NationStates Jolt Archive

OoC: I started with this concept a while ago, but then I returned to my main and abandoned it. Well, my main died about a month ago and I have no interest in reviving it, so I'm going to switch. I hope things turn out better this time around.

Somewhere on the edge of time lies a dying world, a world that has seen the rise of one of the greatest civilizations of all time. For nearly five billion years, this race has toiled across the face of their planet, fighting wars, celebrating accomplishments, even leaving their comfortable home to reach for the stars.

Unfortunately, when they found their way into the greater universe, they did not like what they saw: Entire nations being destroyed for little more than perceived offenses, whole star systems blown to shards of nothingness. Such things did not fit with what was quickly becoming their pervading worldview.

Now, at the end of their time, a flash of experience that would lead one to believe they would regret the ancient decision of isolation, only one person, a single Arlae is left to stand on the face of his home planet and stare up into the sun that would so soon betray him.

However, even he would soon be gone...

As I stepped into the white hot light, I suddenly felt small, insignificant, and utterly useless. Of course, this only lasted for the barest fraction of a second, for that is what they wanted it to be like for your first time. As the light washed over me and soaked into my every pore, I experienced a moment of intense pain, and then I could feel my inner self being drawn out. Very soon, I was drifting upward and, as so many others before me, I could not help but look down at the tiny, yet magnificently important thing of flesh and now slowly cooling tissue.

At first I was elated at this feeling of freedom, but soon, too soon, I could feel my spirit (Is it right to call it that? I thought to myself) being pulled toward the giant construct of metal and plastic above. As I was being squeezed through a conduit into the core of my new body, I could only send out an un-voicable thanks to those ever silent robots that were now the only things left, besides my own corpse, of my race's ever changing age of flesh. As I reached the new brain I would inhabit at the center of my ship-body, I turned on the sensors with an unheard voice.

The rush of sensations I received through the arrays around my ship-body was overwhelming at first, though as soon as I was under control I saw the robots dump my old, aged body into the incinerator and proceed to throw themselves in. As the last vestiges of my past disappeared, I sent out my thoughts to occupy the rest of my new body. I slowly started to hover, and then I faced upward and forced myself into the sky of my old home. As I passed the orbit of the last moon of my home world, I tensed and turned around to watch the death of everything I knew.

I twitched back a few thousand miles after the first explosion and the resulting concussion. I shut my numerous eyes from the brightness and then waited until the shockwave had passed me by when I finally peeked. I looked to where my home of old once was; all that remained was a small cloud of debris, slowly expanding away from the source of the massive conflagration. Beyond, though, was the worst sight yet: the maternal entity of the crucible world of my race was no more. I glanced around at the cloud of gas that surrounded me. After heaving a deep mental sigh, I set out to meet the others at the edge of eternity...

SAS Expanse had just arrived in it's current location. Following the endless mission of the Shofar Intelligence Agency, explore and learn. To know all, an unachievable mission. The endless expanse could never be fully charted, and new knowledge was being born every second. Yet here they were. Just like every other Sonar Cruiser in the agency's fleet, forever moving from one place to another and learning all it could for the benefit of those back home.

Agent Commander Silus watched has his ship left hyperspace and returned to his universe. The stars here burned just like anywhere else he had been, but they looked different. "Open all sensors and begin deep space charting. Lets see if this barren patch of space has anything worth looking at."

The shockwave from a nearby system hit the ship. Systems shut down, gravity failed, and lighting flickered off leaving only the luminescent tubes filled with water to light rooms and corridors with a fluctuating glow.

Silus stood up only to float away from his chair. "What happened?"

A Deck Agent drifted from one screen to another. "Sensors, gravimetric drives, weapons control, and AI are offline. Last sensor readings indicate an overload in the sensors that cascaded through the other effected systems. It looks like Anse was able to contain the surge but it had to go dormant to recover from the damage that did."

"How long until we can get them back online?"

