The Unwavering Message continued its journey to Nal’Shiar Enub. Even at its current speed it was still four days away. All of the FC Ambassador’s had crafted their new bodies. Ambassador Rachel’s was the final one being crafted in Probe FC for once first contact protocols were established and would then take over duties as permanent Ambassador to the Empiress Issan’Shiar III. While Nora was ecstatic to be the Ambassador for all of Terra in the first contact, she did not want to be stationed to the job permanently. Luckily once her job here was done, she was to contract another ship to become the First Contact Ambassador to the Hissar Empire. From what she gathered from Captain Ra’Jinn, they more favored lizards than primates and were more aggressive than either the Nal’Shiar or the Ordavelli.
As she spoke to the Captain in her ready room a message arrived to her in her home system, on tight-beam string, and encoded. She frame-jacked down to the nano-second range when she saw it was from Professor Montague and transcended her consciousness back into her digital library in her system. In front of her sat her ancient PC, in green phosphor Dave had de-encrypted the message and printed it for her. “This is for your eyes only, I leave it up to you as to whether you wish to reveal it to your team, or even the Empress in private once you reach Nal’Shiar Enub. See the video attached, all will become clear to you. It is the UTL’s decision not to inform the Nal’Shiar of the danger until it is absolutely necessary. I do not believe this to be the right course of action, but you are the Terran in the field. Good luck Nora, I have the utmost faith in you.” Signed, Professor Montague, and a holo-attachment at the bottom.
She watched the attachment, then shook her head and watched it again. “This is bad, this is really really bad.” She stood up in her library and her boots clicked on the cherry wood floors as she paced. “I thought for sure they would want to inform them of a potential danger, especially after Montague showed them the encoded string radio transmission.” She thought as she paced the length of her research table, then turned around. “However, as this hive is technically a Terran enemy, perhaps they think that maybe the Mother’s will leave this race alone? No, this is the most watched event in Terran history, quintillions of Terrans from across the ‘verse are tuned in to what the FC team are doing at any given time, and while they scrubbed our conversation a few days ago about the hive from the record, if it slips out, we could be looking at a big problem before the UTL is ready for it.”
She turned and walked back to her desk and sat her avatar down, “I’ll have to get Simon in on this, he will know how to shut down the string radio broadcast on an android if I need to have a private conversation with the Empress.” She closed her eyes and was back in her android body sitting in the Captain’s ready room, she picked up where she had left off in the sentence, “.. of course it took some time for all of Terra to decide that living digitally was really the next evolution of our species.”
Captain Ra’jinn sat down her cup of impach, “Fascinating Ambassador Nora, so for the first part of your lives you are biological, and then as you age you eventually move your consciousness into your computer systems?”
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Nora nodded, “Yes, of course the AI’s were born to these systems, but all Terrans eventually move to ‘vert as our bodies decay. However, some of us regrow temporary biological bodies to reproduce.”
This got a raised eyebrow from Ra’Jinn, “Wait, you grow new bodies to reproduce? You don’t do it in the ‘vert?”
Nora then took a sip of her own impach, “Some do, but most still want the experience of child birth. That can only happen in the real ‘verse, but our AI brothers and sisters do reproduce through the ‘vert. I believe Simon has over thirty offspring.”
Captain Ra’jinn smiled, a strange expression for a human to see, as Nal’Shiar’s eyes were not completely forward facing, and their teeth were all molars. “Well, thirty or so offspring in a billion years isn’t a lot by any standards, it gives me hope than even at my age I’ll one day have children of my own.” Noras’ thoughts went to the hive, if they sent a fleet from the void they would beat the Caplan Explorer to this part of space by nearly a month, and if that happened, no Nal’Shiar would have anymore children.
Nora sat down her cup of impach, “Excuse me Captain, I have some things in the ‘vert that I must attend to and I’m sure you need your rest, can we resume this tomorrow?”
The Captain rose and adjusted her uniform, “Of course Ambassador, I’m sure you deal with more paperwork than I do as a ships Captain, let us resume tomorrow.” Nora rose and bid the Captain farewell as she made her way to the elevator and to their shared Ambassadors quarters. Simon, Victoria, and Uhghea had placed their android bodies around the table with their eyes closed and left for their own personal ‘vert environment. Evidently Nigel was playing a card game named Regalas with the crew in the forward observation lounge. She laid herself on the bed and closed her eyes as her consciousness reverted to her library.
She sat down at her desk and brought up her computer. Even if Simon found a trick to shut down the string radio transmission back to UTL that they watched through, it couldn’t be for long, or else they may suspect something was amiss. No this would take two separate shut downs, one to prepare a letter, the other to deliver it. Did she really want to do this? If the UTL found out she would be looking at being removed from SETI, removed from the FC team to Hissar and Ordavelli space. She would become just another citizen, out of the loop, and reduced to the sidelines as they did whatever they did in the UTL. Professor Montague had already put his neck on the line sending that message, and if she acted upon it, he would be ostracized as well. But he had made that decision, and would face the consequences if the worst happened. Then she thought back to the Captain, who if she didn’t do something would never have offspring of her own, because her entire race would be wiped out.
She pulled the beige keyboard towards herself and brought up a word processor and began to type in Nal’Shiar Elite. The dialect that only royalty were taught, and hopefully only the Empress and her closest confidants could read. She summed up the unification war and explained that we believe the void is a nest of Mothers. That she was giving the Empress this message at risk of banishment from the powers that be, and that she begged the Empress to begin building transport ships to move as many of her people towards Terran space as possible. She placed her digital signature on the document and saved it to her desktop where she could access it easily and make a physical printed copy of it on The Unwavering Message. She sat back and breathed a deep sigh that her digital body did not need, “Only one thing left to do, please forgive me for bringing you into this Simon.” She sent a simple message to Simon, “Come see me, I need you.”