Rama Revealed

REPORT #319

Time of Transmission: 156 307 872 574.2009 Time Since First-Stage Alert: 111.9766 References: Node 23-419 Spacecraft 947 Spacefarers 47 249 (A & B) 32806 2666

During the last interval the structure and order in the spacefaring communities inside the spacecraft have continued to disintegrate. Despite the warnings of the octospiders (Spacefarers #2 666) and their laudable attempts to avoid a broad conflict with the humans (#32 806), it is now even more likely that a disastrous war between the two species, which could leave only a few survivors, may take place in the next several intervals. The situation therefore meets all the prerequisite conditions for a Stage 2 intercession.

Prior intercessionary activity has been declared a failure, primarily because the more aggressive of the two species, the humans, are fundamentally insensitive to the entire range of subtle intercessionary techniques. Only a few of the humans have responded to the many attempts to alter their hostile behavior, and those who did react were unable to stop the genocide of the avians and sessiles (#47 249, A & B) perpetrated by their rulers.

The humans are organized in the rigid, hierarchical manner often observed in pre-spacefaring species. They continue to be dominated by a leadership whose focus is the retention of personal power. The welfare of the human community and even its survival are subordinated in the implicit objective function of the current human leaders to the continuation of a political system which gives them absolute authority. There is consequently little likelihood that the threatened expanded conflict between the humans and the octospiders can be avoided by any logical appeals.

A small cadre of humans, including almost all of the family that lived at the Node for over a year, remains in residence in the main octospider city. Their interaction with their hosts has demonstrated that it is possible for the two species to live together in harmony. Recently a mixed delegation of those humans and one octospider have decided to make a concerted effort to prevent a full-scale interspecies war by contacting the leaders of the human colony directly. However, the probability that this delegation will be successful is very low.

Thus far the octospiders have taken no overt hostile action. Nevertheless, they have begun the process of preparing for a war against the humans. Although they will fight only if they determine that the survival of their community is in jeopardy, the advanced biological capabilities of the octospiders makes the outcome of such a war a foregone conclusion.

What is not certain is how the humans will react once the conflict escalates and they suffer heavy losses. It is possible that the war might terminate quickly and, in time, the two surviving communities might again reach a near equilibrium status. Based on the available observational data on the humans, however, there is a nontrivial probability that this species will continue the battle until most or all of them perish. Such an outcome would destroy all the vestiges of at least one of the two spacefaring societies remaining in the spacecraft. To preclude such a disadvantageous result for the project, consideration of a Stage 2 intercession is recommended.