Just finished the aesthetic pass for my new modular button box.

!

Each button module has a 2" yellow OLED display and an STM32F103 (overkill). They are chained together to the top module that runs FreeJOY firmware. The selector is a 6 position rotary switch that can select 1 of 5 shift pages (0 is unconnected) and the displays will say whatever you want and can fit in a 256x64 pixel resolution. Each module attaches to the lower one with 4 diagonal Torx M2 screws.

The module measurements are:

100mm wide, 25mm tall, 37mm deep (excluding the aesthetic corner screws (that can be used to put the modules in a panel, but for now I'm using them as a standalone block)

Top module is same dimensions but 50mm high.

!

Why am I overpowering each module if I could just daysichain them to a single one? Because someday, in the far future, CIG may gift us an API to pick up data from the ship/game, and then I want the modules to be able to take actions and do much more than now. For the time being, tho, I'll make them act dumb and just let me know what each button does.

!

"You can hop in your beautiful yellow tuning fork"

Com'ere you little shit!

On the last cargo refactor video from CIG, they added a very special load.

!

Fucken trolls.

XDDDDDDDDD

I left like a year ago, but I have lost touch with the Citizens over there. I myself migrated to Mastodon, but where's the rest of the people that left?

Part2 / Part 4

/knock knock/

-Uh?

Dhasso was surprised to hear a knock on the door. He signaled it and politely asked the student to go check who was there. A guard popped his head in and said hello.

-Working late, professor? -Uh? Oh...

While he had been telling the story, the sun had been busy, and it was now a beautiful sunset through the window.

-Yes, I guess... – Dhasso blushed. -I guess we will not be long. -Ah, don't worry professor, I was just checking who is in and who isn't. Have a good time!

The door closed and Dhasso stood up. The student looked at him, and hid the drawing notebook, full of humanlike sketches.

-Well, will this be all? -Dhasso said. It was indeed a weird phrasing to end the day. -I suppose so, professor, unless...uh...you want me to order...whatsitcalled...pizza? Seems like there is still some story to be told, I think.

Dhasso smiled and turned to look through the window, as the last shards of sun caressed the horizon.

-A human dish. I think it's very befitting, especially now that it's getting dark, because what comes next is not especially fun to tell. Where was I?...ah, yes, the Days of the Spines.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sometimes the numbers boggle my mind when I go over them. 40 million ships, give or take, orbiting the earth. Compared to the measle 10 thousand-ish artificial satellites terra had, prior to this event, orbit was busy like it had never been before.

But the nightmare was yet to unfold.

You see, having space capabilities is not the same as having FTL travel. In their haste to leave, the group at large made the slight miscalculation about where to go. I imagine noone thought the exodus would be in the millions.

Hundreds? Absolutely. Thousands? Likely. Tens of thousands? Possibly.

But millions?

No humanitarian fleet in the galaxy was capable of dealing with that all of a sudden.

-Don't make that face, it's not like they can't.

Cryses in general are predictable to a degree. Supernovae, wars, a sudden pandemic outbreak in colony worlds that proves to be a bit too resilient to deal with, you name it. It's my opinion that it's the duty of all civilised species to help other sentients (unless war arises, but that's a different moral dilemma). Anyhow, literally noone predicted this, and aven if faster than light, space travel is not instantaneous. So? all environmentally right and avaliable ships, free of duty, where, at minimum, many weeks away. Not that much time to wait in general, unless your atmosphere regenerator is built for tens of days.

I seriously think that the unspoken plan accounted for, as said, as much as tens of thousands to seek asylum in the negotiation, shipping and delegation ships of the closest systems interested in trade.

Like that, it would have probably worked. A bit tight maybe, but doable.

However, that was not the case. At some point, all capable visitor ships had to deny their help, they could literally not bear anymore passengers.

The slow trickle of ships descending to ground was barely noticeable. Remember, the numbers here are impossibly huge. As far as I know, many went untouched, sometimes, police or military would arrest someone, but at large, whomever went back, got home.

At first.

By this time, government tacticians had, as humans say, smelled fish. Given the spaceship plans they were incapable of previously blocking, they had calculated that there would be a critical moment when many of the ships air regenerators would start to fail in large numbers, and they began preparations.

When the predicted mass descent of ships began, the returners found themselves hailed and directed to specific coordinates on their home countries. At first they complied, imagining some sort of air traffic control, as terra had never had it's airspace this full, in the most absolute of terms.

But, you see, humans had had a a previous history with concentration camps...

CRACK! -The student pencil point, broke, and he looked up. Dhasso didn't mind the drawings, they showed concentration on the story being told, and he had not had told it in a long time.

Not all countries had implemented this, though! Some welcomed them back, directed air traffic as best as they could, even taking some refugees from other places. But sadly, those were a minority.

When realization of the awaiting destiny settled in, unfortunately, the descent was almost impossible to stop, and returning humans were complying out of fear, more than anything.

As far as it is known, it took less than 5, more or less simultaneous incidents (within a couple of terran hours) were ships, for obvious reasons, diverted from the designated landing camps, and were consequently blown up by military, for the descent to suddenly grind to a halt.

It was a sudden stop, like a planet holding it's breath. Many ships en route went back to orbit. Some in the camps revolted and went back into the air too.

For fucks sake, they were just going home.

/Dhasso braced himself to contain a shudder/

They would die free, not shot down like prey. It was a grim perspective, but it's worse to think about what your own were capable of, to get the population back under their control.

One thing many failed to realize, however, is that this unlikely formation, was nothing like the galaxy had ever encountered. This was not an assemble of civilian ships (in the simplistic sense) fleeing a warzone or a natural catastrophe. The humans that had, literally, built this fleet, hadn't come empty handed, either.

Assuming they were helpless sheep could not be so far from reality, in a truly spectacular way.

A great percentage of ships was comprised of large vehicles wich were quite roomy, for human spaceship standards. Before having grav generators, human ships always shaved weight whenever possible, dependant on their chemical engines efficiency. However, when tinkerers built theirs, having access to grav generators, they literally built flying workshops. They came in all sorts of sizes, but almost every single one of them had some kind of manufacturing capability.

Let me put this in perspective. In sheer numbers, at that time, it was estimated that the orbiting human refugees became the largest single orbital factory in the galaxy.

Human governments sat in their chairs, sure of only having to wait until either the refugees came back before suffocating, or having the military deal with stranded ships with cold bodies in them.

However, in the meantime of the planetside drama unfolding, many things had been happening in orbit. Try to imagine what dire perspectives can do to the minds of creative people and the like, having literally millions of humanpower to build anything.

In a matter of days, I swear that the thech level spaceside, increased tenfold, in comparison to their eathbound brethren.

Multicouplers were developed to interconnect ship vitals, to help the ones in the most dire of situations. They were vacuum explosion welded to their hulls, drilled and an interconnection made to transfer clean air. Later on they could pass power conduits if needed.

Force field ramscoops were constructed to forego requiring to land and change the air scrubbers. Instead, they captured air with a modified shield generator, acting as a filter for almost pure oxygen, then compressing it until liquefying, by collapsing the field under power. At this point, visitor engineer groups were taking notes, I tell you. I think I remember reading footnotes that literally asked on the border of the pages "how are they doing this?!" Can't recall it properly, I'm an historian, not an engineer, but apparently, extended microgravity access had something to do with manufacturing monocrystalline capacitor stuff that was amazing in some sort of techie way.

As far as it is known, no ship was lost then. Every single one of them saved in a way or another by a comunal effort with no precedent in sheer scale. The best, if we take sides here, and I definitely do, was yet to come, tho.

Earthbound terrans still thought they had the upper hand in the feeding section. However big ships were there, the amount of edibles they could overall carry, was limited. And they would definitely not get that from atmospheric spoon scoops. They would prevent them from getting food, unless they surrendered to their terms. For all they cared, at this point, they could starve to death, and they would be less of a problem than actually keeping them in the camps they had hastefully prepared.

The friendly countries that helped, and allowed a limited amount of ships, to prevent accidents, to go to and from, were one by one made to stop under the political and military threats of the bigger players. After all, they could not flee with their piece of planet, however much they wanted.

When the last of the help was crushed, things got tense. Willing governments had formed a coalition of sorts, to deal with spaceside. I can't particularly recall the complete talks, but basically they demanded full "surrender", whatever this meant in the situation, wich was not yet a war, but definitely abiding by their demands would have consequences very similar to a losing side in one. Tinkerers just would not agree to any of the demands, period. They were not a menace, nor a danger, why would they have to accept such minutiae of punishments (like foregoing all research, workshops and tech access, among others) for basically no crime commited?

