Living in the Fray

An Informative Interlude

Humans as it turns out aren't the only beings in the universe. In fact, it was aliens who discovered humans by chance.

The Voyager-1 space probe went missing. Boom. Gone. Just like that. All links with NASA were severed instantly, begging the question; what had happened? A few years went by with absolutely no indication as to why the probe went dark. Nothing.

Until a strange craft landed on the front lawn of the White House and a handful of people exited and walked straight in the front door without a care in the world. No; universe actually, that's a better word.

'We found your gold plate, the sounds on it were rather delightful.'

The beings that had swanned their way in to the White House as if they were visiting their mother for tea one Sunday afternoon were in fact the Voxon. The humanoid beings named after their home planet were like humans in every way, except they were taller, fitter, more intelligent and good looking.

Incredibly good looking. Not a single Voxon; male or female were too skinny, too overweight, too short or too tall. They were in a matter of speaking, perfect.

Except their demeanour. Something wasn't quite right there. The Voxon had an underlying naivety about everything in general and to humans at least, were devoid of what would be considered a sense of humour. Humour obviously being subjective but even watching ten minutes of what the Voxon called "comedy" on the few channels of television they had, you could see they were kind of missing the point.

Show a Voxon human comedy and they would giggle in a strange manner, politely of course. The Voxon were clever, efficient and above all polite. Their planet wasn't armed either, it didn't need to be. They rarely had arguments, wars or fights but were a race who really did prefer to talk out their differences and leave as friends after, it was just a part of their culture. Not to say they didn't have the occasional falling out, or bad day or hell, even the odd murder that happened once in a blue moon; but they were pretty much faultless nearly all of the time.

And it was the Voxon who found us and graced us with their presence. All thanks to Voyager-1 casually drifting in to a part of space that had a tiny, tiny tear in it.

The Voyager-1 somehow ended up in a dimension separate to our own by pure chance. The Voxon and some other alien races had long been using interdimensional travel to cover huge distances in a fraction of the time and the probe had accidentally stumbled in to that highway. A Voxon automated postal pod had picked up signals from the Voyager and retrieved it, taking it back to the home planet as an object of interest.

And that is how they found us.

Within a thirteen month period and after a lot of talks and shared information, humans were granted a place in the new galaxy, new to humans anyway. The Voxon and the Round Table of other alien species; namely Leuforia who were humanoid to some extent but ranged in colour from pastel blue to aqua green and the Maran, who were short lived but incredibly fun beings who physically looked like a mix between the depictions of elves and dwarves from old fantasy stories; invited humans to terraform and populate several planets in their galaxy that were "going free." But before all that, they sorted out so many things that humans were getting wrong. They increased renewable energy viability and consumption by thirty percent in one year, reduced the need for nuclear power and even taught humans how to even recycle nuclear waste properly. They advanced medicine by a phenomenal amount and introduced cyberization which assisted a lot of people with lifelong ailments or physical disabilities. 

Within a short amount of time, humans were living better, happier and healthier lives. And the Earth had slowly begun to repair itself almost. Pollution was down drastically, food production was more sustainable and transport more efficient. And to top it all off, millions of humans left Earth to live in the new galaxy, releasing the burden of over-population on Earth a noticeable amount.

And then there was space travel and all the wonderful technologies that could be developed thanks to the aliens. The scientists of Earth went to town on everything they made. Spaceships they could only ever dream of building all powered by a sustainable fuel that the alien species on the new galaxy produced by a very special plant. They built robots and cars and planes, literally everything. Of course they named everything they made after some kind of geeky science fiction reference; the Tannhauser Interdimensional Gate being one of them. And of course they built a properly functioning Gundam.

The Gundam eventually became the Aegis; robots that could be piloted for many, many uses, mainly by the military but some were in civilian ownership. Needless to say they were pretty popular.

Humans fit surprisingly well in the new galaxy and soon set up their lives, homes and businesses on the various planets that were gifted to them. Gifted meaning that the races who inhabited this galaxy didn't just let any species they made contact with join their alliance, oh no. If a species was deemed fit enough then they were invited. Not only to live out there but to help keep many populated worlds safe from the more unruly and bloodthirsty alien races. Like the kind you'd get in movies or comic books, the ones intent on conquering the universe and all that good stuff. Typical bad guys that wanted nothing more to enslave and plunder. The Earth Military Alliance was formed for this reason. Many countries joined together to form a military consisting of army, navy and air forces who went on to become a sort of space force. The EMA were the first to be shipped out in order to guard and protect the first settlers as they terraformed the gifted planets and began building.

Moralis, Tekana, Galeria, Pacifica and New Edo; planets with the new purpose of sustaining humans. Planets that were somewhat naturally devoid of existing flora and fauna but were easily terraformed using Voxon technology that would suit humans and other off-world visitors. It soon became apparent though that the planets had some kind of segregation going on, some of them at least. Moralis and Tekana were planets of industry and agriculture, Galeria and Pacifica were more middle to upper class corporate affairs. New Edo is where all the reprobates and people who were down on their luck ended. 

Nobody really know why it ended up like this, in an odd class segregation but it strangely worked for some reason. And New Edo being as lawless as it was kept most of the bad people away from everywhere else as they were free to do pretty much what they wanted on that planet within reason. The Convict Chase being introduced was something "entertaining" brought in to serve as a form of death penalty for some of the worst criminals going. It only happened on New Edo though and nowhere else. Life carried on a usual. The rich were rich, the poor were poor, conglomerates got their pound of flesh and anybody who didn't fit any societal norms, had fun, fights and got drunk on New Edo.