Once the drinks were distributed, Max passed the lead off to Nico, who was a walking repository of historical and technical information, to begin with. As such, she was much more qualified to lead this conversation.
"Let's start at the beginning. A million of our standard years ago, our species wasn't even sentient yet. We only began our major developments in sentience a few hundred thousand years ago. So, we never interacted with them to our knowledge.
However, as we expanded around our Galaxy, we found signs that we weren't the first ones there. Abandoned planets with ancient ruins well beyond our knowledge and abilities. Odd spatial anomalies, like groups of planets arranged in identical patterns and rotations around nearly identical stars. Things that we could have never done as a species.
Thousands of years of War stalled our development as we fought hostile species in our Galaxy and focused on War and survival. Not that we didn't advance at all, but everything we developed had a basis in our struggle against hostile species.
One of the earliest developments that we created was the Mecha, our war machines. At first, they were intended as planetary assault forces, and that is still primarily how they have been used for ten millennia or more since their development.
But recently, we found a handful of ruins with technology well beyond what we had developed or found in the past. The construction method that led us to designs so similar to the Knife Ears.
This was much more than an isolated scrap of technology. It was a whole new construction method. The ruins were more intact on the planet and appeared to be designed for a species roughly our size and physique.
So, it was postulated that we might not have been the first wave of Human development. There might have been another culture of our species in the past, which was wiped out, leaving only a handful of primitive survivors struggling to survive, which rebuilt our species into what it is today.
That is the prevailing theory among our people right now, but after meeting the Knife Ears and seeing the more advanced version of the same technology that they are using, the two of us have a theory that it might not have been ancient humans who were in our Galaxy and rearranged all those star systems for the peak in habitability. It might have been the Knife Ears, or possibly the Knife ears guiding our species' early development as an experiment. The majority of evidence still suggests that our species spread through the Galaxy twice, with culling in the middle."
Nico paused as the Koleska and Tinnar took in that news.
"A farmed Galaxy. I have never heard of them doing it on such a grand scale, but arranging planets for their cattle species to grow on? That isn't new for them." The Koleska bureaucrat agreed.
"It is possible that a million years ago, your species was their first attempt at the practice, and for some reason, they determined that it was less efficient to develop a species than to help multiple species spread and then farm them." The Tinnar leader added.
One of the junior Tinnar delegates raised her hand and cleared her throat. "Is it possible that the species turned out to be insufficient for whatever purpose they have with them? From what I have seen, humans are relatively fearless and highly aggressive. Perhaps you were too much trouble for the effort they put in?"
That made Max laugh. There was a good chance she wasn't wrong if the theory that the Knife Ears, or Darklings, as he and Nico knew them in their past life, had developed, raised and then given up on their species was too annoying to put up with.
In his past life, they had the technology, and they certainly did now. Even humans had no problems guiding a species' genetic development at this point, so it couldn't be beyond them.
This could be a turning point in human knowledge of their past. There never was a good explanation for how they might have lost their own home planet. Even if it was developed past the point of no return and couldn't be inhabited anymore, there should be at least some record of its location.
But if they were relocated during the early days of the expansion, then they might really have lost track of the location since they weren't in charge of their navigation. It might have been through an Anomaly, which led to a part of the Galaxy that they hadn't mapped properly, or like the identical stars, it might have simply been out of sight and identical to the system where they came from, which would have led to theories of time travel.
Humans had too many origin stories and superstitions at this point, so it was impossible to track down the source of them all. But if it was because they actually came from a hundred different but identical star systems, it would explain a lot of the confusion and arguments when they met up with each other tens of thousands of years later.
"How does this origin story of the humans relate to how you manage to get along with the Knife Ears?" The Koleska senior bureaucrat asked impatiently while Nico was waiting for everyone to digest the information she had given them.
"My current theory and this is just a theory without evidence, since we have no prior interactions with them before the battles here, is that because we are using a primitive version of their own technology, we are not seen as a threat to them, but more as abandoned toddlers returned to their former nanny.
We come from a Galaxy that they developed and farmed and most likely culled of ninety percent or more of its population. There is a good chance that they know more about us than we do at this point, with all of the knowledge that was lost when our oldest colonies were overrun by hostile species in the past."
This 𝓬ontent is taken from f(r)eeweb(n)ovel.𝒄𝒐𝙢