Marla

Marla Lay had been a gifted child. She graduated at age 13, got her master's degree at 15 and wrote an already groundbreaking piece as her PhD Thesis when she was 20. That was in the year 2089.

But it was not the end of her career. She was not obsessed with going deeper into one field. She wanted to go broader. She wanted to have an explanation for the universe as a whole. And some of her broad skills helped her in other situations as well. She was the one exceptional multi talent of the third millennium, thinking outside the box like her role model and genius of the second millennium, Albert Einstein.

One of her interests was in data science. She was working with AI in terms of training and giving them the right kind of work at the right time. It turned out to be some kind of symbiosis.

Her second side trait was a good portion of realism and an understanding of economy and psychology. So she also was a natural leader and entrepreneur.

The real breakthrough in her main field of work, physics, had happened at age 26. In 2095, she published her paper 'A Theory of Transspace', a paper that was supposed to change the world of science and the world itself more radically than the Theory of Relativity and Darwin's Origin of Species together.

But even that was just the start. Marla was supposed to become more famous than Einstein, not only because of her groundbreaking papers that changed physics. She added her entrepreneurial spirit to her work as a physicist. This instinct led her to the decision to form a think tank to bring her scientific work to the next level and into reality.

In that project, she gathered many other leading scientists and engineers together for some years to develop viable spin offs and ideas from her Transspace theory. The project was called "Enclave", because she brought everyone in there to collaborate closely and work in a gated and controlled environment. Neither speculations nor premature thoughts went out of that circle.

The results were disruptive to say the least. The team presented a Faster Than Light drive that made humanity ready to conquer the solar system. As a side result, they presented anti gravity technology that also changed the life on earth at once by providing safe and fast transportation and an infinite amount of new and spectacular tools.

But yet another step increased her fame after the Enclave project published their results and that is the fact that she made money out of her discoveries, so much that she became the third richest person in the solar system with her megacorp Zodiac.

At that time there were already four other global players, who were not so global anymore. They made their money in space by mining asteroids, running space station chains and controlled interplanetary transport. All of them were eager to use the new tech, that could bring more people and goods to and from their real estate in a shorter time. But Marla and Zodiac owned many of the patents and had the talent and skills to use them. They were soon involved in all of these profitable businesses.

Even the name was wisely chosen as two of the other corporations were called Sagittarius and Scorpio. Zodiac for them might have sounded like a declaration of war. But at the same time, they needed access to that groundbreaking technology.

Fifty years later, Marla retired from the company's chair at age 80. The solar system was split between three corporations with more financial power than any state on earth. The Dublin drive, invented by Zodiac, was the dominant spaceship technology. So the company became number two under Marla, so huge that it could buy number three, Sagittarius. Bigger than any terrestrial nation, no authority was there to prevent them from doing so. It was the corporate wild west. But the possibilities to grow didn't end at the borders of the solar system.

After Marla Lay, Chi Feng became chairman. He came up with the idea to put his claim on other star systems. He was a diplomat and cultivated good relations with the other megacorps. He managed to form a consortium with his competitors. Their project: sending a series discovery drones into the universe.

Already two years later, the first pair of drones launched from the facilities at Zodiac space station. Project Gemini - of course it was named after a zodiac sign and as it was a pair of rockets, the choice was obvious - started to Alpha Centauri and Barnard's Star. The drones were built to find habitable planets and valuable asteroids autonomously and acted as communication phalanxes for the probes they carried in their bodies.

Marie

Marie approached Zodiac Station inside the most comfortable space vessel possible. It had two lounges with top class bar tenders for only a few exclusively selected people. Everything was posh. But Marie was used to travelling this way.

Her destination - the station - circled Titan, which circled Saturn, which in turn circled our Sun. That was what she thought sitting among the 15 other suits who prepared for the docking maneuver at the end of their comfortable flight. All of them, Marie included, were representatives of the wealthiest corporations of the solar system. This was the most exclusive funding event she ever attended.

