It's deep space.

Over many light-years only leftover radiation from the big bang can be detected. One of the most peaceful places in the Milky Way.

A burst of energy erupts in the desolate area, followed by the sudden appearance of a massive black cargo ship with sharp edges. The ship's lights flicker off, leaving it to float aimlessly in space, the name "Arberon" emblazoned on its side. The ship is thrown into chaos as a powerful vibration threatens to tear it apart, until it finally comes to a halt and the lights switch back on. In the command room, the three-member crew, dressed in sleek black astronaut suits, work to regain control of the ship.

As the ship stabilizes, the crew begins to assess the situation. The ship's systems scan for the source of the disturbance and pinpoint the issue: a chance encounter with a gamma-ray burst from a distant supernova located 400 light-years away. The rare event took place while the ship was traversing a wormhole, which shielded it from the full force of the blast, limiting the damage to just a fraction of what it could have been.

"System, let's proceed with the journey," the captain orders from his central seat in the command room, addressing the ship's artificial intelligence. He waits expectantly, his gaze fixed upward, but there is no response. "System?" he repeats, concern creeping into his voice.

"It's possible the overcharge damaged one of the circuits. I'll need to physically inspect it, but it will take some time," the technician explains as he stands from his seat to the left of the captain. He stretches his legs, letting out a sigh, and rubs the back of his neck. Despite being the tallest of the three crew members, the technician is only two meters tall.

"Understood, I'll assist," the captain replies, glancing over at the logistics officer to his right. The two then make their way down to the lower decks.

"Perform a complete systems check to ensure there are no other issues," the technician instructs the captain through the comms system.

"All right," the captain responds, initiating the procedure manually.

An hour later, the captain dozes off in his chair. Suddenly, the radar system blares a series of beeps, indicating that something is approaching their location. BIP, BIP, BIP.

"Captain, the odor of melted plastic is strong down here. The system is completely fried," the technician reports, lying amidst the tangled wires and circuits of the system's processing area. "Captain?" he calls out, growing increasingly concerned.

"Yes, I'm here," the captain stirs, rousing from his slumber. "Can we proceed without System?" he asks, straightening in his seat.

"Yes, but it's gonna be a lot of red tape." The technician replies.

"Hmm?" the captain mumbles, suddenly aware of the beeping on the radar. "Ah, yes. I've never encountered a ship without a system," he muses, quickly typing on the control panel to gather more information about the incoming object.

"Yes, and we've also never been hit by a supernova," the logistics officer adds.

"Quick, get over here! The radar is detecting something close to us," the captain orders in a rush.

"An asteroid?" The technician asks, looking at the logistics officer.

"No, it seems artificial. Hurry," the captain replies strongly gripping his chair.

"What the fuck?" The logistics officer gathered his things and both went back to the command room.

"Finally," The captain walks from one side of the room to the other when they enter it. "Buckle up, we are going to jump closer," He says while sitting on his chair.

"Imagine if we're the first to find signs of aliens!" The logistics officer speaks while running to his chair.

"Captain, we have to follow protocol," the technician places himself between the captain and the room's main screen that covers most of the wall in front of the chairs.

"Fuck protocol, System is offline and I'm not leaving it for someone else to get the credit," the captain looks at the technician. "Hurry up."

They jump.

"Okay, we have a visual," the technician says, zooming in on the main screen. "Oh my God, that's not...that's..." he trails off in disbelief.

"Alien! I knew it," the logistics officer yells, excitedly tapping the armrests of his chair.

"Yes!" The captain stands almost jumping and walks closer to the screen. "Look at that!"

"It looks very archaic," the technician replies. "And there are no emissions."

"Beam it inside," The captain says heading to the loading bay.

"Don't let your excitement get the better of you. We need to isolate it," the technician stands. "We don't know what kind of alien diseases it might carry."

"I agree with him, we can use the high profile compartment, I think it fits," the logistics officer argues. "It's airtight and it can fly outside to get it."

"Ok, we send it outside, put the object in, shall we call it the object?" The captain asks and all agree.

The procedure takes about two hours.

"Let's send in the droid to inspect the interior," the captain explains, gazing at the screen that displays the compartment's interior.

"Captain, bringing it aboard already broke protocols, but I won't take part in tinkering with something we have no idea what it is," the technician touches the wall of the compartment.

"You follow or…" The captain inflates his chest but is cut mid-sentence.

