"Peace For All Mankind"

General Jon-Tau stared out the window, looking at the blue planet overhead. Somewhere down there in Aemrik was an officer ready at any moment to deliver orders to the orbiting warstation Jon-Tau stood in at this moment. And somewhere in the nation of Meslex, an opposing general was willing to deliver orders to Meslex’s orbiting warstation. Jon-Tau was taught that the use of warstations was decided upon long ago to make war more humane, to keep it off the planet. By the present day, the staff necessary to operate the warstation’s weapons, repair malfunctions, prepare meals, and a myriad of other operations now rivals that of the planet they fought over. Regardless, it was Jon-Tau’s job, and he was only too willing to perform the services Aemrik required of him. As he sat in his desk, awaiting orders, Jon-Tau heard a knock on the door.

“Come in!” he shouted. The door slid open, and Pol-Xi, the resident scientist of Aemrik’s warstation, stepped in, hands behind his back.

“Ah! Pol-Xi!” said Jon-Tau warmly. “How are things? Have you managed to get the hadron cannon back to normal yet?”

“Not yet, sir,” answered Pol-Xi. “But I found something that I think you would find interesting.” Pol-Xi smiled. Being the weapons technician aboard Aemrik’s warstation was the only respectable career he found himself suited for, but the perfect opportunity to become the scientist he always fantasized about had finally fallen upon him.

“While repairing the hadron cannon, my men tried examining every little aspect to find the flaw. We decided it may come from the parts of it that are, you know, under the floor. We begin taking things apart, looking deeper and deeper, and we find…”

“Yes?” asked Jon-Tau, intrigued. “What did you find?”

“This!” said Pol-Xi has he pulled out one of his hands. He opened it, revealing a pile of fine dust, and blew it into Jon-Tau’s face.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” screamed Jon-Tau.

“Sorry about that,” Pol-Xi apologized, still with one hand behind his back. “It’s soil. Not like the kind back home, but it’s still natural soil.”

“You can’t be serious. There’s nothing natural here.”

“The dust in your face says otherwise. I begin to wonder if maybe…”

“This entire warstation is natural? Well then why don’t you stop trying to repair the cannon and just grow a new one?”

“Well, I suppose it’s possible that…maybe this whole place was a natural satellite of Earth that was converted into a warstation. It’s been almost 3,000 years since the earliest known mention of the station. Details are sketchy about its origin.”

“Do not be ridiculous. I suppose you’ll say Meslex’s warstation is natural too? And Inglon’s? And Zhaen’s?”

“They could be.”

“No. None of the warstations are natural. Especially not ours. Ours is the largest and the most powerful. A total construction of Aemrik’s army. The pinnacle of human achievement.”

“If you insist,” said Pol-Xi, rolling his eyes. “Can I show you one other item of interest?”

“Are you going to throw it in my face?”

“No,” answered Pol-Xi as he dropped a sheet of metal on Jon-Tau’s desk. A picture of a familiar planet adorned the top of it, while the rest was covered with a series of bizarre symbols.

“What is it?”

“I took a class on archaic linguistics in college, sir. I don’t remember much, but from the look of it I think that this writing is an ancient form of Inglin.”

“Well, we all speak Inglin, don’t we? What does it say?”

“I’m sorry, sir. Although this is technically our language, millennia of memetic mutation has warped it so that Inglin then barely resembles Inglin now. You may as well ask me to read a completely foreign language.”

“Oh,” grunted Jon-Tau in disappointment.

“I can tell you what one part of it says, though,” Pol-Xi offered as he pointed at one segment of the sheet. “‘1969’. Those are numbers. A year, I believe.”

“1969? So this thing came from the future?”

“Whenever this sheet was made, it came from a time when they used a calendar different from our own. By my estimate, it has to be at least 5,000 years old.”

“Where are you going with all this?” asked Jon-Tau impatiently.

“I have a theory, sir. Suppose our warstation really is natural in origin. Someone would have to be there first for there to even be a warstation in the first place. My guess is that this is…some type of plaque to honor the first settlers.”

“From five thousand years ago.”

“Yes, sir,” answered Pol-Xi. Jon-Tau sighed and pinched the space between his eyebrows before looking up.

“Pol-Xi, we pay you to make sure the weapons on this station are in proper shape, not to tell fairy tales. Unless your little ‘scientific studies’ improve our military potential, then you’ve just wasted your time, my time, and the time of the good people of Aemrik. Out!” he shooed. Pol-Xi hastily ran from the room. Jon-Tau looked back at the window and saw another planet. This one was red. He forgot the name, but remembered it was named after a god of war. He began to wonder if Aemrik could convert the red planet to a warstation, like Pol-Xi claimed was already done. Meslex would be helpless then. He quickly dismissed the notion and picked the weathered plaque up off his desk. He looked at its symbols a final time before shoving it into its drawer, a curiosity to never be retrieved again. Its text, forever unread, was as follows:

HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH
FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON
JULY 1969 A.D.
WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND.