CHAPTER 200: THE NEW DEAL FOR EXPLORERS AND DEVELOPERS

"This cannot be true. The Galactic Union would... This cannot be true." Earth friend seemed to be having a hard time accepting the implications of what he had just learned. Disbelief, fear. Disbelief.

FEAR.

"I am the cause of this." FEAR

"I can offer you a protection pact, Earth Friend." My duplicate said. Yikes, I thought, that’s really twisting the knife.

"Earth Friend," the other me continued, "Will the Galactic Union still allow you to explore new worlds?"

"Explore? No. I will be finished."

"Earth has many new worlds that must be contacted and taught how to avoid the traps of the established empires and to be formally placed under Earth Protection. We have need of explorers like you. We will offer you full protection as a citizen of Earth, and a position as Explorer. We have mapped all the inhabited and inhabitable worlds of the universe. They remain only to be visited and contracted."

Curiosity, impassive.

"What are your terms?" Impassive.

"What did the Galactic Union offer explorers?"

"One percent of the Galactic Union share of licensing revenue for a period equal to 3.42 Earth years, plus three percent of protection contract revenue indefinitely so long as such contracts are renewed."

"How does that work with uninhabited planets or planets where the intelligent species cannot comprehend such things?"

"The explorer is responsible for finding licensable products on such worlds, A standard contract for the world is issued if there is a sentient, but primitive race. Offering protection and standard licensing terms with a much higher rate for the licensing fees since the local species does not contribute to the selection of products. The funds owed the planet are kept in trust and debited for planetary protections, until the planetary funds are insufficient to cover such costs. Truly uninhabited worlds become the property of the claimant without reservation. Explorers still get one percent of the funds generated by licensed products of that planet, or two percent if they identify the products to be licensed. There are others who specialize in the exploitation of uninhabited planets, developers, who will also visit such planets once they are claimed. They can earn the one percent for each product they license for m such worlds. It then becomes a kind of race between these developers and the explorer to find and license products. Often, the explorers move on after they have identified several easy products, preferring the chance of finding another world to the incremental product by product commissions, once competition arrives."

"Explorers still benefit from the products developers license, because you have a one percent stake in the GU share of the entire planet’s revenue."

"Yes, developing products ourselves adds another percent but only for that product, so we balance that against the prospect of finding another new world to add to our portfolios."

"Even though the odds of finding a new world are pretty low?"

"Yes. There are many worlds in the early stages of developing life that have simple prokaryotic cell colonies. Sometimes these have unique properties that can be useful, but revenue opportunities are limited, or even zero. It is much more likely to find those than worlds with rich biospheres, and even more rare to find worlds with intelligent species."

"Earth was never contacted by any Developers, are they prohibited from contacting worlds with native intelligent species?"

"No, but in recent history, they would only derive temporary benefit from such worlds as they are generally quickly exploited then lose protected status. Once these planets new claimants take possession, usually by military conquest, and the origin species is no longer relevant. Developers lose their stake. Developers prefer permanent royalty streams even if they must spend more time finding products themselves."

"So, even though the GU keeps the licenses for the discovered products after a world is destroyed or conquered, they no longer pay a share to the developers? What about explorers? Do they get cut out as well?"

"Yes, but the revenue for us is much higher, since we earn from total licensing revenue and even more from protection contracts. So, the benefit for inhabited worlds is much higher for us."

"Earth Friend, I’m going to end the communication for a short period while I prepare a contractual offer for you. Please wait in place. I will contact you again within the hour."

My double closed the communication link.

"Are you thinking what I’m thinking?" I asked him.

He laughed, "Based on the nature of my existence, I’d say the odds are pretty good that I am."

