"Are you seeing this?" he asked.

"Yeah." she replied.

They abandoned the ship's course and moved closer.

"What should we do?"

"They haven't seen us yet," she said. "We shouldn't interact with them. Nothing good ever comes from making contact with a primitive, indigenous..."

"They clearly need our help!" he cut her off.

"I know... but if we do this..."

"Don't you see? Everything they told us about them was a lie!" he pressed. "That signal belongs to Gen Ship 298465! They said it was pulled into a black hole. We mourned for the first ever lost generational ship! A planet's worth of embryos and souls. Mourned for eons. Mourned for nothing!"

"There was no reason to believe that wasn't what happened," she said, staring at the beautiful blue marble floating on the hologram in front of them. "They didn't send a call back to Base Planet. They didn't join The Collective."

"Don't you want to know why?" he whispered, in awe of all the data being pulled from the planet.

Earth.

That's what the descendants of Gen Ship 298465 called the planet.

"Wait a minute," he said, punching buttons into the console. "Something isn't right here. They're eons behind in their technology. I can barely find any signs of the Gen Ship's influence."

"That's not all that's weird..." she said. "Look at their moon."

"It's a good imitation of one, but that's not a moon." He replied, seeking even more information from their Gen Ship Intelligence. "That's not even remotely natural."

"The GSI says it's a Celestial Energy Collector, built around a red dwarf star," she replied. "This kind of tech shouldn't even exist, and yet, someone used it to replace the planet's main satellite and stay camouflaged as their moon."

"There are no signs of life in the megastructure... but it's not dormant," he replied, rapidly scrolling through the data pouring in.

"It's filtering a continuous stream of energy to the planet," she said, straining to understand the data. "This is... what the hell?... I've never seen this type of electromagnetic force... I think it's... alive? ... some type of organic, evanescent, almost sentient energy. What is that energy?"

"My question is 'why'?"

"Why?"

"Why do the descendants of Gen Ship 298465 have access to this technology that fits the label of 'extreme-tech', yet every other type of planetary technology is beyond primitive?" he sat back and shook his head. "This doesn't make any sense."

"You're right," she whispered. "They don't even have the most basic of planetary defense. Their broadcasts show that they have no idea about the incoming Coronal Mass Ejection from their Sun and yet their civilisation fully runs off electricity. This electromagnetic pulse will destroy them."

There was a beat of silence between them before he answered.

"It doesn't have to."

She narrowed her eyes at him and scowled.

"We are manning a Generational Ship, and we have skirted enough of the rules as it stands," she threw back. "No more detours."

"Are we going to just watch their civilisation die? Degrade into even more primitivity than now?" he challenged. "Gen Ship 298465 clearly followed the rules. They found a planet with life, integrated their DNA with the highest-level sentient beings, made themselves a new home and look what happened? They're worse off now than we ever were at Base Planet, without even the means to make contact with The Collective. What if that happens to us? What if we follow all the rules only for our descendants to devolve into unsophisticated beings only one rung above beasts, unaware of a planetary extinction event with no one to warn them, let alone save them?"

"You want to save them?"

He did.

But this went beyond breaking rules.

Interfering with an established Gen Ship civilisation was expressly forbidden!

"I want to know what went wrong here. I need to know. I need to make sure we never have to be saved." He replied, taking control of the Gen Ship's Intelligence and guiding them towards the concealed Celestial Energy Collector. "I'll set the ship in orbit beyond the moon. We'll take a scout ship to Earth."

"The scout ships are built to survive entry into our Destination Planet, not Earth's atmosphere," she replied, her voice shaking. "Not to mention the fact that every scout ship holds embryo sacs and regeneration pods and generators. 'No trip should be wasted'. That's The Collective's first rule for every Generation Ship. Or have you forgotten?"

"It's not going to be a long trip and Earth's atmosphere will be... tolerable..." he replied.

"Tolerable?"

He turned to her, his gaze firm.

"Listen. I know the rules. I know our duty. Our mandate. We spread high intelligence to all planets with a semblance of sentient life. We let every new civilisation develop at its own stead and in the end, this allows for the development of the most comprehensive laws to govern a perfect universe." His voice was solemn. Determined. "But for that to happen, I believe that every civilisation created by a Gen Ship has to survive. Gen Ship 298465 is the only Gen Ship that has ever failed the mandate. Who knows? Maybe this civilisation holds the key to the most important law for perfect intergalactic existence. If we let them die, this possibility may die with them. Can you live with that?"

She let the words wash over her.

He knew that she'd thought about it too. To create this civilisation, the human race, Gen Ship 298465 had integrated with bipedal hominids, the closest type of living beings to their own at Base Planet. They may have looked a bit different now, but these beings were still a part of The Collective, just like every other species out there with their DNA marker. He was right and she knew it. They couldn't just watch a civilisation collapse and do nothing.

