It All Started With Magnets

.3.

"Somewhat." She gave that small shoulder movement. "I dropped off comm buoys every so often but it takes forever for a message from me to hit Earth and then come back to me. Our communication doesn't travel as fast as I do. If I were to head home I would probably reach Earth well before messages I sent from here got there." That was so utterly strange, for a species to discover FTL travel and not a communicating system quick enough to reach the next sector over was nearly baffling.

"You haven't developed interplanetary communication?" Lyrs said it, her blocky head tilted as her pointed ears swivelled.

"Well we are only on Earth, so no. There is a huge lag for the communications we do have. We certainly aren't as advanced as you guys clearly are." Rok-see waved her hand around slightly and I felt stunned by the words.

"You developed FTL travel." Dnrtn's voice was a touch high, like the sound of metal on stone with his shock.

"By accident." Rok-see pointed at him, a look on her face that clearly read as if she had proven her point.

"You said you just discovered that gravity is a fundamental of the universe and because of that you discovered FTL travel. We have been working with gravity as a fundamental for over three hundred solars and have not come close to that." Lorilyee'ei said it rapidly and her wings fanned out and then snapped closed with her disbelief at how Rok-see was brushing off the accomplishment of FTL travel.

"But that's one thing. You guys have space travel and interplanet communication and you have made, what I am sure is, a big galactic community comprised of what appears to be seven species, plus have probably crowd sourced numerous other technologies we are missing." Rok-see looked at the Antwyn, "So, far more advanced." She moved her shoulders again as she sat back in the large chair.

"I can agree with that assessment." Gal-rug said it evenly and Lorelyee'ei looked a thim as if outraged on the human's behalf.

"Uncalled for!"

"Why? When you guys found Torin, we had no concept of space flight, you gave that to us." He said it slowly before looking at the smaller Ambassador. "We did however have a far better grasp of surgery and medical knowledge. We were even doing complex non-invasive inter-cranial surgery before you reached us and you never encountered that before." The Grog looked rather self-satisfied and Lorilyee'ei nearly sputtered.

"Because you would routinely do your best to kill each other." Her voice squeaked slightly and Gal-rug chuckled.

"But it deemed that we needed to perfect our medical fields, which we did." He nodded his head at Rok-see. "The humans might not be as advanced but it doesn't mean that it is a bad thing. It just means that they found something they were really good at and worked on it rather than anything else."

"We humans do like to go fast." Rok-see grinned wide at him, showing off her blunt teeth and he nodded at her in turn. "If it concerns you that much, think of it like an exchange, you help us, we help you. That sort of thing." She moved her shoulders up and then down. "Also we have only been together as a civilization for like six thousand years and a vast majority of that time was trying to find new and inventive ways to kill each other. So we worked against ourselves a lot."

My mouth dropped open without meaning to. "You are just babies!" Only 6,000 star revolutions of civilizations? The Ithli had civilizations that reached back nearly a six hundred thousand star revolutions! I couldn't believe it. They were so young.

Rok-see looked at me, a rather disgruntled look on her face. "Not really babies." She crossed her arms over her chest, pursing her lips.

"Forgive her. Her species lives to be nearly five hundred revlutions old and their civilizations stretch nearly ten thousand times yours do. To her species your own is in its infancy." A'tkat'vo said it quickly, his buzzing had stopped and my face flared blue as Rok-see gave a nod of understanding her arms uncrossing from the rather defensive position she had put them in