The majority of humans on Xenosulia are descended from those who arrived on colony ships around 200 years ago. The humans that settled Xenosulia were from 38th and 39th Century Earth, a society that had only relatively recently rebuilt itself since civilisation slowly collapsed over the 22nd Century; this collapse was caused by a number of factors, mainly wanning resources and climate change.
Language and taxonomic nomenclature
In 38th and 39th Century biological taxonomy, as with other areas of science during this time period, extensive use is made of Sukian words in the nomenclature. The Suki people had done a great deal of work recovering ancient technology before the expansion of the Gontanic Empire. After the empire began incorporating Sukian research into their technology, it was only natural they’d borrow words from Sukian for concepts that were at the time new to them. This habit persisted to the extent that when the Gontans made further technological developments, they’d often use Sukian as a source language to create new terms. This continued long after the Gontanic Empire fractured and the fragments became nations in their own right. The Sukian language is one of the many languages descended from Russian, although it has arguably changed the most, with the complete attrition of consonant clusters, simplification of the vowel inventory, and simplification of grammar.
Latin and Greek are also used in science, just as they were before the 22nd Century collapse. This is mainly because a lot of scientific advancement early on depended on searching for old records from before the collapse. This is especially true of taxonomy, since clades that had already been named pre-collapse were usually given the same name if that name could be recovered.
One of the most common languages during the 38th and 39th Centuries was Gontanic due to the prominence of the Gontanic Empire prior to re-industrialisation. The Gontanic language is descended from English, although it is incomprehensible to English speakers due to the sheer amount of time that had passed. It’s far from the only language descended from English, but it has by far more speakers than any other descendent of the language.
After the discovery of complex life on other planets, there were a few changes in taxonomic conventions to better facilitate this, such as the addition of a rank at the very top to reflect the taxonomic tree as a whole, with all Earth-life belonging to the group Terravitae.
In addition to this, a taxon only needs to be given a unique name within a planet, and can share a name with other taxa on other planets or moons. This applies to any taxonomic rank except for the name for the taxonomic tree itself. This is mainly for practicality, since communication delays are so long at the distances between stars that not all taxonomists are going to have records of all taxa that currently exist. If this wasn’t the case, taxonomic groups would be forced to change names all the time as new updates are received from other planets.
There is already precedent for this in the past, prior to the 22nd Century collapse; although names must be unique within the purview of a nomenclatural code, there are many instances of duplicate names occurring between plant and animal genera. In fact, the rules on duplicate naming is more restrictive than it used to be.
There is a common tendency to Latinise taxonomic names from other languages like Sukian, at least in terms of spelling, for example by replacing k with c. Contractions are also more common than in pre-collapse taxonomic nomenclature, likely because of the heavy use of Sukian words, which tend to be long and vowel-heavy.
Following the colonisation of other star systems, there was a tendency to refer to the Solar System as the “Helios System”, and the Sun as Helios. The term “sun” was often applied to the local star of whatever system one was in, and while inaccurate by previous definitions, the term “solar system” came to be used for any planetary system.
Timeline prior to settlement
During the 3700s, small translucent-white orbs were discovered, presumed to be naturally occurring, which consisted of an outer shell of matter with antihydrogen contained within. This discovery of “antimatter pearls” spurred an increased interest in colonising interstellar space.
The Zhimuchua Space Telescope Array was one of numerous enormous telescopes built around this time, built from carved out asteroids, which began making more detailed observations of exoplanets than was previously possible. The Zhimuchua Telescopes in particular consisted of multiple large asteroid telescopes sharing a wide orbit around the sun, with the asteroids spread out evenly within this orbit. They were initially stabilised with nuclear propulsion, since the technology to utilise antimatter pearls for energy hadn’t been developed yet.
The name “Zhimuchua” came from the Sukian word for “pearl”, referencing antimatter pearls, since it was believed they’d allow passage to the worlds being observed.
It was in 3738 that the telescope array turned its attention to the Limax System, designated by the researchers working on the telescopes as Zhimuchua 23. It wasn’t long afterwards that it became clear Zhimuchua 23 d should be a prime target for settlement; not only was it shown to have an atmosphere mostly breathable to humans, with comfortable temperatures and pressures, but there were also strong indications of life. Since astrobiological research had previously been limited to just the Helios System, at the time people were only aware of the presence of single-celled and pre-cellular extra-terrestrial life. So this was worth investigating. It was far from the first exoplanet to show such definitive evidence of life, but so far humanity had been unable to directly observe the organisms on any of these planets. However, Zhimuchua 23 c and e, previous candidates for habitability, showed disappointingly little evidence of life.
With the research into antimatter pearls making frustratingly little progress, while significant progress was also made into more efficient use of nuclear power, there had already been a few colony ships sent out to other stars. Most colonists were researchers and their relatives, travelling only to study new alien worlds, but because of the time it would take to reach these planets the only practical option would be for the researchers to permanently settle there. There were very few volunteers outside of this group, since few people would want to leave the comfort of the almost utopian society that existed in the 38th Century. Although, with a looming energy crisis (one of the reasons motivating the development of more efficient nuclear power), there were a few individuals who were worried this may change.
It was as early as 3742 that the first colony ship was sent to Xenosulia. It used nuclear propulsion, and possessed large retractable sails that allowed it to be sped up further by powerful lasers outside the ship. These sails were also used to decelerate the ship as it neared the Limax System. The ship would take 83 years to traverse the 16 light years between the Solar System and Zhimuchua 23. However, technology allowed the researchers and their family to hibernate for most of the duration, with a comparatively small rotating crew outside of hibernation to perform maintenance tasks.
