Many Alone

Jorden Erenberg

            Trithiss shivered in anticipation as the ship descended from orbit to the planet below. He would be the first individual mind to ever set foot on The Soil of the Forest and communicate directly with the consciousness that inhabited it, a gestalt entity known as The Pale Forest. All previous negotiations with the ancient space-faring race had been through common FTL communications and electronic translators. His species, the Hyrethians, had gained access to faster-than-light travel just a handful of decades previously and The Pale Forest had been the first race they had established communications with. The hive entity quickly translated Hyrethian language, sent charts outlining the large territory they controlled, and ushered the Hyrethian science vessels outside of their borders while displaying an emotion that the Hyrethian sociologists later interpreted as 'amusement.'

            The astonishing find of intelligent alien life which was so very different from expectations had taken Hyrethian society by storm. Where the Hyrethians were large and covered in exoskeletal plates the Forest consisted of tall, thin, plant-based creatures who resembled nothing so much as ambulatory ghost-white trees. Trithiss himself was but a mere hatchling when first contact occurred and though many more species would be discovered as he aged it was always The Pale Forest which held his greatest fascination. Indeed for many Hyrethians the Forest represented a sort of galactic constant amidst the turmoil of galactic politics, itself a new concept with many missteps. Unlike others in the galactic plane, the Forest seemed completely disinterested in war or even expansion, they simply continued to exist in their controlled space as they apparently had for quite some time. They did not show the same apathy towards the races they encountered and often answered simple questions or offered cryptic guidance but they never shared any technological secrets, claiming that a truly mighty species doesn't need the secrets of the universe handed to them. For most of a century the Hyrethians took comfort in the eternal presence of their ancient neighbor and an understanding formed between the two races.

            As the end of the first century of galactic expansion and exploration drew near the Hyrethians surprised the Forest with a bold request. The elected leader of the Hyrethians quickly explained that they had come to believe The Pale Forest to be their link to the galaxy's past and that by hearing the true story of the Forest, they might gain more knowledge about the history of the galaxy than would be possible by simply studying the remains of species long dead. At first the Forest had refused, not wishing to share such intimate details over electronic channels and claiming that while pleasant diplomacy over FTL communications was no difficulty the organisms that made up the gestalt consciousness never evolved to properly coexist alongside individual entities and would react violently to Hyrethian presence. The Hyrethians insisted that there must be some way to bring a small number or even a single Hyrethian representative into contact with one of the Forest's speakers to communicate. The Forest requested time to consider and ended communications; the following months saw a spike in overall anxiety and worry among the Hyrethian populations who feared that their government had insulted their first galactic friends and a powerful potential ally.

            At last a communication came from The Pale Forest to inform Hyrethian leadership that a location had been set aside on their home world where the presence of a small number of representatives could be tolerated indefinitely. Social analysts even noted that the consciousness seemed rather pleased with itself for overcoming this hurdle. The government quickly assembled a small group of which Trithiss, now a high level interstellar diplomat, was selected to lead.

            The ship descended to an area far from any of the population centers on The Soil of the Forest and Trithiss and the three other Hyrethians who had been sent to assist him were quickly ushered to a large grove in the center of a forested area where the trees appeared to be far less mobile than the drones leading them. Throughout the short march Trithiss became more and more convinced that there was far more presence than any other forest on any of the alien worlds he had previously visited. The flora and fauna seemed more vibrant, more alive than any he had encountered before and as he watched he started to gain a sense of some grand machine turning and spinning before his eyes. Yet nothing crossed the clearly marked path they marched on and any attempt to step of the path was met by sudden activity from the escorting drones who would pull or push the Hyrethians back onto the only path through the forest.

            In the grove itself was one enormous tree and one singular Pale Forest drone whose roots seemed entwined with those of the tree. The escort remained at the edges of the grove while Trithiss approached what he was certain would be a speaker drone for the gestalt entity who had been the first introduction to the larger galaxy for his entire species.

            "Greetings, Hyrethian," the speaker pronounced and it's words seemed echoed by the rustling of the branches of all the trees in earshot. "We are quite pleased to welcome the first individuals to set foot upon our soil," it paused for a moment, "was your journey tolerable?"

