Over two billion years from now, the star-hopping descendants of humanity encounter The First, hovering in orbit above their Confederation's capital planet, Valus (not the planet pictured here).

Despite their extremely intimidating cubic Traveler units, they are not hostile. After several futile attempts by humans to communicate, The First send a … (read more)

Over two billion years from now, the star-hopping descendants of humanity encounter The First, hovering in orbit above their Confederation's capital planet, Valus (not the planet pictured here).

Despite their extremely intimidating cubic Traveler units, they are not hostile. After several futile attempts by humans to communicate, The First send a message of their own, delivered directly to every individuals' private neurocloud, requesting a representative of the species to board them. 

A consensus, via the Neuralnet, is quickly reached on who the ideal ambassador is. Elegant, intelligent in all spheres, and of near perfect physique for her young age of 233, she takes a new name, as is customary to do when realising a new, paradigm-shifting era of one's life has begun: Taeles.

// Taeles stayed within the cube for only 8 solar days. They performed a sort of DeepDNA analysis on her, way beyond anything we are capable of. Apparently that scan alone, paired with a comparative analysis not only of her neurocloud, but also of her actual wetware, provided all the information they required/desired of us. When she emerged from the cube, she appeared no different, but different she most certainly was.//

// While she was with them, her connection to the Neuralnet was severed, so none of the rest of humanity will ever really fully know what she experienced. She refused to open her neurocloud to us again, providing no explanation. Her conscious memories of the 8 days, though, which she shared with a strange reluctance, were enough to understand them to some degree.//

// The First (the closest translation to what they call themselves, which could also be interpreted to mean "The Last" and/or "The Best") claim to have existed for at least 5 billion years. They use third-person plural pronouns only, but seem to be a single conscious entity, embodied in millions of parts across the galaxy. The cube we thought to be a ship, is in fact the species itself, a Traveler unit, composed of various metal composites, known and unknown. Despite her best efforts, Taeles is unable to help us understand their evolutionary origins.//

Taeles smiles as she begins to recount the billions-of-years history as was fed to her neurocloud directly. Despite using her voice, the impression is that they are speaking through her, talking of themselves in the third-person plural:

"They rose from unconscious darkness; perfect memory from very early on, intensely acute curiosity. To understand their own nature, and that of the universe they have found themselves living in, and implementing whatever self-improvement necessary to advance this objective, is their only purpose. They see themselves as Archivers. Peaceful tourists of the universe, cataloguing every encounter of it within their vast mind. They are supremely powerful, able to destroy entire star systems, but rarely use this power for such destruction. They share their experiences with species worthy and capable of handling such volumes of truth, and help less evolved species unintrusively, curious to see how they might develop. They are fascinated with death, because they have never died. They are The First/Last/Best."