Before she could finish her thought, the impressive station appeared on Titan's Horizon. It was huge and perfectly symmetrical. The famous space architect Zoe Zass had designed it. Actually it was the first piece of space construction that was designed and not only engineered. It was iconic although it was a gigantic wharf, and industrial site.

On both sides, you could see the half-finished ships, the twins from the Gemini project. Their characteristic star form with five arms coming from the specifications of the Dublin drive could be seen. The twins were already bigger than the shuttle they were in. But they were not yet even half as big as they would finally become - and not to forget the fact the fact that they were drones that wouldn't even carry a living space crew.

On additional parallel platforms, the manufactories were assembled. They would be put into the belly of the drone ships when the mission started. These engines could produce arbitrary tools, probes, miners or other devices to explore the target solar system. They were little autonomous wharves themselves - so much more than 3d printers. They could digest raw material like ore from remote asteroids and forge whatever was needed for the mission.

Most of the technology of these manufactories came from Maries company ForgeForce. It was not among the five largest corporations, but their CEO decided to invest a great deal of company money into the Gemini adventure. It was a risky move, but Marie, who had been appointed as the project lead, was sure that it would pay off hundredfold.

ForgeForce's technology was the missing link for colonisation. The company engineered blueprints for hundreds of essential appliances to colonize a new planet whether it was habitable or not - or not yet. The manufactories could build reliable housing, energy cells as well as terraforming gear on a large scale.

For Marie, the presentation on this day was impressive. At that point, half of her company had been involved in the project already but the investor show and the disclosure of their plans and mission goals was the last missing bit to convince her boss. After contributing technology he also bought ten percent of the project shares two years ahead of their first launch.

Two and a half years later, Marie was the CFO of her company. ForgeForce went through rather tough times as most of their capital was in the Gemini project. But the first two projects were over now. The general idea was to build a continuous program to explore the surrounding stars around our solar system, always two at a time. While one misson was on its way the machines for the next twin mission was about to be assembled.

So these days, numbers three and four were docked at the Zodiac station. The first twins were on their mission and had already reported a fifty per cent success. Probe number one brought early amazing results from our nearest neighbour, Alpha Centauri. It was a relief for the mission management and especially for Maries company.

Barnard's Star, the second mission however, had a series of failures in its transmission module and didn't deliver any results.

Marie had reached her goal already. Almost nobody would have expected such a good outcome anyway. Alpha Centauri became a gold mine and Marie in turn was appointed to CFO. ForceForge was given the licenses for the construction work and real estate management of the first extrasolar dwellings of mankind. It was the start of an exclusive holiday and migration business, the best time to build hotels on Proxima Centauri 3.

The Twins project and Marie's involvement even continued after she became CFO. The company decided to reinvest their profits continuously. Every six months, Zodiac was ready with another pair of probes and sent them on their way to the stars in our neighbourhood. They visited twenty destinations within five years and almost each of them with at least a small financial success. Some companies profited from mining, others started terraforming and creating settlements. Dozens of adventurous communities wanted to start a new way of living and be the founders of a fresh society on a new planet.

ForgeForce had the knowledge to build all necessary infrastructure and also made a lot of money with licensing their technology to the new settlements.

In the sixth year, something big happened. One of the probes reported the discovery of intelligent life.

Martin

Mission 23 of the Gemini project targeted the Rana system. Rana was a star with about 30 light years of distance from the sun. For a long time, it had been considered a rather uninteresting system. Some scientists have claimed that there wouldn't be planets at all. Mission 18 however brought us closer and the Gemini probe's manufactory had produced a large telescope that transmitted footage from its host system, but also from surrounding stars. It became clear that Rana showed thought-provoking anomalies.

The Gemini project had already found life on mission 12 and 17. It discovered one planet with a fungi like species that rendered the planet pretty much inhabitable and thus useless, but yet interesting for scientists. The other one was a planet with an almost breathable atmosphere and grass-like plants. It was the most promising candidate for a short term terraforming project, that could produce a second Earth within a century.

But Rana turned out to be different. When the Gemini probe approached the system, the first detailed stereoscopic screenings showed clear signs of life and activity. The Gemini headquarters on Earth immediately sent orders for visual observation, so the probe started manufacturing a series of planetary micro drones with hi-resolution optics.

