— VJOOM PS-SHH-SHIIIT TUDUM
RADIO NEBULA 69.99 FTLM![Cosmo-jazz, sounds like a swarm of space mosquitoes flies straight into a saxophone, starts a full-on group orgy inside it, and their collective itch turns into pure audio terrorism]“Well, well, well…
We’re still alive.And you’re listening to another episode of the podcast
‘Night with Melody and Jackie Rho™’
on Radio Nebula 69.99 FTLM—
the only station that, according to Jackie,
broadcasts…
across the entire Local Group of galaxies
using faster-than-light modulation.Hell, just thinking about that is already messing with my head.
Third damn Sunday we’ve been on air, feeding you this third-rate cosmic crap… December 13th, 3479—SST.
And as usual, every Sunday,
from 21:00 SST
to 09:00,
we’ll be right here with you.Who’s ‘we,’ in case you somehow forgot?
Go screw yourself, I’d say.
Because by now you should know our names
better than your own damn relatives.”
[Jackie leans toward the microphone, lightly tapping the stand with her nail]“With you all night long will be
the one and only, everybody’s favorite,
Dick Melody.And of course, right next to him—
the most charming DJ you’ve ever heard,
Jacqueline ‘Jackie’ Rho.That is… me.
By the way, Dick, listeners are still sending messages to 555-6996.
We’re just not reading them…”
[Dick already opened his mouth—clearly about to tell the station owner and every listener to go to hell—but Jackie raised her hand, cutting him off before he could say a word]“Yeaah… last time you almost had a breakdown reading replies.
I won’t torture you again.
But one of the listeners, Selly’Marrak—a thirty-nine-year-old Trophonian…
which is basically a teenager by Terran standards—
asked a question that might actually interest a lot of people.”
[Jackie shifts her tone slightly as she reads]“‘Hi, Jackie.
You’re so smart—maybe you can answer something for me.
I asked at school, but the teacher keeps dodging it.
And you’re nice, so I’m sure you’ll actually explain it to us… the younger ones.Why does the entire galaxy have to live by human standards?
There are so many planets, so many species—
but we all have to learn and speak
Cosmonglish.Our time is measured in SST—Sol Standard Time.
Even in the United Galactic Nations,
humans dominate.Do you really think
you’re the center of the universe?'”
[Jackie lifts her eyes from the panel]“Maybe…
we answer Selly?”
[Dick shrugs, muttering quietly]“I’d answer Selly short and simple…
And you’d get all sad with that face of yours.
Then you’d spend the next hour yelling at me.
So… I’ll let you handle it.
Well?
Why are we humans such assholes of the entire galaxy?”
[Jackie forced a smile. Dick felt it.
She spoke softly, but there was weight behind her words]“I’m going to answer this the long way.
Because the short version turns into xenophobia
and dumb slogans about how ‘we’re special.’…Selly, I understand how this can look unfair from the outside.
But there is a reason for it.
Once, humans on the planet Terra looked up at the sky and asked themselves:
Why are we alone?
Where is the other intelligent life?
Why is the universe so vast, hundreds of billions of stars,
and no one is knocking on our door?They even gave it a name. The Fermi Paradox.
The universe is 13.8 billion years old.
Hundreds of billions of galaxies.
Each with hundreds of billions of stars.Even in our own Milky Way, there are billions of potentially habitable planets.
Life should be everywhere.
But there was nothing.
No signals.
No probes.
No traces of megastructures.
No ‘Hello Terra, we come in peace.’And then humans went into space.
And it turned out, life does exist.
A lot of life.Hundreds of billions of life forms in our Milky Way alone.
And hundreds of intelligent species, just like you, Selly.But here’s what surprised us.
Almost none of you were technologically ahead of humanity.
Most civilizations were at earlier stages of development.
And that’s not your fault.
The universe is still young.
It’s not even fourteen billion years old.On Terra, it took nearly five billion years
for intelligence capable of reaching interstellar space to emerge.Almost half the age of the universe,
just for us to appear.For the first one or two billion years after the Big Bang,
there were no heavy elements at all.No rocky planets.
Only hydrogen and helium.Sol and Terra formed earlier than average
in the galactic distribution of habitable worlds.We simply ended up in an early wave.
For intelligent life to reach space,
it takes billions of years.And something else.
Ridiculous luck.
A moon nearly the size of a dwarf planet, which is already rare.
Without it, Terra would have been far more violent and unstable.
Luna acted like a stabilizing resonator, slowing things down,
creating the conditions life needed to develop.Like Dick and me… in a way…”
[A quiet, almost playful breath]“…But even with Luna, it took five mass extinctions.
Millions of evolutionary dead ends.
And only one species out of millions
made it to the stars.Scientists estimate that depending on planetary conditions,
the path from single-celled life to an interstellar civilization
can take anywhere from three to twenty billion years.And the average lifespan of a star
is only ten to twelve billion.Many simply didn’t have enough time.
We’ve found traces of extinct civilizations.
Remnants of attempts.They didn’t make it.
It just so happened that humans got lucky.
Not because we’re smarter.
Because we survived.
And when we entered space,
we became the very ‘visitors’ we had been searching for.We helped dozens of species accelerate their technological development.
We taught them how to build ships.
We shared mathematics, navigation, engineering.
The Trophonians, Selly…
your first orbital stations were built using human blueprints.They teach this in your schools.
All throughout our history, we searched for aliens.
And in the end…
we became them.For hundreds of others.”