story idea
I realize posting the idea here means someone might take it, but hey, whomever uses it still has to write the story, right? And two can right from one premise and get two completely different stories. So while I'd like to be the one that does something with it, I'll risk it's theft. Besides, getting a book published and selling, it seems to me, more than ever before, is about the same as becoming a pop star, lottery winner, or political leader of a wealthy nation!
Okay so here I go thinking.
There's the kuiper belt and the Oort cloud out there. Each is a torus around the sun of gasses, ices, minerals, dirt, and even organic matter. Yes, yes it is, I kid you not. Comets, you see, contain organic molecules, ice, (including water ice) and assorted rocks. They are prolific in these two belts, and some, perhaps by some previous impact of something slightly less tuned than the rest, come flying in at weird angles to the rest of the solar system. Hence why it's believed that a comet impact may have been the genesis of life on earth. There's the earth, it's a hot ball surrounded by a dense layer of gasses, rather like our gas giants I bet, back then. These comets coming flying in and hitting the middle are surmised to have delivered both water and organic material as well as contributing to the minerals on the planet, the mass of it. Got it? So yeah, life on earth delivered by comets from these two belts of crap that has the water, land, minerals, gasses and even organic matter needed to have a living planet.
Here's where the story genesis comes in. A miner in the kuiper belt comes across something unexpected in an asteroid. There, embedded in some molten and reformed material, he finds something manufactured. Deep inside a rock so ancient the earth didn't even have a horizon yet, there's God's hand. Or someone, anyway. But there's been no sign of alien life, all these long years as humans ranged further out from home, terraforming mars and IO, developing long-range quantum communication allowing them to colonize well beyond the range of human life travel and stay in touch, if not able to return or move back and forth effectively. Children born in transit would be the colonists parents when they arrived, that kind of long term travel time, but thanks to quantum radio waves, holographic and VR visits kept the distant planets in touch, and even allowed them to trade materials common on each planet amongst them by long-range robotic cargo.
Now, here, an artifact not made by human hands, in a universe populated only by humans. The only alien life that had ever been found thus far, or seen in distant parts of the galaxy, or even implied from distant galaxies, was at best a sort of algae. But no human hands had carved this object. it was decorated, it had a deliberate fold to it. Delicate tracery of etching showed a sense for lyrical beauty and the edge of it's fold showed it had been part of something. But it was small. Not bigger than a bread box, as people used to say when they ate bread kept in boxes. Joe stopped to wonder why you'd put bread in a box anyway. The bag works just fine. Boxes implied wood and trees, that's one of those incredibly rare materials worth shipping from planet to planet! Nobody ordinary in Sola could afford so much as a paper flower!
So here he was, peering through his scratched visor at something he knew would freak out everyone, and wondered if they'd pay him for it or expropriate it. Should he keep it quiet and try to sell it on the black market? But then they'd say he made it, of course. Only by official record could he prove it's provenance and only by it's provenance would this relic have value. Joe wasn't stupid, he understood in an instant what this meant. He'd been mining the guts of a dead planet all these years, one that had been populated, and then blew up into shards and fragments. Blown to smithereens. It also meant... Joe's mind paused here and he stared blankly at the stars, unable to finish the thought in shock. Then he finished. It meant that the organic matter which first started Earth's life, and spawned earthlings and all the living beings in the planet, was once a sentient species capable of blowing itself up. He'd read in history how often Earth had come close to that. Earth had parents and they'd done exactly that, then Life started over on Earth, and it nearly happened again. But now, no way we'd ever kill off all life again, we'd made it through that puberty. Joe started taking enhanced recordings including location data, sonar, and so forth, live syncing to Earth servers as he went, as though he'd found a diamond deposit or platinum, or trees growing on a planetoid. Something highly valueable, found here, proving it was Joe's, for one thing, even though the government might not let him sell it for the highest price. Showing earth, as soon as anyone bothered to look in, that everything had suddenly changed and we were no longer alone in the universe, while still being alone. There were ghosts. There had been other life. That life was us, but not us, our parents.
Okay so here I go thinking.
There's the kuiper belt and the Oort cloud out there. Each is a torus around the sun of gasses, ices, minerals, dirt, and even organic matter. Yes, yes it is, I kid you not. Comets, you see, contain organic molecules, ice, (including water ice) and assorted rocks. They are prolific in these two belts, and some, perhaps by some previous impact of something slightly less tuned than the rest, come flying in at weird angles to the rest of the solar system. Hence why it's believed that a comet impact may have been the genesis of life on earth. There's the earth, it's a hot ball surrounded by a dense layer of gasses, rather like our gas giants I bet, back then. These comets coming flying in and hitting the middle are surmised to have delivered both water and organic material as well as contributing to the minerals on the planet, the mass of it. Got it? So yeah, life on earth delivered by comets from these two belts of crap that has the water, land, minerals, gasses and even organic matter needed to have a living planet.
Here's where the story genesis comes in. A miner in the kuiper belt comes across something unexpected in an asteroid. There, embedded in some molten and reformed material, he finds something manufactured. Deep inside a rock so ancient the earth didn't even have a horizon yet, there's God's hand. Or someone, anyway. But there's been no sign of alien life, all these long years as humans ranged further out from home, terraforming mars and IO, developing long-range quantum communication allowing them to colonize well beyond the range of human life travel and stay in touch, if not able to return or move back and forth effectively. Children born in transit would be the colonists parents when they arrived, that kind of long term travel time, but thanks to quantum radio waves, holographic and VR visits kept the distant planets in touch, and even allowed them to trade materials common on each planet amongst them by long-range robotic cargo.
Now, here, an artifact not made by human hands, in a universe populated only by humans. The only alien life that had ever been found thus far, or seen in distant parts of the galaxy, or even implied from distant galaxies, was at best a sort of algae. But no human hands had carved this object. it was decorated, it had a deliberate fold to it. Delicate tracery of etching showed a sense for lyrical beauty and the edge of it's fold showed it had been part of something. But it was small. Not bigger than a bread box, as people used to say when they ate bread kept in boxes. Joe stopped to wonder why you'd put bread in a box anyway. The bag works just fine. Boxes implied wood and trees, that's one of those incredibly rare materials worth shipping from planet to planet! Nobody ordinary in Sola could afford so much as a paper flower!
So here he was, peering through his scratched visor at something he knew would freak out everyone, and wondered if they'd pay him for it or expropriate it. Should he keep it quiet and try to sell it on the black market? But then they'd say he made it, of course. Only by official record could he prove it's provenance and only by it's provenance would this relic have value. Joe wasn't stupid, he understood in an instant what this meant. He'd been mining the guts of a dead planet all these years, one that had been populated, and then blew up into shards and fragments. Blown to smithereens. It also meant... Joe's mind paused here and he stared blankly at the stars, unable to finish the thought in shock. Then he finished. It meant that the organic matter which first started Earth's life, and spawned earthlings and all the living beings in the planet, was once a sentient species capable of blowing itself up. He'd read in history how often Earth had come close to that. Earth had parents and they'd done exactly that, then Life started over on Earth, and it nearly happened again. But now, no way we'd ever kill off all life again, we'd made it through that puberty. Joe started taking enhanced recordings including location data, sonar, and so forth, live syncing to Earth servers as he went, as though he'd found a diamond deposit or platinum, or trees growing on a planetoid. Something highly valueable, found here, proving it was Joe's, for one thing, even though the government might not let him sell it for the highest price. Showing earth, as soon as anyone bothered to look in, that everything had suddenly changed and we were no longer alone in the universe, while still being alone. There were ghosts. There had been other life. That life was us, but not us, our parents.