"Unknown, we will need to reboot the systems but it is unclear how much damage was done to the core. And until Anse restores itself, it is going to be slow work."

Silus sighed. "Alright get to work." He pulled himself back to his chair. "Stranded and blind, I'm already hating this part of space."

OoC: Whoo, I just took a seven hour long nap. It's crazy going to sleep in full daylight and waking up in the deep night. Nice to see I've garnered at least a small amount of attention, and I'm honored to see it's from someone who displays a pretty-bit of writing talent.

IC

Galavanting is the word, I believe.

That's what I'd spent a whole week doing -- galavanting. I had wasted the last million years, ever since the Arlae exodus began, talking about how we shouldn't be so casually throwing away our bodies, how our flesh was still important, and here I was, galavanting across space. It really was amazing how much of it there was. I could cross the gulf between suns in the blink of an eye, but there was always another star just beyond, and yet more after that next one.

And what beauty! The iridescent clouds of inter-stellar gases, arranged in every shape imaginable, every geometric pattern described by Arlaen mathematics after five billion years and even some unique shapes that we hadn't bothered with! The black holes with their beautiful acceration disks; the pulsars, like the gigantic spot-lights of the universe; neutron stars, the diminutive elders of the stellar sequence that felt like the hardest hadronic armors we Arlaens had built a billion years ago to the touch. I really couldn't believe what I had missed in all my years of close-minded rejection, what I had been very close to missing forever by staying on our homeworld as a vulnerable creature of flesh and blood until the very last minute.

But thoughts of that home, now forever gone, were quick to sober my elation at my new-found freedom of movement. I had spent many an age on that world, leaving it only twice. Once to visit one of the few space stations we had decided to keep after our initial expansion into space (and the thing had aged well for being over four billion years old by that point!), and once to assist in the first experiment with mental transfers. I had always returned, though, thankful to be back on the solid ground of the planet that was the single most important object in my entire life.

Now I could never return. This joy-ride I was on, this race to see every interesting thing I could see I had engaged in over the last week (Had it really been that long already?), wasn't a vacation. I couldn't go home again. I had left for the last time. I turned away from my journey outward and slowly made my way back towards what was left of my homeworld.

Amidst all these musings, I very nearly didn't notice the small, clearly artificial object stranded in the inter-stellar space between me and my destination until I had almost passed it. The part of my new brain that was more machine than Arlae, however, noticed it right away and made a point of telling me, rather insistently. I could tell, from this distance, that there were several smaller life-forms, flesh and blood like I had been up until recently, resided on board, so it wasn't a machine-life like I was. Besides that, though, there was only a vanishingly small power reading coming from the vessel.

Although we Arlae hadn't fought a war in well over four and a half billion years, the instincts that had allowed our ancestors to survive on the vast plains of our world had never really left us. Thus, I approached the vessel swiftly, but as silently as possible. I did my best to hide myself along the way. However, when I came within what would be visual range for the baseline of most species on Arlaen catalog (we may not have liked what we saw when we first left our home-system, but there were those among us with the fore-sight to still study those in our surrounding galaxy -- without their knowledge, of course. Better they never know we existed) and the ship still hadn't responded, I decided it should be safe and revealed myself.

To avoid spooking the much smaller vessel with my immense bulk, though, I immediately began broadcasting images of my acension and escape from my homeworld, hoping to convey that I was a refugee, not an attacker. Not really knowing what sort of communications technology these beings used, though, I was forced to resort to directing my signals at the bodies themselves, doing my best to insert the story into their minds, as it were.

After I had told them my story, I, bowing to nature's far reach, sat back on my proverbial haunches and awaited some kind of response.

The Ravenholm a Corvette Class ship, arrived out of Slipspace in it's current location.
"Status Report."
"Slipspace cores have spun to zero it will take a few hours to get them up."
"Alright, where are we?"
"Uknown space sir, right where we are suppose to be, remeber we need to map everything we can."
"Well I guess that's what I get for telling an Admiral to screw off."

