You're Welcome and Hopefully See You in the Imperium Soon

On August 15th, 1977, a strong unidentified narrow-band radio signal from space was detected by Ohio State University’s Big Ear radio telescope. The astronomer who first saw the recorded signal realized how non-natural it looked and simply circled the readings and wrote “Wow!”It was subsequently dubbed the “Wow! Signal,”with the origin of the signal, and its strikingly artificial appearance remaining a mystery ever since its initial detection. This led to many theories and speculation of it being the work of some interstellar species.

Unbeknownst to the people of Earth, the signal was indeed of extraterrestrial origin. It contained a message, although encoded in a way that humans would never understand, and sent on a frequency that they were not equipped to fully detect. That of course, was a slight oversight by the message’s sender, who assumed that humanity’s technology would be several centuries ahead of what it currently was. He did not take into account that humans historically seemed to be more interested in developing new ways to kill each other than developing new space technology. In fact, if he were to find out that humans invented nukes before they could even put a person in space, or that rockets were first created as a way to deliver bombs across longer ranges, he would be quite shocked and appalled.

Nevertheless, the message was sent with the hope that humans would receive and appreciate the content. That message was as follows:

Hello humans! I’ve gone through the great trouble of encoding this message using words from your languages, so you all better appreciate it. Now, many things I’m saying might not make much sense to you but first know this: I single-handedly saved your entire species, and planet for that matter, all while risking my precious job. If that sounds like an impressively heroic feat, that’s because I think it is too. So I figured that I would detail exactly how I managed to save you all so that you can put this in your historical records for future generations to appreciate as well. Oh, and you can call me Aeryn by the way.

First of all, there’s a great big galactic imperium out there that none of you are a part of yet. Now you may be wondering why, and the reason is that it was decided that we didn’t really like you guys and thus your planet was assigned to be destroyed for the entertainment of the masses. But, I’m getting ahead of myself, we’ll get to that part later.

So let’s start where it all began. Within the Imperium, there are a lot of companies and corporations that do things for people. It’s a big galaxy that we’re all in, so there’s quite a lot of work to be done. Now, the largest companies are often funded by the grand empress herself, and they usually provide services for all galactic residents. One of the oldest and most well-known of these companies is Galactrix. Now yours truly managed to land a position at Galactrix (which is quite exclusive, I might add) and has been working there for several decades. Now since Galactrix is such a large corporation, they’ve opted to build up entire planets as their offices. As of recently, they’ve been expanding beyond just a single planet to multiple other uninhabited or recently cleared planets in the same system. But, those terraforming projects would probably take another few centuries or so. Maybe I’ll get to see them finished before I take my retirement.

Anyway, I work on the original Galactrix office planet, G1. More specifically, I work at complex 2375A which is just north of the equator. Actually, you’re probably wondering what Galactrix even does to be so important in the imperium, so let me explain. In the beginning, any sufficiently advanced race could join the imperium if they just asked nicely. That worked out for a while until people started to get a bit apprehensive about the possibility that one of the races might be secretly a little batshit crazy and cause trouble. So, a review and application process was created to scout out developing planets and species and evaluate whether or not they would eventually be fit to join the Imperium. Now the policy when a species was deemed unfit either because they would develop to be too violent, or were simply too primitive to ever become an interstellar species, was to destroy them and their planet (for safety, and/or to clear some needed space).

Admittedly, I didn’t look too closely at the evaluation for your planet, but somehow you all were deemed both too violent and too primitive. Don’t take it personally though, it’s not like I make the rules about these things.

So getting back to what Galactrix does, they essentially act as the official body responsible for enforcing and enacting the planetary policies I just mentioned. Although they get a lot of funding from the grand empress, they still like to make money when possible. That’s why Galactrix operates not only as an official government corporation but also as an entertainment company. You see, destroying a planet and its inhabitants is usually quite a grand spectacle to watch. So, the higher-ups at Galactrix realized they could broadcast each of these planetary clean-up operations and run some ads while they were at it. This worked remarkably for the company's profits, so it stuck as a permanent venture. Now you could probably see how this incentivizes the employees responsible for planetary destruction to think of new and creative ways to accomplish that task to keep people entertained. That was precisely my job at Galactrix.