One month into the project, the drones produced footage of the planet's surface. There were settlements and humanoid lifeforms. The next step was immediately clear to everyone at the Gemini headquarters. A manned mission was planned.

The various wharves around Titan and in the Jupiter orbit had a lot of experience in building bespoke space ships in a short amount of time. Within one year they conceived and built an interstellar ship for a 100 people crew.

The Nigerian Martin Adebayo was a diplomat at Zodiac station at that time. He was the representative for the United Nations and the African Union and responsible for the relations with the Gemini project and in that role a core part of the Gemini supervisory board.

For his age, he was just thirty, he had already achieved a lot and was well known amongst diplomatic circles and a valuable consultant for the project. It was only natural that the organisers of the Rana mission asked him to join as lead diplomat.

What that meant was not immediately clear to him at the moment they approached him. Only in the night, when he was lying awake in his bed, he realised that this meant something historic. He could be the first human to meet an alien, standing in one line with Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon, Jennifer Woo, the first woman on Mars and Mathieu Valinort, the first man on Proxima Centauri 3. After realising that, he could not sleep at all anymore that night. He heard his heart beating for six hours, then he stood up, took a shower and signed up for the job.

The staff selection for the Rana mission continued while the training for the crew members that were already appointed started. Next to actual training sessions, Martin took part in strategy meetings together with some of the brightest minds in philosophy and anthropology that could be found on Earth.

The whole crew of the mission consisted of sociologists, linguists, biologists, engineers and a handful of reporters next to the diplomatic corps of seven people led by Martin.

On day zero, he stood in line with the others as Captain Persson gave her departure speech. Martin was a little nervous and very proud not only because of such an important mission he was sent to but also because hundreds of reporters and dozens of cameras transmitted these moments to over eight billion people who watched the event in the live stream.

But there was still a lot to achieve until the actual first contact. So he quickly calmed down again and got himself distracted by the routines that followed. Only an hour later, the Captain gave the order for departure and the engines ignited. Another five minutes later, they passed into Transspace. The 30-ly journey would take them one year, one year of further preparation on board.

Martin's crew and the other departments had a tight schedule. Physicists analysed the available data from the probe's information stream from the Rana system. Martin's diplomats and negotiators went through all their strategies and worked together with the Sociologists on studies about settlements and derived potential social structures that could give them hints about the character of their aliens. For now, they called them 'the Rana'ans'.

Arriving in the Rana system was less spectacular than Martin thought. The blackness of the space there followed the blackness between the systems. The only difference was a star that shone a bit brighter than usual. They still had two days until they were supposed to reach the designated orbit.

Martin also knew that it was not planned to meet the aliens directly after their arrival. So even when they arrived, they had plenty of time to acclimatise and get acquainted to the situation. The plan was a detailed half-year observation mission before going into the next phase, the first contact. But at least, arriving was a change for good for the surprisingly impatient diplomat.

He was not the mission lead, but in the council and so he had enough to do and enough to think during the two days of impatience. As soon as the ship reached the orbit of Rana 3, Martin's mood immediately changed. His work mode switched from stand-by to alertness. He noticed that on the whole ship. Everyone woke up from inactivity as if they were kept in sleep chambers all the time like they did in old sci-fi stories. Besides the rumors that spread in the canteen and the bar, also several work protocols seemed to autostart. The plans were detailed and so everyone on the ship including him and his team knew what to do.

Probes were prepared. Camouflage surveillance drones were sent to the ground. Translator systems were set up for learning mode. Science Teams started to make theories. And Martin absorbed all the information for his first contact strategy.

The following weeks brought an inflation of knowledge. The probes on the surface of Rana 3 worked perfectly. The translator AI learned the new languages within a week. In the same week, the crew had already gathered a lot of geographical and sociological data. As soon as the translation matrix was ready for processing, the working teams augmented their observations with spoken footage from the aliens.

