A pure fractal made in Apophysis 2.09, overlaid in the first of four different ways
“Does anyone care to see how these creatures who are being blamed for a billion humans' problems live in their natural environment, and why they actually need protection from both humans and humanoids with their own agendas that are taking them from their own planet and environment?”
Commodore Wilhelm Allemande, having discovered cesium-based lifeforms, had lived to be 95 years old to come back to the fleet and be their loudest advocates, and was going to be pushing the younger men he had trained and who outranked him to do the right thing as they had in evacuating humanity from the successful schemes of the humanoid civilization that simply did not want humans around in their region.
“Concede it!” the commodore thundered in the conference call with Admirals Elian Bodega, Joshua Feldstein, and Benjamin Banneker-Jackson. “I know I was the one saying last week that what we really needed to do was blow that meddling civilization in the middle to smithereens, but then I got over myself and we need to get over ourselves!”
My first officer, the commodore's younger cousin Cmdr. Helmut Allemande, had been constantly when going and coming from duty observed to have been talking to himself, and not everyone understood “Pray without ceasing” was a thing when dealing with a firebrand of an older relative who is like “an old king – a Kaiser, really – who will no more be admonished by mere mortals,” as he explained it to me.
“Oh my,” I said. “Kaiser Wilhelm III?”
“You know the ancient history of the 19th and 20th centuries so you know the magnitude of the challenge – not that Cousin Wilhelm is dictatorial in the sense of wanting to lord it over other people on a mass scale, but his personality is so big and his mind still so sharp and he is still so physically active and energetic for his age, and his not even hearing 'no' when he is convinced he is right is so firm at this age… .”
But, sure enough, the commodore had changed his mind about who was ultimately responsible.
“We are!” he said to the admirals. “The consortium has the protest of the existing civilization in this region and the well-documented reasons why, and we have the whole galaxy ahead of us to settle while this little civilization just has this, and they know us, that we don't respect territorial rights when we want something! I read that and as a German knowing my history had to check my own pride and am now here to check humanity – that little civilization in the middle successfully defended itself and we need to take our lumps and move on!”
This was definitely a minority view, but …
“But Cousin Wilhelm is so loud,” Cmdr. Allemande said, his own booming basso profundo in its usual calm check.
But sure enough … the three admirals in question, having noted what mistakes and missteps there had been to have made to need to relocate a billion people in two months, decided to put their weight behind the commodore's recommendations, including authorizing him to prepare an exploratory expedition to the home planet of the beautiful cesium-based creatures that had been made the means of a civilization's self-defense. The commodore knew “protection of rare life form” was going to go down with humanity far better than “defeated and driven off by a civilization without even a smidgeon of the power we have in space.”
This allowed the crew of the Amanirenas to participate in the modern documenting of what Wilhelm Allemande had been among the first to see … these gorgeous creatures, at home enjoying their natural environment. Of course, we humans had to suit up to survive the atmospheric conditions, but … .
“These here are firework royalty … living light and loveliness in a sky no eye but their fellow creatures and their Creator should see … and that is OK,” Admiral Banneker-Jackson my uncle said to me. “We have plenty, and do not need to have everything, and if we had understood this in time, a billion people in these last two months would have not been dispossessed of everything they possessed out here.”
“As a young captain,” I said, “I get satisfaction just knowing my generation has a chance to learn up close and personal why we do what we do, and why we are not doing what was done poorly from before.”
“Learning from the previous generations' mistakes and doing better is rare among humans. Keep up the good work, Captain.”
“Sir, yes, sir, Admiral.”
When going off duty, Cmdr. Helmut Allemande was observed to be silent for the first time in a week, but if you knew about the glow of gratitude when a younger relative knew his prayer for an older relative and all the preservation of human, humanoid, and cesium-based life that went with that older relative had been answered, you knew.