The ships rocked and panals went offline. The AI came on the Holo-display and then flickered off.

"Goddamit, now what!"
"Sir all our systems are offline, the AI crashed it will take several moments to get everything on-line again."
Captain Buarer sighed and looked at his offline display..
"Great just great, deaf, blind and dumb, what a perfect situation...."

Jason Rivian, or as it was listed on his CADRE ID, Jason Michel Yakazumi Richard Seraph Rivian, kicked Uzami or rather Uzami's avatar. Reaching up Uzami caught the leg only to be slammed in the chest with a blow that would have pulverised the breast bone of a human.

"And that is match-point." Jason commented as the avatar spun him by his foot.
"Ya, ya, ya." The ship groused as Jason slipped out of the hold.
"How about some chow?" He asked
"Why, I don't need to eat." The ship said with a sniff.
"Because I do." Jason said in a familiar and almost traditional argument with the Uzumi.

As the meal was prepared and deposited on the table, the ship shook slightly.
"What was that?"
"Some energy wave." A few seconds later Uzumi continued, "Nothing damaged. But there is a large ship approaching two other vessels, none of them recognised."
"Well let's go see what's up, but be ready, one of them may be a pirate or a general hostile."
"Gotcha."

Uzumi began sending a repeating message to all three ships.
This is the TRNC Uzumi. Is anyone injured or in need of assistance.

ooc: Mental contact won't work with Jason but the Uzumi can translate most languages/signals.
Also how big is your ship/person?

(tag for a reply tommrow)

A week had gone by, and repairs still went slowly. Finally Anse, the ships AI, had returned from her digital coma. She, for her form and identity were chosen by her like all of Tidan's ship intelligences, had completed her diagnostic and repaired the damaged code and memory. Now restoring the systems went much smoother. Secondary effected systems had been returned, the gravimetric drives and weapon controls for example, which meant that though they were stranded they were no longer defenseless should they be fell upon by oportunists. The Sonar Class was a ship of exploration and intelligence gathering, but like much of Tidani society a healthy dose of realism and security played a part in everything. The ship was not a powerful warship but it had standard military weapons and systems, while hoping they would not need them.

Silus sat in his chair now, thankfully gravity had returned when the engines restarted, and watched the crew busy at work. Anse appeared on the holopad next to his arm, "Sir, I should have senors ready to reboot in a matter of minutes." she reported.

Silus smiled. "What are you doing telling me about it? Finish the job and we can continue ours." He know exactly what response he would get.

"Sir, communicating with you takes up exactly 0.001345% of my processing capability. The amount of time that extra processing power would reduce my estimated time of completion would not even be noticable to your senses." She frowned at him smiling and disappeared with a huff as she identified his comment as taunting her for his own amusement at the anticipated response.

Silus relaxed now. Soon everything would be back to normal. Even sooner though he relaized he was not in his chair, and not on his ship, but on an alien planet. He watched as his people left their home, left their bodies even. Friends, people he cared deeply for abandoned him and their home. He watched as his world became barren, a lifeless shell of what it had been. Then he too left the world, left his body to inhabit a ship. His own body was destroyed and then so was his planet. He saw the natural wonders of the galaxy before his very own... eyes. Then returning to that planet he had left he came upon a small ship. It seemed familiar to him, like from a dream. Slowly he approached not wanting to startle the creatures, he moved slowly up to them.

"Sir... I said, sensors are back online and I have a contact approaching on the port-aft section." The voice of one of the monitor agents brought him back to reality.

"Yes, I know." He said, still a little dazed.

The agent looked around at his peers puzzled. "Um... well, what are your orders Sir?"

"Anse?" The AI appeared next to him, she seemed happy again. "I'm sorry for teasing you Anse."

She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. "Please Commander, that was almost two whole minutes ago. What can I do for you?"

"Send the ship approaching us our binary cypher, then send this message encoded in binary."

Hello Arlae, I have received your message, and I believe I understand you. We come in peace and mean you no harm. We are explorers, gatherers of knowledge about the universe around us. We, like you, are an old race but only infants amongst the stars. I am sorry for your loss.