            "It is a great honor to speak to you," Trithiss bowed low as his translator converted his words into the language most commonly used by Pale Forest speaker drones. "I am very thankful for the opportunity to converse with you directly and to hear your story. The journey here was incredible, we have no idea how you managed to bring us here in a mere two weeks when all of our projections suggest that your home is a full two month journey from our own, and it seemed like we didn't even spend any time in hyperspace."

            "Ah, you are curious about the jump drives. We are quite pleased at this opportunity for a new experience as we had always believed communication in the manner which most species are most familiar to be an impossibility to us. We think we shall reward your kind with just one small hint about our travel technology," the speaker leaned towards Trithiss as though sharing a secret between close friends, "it is possible to construct engines which redefine a ship's location and allow near instantaneous transportation from one location to another and at great distance. Our own discovery of the technology came when we triumphed over a great leviathan which existed in between realities." The speaker resumed its upright posture at the base of the tree, "It is but a small hint but we hope that knowledge of the possibilities will take you farther."

            "We are very grateful for this knowledge, but shouldn't we be rewarding you for the opportunity? After all, we are asking you to share your personal history with us and yet we have very little to offer in return other than our friendship."

            "As we have watched the millennia pass we have found fewer and fewer reasons to expand our knowledge and understanding of the universe. When you requested to speak with us, we knew that we did not wish the conversation to be overheard and yet we had no way to tolerate your presence on any of our worlds. For the first time in a very long time we awakened our long dormant autonomous drones who were bred for science and presented the query. The autonomous drones are almost independent themselves and this allows us to devote more of our vast mental resources to research and the discovery of new technologies. Through their research we determined a way to engineer a small group of drones which would view all independents as simply highly autonomous drones. With this technique we might learn to create diplomatic drones which can land on the planets of other species and negotiate with them. Perhaps when the current cycle of empires reaches another peak, we shall once again rejoin the community and forge new alliances," the speaker brought its gaze from the stars to directly stare at Trithiss, "and it is all because one young race dared to challenge our established reality. We shall treasure our memories of your kind forever, Hyrethian."

            "I...truly don't know what to say Pale Forest. I think our leaders had no idea that our request would carry such meaning for you."

            The drones and trees all seemed to rustle in a manner that was similar to laughter. After a moment the speaker folded its arms before its waist and asked "Shall we get down to business? I caution you that our story is long and you may think quite differently of us by the end. Certainly you will understand the animosity directed at us by the Union, the ancient federation which has existed in this galaxy for almost as long as we have. We apologize for nothing, not after so much time, but we do not deny their right to loathe and fear us as we earned all of that and more."

            Trithiss inhaled deeply of the alien air, signaled the assistants to begin recording, and then nodded. "We are ready to hear your story."

            Even on our home world we were a unique and strange occurrence; the result of a series of chance mutations which resulted in a species whose like we have never encountered. This is not intended as a boast, for of the many trillions of different mobile species on our planet less than one hundred evolved from flora. It takes a proper digestive system to provide the energy necessary to engage in any strenuous activity, photosynthesis simply does not suffice. Of those flora that evolved to walk and run, only thirty-six developed into omnivores capable of taking advantage of all of the available organic nutrition. We have learned from fossil records and ancient relics that only two of those thirty-six developed advanced intelligence. One developed in a fashion that resulted in a common race of individuals, like yours, and while the other's intelligence was the emergent result of a psionic connection which linked all of the individuals of that species. We believe that our early collective out-competed our intelligent rivals until they went extinct, but it is possible that they were marked as a threat and destroyed. This collective would eventually become us, but not until it grew larger in number. It was only when our species numbered in the thousands that an advanced sense of self emerged.

            We remember when we first considered our self and our surroundings, when we became aware of our difference from the life around us. Though we were the only species connected by a unified consciousness we never felt alone. It was at this time when we took on our name, The Pale Forest. It was so long ago but we still remember our first attempts at tool use, our conquest of our world, and our rise to technological mastery. It has been over four thousand years but we still remember the day we completed the hyperdrive and ascended to the stars, eager to expand our territory and to learn about the galaxy we inhabited.

