The Signal Ch. 05: Rapture

"W-wait! I have one more question!" He blurted out.

Almora lifted her head before turning once more to him, listening patiently. "Yes, Gallo?" She blinked her smooth dark eyes slowly.

He paused again a moment as he tried to catch his train of thought. "The First Primates. Do you know them?"

This was the first question that truly stumped her, blinking again as she tilted her head. "I am afraid we do not know them by the words you use. Can you elaborate?"

"The First Primates. They were there around fifty million orbits ago... like you! We uncovered their artifacts from our own world and recently the fourth one from our sun. We think they reached all across our solar system, maybe beyond. They stood on two legs like us but they were mammals with hair instead of feathers. Where are they? What happened to them? Do you know?"

Another pause. She must be thinking it over.

A long minute passes. Gallo starts to become discouraged by this before Almora finally gave her answer.

"...we do not. We have encountered thousands of intelligent species and civilizations throughout the galaxy, coming and going across time. We have records of them as extensively as we could have made them. We may have archival records of them stored elsewhere, but given how ancient they would have been they would not be easy to find. If you can provide biological data for us, we may-" But then she paused as if remembering something, "...hold."

She blinked once again as if something clicked in her.

"...what is it? Something wrong?"

"No. We know now. Allow us to retrieve it for you."

Gallo could see one of the strange workers enter silent commands on a terminal without no apparent need of a keyboard.

Before long she speaks again. It seems that she and her kind receive data through the air through either telepathy or technopathy. "We have sifted through our archival data based on the biological data you retrieved, namely in the skeletons you have collected in your museums. It took time but we have found a match. Tell me if it looks familiar to you."

She brings up a hand again, with the points glowing once more before a screen fades into being. Gallo gasped at what he saw. There was no mistaking it. He saw the bipedal forms of the First Primates in every authentic detail imaginable. Their bodies were completely smooth-skinned and bare save for atop and behind the head, hardly like the cracked and thick hides depicted in museums and movies. Their noses were not a pair of slits but cartilaginous and wedge-shaped protrusions, pointing outward. There were two of them, one taller and more robust with limp, externalized genitalia, and the other shorter and more curved with a pair of prominent teats at the torso area.

"I don't believe it. That's them!" Gallo was simply awestruck. He was staring right at the very precursors of the gakanu race, with their small virtual eyes staring back. He simply had to know. "What do you know about them?"

"Alas," Almora was apologetic, "our information on them is limited and scattered, but we will tell you what we do know. They once called themselves the Homun and their planet they called Tera - which you all Oluna. They were active more than fifty-million years ago and were highly cooperative. They were sapient, developing sophisticated cultures, religions, and even technology. At some point, our ancestors were even able to obtain very complete records of their genome even after so long. Like your gakanu race, they were divided into regional subgroups adapted to their particular biomes and home environment. Unlike you who have distinct subspecies, the Homun were a species all unto their own, with their relatives having gone extinct at their peak. They, like so many social creatures, were also prone to violent sectarian conflict."

"Sounds like us," Gallo quipped with a cynical humor. "What happened to them? Are they still alive?"

"Sadly, we do not know their fate. Our records of them disappear some twenty-thousand years after the beginning of their civilization. After this, we have never seen the homun again even after all these years. They are presumably extinct. What we do know is," she paused as she inched her head closer to Gallo as if accentuating the importance of her words, "they were not alone."

The screen switched again from her hand-projector. It then showed a rapid-fire succession of forms strange and familiar, some of which strangely held a similar shape to the homun. Amazingly, Gallo even spotted a couple that had the gakanu body plan, including a tall and lanky sort with bat-like wings and a scythe-bladed tail. Another had a passing resemblance to gak-kind's dinosaur ancestors with a stiff tail and no wings, but also no feathers, instead having a thick, almost armored skin. One of the strangest beings even looked like giant amoeba in a floating tank.

He was nothing short of in awe, completely speechless at that stream of data he was seeing. Not only did he see the truth about the First Primates, called the homun, but also of extraterrestrial beings that lived in their heyday!

At the end of the scrolling Almora closed her hand, shutting off the screen. "The species that you just saw were all contemporary to fifty-million years ago, each with similarly intact records."

"Oh my gods," Gallo whispered quietly, "that was incredible. All these people, all these races that were there before, each with their own societies, their own cultures, struggles, wars, triumphs, their own stories to tell. Our precursors were there to see it all."

"Yes," Almora assured, "indeed they were. The homun were likely one race among a grand cooperative of beings working for the common good. You, the gakanu, are the inheritors of that legacy. It makes me all the more glad for this mission. Speaking of which."

When Gallo turned his head back to Tika, he saw a dragonfly-like being hovering in front of Tika, holding up a "barb" at the end of one of its forearms.

It pokes it into a slot beneath the egg and out comes a translucent yellowish fluid, making its way towards her before seeping itself into her cloaca, making its way into her womb.