Agent Commander Silus
Shofar Intelligence Agency
Republic of Tidan

He hoped that in the most basic form of communication, the ship would be able to understand his message.

EDIT: (ooc: wow 3 people responded while I was typing this up. Too bad I take so long writing my stories.)

OoC: Whoa, that's a lot of people. Awesome. As to the question of size, I still haven't quite decided on an upper limit for the race as a whole (no two Arlae ships are exactly alike), but this particular ship is 12 kilometers in length and a little under a third of that in width and height. And, to clarify (I don't know how clear I made it before), but the destruction of the Arlae homeworld was in a supernova of its primary, in case it wasn't presented clearly enough for anyone.

IC

Just as I was setting my machine brain to the task of translating the strangely patterned message from the ship before me, I turned my own attention to the ship itself. It was interesting, to say the least. I had never seen an alien race in person. I had a multitude of them in my catalog, of course, but I had never personally met something that wasn't Arlae. I breifly considered leaving my ship-body to 'visit' these creatures in just such a personal way, but I decided against it when my machine brain finished its task and told me what the message had contained.

Pondering what it meant, for a moment, trying to work my mind around the various idioms and other slightly unfamiliar turns of phrase, I set ready to return in kind when another ship appeared in what was left of my home-system with a burst of energy. Although it was still a distance away, their sudden appearence startled me. A quick scan revealed an energy situation similar to the ship in front of me and my suspisions arose instantly.

When another ship appeared in-system almost immediately after, broadcasting messages in an entirely unfamiliar language, instinct took over and my return message to the original ship was made and sent in haste as I turned tail, moving to hide in the blasted cloud of gases that was all that was left of my homeworld. While these ships seemingly presented no threat to my person, I was wary and rather liked the comfort of being at least partially hidden. In my confusion, I didn't notice any of the myriad differences between the three other ships.

The message itself was short and was accompanied by emotions of anger and mistrust.



I am betrayed. What is the meaning of these actions?

I am betrayed. What is the meaning of these actions?

A message was returned to the ship as it sought refuge in the debrise field.

The first ship is from a people we know and are currently allied with, though I have no idea what they are doing here also. The second ship is unknown to us also. We have been out of contact with our home since we were stranded here originally and only restored our ability to communicate as we did so with you.

We had just arrived here to study this area of space when this sun went supernova. The resulting shockwave from the destroyed planet damaged several systems as we were unprepared for such an event. We have recovered now and are fine, though we appreciate the concern.

Agent Commander Silus
Shofar Intelligence Agency
Republic of Tidan

Captian Buarer looked at his XO.
"So how long do we have left untill our AI comes back on-line?"
"Well she will come back when she wants to.."
"Goddamit she is supposed to be our tool, how can she just take a break indefenatly?"
"I don't know sir, she's been kind of quirky the last couple of days."
"I've noticed."

Ensign Chapelle puched his display..and miracualsy it came back on.
"Sir!, my station is on again!"
"Well good, one station on many more off-line!"
"Alright it looks like Linda isn't going to be coming back for some time...lets try and get these stations on-line, start with Taticle displays and sensors first."
"Aye sir."

Chief Engineer Kelly ripped open a panal and tied his Network Conector into it and began working.

Buarer's mind began to fill with images that he's never seen before, it was like he was seeing someone's life story..Buarer began to sweat profusly..he's own thoughts were overun. when it was over he was physically exausted. He wondered if anyone else saw it.

OoC: I'm having an amazing amount of trouble keeping my account actually logged on. Annoying, that is

IC

Still not entirely trusting these aliens, I nonetheless emerged from the debris of my home and resumed communications with the original ship, keeping a proverbial eye on the other two in-system. I now noticed that there were indeed substantial differences between each -- the similarities in power generated was more than likely attributed to similar levels of technological development. I parsed together a message in their odd code-language replied with caution.



