Tourist Trap
Please remain with the group. Locals who offer to take you to 'authentic' restaurants or show you places 'not full of tourists' are at best tricking you, and at worst may attempt to rob you by force. Local law-enforcement is corrupt and will be unlikely to do more than promise to 'look into it' unless bribed, and even if bribed, may decide to just take your credits and claim nothing can be done. Sadly, Central Command lacks the resources to pursue minor crimes on a backwater world, so to stay safe, go only to those places on the schedule and remain close to others.
First Contact
Pioneer 10 left the solar system in June of 1983. In September of 1983, the question of interstellar life was answered when a fleet of ships was spotted passing Mars (with no indication of their approach from any direction), and, if there was any doubt, shortly after news broke of their being spotted, transmissions on dozens of terrestrial languages began to come on multiple frquencies, all saying, in effect, "We come in peace, we wish to welcome you to galactic civilization, and please don't even think about attacking us." Responses, questions, and complaints were met by "We'll discuss it with your planetary leaders when we get there", which was to be a week later.Naturally, humanity reacted stupidly. A hasty call between Reagan, Andropov, and Deng Xiaoping resulted in an agreement to, as the US President put it, "Call those spacemen's bluff!" Simultaneous launches of missiles from all three nations converged on lead ship of the approaching fleet as it entered their range. The missiles were destroyed while still miles from their targets, and shortly afterwards, all three world leaders were executed as small robotic hunter-killers, each a sphere about a foot across, were teleported into the bunkers the leaders had retreated to. President George Bush, General Secretary Chernenko, and President Jiang Zemin were on hand to meet with the newcomers a few hours later.
In short, having successfully reached beyond Earth's solar system and thus entered 'galactic space', Earth was now welcomed to the Galactic Republic, whether it wanted to be or not. Promises of great technological aid, provisions of miracle cures, unlimited food, pollution removal, and so on, were made. Local autonomy was guaranteed, though any disputes between nations that could not be settled peacefully would go to arbitration under galactic law. Likewise, other galactic citizens could come and go from Earth at will, subject to some minor regulations and tariffs.
What the Galactic Republic demand, other than that? The representatives seemed to think it was quite amusing to think Earth had any natural resources of worth, when an entire galaxy existed to be mined. Nor did they have any appetite for human flesh, and if they did, that's what cloned meat factories were for. They simply wanted Earth integrated into galactic society. Earth could choose not to participate, but then, there would be no protection against anyone that did want to plunder the world, or conquer it, as the Republic only quarantined worlds that did not meet their standards for first contact. If a world decided to be on its own, it was on its own.
While the world's leaders debated, representatives of the Republic made their case directly, visiting major population centers and demonstrating the technologies they had to offer, from flying cars to food synthesizers to neural link entertainment systems. It was no surprise that the world's leaders voted overwhelmingly to accept the offer. With much fanfare, on October 1, 1983, Earth became the 9,871st world to be represented at the Galactic Congress. A period of integration followed to tie Earth's local economy into galactic standards, synchronize times (allowing for relativity, quite a complex process), set up hyperspace links to allow connections to the galactic communication network, and so on.
Of course, the many goods produced by the Republic had to be paid for. Some of the basics were effectively free: Food synthesizers could take any organic matter and produce output that would keep you alive and healthy, as long as you wanted to eat grey cubes of dubious texture. Most of Earth's major diseases and killers were easily curable at free clinics planted world-wide and run by courteous automatons, which was a great boon. Of course, this didn't extend life much beyond its normal limits, and such luxuries as brain recordings and cloned bodies in case of accident were not available for nothing.
What Earth had to offer was culture, art, and history. Museums were flooded with alien visitors, and almost any marginally-interesting location might attract someone. With a galactic population in the trillions, you only had to appeal to a vanishingly small percentage. However, there's only so many people needed to point to the Grand Canyon and say "Look, a canyon!". Earth's native industry produced little anyone else wanted, and humans, if they could, would buy goods from galactic providers. Even if they weren't notably better than Earth's, they were far cheaper. Unemployment soared, and though food, medical care, and even housing (in the form of small habitation cubes, which were secure, temperature controlled, and could be stacked by the hundreds on any vacant lot, on empty land outside of cities, or an floating platforms just offshore, donated by the generosity of the Republic) were provided, it was obvious there was far more to have.
The other thing Earth had was labor. Not raw physical work; no sapient being could compete with a mining robot or cleaning droid. However, true AI was expensive, and sapient minds were cheap. Sapient beings were far better at jobs involving dealing directly with other sapient beings than most machines were, but since this is true of almost all sapients, the supply was large. The only competitive edge humans had for such work was that since their economy was barely a blip on the galactic scale, they could work for what would be starvation wages elsewhere and be better off than the minimal standard.
For creators, things are somewhat better. The main demand that citizens of the Republic have is for something new to occupy their attention. If an artist, writer, musician, or other creator can get noticed, even a little, in the larger galaxy, they can live like an emperor on Earth (or like a working class shlub on a galactic core world).
BREACH
This world is in the Omega File. The Republic could, if they knew it were possible, build a breach stabilizer and cross onto Baseline, and their technology does seem to work there. One person leaking schematics would lead to an alien invasion. However, reverse-engineering their technology has proven very, very difficult. Except for the teleportation, it should work under Baseline's physics. However, the handful of items brought back seem to be stuck trying to connect to a non-existent galactic network to secure usage rights. Beyond that, they can be taken apart, but not understood in any meaningful way. It is much like taking a radio technician from 1910, used to working with devices containing under a dozen large, touchable vacuum tubes, handing him a 2022 CPU with 40 billion transistors, and saying "figure out how this works". To even see the circuits, you'd need an electron microscope. And to build an electron microscope, well, first you'd need to know what one was, and that it was the tool you needed to examine the chip. And so on.The likely breach point coming to Baseline has been calculated, and breach shields have been set up in overlapping fashion, just in case some idiot decides to travel there and ends up revealing where they came from and how they got there. If the Republic were sufficiently determined, there's no doubt they could throw enough power and resources at the problem to get through... but it's hoped the shielding will lead them to conclude the line of research is a dead end.
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