Fermi´s Paradox

Mankind became aware of its galactic peril in July of 2040 when a gamma ray storm swept through the solar system at the speed of light. The radioactive particles destroyed unshielded satellites, lit up the sky for days, crashed the GlobalNet, and made life miserable for the modern world. It took nearly five years to repair the damage. In 2046, astronomers compared new observations to those recorded in the years leading up to 2040, and determined there was a second wave already speeding toward our solar system from the galactic core. They described the 2040 wave as a minor tremor, and the newly detected wave, to strike in 2060, as an earthquake. Within a year, Earth's governments initiated the largest civil construction programs ever imagined. They dug city-sized survival shelters under the tallest mountains, and burrowed hundreds of miles of tunnel complexes under the ocean floors. Humans, plants, animals, and samples of as many forms of life as possible were relocated into the shelters. They transplanted entire industries, and all the supplies and raw materials needed to make a population self-sustaining for decades into the shelters. It was the greatest cooperative effort in human history. They did everything they could to shield the world's population and infrastructure from the impact of the second wave. And still. Billions died from radiation poisoning. The second wave ravaged the surface of the Earth with gamma radiation that penetrated hundreds of feet underground. The storm wiped away all life on the planet, except for those huddling in the deepest shelters. Following the storm, humanity struggled forth from its shelters to begin the task of rebuilding. The first priority was to deploy the newly constructed satellites and gamma ray detection equipment. Within a few years, the satellite network was launched and operational in high Earth orbit. Astronomers soon started pouring over the data in makeshift control centers around the world. The data contained their worst fears, as well as something unexpected. There was in fact a third gamma wave approaching and would envelop Earth in 2070. If the first wave was a tremor, the second wave an earthquake, the third wave was off the Richter scale. The storm's intensity and duration would penetrate even the deepest shelters and strip away the Earth's atmosphere. It was a Global Extinction Event. They discovered the storm build-up to the third wave had already started. The intensity would increase with each passing year until all life was scrubbed from the Earth. Then, unexpected readings came from Venus, Mars, and Earth itself in Antarctica. As the precursor radiation of the new wave passed through the solar system, the gamma rays had hit something in each of those bodies, and reflected. As the weeks passed, one of the moons of Jupiter and several of the larger asteroids in the Asteroid Belt produced similar echoes. Within weeks, an elite team of cold weather survival experts, miners, and scientists deployed to Antarctica and began burrowing into the ancient ice to determine the source of the echo. The few seconds of grainy video they managed to send back before going silent, shocked the world... Twisting alien corridors, gently pulsing light strips, weirdly shaped devices, and whip-like shapes coiling in the darkness. Alien stasis technology had kept the base inactive, but upon the team’s entry, the device deactivate, powering up the base, and its defenses. It was the first time humans realized we were not the first intelligent life form to inhabit our solar system. The next team, led by Special Forces soldiers, fought their way through the ancient warrens and the alien creatures. After suffering heavy casualties, they were able to retrieve the base’s power core. The Core was roughly one cubic centimeter in size, yet produced power equal to a full nuclear reactor. Based on the strength of the echoes, scientists were able to calculate the cores present throughout the solar system were many times more powerful than the core retrieved from Antarctic. The cores though remained out of reach. Any ship leaving Earth would soon be pummeled by gamma radiation, and its crew killed within a few weeks. The first advance in human technology came when an on-site researcher noticed near zero gamma radiation penetrating one of base’s larger chambers. The xeno tech responsible for shielding the chamber was soon isolated, and researchers set to discovering how it functioned in hopes of shielding all of Earth. The tech proved to have very limited scaling and was extremely difficult to reproduce, but it was capable of shielding something small, like the living quarters of a spaceship. This leap was the final piece of technology needed to allow human ships to safely travel the solar system. For the first time, humanity had a hope to survive. While humanity lacked the technology to manufacture xeno power cores, with the help of xeno technology, mankind could tap their mysterious energies to power devices never before dreamed of. After the discovery of the first core, it became clear that Humanities one hope for survival was to retrieve the xeno cores spread across the solar system. With those cores planetary level defenses could be constructed in orbit to protect the Earth from the third gamma wave.