I have to note here, that a smart move on the Tinkerers part, was to actually not provide a recognizable human head to point to. Unlike earthside, with a president of chamber, counselors, etc...they only comunicated with a digitized human figure that had a syntethic voice. Earthside would not be able to point a single human and make that the evil that had to be fought. They only had a ghost with a voice, and they didn't know how to deal with that.

Even religious delegations, wich still had their dying hand inside governments, altough devoid of the massive amount of followers they had had decades prior, were having a bad time. Everytime they tried to intercede, offering a seemingly helpful and concilliatory hand, they were reminded by this disembodied voice, that they probably had a figurative dagger on the other, and to fuck off.

That did not sit very well with them. And some voices started to murmure "Holy War", of one kind or another, to see if that stuck.

You may not know this, but the galaxy delegations had also begun talks to recognize the Tinkerers as an independent nation. This may be a surprising move to some, however, to ensure that humans could get the help of the evac-ships, some legalities had to be observed.

When news of that move reached ground, it was chaos. Threats were flying everywhere, like a bar brawl that got out of control. And "terms of surrender" just skyrocketed to levels that just became insane.

By this time, almost all space military was on orbit as a single task force. Not that they could do much without great risk, this was an orbit theater of war, unlike interplanetary battles. So, in a sense, they where in a stalemate. But even then, spaceside situation began to become unsustainable. The difference in time between rescue and starvation was just too large. Evac-ships would not arrive in time to support the majority of humans, and earthside would not budge.

It all looked very grim.

I still remember the holovid of the last talk as vivid as if I had been there.

An emergency meeting was called between Tinkerers and earthside. When they connected, a voice much stronger than before, spoke, not even allowing the president to scream over it to complain.

-WE ARE TIRED OF THIS. THERE IS NO NEGOTIATING WITH SILLY IDIOTS IN SUITS, LIKE YOU. IF YOU WANT TO MAKE OF THIS A WAR, IT IS ONE YOU CAN'T WIN.

WE HAVE DECIDED WE ARE GOING TO LAND TO RESUPPLY IN OUR ALLIED NATIONS.

NO ACTIONS ON YOUR PART WILL BE TAKEN, NOT ORBIT, NOT GROUND, ESPECIALLY NOT AGAINST OUR ALLIES.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

All hell broke loose in the auditorium. Indignated and rage fueled screams were heard in such an amount that universal translators just could not keep up. Many minutes later, when the chamber president managed to make everyone shut up, he spoke, as the connection had not been cut.

-This is unacceptable, and we will not remain impassible when you transgrede all legality to do whatever you want. You behave like disrespectful and inconsiderate children and we will not tolerate it. Come here and negotiate like adults, or prepare for the consequences.

-NO

• Your souls be damned!- Screamed an elected clergyman representative, before standing up.- Your families and allies will not find help in our communities, they better look for themselves unless you abide! -

Counselors from different religions stood up and agreed.

-HOW VERY RELIGIOUS OF YOU. YOU ARE IRRELEVANT TO US, AND WILL DO NO SUCH THING AS CHASE OTHER PEOPLE, PERIOD.

Flabergasted, the clergyman shouted to the voice:

-Do not dismiss the power of belief! If need be, we will bring Holy War to you, to prevent this charade to be what the galaxy thinks humans are. We have nu.../the microphone was cut from the president's controls with a punch/

-We don't have to go there, calm down, calm down everyone!

-EMPTY THREATS DO NOT WORK ON US.

The clergyman shouted in vain, as the microphone had been cut. In his behalf, the president spoke:

-My colleague here may have stepped out of line, but he is right. You are acting of your own accord as representatives of earth as a whole. The Galaxy is watching, meanwhile you throw your tantrum.

-WE DO NOT NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS.

Immediately, an audio file began playing. The president's voice was clearly heard saying:

"Look, I do not care how you do it, but stranding them in space is the best solution for us all. We can reap the science later, and brush it off as..." The audio had suddenly stopped when someone broke the roof antenna controller that had been hijacked to reproduce that recording.

The president paled, but tried to recover: -This is taken out of context! Let me explain!

The voice spoke again, a single, magic phrase.

