First Contact

Popi-dee was sitting on her couch watching the vid, eating crackers while watching her son play on the floor with his toys. It was a sunny day outside and she kept checking her datapad to see if her block was going to be taken off of lockdown. For some reason, that morning, her entire hab-block had been put on lockdown. She'd seen LawSec wandering around, looking in bushes, under cars that hadn't moved in a few years, and walking up and down the stairwells.

Something was going on, but to be honest, Popi-dee didn't really care about it.

Her door chimed and she frowned. Most of her friends were at work or lived in another hab-block or, like her, were locked down into their own apartment. She got up, told her son Daki-dee, to just keep playing with his toys, and went to answer the door.

When she saw what was on the other side she screamed and ran into the front-room, grabbing her son and hiding behind the couch.

Dreams looked at her escort and gave a wry tilt of her antenna. "Well, that went well, did it not?"

The escort frowned and went into the room. Dreams could hear a little bit of arguing until the Sec-being came back and waved for Dreams and 117 to go ahead and come in. Rack and Pinion moved in behind Dreams and the Mosizlak sauntered after 117, the Board over one shoulder.

117 was looking around with interest. He wanted to tear open the wall and fix the connections on the power line, go in and fix the blender, pull the fridge out from the wall and adjust the angle of the compressor cooling fan blade, undo the interlocks on the data-link that prevented a datalink from being used in the apartment, and many other things, but he resisted the urge.

Not because of the Mosizlak but because it wasn't his apartment and it would be rude to tear the place apart to make adjustments that appealed to him.

In the main room, which was lit by both old-style fluorescent lights and natural light streaming in through the two large sliding glass doors that led to a patio, was a Vuknaraan female and an immature male.

The immature male had small toys around him on the floor and was sitting in the middle of them. Some were broken, and 117 felt the urge to run over there and fix them for him. Most of the toys were older than the child, and 117 could feel the corrosion on the power linkages before he even entered the room.

Moving up to the middle of the floor Dreams arranged her limbs comfortably on the shaggy carpeted floor and looked at the Vuknaraan female, who had an expression as if she expected Dreams to jump up and attack her.

"Let me guess, seeing a giant insect outside your door was not what you expected?" Dreams asked.

The Vuknaraan female twitched her ears in a negative.

"And now you're wondering if this is some trick so I can eat you?" Dreams said, trying to seem harmless. Not an easy trick when you were giant preying mantis.

The Vuknaraan female twitched her ears in a positive.

"And you're wondering just what makes you so special that you'd rank a visit from a being you say on your Tri-Vid," Dreams tried to sound slightly amused but wasn't sure if it carried across her translator.

The Vuknaraan female signalled positive.

"Well, to be honest, nothing," Dreams said. "As a matter of fact, your leaders attempted to dissuade me from visiting anyone not approved and vetted by their various arrangement, so I just walked out and did it myself."

"Oh," Popi-dee said quietly. "Why me?"

Dreams just signalled an icon for a pleased smile. "Because you actually opened the door."

117 flashed icons of pleasure when the immature male handed him a broken toy. He flourished a wrench and signified to the child to watch closely than began to take it apart, making a big deal out of every removed screw and bolt so the child didn't think he was breaking the child's toy.

The Mosizlak shifted position to have a clear shot without risking the kid and adjusted his grip on the board with a nail on it. He could see lithium-ion batteries, copper wiring, and magnets.

"But why?" Popi-dee asked, trying to come to grips with the fact that one giant bug was talking to her while the smaller, bright green one, was taking apart one of her son's toys while her son watched with wide fascinated eyes.

"Because I want to meet the people of your species, not just have diplomats yammer at me all day," Dreams signaled pleasure again. When she saw Popi-dee's confusion she sighed and pointed at the vid-display. "When the politicians and leaders come on do you sit and listen to every word with endless fascination or do you go in and use the toilet or make a sandwich or stare off into space with boredom?"

Popi-dee felt uncomfortable by the question and glanced at the Sec-beings. "I pay close attention."

Dreams sighed and turned to Rack and Pinion. "Assist those four gentle-beings out, would you, boys?"

To the Sec-guards, a quartet of Lanaktallan, it seemed as if Rack and Pinion got suddenly bigger as their eyes went from blue to green to amber and they took a single step toward them.

They almost knocked each other down racing out of the room and then the apartment, the door slamming behind them.

"Give us some privacy, will you, boys?" Dreams asked.

"Counter-intelligence packages activated," Rack growled.

"Electronic Warfare packages activated," Pinion rumbled.

"Excellent," Dreams smiled.

