This blogpost is part of the A to Z Challenge which begins on April 1st. The goal is to post every day (except Sunday) in the month of April. Each blogpost will be associated with a letter of the alphabet. Check the A to Z Challenge page for more information.
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The Starship Aprilis was a common and unremarkable transport ship built on Earth, back when humans were still bipedal and mostly organic creatures. The ship travelled between the many human colonies that were established at the time throughout the galaxy and served as both a cargo carrier and passenger transporter.
The ship finally met its end when it was stuck in a crushing gravity field off of Taurus Baqara C, which killed all who were aboard and destroyed all the on-board data and most importantly, the ship’s log. Of the ship only a small section survived, which was discovered quite recently several million light years away, in a slow decaying orbit around a black hole.
The remains of the ship offers no clue as to what really happened to consign the ship to its fate. The only document that could be salvaged from the remains is a travelogue, believed to be written by an unknown crewmember. The travelogue offers a glimpse of what life was like for a traveller of the stars in those heady days, thousands and thousands of years ago. Most importantly, it gives us a glimpse of many different planets and what they were like during the time.
The following entries are excerpts from the travelogue. May you find amusement and enjoyment from reading them.
N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z
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Gallimimus
The Planet Gallimimus gets its name not surprisingly from its native intelligent species, which look very similar to Earth’s extinct reptile, the Gallimimus.
The Gallimimus are intelligent in the way that they have consciousness, are aware, and form social groups amongst themselves. Technologically they are almost equal to the medieval times of humans.
It does not look like they aspire to a more advanced state as they have, on many occasions, been less than impressed with our own advanced technology as well as our spacefaring vessels. They are a race of beings who prefer to run and roam wide open lands of lush greenery. To coop them up in a can that rushes through vast areas of emptiness is not their idea of how life should be lived.
In consequence, while they are generally at peace with us, they mostly leave the human settlements alone and only come to trade every once in a while.
I wonder how long this peace between our species will last. It’s only a matter of time before we encroach upon their territory as humankind is wont to do.
*EDITOR’S NOTE: Humans eventually did encroach upon the territories of the Gallimimus and that was when they strove to advance their technological abilities. Despite human interference, they became a spacefaring species but were wiped out completely in the Five Hundred Race War.
Hi Ted - I'm visiting from the AtoZ challenge. I like your scifi theme and am working backwards from G. Out of curiousity, how do the gallimimus communicate with the humans to trade? Looking forward to H.
ReplyDeleteThanks for dropping by! I've subscribed to your blog as well.
DeleteThe Gallimimus communicate amongst themselves using a pattern of clicks and chirps which humans cannot imitate with their vocal chords.
Instead, with humans they communicate by arranging sticks of about 10cm/4inches long into certain patterns on the ground.
The humans used to have translators that could read these patterns but now depend on tablets with built-in cameras that can translate the stick patterns on the fly.