All forms of life are different. Shape, size, color, texture, voice, and a hundred-thousand other features might easily distinguish one from the next. It was with no small sense of pride that the Third Prime Congregation of Malakais had coined the phrase "We so divided - All stronger united."

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Despite this cheery sentiment though, it was undeniable some species paired together better than others. The U'Larak and San-Saium might bond deeply over the finer points of fate mapping. Reshi and Renaris both drink in the same blood red sunlight and claim it to be more pure than any other system.

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However, Renaris and U'Larak begrudgingly manage sharing space with one another, malice built on the sentiment of heresy to the unspoken union - the U'Larak claiming them to be slaves to superstition. This atop their starkly different physical needs compounds to form some rather tense trade districts. One suffering in the others natural environment while affixed with effective albeit uncomfortable BSO devices.

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Many in times of great strife and anguish feels a burning. A simmering distaste for their fellow galactic residents that with each passing comment, each look from irregular eye, and each sneer delivered from foreign mouth that threatens to rise to an unsustainable and destructive boil.

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But this does not happen. Tempers cool in time. Memories rise through the steam of clouded mind, bringing perspective. Bringing sound. Bringing music.

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The Humans had been the first. In some ways, they might even be considered the founders of the entire Third Prime. Though at that time it was simply The Prime, given that there had been no knowledge of the previous two wiped out in cataclysmic events of the cosmos.

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It was a great shame they never went on to see what would come of them. Of what their small action of rebellion in the face of annihilation might manifest.

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Eight of them drifted through the unblinking void of the cosmos, their home-world finally collapsed, brought to temperatures completely unsustainable for their lives. In the impartial blackness, with no aim and no purpose, they sent out a broad spectrum signal to anyone or no one at all. Their transmission rattled through the great nothing, pawing at each passing star. Channel 10.55.7; 771.

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First, it was jovial. Fast. Some mockery of their fate. Scornful. Willing to dance until the lights shut out and they had to be escorted - or rather smothered, out of existence. But that fell through. That thing we now collectively know as 'Jazz.'

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In the last hour of their transmission, something else was played. The roots of so called 'Jazz.' It was slow. It was haunting. It brought with it all the beauty of a flower brought to bloom, and all the tragedy of one born unto the shade to wilt away quietly. It needed no words to speak, nor guide to follow. It was call and response. It was the breathing of life and rattles of death. It was all the joy that was and shall be, and all the grief passed and yet to transpire.

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It was 'Blues.'

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What was found from these waves which bounced through eternity, their senders long deceased, was the one common ground every consciousness could share. The heartache of loss. The fear of joy for the bitter than must come. The unity of love, joy, and hope paralleled against the inevitable trudge of loss, grief, and anguish.

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Soon those phantom waves were joined by new ones. Some decades later a third chimed in. Then a fourth. Until soon, a galaxy once thought devoid of life became a swirling starscape of music, alight with an ever growing array of sounds. The strange airy tunes of the Kek-an. The thunderous beats of Renaris coldroms. The violent and clashing percussion of the U'Larak.

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But among all that new noise, one station is universally reserved. No formal writ of this was ever published. Rather, it needs no speaking. No declaration.

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10.55.7; 771

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For that airway was carved out of time long ago by those eight doomed travelers. One need only tune in momentarily, in times of great doubt, to remember the only truth that ever really ends up mattering.