-WE HAVE THE HIGH GROUND.

The president gasped in disbelief... - Did...did you quote a movie? Do you think this is a joke!? - he screamed to the void, when the connection was cut.

-Hey, I got that reference!- The student said.

Dhasso snickered, but was met with incredulous student eyes, it had been only a coincidence. A shame, but after all he was much older and may have watched a few more human movies than the student. Still funny.

Before the president could say anything else, a secretary approached him and spoke to his ear.

You see, amidst the pandemonium, noone had really notticed a small little detail. All dignataries from the allied countries to the Tinkerers, including press personnel, had slowly and silently left the auditorium a while ago. It was a small gesture. Nothing more than a dumb, inconsequential political protest.

The president stood up, silent, for a moment, just before a soulless alarm started blaring:

-"WHOOOP! WHOOOP! WHOOOP!..."

The audio files are only filled with screams at this point, nothing discernible can be decoded from them. Only videos of the now unmanned cameras remain, showing humans running everywhere, their arms in the air. Some even paralyzed in terror. I remember the clergyman that spoke before, standing up, hands in the table, his skin having gone white in a definitely unhealty way. But what can you expect from a master manipulator at the peak of his pyramid scheme, when he realizes that all he had taken for granted is now gone, and he is going to be sent to meet his, now wishfully wanting to be real, maker?

After this, the screens turned pure white for a brief moment, and then static.

What the fuck had happened?

Tinkerers, that's what happened. You don't threaten them in any real way. Of course it will work for single ones, or small groups, but you don't do that to a nation of them.

You see, in the meantime, all this political back and forth, they had been working like demons, for the sake of their survival. That tends to expedite things in very weird ways. They had realized that the way their ships were designed, the grav generators were detachable from the main ship chassis with relative ease. Taking it out, would leave the ship stranded, sure. But the interesting part was what could you do with it afterwards.

By design, grav generators are inherently safe, however, best practice is to equip them with a force field containment, in case of failure. That in itself means nothing...unless you decide to attach a small power supply to it, point it carefully, and turn it on...

Having to carry no mass, nor to deform the grav field to acomodate living conditions, the grav generator will accelerate at a few hundred (terran) gravities. Coincidentally, the containment generator will withstand an orbital reentry for enough time for what comes next.

Yes, they made improvised orbital impactors.

But, how, then, did they prevent an all out war? The head had been cut off, but the arms could still fire their guns.

In short: mutual self assured destruction.

At any other point in time, there is no doubt they would have lost. War is not a game, and no civilian trains to endure the loss of others without leaving their post. Nothing can beat well oiled military power, right? Especially not improvised spaceships with outcasts at the helms. There is a running joke amongst Tinkerers about Emus, but I haven't found the meaning yet.

Anyhow this was the right moment and place for them.

You see, altough all countries had more or less created new space divisions for their military, creating a mil-spec ship, even a primitive terran one, at that moment in time, required large economical effort, and of course, time. Taking into account that humanity had not yet managed to develop their asteroid mining efectively. So, the majority of their forces were still ground based.

That meant the troops in orbit, altough impressive, especially through imposing fear, in actuality paled in comparison with what they had in front, but had not realized. One thing is having 40 million tin cans in front of your machine gun, and a much different one is having 20.000.000 orbital impactors pointed at you. Tinkerers had joined every two ships and transformed one of both grav generators into a kiloton capable device.

Before the crater dust had not even plumed into the atmosphere, the Tinkerers hailed everyone in a standard frequency. The old record computer voice still resonates in my head:

STAND DOWN YOUR WEAPONS, GO HOME.

LEAVE US ALONE. YOU SHOT AT US, WE ALL DIE TODAY.

DO YOUR MATH.

WHATEVER YOU HAVE CAN'T BEAT OUR NUMBERS. WE WILL RENDER EARTH'S ORBIT UNTRANSVERSABLE FOR CENTURIES. WE WILL DIE, BUT WILL TAKE YOU, AND EVERYONE YOU LOVE, WITH US.

YOU DECIDE.

Everyone held their breath.

It would have been the saddest story ever told to have to witness a race destroy itself in this way. So close to the stars they almost touched them, just to be gone because a bad decision, or a trigger happy individual.

Luckily for humans, that did not happen.

