The Transsian - A Threat Analysis

An actual, typical Transsian, in a selfie^2.

Introduction

The Alien Species commonly referred to as Transsian (Homo Sapiens Sapiens Hermaphroditae) is the apex predator on the Super-Earth of 2.3 Earth's masses Barnard I - the only planet in
orbit around the Barnard's star.

The species occupies, on it, the same ecological niche that Homo Sapiens Sapiens occupies on our planet.

This is not surprising, as both are an offspring of the Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Cro-Magnon) explosion that was halted by the phenomenon commonly referred as "Nu slide", occurred around 43 thousand years ago.

The Transsian is, by far, the alien human species nearest to our star.

As such, despite their current lack of any FTL technology, it arguably is in Earth's best interest to study it. 

It appears probable that the original settlement on Barnard II was not an actual, full scale colony - like Anipos Prime - nor a leisure resort - like,  it has been inferred, was our Earth at the time.

The most probable explanation for Transsian physiology and for their general cultural idiosyncrasies is that the original settlement was a mono-gender biological research community, either a male or female-only one - something that, not unlikely those created by some contemporary trans-humanist cult, was relatively common at the time of the Great Slide.

Either way, the stranded colonists answer to the disappearance of FTL planet-to-planet transit was to use the biological technologies at their disposal to reproduce themselves, and to assure that their offspring didn't need any technology to reproduce.

Given the sophistication of Cro-Magnon technology at the eve of the fall, even billion-inhabitants industrial colonies like Anipos Prime could manufacture only a tiny subset of the spare  parts and supplies they needed; it was inevitable for a smaller group like the one living on Barnard I to devolve into barbarism as the machines broke down and couldn't be repaired.

It appears manifest that, in the process of granting their descendants the ability to reproduce without technological assistance, the "Barnadites" added some modifications to make their offspring more resilient to the perceived threats of their environment.

Also, it is extremely probable that they tried to obviate what they perceived as shortcomings of their own species physical and social structures of the time - again, like it has been tried by cultists, here on Earth, as recently as in 2057.

So, it is probably in observance to some ideological goals, that they engineered their descendants to be symmetrical hermaphrodites, a trait that has no other human species in this arm of the Galaxy. .

This characteristic was, famously, highlighted by the first photo of a Transsian to ever be obtained, the famous "Beautiful Alien"

It was very unfortunate that that was the first Alien image to have ever been deciphered, though it was almost inevitable that a  Transsian image would have been the first data packet to be interpreted.

Barnard's Star is a red dwarf, with a light so poor of high energy photons that Transsian 's first environmentally-induced mutations must have been the complete loss of melamine and of chromatic vision - no biological pigments are known able to intercept reliably infra-red light in a warm body, and the only visible light the planet receives - and few of it - is almost monochrome red. 

As a result of this reality, during their long phase as hunter-gatherers the Transsians lost every cone cell in their retina to the vantage of rod cells, and even acquired the same kind of reflective layer present in the eyes of felines and other night animals. 

As a direct consequence, transsian visual media is all about light and shadows, and their most employed  image format is consequently a 16-8 bit grey-scale with LZF compression, reminiscent of GIF images and suited for their extreme ability to distinguish shades of colours.


A format relatively easy to identify and decode.

Unfortunately, the nature of this first image was generally misread on our planet, with consequences that may be potentially ominous. We shall examine these in the successive sections of this document.
 
Another genetic difference between Transsian and base humans, whose genesis is unclear, is that their myostatin hormone seems to be less efficient than that of most descendants of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (Cro-Magnon).

Coupled with the planetary slightly stronger gravity acceleration, (1.40 g), it contributes to make the average Transsian way more muscular than the average terrestrial male of the same size. . 

The consequences of the Transsian unique physiology on their cultures and societies cannot be underestimated.

Human male and females, in almost every Homo Sapiens variant,  have vastly different - and somewhat at odd - biological imperatives driving them.

The interplay between these competing imperatives is one among the strongest forces to haveever  driven human societies development, here as well as on many other planets.

Transsian had instead only one gender, their reproduction system is entirely symmetric - it is not rare for Transsian partners to fall both pregnant after sexual intercourse - and their mating has an almost symbiotic nature.

Transsians mate for life, and it is not uncommon for a partner to die shortly after the other.

In turn, this is probably the reason why the species has not reverted back to the "silent estruses" that are common to most humanities.

There is no necessity for "females" to keep "males" "enthralled" - companionship, once a bond is struck, is automatic and mediated by a complex interaction of hormones.

Also, Transsian cannot sexually excite at all, unless their partner is present and receptive... which happens only in the fall mating season, a period of around one month - 22 Earth's days - in which every fertile adult of the species feels a compelling urge to copulate, till either it or its mate gets impregnated.

The remaining 180 days of the Barnard I year, the Transsians feel no sexual impulse whatsoever.

As a result of these fundamental differences, the Transsian cultures have no more use for the concept of "sexual mores" than they have for colors as we see them.



