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2022-07-13 23:44:43The room was a lab of some sort. The team tried to find out from where those genetic signs were radiating. They finally got a glimpse of the true size of the insectoid aliens. There were several exoskeletons in the room and each exoskeleton was the same size as an adult human. The more pressing concern of the team was that the exoskeletons had varying degrees of cybernetic implants in them.
The team finally discovered an intact computer, so they powered it up. With the help of some exoskeletons, the team managed to operate the computer. It had a map of a star system to where the team finally pointed the ship.The star system was 15 light years away. The team with the ship jumped there.That was not a star system. It was something beyond the imagination of most of the Sagittarian crews. It was a Dyson Shell. Around 550 million earth could fit inside. The shell was made out of something unknown materials.When the team jumped to the system, a strange tractor beam-like thing was holding the ship.“Try to break free,” Captain Cohen shouted. Helmsman tried to move, but the ship could not. They were stuck. The cruiser that was protecting the science ship moved swiftly and armed its antimatter beam weapons.Captain Cohen quickly opened the ship's computer to do something and suddenly, T'Yer shouted, “Captain, our ship’s linguistic database is being scanned.”Captain quickly opened a channel to the cruiser and tried to warn them off from attacking the Dyson Shell, but he wasn’t too quick.8 red beams were shot from the cruiser and hit the source of the tractor beam and all of a sudden, the science ship broke free.Captain Cohen stood on the bridge, stunned and terrified. He wanted a peaceful dialogue with the newly met aliens, but instead, a fire was exchanged.“Don’t shoot,” a mechanical voice came into the bridge.“Who is it?” asked the captain.“We are… us, you are looking at us from the viewport of your ship,” the voice replied.“We mean you no harm. We didn’t like you grabbing us with your tractor beam,” Captain Cohen replied.“I see. It’s been a long time since we had been organic, we apologise,” the voice continued, “We are… I am the species you were looking for. For thousands of years, we had been organic. We ascended ourselves from the biological shells and became synthetic. Since we were hive-minded species, we had it easier to combine our minds into a single gestalt consciousness.”“I am Captain Cohen, on behalf of the United Earth Commonwealth, we greet you as a fellow explorer,” Captain Cohen said in his rehearsed lines perfectly.“Really? Are you really explorers? I have so many things to see and so many things to show you. Please, park your ship inside of the shell. We can talk,” the voice said while a huge gate opened in the shell.
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The Butterfly The Observation
The drone was moved to another town. The Butterfly was moving the drone in a manner that looked like an old man. But captain Probir wanted to visit the planet by himself. It was still difficult for him to land because it was dangerous.Probir ordered the drone to move to a quiet place, out of the town and decided that he, himself would land. He took a shuttle and landed right beside the waiting drone.Probir, although a very capable starship captain, lacked the personality of being a captain, a showy personality with a very high level of charisma. He only cared about his next mission, and by doing that, he distanced himself from the others. Even his first officer couldn't predict his next move, not because the captain wanted not to predict, but because he was not like clockwork, like the other captains.He always thought of himself as an observer, observing everything without interfering. The reason was, from his childhood, he was an observer, always keeping to himself and observing.
The Butterfly The Observation Part 2
Captain Probir finished his song, looking towards the distant horizon, his mind was somewhere else.“Captain, what’s the meaning of this song?” asked the Butterfly.“It’s complicated. See, the song was written by a monk-song writer and poet who searched for spirituality around 700 years ago. The mystical village he was talking about was the soul. The soul, which we still don’t know if it exists or not,” said the captain, “You see, we have 2 schools of thought. One believes that there is something called a soul within every one of us. It operates us, just like your operating system. The second school of thought was they believe that there is nothing called a soul. We do not observe this soul and we have no physical evidence for it.”“What do you believe in, captain?” asked the Butterfly.“Me? I believe what is scientifically proven. Our consciousness is the result of the emergence property of our neurons. I think, this emergence property is called a soul,” replied the captain.“But my
The Butterfly The Observer
“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 Butterfly The Observer Part 2
“I am an observer. I observe things,” said a very deep mechanical voice. “Observer? What do you observe?” Probir was annoyed more than curious. He absolutely hated the so-called monolithic civilization culture. “I observe civilizations, life, anything that is interesting to me,” replied the thing called Nicolas, “My origin is beyond your understanding. I am, you may say, beyond time and space, yet I’m not omnipotent or omniscient.” Probir said, “Looks like you are in a higher dimension anyway. So, so it’s reasonable to…” before finishing, the observer said, “No. I am not what you think I am. I have seen many lives come into existence and extinguish and I have collected so much data that your universe would not be able to handle any of that. It’s more than Graham’s number, it’s more than your universe could handle.” Probir said, “Okay, tell me your origin. I will comprehend,” he wanted to know. “My origin is out of time. Countless times the universe went into the big rip, big crunc
The Butterfly The Observer Part 3
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
The Butterfly Mysteries of the ICH-31120 Cluster
