“Mhh, I don’t know if there is much to talk about us, let’s see… We are trrarrusians, the sole sapient specie that we know of in the Conglomerated States, originally from Kalgyul, our capital planet.”
“5400 years ago, we made our first warp drive, and since then we have been colonizing planet after planet.”
“To be honest, we aren’t the only sapient specie in the territory that we know of, we are just the only one left…”
“I see. If you don’t mind us asking, what caused you to advance so slowly?”
“Our Empire is 9700 standard years old, but we have met some nations and species that are much younger and still more technologically advanced than you.”
“Is this because of culture, distrust towards technology, or does it have to do with something else? The same reason for why your nation is apparently divided into different states.”
“If this is a sensitive topic for you we might as well move on of course. We are not in the position to demand an answer here.”
“Mhh…”
“That didn’t sound very…”
“It’s fine, it’s just, we don’t know if there’s a single reason for it, but, if I had to choose the main one…”
“Ah, yeah. So, it’s taking a bit of time to… get back to stuff, if it could be said that way.”
“… Galactya knows about them, by any chance?”
“What… are you… referring to exactly?”
“It’s… it’s not much to go on. Are you referring to a specific nation or…?”
“I mean, we can pull up the archive if you want us to, but…”
“You’re gonna have to explain yourselves better. I’m sorry but there are a lot of nations and races in the Sector and since we can’t read your minds yet you have to be more specific than that.”
“To put it simply, they came to our planet millions of years ago. We only have remnants of what happened and information that was left by the ones before us.”
“They didn’t leave a good tongue taste, to say the least… Even though the colonization of other planets has fixed the resource problems we had… Their arrival still affected us to a societal level, even if we weren’t the main targets…”
“From demographics, to politics, to economics, to science, and even emotions and society, the possibility of them coming back still haunts many, ourselves included.”
“Each person here takes their action independently, as such, there are the ones who believe we must prepare for their comeback, and the ones who believe there should be a more… active stance…”
“We have reached far, but… it’s hard developing, making or living with the constant danger, wars, instability, and even though it would be great moving on, even though it’s almost impossible, we are basically kept together because we are many with a single goal, it’s hard moving from the idea for many, for the fear of utter dissolution…”
“We exist to survive, with all our hardship, not much can be expected from our situation, if that can be understood.”
“We are limited by our past, but we are here, probably most people here didn’t expect to be here in the first place, hopefully we will find prosperity after the inevitable conflict.”
“That was kinda depressing…”
“Ah. I’m sorry to hear that. It must have been a traumatizing experience for your species.”
“Yes, but hey! We’re to help after all, are we not?”
“We want to help you advance and achieve the level of prosperity we have.”
“And, if this mysterious alien race happens to show up again, we’ll be glad to help you. If you accept our offer that is.”
“Well said Elphidae. Now, why don’t you guys tell them a bit about Galactya? I’m sure that will help them understand us a lot more.”
Thauvierd extended a “limb” from his main gelatinous body, and pressed the surface of the central table. Suddenly, a voice-reactive hologram projector activated, and began showing the admittedly shocked Trrarrusians what the diplomats were going to talk about.
“Well, the Galactyan Empire was founded 9698 standard years ago on our homeplanet and now capital Galactya, after a Global War that resulted in the total destruction of one of our planet’s three original moons. As of now, the Empire covers around 32000 star systems, and has extensively terraformed and colonized 31290 worlds between telluric planets, moons and gas giants. We also have an extensive presence in planetary and interstellar habitats.”
“The Empire has a population of 81 trillion and 498 billion citizens, and inside it’s territories, uncountable sapient species live as it’s equal citizens. The biggest majority of those species were genetically created by us wither through modification or from scratch, while a smaller minority are immigrants and their descendants, hailing from our allied nations. Everyone under the Imperial Flag is respected equally, regardless of things such as gender, species or religion. We still don’t really understand the last one, but we try our best to respect and help those who do.”
“Galactya, through the years, has allied itself with a multiple of nations, and has created a vast net of powerful alliances and trade that solidified into a supranational alliance called the Coalition Of United Stars. As you can guess, we have always valued trade, diplomacy and friendship over things like conquest and conflict. While I can’t deny that the Empire can be a bit expansionist at times, it does not do so through military actions. If it’s not provoked to do so, that is.”
“And that’s pretty much it I suppose. We’re an interesting nation we know, but we are the living proof that hope achieves much more than what pessimism ever could.”
“Now, onto the actual offer. If it is possible, we would like to build an orbital station, as well as an embassy on your capital planet, or any planet of your choosing. Said space station would act as a trade center, from which we could exchange knowledge and technology. Armaments as well, if that’s what you desire to have.”
“Would that be a reasonable request? We don’t ask you to accept right away, and if you need to, you can contact your government through this ship and inform them of our proposal.”
Taulsu and Souby looked at each other, and Souby made a gesture with one of his hands, indicating Taulsu to take it from here.
“We would like to contact with our home planet about the offer, if it isn’t much problem. Groydrus, send the report you have at the moment together with the contact to Home.”
“Yes sir.”
“Perfect then. My team will escort you to the Communications Center, where the staff will brief you about how the communication equipment works. Then they’ll leave you alone in the room so you can talk with your government in private.”
“In the meantime, I’d like for Groydrus to stay here with me. I’ll bring him down to the Warp Drive Sectors of the ship, so he can take a good look at everything. If that is fine with him and you of course.”
“Sure sure, take him away.”
“U-uh, just make sure that he comes back for when we have finished here, would be nice not losing the responsible for data.”
