[Quick Write]

The spaceship itself was old- really old, thousands of years outdated even by conservative estimates. It had no FTL capabilities, no onboard oxygen production systems, no way of producing sustenance, and it was still using liquid propellants. It was also extremely small, only having the capacity to store six crew members, a modern ships mess hall was capable of storing the entirety of the ship thirty times over, and still having room.

None of that was truly the peak of interest though. It was its cabin that was interesting- precisely the dimensions needed for a humanoid creature. Did life evolve into humans when it reached intelligence? Were they capable of understanding us? Were they carbon based? Perhaps we truly weren't alone.

All of that was disproven.

We deciphered the faded lettering on the side of the craft: Voyager 6 in a forgotten tongue, pre-intergalactic humanities attempt to reach for the stars and make it to Alpha Centauri, only for navigation to fail, flinging the ship into the proverbial space-boonies. Long since then, humanity had already colonised and terraformed any planets within a 5 light year radius of Hub World- Earth in that same forgotten tongue.

Despair, for humanity truly is alone. Despair, for the universe is barren.

It was nearly 300 years ago that humanity finally took its first tentative steps into real galactic travel. Since then, we have made many great advances in space travel. We've developed FTL quantum engines that fold space around the craft to allow manned travel to distant galaxies and back.

It was with great hope and anticipation that, in the year SD56, the Galactic Reconnaisance Force set out to find intelligent life beyond our Solar System. By SD133, we had exhaustively searched the entirety of the Milky Way with no luck. So we looked to our neighbouring galaxies.

Over 150 years later, in SD289, we've found no other intelligent lifeforms amongst the dozens, hundreds of galaxies we've traversed. That isn't to say we've found nothing; no, we have found evidence of other species that attained legitimate space travel, but nothing of their societies remained.

What happened to them? Where did they all go? These are the questions that have risen in our expedition. These are the questions we are now trying to work out. And we fear that it is the answer to these questions that our equipment is detecting, rapidly approaching from the direction of a recently destroyed civilisation in a galaxy on the fringe of our radius.

The nebula cloud had a pearlescent sheen to it as it slowly drifted, undulating on nonexistent winds. Atum blinked hard to activate her iris cam, and sync with the ship's sensors. The program instantly overlaid information, pinpointing her location, the relevant time, and ... stopped. Three little birds chased each other in her peripheral, round and round. Leighdee said the newest update allowed the user to choose their favorite influencer as the the loading animation. Atum wasn't tempted. The price was astronomical, even if it really was the influencer live. They would just be a blurry figure you could never directly look at.

Atum steered her exploratory craft closer. It was sleek, quick, and, most importantly, only big enough for one person. It didn't have the top end life support, but she was still able to explore for several weeks before returning to the main ship. Leighdee had requested a double once. Atum shuddered. That was too much time with another person. Secretly, Atum enjoyed the vast emptiness of space. There was no one to run into. And there hadn't been for the past millennia, but they were still sending out crews to search for other life.

She dodged a stray curl of the cloud. Without the program telling her what it was made of, it wasn't safe let it touch her craft. That was how Mahn had died three cycles ago. In all her years as part of the exploratory crew, she had never seen anything like this. Little glints of her craft were reflected back at her, as if the cloud were made of tiny mirrors. Or holoscreens. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility that this was all just an influencer stunt. The contender season was approaching. All influencers would be desperate for looks, likes and support. As if making all the social rules was really so enticing. Really, Craft Master and Scrum Lords had the most power.

The program replaced the birds with an exclamation. An error scrolled across her vision: Components Unidentified. Auto-report Generated.

Not influencer made then. Atum queued up the start of a report. Whatever this was, most likely the fabricators could find a use for it. A glint flashed in the corner of her eye. Atum briefly ignored it, before she realized it wasn't the program. Something was in the cloud.

She flexed her hands and the craft whipped around. The program scanned the cloud again, faster. The same error popped up. Atum dismissed it entirely, letting her own eyes do the scanning. A reflection bounced around the cloud. Atum tracked it frantically. There! A curl dissipated. In its place was a mirror image of her craft, down to her own face.

Mirror her lifted an arm, flapped her hand, then, when Atum didn't react, tapped its head, the universal signal for comms. Atum flexed her ears, flicking on the comm. It was empty except for the manufactured static noise. She rumbled her inner ear to rotate through channels. One off from her regular channel, she stopped. Her own voice echoed back to her.

"Atum, this is Atom 1. Atum, please respond to Atom 1."

"This is Atum." She let her suspicion and questions hang off the statement.

She had drifted close enough to see that the only Atum had faint stripes around the edges of her face and her eyes were violet.

"Atum, this is Atom 1. Be advised, the nebula is a weak point in your dimension and crossing is not viable."

"How do you know?"

"Atum, this is Atom 1"

"Yeah," she broke in, "I understand that you are Atom 1."

She muted herself as she swore quietly. Amateur explorers really were tiresome.

"Atum" - the other person hesitated briefly, just long enough for Atum to mentally fill in the 'this is Atom 1.' She was really starting to hate this person. - "Be advised, you are a distortion dimension, not a parallel. Travel between is not viable."

"And what? You're in charge of guarding the weak spot?"

Her counterpoint frowned. She recognized her own wrinkle line in her forehead, a sure sign that she was trying really hard not to spout off. Maybe Atom was also irritated.

"Atum...I am here because you are here."

"So if Leighdee had come, you'd have a Leighdee as well?"

Atom shrugged, "Yours is distorted. Therefore, we cannot accurately predict your outcomes. We do know this weak point will close in the next 2-200 lightyears."

"That," Atum sighed, "that's not even a unit of time."

Atom nodded her head, sagely. Atum restrained herself from rolling her eyes. Did she really look that condescending all the time? Maybe it was the stripes. Atom opened her mouth again. Definitely the stripes, Atum decided.

A glint zigzagged its way through the cloud and her counterpart disappeared, like someone walking past a mirror, a flicker of movement and gone.

A message was blinking at her. Her internal system asking, Did you want to record?

Atum pressed her head into the restraining chair. No one was going to believe her. She manually brought up the exploratory map and marked the area as empty.

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