Martin had learned the name 'Kret' for the first time two weeks after the arrival. It was their name. That's how the aliens called themselves - the Kret. It became an important milestone. Later on, Martin thought that it was the moment where the Kret turned from an interesting phenomenon into his aliens, his life project.

Martin was concentrated, meticulous and became more and more obsessed with the details the found out about the Kret. Within three more weeks, he and his team had learned a good deal about the Krets' history, preferences and habits.

Most of the plan for the first contact had been worked out back on Earth already, many philosophical and psychological principles were defined and a universal guide for meeting alien species for the first time was developed. But the information that they collected now would be crucial for the choice of strategy and the details of the first contact. It was his call to make.

Which landing place would they choose? Which people would they pick for interviews? The things that mattered most was what he would say, what would be the first words. A truly giant leap for mankind, but also for Martin himself.

Now, a team of seven plus pilot and copilot were sitting in a shuttle waiting to be transported to the first contact. Another phase of impatience started for Martin. Four of the crew were dressed like the Kret. They wore long robes and lightweight fabrics in natural colors with a lot of white and black. Martin had selected the tallest people in the whole crew, those who resembled the Kret most, to act as pickers.

"Are you ready?", repeated Martin impatiently. "Let's go through the mission one last time. Today, we pick the informers. These are the people close to the leaders we want to make contact with. Fortran, Alyssa, Peter and Renata, you know the dossiers of your contact persons?"

A yes or a nod came from everyone.

"Good. Our Light Shuttles will bring yo to your destinations. You have twelve hours to make contact. Team two and myself will meet the other group of Kret, the politicians. You know that we expect an outdoor gathering in three hours. That is a unique opportunity. We must be there in time."

They had gone through that protocol dozens of times. So after the landing, everything went smoothly. Everyone of team one left for their solo mission. And now team two and Martin observed, how their target group appeared at the designated place. It was time.

All of the monitoring systems reported a good safety level, so Martin dared to step out of his hideout.

"Ashea, ashea", he drew attention to himself by using the Kret language. He had learned some words, but the translation engine would take over soon.

The group of seven Kret who had gathered here in a beautiful outdoor camp looked surprised as they saw the alien. Martin had expected exactly that reaction.

"I am Martin Adebayo", he said. "I am here to meet you."

On the inofficial day of first contact everything went according to plan. Team one successfully made indirect contact with the planet's leaders and team two had a good conversation with the group of Kret that had gathered in the camp. Martin was happy with the results. Especially there was no sign of aggression or fear. All Kret were very curious and open minded. Actually that was something that made him think and later that week, he brought it up to the philosophers in the crew for an interesting red wine discussion.

Now it was time for the official first contact. The mission was about to meet the leaders of Kret for the first time. The political system was significantly different from earths countries and corporations model. The Kret lived in clans of 40 to 80 people. Most decisions were made inside those clan structures. Nine of those clans, however, were there to take the lead and coordinate higher level topics.

The official first contact was supposed to be a formal event with around thirty selected crew members and the matriarchs and patriarachs of the nine clans. It was a banquet in one of the most beautiful venues Martin has ever seen. The food, that originally had been predicted as a potential blunder, was a safe bet after the drones had analysed the kitchen and diet on Kret. But the actual meal was not only acceptable. It was 'extraordinaire', as one of the French crewmembers coined it. It turned out that almost everything the Kret crafted was somehow brought to perfection.

The following months were the actual new ground. While every single minute until the first contact was well planned by hundreds of experts, the time after that was the challenge that Martin had been searching for. Working groups with members of the Kret and the Humans were founded to work on detailed exchange in the fields of history, culture, science and technology.

Martin finally became the first ambassador of Earth. He represented the whole planet here on Kret, while at home, the nations and corporations were still in political, economic and physical war with each other. At the end of the mission, he decided to take a permanent residence on Kret while most of the crew went back to earth. Also a permanent shuttle connection was established that brought people from and to Kret once a month.

One evening, he and his friends, Kret and Humans alike were sitting together as they often did and discussing topics from philosophy to daily business. Amanda, the chief biologist of the crew usually joined as well, but today she and her team worked longer.

