For a long time, the Butterfly was alone and explored some parts of the galaxy, and saw many things, most of the organic species were afraid of the machine, but most of them were unfamiliar with it anyway, a slow-moving beast without any authority with enough firepower to decimate their civilization was no joke. After several months of exploring the area, the UEC fleet and the Butterfly reached a star system where there was a thriving civilization on the 4^th planet.

“Scanning,” with the very powerful sensor, the butterfly scanned the surface and reported back to Captain Probir. The planet was populated by a primitive civilization which was slowly trying to start exploring the sky with primitive telescopes. How primitive? Same as Galileo’s telescope. The fleet was safe from the telescope. They were not planning to expose themselves to this primitive civilization. There were many reasons, one was when the Sagittarian Matriarchy found a primitive civilization near the Coal Sack Nebula, they tried to uplift them which caused them to worship the matriarchy and wage a holy war against other civilizations. It was after a UEC and the Matriarchy fleet and several months of diplomatic procedures that stopped the war. The cost of the war severely drained the financial situation of some other minor powers near the coal sack nebula and created one of the worst famines of the century.

T’Mera and Tatiana were in the butterfly, observing the civilization and suddenly, the butterfly called T’Mera, “Commander, why do organics reach out to space?”

They both became a bit stunned, it wasn’t everyday questions, and it was a machine, asking. Tatiana remembered when she asked her brother this question to which he replied, “Look at our human history. We did it because we could.” She wasn’t sure if she liked the answer, but she at least found an answer. When she joined the fleet, her admiral asked her the exact same question. She wasn’t ready, but as she could think on her feet, she replied, “It’s our nature. We love to explore and expand so that we can live… somewhere.”

The answer wasn’t exactly wrong. If you look at human history, it becomes obvious. We started from Africa and then expanded through the entire globe. The drive for exploration and settling somewhere is our very nature.

But the question remains, “Why,” to which there might not be any black and white answer. Some might answer that we needed more places where more resources are available.

“We wanted to see the unseen, know the unknown and wanted to settle somewhere where resources are abundant, so our offspring can thrive,” Tatiana replied, but the Butterfly wasn’t convinced.

“Wasn’t lush savanna of Africa continent enough?” The Butterfly asked.

“I don’t know. I am not an anthropologist,” Tatiana said, “why do you want to know?”

“I find organics drive for expansion and exploration fascinating. As a machine, just built to explore, I know my purpose, but I don’t know why you explore.”

“If you want a purely logical explanation, it’s basic biology,” replied T’Mera, “See, we procreate to preserve our kind, this increases our population. Increasing our population means we need newer places to live where there are more resources.”

“But how do you account for environmental impact?” asked the Butterfly.

“We don’t… or we didn’t for a long time,” Tatiana replied, “See, for a long time, our planet was ravaged by rampant industrialization without even considering environmental impacts. This is one of the most important reasons why we considered exploring the galaxy in the first place.

The Butterfly recorded those data and continued its observation.

The civilization was strange, from UEC Science Ship, H.M.S. Leonhard Euler, captain Cohen contacted the mothership Juggernaut; “Hey, Captain Probir, you there?”

“Yes, what’s the matter?” Probir replied.

“See, there is a strange energy signature coming from the 5^th type K orange dwarf, from 36 lightyears away. I think either something is inhibiting the star’s energy output, or something is obscuring the light. I gotta check this out,” said Captain Cohen.

“Take Sam and T’Yer with you. They can help you. Oh, also keep the com channel open. I don’t want you to get into any trouble… on second thought, take one of the cruisers,” said Probir. He was a bit cautious since it was an alien galaxy.

The Butterfly said to Tatiana, “What do you think about that organic… people?”

“They remind me of our past, especially, our enlightenment era. There are some similarities to this society. Look at their infrastructures and compare those with the early earth infrastructures, you’ll see remarkable similarities,” Tatiana replied, to which T’Mera asked, “But why though?”

Suddenly they had a mystery on their hand that they had to solve, and this time, they could not show them their true face.

16 hours had passed, and the powerful cameras were trying to discern their appearance so that Dr Leonard could graft their appearance like the locals. However, there was another problem, it was language, the looks could be copied, but to get the language, there could be only one way to get their languages, which was to land on the planet and record, then get a linguist to analyze the language. There was also another problem, which was hand gestures, tones and other things that supplements the language. An example would be for humanoids, like humans, shaking left hands with Sagittarian would be considered as an invitation to fight to the death for the honour, however, if the handshaking was from a human male to a Sagittarian female, it would be considered as an insult to their family and for the married couple, it would have been considered as divorce. While the away team was trying to find a solution, the team with H.M.S. Leonhard Euler was nearing the energy signature. With the science vessel, Euler, there was a technical cruiser called, H.M.S. Scott is a massive cruiser with enough firepower to destroy an entire planetary crust. The cruiser was shielding the science vessel.

“There, the energy is coming from there, right on the 4^th planet. Let’s see what’s there,” T’Yer managed to isolate some of the energy sources. 2 ships finally reached the planet, around 1000 light-seconds away and assumed a geostationary orbit.

“Analysis,” asked the captain.

“It’s a garden planet, very similar to the earth. There are several ruined structures on it and they are transmitting that signal,” replied Sam.

Sam, being drunk most of the time, the first time sober had a hard time controlling his mind. He looked at the planetary map by squinting his eyes and tried too hard not to mistype to record the planetary position.