            Our first forays into the stars were much like yours, Hyrethian. First, we sent our scientists to all of our nearest stars in search of planets to inhabit and even other life to interact with. We found planets that could be inhabited but early experiments revealed to us the nature of our fragile biology. We are considerably less adaptable than many of the other species we encountered and only planets which were of very similar classification to our home world would be able to comfortably serve us as colonies. We elected to choose our colonies carefully, rather than suffer the reduced efficiency of settling less suitable worlds, and we resolved to focus our efforts on technologies which would help us to overcome this obstacle in the future. To this end we would eventually become masters of terraforming and genetic engineering, creating ideal planets for our species and a stronger species to inhabit them. Even the soil you sit upon is not as it was when we first ascended to the stars. We changed our home planet to be incorporated into our hive consciousness so thoroughly that even the ground actively serves our interests.

            We get ahead of ourselves. Long before we mastered any of these abilities there was our own first contact. We had taken many star systems for our own, and begun to believe that there was no other intelligent life out there, when at last we encountered another. We sense you are curious about their identities, but we are afraid that is something we will not be able to assist you with. We learned that, in the parlance of many of the cultures we encountered, we are what is known as "bad with names". We have but one name, after all, and all the myriad races and cultures we encountered have washed over us like water. We remember some of their titles and their ideals, but with few exceptions we have forgotten all of their names. We can tell you that most of the races that inhabited our closest neighbor empires now form The Union. Perhaps they will have records of the empires they used to be. We recall that our neighbors were largely amiable, but they were universally perturbed by our existence. Something about our unified nature disquieted most of them, and provoked outright hatred in two particular empires. They got along with each other quite well as we recall, and we largely ignored their animosity. Our unique collective consciousness and rapid expansion allowed us to gain an early technological lead on most of the other powers in the galaxy.

            Very quickly we found ourselves completely unchallenged in military might and technological prowess with but four exceptions. There were four ancient empires which long preceded the existence of every other space faring species in the galaxy. They were to us then as we are to the Hyrethians now. We recall them as the Prophets, a highly spiritual race which resided on the far side of the galaxy from us; the Machines, an artificial collective consciousness; the Knowledge Keepers, a closer neighbor who exalted scientific progress above all other things; and the Ancient Hatred. Of the many empires we encountered it is the Knowledge Keepers and the Ancient Hatred who hold the greatest roles in our story, but all four of the ancient empires possessed technologies unlike any we had ever considered before.

            "You describe the other three ancients but not the Hatred, yet you also speak their title with such animosity. Why is this?" Trithiss was loathe to interrupt The Forest's speaker, but his need for more details was too great.

            The Pale Forest was silent for many breaths before answering the question. "The other ancients held to some form of ideal which was admirable, even if we didn't agree with them as to that particular ideal's necessity. The Machines were created by some precursor, and they dutifully attempted to follow their directives. Their age caused many malfunctions, but on the whole they seemed to truly seek the betterment and long term survival of all the species of the galaxy. They are still here, we advise you to be kind when you encounter them. The Prophets held to a belief in a greater order to the universe, and sought to preserve that which they saw as sacred and beautiful. When we first became aware of our self, we too toyed with the idea of a greater order in the universe." The Forest speaker looked to the sky where the twin suns of their home system shone brightly. "We named the binary stars our planet orbits The Eyes of Life in honor of their necessity for all life on our planet. We imagined, for a time, that they were the eyes of a creator watching us and protecting us. As we ascended to the stars we abandoned these ideas, but we did not look down upon the Prophets for  holding close their comforts. They are no longer with us, their species was wiped out in a calamity which they did not provoke."

            "And the other two ancients? The Keepers and the Hatred?"

            "The Keepers held to an ideal which we also held high: the notion of pursuing science to its furthest extent and gaining power from knowledge. They also believed themselves the true judges of which knowledge the other empires should or should not have, and in this we disagreed. Their remnants now form part of the Union. But the Ancient Hatred," at once the escort drones standing attention at the grove's entrance emitted a hiss of anger. "The Ancient Hatred held only to the ideal of their own supremacy over anything which was different to them. Their behavior fostered in us an anger we did not know we possessed, an anger which has never faded. We do not mourn their loss, the galaxy is safer without them in it."

