ATHENA

One of your renowned writers once said two possibilities exist:

Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

You ever wonder if there's life outside your universe, or if it's all just dead space? Ever wonder what first contact what be like if there were?

Believe it or not, my world never gave it a thought. Not even when the most advanced technology we ever saw just fell into our laps, and jumped our tech forward thousands of years.

But...As it turns out, the lack of wanderlust is justified. We never had to look. Our first contact came long before any archaeologist had the means to preserve it.

Without preservation, we had no way of knowing what we were mining was something our world didn't know. Something our leaders didn't suspect. Something our scientists couldn't control. Something our soldiers couldn't destroy.

That's the downside of uplifting a species; If it's done before we're ready, we're likely to make a mistake. And keep making it, over and over again.

That would be the best case scenario. Worst case? The first mistake is the one that kills you.