And this brings us to the fateful day when I managed to save your entire existence. It really was like any other. After a short twelve-hour commute (I’m lucky my home planet is only a couple of light years away from the office), I arrived at the central express teleporter station. Now, there was a certain chain of events that led me to even record this message for you all, and this was the first. It just so happened that day that the teleporters were all closed for a safety inspection. This was because mere days prior, someone was severed in two when their lower half was reconstructed at their end destination about two hundred milliseconds after their upper half. Thankfully, that someone was a xelvorran, and so not only did they not even notice they were in two pieces, but their lower half rejoined their upper half by the time they moved out of the teleporter unit (I’ll explain xelvorrans in a bit as they do become quite important). Nevertheless, there are many less biologically robust species, self-included, so an immediate shutdown and safety inspection of the teleporters was the obvious decision. This meant that I couldn’t take my usual route to complex 2375A, and had to settle for the replacement hypersonic shuttles. Although they weren’t technically much slower than the teleporters, travelling at Mach 53000, they were slower in the sense that you now had to wait for a bunch of people to cram into a shuttle before it could leave.

So anyway, because I had to take a shuttle now, I arrived quite a bit later than I usually would have at my complex. This actually led me to run into Jex, a colleague of mine at work, and someone who I act like close friends with at the office, but cease talking to the moment I step on that space shuttle home. Jex was notorious for being late to work, and our manager Elvoria only let it slide because he was a long-time employee. He also had a very brazen personality, and admittedly was sometimes a chore to talk to.

Upon leaving the shuttle terminal and heading towards the elevator lobby, I heard his voice yell from across the room. At that moment my mind was swarming about the frustratingly resilient planet I was assigned to destroy (more on that in a bit), and I really didn’t want to waste time talking to Jex of all people. But, I hadn’t seen him in a couple of days, and not wanting to look like the asshole, I put on a smile and waved him over. The conversation went a little something like this:

“Hey Aeryn, haven’t seen you in a bit!”

“Yeah, been busy with Planet E-26. Keeps worming its way out of every calamity I throw it at. Elvoria really dropped a stinker on my plate, you know how it is.”

“Sounds tough,”Jex said with a hint of mockery, then continued

“Well, I just cleared three planets yesterday. Wanna grab a coffee real quick and talk about it? Maybe I can help.”

Jex put on a proud grin, probably unaware that I already knew that those three planets he “cleared”were all barren rock piles that he just had to toss a neutron bomb at. I already wasn’t optimistic that he would have any good advice, but again, I didn’t want to be a Negative Nancy. He was still supposed to be my friend after all.

“Sure,”I responded, also putting on that same grin he had, “I could use the help.”

We headed up to the kitchenette, which was quite a bit far away from where my workstation was. Walking into the kitchenette, there were two entrances. One was closer to the elevators, which I needed to take to get to my workstation, and one led to a long hallway of various meeting rooms and archival storage. This will be important soon. Anyway, Jex walked into the kitchenette first and started making his coffee at the opposable appendages machine. There was another coffee machine for species that consumed things by simple osmosis, but I wasn’t really keen on taking a coffee bath (I learned that the hard way on my first day on the job), so I had to wait for Jex to finish making his coffee first. While the coffee was brewing, Jex brought up the planet I was working on:

“So, Planet E-26—tell me about it.”

“It’s got some sort of sentient species on it. Quite strange though. They have to pretty much rely on artificially built machines to do anything substantial. Anyway, I’ve tried disease, global war, climate disasters, you name it and they’ve still endured. I feel like Elvoria’s gonna be on my ass soon if I don’t figure this out.”

“Hmm, have you tried an asteroid? Works all the time for me.”

“Yeah, but I kinda miscalculated its space-time positioning. Accidentally sent it 66 million years too far into the past. Anyhow, it still ended up being too small to wipe out everything and I’m looking for something more creative than that.”

“Have you tried a large supernova gamma-ray burst?”

“No, I’m already about to head over budget and that would definitely drive Elvoria insane if I tried expensing a supernova for just one planet.”

Jex threw his hands up. “Looks like you’re kinda stuck then huh.”

As I suspected, he really didn’t have much good advice to give me. At this moment, he had finished brewing his coffee and moved over so I could make mine.

“Do you have an inkling as to why the planet’s been resisting the other things you’ve thrown at it?”Jex asked.

“Nope. The report on Planet E-26 labelled the dominant species as simple and barbaric. Not sure how they’ve escaped the pandemics and subconscious violence manipulation. Not to mention the artificial climate change. I think there’s something wrong with the way my calamities are being sent across space-time, but I’ll need some time to really debug that.”

“Yeah, strange. I’m sure you’ll figure it out though.”