"What are you doing to her?" Gallo said worryingly.

"Not to her. Your child, and all other children that you will make, will possess the Gift."

She lifts her head up once again, now staring down at Gallo. "This communications vessel will be visiting your planet by next day. Be prepared. Oh, one more thing. I have good news for you. You have neighbors! Please don't forget to say hello!

"But Gallo and Tika, all I can say is this: thank you....for everything."

Then a growing brightness, and then flash!

Gallo opened his eyes again to see... the sun. They were back on the beach. It was morning, with the sun shining bright in the sky. Then he heard Tika groaning.

"Why is my heart pounding so hard? Ough... It's like it's ringing against my ears..."

"Tika? Tika!"

"Mphh... Gallo? Is that you?"

Gallo rushes on over to her and kneels down to her. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, just the head...so foggy. What a dream. It was like I'm in this egg...so warm."

"Wait, you saw it too? With the big alien and that... ship?"

Tika stared at Gallo blankly in confusion, "what ship?"

"The ship..." He widens his eyes as he remembered what the head alien just said. "The ship! It's supposed to be coming down sometime today! But where?"

"Gallo, what are you on about with some ship?" She shook her head as she tried to regain some form of clarity. "N-nevermind. Let's first put on some clothes before anyone sees us. Then we can worry of some ship landing."

"Yeah, good idea. I'll explain it on the way before I forget anything."

They quickly got back into their sand-ridden clothes, brushing off whatever sand they could from then and then exiting the beach. Today would prove to be the biggest day in history.

Galaoua City, 14:59 hours.

The day has come. The public stares into the air as a giant object flies above the city skyline, with the appearance of a four-winged dragonfly and a beaked head. Its exterior was not unlike that of the mothership, but far less complex. Its hull was verdant green not unlike a terrestrial plant, but on its belly were bioluminescent, symmetric lines that pulsed slowly and beautifully for all below.

The entire city - no, the entire world stopped everything it was doing to see its form eclipsed the sun. There was no panic, but there was tension. News crews crowd the city to record and report on this strange object hovering above the city.

After ten tense minutes, it finally finds a spot to land, folding its elegant wings like a majestic bird. Delicately it extended bramble-like landing gear from beneath to absorb the impact. The craft was enormous, its length easily reaching a hundred tiks and its height reaching some four stories at the back. It landed in the city park, its wide space providing landing space for such a craft.

Hundreds of thousands flock together before the ship, staring at awe at this vessel as they awaited to see the face of their visitors who had been contacting them all this time.

The doors soon untwined and figures slowly began to descend from the ship. Across the world these tree creatures all introduced themselves to society for the first time. The crowd, news crews, police and even some local military personnel all gasped and stared in utter disbelief and awe at seeing these beings for the first time.

First contact has been made.

They stepped down the ship to greet the public, none of them intending to do harm. Truly, they come in peace.

Taking the rear was what could be assumed to be their leader, a being of an enormous and peaceful form. Her lithe sinuous form and many tendril-like arms presented themselves to the public for the first time. It was Almora, the very same being seen by the Sojournjer-1 probe when it was being taken inside the mothership, only to be released back into its old trajectory in better-than-mint condition. She stands tall at over five-and-a-half tiks, ready to deliver a message congratulating the gakanu race.

250 years after contact.

The Commonwealth exploration vessel, Timulla had just recently arrived at the Munu'a'oa system, one of the star systems nearest to Aluna. There, the Commonwealth Space Command has detected what they believe to be signs and EM signals from an extraterrestrial civilization, one different from the Seeders from Contact Day. The crew of the ship was sent to investigate.

They had especially good feelings about this one.

"Lieutenant? Status report." The captain of the ship was a tall and very fit Gallomorph, a sort of hybrid between the different subspecies from before. She was mainly Nakanu, but with strong influence from the Oummu'ua people, with some traces from other backgrounds. She had on herself a mainly green plumage, but with some broad black and white markings across her body reminiscent of her ancestors.

"All systems nominal, Captain Gikala." That was Lieutenant Tal, a largish gak who has mainly white plumage denoting Torkashkanu ancestry but with specks of black and blue plumage at the wings, tail and at the base of the head.

"Very good. Any updates on that signal?"

"Nothing new so far, but we are in the system of its origin. We should be arriving on the suspected planet within T-18 hours."

"Stay the course. If this really is from an intelligent source, then we may be in for first contact since the Seeders. Gods, that was a long time ago."

"Captain," Houma, the comms officer, notified. "We've picked up an unidentified vessel. It's hailing us."

"What? Already?" Gikala raised her head up on the chair in surprise. "Zoom in on screen."

The screen shows a very rotund and very abstract-looking vessel that appeared like a bunch of ovoid shapes welded together into a ship. Whatever it was, it was clearly intelligent and not of Gakanu design. She was in awe at this. She and her crew get to become the first initiators of contact with an alien race.

"Lieutenant... respond to hails."