A single ship shot a white flare (apparently, a signal of accepting defeat in terran culture) and began deorbiting. Shortly after, the task force dissasembled and went home.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The pineapple pizza box lay empty in the table when Dhasso finished the story. The student had stopped drawing some time ago, and sat still, ecstatic.

-Why don't you tell this story in class? - Asked.

-Not many people is interested in human origins, so not much opportunity to tell it, to be honest.

-Too bad, I loved it!.

-I'm glad to hear that. But it's late now, how about we retire for the day?

-I have to sadly agree, but there's more, right? Right?

Dhasso smiled, it was very uncommon to get a student so fascinated with humans. He may, after all, be able to tell the whole story to a non-bored individual. -Okay, we may have pizza some other day, then.

-Soon, please. - The student smiled and left silently, clutching the sketchbook with their arms, and a very big smile in their face.

Part 1 - Part 3

---------------------------------------------

-Proffesor Dhasso?

-Yes?

-I was intrigued the other day about the human history you told in class, and I was wondering if I could request some bibliography on the subject?

[Dhasso smiled slightly] -Ah, Humans piqued your interest, I see. Well, there is not that much, to be honest, humans sometimes keep to themselves in puzzling ways. If you want I could explain some more history, and then you can decide if you still want the books. Anytime you wish, I have a very open agenda.

/a chair creaks when the student slightly leans on it/ -How about now?

[Dhasso checked his wristwatch and cleared his throat] – Heh, I guess it's a good time as any other.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

When the human exodus happened, 50 years afc., it was a chaotic mayhem. There is no easy way to put it, and it almost ended up in disaster.

When I said that the planet spat a million ships, it was a bit of a poetic license. You see, there where about 8.000 million humans at that time, not exactly a small number. I should check my notes for exactitude, but a guesstimate of 50 million ships were constructed in total. 5% of all land vehicles on the planet at that time, were converted into spacefaring caravans of sorts. Sure there where deaths all around, about 10 to 20%, it was extremely difficult to calculate, as sometimes there was nothing to reach land in its fiery way back. Even at that 20% loss, FORTY MILLION spaceships salied out into space.

BUT, I'm getting way ahead of the story, let me backtrack a bit.

Terra had already a busy low orbit, full, so to speak, with communication satellites of all military and civil kinds.When the first few hundred tinkerer ships temptatively began flying worldwide, at first everyone was keeping low altitudes and safe speeds, so mostly went, no pun intended, under the radar.

Plans for building grav generators and particle shields were flying at the speed of light through terran computer networks, and anyone who was curious about how they worked and had access to a moderately amount of high power electronics and machining equipment, could at least make wineglass floaters to awe the neighbors. We have to remind ourselves, that at that tech point in terra, a few home tinkerers were capable of building their own silicon based computation nodes at home, from scratch.

It didn't even took the first accident (there would be, later on, of course) to ring the alarms in the airspace industry. One early morning of a long lost date, a homemade ship took off from a landmass near the equator, first appearing in the airspace radars until it reached too a high altitude to be further tracked by atmospheric flight radars.

At this point, of course, all the militaries in most of the terran governments, had space warships and where doing their thing, when a small blip appeared in everyone's (in the correct hemisphere of detection) radar.

You see, the fun thing about having grav generators is that you no longer have to worry about atmospheric heating (as long as the gg's work, of course), nor reaching space fast, for that matter. So this makeshift first attempt at DiY spaceship took a long, LONG time to reach high terran orbit. At this point literally everyone capable, was tracking the object, even radioastronomy aficionados. And a few armies were both pinging and hailing it.

It is considered a fact that whomever built that ship, it had had amidst it's group at least a pilot, a space nerd of some kind and an amateur radio operator, it may have been, for all we know, a single human, though, as humans can have wildly different interests. There are remainders of logs about that flight, and the flying was not erratic, comms were using amateur radio equipment, and the orbit pretty much was on point avoiding anything in it's path.

Then the funny thing happened.

We don't know for sure what the interaction was between the ship and the last of the military ones that hailed them was, but my guess is that everyone was saying “stop right there”. I assume that the militaries did warn about blowing them to pieces, when two things happened:

The ship outran the military. Yes, as you hear me. That little ship, that no-more-than-a-radar-blip chunk of metal, outrun a terran state of the art warship (I imagine everyone had more or less the same capabilties at this point). Again, there are no exact records about the speeds, but I have heard it was like 100 to 1 of difference in acceleration.