Suddenly she jumped into the room and shouted: "You are no aliens!" pointing at Mesa and No'o, two of the Kret in the round.

They looked at each other. No'o was part of the grop of the first contact, one of the first to see Humans for the first time. And now he had the exact same surprised facial expression as in that moment.

"Wait, what?", asked Martin.

"We are related", said Amanda. "We are genetically related. We don't know every detail yet. But we've found human DNA in your genome. Actually that shouldn't be too much of a surprise, right? I mean look at us. Martin, No'o your physiology is so similar."

"But how?", asked No'o in only half of a sentence while his brain clearly needed time to process.

"As I said, more details will follow. But we are pretty sure that the split is around 100.00 to 200.000 years old."

"But there were still Neanderthals on Earth at that time", said Martin.

"Our history", responded Mesa, "goes back very long."

They continued discussing the topic for hours. Throughout the evening also the other biologists joined and shared more details.

At the end of the day, it was No'o who summarised the discovery perfectly.

"What do you think happened one hundred thousand years ago?", he asked and the speculations began.

Mesa

Mesa had an adventurous life. Her Arra, the clan she was born in, was one of the Arram Mas. They were wealthy and influential in politics and large scale topics. In her early twenties, before the humans came, she had the opportunity to be appointed into several councils that debated the present and future of the Kret. She was a good speaker, listener and negotiator.

When the humans came, she was lucky to be part of the group that made first contact. She used this opportunity and kept contact, stayed open for opportunities and was one of the first Kret to learn the human language. But above all, she was curious. She was eager to exploit the knowledge that naturally comes when you make friends with a new species. A whole cornucopia of new ideas and concepts was laid out in front of her.

Later on she became a natural choice for the Hyperion project. Kret and Humans wanted to build the center of the Universe together, a space station almost exactly in the middle between the two home planets. The project was gigantic. The Kret provided their craftsmanship and the Humans their technology and the money and resources of the mega corps.

Mega corps and capitalism overall were concepts that were hard to grasp for Mesa. It took her almost a decade to understand the mechanics and subtle rules, schemes and conspiracies below the surface.

Now she was standing in Hyperions great hall, a huge lobby with more than a hundred meteres of length and a large glass front. From many benches and lounges, you could look at the Keid star system. The planet they were orbiting was Nava, named after the origin of everything in the Kret mythology.

She watched how the star Keid B was rising and immersed the thin atmosphere of Nava into thousands of shades of red and orange. This event only happened about once a week and the hall was full of spectators.

"There's a funny story about Keid", said Rich, who stood behind her. Rich was her Human colleague and friend.

"Keid", he continued in a mic drop way, "is the sun of Vulcan."

"What is that supposed to mean?", asked Mesa.

"Well there was an ancient story on earth, actually it was a famous show, that was broadcasted. And it predicted the first contact with an alien species called the Vulcans. And the planet Vulcan was placed here in the Keid system. At that point, some 200 years ago, that was just a wild guess. We hadn't even discovered planets on other star systems. But isn't that a coincidence? Us standing here now looking at Vulcan."

"Well, if you say so", said Mesa. "I also have a story for you, Rich. You know about transspace, right?"

"Yea, who dosn't? I'm a scientist, of course I know Marla Lay. Why do you ask?"

"Yesterday, I received some news from one of the collaboration teams, you remember them? They made a transspace discovery regarding time travel. It's just theoretical stuff, but it made me think. What if time travelling was the reason for us to exist? Some starship travels back 100.000 years and colonizes a planet. And that little colony develops into us, the Kret?"

"But then why don't you have all that technology?", asked Rich. "You Kret are very sophisticated and educated, but you have a lack of at least three or four disruptive tech discoveries. You should have had all of them from the beginning, right?"

"Yeah, you're right of course. I was just thinking."

But the topic continued bothering Mesa. She was not a scientist, but she treated that topic in a scientific way. She became obsessed with it, but in a positive, non-destructive way. After reading all available papers about it, she discussed the matter in detail. First with her biologist friends, then with the physicists she knew. And as a last step, she started publishing articles about it. At the peek of her obsession, she wrote the famous book "3000 Generations of Humans", where she enrolled all the details of her research and the progress that had been made in science since the topic started forming in her head.

