A ship emerged near Earth in a flare of light, shining radiance piercing the heavens. It was massive, and the human Navy vessels that swarmed out to meet it looked like minnows dancing around a whale.
It waited patiently as a diplomatic party was assembled, an opening in its crystalline elegance inviting them in.
The aliens themselves were tall and graceful, their forms and faces partly obscured by something that was not quite cloth and not quite energy. Greetings and negotiations were flawless, the alien translation perfect. They would give us FTL technology in exchange for access to certain locations within the Solar System that they could extract some type of esoteric energy from. We didn't understand the physics, but they offered to give us a translated database as well.
The diplomatic team returned joyous, the dreams of generations fulfilled.
We were not alone.
They were not hostile.
They had given us the stars.
It took months for the first cracks to show. Years for conclusions to be drawn.
Although they were courteous, precisely so, they were distant and often uninterested in us. There were oddities in their speech and behaviour. Their translation programs seemed flawless, yet artefacts emerged.
Work was done, research conducted. Speech and language analysed by the best humanity had to offer. Their report, secret and classified, spawned more research, more experts drawn in from dozens of disciplines. The alien database, combined with the first reports from the FTL exploration ships, led to one terrible conclusion.
It was dismissed, disregarded, buried.
But the years passed, and it was once more dragged into the light.
The terrible truth.
Humanity, by galactic standards, was barely intelligent.
The translation errors were caused by conversation several orders of magnitude more information dense than human thought being reduced to a level we could comprehend.
They were talking down to us, as we might a dog, or child. They were not being arrogant, not judging prematurely. We had been analysed in full, our history, our technology, our culture, our biology, our military might.
We were lesser. And as we spread further into the wider galaxy, into the shadows of civilizations greater than we could perceive, we learnt that we were least.
Some ignored us. Some tormented us. Some felt pity. None viewed us as equals. How could they?
Generations passed, and we became the rats in the walls, common throughout the galaxy but never strong. Some races would exterminate human colonies when they were found, not out of malicious intent, but simply because they didn't want us in their space.
Sometimes, we tried to fight back.
Rarely, they noticed.
For centuries, humanity’s lot was unchanged. Scattered colonies thrived in the shadows of golden cities. Entire populations hid in the cracks and wildernesses of ringworlds, occasionally casually obliterated, but always returning.
We stole technology we could never hope to understand, but that we could learn to use. Arcane devices crudely wired and bolted to human contraptions. Scraps and refuse from the tables of the gods.
And then the Pale came.
They were something strange, even to the greater beings of the galaxy. They seemed almost immaterial, echoes of things rather than things themselves. But they swarmed, and where they found technology, they copied it, absorbed it, emulated it. The races of the galaxy united to drive the Pale back, even as it grew to match them. Humanity was caught in a war between the unstoppable force and the immovable object. We survived only by being not worth consuming.
The war raged on. Star systems were reduced to ruin, and slowly the races of the galaxy lost ground to the Pale. In the gaps, humanity hung on. Even on worlds consumed by the Pale humanity lived, their technology still not even worth considering.
The last great races of the galaxy made a final stand, moving their greatest habitats, a triad of Dyson Spheres, to the galaxy’s core. There, drawing upon the supermassive black hole in the core’s heart, the unleashed their final weapon.
A disruption wave folded outwards, spreading across the galaxy faster than light. In its wake, all forms of technology broke. No mere EMP, the Wave destroyed all machinery, even fracturing clockwork and steam engines. When it had passed, the Pale were gone, annihilated, but the entire galaxy had been plunged back into the Stone Age.
On Earth, humanity rebuilt. Scientists and engineers spent the remainder of their lives committing their knowledge to books, even while everything that could be done to advance humanity was done. By the end of the first generation after the Wave, humanity was beginning to replace steam power with electricity once more. By the second, transistor technology led to the rebirth of the computer. A century after the Wave, the first new starships took the skies. The old plans for FTL, given long ago, were rebuilt and once again the children of Earth went forth.
They found pockets of humanity, some just surviving, some rising like they had. All were welcomed, and the new Human Universality spread.
They found other races too in time. Some had gone extinct before humanity could meet them again. The rest went shortly after.
The gods, fallen further than humanity had, suffered more. Those that lived began to rebuild faster than humanity could imagine, but they had much to go before they could reach their former heights.