            "What happened to them? What happened to the Prophets and the Keepers? Why are the Forest, the Union, and the Machines the ancients of our time rather than these others?"

            "We shall tell you all of this. We shall tell you about the loss of the Prophets, our war for greater power, the calamity which threatened all life in the galaxy, our betrayal, and our retribution. Hear now, Hyrethian, how we became the dominant power in the galaxy, and earned the fear and loathing of the other powers of our time."

            The younger empires of the galaxy rarely agreed on anything but many of us were willing to set a few standards that would make treaties and negotiations possible. Chief among these compromises was the establishment of a galactic calendar by which all empires would keep to for the purposes of trade and negotiation. It was not a perfect match to any yearly cycle but it was close to most of them. Perhaps the current empires have established a similar system? We shall learn it someday if that is so. An arbitrary year was set as the common starting point of galactic expansion at two thousand two hundred; we tell you this to give you some context of the passage of time between our first expeditions to other stars and the events we shall now describe, which were much later.

            Over two centuries of this galactic calendar we expanded, discovered, traded, and struggled with our neighbors. We did not openly war with any of them, our fleets were too mighty for them to consider such a thing, but there were other galactic threats for us to sharpen our military strength against. Titanic creatures lurked in the depths of space and threatened the safety of any ship which passed through their systems. In one black hole system we pitted our fleets against a monstrosity from another reality, only a portion of which could successfully squeeze itself into our universe. Many ships were lost before it was slain, or perhaps only pushed back, but studying the remnants of the tear in space that allowed its entry gave our scientists the necessary hints to discover the jump drives. Despite the setbacks that hampered ships for a time after making a jump, the ability to move our fleets across our space at such a high rate was a critical boost to our military power. Adding to this speed was our discovery of the means to activate the long dead gateways inside our territory and even to build more gateways for our use. Our borders became more secure than ever and we began to look with envious eyes to our ancient neighbors, the Keepers and the Hatred, whose technologies both still vastly outpaced our own but whose military strength we approached closer every year. Sometime after the two thousand four hundredth and fortieth galactic year a shift occurred in the policies of the Ancient Hatred. We do not know why but suddenly they began to produce more of their great fleets and to expand their territory into what little space lay unclaimed around them. We held a system but two jumps away from their territory, though those two jumps lay unclaimed as we did not wish to share a direct border with them, and we spent the next several years building up the central station of that border system until it was a bastion of military arms. We relocated our two greatest fleets to dock at this station, all other border threats became trivial as we wondered what the Hatred would decide to do. Our estimates indicated that the new bastion and our fleets together would likely be able to hold back the forces of the Hatred, provided they did not dedicate all of their might to annihilating us.

            We waited and watched for a decade or more while the Hatred marshaled their forces in preparation for something. At last the war declaration came but not against us, their nearest neighbor, but against the Prophets on the other side of the galaxy. Our recently completed sentry array helped us to discern their motive as we observed the Ancient Hatred sending their military fleets through a wormhole in their controlled space which we had been unable to explore. Those fleets appeared on the other side of the galaxy, just a few systems north of the Prophets who, while mighty, had not been gathering new strength like the Hatred. It was as though the Prophets, the Keepers, and the Machines all still lay dormant and asleep and so the Prophets were fully unprepared for the onslaught of the Ancient Hatred's fleets.