Captain Cohen, in the other system, was investigating a strange insectoid species of a very advanced technological capability. Their science ship and the cruiser went inside of the Dyson shell.It was massive, the Dyson shell was big, it was massive, it was mindbogglingly big. It was so big, that 550 million of earth could fit inside of it. From the perspective of the ship, there were distant stars glowing and twinkling. But those were not the stars, those were lights of massive mega servers built inside of the Dyson shell. There were cables going from one side of the shell to the supposed “space.” The helmsman said, “Captain, I’m having a hard time keeping the ship stable.”“Why is that?” asked Theo, his first officer.“Sir, the wall of the shell is at our port side, and the entire bloody universe is at our starboard side. I know how to keep a steady line, but for some bloody reasons, the ship is banking to the starboard.” Extremely irritated helmsman reported.“My host star has a v
The Butterfly Mysteries of the ICH-31120 Cluster Part 2
“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
The Butterfly New Neighborhood
Captain Cohen started to talk about Graham’s number, an exuberantly large number. The number was so large, that it could not be contained in the observable universe. “Connect each pair of geometric vertices of an n-dimensional hypercube to obtain a complete graph on 2n vertices. Colour each of the edges of this graph either red or blue. What is the smallest value of n for which every such colouring contains at least one single-coloured complete subgraph on four coplanar vertices?” asked Cohen. “Huh?” Theo looked at him like an idiot. He was overwhelmed, “Let me get a pen and paper…” Theo tried to find it. “Won’t work. You cannot write the number on a piece of paper,” Cohen said, “In our observable universe, there is not enough space to write the number on.” While the UEC Expeditionary members finished exploring 500 cubic light years area of space, they had to settle down. There were not enough supplies with them to go on like that forever. Soon, they had to find a new planet, meet
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The Festival (The Celebration)
The butterfly was restarted and as per Sam's request, it stopped its wings to flap around. The only thing it did was made an enormous foghorn-style sound which nearly deafened the technicians around 3 miles radius. Sam was inside of the butterfly when it started its massive 8 reactor cores. it was amazing to see the restarting sequence of a beast, also Sam felt very small, the ingenious and advancement of the species did not save them from just simply Vitamin deficiency.The Settlement Festival was a 7 days long celebration. For the first couple of days, people had to eat field rations to signify the struggles of the first people who settled on the land. The slow and consistent humming of the machine's interior made Sam a bit annoyed, but he kept it to himself. He then went to the bridge, where the chair was awaiting him. The bridge of the butterfly was a cold and dark place, the temperature was around 2 degrees Celcius. Sam wore his winter dress. He sat there and touched the com pane
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The Festival (A mindgame)
Sam sat down on his bed, it was harder than his bed on the ship, the reason was, his bed was made of stacks of books and journals and a bedsheet covered it. He took out a book from underneath the bed, it was about xeno-biology. Slowly, he opened the book and saw some hazy doodling on it."It can't be!" he exclaimed. His hand was shaking and his eyes were wide open. He was searching for something. He then stood up and opened another book, this time, it was about the history of the UEC."No!" he was upset by the fact that the book was hazy and strangely written. The butterfly asked why was he very upset about it."Look, I can imagine things way better than anyone else, I can visualize things, imagine things and make connections better than all the fat cats like the captain Probir and Cohen. This room, you are seeing? It's my visualization, it's my imagination. Trust me, if I see a book is hazy, I will know that something is definitely wrong," he desperately tried to open the closed wind
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The Festival
While emotionally involving someone or something can be gratifying, the practical implication of it was problematic. As per Cohen's request, the Butterfly was involved in the party, but how would it participate at the party was a major concern. The engineers and technicians repaired its wings. The actuators were worn off, but some of the actuator fluids were only available in the largest shipyards and they were used for deep crust mining robot arms. The fluids the creators of the butterfly used were very alien, but one thing it had was an ability to self-replication, in the UEC space self-replicating technology is very controlled, but not outright banned. The philosophy of the UEC was "if we ban things, we won't know enough to safely use them."UEC ship, H.M.S. Alan Turing was assigned to go to the Earth after the settlement festival. Captain Probir volunteered to stay with the main team, to "cheer the colonists" however deep down, his motivation was to oversee the construction of the
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The Festival
After the difficult landing, the Butterfly was temporarily shut down. It was ready to accept whatever service the UEC engineers and technicians could render to help its wings. However, the works never stopped on the planet RA. 2 massive tractor beam emitters held the massive Dimensional Displacement Gateway above the planet. The problem was that in space, nothing is stationary, so the long tractor beams which were rotating with the planet's rotations exert an enormous amount of energy, it's like attaching something to a rope and swinging. To overcome this, the UEC engineers created a shield bubble which effectively lowered the weight of the massive gateway and made the structure a rigid part of the planet.The colonists were getting ready to start their new life. The process might sound very romantic, but from a logistical point, it was a nightmare. The minerals, mined from the moon and refined by H.M.S. Isambard Kingdom Brunel were turned into construction materials, especially metal
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A Difficult Landing.
