Captain Alina and Ela reached the bridge. Ela was expecting another massive industrial bridge with sharp edges and smells of lubricants. In fact, she could not be more wrong. The entire bridge looked something like the Philosopher’s palace on their home planet. Even the philosopher’s palace was not that extravagant and elegant. The trim lines on the furniture of the bridge, frames of the computer screens, almost everything was covered in expensive Low-Pressure Neutronium, Gold and Platinum.Ela said, “You might be very rich,” to which the captain replied, “We don’t use wealth, we will explain it to you later.”The ship was holding position right beside the Butterfly. The machine majestic machine was slowly flapping its wing to radiate heat. Ela thought that the butterfly must’ve been another ship of the UEC. The captain asked Ela, “Where you were going? We will drop you there,” she felt it was her responsibility to drop her at the destination since she grabbed and picked her up.“Can
Ela was desperate to reach the outpost. She accelerated her ship to 3 times the speed of light. The outpost was near an emission nebula. It used to glow dark purple and pinkish colour because there was many calcium outgassing from the nebula. From the outpost, the nebula looked like an enormous mountain. Sometimes there was lightning and thunders. Sometimes there were nebulous winds and storms, that touched the edge of the solar system, where the outpost was orbiting the 2nd star. Ela sat down on her chair and tried to understand why, after everything, she felt nervous. She tried to think the entire event through. There, she was, trying to haul a lot of cargo to a very faraway station, and she got interdicted by an alien federation who claimed to be from the other galaxy. Ela calmed down a bit. After several hours, the outpost came into view. It was majestic, rotating rings were sleeping and the habitat area and the centre was the science laboratory and a stellar observatory. She f
While Ela was in the infirmary, station crews were investigating her logs. After discovering what was there. Meanwhile, Ela's blood was analysed by the lab scientists."You've got this strange chemical in the blood that is slowly dissipating away, it has a trace amount of caffeine in it, but the rest is unknown," said the lab scientist to Ela."The alien captain gave me something. I don't know what are they," replied Ela."I won't be so sure. Did you drink something there?" asked the scientist."Yes, but... when I drank, it felt very good. They called it, tea," Ela replied.The station crews finally managed to pull some camera footage. They finally handed the compiled log to the authority. However, the government felt different."To be absolute pacifists, we must avoid all kinds of contact with these aliens. If they decide to wipe us out, we must use force which will violate our idea of pacifism," said the Chief Philosopher.Ela was stunned when she heard about that. She wanted to have
The reason why the UEC avoided contact with the Pre-FTL species of the milky way galaxy was that most of the time, contact could change their society to a path that could be very difficult to correct, but not outright impossible, but when they made contact with a spacefaring society, it became a huge issue. The political instability, combined with advanced technology could create an unimaginable amount of damage. In the Milky Way galaxy, these types of civil wars and political turmoils were contained and most of the time, UEC's intervention stopped these, but in the Andromeda galaxy? It was nearly impossible to stop. On top of that, the UEC didn't establish any bases yet, so they can't exactly call themselves a superpower, yet.When a pre-FTL society sees an advanced spacefaring civilization, the first things it loses are the religious and national identity, and then they become unified under a banner. This stage keeps them most vulnerable because many demigauges, populist leaders and
Ela was taken to the Central Science Authority of their home world. She was there for some interviews and questions. The slow and leisurely evening was intoxicating. The golden sunbeam was casting a shadow on the silky waters of the lake Tranquility. Ela was in a secured compartment of a train. Right at the railway station of their capital city, "Blue Eyes," several security personnel escorted Ela to the CSA HQ, which was in the middle of the city.It was the first time she entered the building. She was greeted by a bunch of holographic images and videos. She was amazed. What were those?"While you are here, the Science Minister will arrive after an hour. Feel free to take some rest," an assistant told Ela and left the room.Ela was alone, surrounded by lots of holographic media. She spotted chronological order stickers on each holographic device. She walked towards the "t - 2 million years" device and touched it. Suddenly it lit up and completely engulfed the room. The veneer of the
Selop started the video in a dark environment. The entire planet was full of volcanic ashes, and very little sunlight was coming. The entire area was full of dead plants and animals. There were Hronta ancestors and other animals within the pile of the dead. Ela had a question, "How did we overcome this?" Ela asked. "See, this is when the environment changed and forced us to walk on 2 legs," Selop started playing the video. What happened was the planet cooled down to an ice age, which trapped lots of carbon dioxide. Less carbon dioxide meant fewer plants to perform photosynthesis. Ice age also triggered a catastrophic insecticide event where almost all the pollinator insects went extinct. However, things kept dying because death was an inevitable part of life. The age of giant mushrooms started. Those mushrooms started to decompose corpses. However, the Hronta ancestors started to eat the mushrooms to stay alive. After several hundreds of thousands of years, the volcanic ashes settl
After several thousands of years, the Hronta species started to manage new farmlands and started to grow foods. This meant a stable society and civilizations.With this newfound knowledge, Ela told Selop to stop the video. She wanted to know what the evolution of their species had to do with the contact with the new aliens."The problem is not the new aliens, it's what we are, compared to others," replied Selop, "See, we are basically defenceless. Our evolutionary history suggests that we were prey, not predators. We managed to be safe on our planet because we had the technology to stop other predators. On a galactic scale, we are nothing but delicious foods for them." Selop's logic was flawless, in fact, the way the UEC ship scooped her up from her ship was evidence of how technologically far behind they were. However, Ela did want to contact, the reason was she knew how good those people were.Ela was later seen by the chief scientist who wanted her input on how to deal with the new
Captain Alina was looking at the sensors of the Butterfly. The sensors were very different from the standard sensors of the UEC ships. It also didn't help her the fact that the sensors didn't have discernable buttons on them. She stood up and desperately tried to find something to stop the Butterfly's twin beams. She knew that the butterfly is extremely fast, in fact, it thinks at the speed of light, so a human's decision could not be fast enough to stop it."STOP!" Captain shouted. She was worried about a diplomatic incident. After all, they seemed to be species that could have some ties with the UEC.The butterfly stopped its beams and started its cooldown session. Captain sighed a breath of relief.Ela finally said, "Captain, I want to come with you," she wasn't even hesitating, she just said it in a plain voice. Captain looked at her face, she was sad and somewhat lost. Some burning wreckages were floating behind her.Captain said, "Why did you do it? Faking a distress call?" she