            As the Hatred prepared to lay waste to the territory of the Prophets we chose to consult with ourselves on a course of action. We use autonomous drones as governors, generals, admirals, and as heads of our research. By allowing these drones to generate independent personalities new opinions can be produced for our consideration and each drone can focus its full attention to a task that is too minute for the attention of our greater consciousness. When we commune with these drones together, much as you might assemble your major government leaders, it allows us to consider multiple sides of a situation but is in essence a form of talking to ourselves. At this time we considered the problem of the Ancient Hatred and their war against the Prophets. We knew we could not stand with the Prophets properly for though we had the means to cross the galaxy quickly via the gateway network we had helped to reactivate, we had no alliance which would allow us to enter their space and aid them. Even if entry were negotiated, it was doubtful whether our fleets could pose a threat to the full force of the Hatred's armadas. It was one thing to establish a border defense but all of the ancient empires seemed to possess advanced military technologies which we had not been able to discover for ourselves. To declare war on the Hatred and send our fleets across the galaxy would be equivalent to simply recycling them on the spot. At last one of our admirals suggested a brilliant, deceitful plan which would potentially aid the Prophets and serve to secure for ourselves the technologies we were missing. In their arrogance the Ancient Hatred had sent all of their most powerful fleets through the wormhole to assault the Prophets, perhaps considering the rest of the galaxy a non-threat to them. Even with the most advanced hyperdrive engines, jump drives, and access to the wormhole we still estimated that their fleets would take months to return to their territory while our fleets were already a mere two jumps away from their borders. We could declare war, attack the Ancient Hatred, destroy some of their large bastion stations, research the debris left behind, and have our fleets and scientists retreat back to our borders before the Hatred could retaliate. This would give us access to their technologies and divert their attention from the Prophets long enough for the Prophets to attempt to rally.

            Our fleets were already in position, we just needed to relocate a science vessel from assisting research at one of our larger worlds. We watched from a distance as the Hatred's fleets drew ever closer to the territory of their target, and on the day that they engaged with the Prophet's forces we declared our war and launched our own assault. We claimed system after system from the Hatred without bothering to attempt to secure any of them, we had only months before the Hatred's counter assault not the years it would take to build citadel stations and outfit them. We stormed across their space until we hit one of the bastion citadels that defended an inhabited world. It was no small enemy but our fleets easily overwhelmed it and afterwards our science vessel moved in to scan the wreckage. We didn't bother invading planets we knew we could not keep, our fleets simply moved on to the next bastion and the next. We destroyed three large bastions and scanned their wreckage before the fleets of the Hatred returned through the wormhole, though they were battered from encounters with the armadas of the Prophets.

            We retreated, allowing the Hatred to reclaim the systems we stole while we escaped with the true prize: the secrets of dark matter technology, particularly the deflectors and reactors used by their stations. Only one of their smaller fleets, which was by no means insignificant itself, chased us all the way to our own territory in a miscalculation which gained us more wreckage to explore and the secrets of dark matter thrusters. It was during our retreat when drones monitoring our sentry array and other large scale sensors designed to collect research data on the physical nature of the universe noted an alarming change in space-time itself. Strange distortions in space were rippling across our galaxy, faster than light speed, and with an origin point somewhere outside of the galactic plane. This was not our first time noticing this disruption but as we turned our primary attention from our retreating fleets, trusting our admirals to do what they were bred for, we understood that the data showed an alarming change in the distance and frequency of the distortions. As our science drones interpreted the data the disturbing meaning became clear to us.

            Something was crossing the vast distance between galaxies at faster-than-light speeds despite the lack of any extragalactic hyperlane network to facilitate such travel. We realized that these space-time distortions were a sort of echo, like the sound of an engine screaming through an atmosphere those echoes raced ahead of whatever engines were creating them. We theorized that perhaps extragalactic travel was possible by propelling ships through a form of sub-space, treating space-time itself as an ocean which ships could dive deeper into to take advantage of different physics in a similar fashion to how our own hyperdrives make use of the unusual physics of hyperspace. We could not identify the identity or the exact distance of the origin of the echoes, only that they were coming closer and their eventual arrival point would be just a handful of systems south of the Prophets, not far from the unclaimed gateway we had inadvertently activated when we first discovered how to reactivate gateways within our own territory. What we knew for certain was that in just a few short years our galaxy would be visited by something whose nature and motives we had no way of discerning ahead of time.

            We turned our attention back to our war with the Hatred, no longer interested in prolonging the conflict with such an unknown variable bearing down on our galaxy. We held our ground against the Hatred and with the loss of one of their fleets and the work to rebuild in the systems we had attacked, plus their war with the Prophets who had launched a counter attack through the wormhole into the territory of the Hatred, the Hatred quickly decided that continuing to skirmish with our forces was only compounding their losses. After only a handful of fleet skirmishes the Hatred accepted a white peace and agreed to the standard post war cease fire of ten galactic years so that they could focus their attention on the Prophets. We hoped that our efforts would be enough to preserve the Prophets as we focused our attention on perfecting the technologies we had salvaged.