"Wait, it looks a lot like one of our first probes, I remember seeing something like it in history class," the logistics officer replies, placing himself between the two.

"Do you think this is one of ours?" The captain calmly asks.

"I think… maybe." The logistics officer shrugs.

"All right, all right. We can open it, but if we see a clear sign that it's alien we stop tinkering with it, ok?" The technician shakes his head and avoids eye contact with the captain.

"Ok. I'll respect it, the discovery is already ours," the captain smiles. "Now may you control the droid?" He looks at the technician.

"Ok. Droid, make a full image scan of the object," the technician turns to the screen.

"This is so awesome," the logistics officer can't stay still.

"I know," the captain looks fixed at the screen.

"It seems there is a very low energy isotope that might have fueled the object," the technician observes.

"What is that yellow thing?" The captain points at the screen.

"Some kind of plate," The technician zooms in.

"But on its back, I think I saw something," the captain gets closer.

"Droid, focus on the back of the yellow plate," the technician orders.

The crew stays silent for a few seconds.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," the logistics officer put his hands over his head.

"Are those… them?" The technician mumbles.

"It must be, but they don't look the same, a duo intelligent species?" The captain almost touches the screen with his face.

"There are some two gender species on our planet," the logistics officer replies.

"They look so much like us, yet so different," the captain points on the screen.

"Now we have to stop, we cannot open it, it's alien, alien!" The technician turns off the screen.

"Hey!" The captain turns to the technician with a tilted head. "Agreed. Let's continue our journey. Tomorrow, we'll be famous," he says, giving the technician's back a pat.

Arberon exits its jump slightly further away from the Segan space port,, home planet of the crew. Segan is a massive planet, twice the size of Earth, with a red and blue hue, the second around a blue star. The planet's surface is characterized by narrow water river valleys leading to vast lakes and oceans. The dense red forests cover the planet integrating the lives of the intersolar segans and its atmosphere is primarily composed of nitrogen, similar to that of Earth.

As the crew approaches the port, the density of ships increases dramatically. Billions of lives have been orchestrated by the System since the great pandemic of a hundred years prior. There are two circular elevators, surrounded by semi-closed wall rings, that connect the space port to Segans, the capital of the planet.

Arberon hails the space traffic control to request manual guidance for docking. The captain holds his comm device and says, "I'm sending a message to a friend who works on the news."

"We should report it first," the technician can't stand still in his seat.

"This is bigger than company policy," the captain continues typing on his comm.

"I'm not talking about the company, I'm talking about the authorities," the technician grabs his comm and starts contacting the police.

"I'm not letting someone else get the credit for this," the captain continues typing to his friend. "My friend got it and is coming to the port."

"Shit guys, calm down!" The logistics officer shouts.

"If anything happens it's on you…" The technician itches his neck. "They are hailing us," he puts away his comm.

"Bring it through," the captain looks forward.

"Hail, Arberon. Why is your System offline?" Space control inquires.

"Hail. We had a mid-jump electrical problem, sending you the report," The captain signals to the technician. "We also found an alien artifact," he glances at the logistics officer.

"Sorry, what? Are you for real?" Space control goes silent, and static begins to fill the channel.

"It's some kind of probe, it's dead," the captain continues. "Hey… hi?" He opens his comm and it's also offline. "What?" He mumbles.

BUM

"What the hell was that?" The captain grips his seat tightly.

"An explosion in our cargo area," the logistics officer reports, as he activates a holographic display in front of his seat to assess the damage.

"Shit, did it get the object?" The captain puts a hand to his head.

"Almost sure." The logistics officer continues checking.

"Fuck," the captain mutters, hitting his seat with a clenched fist.

"It was nice knowing you," the logistics officer starts praying.

"Shut up, I have to level the ship. We can survive this," the technician moves hastily manually initializing containment protocols.

"Oh Primordial Being,  Sacred Tree that blooms at noon," the logistics officer continues silently.

BUM

Arberon's surroundings are filled with rapidly moving fragments as the ship is reduced to a cluster of small pieces of metal, plastic, and segans.

A few minutes before, down on the crowded streets of Sedani, Menth, a young journalist, stands still watching a video he just got from his uncle. The slim figure seems even fainter with a dark gray modular hazmat suit, for all segans have to wear one in public after the great pandemic. His left arm covered in tattoos of his favorite bands holds his comm while the other arm has a bag full of smoking stones or fumes. A bright light in the sky. Everyone around him stops. "Holly Tree," segans around him start saying. He looks around and then up. A bright light as a second moon shines close to the space port. "Uncle," he mumbles and looks at his comm. "No…" His uncle is offline.