Lieutenant Jeremy took my helm to guide me to land on the RA. A massive task for me, because I was built to survey planets while being in the orbit of the planet. I was not worried about the hull damage, but during my flights with my creators, one scientist told my commander not to land in an oxygen-rich atmosphere, because the exhaust plasma can burn up the atmosphere. I mentioned it to the engineer who took care of my wing. He set up a cooling adapter to my exhaust port that cooled down the hot plasma and recycled it into liquid helium and hydrogen. Later those hydrogen and helium would have been transported to human facilities where hydrogen was used in energy generations helium was used for scientific experiments.I was ready to glide down. My helm officer Jeremy was there, guiding me, he was a very talented pilot. He was born in space, from age 7, he started space capsule racing and at the age of 18, he won the United Formula-S championship. He was perhaps the most experienced p
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Childhood, maybe?
When Sam was gone, Tatiana invited T'Mera into my bridge and they wanted to test my new upgrades, and for the first time, I had a drive that could jump 70 lightyears. The geostationary orbital height of the planet was very busy because of how many ships were unloading their populations on the planet. Especially the civilian ships were very busy. Shuttles were zipping around the massive cruisers and around my wings to get to their destinations."Let's go somewhere interesting. Let's go to the ringworld we've found around 300 lightyears away. You need 5 jumps to go and then we will be there," T'Mera said to me. She was not very anxious to be on a ship with an experimental drive. So, I asked her, "Aren't you just a little bit curious?""Nope, I trust you," replied T'Mera. Truly, I had a hard time processing the idea of trust. It was a very organic thing. So, I stopped thinking about it and plotted the course to the ringworld."Drive core engaged," a noise came to my ear. Really? Did the
- The Butterfly
Childhood
I was trying to run a diagnostics on my central drive core. It was glowing red hot right after the modification. The computer didn't give any mod rejection notice, and the new modification fit like a pair of gloves. Within 4 seconds, the drive system radiated a massive amount of gamma radiation. Thankfully Sam shoved Tatiana out of the lab and he jumped out of the lab before the explosion. After the explosion, Sam and Tatiana returned to the lab. The massive radiation would have killed them both. I helped them to open a computer terminal where Sam could work."What the hell?" Sam exclaimed. He was looking at some strange data they weren't there before the modifications.""I can scan them and find out what are those," I offered to help. Since my firewalls are significantly updated to deal with any threats. Sam agreed, so I opened the dataset and scanned it one time.Suddenly, everything went dark. I could not find myself anywhere. I also had no point of reference. Then I lost conscious
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Childhood
"Audio data record, Butterfly... or whatever the aliens from the other galaxy call me, whatever the time is. It's a log. I cannot organize my internal chronometer to tell when am I. I'm recording this audio log because I have managed to squeeze some free time off from my busy schedule from visiting here and there. But I have to agree, that going here and there was a good stretching of my wings and drive system. The UEC upgraded my drive system by adding one more component and I requested them not to replace my old drive system which was really necessary for a short burst of FTL drive for course correction." I had to enter the log for a reason that most biological organisms cannot understand.I was in the orbit of the planet RA from there, the planet looked like a glowing ball of light. The ice was reflecting lights. My drive system was being re-engineered by Sam and Tatiana. They seemed like well rested. I never thought I would push the memories of my creators into archives, to say in
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Founding a New Home
The UEC fleet finally settled on a planet they named "Roald Amundsen" or RA as initials. The planetary naming convention of the UEC followed a standard procedure. Planets were named according to their functions and classes. The naming convention followed a set of rules;1. Earth-like planets were called Garden Planet. If any UEC member first land and claim the planet, it was named after explorers, pioneers and vanguards.2. Natural Moons that were landed and claimed were named after the coordinates of the host planet and with added letters according to the orbital line. An example would be the moon of the earth would be known as SOL-001/1-03-A. There, the SOL part indicated the Sol system, the 001 part meant the home system of the UEC, /1 meant the 1st star, 03 meant the 3rd planet and the A meant the 1st moon. So, the tidally locked 2nd moon of Proxima b was known as SOL-002/2-01-B. So, SOL-002 was the Alpha Centauri system, /2 meant it was the 2nd star, 01 meant it was the 1st plane