Of course, that would not have worked for long, missiles with greater accelerations would have catch that ship if the military had been in full alert, with the finger in the launching button. However, they weren't ready, and the pilot pulled the most insane, dangerous and politically incorrect maneouvre I have heard of. I like to imagine they did that while saying a big fat

“TRY ME, FUCKERS!”

They descended from high orbit into the most packed low terran orbit, where blowing them to pieces would create a cascade of destruction that would fill the entire orbit with projectiles too hard to track, literally destroying any possibilities, for other than the most hardened of spaceships, to get through, in both ways. Cleanup of that, even for us, would take decades, so imagine the terrifying thought in the captains of those warships when they realized. They had to let them go.

The story did not end there, however.

Apparently, the ship was destroyed by the builders after landing in a different point, not to prevent anyone knowing how they did it (the plans where on terran computer networks a few hours later), but to protect themselves from any and all governments. In hindsight, there was someone really smart with that project, to begin with.

This is where the whole debacle began.

The airspace industry at large went ballistic. That had to be controlled with iron fist, no matter what. It is true, as it was seen later, that the dangers of uncontrolled spaceflight could be disastrous, but not everything was due to them worrying about human life, no. The economic consequences could be catastophic for them.

But at this point, the know-how about building homemade starships was out there in a coalesced and condensed form, rather than individual parts. As we all know, governments tend to move slowly. Their inertia increases as the number of them that have to agree, increases. Even then, the speed at wich they decided to cut off the whole planetary computer network to prevent the spread of the information, was notable, but to no avail. The few hours that had passed between the flight, the spread of the plans and the cutoff, were enough time to get a copy of those plans, into anyone's computer that also had the habilities and materials to pull it off.

Even after their great terran pandemics, this was just too much to try to control or enforce for any single government to try, short of removing the computers and workshops from everyone's home.

At this point, all tinkerers capable of, knew something. Unless they fled right away, and in masse, they would be earthbound for the rest of their lives. I have to think that the human species has to have some form of telepathy of sorts, or it may be just chance, because the tightness of timespan between the incident and the day of the million spines, is astronomically small, given the effort required.

With the information and personal lockouts, planetary protests ensued. The economy suffered greatly, as international trade and businesses relied on the same networks to properly function. There was a limit on how long the Government siege of their own citizens, everywhere, could stand. Not even the majority of the military components, humans too, after all, were keen on this treatment of their families, and slowly but surely, all lockouts where lifted.

There where demonstrations of force, mainly the most prominent tinkerers and builders were rounded up and locked down, wich of course, would work wonders to keeping the millions of others at bay, would it?

As we now know, it didn't do shit to prevent what would happen next. Exact progress of events is blurry at this point, as most of it was conducted in somewhat secrecy by individuals, or groups of individuals. But it is easy to see that when governments tried to track materials, builders resorted to scrapyards, and when those where closed too, it was too little too late.

This brings us to the days of spines, when, in a few weeks timespan, about 50 million starships took off. Casualties I imagine were larger than 10 million humans, as many ships could bring up to space more than one, but it's a sad thought I don't want to entertain.

It is safe to say that a whole small country worth of humans, had just abandoned earth, with an impossibly huge percentage of them being tinkerers. Of course, more average humans would follow later, but this first exodus would be determinant for this particular bunch.

I was looking up my old HDD copy for an old photo I took, and accidentally stumbled upon this gem.

What a wild ride has it been between that moment and now.

!

Fleeing from reddit, this is an older story of mine (3 chapters so far, but I would like to continue it, just not on that site) Enjoy, or don't.

Part 2

>>>>----------------------------------------------------------<<<<

Or so we thought, after first contact.

You see, when we first encountered humans, they had barely colonized their solar system. Not even counting the ginormous cost, both in lives and materials, and their primitive spacefaring thechnology, the galaxy in general classified them very low in the scale of species relevance, given what happened right after comunications began.

First, major religions suffered a cataclysmic schism, unable to cope with the fact that there where other life forms, and other faiths, throughout the galaxy. One can argue that their religions where already dead far before, when instead of enlightenment, they were driven by power-hungry megalomaniacs. In any case, over a few terran years, all large faiths collapsed, unable to hold themselves together with enough followers to keep mattering in the world affairs, divided each into millions of pieces and interpretations of life. But more on that, later.

