Contrast
29 Jul 2018Vallysa
As I pulled my Dolphin 'Cecil' into Metcalf Station, the destruction that met my eyes immediately shook me out of my travel reverie. The latest victim of a Thargoid encounter, the station was burning inside and out and barely holding itself together with its emergency protocols. I had to drop heat sinks just to make the landing pad without cooking myself from the inside out, then immediately evacuate as many refugees as possible to the nearby rescue ship. Cecil and I made trip after trip, cramming my passenger compartments to the brim with desperate people seeking to be anywhere but there. As always, Cecil held true and proved her resiliency, as she had done time and time again on deep space exploration missions.Dodging flaming wreckage--and fighting my stomach as I had to ignore the escape pods I was not equipped to rescue from the un-survivable heat--I almost couldn't remember what I dedicated the previous week towards achieving. Morris Station had put out the call to independent pilots to bring it all the necessary supplies for a reinvigorated effort to decipher xeno-linguistics. A noble goal in my mind: without the ability to communicate it is impossible to understand, and without the ability to understand it is impossible to peacefully coexist. It turns out--perhaps unsurprisingly--that the materials needed for this project were computer components...and coffee. Lots and lots of coffee. I had recently acquired a Type-9 freighter, lovingly named 'Mabel' and colored bright orange, because I knew that was the only way to bring the community the large quantities it needed. So there I found myself, hauling hundreds of tons of coffee beans over and over, providing the brain fuel for these scientists to break down Thargoid and Guardian signals.
As I looked at Metcalf, I finally accepted there would be no communicating with the Thargoids. Notions of peace with that race is a lost cause. But, I've also seen a map of the systems in the galaxy that humans have actually visited, and just how small that sliver is compared to the size of the galaxy. I think it is inevitable we will meet a new race among the stars one day. When that happens, I have to believe we can find a peoples who share a common passion for exploration and discovery of the infinite beauty of the universe. I have to believe the Thargoids are the exception, not the rule. I have to believe when we find this new race, we will be prepared to exchange the better nature of our kinds with each other and find a friend, not an enemy. I have to hope.