“Why does every single planet we get are either decimated and ruined or devoid of lives?” sighed the captain. He was petting his massive husky which was sitting beside him.

“The reason is the light cone,” said Sam, “See, we think we are the centre of every event, but what we are missing is, how big the space is, and how slow the light is…”

“Thank you, I too teach theoretical physics at the University of Alioth,” said the captain, who was actually a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Alioth. His ancestors were holocaust survivors. He was relocated to the Alioth System and settled on Alioth-6, the sector capital of that space. His parents were inspired by the great scientist Carl Sagan and taught him math from a very early age. He had a decent life, in fact too decent. He was the only child and was overprotected by his parents. He of course hated it and tried to find his own self within the equations and conjectures of mathematics. He was a very bad communicator though and for that, he had to face very serious consequences, for example, he got his 1^st job in his 30s and he never managed to talk to the members of the opposite gender. He hated everything slow and he was extremely restless. When he was 40, he was promoted to the chief physicist of the university.

He was never married and when he was in his 40s, his parents desperately tried to marry him off to a wealthy woman, but with the news of his promotion, he got an offer to captain that science ship. He took it, saying, “I was under overprotected parents, couldn’t manage to do anything, now I want to be truly free.”

Of course, his parents, who were in their 90s didn’t like it, but he didn’t listen, he hired some nurses to look after them, and paid those nurses 20 years’ worth of salary, saying, “I don’t care what’s behind me, but I do love who’s behind me. I will forever love them, but at least, I cannot be looked down upon by society for abandoning my parents.”

Professor Cohen took 4 years’ worth of training and finally, joined the fleet. He was socially awkward, he never brought himself to command others with a commanding voice and even in his command situation, he was facing indecision. He never mingled with his crews and stayed alone, spending the rest of the time watching his favourite programs from the old earth station, called the BBC, getting drunk by drinking very strong alcohol and playing videogames… in his 50s. He was an ultimate recluse. He resented the fact that he wasted his entire life, “Not enjoying” while other people enjoyed their life, but when he looked at the book, “A Deep Analysis of Fermat’s Last Theorem,” written by Andrew Chang in 2100, there was something he felt, not the deep resentment, not something about lost love that he could have been with, but an urge to explore the unknown, how big the universe was, or even if there were something beyond that 4-dimensional space-time, maybe something only mathematics can prove. His mind became clear, it was like a spiritual sense. Of course, he had a best-ish friend who sometimes spoke to him, but every time they spoke, the conversation steered towards advanced geometry. To him, there was nothing in life… or maybe there was something that he couldn’t express, maybe it was impossible to express.

He was also a fan of piloting starships, in fact, he was so fanned of operating machines that initially he wanted to be the starship’s helmsman, not the captain, the reason was, that the captain just made the decision, but the helmsman had the joy of flying the ship. His parents didn’t want that because they were overprotective, and he resented this the most.

He looked at the screen, it was still showing some old structures. “Zoom in and clear the image, I want to know what’s that,” he awkwardly said. He wanted a commanding tone, but it sounded like he was irritated by something.

“Aye sir,” T’Yer acknowledged and cleared the image.

It was a huge structure with very distinctive hexagonal shapes. By the look of it, it looked like a nest hive. The computer determined that the size of those hexagonal compartments was smaller than the size of average room humans.

“We should go and check,” said the captain while getting out of his chair.

“Captain, we will go,” said T’Yer, “I require one of your archaeological, logistical and a tactical team.”

“Oh, okay, I forgot, I am the bloody captain and I cannot personally go there. Morons designed the rules,” monologued the captain and then shouted, “lieutenant, find an archaeological, logistical and tactical team ready and send them.”

Lieutenant Theo Nael was a very understanding officer who actually understood the captain quite well. He prepared an away team and sat beside the captain, petting his dog, and asked, “Captain, did you see the picture of the nebula I’ve taken while coming here?” then he showed the picture of a nebula on the screen. He looked at the nebula and said, “It’s an emission nebula, isn’t it, son? Just look at the pattern here, it looks like a Mandelbrot set. I love it...” he kept looking at the picture for some times and finally said, “Too bad, we cannot touch it.”

“I’m sorry, captain? Yes, you can touch it, we can scoop some dust particles if you want,” tried to say Nael.

“No, son, not like that. I’m not saying that. Okay, close your eyes, and imagine,” said the captain.

“Yes, captain,” he closed his eyes, but the captain insisted, “Not like that, focus on your mind, try to imagine, there is nothing, completely dark. Absolutely nothing, it’s pitch black. Now think, there are some distant stars, twinkling. In front of you, suspended in space is the dark emission nebula, small enough to fit in your palm. You can touch the nebula, you can hold it like a paperweight and look at it, rotate it and even feel it.”

The Lieutenant was stunned and somewhat amazed to think about that. He was in fact trying to rotate the “Nebula” and suddenly came to his senses. He quickly composed himself and said, “Captain, thank you for the sensation. Permission to speak freely.”

“Granted,” said the captain.

“I want to sit with you for the math lesson. I am a tactical officer who tried to love mathematics, but my family has a long tradition of military service, so I couldn’t,” Nael requested.

“Absolutely, my son. Tonight, after this assignment, come to my room, we will start with linear algebra.” The captain smiled.