unaggressive. ^ 1
Lost Civilisation: 22,399
SPECIES: Unknown
MORPHOLOGY: Unknown
Language of message untranslatable, but coherence patterns indicate it originated as an electromagnetic signal. As with 67.2 per cent of all messages, the lack of a hermeneutic prime number/alphabetical symbol/significant images key page makes it impossible to read the message.
Lost Civilisation: 33,445
SPECIES: Kaaaala.
MORPHOLOGY: Not specified but aquatic origin implies limbs that are evolved from fins.
This species left many messages caught in the folds of space, but this lament is the most haunting: Our planet is dying. Our people are dying. We are the last of our kind, and we are truly cursed by our own foul nature. Yesterday I saw a mob erupt and kill a pregnant female and rip her embryo from her womb and trample it into the dust. Such a horror appalled me but I know it is typical of our times. Such outbursts of violence are hardly new. We’ve all read our history books, and we know about the city riots of the sixth century and the country riots of the twelfth century and the class riots of the thirteenth century. Our history books are little more than a litany of murders, wars and mass uprisings in which the death toll can often reach the millions. Why are we such a barbarous species? Are we unique, in all this universe, in being cursed to kill our own kind? Some commentators blame the corruption of technology and science for our woes. And it is true that the invention of the projectile bomb, the road-side bomb and the extendable dagger have wrought havoc among our youth and our elders. My own grandfather slew a hundred innocent children when he rampaged through his former school with a multi-projectile gun and body armour. His age-rage was typical; our kind seem to evolve out of riotous youth into a tranquil middle age, only to descend once more into vicious anarchy once we are past the age of sixty years. But the death rate was even higher back in the long gone Old Days, even though knives and swords and axes were used instead of rockets and mortars and projectile guns. The streets ran purple with blood on so many occasions; and traitors and innocents alike were punished by the law by the most cruel methods, including beheading, eviscerating and [NOT KNOWN]. The biological determinists believe that our cruel nature is the result of our distant origins as aquatic creatures of the great oceans. For we are used to spawning, and shoaling, and dying en masse in the teeth of vicious sea predators. A million of our eggs will yield ten million or more children as they hatch in the nursery muds and we are accustomed to allowing nature itself to determine which of those children shall have parents-in other words, we let them fight it out until only the strongest new-born embryos survive. Perhaps there are other species who do not practise such a barbaric form of early nurture, who place more value upon the lives of their children. We are born to bloodshed, eating alive our brothers and sisters in order to survive. Is it any wonder that blood-lust remains with us all our days? There are deists, however, who believe we are dying as a species because we have been cursed by an unknown, omniscient creator, who spawned all the eggs of life and is now waiting gleefully to see which intelligent species will live, and which will die. We are pawns of a playful god, in other words, waiting to see if we live or die and not caring either way. When I was a young one I dreamed of travelling into space and discovering alien forms of life and being an explorer. Now, it is unlikely I will live beyond my sixtieth birthday. For the mobs are using hydrogen-fission weapons to attack their enemies; the end is surely not far off. We will kill each other off with our new bombs; we will destroy ourselves as surely as we destroyed our enemies. And if the world does survive-what do we have to look forward to? A slow decline into vicious, violent, gangsterish brutality? Will I end up murdering my own children, as so many of my older friends have done? What savages we are! If there are other intelligent species out there, then I thank my blessings we never encountered them; for they would be ashamed of us. We are nature’s runt; the worst, most violent species ever spawned. We do not deserve to live.
One year after this message was broadcast to the stars, the Death Ship appeared in the skies above these people’s planet. The Dreaded were hailed as saviours, and a new spirit of cooperation spread through the lands of these once-aquatic peoples. Violence ceased. The elderly mellowed, and realised the folly of their brutal ways. The children learned to respect their elders, awed and shamed by the presence of alien sentient life.
The Dreaded were welcomed by these people with open arms, and according to several broadcasts transmitted to the stars, they were acclaimed almost as gods.
There is no record however of how this species and its planet were destroyed by the Dreaded; but destroyed they were, along with the rest of this universe. All that remains is a lament by a sentient being ashamed of his own people for all their flaws and frailties; and, as Star-Seeker Jak has ironically observed, unaware that that there are other creatures in existence who take evil to infinitely greater extremes.
Sharrock
“I have a tale to tell,” I said.
It was Day the Fourth, a day for poetry and tall tales. And I held all those gathered before me-who comprised almost all the sentients of the interior world except for the Kindred, and the sessiles, the aquatics and the plants- with my fierce gaze.
“A tale of adventure and courage; duplicity; guile; alien artefacts; and beautiful jewels,” I continued, and I knew I had their rapt attention, for such is my way with words. “For I stole a precious stone for my beloved wife Malisha, from the treasure house in the palace of the Galli, the chief family of the Southern Tribes in the city of Sabol on the planet of Markdsi. It was a jewel that had previously been stolen by the Galli from an alien species of peerless power. And I stole it from the thieves; for those effete Southerners could not keep it from me!
“And here is the jewel.” And I held it in my hand; a beauteous red stone, which shone like a furnace in the dim candle-light.
“I stole it for her, for my beloved wife Malisha,” I continued. “And, after fleeing Sobol in a small spaceship, I was pursued and then captured by soldiers of the Southern Tribes. But I kept the gem safe by hiding it in my mouth, in the place of a tooth which I had ripped out.
“Then I escaped, and stole another spaceship. I survived a space battle. I was marooned for many months when my craft was trapped in waves of energy that prevented all means of propulsion, a doldrums of deep space. I saw, or thought I saw, space ghosts. All these adventures I briefly mention here; they were to be the matter of a glorious tale to be told by the fireside late one night, to my naked and sated and beauteous wife.
“Yet this never happened. The tale was never told; for Malisha died, terribly. My daughter Sharil died. My people died. I came to this place and I found brave and noble souls, yourselves. And I commend you all for your spirit; I am proud to know you.
“But all this is mere preamble, to set the scene, and acquaint you with the character of the story’s protagonist, namely- myself. The tale I tell today is this: One day on the ship called Hell, a decision was made. One fateful day changed the destiny of all. One day all the peoples of the ship resolved to work together; not to fall into Despair, but to work together with one aim. And that aim is: to comprehend this place and how we are kept here and why we are kept here. And to use this knowledge to destroy our enemy, and to escape our captivity.
“That is the tale I have to tell; except I cannot tell it, for it has not yet happened. If we succeed, then shall I speak more.
“Who will join me?”
When I had finished speaking, I looked at Sai-ias. I knew what such a course of action would mean to her. It would be the repudiation of all her dreams of peace and contentment; the destruction of the equilibrium she had so painstakingly achieved; and the beginning of a vicious and merciless war which in all likelihood none of us would survive.
“I will join you!” Sai-ias roared, and relief swept over me; and all voices were raised to celebrate the dream of liberty I had conjured up this day.
There was much work to be done, and many nonsensical notions to be discarded to help us to achieve our aims.
For instance: translating air!
The very idea was absurd. There was no technology I could conceive of that could allow air to translate, on a
