Bitter Remnants

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. However, president Bannon heard the screams clearly in his head like they were coming from the room next door. The sound didn’t register through his ears, but resonated in his head as he imagined the wailing shrieks of all the Plosteks who now knew the fate that their once trusted leaders had doomed them to.

The president had just gotten off the vidcom with his Plostek counterpart in the armada and said his final goodbyes and now all he could do was hang his head and thank their creator for bringing them together, a feat that saved his entire race, but assured their annilhilation . In all his sixty-three years he had seldomly come across a being who felt so strongly about the advancement of peace, but he supposed being used as an unwitting tool of destruction has a way of making one a bit subversive. They were told they were peace emissaries, that they would be making first contact with a newly discovered race and laying the groundwork for potential development and exploration together. This lie was further enhanced by the omission of any military personnel in their ranks. Their ships were populated by philosophers, scholars, and anyone lucky enough to win a place through their lottery system. They thought they were paving the way into the future. The truth was that they had been consigned to death long before they even left home and none of them were the wiser.

They had contacted Earth through SETI nine short months ago while still outside our system and were barely able to contain their excitement and remain professional. Nine months, the president thought, the same amount of time required to create life. The irony of this struck him in the gut since the lives they had planned together would have enriched both races. “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts” someone once said and that would have certainly been the case here. In a sense, their combined “whole” would have created a new era, a new life of shared experience. Many nights had turned into early mornings as they talked about how their knowledge and technologies could be combined into truly amazing advancements.

Luckily, first contact on our side was made with like minded individuals whose love of freedom and discovery outweighed their sense of decorum. The initial fibonacci transmission was identified for exactly what it was, an attempt to get our attention. A dialogue quickly developed from all corners of the globe as our military anxiously weighed all their pros and cons of the event and tried to assess whether this was some sort of a hidden threat. Their attempts to control communication with the Plosteks was futile from the start so they wisely just monitored all the back and forth discussion and evaluated it all behind closed doors. It wasn’t until later that they found out the truth.

By mutual agreement the Plostek delegate took the name Andy due to president Bannon trying mightily and failing to pronounce Andy’s real name and it wasn’t long before they developed a strong friendship. Initially, their discussions were short and formal, but the more they spoke about life on their respective planets, the more they realized that the common things in life, such as family, sense of duty, survival and the loftier traits, that of nobility, chivalry, gallantry were all just as important to both species.

As their discussions progressed, however, small inconsistencies started coming to light, generally during discussions of technical matters. A few of the crew on Andy’s vessel were able to tap into the ships data reserve, which Andy mentioned was not supposed to be possible. Anyone with technical experience greater than the equivalent of a grammar school student was not included in the lottery and were certainly excluded from the assignment of ship personnel. They were told the automated ships functioned cleanly and precisely and needed no personal interface, but President Bannon discovered this was another way they were alike. People on Andy’s planet didn’t all follow the rules, either, so some feigned ignorance of technology, slipped past the limitation and got aboard, just to be a part of the adventure. Their desire to add something important led them later to gain access to the computers and all the technical knowledge contained therein that their race had to offer.

The president was not well educated in this area so he missed what the engineers in his group referred to as Anomalous Red Flags but as their discussions came around to limitless energy reserves it became obvious they both had a huge problem. Calculations of energy yields based on combined technologies were much, much larger than they should be, in some cases off the scale. Then they figured out why. Andy’s entire existence, their lives, their ships and everything they held dear was based on and composed of anti-matter.