I didn't pay much attention in history class, but I think we finally managed to step out of our solar system around the turn of the 25th century…2397…or something like that. Yeah, our first colony was on a planet in Alpha Centauri. Alpha Centauri? What loser came up with that name? Rigil is so much cooler. Oh, we call it Rigil now, but that was our first colony. It wasn't exactly paradise, though. Rigil's got three stars, and they're not as calm as the one back on Earth, but the planet was good enough. Pretty soon we had people living in a dozen different systems. Rigil, Luyten, Ross 128 (another dumb name), Wolf 359 (and another! Whoo, we sure had bad taste back then.), they were all filled up with people pretty quick. For good reasons I suppose, considering what was happening back on Earth at the time.

Yeah, Earth. That blue planet we all call home. Well, not all of us, but most of those sentimental guys. Some how some way a bunch of high and mighty bureaucrats decided to make the Earth one big nation and turn it into their little playground. So there wasn't much truth, justice, and the American way of life down there anymore. Then those same bureaucrats decided they were all superior and should control all the movement between Earth and the other planets. So they did. How you ask? Well, that's a good question.

Ya see, at that time the only Faster-than-Light stuff we had was good ol' fashioned gate travel. Gate travel is a reliable system, now, don't get me wrong. It's great that it instantly zaps you from one place to another, but those gates are the only place you can do it. So there's traffic and dealing with other people and all that crud, plus those government guys can easily stick it too you if they want to. I know, can you believe it? How did they stand traveling like that? Come to think of it, how do we stand traveling like that? But back to my story, we had to build gates that stabilized hyperspace between the systems and all, so the Earthers built one mumbo-jumbo gate that everybody had to go through to go anywhere. Yeah, I don't get how it worked. I didn't pay attention in science class either. Still, that's what happened. Everybody had to go through Earth to get anywhere. And as you can imagine, some people didn't like that. A couple of idiots decided it would be a great idea to bomb the gate that all FTL travel was tied into! So they did, about 2462 or something. Dropped a few nice big ones on the gate. We won't go into how they nuked nearly all of Europe and New York too right now…so they destroyed the gate.

And we never heard from Earth again.

Not! We heard from Earth again. 400 years later, yeah, but we heard from Earth again. Paris seems to be doing well (dang), but all us humans on the other planets (there were about six of them then) thought Earth was gone. We both went our separate ways, not knowing each was still alive. We still had gate travel (and we stuck with it for some stupid reason), so we spread out to other planets. The Earthers, on the other hand, started fighting themselves again. Still, they managed to find enough time between wars to invent point hyperspace tech, stuff that didn't need to use gates. Point hyperspace takes time to get between system to system, so its not as fast as gates. But they can get into hyperspace from anywhere they want to, and they still use gates like we do. Lucky them. But during those 400 years things got a little creepy, if you know what I mean.

I don't know about you, but us outer planet guys have always seemed to find the really bad planets. We never got the tropical paradise planets, like Vega, Capella, and Nightfall, or the nice, warm, sunny, temperate planets like Procyon and Mahal, or even a cool ocean planet like Deneba. No, we got stuck with baked, flare-starred rocks like Lila and Fomori. We had it rough. Really rough. Seriously, the flare star planets were killing us, but they were all we could find. Gate travel isn't like Point travel, guys. Expansion isn't just point, click, and zoom. We only found hot planets, and they didn't have much stuff to work with.

So we had to improvise, make ourselves stronger, hardier, in order to survive. We started putting machines in our heads and limbs. It was painful at first, but we got used to it. Our bodies started all adapting and whatever to the technology, and out came us, the Nuadans. Well, actually, we've got so many names we can't keep them straight. Mostly people call us Nuadans. Some of the more colorful ones are freaks, bots techheads, M&M's, and my personal favorite, 'borg.' Yeah, I don't what the heck it means. Apparently that's what they called some evil cyborg race in some TV show back on Earth before we had space tech. They don't even remember the name, but they sure remember the word 'borg' from it! The only contribution to humanity that show ever made. Whatever. Anyway, yeah, that's us. The Nuadans or whatever you want to call us. We're the cyborg guys, the one with machines in our heads. And we're cool. Seriously. Trust me.

But this is getting a bit long. So the Earthlings were going through their own change, and this is really freaky. Somehow or other, through all the war and what not, I reaaaaaallly don't get it, but they can do it! Don't think I'm kidding here. It's happened to me once before. It was kind've cool, though…yeah…forget I said that. Some of them started to get to know each other…or wanted to get to know each other…so much that they started to be able to read each other's mind, pick up each other's thoughts, and get into each other's minds. Telepaths is what they call them. We call them Teeps, mostly. All Teeps are Earthers, but not all Earthers are Teeps, if you know what I mean. The Earthers…we just call them the Earthers, that too. We aren't very creative in the nickname department like they are. Seriously, man, nothing'll ever beat that borg thing, you know.

