Rest in Peace?
22 Nov 2022Iridium Nova
Peace is a popular word lately. We've been blasting the literal snot out of our favorite monstrous space flowers for a few years (and quite a few more a century or so before that), and now we're going to try to make peace with them. I guess it's the thought that counts. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for peace, but it's a bit late. The Thargoids, as far as we know, don't really fully understand our non-hive society. They are attacking us because we attacked them. And picked on their seed mounds, colonized their territory, and probably inadvertently threatened their queen's honor with all that light-flashing, honking, and flying around in circles we did in front of them. Not to mention plucking the little seeds off their mounds and then chucking them back at them.Every mention of Thargoids throughout history is tied to their aggression. Some of that is the work of historical revisionists, but not all of it. Yes, we started the war, but aside from rumors that they might have reprogrammed a beacon to tell us they're coming back, there's been no real attempts on their part to bury the hatchet, except in the skulls of our collective species as a whole. The only hope we have that peace is a possibility is the fact that sometimes they don't attack when we encounter them. But sometimes an ant doesn't bite you when it lands on your foot. These creatures are a hive. Each one is biologically programmed to do a certain task, with a short list of contingencies to handle complications or opportunities that arise during the completion of the task. For all we know, the Thargoids we've encountered are basically animals, incapable of sentient thought or complex communication. Workers, soldiers, drones. They communicate with each other and their queen through pheromones, body language, radio waves, or maybe psychics. Or some combination. Even if we could decipher this language, they'd just ignore us because we're not one of them.
But what if we could talk to the queen? That's the thing. They're a hive. Each member is only capable of the specific tasks it was built for. It stands to reason that the queen would be the only one capable of communicating with other species. The only really sentient one. Because, what use does a worker ant have for emotions and reason? But the queen? It makes sense.
The Guardians claimed to have deciphered the Thargoid language. That'd be the language they use to communicate with each other. Useless to anyone that's not a Thargoid because they're a hive. No wonder it didn't work. If we're really going to have a diplomatic exchange with the Thargoids, we have to talk to their queen, and I doubt the Thargoid language would even work for that since its only purpose is to allow the queen to control her hive. So, we have to come up with a new language, and the queen's gotta be in on it. Not exactly a walk in the park.
Still, maybe it's possible. Just maybe, if we're lucky, and could find a queen to talk to, we could make her see that, unlike her kind, humanity does not speak with one single voice. We are many, and we do not agree. Yes, we embody chaos, but there is both good and bad among us, just like the rest of the universe. And not all of us want to kill aliens. Those of us who don't might be willing to help fight those who do, or offer other benefits of interest to a hive, things that hive couldn't obtain on it's own. But all of these possibilities must start with communication. And to do that, we have to find a queen, but where could they be? Anyone seen any really big Thargoids around lately?
Oh, hey, there's eight of them headed this way. How convenient.