Very well, what is your purpose here? Why have you come to this graveyard of my species' past?

I then turned my attention to the last ship to have arrived, the one that had sent a communications signal in some language I didn't readily recognize. Betting on some form of similarity, of their power levels really were an indication of technological sophistication, I prepared a message for this ship in the language of on's and off's (binary) sent to me by the original ship.



I am Arlae. Who are you? And why have you come here?

Accompanying this second message was what I hoped to be a simple summery of what had happened here. I sat back, ready to once more project my meaning directly into the being I had detected on the ship's mind should the message fail to go through.

After a few hours of hard work systems began to come back online. Displays glowed with energy, computer systems hummed with life.

Captain Buarer sat at his Commanders seat and waited for a Tatical Display to come online.
"Sir!"
"Yes, what is it?"
"The Display should come on in a few moments."
"Good, good, what about Linda?''
"Well sir thats another issue..."
"I see, fine let her sleep, I'll just have to command like the old days."

The Tatical Displayed clicked on and information scrolled across the screen untill a map of the area came on, being filled with the streaming information from the sensors. It showed 3 ships within the general area, one of them being quite large insize compared to the Ravenholm.

"Sir, we are getting Communication between the ships."
When Buarer heard that he wondered what those images in his head were, could they have been some advanced communicating device? Now by seeing this large ship infront of him he was actually starting to belive it.

"Sir, we have identified one of the ships to be Tidani!"
"What are they doing here too, open up a Comm. link between them."

It's great meeting you here, it seems you have been in contact with one of these ships for a while, all of our systems were knocked out and our AI is still of-line. Any information sicne you seem to have your systems on-line for a longer time would be most helpful.

Silus could tell that the Arlae ship was being very cautious and defensive. Given his recent sharing of its, or his, or whatever's experiences he could understand why. He wanted to reassure it, but he wasn't sure how.

Our mission here is to collect information about this area of space. We have been travelling for a long time, moving from one place to another. We collect information about the region and its inhabitants, and then we move on to the next location. We are but one of many ships who do this in order to provide our homeworld with greater knowledge of the universe. We had just arrived here to begin such a scan when your sun went supernova and your planet exploded. We did not have time to prepare for the shockwave and many of our systems failed. We had not recovered until you approached us. We did not even know of your existance until you communicated with me. I believe we are fortunate that the planet damaged our ship when it did, if it had not we would have moved on and never met such a remarkable... person as yourself.

Greetings friends, it is good to see you also. Our computer system was damaged in the shockwave of this ship's homeworld's destruction, as I gather yours was as well. The ship is capable of telepathic communication of some sort, which is how it first made contact, but we are now communicating through binary code. I believe the ship is infact controlled by the conscious mind of a being from the destroyed world, though this is still unclear.

Uzumi to Expanse
Then you are welcome. If I might enquire, what do you know of the rather large vessel.
.
Uzumi to Arlae
This is the Uzumi, it's nice to meet you. I'm here on buisness.

Silus knew how uncomfortable the Arlae ship was, and nothing about this new ship. He did not know how the Arlae would respond to him sharing the information he had learned with the newcomer. So he lied.

Very little I'm afraid. We made contact only a very short time before you arrived.

Uzumi to Expanse
Thank you for the information, if you get any more we would request you share it.

"Wonder what they're keeping." Jason commented to Uzumi, "Well I guess we'll just have to wait and see."

Taking a second to ponder the messages I was recieving, I made my way back towards the original ship. As I approached it, I started to realize something had just gone terribly wrong.

No, wait, it didn't just happen, it's been wrong for the whole last week.

This thought rang through the clouds that had been in my mind since I had made the transfer like the light of the Home-star through a fog bank. My mind cleared, I could begin to understand what had happened -- and what was happening.

Apparently, the sudden, extreme change of locale for the chemical impulses that made up my mind, from a brain of flesh to one of circuits and metal, had caused an initial shock, a repulsion from what had been forced on me. In a few more moments, I was once more within (aided) visual range of the original ship, calling itself the Expanse. I shook off the last vestiges of that odd shock that had forced me into a much more primitive state of mind and seemingly returned to my full mental capacities.