“Don’t worry Commander, I’ll be sure to give him back to you in one piece! Also, if you happen to need me, just ask one of my team members, and they’ll contact me right away. So Groydrus, follow me. I have much to show you.”
Together, the quite ancient Galactyans and the young Trrarrusian headed towards the Warp Drive Sectors of the titanic ship. Entire teams of crewmen watched them curiously as they passed, seeing a trrarrusian for the first time in their lives.
After some minutes, they reached an observation room, that overlooked a particularly bustling area of the ship. In front of them, behind the panes of diamondoid glass, an enormous gravity engine towered over the rest of the machinery, surrounded by cables and fluxes of energy.
“There we go Groydrus! The ship’s warp drive. In actuality, it’s a regular Galactyan Ringular Gravity Warp Drive that was adapted to travel in Mirial Space, allowing for much higher speeds. We just had to tweak the fusion input and dope the generator rings with monopole-binded mirions. Any questions?”
“Y-yeah, what are mirions? I get the monopole part, but I have never heard about any mirion’s mentions in any of the CKA documents I stol- I was given access to.”
“Ah, I see. A little sneaky thief! Don’t worry, don’t worry, I won’t share your secrets with anyone else.”
“Anyways, to put it simply, mirions are a fundamental particle originating from Mirial Space, another dimension that shares part of it’s brane within the Bulk with our own. In Mirial Space, due to a much higher energy density, matter and energy inside spacetime can move far beyond the speed of light limit that exists in our universe, allowing something known as VIV, Virtually Infinite Velocity. Calerostan ships use Mirial Space to carry out their superluminal travel. However they require a Q beacon to properly exit VIV. It’s basically a large energy collector that slows down ships in Mirial Space, collects the accumulated energy, and releases it in the form of small gamma ray bursts, thus allowing a ship to safely re-enter Realspace.”
“I assume Kalgyul uses a spacial dilation-contraption method for superluminal travel.”
“Mhh, I think I understand… Wait, another dimension? So… the anomaly is a… an area with high energy particles… that serve as gateway from our our dimension to that dimension… But wait, we don’t know of any strange structure in this area, so I’m guessing that Q beacon works across the Mirial Space? or maybe is in Mirial Space?”
“Q Beacons have to be artificially constructed in realspace. They accumulate the energy of a ship interdimensionally: gathering it in Mirial Space, and releasing it in Real Space. I’m not sure myself, as the anomaly was very recently discovered, but I suppose that it works similarly to high mass gravity wells. You see, particularly large gravity wells, such as the ones found in big star clusters, large black holes or very active molecular clouds, leave a sort of “shadow” inside of Mirial Space, as their mass is able to cause a microscopic shift within the Bulk. In our case, the opposite might be happening: a particularly large mass object in Mirial Space has created a sort of anomalous rift to our own dimension, releasing large clouds of the particles, and carrying along their higher energy density. However, I advise you to take my speculations with a grain of salt. I’m still just a modosapient and besides, nobody has researched it well enough yet to really know what’s going on.”
“THAT’S. SO. COOL! I-I mean, we already knew there was other dimensions by our mathematical equations, but I never thought they could be used in such a fucki- umh, in such a incredibly cool way! I’m taking note of all this stuff! My friend is gonna love this stuff- … Uh, well, I mean, can I? This is kinda like pretty big secrets, aren’t they?”
“No, no, you can note it down. And besides, if it were secret stuff, I certainly wouldn’t be sharing it with you. No offense intended, of course.”
“If it interests you, there are six other parallel dimensions that we know of, besides our own. One of them is Mirial Space, and the others are, if I remember correctly: Warp Space, used by the Drakari, Jumpspace used by the Emeraldians, Pseudospace used by the Akropii, Hyperspace used by the Ryccians and the Rose Nexus used by the Sereniani. We have also heard rumors of another dimension used by the Venterrans, called Slipspace, although we are still not sure if the voices are trustworthy.”
“Each of these dimensions has it’s own gimmicks and exploitable tricks, although if it interests you they all seem to be pretty barren and dangerous spaces. Even Mirial Space, which does contain naturally evolved entities, is still an hostile environment. Slipspace is just an endless sea of black due to hendecesimal spacial compression of visible light, and Warp Space will literally make you go insane if you look at it without proper protection.”
“Ok, all those sound terrible compared with warp drives… Wait, Drakari, Emeraldians, Akropii, are all those other civilization in the sector? And all of them have better technology than us? I should write all those names…” Groydrus thought to himself.
“Uhhhh, is there any more interesting stuff around here?”
“Now, you must be thinking that all of these Interdimensional FTL methods sound terrible compared to regular Realspace Superluminal Warp Drives. And yes, while they are much more dangerous, they are capable of reaching speeds that are 240 times faster than regular Realspace FTL. Around 525960 times the speed of light if I remember correctly. So yeah, it’s a decent trade off.”
“Well, in terms of warp drives there’s not much more to see… we could however look at some of the weaponry the ship has, if you’re interested. We could even look at the shielding.”
“It would be cool seeing the shielding, if that isn’t much bother.”
“Am I that easy to read…??”
“It’s not, don’t worry. Besides, your superiors are still having their conversation with your government in the Communications Center, so we might as well give them some extra time.”
“We’ll arrive to one of the external observatories near a weapon battery shortly, but in the meantime I wanted to ask you something.”
“This may sound a bit premature, and to be fair this entire situation probably is but… if given the chance, would you be open to a foreign scholarship? It would be such a pity to waste a bright mind like you in low military serving.”