Say, this brings me to my next point in the story. Ever heard of that Earther legend? Yeah, Atlantis. Something about a big island in the middle of the sea with dang smart people with a bunch of cool stuff. Yeah. They weren't so smart. What do I mean? What do you think I mean?! They built their city on a freakin' volcano! How stupid can you get? But it's true. Yup. Atlantis is true. At least, that's what the little buggers say. We found another bunch of us, the Atlanteans. They claim to be long lost humans who came from Atlantis, built space travel, and left Earth thousands of years ago. Whatever. Seriously, give some guys some fancy toys and they come up with all sorts of crazy stories. I think they found some alien ships in some systems somewhere, but what do I know? Those ships of theirs are cool. Really cool. And they can blow stuff up too real good.

So that's how it is. Nuadans, Eathers , and Lanteans. We and the Eathers don't get along so much right now…we sort've want to blow each other up…but that's how it is. The Lanteans fly in from the outer edges of known space, you can usually catch one or two of them at Nightfall. The Earthers have expanded, and dang, they breed like rabbits. They found all the good systems too. They've only got about six planets, Rigil, Sirius, Procyon, Vega, Tau, and Polaris, and some nice colonies, but they're swarms of 'em on those planets. At least we can come up with something better than Tau or Procyon for our planets, though. Anyway, we Nuadans have about nine planets (Fomori, Gibraltar, Ral, and Lila are the important ones) and a few colonies of our own, but we don't have as nearly as many people on ours as the Earthers do. But we're holding our own.

There are a few guys that have managed to get outside the Earther v. Nuadan camp. Nightfall is the big name among those. Almost as many people on there as there are on Vega, and that's saying something. They found a big gas giant with some of the best fuel in the Way, so we and the Teeps leave 'em alone in exchange for letting us buy some of that stuff of theirs. They've got more money than Solomon over there. There's also Mahal and Deneba, that ocean planet I was talking about, but they don't 'cause too much trouble for us.

It's 2880, and it's a wild galaxy out there, but we've only scratched the surface of it all. Better get settled in.

9:00 AM

Every day was equally, miserably joyous for John McDonald. If you'd asked him, he'd have said he loved his job, and he did, sure enough. It was in at nine, shuffle papers at a desk for eight hours, leave at five, go home to his wife. In short, it was the world's dullest, most boring job, and John adored it. As a kid, he'd had the usual ambitions of being the President or a fireman or a fighter pilot. Even today, at 32, he'd still confess some part of him wished he'd done greater things. When it came right down to it, though, real life had hit John in his early twenties, just after he finished college, and deep in his soul he'd decided he was going to do something safe and sensible, something with a nice pension. He'd taken a job that promised steady advancement and mind-numbing sameness, and, ten years later, that's exactly where he was. John was the type to leave well enough alone, and be happy with it, so by now he was quite adept at silencing that one-tenth of one percent of his soul that screamed at him to live instead of exist.

Not today.

He came in to the office, said hi to Sandra and Deborah–they were the secretaries–and sat down carefully at his desk, just like he'd done every Monday for the past decade. While he waited for the computer to warm up, he ran his right hand through his close-cropped, sandy hair, while his left hand set his lunchbox underneath the desk. After that, he logged in and started filling out the forms and invoices, just like he did every minute of every working day. He described himself as “quite satisfied” with his work, and nobody ever caught him complaining about anything… but he'd never smiled or hummed or whistled while he was on the job, either. His steely blue eyes looked liked they knew how to twinkle with a thousand kinds of merriment, but in the office–and outside, as far as anybody could tell–they simply gazed ahead with the calm, steady focus of headlights.

One form done, two forms done. John was halfway through the third when a banging noise caused him to glance up. There were two workmen doing some sort of repair or replacement on the far window of the office, and they looked less than professional, in John's estimation. He gave a mental shrug, as was his custom with anything that disturbed his concentration, and returned to his work.

9:17 AM

The new windowpane broke about as noisily as one might expect from nine square feet of glass. Again, John looked up, shrugged mentally, and returned to his work. It wasn't like he'd hired the obviously incompetent workmen or paid for the new window. The janitorial staff would be over soon enough.

Within five minutes, as if on cue, four new men tromped in past John's desk and proceeded to make themselves look as though they were busy cleaning up the broken glass. As with many lower-end paid-by-the-hour workers, they took their sweet time with each piece and shard of glass, treating it with all the time one might give to picking up the Hope Diamond, and all the care one would expect a cockroach deserved. In fact, it looked like one guy was doing most of the work, and the rest were just standing around watching him work or trying not to look like they were leering at Deborah.

John sighed.