            It did not take long for our talented and well developed research infrastructure to turn hints gained from a few ship scraps into full fledged dark matter technologies. The new ships were designed within a month of all three technologies being fully realized and we ordered all fleets to shipyards to undergo immediate retrofitting. Resources were no obstacle for us at this time, all that mattered was crossing the technological gap between us and the Hatred before the treaty ran out and they decided to repay us for our audacity. Projections held that our fleets would be in dry dock for almost four years as the vast majority of major systems had to be removed and replaced to accommodate dark matter technology, but with the peace treaty in place we were certain we had the time and so we forged ahead. We were wrong.

            Almost a year into our fleet upgrade a signal was broadcast over FTL channels. Though the message followed no standard protocols and could not be translated it was not difficult to receive. The only data that could reasonably be discerned from the message was one word which was deemed the likely title of the extragalactics: the Prethoryn.

            Shortly after the message the first wave arrived on the eastern rim of the galaxy. We had hoped that the visitors would be peaceful, perhaps explorers who could bring new knowledge to us from distant stars. Failing that we hoped at least to be prepared for a new, expansionist empire much like the others we were already familiar with, or even some kind of extragalactic ancient empire. The Prethoryn were nothing like our expectations and nothing like anything the galaxy had previously encountered save for one other empire: us. As the first Prethoryn ships entered our galaxy we became aware of a strange and familiar connection amongst them. We reached for this connection and found not an army of individuals but a unified consciousness almost identical to our own. For the first time ever we met another hive mind species. We cannot express the feeling this created in us. We even found that we could truly communicate with them in a way that none of the other races of the galaxy could manage. We immediately attempted negotiations only to discover that although the Prethoryn were kin to us in many ways, they were ideologically incompatible with our own way of existing. They were refugees of their own galaxy, fleeing a faceless entity they referred to only as the Hunters, and they were determined to consume the full biomass of our galaxy as quickly as possible before moving on to another galaxy, and another after that. There could be no peace, no cooperation or diplomacy, no alliance against a greater threat.  They were a massive force, with powerful and terrible fleets composed entirely of living ships that were grown rather than built, and our own fleets were trapped within our own borders, the retrofitting process already too far advanced to halt.

            For two long years we watched in horror as the Prethoryn invaded and devoured, infesting habitable planets and consuming all of their organic mass. The Prophets had lost their home world and much of their military might to the Hatred and put up only a paltry defense against the swarm. A few members of their race managed to flee and seek refuge among other empires of the galaxy, the rest were either exterminated by the Hatred or devoured by the Prethoryn and their highly religious culture was lost forever. Some of the remaining empires of the galaxy had begun to join together in a federation that would one day become the Union, and they deployed what fleets they had in an attempt to secure their borders, but none had the strength to challenge the swarm directly save for the Hatred. The Hatred only concerned themselves with those Prethoryn which invaded their territory. They were content to try and ride the crisis out while watching the rest of us be exterminated. In the last year of our upgrade hope bloomed anew as the Keepers of Knowledge, galvanized by the threat to all existence, broke free of their own dormant state and began the mass production of mighty ancient fleets of their own. They joined the Union, an unheard of decision for one of the ancient empires but they made clear their desire to gather as much strength as possible by joining the galaxy's largest federation, at least for the time being. They launched an assault directly into Prethoryn controlled territory and began to turn back the tide, but it was too much for them to handle even with the aid of the Union's federation fleet.

            Our upgrade to dark matter tech was completed and we petitioned to join the Union and pledge our forces against the Prethoryn. Many of the Union distrusted us but our entry needed to be accepted by majority, not a unanimous decision. The Keepers accepted our help automatically and large gifts of resources to two key members of the Union served to express our sincerity. With multiple fleets of our own already on the move we were accepted into the Union. We took on the task of using our resources to produce more ships for the federation fleet and with this shared fleet, plus our own and that of the Keepers, a true counter offensive was launched against the Prethoryn invasion. Early assaults were difficult, but as we defeated more fleets and began to learn the enemy's tactics and technology we altered our ship designs and began to see true progress in the war. We deployed our newly constructed colossus, a great war machine capable of neutralizing all life on a planet, and used it to cleanse worlds infested by the Prethoryn. This left the worlds barren but we were confident that they could be terraformed at a later date if we managed to survive this crises. The war was grueling but despite early setbacks we found that we were winning and every system reclaimed from the swarm brought more hope to the galaxy. Where previously we had enjoyed universal distrust our heavy contribution to the war effort made us heroes in the eyes of many of the weaker empires, which lacked the strength to attack the swarm directly.

