For the first decade the signal continued at the same pace, never changing and never faltering no matter where on Earth it was tracked. Some tried to claim it was a sign that the source was natural, after all the prime numbers were such a fundamental part of nature that it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility for a naturally occurring feature to produce the signal. Why not send video or text or audio of some other kind to the people of Earth, or could they have discovered a society just as primitive and undeveloped as their own?
Religion was rocked to the very core by the discovery, earning the first scorn about reaching out for the stars when God was here on Earth. Ancient beliefs were rocked to their very core by the discovery of life on other planets, as Judeo Christian religions taught that humanity was made in God’s image. Eastern philosophies taught reincarnation and second chances, but did that mean souls would travel to other worlds, to other places when they died? Even mystical beliefs of energy in the universe and centering the power of one’s body were torn from their usual places by the revelation that life exists outside of the chakras and fields of Mother Earth. Overnight humanity’s selfish and self-centered views of their place in the universe were tossed out with the trash, opening the floodgates for reinterpretation of known and existing truths and ancient systems of religion that were dear to the vast majority of our population.
This was Western propaganda, some swore, designed to destabilize their proud traditions and powerful countries in China and Russia and the former Soviet bloc. A Zionist plot against Islam and an attempt to take our eyes from Allah in the Middle East and Southeast Asian countries. The Left-wing Atheists here to discredit God and his might power in the Bible Belt or the devoutly religious nations of South America. Everyone saw a hoax, a lie, something to hide the fact that they were seeing proof of their deception or at least proof that accepted truth might be wrong and there was more to life than a religious text.
None of it was made easier by the reaction of the United States government to this revelation, denying at first that such a signal could be real only to reverse the denial when a science-friendly President was elected a year later. Funds were diverted from the Conservative strongholds of defense and security to feed the needed resources to study Aurigae and the possibility of planets in orbit. A committee to build a reply didn’t include any religious figures, only the who’s who of science and technology, further angering the fundamentalists in society. Finally, the inclusion of foreign powers in our research, the shared burden without shared funding by our allies caused an uproar that was heard around the world.
Like all of history from that period, it started in the Middle East first with a series of bombings targeting corporations and organizations involved in the signals to Aurigae or governments that supported the program. A Dutch journalist was taken by a militant group in Syria, his execution was broadcast live on YouTube to three hundred million viewers before they could stop the stream. Next an Iraqi solider was blown up by a captured drone, the video hit number one on Twitter before it was taken down. Then an oil tanker transporting crude from Algiers to Texas was boarded and destroyed, spreading a slick of burning oil for nearly three hundred miles in the Atlantic, the first fire of that kind to be visible from space. Countless atrocities were perpetrated, countless horrors unleashed, and it spread like fire across the planet.
Things turned nuclear by the end of of the third year, North Korea the perpetrator as they sought relevance once more in a world no longer focused on petty cross-border squabbles. Evil America and its capitalist stooges no longer cared about the bluff and bluster of the little peninsular power. That didn’t sit well with the ruling class or the despotic leader, and Seoul was less than two hundred kilometers from Pyongyang after all. Eleven million dead in minutes, ten more in days from the fallout, another ten injured beyond recovery before the end of the week including thousands of US troops stationed in the small nation. Three fifths of South Korea was as good as dead and the other twenty million evacuated to any nation that would take them, the entire world was in shock.
Cooler heads would have cautioned peace, understanding, diplomacy, but a military elite frustrated with their diminished position in America and the anger of their soldiers killed without warning led to a brief coup-dé-tat in the United States when the Joint Chiefs retaliated with nuclear weapons. Fire rained down on every military installation in North Korea for three days, conventional and otherwise, until the entire nation ceased to exist. Thirty million were repaid with twenty-five million, civilians and soldiers alike murdered by American weapons while the loyalists and the President fought to take down the generals in their bases.
Americans were forced to fight their fellow soldiers, those who believed that blood paid for blood versus those who believed civilian deaths were never acceptable. It was short, far shorter than the last of their civil wars but tens of thousands of Amercian soldiers were dead before the generals were brought to heel. China, Russia, even their allies in NATO universally condemned and censured the United States and world war was stopped only when they were delivered to a man to the Hague for trial. Not since Nuremberg did the world watch so closely the inner workings of international justice. When the dust settled, however, there was a new world order building, one based on the ideals espoused by Dr. MacAllen and her Committee for First Contact.
The public cried out in unison for a change, people of all religions and races together decried the old order and the old way of life they’d lived for generations. At the UN headquarters in New York a crowd began to gather by the thousands, increasing each day and matched by crowds in the capitols of every major nation on Earth. Historians say by the end of the month over two billion men, women, and children took to the streets and shouted for the Reformation, at least those with a positive view of the time period. Even if it were half as many there was an uprising bigger than the Arab Spring, one that overthrew the ruling class of all but the most repressive and religious of nations.
On October 7, 2024 the United Nations voted unanimously to adopt the Treaty of Al Hurr, to dissolve their local governments and adopt a common set of laws and practices for the entirety of humanity. Out of two hundred and four represented nations, one hundred and eighty-four signed the treaty, bringing six billion out of seven and a half billion into a single world government. Abolished were class systems, personal wealth, banking, it was a socialist paradise promised by academics on high but this time it took.
What it didn’t do was stop the darkest and most dedicated of the world’s enemies from opting out. China, Russia, the middle east, twenty total nations were left in the cold and out of the new utopia. Humanity had changed, but human nature had not.