Religious Mismatches between Earth and Barnard I

As stated in precedence, it is somewhat unfortunate that the first image of a Transsian was "The Beautiful Alien", and maybe even more than it was not just circulated among a restricted number of scientist - like it has been the case for the images of the "Starfishes".

What is even more unfortunate is that too many "moral entrepreneurs" tried to capitalize on the apparent - to OUR eyes - lewdness of the image, and devised an entirely fictitious "orgy planet" around it.

Even as we write, there are religious preachers around the world that condemn the very existence of the Transsian species as a proof of the existence of Satan in the universe.

This is contributing to what is maybe the single greatest danger, aside from climatic instability, that our species has brought upon itself in the last century.

Because, and we can't stress this enough, the actual government of Barnard's I is a  theocracy.

A theocracy whose members lacks many "normal human compulsions", to compete for their attention, for some 11 of their 12 months, and that is known to go to extremes that make those of the ISIL Caliphate, in the first quarter of the century, look tame in comparison.

The person in "The Beautiful Alien",  with its greatly reduced body mass, was actually an ascetic monk of the so-called "Order of Sobal", a F'Qahj named Lize Fjschwann. 

In the main Transsian religion, Gubernism,  F'Qahj is a term used  to indicate a pious person, versed in the religious law that has decided to dedicate its life to follow one of the faith's three paths to illumination, in this case the path of the ascetic starvation.

It is also telling that the image itself was a drawing of pure black and white with no gray shading - in Gubernism it is considered disrespectful to show photos of a person, because - as the Good Book says - "un-mediated mechanical representation  cannot bring to the viewer the true soul of a being".

It is a style, we now know, that Transsians most commonly use for sacred images and between friends - almost every Transsian learns to draw, or - at least - to ink competently, in religious schools, as Gubern was a graphic artist before discovering his role as prophet.

Fjschwann passed way in 2058, and its teachings have grown to become the source of a great renovation  - i.e, a return to fundamental roots and practices - in the Gubernist faith.

Barnard star is just some 6 light-years away from our system, well inside the range of current digital video broadcast, and has acquired extensive specs.

Every time a televangelist like Rupert Moon bashes the "sinful alien monsters", showing a censored - or defaced - representation "The Beautiful Alien", our species is in effect grievously provoking the inhabitants of Barnard with that they call "Disrespecting Saints".

A crime that they routinely punish with death by public impalement. 



Gubernism and Islam

If the activities of Christian telepredicators weren't enough, there is also the issue of the relationship between Islam and Gubernism.

Owing to the difficulties involved  with historical sources and space-time fabric dilation over huge distances, prophet Muhammad's birth is estimated to have been in a range from  the year -2  to 3 of the Gubern era.

One of the historical problems of the Gubern faith was that, in the tradition of Zamarysm (the religion in which Gubern was born), to every prophet correspond an anti-prophet, whose followers and false teachings the true prophet had to conquer.

No such false prophet arose, during the life of Gubern... which Zamarysts interpreted as a proof that it was not, indeed, a true prophet. 

The discovery that in the same  time-frame, a mere 1.83 parsec away, appeared another prophet came in as a much-needed relief. A way to reconcile the Gubernist majority with the influential Zamaryst minorities still present in the Transsian population.

It did not take much for the Gubernist religious authorities to cast Muhammad as the Anti-Prophet, whose followers the true believers are called to destroy, to prove the righteousness of their faith.

Probably, the Gubernism leaders would have contented themselves with using the argument as a way to ease the inter-religious tensions with the other great faith on the planet, without bothering with any form of off-world interference.

Unfortunately, in the spring of 2061 the 40 million dollars transmitter built on behalf of the Quranic University of Ryad, send toward the stars the first Sura, encoded in Universal Data Link format.

It was preceded by a lengthy Arab-Transsian dictionary and a description of Arab grammar and rules, as it was intended from the start to send the QuRan in its original, Arabic form.

The transmitter used radio waves, to bypass the stringent No-Religion policies of the firewalls on the Anipos Z-Wave network; as a consequence of this and of limitations in its design, the transmitter was pointed toward the Barnard Star - the only humanity's cradle inside its effective range.    

The message reached its intended recipients in 2067.

Needless to say, they didn't take this attempt at religious propaganda lightly, even fatally flawed as it was.

Our current understanding is that the Gubernism authorities have declared Islam a "false faith", its believer "apostates" and that a way more rigorous firewall has now been implemented on the Z-Waves real-time data connections entering the Barnard System.
 
Needless to say, this unprecedented state of affairs is extremely worrying.




Current threat Analysis.

The Transsian technology is greatly inferior to the Anipos' - around 2000 years at the Transsian current rate of improvement.

This means that they have no FTL capability, nor is it realistic for them to acquire it for - at least - another 800 years.

However, this does not signify that they have no means of retaliation, for what they see as acts of significant memetic hostility made by inhabitants of our system.

More in particular, as many Earth's religious entities have already violated the Barnard's info-sphere with their proselytistic efforts, they felt justified to repeal the AMW treaty of 12330 A.A. (1070 AD) insofar as it relates to data traffic toward our system, and notified their decision to the Anipos.