In this new state of mind, I was much better able to comprehend and work with the language this small ship had sent me.



I apologize greatly for my earlier behavior. Apparently, some side-effect of the transfer process that gave me the body I now reside in forced my mind down to the bare minimum, instinctual state my race existed in for millions of years prior to our first civilization. My caution was more the inate fear of a prey animal of any percieved threat than any real distrust of you. In truth, I am rather embarrassed that a being, millions of years old as I am, such as myself could be reduced to such a primitive, child-like state so easily.

That being said, I very much understand your mission. My own Data Catalog contains the end result of billions of years of Arlae space exploration and study and I would be happy to provide you with as much information about this sector as your data storage technology can handle.

Again, I must express how sorry I am that I reacted to you in the way I did. If I ever should find one of my fellows again, I must enquire about their experiences with the transfer process.



I likewise sent messages of more open greetings to both of the other small ships in-system, hoping to repair what damage I might have done to their perceptions of me.



Greetings fellow sapients, I am Arlae. I apologize for my lack of communications earlier and express regret that I delayed this welcomes message, although the welcome isn't very much. There is nothing left here besides the graveyard of my species' past.

If either of you is on a similar survey mission to this ship before me, the Expanse as it calls itself, I would like to extend to you a similar offer as I did to them: access to Arlae records on the surrounding sector. As the Arlae have a little under five billion years of experience with this particular stretch of space, I can assure you that I have enough information in my Data Catalog to satisfy your curiosities.

Uzumi to Arlae
We would be grateful to have access to your Data Catalogs. We would like all the information you have, if you do not mind.

"Appears there is another 'elder' race out there as well."
"Seems that way."

Bah. Thread Tools won't work. TAG.

"Sir, we are getting a transmission from the Large ship."
"Let me read it."

Greetings fellow sapients, I am Arlae. I apologize for my lack of communications earlier and express regret that I delayed this welcomes message, although the welcome isn't very much. There is nothing left here besides the graveyard of my species' past.

If either of you is on a similar survey mission to this ship before me, the Expanse as it calls itself, I would like to extend to you a similar offer as I did to them: access to Arlae records on the surrounding sector. As the Arlae have a little under five billion years of experience with this particular stretch of space, I can assure you that I have enough information in my Data Catalog to satisfy your curiosities.

"Ah, so another Billion year old race eh, I'm shure we can learn a lot from them, send a reply."

Hello Arlae, yes we are on a similar mission as that of the Expanse. We would greatly appreaciate any information you could give us.

I apologize greatly for my earlier behavior. Apparently, some side-effect of the transfer process that gave me the body I now reside in forced my mind down to the bare minimum, instinctual state my race existed in for millions of years prior to our first civilization. My caution was more the inate fear of a prey animal of any percieved threat than any real distrust of you. In truth, I am rather embarrassed that a being, millions of years old as I am, such as myself could be reduced to such a primitive, child-like state so easily.

That being said, I very much understand your mission. My own Data Catalog contains the end result of billions of years of Arlae space exploration and study and I would be happy to provide you with as much information about this sector as your data storage technology can handle.

Again, I must express how sorry I am that I reacted to you in the way I did. If I ever should find one of my fellows again, I must enquire about their experiences with the transfer process.

Truely remarkable, Silus thought. A being and a ship combined had been disgused and considered before. Here he stood with such a miracle before him. Not just a ship controlled by a mind, a ship with a soul. It was a spiritual moment for Silus, he had to learn more.

Perfectly alright, no harm done. We would be most grateful to share in your knowledge. If you wish to learn anything about the rest of the galaxy we would be just as willing to share our knowledge with you.

Pardon my curiousity, but your current form interests me. How did you come to be in the body of this ship, our sensors detect no life signs on board. And...did you say there are more like you?