It was a stunning discovery to have the multiverse theorem proven so concretely before them all. Though there had been solid proof for countless millennia, it didn’t matter as they had no use in proving its physical existence.

The people, humanity, had conquered the universe. Life was fickle, so many opportunities and an equal amount of failure. Humanity was alone. Despite the astronomical odds against it, we were alone.

We began to unify. Slowly, but with growing stability, humanity became unified under the people. The greater good. The final truth. We were alone and there was nothing else. So we turned inwards for expressions and progress.

We conquered not just physical space, but sciences, the physical form, energy manipulation, and heightened existence. We did all that and more. We expressed ourselves in the arts. Carving whole star systems into beautiful examples of human vision.

The greatest artist of the people, the Cyclops, arranged twelve million black holes into a stable pattern. The image of a rose that could be seen in a myriad of spectrum showcased humanity perfectly. We were beautiful, but we would bloom and then wilt before finally returning to the nothingness.

Things changed, however. There was a finite resource that even their impressive resources could not change. Entropy crawled forward. Our universe was now entering the early stages of heat normalization. Which was a bad sign as if all energy was constant, then there was no more universe. Just a pool of slowly compacting energy that would recreate the big bang.

Our existence was ending and though we still had time, we needed to begin searching for a solution. The easiest was migration. Find a new universe and simply take it over. It should hardly be a problem. The people had the time and trillions years of search and discovery will yield a suitable universe to house us.

The problem was that we still didn’t understand planar mechanics as well as he thought we did. The quantic probes met with 78% failure. Though we could open and sustain planar travel, it didn’t always lead to someplace stable.

The other 22% was equally disconcerting.

All surviving probes lead to the same conclusion. We could only move into one other universe.

This defied our knowledge. Our sciences were sound. But the facts were immutable. We had only once choice available to us currently.

So we split up the focus. A small team would still try to connect to another stable universe while the larger team would explore this new universe.

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Probes were sent in mass. The data pouring in was equally fascinating.

The universe was identical to ours. Except it was much, much younger. The second discovery was mind-blowing.

Following ancient travel lines, we found our counterparts. Humans. Primitive but humans none the less.

The aliens, however, were both incredible and fascinating.

The probes gathered the information and the galactic compusystems analyzed and collaborated.

Fifty-Two years was how long it took before the Toluns and Humans were cataloged and understood. Languages, biology, society, and present culture.

Humanity resembled early 2000 AD in form. But not socially or technologically.

The Toluns were the rulers. They had raised the technology of humanity by nearly a thousand years. Yet they kept the real high-level stuff for themselves.

Sure humans populated the entire Sol System and had a complex internal society. They had a standing military and everything. Yet there was no real dispute about being enslaved. The Toluns simply had superior military technology and humans existed as a labor force to extract raw materials for their empire.

***

A world that any human would have identified as the crown jewel of the people hovered before the assembly. The transparent world was pristine and colorful. Blue oceans, green land, white clouds.

Though the data connection was available to all, only a dozen people would be allowed to attend in full persona. The heads of the twelve pillars of the people. These people were the embodiment of government.

The earth had two pools of data. One for Earth-Prime, and a second for the discovered duplicate Earth (1).

“As you can see, the data consolidate our theory of Earth (1). It houses pure humans, and it topography is roughly identical to 3000 AD.” Dr. Allen explained as the rotating image of the earth slowly rotated.

The world was identical in solar terms. The land was also identical to ancient history, during the end of the Climate Era. Humanity was so barbaric then. Willing to earn short term value over long term development.

“Our probes have also given us the data we needed. These pure humans are also quietly developed for their era, the technology present is easily a thousand years more advanced then what we had. This is probably the influence of the foreign aliens

Exa blinked as he woke up. His vision sharpened instantly as he looked around himself.

He had been transported here a week ago, dropped into the oceans by the South American landmass, and he had proceeded inland.

The world was very similar to what ancient history had chronicled. Society was a fractured mess. There were also differences such as the twelve thousand, separated nations across the solar system, but humanity was still struggling with ideas of equality.

The timestamp of the world was 2018, but space travel was as simple as getting onto a train and getting off at a spaceport.

Historic people were also identical here. Present Trump promised to build an energy wall to keep the world away from the sovereignty of the USA. What was new was the other countries that had never existed before. The CDC, the republic of Bilkar, the Imperium of Man, the Blue Cosmos.

These new nations had terraformed the planets. Physical rock planets were either like earth, or the people lived in habitats. The gas planets were stuffed full of floating space habitats.

There was still war. There was still a culture. There were still taxes.

The Toluns had given humanity the boot during world war 1. They came down, the wars ended and the Toluns bared their fangs. Serve or die.

Humanity tried fighting. The day of scorcher that erased western Europe proved them wrong.