I gave a brief nod and Jex took a sip of his coffee. An awkward silence ensued as we’d run out of things to say on the planet I was working on and I was still waiting for my coffee to brew. Jex eventually broke the silence.

“So anyway, how’s your week been?”

I took a mental deep breath and prepared my cookie-cutter answer.

“Oh, it’s been nice. The weather back home’s started to get better so more skyball games have been popping up in the upper atmosphere. Went to one yesterday with a couple of buddies.”

“Man sounds fun, wish I had skyball games to watch back home. Our atmosphere’s too thick y’know, great for cloud surfing though.”

“You go cloud surfing often?”

“Well, every now and then. I would be breaking the bank if I went every day. You should come by sometime and I could show you the ropes.”

“Yeah, just let me know when,”I said, raising my eyebrows as I brought the coffee mug up to my mouth for a sip. I knew full well that Jex probably wouldn’t tell me when, and that I probably would never visit his planet. It was also halfway across the galaxy from mine.

“Maybe next time you could invite me to a skyball game too. We could do a little planetary exchange.”Jex added.

I forced a chuckle. “Sounds like a plan.”I really didn’t like how real this was starting to get.

Another brief silence passed as Jex sipped his coffee. I glanced down at my watch as a way to signal that I should get going. Jex thankfully took the hint.

“Welp, if Planet E-26 is still kicking your ass over the next few days, you could send it down my way for a bit. It might be the calamity architect and not the planet that’s the issue y’know,”Jex gave a teasing wink.

I laughed, taking it as a joke, but also definitely feeling a little offended.

“Don’t get too hopeful that Elvoria won’t dump a planetary stinker on you soon too.”

Jex gave a laugh and clapped me on the shoulder as he exited the kitchenette.

“See you around Aeryn.”

“Yup, see you”I responded.

Now, back to that notion of the two doors to the kitchenette. Jex left going through the same door that we both came in; the one that led to the elevators. That’s where I needed to go as well, but we had already said our goodbyes, and it would be pretty awkward if I just followed him out after that. So, I decided to take a little detour out the other door and head down the long hallway of meeting rooms and archives. Although this may seem insignificant, this decision is why you’re all still alive right now.

But I digress. As I was heading out from the kitchenette, I glanced at my watch. It was already well past the start of my daily standup meeting, and now I was really wishing I hadn’t bumped into Jex on my way to my workstation. However, it really wasn’t too big of a deal as most people were usually half asleep in those meetings, and everyone just said the same thing every day anyway. I just hoped that Elvoria wasn’t paying too much attention to the fact I happened to not be present in the meeting that day.

As I headed down that long hallway outside the kitchenette, I spotted Liorith walking out of an archive room. She was probably the most senior member of my team, even more so than Jex, and also unlike Jex, I actually respected and admired her. In fact, she was the person who first onboarded me in my early days at Galactrix. I considered calling out her name and saying hi, but she was already on her way out of the room and walking away from me. It would’ve been weird shouting at each other from across a hallway or waiting for one of us to awkwardly walk towards each other to be in a normal conversational distance. I decided I would pop by her desk later in the day instead. Nevertheless, seeing her leave an archive room actually gave me an idea. Those rooms held terribly organized masses of data on just about every planet out there in the galaxy. No one liked combing through them, and most people didn’t need the brutally specific data stored in them to create calamities for most planets anyway.

So, you really only had very tenured people like Liorith actually using those rooms for probably extremely niche planetary situations. But, given that Planet E-26 was causing such a headache for me, I decided that maybe combing through an archive room might actually give me some solutions.

Now I mentioned that no one liked going into an archive room because they were usually terribly organized. Up until this point, I’d actually never tried combing through one myself, but my god were the rumours true. Stepping into the room I was instantly hit by the stagnant air. In the centre of the room there was a single console and surrounding it were walls of industrial data stores. The console doesn’t actually have any physical controls but rather automatically connects to any stand issue telepathic implant. Now this also activated said implant, which I usually kept off because I felt all the noise it generated got annoying.

This actually brings us back to the topic of xelvorrans, which I mentioned earlier on with the teleporter incident. They’re quite an interesting species in that they have no discernable external features. Their bodies are just soft smooth masses of uniform flesh arranged in a pill-like shape which is really just the natural shape for a viscous fluid in a round sac. Xelvorrans are also unique in that they can sense things, but have no capacity for feelings of pain or discomfort. You could quite literally rip one apart and it would probably just be annoyed that you’ve started dividing its brain power. Oh right, and xelvorrans are basically one giant mind but when split apart or otherwise mutilated, they can exist as separate instances of the same mind, just with less mental processing capacity.

