Part III: Ave Homines
On June 18, 2023, the spacecraft
USS Arminius departed from The Hub, a torus-shaped space station that was the center of travel throughout the Sol system. The Great Expansion was underway- reverse-engineered Race technology was being used to colonize and mine the asteroids, terraform Mars, build colonies and watering stations out in Saturn and Jupiter, haul ice from the Kuiper Belt to the Inner System, and fuel the greatest economic expansion in human history. The Equator was now a visible object, as a straight line of space stations, satellites, and orbital factories dotted the equatorial plane at LEO. Reconnaissance of the Race was no child's play, simply because they had no way to scan every singe object in orbit. Colony transports like the
Speedwell, the
Mayflower, the
Godspeed, the
Susan Constant, and the
Discovery, carried thousands of colonists to Mars, the Belt, and the Outer Planets every month. Two uninhabited habitable worlds, around 61 Cygni A and B, are both under review for being the subject of American Colonization fleets, using newly-developed FTL technology
Mexico, Spain, and Poland have been granted greater autonomy as a hedge against rebellion, with all malcontents in the Race colonies invited to relocate there, where they have roughly the same autonomy as an American state.
The
Arminius expedition was sent to send the message to the Race that they were obsolete. President Shaw, who had been placed in cold sleep in 1974, was awoken and treated with telomerase to be allowed to go on the expedition. Back on Earth, a brain drain was rapidly occurring as the best and brightest of the Race colonies were abandoning the lizards for the United States.
Back stateside, the Anthropist Party, founded in 1946 by President Shaw as the majority coalition on Earth, has stayed in power for nearly a century. Benjy Shaw was succeeded by Richard Nixon (1969-1993,) Hillary Rodham (1993-2021) and now Jason Kander was the current President. The Human Power salute (two taps on the chest above the heart with a close-fisted right hand, followed by a closed-fisted salute) was a universal gesture in the States, and the greeting
ave homines (roughly translated "Hail, Humanity" or "Hail, Mankind") was a subversive gesture in the Race Colonies.
Washington, DC was rebuilt following the Race's nuclear attack on it in 1942, with a Capitol building far larger and grander than the original, capable of housing Senators and Representatives from all 117 states. The Invasion Memorial, a massive, 400-foot obelisk in the middle of Victory Square, dominates the skyline even more than the Washington Monument did. On it are the names of every person killed in the Race Invasion of Earth.Victory Sqauare and the National Mall are now merged, and in 2021 the inauguration of Jason Kander drew the largest crowd in history, simply because a significant fraction of the population hadn't been born when Former President Rodham was inaugurated.
Shuttlecraft ferry people between points on Earth in under an hour, while for shorter distances a MagVac system crisscrosses the nation, allowing one to travel from New York o Los Angeles in 40 minutes. The trip from Boston to Washington, DC is made in under ten.
English is taught in schools nationwide, acting as the lingua franca of a new empire. Jakarta, Singapore, Manilla, Tokyo, and elsewhere are all modern cities with modern conveniences. As travel between states is so easy, the cultures of many of those areas have been disbursed, so much so that the neighborhood south of Cecil B Moore avenue in Philadelphia is called "Javatown," while "Little Philippines" in Chicago is a thriving area chock full of small, family-owned businesses.
Mars has a population that is approaching one million and may soon be broken up into states, while the Belt has about half a million and the Outer system has about the same.
The world changed in 1942, but in the end it is Humanity that was the victor. Humanity will soon spread out amongst the stars and make them home, and it's all thanks to the little, hide-bound lizards that invaded so long ago.
Ave Homines
Ave