117 had fixed the corrosion, adjusted the power leads correctly, and cleaned the copper windings on the engine for the car and was putting it back together already.

The child watched fascinated as 117 did each part while flashing simplistic icons from the child's own culture to try to explain.

"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, gentlebeing?" Dreams asked.

Popi-dee couldn't believe she was sitting near the big golden insectiod she had seen on the vid. She wasn't wearing the same hat or the leather jacket with the chrome spikes and chains on it, nor did she have the chain or knife in her hands. Instead she was wearing a little hat that looked like a box with some flowers on it, a vest of blue denim, and an abdominal wrap that rippled and flowed with different color patterns along with comfortable looking shoes. The big gold mantis seemed very nice and polite, but it still boggled Popi-dee's mind that such an important personage would be in her poor little apartment.

She was suddenly ashamed of the water-stains on the roof from where it leaked when her neighbor did dishes or it rained with the wind coming from the north.

Dreams saw the glance at the roof and knew what it meant. Dreams herself had never known poverty but she had seen it quite a bit.

But never as often as she did in Lanaktallan space.

"You are doing the best you can, it is nothing to be ashamed of," Dreams said gently. She pointed at the child with one of her hands, consciously having to restrain from pointing with one of her bladearms. "He is healthy, curious, and obviously intelligent, in clean clothing with acceptable grooming for a male child and to any mother, that is what important," she made a slight noise of human and flashed icons of comedy. "Young males are often covered in dirt and debris, holding a dead bird in one hand and a piece of food they dropped on the floor in the other despite their mother having just bathed and dressed them only moments before."

Dreams deliberately looked at Rack, who just gave a rumbling noise of 'whatcha gonna do?'.

Popi-dee giggled, covering her mouth with her hands.

"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?" Dreams asked again.

Popi-dee nodded, still speechless that someone like Dreams would be in her home.

"What do you do for employment?" Dreams asked, using her implant to turn on her recording device.

Popi-dee flicked her ears. "I drive a public mass-trans vehicle once every three days," she said.

Dreams nodded, "Acceptable and important employment, enabled beings to get to their employment or perform necessary errands."

Popi-dee twitched her ears nervously. The alien diplomat made it sound like she was much more important than she was. Perhaps the insectoid's culture put more stress on for the common good employment?

"Are you married?" Dreams asked.

Popi-dee shook her head. "No. The time expired on our mandatory pairing period and he was assigned to a different female."

Dreams nodded slowly, stilling the urge to sharpen her bladearms. "Do you share custody of the child?" she motioned at the young male on the floor watching in amazement as the little powered vehicle moved in circles around him and 117 was busy fixing another toy.

Popi-dee signaled negative with her ears. "No. I care for him. When I'm at work he plays at the creche."

"Does he go to school?" Dreams asked.

Popi-dee signaled negative again. "He attends classes through the computer system every other day."

Dreams asked more questions, about what the female did for entertainment, how many friends she had, and other minor questions that made the female Vuknaraan more than a little confused.

When the big gold insectoid left Popie-dee breathed a sigh of relief. The little green one had made her nervous at first taking everything apart but she could hear her dishwasher running and see the steam leaking out from the seal.

It had not worked since Popi-dee had moved into the apartment over fifteen years prior.

Her son was still sitting on the floor, playing with the little toys he had. She had purchased them, one at a time, from the used goods store, and none of them had ever worked as long as he son had owned them. Now they were all bouncing, rolling, squeaking, chirping.

Popi-dee smiled at her son. He was a calm and well behaved little boy, much like his father, and made it feel good inside that her son was so happy with the toys that the little green mantid had fixed.

It never crossed her mind how strange it was that what 117 had done was akin to magic to her.

------------------

Dreams sat down in her favorite spot inside the eVR hard-light sim of her grove, slowly sharpening her bladearms as she struggled to control her anger.

She knew she should not judge. A diplomat needed to hold all cultures and societies and systems of government equally in order to dispassionately perform the duties of their office. She knew that she had no right to feel the way she did, but she still did.

Dreams had been a negotiator all her life. Even in the creche, even in school, she had attempted to always negotiate for a better position, better standing, better everything. She had used cooperation to get what she had wanted.

All she could think about was the younger Vuknaraans she had seen. They had no idea that they were living in the shadowed abandoned ruins of their own culture. No idea that there was more out there, that they could be more than they were.

And because they didn't know that things could be better, they didn't strive to be better.

For Dreams everyone was born into their castes. Coloration and size mattered. It was much the same way for the Treana'ad and the Rigellian saurians. It was just part of how life was, embedded in their genetic code due to millions of years of selective breeding. For some races it was obvious in the egg or even in the womb what caste they were going to be. Dreams had known she was going to be a negotiator since she knew what her coloration meant.