            You asked us previously about our anger towards the Ancient Hatred and we mentioned their behaviors which so enraged us. Now we shall explain their crimes, for when the whole of the galaxy was threatened, when the very existence of any life at all became uncertain, the Ancient Hatred took the opportunity to commit their forces not against the mutual enemy that threatened us all, but at us for our previous opportunistic war against them. When the peace treaty with the Hatred ended they did not allow a single day to go by before declaring war against us, and by extension the entire Union with which we were allied. With the whole of the galaxy in the balance we were forced to leave the front lines against the Prethoryn and defend our territory against the Hatred. We left the Keepers and the federation fleet to hold the line against the swarm, knowing that without our direct aid they would not be able to make significant progress against the swarm, but we hoped that they could at least delay the swarm's advance. It was just as when we were upgrading our fleets, the whole of the galaxy was in peril and we were forced to concern ourselves with personal matters.

            We attacked the Ancient Hatred and they found that we were no longer the upstart empire who had struck them while their backs were turned. Our fleets had become hardened with war experience, and our ships were bolstered with the technology we had claimed from the Hatred. The territory they had stolen from the Prophets was on the frontline with the Prethoryn, on the opposite side of Prethoryn territory from our forces. They had no allies in the galaxy who could hold the line while they attempted to destroy us and so were forced to commit only a few of their fleets to fight us. We shall never understand what drove them to the great error of challenging us in the first place during such a dire situation, but we can only assume that their hatred had overwhelmed their reason long ago. We stormed their territory, taking systems and this time we intended to keep them. We landed our armies on their colonies and occupied their worlds. Our mastery of genetic engineering allowed us to assimilate the people of those planets into our hive mind, sacrificing their individual culture to gain greater diversity and strength for our own empire. We took many of their worlds and half of their total territory and assimilated it all into our greater self. They requested a peace, insisting they had learned their lesson and ceding all conquered territory to us. We signed a second ten year treaty, rebuilt our forces, and returned to the front against the Prethoryn.

            Our efforts renewed, we surged against the swarm, destroying fleet after fleet and cleansing dozens of worlds in waves of neutrons fired from our great colossus. It was a long and bitter campaign, Hyrethian, and it was still burning when the two thousand five hundredth galactic year passed by, uncelebrated, but still we forged onward. You must be wondering how things changed so much between us and the Union when we were once such close allies. The Prethoryn were forced back to a mere dozen systems when our second treaty with the Ancient Hatred expired and again they declared a war against us, so blinded by their desire to destroy us and perhaps realizing that their only slim hope of ever doing so was to strike while our allies were occupied with the extragalactic invaders. As we were forced to pull our fleets back from the front yet again we consulted with ourselves on the course of action necessary to finally secure peace in the galaxy. It was obvious that the Hatred could no longer be allowed to act freely in the galaxy; their empire would have to be dissolved. We almost resolved to simply conquer all of their worlds and assimilate them when a dark and bitter idea entered our minds. It became clear to us that the Hatred was itself a poison upon the galaxy, and you do not integrate poison but instead it must be extracted and discarded. It was time to demonstrate to the entire galaxy the reward that the Hatred's ideals of self glorification and destruction of difference had earned them. We would wipe them out entirely, just as with the Prethoryn infestation.