Saving Earth was bigger than them both.

"Okay," she finally said.

---

The human unclasped his arm from mine when I finished narrating how we ended up on Earth. Humans weren't telepathic. That was the first sign of trouble. Telepathy was the main feature in every new integrated form we created on every planet we settled on. But not humans. Touch allowed us to share our telepathy with them.

Yet, despite using touch, human thoughts were too scattered, too conflicting and too unintelligible to read, which means they could only communicate with us via speech. Without the organs necessary to receive and interpret the vibrations of their mouth sounds, we relied on sight, quickly learning to interpret the movements of their jaws, reading the words from their lips to understand them.

"Did you get all that?" one of the humans asked his friend.

"How weird is it that they speak perfect English?" the one asked replied. "And just like back home too."

The first man chuckled and pointed to another man. "Egor here experienced the whole thing in fluent Russian."

"My name is Vladilen." The one pointed to replied, a grumpy look painted on his face.

We were in the presence of five human men, whom our initial host explained were important members of various governments. Our host, the first human we contacted, explained that she was not important enough to host us on behalf of all humans, and that these five men were. The fact that humans were not of one parity, one mind, one tribe and one objective was another deeply troubling realisation.

It was slowly becoming clear why Gen Ship 298465 had failed in its objective to join The Collective.

"Enough, you two!" another of the five men spoke up. Our host explained that he held greater authority than the others in that disquieting hierarchical social structure that I was beginning to recognize as the defining feature of this civilisation. "The aliens seem to be able to project their telepathic thoughts in the native language the person touching them. But the important thing is that whatever they're telling us is exactly the same. So please, stop wasting time and give us a report of what you just saw, Captain!"

As the man who had just touched me went about the highly inefficient communication method of repeating and retelling our telepathic communication for the fifth time, my thoughts went back to our arrival here.

At the decision to save Earth, our Gen Ship had been too far to arrive in time to stop the solar flare that wiped out all electrical components this planet relied on. Upon arrival, amidst the chaos of their collapsing civilisation, our Scout Ship had barely survived entry into Earth's dense atmosphere. Most of the ship tore off or was damaged and it would require a significant amount of time to regenerate and heal enough to carry us back to the Gen Ship.

Our host, the first human we met, met us with kindness and graciousness. She explained her occupation as one who grew food for other humans. Explained a lack of ability for every human to access nourishment for themselves, while a great amount of nutrients was simultaneously wasted, and this was yet another disheartening feature of primitivity that further sank our hopes. This planet's civilisation was riddled by too many drawbacks to enlightenment.

It was difficult to be in their presence and do nothing.

This is what finally broke me and my partner.

We made the choice to unleash the Scout Ship's drones, programming them to install power towers across the planet as was the mandate for every Gen Ship upon arrival to a new planet, right after DNA integration with the highest-level sentient beings. That Earth had no evidence of power towers, or even the ruins of them, meant that something awful must have happened to Gen Ship 298465. Their descendants were able to integrate with the native Earthlings, for human DNA was firmly bonded with our Base Planet DNA, but something tragic must have happened after the integration that stopped them from carrying out any more Gen Ship mandates.

The man I had just touched finally finished restating our telepathic communion.

"Good. That tallies with what he's told the rest of us." The man in charge said.

"Is no one going to mention what they said about the moon?" one of the five men asked.

"I'm more concerned about what they call their 'mandate'," the man in charge said. "They integrate with the highest-level sentient beings of a planet and take over. They're here for conquest."

"Hey!" our host exclaimed, posturing wildly. "In case you haven't noticed, they just saved us from plunging into the stone age by building us these power towers after that solar flare killed everything electronic! Everyone on the planet now has access to free electricity!"

"You're right. Everyone has access to this tech," the leader said. "From the docile layman to the ruthless men who hide in caves, planning our destruction and the radical, fascist dictators who are hell bent on taking over the world! Everyone! They didn't save us. They condemned us!"

Our host blanched, her skin turning pale.

That couldn't be a good sign.

"What happens now?" one of the men asked.

The one in charge looked at my partner and I.

He smiled.

For the last month on Earth, living in company of our gracious, lovely farmer host, we had started reading human faces and were quickly learning that their expressions sometimes didn't match their words. This was a clear case of this type of mismatch.

"The aliens say that this has happened before," the man said. "We're not aliens, so it's clear that we beat them once. I say we keep it that way."

One didn't need telepathy to decipher the malevolence in those words.

I was the one who had insisted on visiting and saving this planet.

What had I done?