Challenge: No humans, or anything pertaining to them at all. That includes human-made or modified things, creatures, places, foods etc.
[AN: Ooooo a GOOD one :D]
Belok took note of the unusual structure as ze approached it. Ze could see that it was made out of ancient hulks of previous civilisations’ stellar vessels, but they had been… conglomerated. Docked, patched and - in at least one case - crashed together into one unappealing whole.
Ze tried all comms avenues including radio and flashing zir ship lights at them.
No response.
It had to have been made. Something like this does not just happen by accident. The accidents looked more like asteroids than… mishmash stations.
As a last resort, Belok matched vectors with the thing and tried peeking into the windows. Those ze could find. There seemed to be atmosphere in there. Thin stuff, and not friendly to zir species.
Therefore, it was polite to dock, and prudent to wear a suit.
The mishmash station did not have any spinning portions or gravity. Belok therefore had to struggle with the magnetic grapples as ze looked around.
Life here was airborne. Swimming though the atmosphere like aquatic life. Most seemed to be… jellyfish.
Some travelled in swarms. Glittering and flashing. It looked almost like a dance. Belok stood still and kept zir arms, legs and tail akimbo as the dancing jellies swarmed around zir.
The comms crackled into life. “…low grade radio transmissions.”
“I can hear you,” ze tried not to yawp, but the excitement was too difficult to contain. “Who is speaking?”
“We do not understand ‘I’,” said the voice. Voices. Talking in harmony. Perfectly synchronised. “You is one colony?”
“I am one individual. Am I talking to the swarm surrounding me? I note that the… lights… seem to be in sync with the audio I hear.”
“We are the swarm Ch'nophth. We are surrounding a new thing. A singular thing inside metal. You carry your environment with you. We carry our environment with us.”
As far as first contacts went, the meeting between the Jelly Dancers and the Riopa was a shining example that very few followed.
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