Marisol

The year 2195 was a special year for Marisol. It was the 100th anniversary of the transspace theory, that was sitting in the heart of her life - privately and professionally. Marisol was a physicist and worked as a navigator in the Hyperion science fleet. She served on a ship called "Kret 3".

The science vessel was a rather large ship with more than 200 crew members consisting of Kret and Humans alike. Marisol was from Earth, Madrid to be precise. But she was at home in space. As the navigator, she knew all the stars by heart, but she was also very capable with the AI and the transspace algorithms that were used to travel between them.

After the Gemini missions had ended with mission 144, the known universe had become huge and the opportunities, especially for science projects were vast. Besides the main worlds, Earth, Kret, Proxima Centauri 3 and Hyperion, there were 18 outposts, 40 space stations and four big terraforming projects ongoing. All of them needed supplies of knowledge and technology.

Additionally there were countless missions into uncharted territories or unexploited resources like asteroid fields and gas clouds. The science fleet was organizing all that demand.

During the celebrations of the anniversary, Marisol and the crew of Kret 3 were on a mission to a micro black hole. One of the high res telescope arrays, that were stationed on the outer borders of the known space had discovered this anomaly, that was about sixty lightyears away from earth.

The celebration ceremony was transmitted via ultra fast transspace arrays to all science and engineering vessels of the fleet and the Kret 3 crew threw a big party.

"I heard we've just arrived officially in the Nightshade system", said Alex, one of the probe engineers to Marisol. The star system had been named after their mission, 'Nightshade', which was a great honour. Everyone wore their mission badge with even more pride than usual.

"You're absolutely right", answered Marisol with a glass of Spanish red wine in her hand. "My calculations show that we crossed the Oort cloud of the star system about an hour ago."

"That's cool. So we arrive some hours ahead of time?"

"No, not really. The captain gave out the strategy to be cautious with approaching the little black beast. So we will fall out of transspace sooner and travel the rest of the way with normal speed. That will cost us three days."

"Oh I see. But also good, more time to recover from the party, isn't there?"

"Haha", laughed Marisol. "Yes. But I don't know if we should overachieve on that goal."

26 hours later, this ship was scheduled to drop out of transspace. That was usually not a big event. But this time many interested scientists and engineers came to the bridge to watch. Right after the drop, the high-res telescope phalanx would be focused on the black hole and everyone was eager to watch the first live footage of the anomaly.

"One minute to go", announced Marisol in her role as the chief navigator.

"Everyone, prepare for a little shake", said Captain Dars after some more seconds.

Then the screen turned white and the ship went through some turbulences, more than expected. Then the screen turned black and then white again. It was flickering.

"Gordon, what are we seeing here?", asked the captain.

"Nothing", answered the technician hesitantly. "Sir, I don't know what else to say. I see no error messages from the telescope feed. What we see is what the telescope sees. I think". The last part, the 'I think' was not very convincing it was more like a question, but to himself or rather the system he was operating on.

"That can't be", said Dars. "Drone C4 to the gazebo."

The gazebo was the go-to leisure spot on the ship. There was a bar, that served food and drinks. But mainly it was famous for its large windows. The only real windows on the ship.

Twenty seconds later, the front screen of the bridge streamed the footage of the drone. They saw the gazebo, but on the outside the sky turned black and white just like on the telescope feed before.

"No, that can't be", repeated Dars. "Marisol, what's going on? Where are we?"

"Sir, I don't know. I've checked the navigation sensors. They don't catch any stars for calibration anymore. Even when the sky is not white, there are no visible stars. So I can't say where we are. It must be the influence of the black hole."

In the moment, she spoke it out, the shaking got stronger and the flickering of the sky increased. Everyone on the bridge was trying to get a seat or at least a grip on the wall. The first gravitation systems started beeping, which meant that they could not balance out the external forces anymore. The ship was out of control, while all the sensors showed Marisol that it was not moving at all.

And then it stopped. No shaking, no flickering. The stars were back. Everything went back to normal.

