“How did you know about AI?” Captain asked for the 3rd time. That time, the drone and the captain dragged Nicolas into a nearby wood for questioning. While despite being an alien, Nicolas was nowhere near strong enough to overpower the drone. “I am not going to tell you,” replied Nicolas, “I’ve seen you, descending from the sky. You are not one of us.” “But I mean you no harm. Please tell me how you know about the AI,” Probir asked. This time, he was angry. Nicholas was staring at the captain like an idiot. His facial expression suggested that he was not in a hurry, yet he was not happy about the entire “dragging into the wood” business. “I will not tell,” for the last time, he told, before he turned towards the river and lay down. He was acting strangely. Probir and the Butterfly stood up and communicated with the ship, “This is the captain, I need a neural suppressor.” He wanted to wipe his memories. He was not so sure if it would work. “What is that,” asked Nicholas. “I will

The observer stopped for a bit and said, “I am to be frank tired of living. I have seen everything there to be seen. Immortality makes me tired.” To which the Butterfly then said, “Observer, I am immortal too. I think immortality is a gift you should not cast away.”“I know what you are going to say. You will say, there are many things to see and learn. But I have spent so many for so long times that I have seen events recurring in an exactly similar fashion. You cannot even begin to imagine how long I am being alive. There is nothing new to observe,” replied the observer.“Do you want to die?” asked Prbir without even a single drop of hesitation.“I… I don’t know. I have seen many deaths, but I could never bring myself to think about my own death,” replied the observer, “however as an observer who saw the death and destruction of the entire universe a countless number of times, I am tempted to see this. I will require you to disconnect my dark matter reactor from my mainframe. I cann

“We used to be Xitian hive, a hive-based civilization. We originated on a planet your ship visited during the first landing. That was our home. We had space flight for over 2000 years and we were the apex of the civilization in this sector of the galaxy. However, our hive-minded appearance scared many newer and fledgling civilizations. We are now in a technological singularity, merged with the machines and became a single entity,” said the insectoid.The first contact with the Xitian hive, the butterfly and the pre-FTL civilization taught the entire task force that natural biological lives could not go on forever. A sufficiently advanced organic civilization would create advanced machines that would do the jobs for them. As time goes by, the organics will incorporate some of the technologies into their own which results in cybernetics. Cybernetics are the final frontiers; it was also a pandora’s box.“When we started our first cybernetics program, it created some massive problems,” sa

“Merchant Ela, logging. My ship has been released from the ‘Orbius Planetary Port.’ I am setting up the navigational system for warping to my next destination, ‘Twin Sisters,’ an outpost planet of our system, 24 lightyears away. My ship’s new warping space drive would take me around 7 of our days to reach there,”Ela finished her log and strapped on her ship’s char for the launch. She took a joystick and used a thruster control to accelerate the ship. Once the orbital velocity of 9.1 km per second of the planet, she contacted the orbital platform of the planet, “Mother.”“Mother, this is the merchant ship, ‘Wrobring’ requesting permission to depart.”The space traffic controller checked its database and saw the ship was carrying 700 tons of food to the “Twin Sisters” outpost.“Wrobring, this is Mother. You are clear to depart,” with that, Ela manoeuvred her ship and pointed towards the binary star, 24 lightyears away, and started accelerating. After passing 4 moons of the planet, she

“I can do this! I can do this! I can do this!” Ela was screaming and trying to break free from the gigantic ship. Finally, her sense of flight instinct kicked in. She accepted defeat and finally curled up in her seat. She was ready to accept whatever the massive beasts would impose upon her.She leaned to the left of her seat while being curled up. She touched a switch and it shut down the light.She could sense that her ship was moving. It was vibrating and having a very strange motion. She however had nothing to do. She became a passenger.“ClANK!” A massive metallic sound rocked the ship. She jumped out of the seat and quickly undid her straps, and moved to a window to see what was happening.There were no stars in the view, nothing. In fact, she felt like her ship was inside another ship. She slowly moved towards the consoles of her cockpit and opened a camera to see the entirety of the holding place of her ship.It was big, but from the camera, there was just so little that could