Alright so back to the archive room. I was mentally combing through the console, going through folders upon folders of terribly named files, that were haphazardly thrown together. I probably spent three hours or so just trying to find where the archival information on Planet E-26 was until I heard a strange buzzing sound. I realized that it was not coming from my own ears, but rather through the telepathic implant I was using. Rather quickly, it occurred to me that it was not a buzzing but actual speech, and from a xelvorran at that. Xelvorrans communicate through electromagnetic waves, and the telepathic implant in my head could receive that input. Switching to a live xelvorran translator program, I could actually start hearing what was being said to me:

“You looking for archives on Planet E-26?”

“Yeah, actually, how did you know?”I responded, then realized that I was alone in the archive room and had no idea where this xelvorran voice was coming from.

“I’ve been in the same room as you for the past three hours buddy.”

Confused, I started looking around again and couldn’t spot any round fleshy sacs anywhere.

“Down here bud, on your shoe.”

I looked down and saw a viscous goo clinging to my shoe. I then realized that at some point I must’ve walked through a xelvorran without noticing. Although I had to have been distracted because I swear I should’ve at least felt something from basically kicking one in half. Either way, I became quite embarrassed and tried apologizing.

“Oh I’m so sorry, I must’ve ran into you earlier today and I was probably—”

The xelvorran interrupted me

“Don’t worry about it bub, happens every now and then. It’s been a slow day for me anyway, I figured I’d just take the ride on your shoe. The name’s Ted by the way.”

“So anyway, seeing you wracking your noodle over this console, I could find those archives for you if you want,”Ted continued.

“Yes, that’d be great. Thanks Ted,”I responded.

Now you might be wondering how a species of pretty much physically disabled round pills of flesh that can’t even resist being kicked in half on the daily was invited to join the imperium. It’s because, despite their physical limitations, their mental computing capabilities are probably the best in the galaxy. A whole single xelvorran could probably solve every single planetary issue that I could ever come across in my entire career at Galactrix within a matter of minutes. A reasonable follow-up question you might have is why the hell don’t the xelvorrans just do all the work then? Well, that’s because they all think this kind of simple problem-solving is too far beneath them, and that they would rather pursue higher levels of thinking. That higher level of thinking basically amounts to angry philosophical debates and forum posts on the Galactrix media channel. A xelvorran rant does generate a lot of buzz, however, so that sort of became their role at Galactrix.

Anyhow, if Ted was whole, he probably would've just solved all of my issues then and there. But, I only had a speck of Ted sitting on my shoe, so all he could manage at the time was telling me where the Planet E-26 archives were.

It only took a few seconds for Ted to tell me exactly where to look, and lo and behold, I finally had the Planet E-26 archives in front of me. I was about to say thank you again, but then I realized that my telepathic channel with Ted went cold. He probably went back to thinking of philosophical arguments or just taking a nap on my shoe.

Combing through the archives, I actually took my first real look at what Planet E-26 looked like. Oh right and, if you haven’t figured it out by now, Planet E-26 is your planet. So with that conversation between Jex and I earlier where I mentioned throwing asteroids and pandemics and whatnot at you, let’s leave any feelings of animosity behind and just be proud that you all made me look silly and survived against the odds. No harm no foul right? Anyway, I will say, your planet is quite beautiful even with the artificial climate change I might’ve thrown at it. Chef’s kiss for those deep blue oceans and marble-like clouds. Aside from getting a real look at your planet, there was also an option to telepathically experience life from the point of view of a member of your species. Now I figured this was the real juicy bit because if I could actually experience how you all think and act, I could figure out how to, well, eliminate you all. But, once again, let’s not dwell on the fact that at this point I was still trying to do that y’know? At that time, I’d never actually tried using that archival tool, because I’d never been inside an archive room until now. So, I assumed that it would just simulate a life and sort of give me a spectator-only type experience. I was sorely mistaken.

What actually happened was that my consciousness was transported across space-time to take temporary residence inside the mind of some unsuspecting human. Time sort of became relative at that moment, so I don’t know exactly how long I actually spent in there, but my god was it disorienting. First of all, I can say that your brains are impressively large, but still not large enough to accommodate my full range of consciousness and thought. So I sort of had to go about with a human-esque consciousness but with my subconscious at the helm.