It is possible that Anipos Prime may intervene and force the Transsian to reconsider but, for the time being, we aren't covered by the treaty any more, which means that the Anipos Firewalls do not stop religious materials between Earth and Barnard I any more .  

Or, to be more precise, we are the first species in almost one thousand years that has managed to expose itself to the full force of Transsian Memetic Warfare.

At the moment, they are still gauging the peculiarities of our various cultures, and devising the most efficient ways to spread their evil-ideologies in our planet, yet we have seen elements that seem to indicate that a preliminary, probably basic, attack is already under way...

In particular, the host of "Transsian porn manga"  - that has started flooding the 'Net in the last two years - has attracted our attention.

While superficially appealing to - and respecting - the Japanese tradition of futanari characters, the fact remains that these so-called porn comics are produced by a culture  that doesn't have - itself - any previous history of pornography, and are likely created exclusively for consumption by inhabitants of our planet.

An analysis of these comics' plots seems to indicate that they are manufactured out of a basic repository of tropes known in the genre, probably by  an AI system.

To date, none of these comics appears to be anything more than what it superficially seems - raunchy material designed to stimulate the lowest instincts of baseline citizens. Run of the mill material, the likes of which many Japanese authors have produced countless examples, for at least two centuries. 

However, one thousand years ago, the crop of absurdly violent video-games that flooded Anipos Prime didn't seem to be anything more than second rate rip-off of classic Anipos games from the dawn of their 23rd Console Era. Yet, before they realized it,  4% of their population had become Zamaryst , of the violently fundamentalist faction known as The re-birthed. These citizen had to be removed from any post of structural importance, after several of them managed to destroy the facilities in which they worked.

It is debatable that launching the very first FTL vessel to traverse the galaxy in 42 millennia, just to destroy Barnard I main moon, was or was not a reprehensible choice.

But it puts in perspective the danger that we have unwittingly brought upon ourselves, by the length at which the most technologically advanced human civilization currently alive went to free itself from a previous incarnation of it.


It is probably already too late to stop this first memetic incursion, as this material has spread well beyond the initial shell of geekly Comics aficionados.

If the past is a reliable guide, the memes that Barnard's authorities are injecting in our culture will not coalesce in the type of memetic catastrophe the Anipos experimented until a third or fourth wave of materials is released into our info-sphere. 

We still have fifteen to twenty years time, to negotiate a peace with the Transsian government and to prepare contingency plans in case we do not manage to do so.

It is not very much time to do so, once we take into account the kind of resistance that our own religious expansionist will probably put up against any attempt to stop their proselytizing efforts, more so as the first goal would be pretty laughable... porn comics hardly appears as a media able to change the soul of its users, and usually it isn't.

We recommend analyzing,  with extreme attention, every cultural artifact that may reach Earth info-sphere from Barnard, from now on.


Beyond the possibilities of a full-fledged memetic war, it must be noted that reaching Earth is NOT outside current Transsian capabilities, once their authorities habits of thinking in terms of centuries is taken into account.

Currently, the Transsian government is in the middle of a 150 years plan to overhaul their retirement health care and retirement system.

Our best estimation put in 200 years the time it would require a Transsian generation ship to reach Earth - provided that they have not already launched it

Such a time-frame goes well beyond anything we are used to, in Earth political landscape.

It is pretty normal for the Transsian, more so among the more fanatically minded.



Final Recommendations

It is now apparent to the members of this commission the wisdom of the Anipos saying:

 "Better to keep your radio shut, until you are sure that nothing of what you may say can prompt any of your neighbors to rip your throat".

Unfortunately, before our species even had occasion to hear it, it obtained the hostility of one of the more belligerently religious human subspecies known in this arm of the galaxy.

We believe that, as a species, we must find a way to resolve this situation positively.

If we do not,our sons or grandsons, if not us, will have to pay a hefty price for our errors. 

It is necessary to steer the AI systems of surveillance, to more closely  observe citizens that have been exposed to questionable - or just odd- Transsian cultural material in these last three years.
This will create considerable unrest, but it is inevitable.

The planet needs a new set of firewalls to replace the now ineffective Anipos systems.
It is improbable that Earth will succeed where a thousand years of Anipose's efforts have barely reduced the Transsian impact section, but we have to try.

Diplomatic talks with the Transsian governments should stress that Islam is just one of the many faiths on Earth. Repugnant policy as it may be, no member of any Judaeo-Christian religion should be allowed inside the negotiation team, nor any atheist or agnostic. 


Unfortunately, it is extremely unlikely that any of the religious authorities involved in attempts to "evangelize the barbarian aliens" will stop, or even slow down their activities. The most probable effect of any such effort would be to instill a martyrdom sense into these authority figures, and prompt a fierce resistance. Given this, we recommend only to ignore religious figures inputs on the issue.
We realize that even this reduced recommendation will be extremely hard to implement, for almost every politician on the planet.