Author: Garrett Frechette

We have called ourselves a great number of names over the course of these many years. At times, we presented ourselves as federations and republics, our history records our imperial conquests and peaceful coalitions. We are Milky-Wayans, we are Solans, we are everywhere.
We are Human.

Humanity has faced many obstacles that were unconquerable. Sweeping plagues that were wiping us from existence without a cure in sight. Yet, we conquered. We cured. There were civil wars that divided us at our core and was once thought impossible to reach an accord. And still, treaties brought us together many times. No other paths were seen when our machines rose up, at an intelligence greater than ours, against us. Now, they are our greatest brethren. Our arms spread wide across these galaxies, altering physics, playing with time, redefining gravity, and even bending cosmic strings to our will. Our minds can know of nothing that can stop us.

In the many millennia that have passed since we first shed our infancy and left Earth’s atmosphere, we have never found any other sentient life. There was the occasional resemblance to mammals and reptile-like creatures that intrigued our curiosity. Never a hint of civilization and certainly nothing to give us reason to believe anything ascended to the stars such as humans did.

Humanity changed again when we rose from our infancy for the second time. One of our exploratory vessels happened upon a massive galaxy that appeared to be infinitely larger than any of the millions of others that we had colonized and surveyed. We had made our way to the center of the cosmos, the center of the universe. The galaxy was a super attractor, pulling everything towards it. It was a nexus to other universes, filled with a mecca of thousands of other intelligent species that made a similar journey here.

The other sentient species congratulated humanity on passing the test and making it to the ranks of other Class 5 civilizations and petitioned us to join them. To come home.

“This was all a test?”

“We thought ourselves to be alone for this? All these years, such loneliness.”

“Do they think of us as children to be patronized?”

The commanders, generals, and admirals of our greatest militaries convened. They assembled humanity’s largest armada of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers. We gathered an anger and resentment that could not be quailed, so we went to war. We went home.
We are human.