Also, this probably isn’t necessary to the story, but I figured that you might be curious about what an extraterrestrial evaluation of your species might be like. I can say confidently that you all are not “simple”like the higher-ups at Galactrix initially labelled you. Now “violent”or “barbaric”I couldn’t really confirm nor deny with the limited time I spent in a human mind. Physically, I knew that you all relied on artificial machines to do any heavy lifting for you, but I was not prepared for how pitifully weak you all are. It actually does impress me that you’ve all gotten so far with such horrendously incapable bodies, so I think you’re all probably on track to become advanced enough to join the imperium eventually. Maybe if your minds keep developing, you can join the xelvorrans in their philosophical rants.

But really, I find it hard to comprehend that you’ve managed to become a planetary-dominant species with just four limbs and five digits on each of them. In fact you actually only have two useful working limbs, and those limbs can’t even do much heavy lifting. I suppose you all don’t know what it would feel like, but trust me, going from eight sturdy limbs and seven morphable digits to basically two limbs with five fixed digits was absolutely terrible. The only thing that was sort of familiar is that you also walk upright, and dedicate some limbs only for walking. Again, I didn’t really know how long I spent inside the random human that I occupied, but I probably was acting quite strange for your standards trying to get used to being in such a different body. I do in fact remember at one point being inside what you all call a “mental asylum”but from what I could gather, it looked like a place where you got free healthcare and food. So although I might’ve been trying to kill you all earlier, at least with my archival exploration, I ended up helping one human get into a pretty advantageous spot.

Anyway differences aside, I did find that you actually all had profoundly advanced minds and definitely were not simple beings. So, you might be wondering what daring action I took next to rebel against my manager and secretly spare your lives. Well, I will admit that what I said at the very beginning of this message might be a slight exaggeration.

You see, there are actually two laws in the imperium that state: No peaceful species that are sufficiently sentient and advanced shall be killed, maimed, or harmed in any way, and no species can be deemed as violent unless the evidence presented proves beyond a reasonable doubt that said quality is true.” Fun fact, a small exception for that first law had to be made for xelvorrans, who clearly didn’t mind being maimed. So upon discovering that you were all in fact, not just simple beings and that I really couldn’t prove that you were all barbarically violent (I’m assuming that with how intelligent you all are you’re not anyway) it would actually be a violation of the law if I went ahead and tried to eliminate your planet. Well to be honest, if I did, no one would really know you were all actual advanced sentient beings because you’d all be space dust. But, since I uphold such high moral standards, I decided to instead file a calamity cancellation report to Elvoria.

Although that might not seem like the bold and heroic action that you all might’ve been expecting, at least we can all agree that I did the right thing. Besides, after filing that report, an internal audit was performed to verify that what I found was actually true. So, if I somehow misinterpreted your level of sentience and consciousness and/or violence (and trust me it was confusing being inside a human head so I very well could’ve) that report that I filed would be subsequently waived, and I would lose performance points for wasting everyone’s time. Now that could eventually lead me to being laid off in the future if I didn’t make those performance points back, so in a sense, I was still risking my job by submitting that report and trying to save you all.

That audit was carried out towards the end of the day and I was correct in that you all were actual intelligent beings and not the simpletons that we thought you were and that it wasn’t really fair to label you all as violent and barbaric. I also returned the piece of Ted that was still on my shoe back to the rest of himself and thanked him again for helping me out. He said he was grateful for the ride on my shoe and hoped that he’d see me around another day at the office. Really nice guy.

So, that pretty much sums it up. You all get to live thanks to me (and Ted), I actually got a performance point boost for catching a species evaluation mistake, and I didn’t have to bump into Jex leaving the office because I stayed back a bit to wait for the audit to finish.

Actually, one last slight caveat is that you all get to live at least until your real entrance examination to join the Imperium. These days the grand empress herself has been conducting those, and let’s just say if she’s having a bad day she might deport you to the next closest galaxy, and you’re on your own from there.

But anyhow, you all still have a couple of centuries to chill on your planet until then. So I guess to conclude this message to you all, you're welcome, and hopefully see you in the imperium soon.

On August 22, 2077, almost exactly a century after the message was initially sent, Aeryn was confused as to why he hadn’t received a reply yet and decided to send it again. This time, humanity was in fact better equipped to detect the radio signal and was astonished to discover its unmistakably extraterrestrial nature. With years of work and the brightest scientists of the era, they were able to decrypt a very small part of the message. It went as follows:

Your planet s9Aw7 assigned to be destroyed 7uAi2Kh the Imperium…[more signal noise redacted] …Ted.