            We once again launched our warships into Hatred controlled territory, but this time they were accompanied not by army transport ships but by our devastating colossus. We went to every planet they controlled and wiped it clean of all higher life, leaving only basic flora and microorganisms. Some of our federation allies, grown more powerful over the many years of war with the Prethoryn, struck out at the Hatred as well and conquered worlds. We suspected that this was actually an attempt to protect some members of the species from our assault, securing them behind the borders of our allies where we would not seek to pursue them. We allowed this as repayment to those allies for working so tirelessly with us to destroy the Prethoryn invasion. In every other system that our allies did not reach first we committed merciless genocide against the Ancient Hatred. We expunged them from the galaxy and we finally tracked them to their last stolen world, where their pathetic king attempted to hide from us. We refitted our colossus with a new weapon and used it to shatter the very planet they resided upon.

            We unquestionably won our war against the Hatred, and without their interference it took only another decade to completely eliminate the main Prethoryn force. The galaxy celebrated and the Union was regarded as a federation of heroes, but a rift formed between us and our allies. Many of the empires who had not been directly involved had only gained second hand reports of the events of the Prethoryn crisis, but our allies knew, through shared intel and sensor data, exactly how we had dealt with the Hatred's betrayal. The brutality of our retribution disturbed them, and perhaps the treaties of cooperation and alliance seemed a thin protection for them from us. We do not blame them, for we had shown ourselves to be a nigh unstoppable force of destruction over decades of war. They attempted to shackle our military might to their own desires, seeking to distract us by engaging the federation in small, pointless conquest wars to gain small pieces of territory from lesser empires. After only a couple such minor wars, we left the Union to seek our independent future. We expanded into all the remaining free territory left over after the Prethoryn invasion and wound up securing almost half of all the star systems and usable planets in the whole of the galaxy.

            Our empire was unassailable but with the destruction of the Prethoryn, the only other hive mind we had ever met, and the renewed fear and mistrust of our once allies we were faced with a new emotion that we had no means to understand. For the first time in our existence we felt...alone. Our mind is a unified chorus of organisms working in harmony to a greater whole, but we were still one mind. What was our singular unified nature next to the greater galactic scale cooperation we had experienced against the swarm? When we assimilated other species did we preserve them amongst our greater self or did we destroy everything that made their existence meaningful in the first place? We did not loathe or regret our existence but we began to see that perhaps it was the contrast of those that were different from us that made our unification more beautiful. We decided that if we were to ever gain full control of the galaxy, then at that time we would be truly alone.

            We waited and we watched the rest of the galaxy spin onward as years turned to centuries and then to millennia. With no place left to expand, the weakest of the galactic empires squabbled amongst each other and destroyed one another and more open space was created. Hoping to stand against us the Keepers were absorbed permanently into the Union. We began to devote vast resources to the terraforming and revitalization of all the worlds which had been rendered barren by the Prethoryn or which had been ruined by interstellar wars. As the processes completed and new, simple life began to bloom on these planets we relinquished our claim upon most of the galaxy's systems. When the Union attempted to lay claim to these systems for themselves they found our fleets waiting for them. They eventually acquiesced to allow new life and new empires to grow where the old had decayed away. After two thousand galactic years a short cycle of young empires sprung into being and then wiped each other out. We rejuvenated the left over worlds and waited again.

            "In what we counted as the six thousand four hundred and thirteenth year a strange race of arthropods arose only a few short jumps from the edge of our controlled space and made contact with us. They did not react, as most races had before them, with fear and disgust at our unified existence. They did not, as the Union had before them, seek to use our technology and military strength to win their battles for them. No, these unique creatures that called themselves Hyrethian asked only for simple advice and to hear our story and learn about the history of the galaxy. They say that we honor them with our history, but we say it is you who honors us, Hyrethian, with your open minds and diplomatic manner. We are eager to watch the mark you leave on the galaxy Hyrethian, and perhaps with time you shall ascend to ancient status alongside us and we shall watch the galaxy spin together."

            Trithiss stared in awe at the speaker drone before him and all he could do was nod slowly. Finally he found the words to reply, "I'm so humbled that you think so highly of our little nation. We will bring your story to the rest of our people and we will not let you down."

            "We believe you will do great things, Hyrethian, just remember these lessons we learned. The true wonder and majesty of the galaxy is best when experienced from many perspectives. Never let anger overtake you, as once did us, for although we have seen many empires rise and fall, none have ever returned from obliteration. Once a culture dies, it is truly gone forever. It has been our great pleasure to share our history with you, Hyrethian, we wish you a pleasant journey home."