Menth runs to the entrance of the spaceport elevator that is a few blocks away. He progresses slowly with most segans still looking up. "What am I doing? I need to go live there," Menth thinks. He picks up his comm and opens a ship-renting app. His body closes up as he searches through the price options. "Shit, here goes a month's wage," Menth speaks to himself and selects a battered yellow ship that luckily won't add another segan to the disaster. He dials "Hey boss."

"Menth? What time is it?" His boss answers from his bed on the other side of the planet.

"Ah sorry, forgot you were traveling. But listen up, there was a huge explosion near the port of Segan, I'm almost there. Can I go live?" Menth keeps his eyes in the sky searching for his ride.

"Holy, yeah, what happened?" He inquires as he perches on the edge of the bed.

"I'm not sure, I'm getting there," Menth walks to the closest ground hangar.

"Ok, just avoid strong graphic content for fuck sakes," his boss tunes to their channel.

"Sure, my ride's here," Menth hops over the stairs of the hangar and ends the call.

"Good l.." His boss is cut mid sentence. "Crazy kid," he says to himself.

Once aboard the ship Menth sets the destination and readies his flying orb camera. The ship takes off and he glances at his bag full of rocks. "Maybe just one to get in the zone." He reaches into the bag and grabs a purple rock. In a small, bottom-fastened pocket in the bag he retrieves a lighter. Holding the rock beneath his chin, he applies the flame of the lighter to it, and a purple smoke begins to seep into his helmet. Tipping his head back and extending his legs, he announces, "Orb, prepare to go live in 15 seconds." With five seconds left, he throws his head back with force and exclaims, "Here we go!" As he claps both hands, the ship exits the stratosphere.

3, 2, 1. Live.

"Welcome to Segan Shades, urgent news," Menth speaks in a higher pitch than usual and uses his thumb and index finger to direct the camera view to the explosion. "We are a few kilometers from the Segan space station and around us there are lots of fragments of a huge explosion, the ship itself is no more." The rented ship moves closer to Arberan. A big black plate of metal slowly rotates towards him. "There we can see…" It turns enough for him to  read Arber "Ah, ah…" Menth pauses. "Segans I have to show," he hesitates. "My uncle was on that ship… Arberan, Arberan was the name of the ship. Now I know he is almost certainly dead," he pauses. "But in his final moments he sent me the video, I'll show you now," he plays the video with the voices of the three member crew as they examine the object inside the ship. Menth collapses and the video loops for a while.

Menth adjusts his posture and freezes the video when there is a clear picture of the alien plate. "Here we have a probable clue of what these aliens look like. There are some symbols on their left for our scientists to decipher. But look, look how they have lags, arms, fingers and eyes. It seems intelligence has a template design. Of course we don't know why there are two of them, and two different versions," Menth starts speaking more energetically. "Maybe one is the immature version that ages and becomes the other. Maybe they can change appearances. Or maybe as the old tale of the two species suggest, they have one that hunts and kills and another that generates the off-springs." Menth's comm vibrates, he sees his boss calling. "I'll leave you to watch it again and decide for yourselves," he puts the video on loop and mutes his mic.

"Hey, boss! I'm killing it!" Menth cannot sit still.

"What the fuck are you doing!? You fucking high fucker," his boss hastily speaks.

"What? I just… Hey you cut the live stream!" Menth grabs the orb camera as it falls.

"You are fired," His ex-boss hangs up.

"Fuck, I'm not high, I mean I used a stimulant which is not the same," Menth speaks to himself and checks his vital signs. "Look, I'm just excited." He starts crying. "Uncle!" He cries for a minute. "Ok, ok. Maybe I took too much, I'm all over the place." He stops. "Uncle!" And resumes crying. "Oh, the rent. This ship. This bag of rocks. This suit, this fucking suit." He stops crying. "Ok, fuck you boss, fuck you duck-tape ship garbage and rocks." He looks into the hot plasma emanating from Arberans' destroyed engine. "Ship, get me down to Segan."

"Please define a destination." The System in the car answers.

"Segan." Menth replies steadfast.

"That is a whole city, please elaborate," System monotone voice requests.

"Where I was before is fine. Go!" Menth opens his comm and starts searching.