When first contact specialists greeted the human delegations, instead of meeting the best and brightest, they found more power-driven humans that were insidiously desesperate on “technological exchange”, but there was not that much the specialists could actually trade, and they had barely enough patience to deal with the backstabing happening behind the scenes between many of their countries, trying to one-up the others. Our computational technology worked on optical and atomic scale, being thousands of times faster and more efficient than their electrically driven, silicon based technology.

Art and culture may have worked for a bit, but in a coalition of one million species upon millions of worlds, it would get diluted and estranged. Besides, humans would not go anywhere unless we carried them, wich was another can of worms alltogether. Given that their spacefaring technology was chemical in nature, vastly inefficient, and definitely NOT interstellar. They had begun spreading through their solar system, but at speeds that even a rock snail (silicon based life from an obscure planet in the edge of the galaxy) seemed fast in comparison. They had developed habitations in their moon and the fourth planet orbiting their Sol, but as singular efforts from individual countries, rather than a general human endeavor.

Medical and biologically speaking, there would be some trade, sure, but human biology was not that different from other well known species (definitely not counting you here, rock snail), so even there, exchange was going to be somewhat limited on what humans could offer.

Materials? Space mining at large was robotized at this point, and planetside digging was barely worth it anymore.

When sociologists arrived to perform a standard psicological analysis for the archives, they more or less found out why humans where confined to their own corner of space. Their structures of power where mostly coped by not very bright individuals that seeked to gain power for themselves or their selected group. That hindered social, intellectual and technological advancement to a crawl. It's not like humans were going to destroy themselves right away, but as an interstellar race, they were not even in diapers, but barely even born, so to speak.

With all this, the galaxy at large celebrated their appearance for a short while, like everything that is new, and then went about their business once more.

And here is where you ask, why on terra am I explaining this story at all, if this was an unremarkable species (for galaxy standards), in an average corner of the galaxy?

Well, as mentioned previously, large religions were, in all effects, inexistent after a few human years. With that, all the thinking control, bombardment of beliefs and fears that drove those, fell dramatically, freeing a lot of human minds to think about something else, other than sit in a corner, dreading existence.

Once humans had a reason to look up, to the sky and beyond, without the background noise of their manipulative brethren, they started to think outside the box they had been kept in, but more importantly, they also stopped hindering the thinking in their offsprings. The cascade effect was unpredictable from our side.

We had inadvertently awaken the colossus.

With all the free brainpower bubbling around, the speed of humanity developement started to accelerate. Human governments tried to hold the reins to mantain themselves in power, of course, but they failed miserably, not because they could have not done anything, but because they did not act fast enough.

It is generally known that it's harder to develop an idea from scratch, than knowing for sure that something can be done, and finding a way to do it.

Humans had seen our ships. We had expected some technological espionage, so to speak, from the humans in power. However, at the time of first contact, Earth was steeming with space travel interest, even if primitive, and the media coverage was on par with any other forms of entertainment. That meant reverse engineering and developement was not confined to a really small percentage of the scientific comunity, but instead, to millions upon millions of ideas hungry humans, with time to spare.

25 years after first contact, humans were already experimenting with FTL drives. 15 years later they had begun gravity manipulation techniques. 10 years later, suddenly, earth exploded.

NOT literally, of course.

That day Earth spat out a million spines. Some were flashy and bright, from the descendants of spacefaring moghuls that still had vast economic power, others were, literally, grain silos. You see, in general, not everyone had the resources to get a starship built for them, be either a government or an individual. So space access for general humans was still a government interest controlled issue, in theory.

It is known that a good Tiv'at mechanic can build a spaceship out of a truck, it's not that hard for a good specialist with hundreds of years of knowledge in it's back. Now imagine a race full of tinkerers that had been physically confined to a single planetary surface and the belief of an eternity of solitude. It took a specific kind of mind, of course, to go about building their own, but if it could be welded shut, and have air scrubbers installed, it could be made into a spaceship.

And that's how 50 year after first contact, smart enough humans plucked themselves out of their home planet, leaving the dumber part of the group, behind.

Uvuk Dhasso, Galaxy Historian.___

> enlightenment