Do you know what the "dark forest hypothesis" is?
No, but it sounds spooky.
It kind of is! It's also relevant. The basic idea is that the universe is teeming with intelligence, spacefaring lifeforms, but they are hostile and in conflict with one another. They all keep quiet in order to avoid revealing themselves to others. They aren't hiding from us, specifically. But the extreme measures they take to remain undetectable also makes them invisible to us, so we think the universe is devoid of intelligent life like ours.
OK, definitely spooky. I assume you have a story to go with this.
Always.
Stak and Vral sought out my help one time--technically, they wanted the Director's help, but he wanted me to assist, too. They wanted to do a little historical nudge to give the Oolians an edge over the Overlords that would be important to the later development of the Oolian/Koraxian conflicts. No problem, sounded simple enough.
Except they screwed up and got Oolar killed.
I take it he's the guy who founded the Oolians, or whatever?
He was the one who led their first revolt, yeah. Before that, they didn't really have a name for themselves that they had chosen.
Oolar's death didn't prevent future revolts, but because of how the circumstances changed, they never quite overthrew the Overlords. The effect it did have was making the Overlords a lot more brutal, such that every species that hadn't yet been subjugated by them went out of their way to avoid having the Overlords even detect them.
Eventually, a bunch of the potential victim species got together to try to take out the Overlords, and it went terribly. But it showed the Overlords that they were vulnerable, so they started to hide their activities. The forest darkened gradually, in essence.
I assume this messed things up for the future?
Oh, absolutely. There was nothing to really counterweight the Overlords. The only thing other species could do was try to warn others, but they had to do so clandestinely or they'd put themselves at risk from the Overlords, too.
I'm surprised they would even bother warning others, given the risks.
Not everyone is a selfish asshole, thankfully.
Eventually, one of them got to Earth. It was actually one of the Trevora, though they were called something else in this timeline. They arrived in the mid 20th century and it was a whole thing. The Trevora delegate brought together representatives from the world's biggest countries and told them the score. Then came the worse news: in order to avoid detection by the Overlords, Earth would need to go radio silent. Forever.
Now, the Trevora delegate couldn't force humanity to do anything. Their only job was to inform us and tell us what precautions to take. The risk was that if we didn't take their advice, we were at increased risk from the Overlords.
But you're probably thinking, "Didn't Earth already send out all kinds of radio signals before?" Yup! There wasn't much to be done about that, though. You just hoped the Overlords never picked them up. But at least if you eliminated any EM signals from leaving Earth, you would reduce the chances of the Overlords picking up anything.
Unfortunately, humanity was just getting started on investing in radio technology and basically everything related to it that would form the foundation of an information society. Think about it: cell phones, wifi, signals from airplanes, satellites, space probes... you look at how things are now, Earth is just screaming into the void. The choice at hand was to give up that whole future.
It was hotly debated, as you'd expect. Plus, countries that weren't brought in on it originally were extremely skeptical that any kind of alien contact took place. Should I also mention this was during the Cold War? Good times. Earth's history wasn't substantially changed by the absence of Koraxian meddling, you see. Things turned out more or less the same, albeit with some details shifted around. So, we had to choose: give up on a technological society that was just being born, or increasingly risk enslavement or annihilation by the Overlords.
Even some of the countries that did get face time with the delegate didn't believe the warning and didn't think they should heed it.
The biggest problem was that this was a pretty all-or-nothing proposition. If everyone didn't cut off their EM emissions, we were still shining like a beacon for anyone who went looking. Everyone had to shut down to make this work.
A few did, but most didn't. And then you had exactly the expected outcome.
Up to that point, we weren't sure we needed to go back and fix anything. Obviously, the complete reshuffling of the galactic order seemed bad, but if things turned out roughly the same for humanity, well, what was the harm?
What an incredibly anthropocentric worldview.
Takes one to know one, I guess?
The Overlord invasion was swift, the destruction of almost every notable human structure took a couple of weeks, and what was left of humanity was carted off to other planets. The Overlords figured they'd come back to Earth in the future, after the environmental damage caused by humanity and by their invasion dissipated, which would take a few centuries.
This was a clusterfuck we couldn't let pass. So, we had to go back and stop ourselves from meddling in the Oolians' origins, which the other uses did not appreciate. They eventually listened, though.
And so, the forest was bright again.
Pretty much. And Stak and Vral learned not to fuck with that particular bit of history again.
Seems like kind of an expensive lesson. Also, wouldn't that timeline where humanity got people enslaved still exist?
Yup. Nothing we can do about that, though.
Do you ever think about how you spawn these timelines and then just abandon them, leaving people to the fates you've created?
I try not to. It's depressing.