Earth had an expanding interstellar empire; for decades they had been locked away, trapped inside their solar system, barely able to send manned spaceships beyond their closest neighbouring body. All they had sent into space since that point in their spacefaring history were probes and space stations. 

But in an impressive period, they had not only gone beyond their solar system, they had started sending expeditions to distant corners of their galaxy, out towards the rim. 

To put it in galactic standards, most alien races took galactic exploration slowly; whether you used warp drive thanks to crystals which could provide exotic matter - nature’s own gift to Faster than Light travel, naturally forming wormholes to jump planet to planet, or lightspeed ships which just reached under the speed of light, most powers expanded slowly, one or two systems at a time in a spherical pattern. The humans preferred that approach, and they just sent more ships out expanding into larger spheres. 

Vast swathes of the galaxy were opening up, and according to rumours that reached the councils of the empires, republics, and federations of the Milky Way galaxy, some humans had even reached other galaxies. 

So many people scoffed at that, although the races who had the power to get to those galaxies were not too quick to dismiss it, although they were sceptical of a comparatively more primitive race achieving the same feat. They had been exploring the galaxy themselves, but at a zootkoor slug’s pace, although the Vantraxi creation of hyperdrive had allowed them all to throw aside naturally occurring wormholes, which many races had adopted as they were easy enough to spot, and even simpler to manipulate. 

Okay, some people were lost to them, but statistically speaking, wormholes were the best way to travel outside of hyperdrive, which simply used special crystals to fold space on itself, while similar crystals were capable of harvesting exotic matter from higher dimensions and use it to create warp bubbles, but the humans didn’t use those methods. 

Many races who met them didn’t understand how the humans could do it, just travel through space. But that wasn’t all that frightened them about humans. 

They were capable of appearing instantly through space. That was why so many races were scared of them. While many races who waged war against each other sought to conquer the heart of their enemy’s empire, it was another thing to achieve since there were ways to detect a warp jump or a wormhole; with the humans, it was virtually impossible. 

And then there was the humans’ age. The humans existed in a relatively boring part of the galaxy, in a remote arm of the galactic spiral. Only a few races had bothered to visit them, but they were merely for scientific research and to set up a unit disguised as the legendary Men in Black to prevent humans from discovering alien involvement in their affairs, and to prevent aliens from taking advantage of the primitive humans and give them technology they were not ready for. 

For centuries since their discovery when an expedition made a routine pass through their backwater system, located in a boring and unremarkable point in the galaxy, some races had debated if the humans were worth the trouble of invading, or wiping out. The debate was no longer ongoing, as they were an interstellar power, and what a power. 

And then the humans began exploring space after discovering a unique Faster Than Light technology of their own. And it was a unique form of space travel, out of the norm for space travellers. 

What they found shook them to the core, and made them relieved they had never tried to conquer them, but the regret they’d never tried to wipe the humans out grew the more they learnt. 

-8- 

Earth had only been sending out probes and few unmanned missions since their mid 20^th century, but this changed later on. Their ambitions were boundless. Millions dreamed of sci-fi like battles against powerful aliens, others wanted peaceful exploration, but they wanted to go into space, but their technology limited them. The humans had been using rockets which burnt huge amounts of fuel at a time and they weren’t able to get more than a few people at a time into space. 

But that was set to change. There were always plans, but funding was the issue. The mid-21st century saw a boon in space exploration for humanity, a new space age had begun. The old romance of astronauts and giant rockets was a thing of the past.  

Ever since the Chinese built the largest railgun cannon, and launched the first reusable rockets into space towards the moon to set up an outpost there, only to be followed by the Americans, who went ahead and built an even larger cannon in a game of ‘Mine’s bigger than yours,’ only for France and Britain to launch spaceplanes rather than spend so much time and money on cannons, before South Korea successfully designed and built, with the aid of Artificial Intelligence, the first skyhooks and then combined the technology with their own version of space planes, and flung them out, further and deeper into space, towards the planet Mars. 

Not to be outdone, China and America sent spies in to steal Korea’s secrets on skyhook technology, before they improved upon the designs by a factor of ten. America because they had been too slow to take advantage, and the Chinese because they didn’t want their new dominance to go unchallenged. 

Say whatever you want about sci-fi programs like Star Trek, or movies like Pacific Rim, where the human race was united in a common cause; all you needed was one country to ignite a spark, and the others improved upon a new trick and made it better, or came up with something bigger and better. 

But colonising Mars turned out to be trickier than writers and visionaries believed; the red planet was perpetually saturated with radiation from the solar winds, and the dust clouds would make living there extremely hard. 

You could barely even see!

That was to say nothing of the problems of shipping water, cleaning the water, and finding an energy source, but while the colonisation of Mars was forced underground and some of the problems required a little creative thinking which stretched human ingenuity to its limits at the time, it was a massive boon to space exploration with the landing on Mars by an increasing number of people was the start of a great age of space exploration. 

Skyhooks were built around Mars, and ships from Earth were thrown deeper and deeper into the solar system, cracking open asteroids and tearing the mineral wealth and returning it to the colonies. The lunar settlements became a collection of low-gravity cities, with everyone living underneath life support domes; telescopes and probes were given the task of exploring the rest of the solar system.

It was because of these probes which were sent close to the sun, and the discoveries of new chemicals and gases which were later mined in the gas giants, that the first commercial fusion reactors were built, and then later research yielded the fusion drive rockets. Every country had their own version, some were bigger or smaller, but followed the same principles as the prototypes. 