"Good. Joe, please prepare contracts for explorers and for developers from the UEC Intergalactic and Licensing Commission." I ordered. "Let’s see, we are only taking a ten percent licensing commission from inhabited worlds, and no additional protection fees. So, to match the GU in credits/ planet... we’d have to offer five percent of our licensing revenue to explorers, plus another five percent for each product they personally discover on that world. That doesn’t include what they’d make from protection fees which would over time, let’s see... triple the revenue from the basic planetary rate, so another 15% of Earth’s share? As much as 20% of our total revenue for inhabited planets (25% for selected products if the explorer discovers them, and 10% for planets without intelligent species that require the explorer or the developer to find licensable products?"

"Right, but our revenue streams would be permanent for the explorers and developers, since we would never allow our protections to run out. So that amounts to as much as 2.5% of the total value of the total export value from a given planet if it has an intelligent species, and one percent if it doesn’t.

"But you’re forgetting the biggest difference in our favor! We know where all the planets are! In every galaxy! And we can place explorers and developers there instantaneously without fuel costs for them, or time wasted in travel or just looking for needles in haystacks. So, if we use the permanence of the royalty stream as an offset to protection fee revenue, a half percent of total planet revenue (five percent of the UEC share) for explorers for contacting and contracting intelligent civilizations. An equal additional amount for products discovered by explorers or developers on worlds with intelligent species incapable of dealing with treating or trade, like gorillas or dogs, for example. For uninhabited worlds our revenue goes up to 100% of the value since we outright own the planet. So, if we use the same rates, Explorers or developers get one full percent of the total value for every product they identify indefinitely. The UEC still get a net of nine and a half percent for inhabited worlds with treaty-capable civilizations, nine percent for non-treaty capable intelligent species, and 99 percent of the total value of a planet’s licensable product value for uninhabited worlds." My duplicate concluded.

I smiled, "AND the fact that we’ve already claimed every undiscovered new world, means that not a single explorer or developers working for the GU or any other galactic empire will ever add a single new world to their income streams. They’ll either have to retire on what they already have or come work for us under our protection from a very angry Galactic Union."

"Checkmate." My double concluded.

"Colonists, like Rafael and Maribel on Ri ja, could even decide to invite experienced developers in to help identify new products more quickly and get a much faster start on revenue streams." I added.

"Right, or even become developers based on their experience of identifying products on their own colonized planets."

I smiled, tossing ideas back and forth with myself was actually working out pretty well. Building off each other’s ideas seemed to flow naturally. Plus, it seemed as if we never disagreed with... ourselves. "Joe, do you have enough to write up a standard contract for Earth Friend and any future explorers or developers we might enlist?"

"Yes, King Tims. I will send it to him now, if you wish."

"Make it so." We said in perfect unison.

Doctor Wagner, who I had almost forgot was still present, saw that our back and forth had concluded and commented, "Well, I take back everything I ever said about committees. They can work efficiently if every committee member is the same person. Ha! You have redefined the entire landscape and conquered it completely in the space of five minutes."

I shrugged, "well, there was a lot of preliminary work that you didn’t see. So, it probably too more like 30 or 40 hours of total effort. I wonder how the rest of the galaxy is going to feel when they find out they’ve also been out-thunk by an eight-year-old."

"Ha! Especially one who hasn’t learned proper conjugations of irregular verbs."

I scowled at the professor. "You know that as King of Everything, I can just change the rules of grammar as I see fit, right?"

"Ha! Of course, there’s a long history of precedents for that. That’s why the Thames River in England is pronounced ’Tems.’"

Joe decided to get in on the debate. "Actually professor, it was originally pronounces Tems or Temes from the Celtic language, but certain professors of English decided during the Age of Enlightenment that word origins should be more universally tied to Latin or Greek roots and added the ’H’ to force the name of the river into compliance with a root containing the Greek letter Theta according their scholarly rules. Despite anecdotes about English Monarchs with foreign accents mispronouncing the name, it has always been correctly pronounced ’Tems’ both before and after the ’H’ was added."

"Ha! I stand corrected- out-thunk by both an eight-year-old and a machine!"