Humanity had lost two thousand years of progress. They had lost millions. And yet, even so weakened, they dismissed humanity. As though nothing had changed, they treated us like vermin still.
So we destroyed them.
Now humanity covers the galaxy. Now, at long last, we have come to the core, where the great triad of Dyson spheres still sit. Within are all those who did not fall, the kings of heaven who cast the galaxy to ruin to save themselves.
We call to you. You who hid in the dark and thought yourselves safe from consequence. You who thought yourselves alone. You waited too long.
Your skies fill with billions of ships from millions of worlds. Humanity has risen, and in our hearts we will never forgive you for what you have done. We have come to take heaven from the gods. Fight us, if you will.
We are the vermin of the galaxy, and we will eat you piecemeal.
The translation errors were caused by conversation several orders of magnitude more information dense than human thought being reduced to a level we could comprehend.
They were talking down to us, as we might a dog, or child. They were not being arrogant, not judging prematurely. We had been analysed in full, our history, our technology, our culture, our biology, our military might.
We were lesser. And as we spread further into the wider galaxy, into the shadows of civilizations greater than we could perceive, we learnt that we were least.
Some ignored us. Some tormented us. Some felt pity. None viewed us as equals. How could they?
Generations passed, and we became the rats in the walls, common throughout the galaxy but never strong. Some races would exterminate human colonies when they were found, not out of malicious intent, but simply because they didn't want us in their space.
Sometimes, we tried to fight back.
Rarely, they noticed.
For centuries, humanity’s lot was unchanged. Scattered colonies thrived in the shadows of golden cities. Entire populations hid in the cracks and wildernesses of ringworlds, occasionally casually obliterated, but always returning.
We stole technology we could never hope to understand, but that we could learn to use. Arcane devices crudely wired and bolted to human contraptions. Scraps and refuse from the tables of the gods.
And then the Pale came.
They were something strange, even to the greater beings of the galaxy. They seemed almost immaterial, echoes of things rather than things themselves. But they swarmed, and where they found technology, they copied it, absorbed it, emulated it. The races of the galaxy united to drive the Pale back, even as it grew to match them. Humanity was caught in a war between the unstoppable force and the immovable object. We survived only by being not worth consuming.
The war raged on. Star systems were reduced to ruin, and slowly the races of the galaxy lost ground to the Pale. In the gaps, humanity hung on. Even on worlds consumed by the Pale humanity lived, their technology still not even worth considering.
The last great races of the galaxy made a final stand, moving their greatest habitats, a triad of Dyson Spheres, to the galaxy’s core. There, drawing upon the supermassive black hole in the core’s heart, the unleashed their final weapon.
A disruption wave folded outwards, spreading across the galaxy faster than light. In its wake, all forms of technology broke. No mere EMP, the Wave destroyed all machinery, even fracturing clockwork and steam engines. When it had passed, the Pale were gone, annihilated, but the entire galaxy had been plunged back into the Stone Age.
On Earth, humanity rebuilt. Scientists and engineers spent the remainder of their lives committing their knowledge to books, even while everything that could be done to advance humanity was done. By the end of the first generation after the Wave, humanity was beginning to replace steam power with electricity once more. By the second, transistor technology led to the rebirth of the computer. A century after the Wave, the first new starships took the skies. The old plans for FTL, given long ago, were rebuilt and once again the children of Earth went forth.
They found pockets of humanity, some just surviving, some rising like they had. All were welcomed, and the new Human Universality spread.
They found other races too in time. Some had gone extinct before humanity could meet them again. The rest went shortly after.
The gods, fallen further than humanity had, suffered more. Those that lived began to rebuild faster than humanity could imagine, but they had much to go before they could reach their former heights.
Humanity had lost two thousand years of progress. They had lost millions. And yet, even so weakened, they dismissed humanity. As though nothing had changed, they treated us like vermin still.
So we destroyed them.
Now humanity covers the galaxy. Now, at long last, we have come to the core, where the great triad of Dyson spheres still sit. Within are all those who did not fall, the kings of heaven who cast the galaxy to ruin to save themselves.
We call to you. You who hid in the dark and thought yourselves safe from consequence. You who thought yourselves alone. You waited too long.
Your skies fill with billions of ships from millions of worlds. Humanity has risen, and in our hearts we will never forgive you for what you have done. We have come to take heaven from the gods. Fight us, if you will.
We are the vermin of the galaxy, and we will eat you piecemeal.
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