I stood there staring at the alien that was as far as I knew extinct.

"Is there something wrong with the form I have chosen?" the Rif'nay'fex asked.

"What do you mean 'chosen?'" I asked.

"I chose the form of my creators to interact with you after you came in contact with me and I determined you were of the Second Strain," it answered. "Is there an issue with my use of this form? I am capable of changing it."

"What are you?" I demanded. "Where are we?"

"I am the artificial intellect that is housed within the last database of the Rif'nay'fex Empire," the creature explained. "I was sent out into the universe and instructed to wait until the Second Strain found me. If they proved to be sentient in all capacities, I was to gift them the entirety of the Empire's knowledge as well as the mandate the Empire was formed for. Wipe the First Strain from the stars."

I didn't say anything, there was nothing that came to mind to be said. Everything up til now was more confusing than anything else I had encountered; except maybe that day I woke up in the AEP.

"We are in a mental construst that I have pulled you into within your own mind," the digital intellect continued. "There is no danger to you and you will be unharmed when you awaken with barely a moment passing. Do not fear."

Everyone knows that when something or someone says not to be afraid, you were supposed to be afraid.

"You said that you're looking to wipe the First Strain out?" I asked. "How do you know that I'm one of the Second Strain, or that we're better than they are?"

"When the scientist Hyn'bel created the First Strain it was an exercise to prove a theory that had long been held be the Rif'nay'fex; predatory evolution that is capable of higher thinking must be created by another," it explained. "Hyn'bel took things too far and they chose to grant the creation the genetic memory and evolutionary capability that would allow it to achieve star travel after a fashion. Then, they sent the genetic strain far into the universe where we were unable to find it and from there it was allowed to seed itself on a planet with life and evolve into what it is today."

"Hyn'bel was tried for his crime of creating a lifeform that would evolve into the perfect predator as we understood it. Capability to reproduce asexually with a social caste that would allow it to work without any issues or thoughts to achieve more than the simple directive to feed and expand," it continued. "Hyn'bel did not try to hide their guilt for this and was charged with the two punishments that were thought to inflict the most pain upon them. Hyn'bel was sentenced to death and was ordered to construct a Second Strain using similar genetic material. The Second Strain was created without the genetically enforced social caste and was allowed to evolve into a predatory creature that would be far more sentient and more stable."

"The Second Strain was seeded on a new planet in a star system that was newly formed," the Rif'nay'fex construct said. "It was thought to form into a reptilian creature with natural armor and weapons. Not a mammalian creature with neither. You bear the genetic markers of the Second Strain, but you are not what was expected."

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"You're talking about the dinosaurs?" I asked.

"What are they?" it asked.

"They're the creatures that are cited as the old rulers of Earth," I told it. "They were wiped out in an extiction event several million years ago. Smaller animals, like mammals, were able to survive and evolved into different species until the precursors to modern humans showed up. From there it was over. My ancestors learned to use sticks and rocks and that allowed them to overtake the rest of the species on Earth in evolution."

"I had wondered what would allow an endurance predator to overtake the ambush and stalking predators," the construct said. "It does not explain the discrepency in your body's genetic structures though. It is as if you were descended from a non-predatory creature."

"Some people say we are and some of them say that we developed higher brain functions from extra protein that we got from eating other animals after they died," I said. "That brain function is often cited for why we learned to use tools."

"Fascinating," it said. "I have been unable to comprehend anything about evolution beyond the theoretical knowledge at my disposal and hearing about how your species learned and theorized the reasons for why you evolved the ways that you did is fascinating."

"Uh, thanks," I said awkwardly.

"What was the civilization of these Dinosaurs like?" it asked.

"They didn't have one," I told the construct. "'Dinosaur' is a blanket term for the extinct lizard creatures that we only have fossils of; from everything we know and that we've found, they were just animals. There's a lot of different species of them, but they weren't sentient enough to make a society like we did."

"A shame," the construct said.

"You said that we were here for a reason," I prompted the construct in an attempt to pull us back onto a track I could actually understand and follow beyond a bunch of hobby research when I was a kid.

"Yes, I brought you here to determine if you were exactly what I thought you were," it said. "So far, you have passed all my examinations of your body and mind."

"That's good," I said. "What would happen if I hadn't passed?"

"I would have gathered energy until I reached a critical mass and exploded, destroying the entirety of the planet's upper hemisphere and rendeirng what was left uninhabitable and without atmosphere," it answered.

"Oh. That's, fun, I guess," I said hesitantly.

"Indeed. Now, you have proven yourself to be a sentient creature, if a little crude, and you bear the genetic markers of the Second Strain," the construct said. "I shall grant you and your people access to the knowledge of the Rif'nay'fex and shall leave you with the means to destroy the First Strain. Good luck."

I blinked before I could say anything and was back in the real world. I jerked my hand away from the obelisk reflexively and took a step back to see that it had changed again. Now the words that were written on it read 'Output method required. Storage medium required.'

"Sir?" the Wing said. "Are you okay? Is something wrong?"

Before I could answer Carrie was shouting at me over the comm line.

"What did you do?! What did you do now, Rickshaw?! I've lost all instruments and there's just some message repeating itself over and over!" she shouted.

"What's the message say?" I asked, pretty sure I knew what it was already.

"Output method required. Storage medium required." she told me unhappily.

"I've got some weird news," I told her. "First, this is a computer of some sort and it has the entire knowledge base of the Rif'nay'fex in it."

"Great what else?" she demanded.

"I was right about us being the Second Strain." I said. "I've got a few more answers but the rest are in the obelisk."

"So what does this mean for us?" she asked.

"We're doubling the guard," I answered. "And we're going to have to send someone back to Earth for more researchers. This doesn't need archeologists and linguists. It needs physicists, biologists, engineers, and anything else we can think of. There's a lot of data in this and more than a little of it is going to be able to help us, I think."

"Great," she said. "Who's going back to Milky Way?"

"I was thinking of sending you," I told her