Suddenly all countries, regardless of their size, had invested a small chunk of the solar system. They had to; space was their future, whether they wanted it or not. 

Small space habitats were built in orbit around Earth, before similar ones sprouted up around Mars and Venus, which was also colonised with the help of air-ship like colonies. Many had not lost hope that Planet Hell could be terraformed and some magical method could make the planet habitable for humans; some even dreamt of transforming it into a jungle world since it was so close to the sun, but it was a pipe dream; it was never going to happen. 

Vast swathes of the solar system were visited and explored. Space stations were being built, and as the various countries got better and better. 

Many eyes turned to Titan; the largest moon of Saturn had long since been eyed keenly as a possible alternative to Mars as a world to migrate to. It was the only moon that possessed an atmosphere, and it was held by a greenhouse gas effect which made it warm. And there was water present on Titan. It was only thanks to the skyhooks around Mars which threw ships towards Titan probes were able to visit, and the fusion rockets took scientists and researchers there. 

LIFE!

Life existed on Titan! 

The discovery shocked and excited everyone, since it meant humanity was not alone in the universe - okay, the life was very basic, and the life forms on Titan weren’t capable of making a fire, and setting themselves up on the long road of technology, but it didn’t matter. There were bacterias on Titan, which would go on to clean the air and water of Earth after being abused for decades. 

Plans were going ahead to send Slower than Light ships off beyond the solar system, but so many spent years trying to find some faster way, some way of beating the terrifying distances between stars and planets beyond Earth. So many wanted to do it to make their mark on history, others were motivated by scientific greed, the need to make a quick buck and put their names in books. 

They wanted to find the holy grail of space flight. 

They didn’t want to go slower than light, they wanted to travel faster than light. Long since believed to be a quirk of sci-fi, so many scientists had debated, argued, haggled over the whole concept. They had argued about higher dimensions, warp drives, and wormholes. They spent years pouring over Einsteins’ equations, as they tried to find a loophole that could give them a way to zoom across space without blowing themselves - or the universe - to kingdom come.

But they found nothing. No Crystals.

For years there were thousands of experiments, thousands of failures; the 40 year plan to crack open the asteroids of the Oort Cloud, and tunnel down into the carcass of Mercury and send in armies of robots to mine them all to build the mirrors to create a Dyson Swarm was over, and it led to the creation of Krugelblitzes, to mine antimatter. A few years later, and a small fleet of prototype interstellar starships were launched, propelled into space by antimatter engines and ramscoops. They set off on a long mission to find new solar systems. The fact they were likely one way trips was not taken lightly, but they had no choice. 

But these ships were their greatest hope for a place among the stars. Loaded with genetic material and plenty of people willing to sacrifice family. 

It was always the way, whenever you looked for something, you couldn’t find it. But whenever you weren’t looking for it, then something turned up. 

It was the same here. 

A group of scientists had discovered parallel universes by discovering time travel; while this discovery was shocking enough, especially when it became possible to visit the past (okay, it wasn’t the past they knew, but it was better than nothing), how did it relate to space travel, never mind faster than light? 

Like space travel, so many time travel experiments, be they practical or thought, relied on loopholes to Einstein’s equations, but what if you shifted sideways into another universe? It worked with time travel, and very quickly explorers, adventurers, and unfortunately criminals found their way going backwards or forwards in time; this was all ignored when a bright spark lit up in someone’s mind and they acquired the technology and they applied it to space travel. 

A space ship prototype was quickly found and modified with a drive which overtook the furthest expeditionary ship; when the expedition arrived in the system, and the crew and passengers saw the prototype FTL ship, both were shocked but delighted. They had faster than light. Instead of using space, or worrying about the laws of time and space in their home universe, they just shifted sideways through dimensional space instead of worrying about coming up with complex means of rewriting the books on physics. 

But when the good news broke out, an even brighter spark came up with an even better idea. After a bit of rejigging with the time travel portal devices, this bright spark was able to teleport someone to the moon! Later they teleported them to Mars! 

Quickly space ship technology was rendered obsolete. Forget antimatter starships, these were the real deal. Skyhooks, fusion drive, all were rendered obsolete as space ports were rebuilt, and began catering to interstellar teleportation instead, and soon people teleported to distant planets and moons. 

Suddenly the galaxy saw millions of humans travelling through space, arriving on worlds and colonising them. The different powers encountered them by chance, and they were terrified by what they saw, as the humans explored and spread over the galaxy. 

Wars with humans became common, but the humans wiped them out; if there was one thing the humans agreed upon, despite their different nations, if there’s a threat, then they will wipe you out. Humans, together, strong. 

And then, just as the various human governments - and millions seemed to be appearing, spreading like a plague as the humans found something better in not being united - were looking outwards, towards the local group of galaxies and beyond, another bright spark devised a new means of travel, and suddenly other universes were opened up to the humans, other times. The humans began meddling in the histories of the different timelines, and they gave their younger ancestors new technologies, and they began expanding in those realities. 

-8- 

The shocking discovery made the various powers wonder if they’d be better off leaving the humans alone, but some wondered if they should conquer the humans, and plunder their technology, which was getting increasingly advanced, out of lust, greed, and jealousy. 

Unfortunately, the humans lashed out first; they had discovered in other timelines, some versions of the galactic powers had launched attacks against Earth. They were simply launching a pre-emptive strike.