FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

~Commander, you are needed on the bridge.~

A groan filled the private sleeping quarters as the ship's commander stirred, snorting out before slowly opening his eyes. How long had he been asleep? Not long enough, to judge by the softly glowing display that was the only source of light in the small room, as well as the sluggishness that filled his body. Cracked shells, he'd have to adjust the heat pad again, it wasn't keeping him warm enough when dormant.

Yawn, stretch, slowly slide off of the sleeping ledge and stand there, swaying, for a bit until the sensors in the room had brightened the lights enough to comfortably see. Another stretch, then a quick drink of water and rapid preening session to make himself presentable. It would have to do, not enough time for a proper cleaning session.

A quarter of a unit after the request went out and the Commander stepped through the sliding doors, entering a bridge full of excited activity. Apparently he couldn't even get some sleep without things going to dung around here. ~What happened? Report.~ The mind-voice restored some order, it was rare that he ever had to 'yell' to do so, a point of which he took a little pride in.

~Sir, we cracked the system that the native species is using.~ One of the technicians announced, sitting in front of a glowing holoscreen and scrolling through bright images. ~It's a giant database! Well, tiny compared to what the Galactic Federation has, but giant for such a primitive species! And they even use it to communicate! Our translators have been able to use this as_their_ breakthrough, turns out this silly species doesn't have a single language!~

~What? At this stage in development they should!~ The Commander huffed, stepping up behind the technician to look over her shoulder. Such garish colors on some of these, one would almost think that it was the Raptors all over again.

Perfectly nice species, to be sure, but NO taste whatsoever when it came to color choices. The brighter and more clashing, the better they seemed to like it.

~Well, tell them that, sir! We've counted over a thousand distinct languages so far, and that number is still going up! And that's not even getting into regional dialects! The translators are going to hate this.~

~Tell them to consider it a challenge, then. Do they have main languages encoded on the chips yet?~

~Not yet, sir. Just a second, they said they're finishing up the first five and posting them... now.~

Suddenly the nonsense symbols on the page started to make sense, as the translator chips implanted within the language centers of all the crew's brains began to download the new languages.

~... You know, somehow I was hoping that knowing the language would make that image make more sense. It does not.~ The technician sighed, then muttered in a mental undercurrent, ~What in Naraka's name is a cheezburger, and why does that small creature want one?~

~Alright, our orders are clear. By Galactic standards this species just meets contact standards, and first contact we will make.~ Really, to go this far in such a short time. The scout ship that had stumbled across the radio bubble that the civilization was putting out had estimated it at a radius of 300 light-seasons, and to have progressed to sending probes in that tiny amount of time was downright impressive for a single lone species. ~Well, technically they don't, but the Federation has stated that they'll be there within a hundred seasons, and are progressing so fast that they want to start picking brains now.~ Any species that clever needed to be inducted and damage control put into place before they ended up blowing up half the galaxy in a few thousand seasons from sheer curiosity.

~Stations, everyone. I don't want another Yingax incident, so if you so much as SNEEZE out of line you better have a good reason why! Are the major communication lines tapped into?~

~Tapped into and starting to worry the locals. Might wanna hurry this up, Commander.~

~Good, let's get this going. What was this planet's name again?~

~Earth, sir.~

Taking a deep breath, the Commander stepped forward and sat down before the recording panel. Quickly, he made sure that his crest and mane was in order and laying neatly before sitting up straight, slitted eyes staring straight ahead as the light changed colors to indicate the equipment was broadcasting all over the little blue, white, and green ball on the screen.

~Species of Earth. We are the Chikrix, one of the species of the Galactic Federation. We extend a formal invitation from the Galactic Federation to join it, after a trial period of mutual information exchange...~

To Be Continued...