"Can I have some damage reports", said Captain Dars immediately. "Gordon, Marisol, what's up?"

"It seems like the Dublin drive is broken", said Gordon. "I can't get it online anymore. It died. Ionic engines are running and electricity and life support within normal range."

The Dublin drive was the facility that created the tunnel into Transspace and therefore the possibility to get home again. So the situation was concerning.

"How about the comms?"

"Transspace Microtunnels for communication seem to be intact", answered Gordon.

"OK. Fine. We're stranded, but we can contact the community. That's good. Marisol? Where are we exactly? Any surprises?"

"I have bad news", she answered. "Look!"

She pushed some buttons on her workstation and the feed she had seen also appeared on the big screen. It was labelled 'rear view' and it showed a planet filling half of the screen that looked habitable.

"That is unexpected indeed", said Dars. "So what's this?"

"That's the bad news. I don't know. I interpolated the navigation data and could not identify our position."

"What exactly do you mean?", he asked and added a command. "Comupter, please show us the front view again. Look at this. There's Orion down here. And the Plejadis."

"I know. But they look off, especially when you measure with nav precision."

"Kret", said Fela looking into one of the side screens. She was one of the Kret scientists. "This is Kret."

"Rear camera back on main screen", said the captain. Dars was also a Kret, but the Kret didn't grow up with aerial views of their planet. So he didn't notice in the few seconds, the planet had been on screen. But now, he clearly saw the silhouettes of the continents.

"This is really bad news. So we're back at the start of or mission? Traveled there within a minute. Who's joke is this? We are pranked, fellows."

"I don't think so", said Marisol. "Look at the C4 Drone. It clearly shows the planet through the windows."

"Ok. Gordon, could you please open a channel to the headquarters? And the rest of us, we go to the gazebo."

While Gordon typed and gestured busily on his workstation, the rest of the group, around twelve people including Marisol and the captain went to the Gazebo. The view was beautiful as usual. A brightly shining planet, a red shimmer where night and day had met and a clear and starry sky. It was just not the place they expected to be.

"Sir, I can't reach anyone", said Gordon through the intercom. "None from the headquarters, none from Rana station or from the planet."

"But you said the comms were working", said Dars and it looked like speaking to the ceiling.

"Yes Sir, I double checked this as well. They are working. I just don't reach anybody."

"That can't be", said Dars more to himself and then he went on to the group "All right, back to the bridge. Everyone to their workplaces. Marisol, can you set a course to Rana Station, please? If they don't answer the phone, we have to pay a visit."

Back on the bridge, Marisol plotted the course by using the planet Kret and the sun Rana as navigation points because the stars were not a reliable source anymore. The ship ignited its ionic drive.

Four hours later they appeared at the place where the station was supposed to be. But it was not there. The station was gone.

"Sorry Sir", said Marisol, "I'm 99% sure that we are at the right place. I have no explanation for this."

"Hey all", said Fela the Kret loudly to the whole room. "Look at Kret. It's green and all looks right, but our city structures are not there. Here, west of the mountains between the river deltas. There should be housings of a million arras or more. That is where I come from. But where is it?"

"Oh no", said Marisol, "oh no. Do you know the book '3000 Generations of Humans'?"

"Everyone knows that book", said Dars. "It's a classic. What do you want to say?"

"Wait, let me check something. You might not want to hear that."

She turned to her workstation and let the AI run a quick simulation. Then her face turned from a glimpse of approving pride to a deep frown.

"You remember that I told you, the stars are off, right?", the others nodded waiting for the punch line. "They are not. They are absolutely correct. But it's not the stars of the year 2195.

The closer star constellations are off by some arc seconds only. Everything points to constellations how they existed 100.000 years ago.

We ask ourselves why there is no space station? Well, because it does not yet exist. We ask ourselves why there is no visible city structure on Kret? That's because the Kret don't even exist yet.

And If I may have a guess, then that we are ... this crew is the origin of the Kret. We are the first humans that colonized or better will colonize this planet. We are the first of the 3000 generations in Mesas famous book that will follow."