But a caste-species recognized another caste-species.

And the Vuknaraan were not a caste-species.

At the same time Dreams had spent the majority of her adult life around Terrans, who caste and birth-station were only slightly related. Yes, the son of a rich shipping magnate was born with advantages over the son of a primitivism world coal miner, but both could change their life station through hard work or just a split second decision.

During her life Dreams had seen highly decorated admirals retire to farms to raise cattle, politicians with go-gang tattoos, wealthy software designers who left to become vagabonds, and starship pilots who ended up writing books.

The majority of the civilized species in the known galaxy recognized a hand full of Great Filters that a race had to overcome in order to endure

The humans believed in nearly twenty other ones.

What was happening to the Vuknaraan was an outside force ensuring they did not survive one of the Terran specified Great Filters.

Genetic alteration.

Opening the report with her datalink and only looking at it on her optic nerve display with her diplomat security in place, she went over what Fights had to say again.

Not only was their current genome altered, but their base germination genome from ancient days altered if someone knew how to look for it, which Fights was trained to look for.

The Vuknaraan had been altered from the beginning. There was left-over code that highlighted and made it easy to spot certain things that a race might want to alter.

Dreams queried her implant, using her diplomatic codes, again searching the available databases.

The fossil record was thin, apparently eight million years ago the planet had suffered a massive life extinction event and the current creatures and plant life were the survivors of that event. It was assumed to have been what wiped out the fossil records, since it had also caused massive geological upheaval except for one area of one continent, which is where the most depth to the fossil record existed as well as where the modern Vuknaraan had spread from.

It made Dreams suspicious as hell.

Her door chimed and she just opened it, not really caring if it was an assassin.

To be honest, she wouldn't mind the fight.

Speaks came in and for a moment Dreams was annoyed. It was like the male knew when Dreams was swallowing a bitter pill so he came in to urinate on her feet.

"You're up late," Speaks said, sitting on the bank of the stream and reaching out with his front legs to dip them in the water.

"I am attempting to formulate suggestions to the Terran Confederacy regarding our efforts within Council Space," Dreams said primly.

"Attentive as always to your duties," Speaks said, flashing wry amusement icons.

"Yes," Dreams answered.

There was silence for a moment, broken only by Mr. Rings hammering the shell of a Pacific Northwest Wooly Snail against something to crack it open.

"Ask me what I've been doing," Speaks said, flashing the icons for smugness.

Dreams sighed. "What have you been doing, Speaks?"

The other mantid was silent for a moment then reached into his satchel and tossed Dreams an ornate tourist token. Dreams glanced at it, then looked again, slowly turning it over and examining it.

"You went to their historical museam?" Dreams asked. She flashed icons for suspicion. "Why?"

Speaks hummed in pleasure. "Partly because I knew it would annoy you. Partly because I had some suspicions that I wished to attempt to confirm. That's just part of it. Here," Speaks reached back into his satchel and pulled out another object, tossing it to Dreams who examined it closely.

It was a piece of armaglass, sharpened and engraved, with a hilt made of wood attached with crude screws to the armaglass and then wrapped with leather. Primitive work with high-tech.

She looked up and frowned. "You went and met with the primitives."

Speaks nodded. "Yes, I did. Best of all, I got a genome sample from a few of them, citing my religion, and turned it over to Fights a few hours ago."

Dreams looked back at the crudely made knife. "And what did she say?"

Speaks smiled slowly. "She had to call in 117 to look at it with her. Then she ran a few other tests."

"And?"

"They've been modified. Are still being modified, right now, as we speak. Fights and 117 believe that they'll be fully primitive within 3 generations and slowly devolve from there. It's already set into the recessive genes, all it needs is a few nudges and they'll barely be sentient within a century," Speaks said slowly. "It's pretty obvious it's from outside too. Nobody would do this kind of engineering to their own race."

Dreams sighed. "The Lanaktallan and their hundred million year empire."

Speaks nodded again. "It's the obvious culprit."

Dreams tapped the tips of her bladearms on the hard light "rock" she was sitting in front of. "You realize that the idea of the Lanaktallan doing such a thing in some kind of intricate plot to ensure they remain at the top seems almost too good."

Speaks nodded. "Now take into account that the Lanaktallan are being genetically altered."

Dreams frowned. "By who? By themselves?"

Speaks signalled that he didn't know with a quick flash of icons. "Time for some words you might fear," he said.

Dreams sighed. "Say them."

"There is another player. We may have made a faulty assumption that the Lanaktallan are the ancient enemy and not the tools of the ancient enemy."