and a small reconnaissance team from our fleet will provide us that information, Commodore.’’
‘’Exactly what I was thinking. Would you be ready to either lead or be part of such a reconnaissance team, Doctor Shelton?’’
Ann was left speechless for a moment before she could go over her surprise, then nodded firmly her head.
‘’You can count me in, Commodore.’’