Even as early as the 3700s, the technology existed to make Xenosulia more hospitable to humans. In addition to some genetic modification – which included the ability to naturally have offspring (technology was such that it was usually easier to artificially grow children) – there were nanoparticles placed in the colonists’ blood that would bind to carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide to prevent too much of the toxins from building up.
It wasn’t until 3820 that the first antimatter ships were sent out to Xenosulia. Society was very different by then, and although advances in technology since the early to mid-3700s allowed for unrivalled levels of luxury, the world as a whole had gotten increasingly authoritarian and militaristic. This was in addition to the fact the existence of antimatter technology meant an interstellar war could end up destroying all life on Earth. This resulted in a lot more motivation to leave Earth so, coupled with the far shorter journey length, there were no shortage of volunteers. It was even possible to make a return trip, although the journey there and back would take up many years of one’s life.
The antimatter ships used antimatter pearls as a fuel source, and accelerated at a constant rate of around 1g, although some ships that travelled longer distances couldn’t sustain this acceleration. Antimatter fuel took up a large portion of a ship’s mass, with extremely strong metamaterials allowing such a large hollow shell to support itself.
The first nuclear fusion ships didn’t arrive on Xenosulia until 3825, when the researchers immediately began sending information back to Earth. This was only twelve years before the arrival of the more numerous antimatter ships, in 3837. Although the antimatter ships took over 17 years to reach the planet, because of time dilation it only felt like five years from the perspective of the passengers on board.
It wasn’t until much later that the messages sent from the first colonists reached Earth, and even later still until Xenosulia’s new inhabitants heard a response. They had already begun hearing signals from Earth before this, but not from an Earth that was yet able to analyse any of the data Xenosulia’s researchers had gathered – or even knew the colonisation efforts were a success.
Timeline following settlement
Since few resources were brought with the colonists and the planet lacked any infrastructure, people were forced to rely less on technology than they had done in the past.
People were at least able to rely on the cybernetics they had prior to arriving on Xenosulia, and they were able to bring a few of the “houses” people lived in back on Earth.
These cubes were fairly small but possessed technology that was able to cater to the inhabitants’ every need, and the use of 3D screens (in addition to the ocular implants everyone had) meant the place could feel much bigger than it actually was. Although they were mobile on Earth, the lack of magnetic infrastructure meant that it was difficult to move any of the cubes brought to Xenosulia.
A few of the earliest settlements were build by assembling buildings with such cubes, although as the population grew a smaller and smaller fraction of the population was able to inhabit them. Eventually, inhabitation of these buildings was mostly limited to the ruling castes of the new cultures that emerged.
Civilisation on Earth collapsed towards the end of the 39th Century due to conflicts that arose in response wanning deposits of antimatter pearls, which Earth had since grown to rely on. This meant communication between the two worlds was essentially shut off around this time, although they still did receive the odd message after 3900. However, these became less frequent over time, and Xenosulia hasn’t heard from Earth since the 3950s. Ships continued to arrive from Earth after this point, but they usually contained passengers in hibernation who had escaped in slower ships during the conflicts of the late 3800s.
In general, the inhabitants of Xenosulia lost much of the knowledge from Earth over time, and became largely agrarian, growing genetically modified crops that had been brought from Earth. Sometimes, they would also grow native plant-life, if they could find parts of the plant with usable nutrients. There were even a few hunter-gather tribes that appeared and had learned to survive on just the native life.
The plan was originally for the colonists to build the necessary infrastructure to re-build society on another planet, which was expected to take a great deal of time. It was impractical to take all the resources needed to do this on the colony ships, so this was a necessity. However, it took so long and with so little initial pay-off that people began to lose interest, and these efforts eventually stopped entirely. People were more concerned with day-to-day survival on a strange new planet than building a future they might not even see in their own lifetime.
There were a few small robot-build cities that were constructed after some of the later antimatter ships arrived, but continuing to build cities like this was hardly sustainable with the resources available. Although the machines largely made use of the materials found on the planet to make these cities, it was a very energy intensive process and it was difficult to gather the necessary nuclear or antimatter fuels. Because of this there are only a few such cities, some of which were abandoned only decades after they were constructed. The designers of these cities had intended for more to be built this way, once the inhabitants of the first cities had used the technology and infrastructure the cities provided to gather more resources. But this didn’t end up happening. These difficulties existed in spite of the cities being far more primitive than those available on Earth in the 3800s.
Recovery of Earth technology
There was a period of re-industrialisation, however, starting in the 3990s in the continent of Occasia. This was mainly spurred by the recovery of Earth technology from whatever records were still available, and by searching abandoned robot-built cities and ships. This was mainly done by the TSO Republic, a nation that originally formed from the unification of various city-states, as well as the Irushi Empire to the north and various smaller nations and kingdoms to the south. Zoological and botanical research resumed after the establishment of the TSO Institute of Science, leading to further developments in people’s understanding of life on Xenosulia.
Technology continued to develop on Occasia, and spread to the nearby Arunia and the southern parts of Mesogea. By the “present” date of 4052, this eventually led to the development of personal transport in the form of fossil fuel vehicles, advanced computers, personal 3D printers in most homes (including food printing), advanced robotics and even limited continental internets. A limited space program is established, although travel outside of the Limax System remains virtually impossible.
A few efforts are made to make contact with other colony planets, although this proves difficult. Although there is nothing but silence from many of the systems that records show to have been colonised, there does seem to be a specific region of space with a lot of activity. Earth itself, however, remains silent.
There were other places on Xenosulia where Earth technology was recovered independently, but I’ll initially be focusing on the research done by the inhabitants of the three mentioned continents.
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