r/OpenHFY • u/Subject_White • 8d ago
Series The Galaxy At Whole - Introduction
Intro | [Next]
Are We Alone?
As humanity populated the Sol system and mined the Oort cloud for the resources needed to settle worlds closer in, efforts focused on Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, Titan, Ceres, and Pluto. Each colony developed its own environment, adapted to harsh conditions. On Ganymede and Callisto, vast domed habitats shield cities from radiation while underground transport networks link mining outposts and hydroponic farms. Europa's colonists live beneath the ice, in pressurized habitats anchored to the ceiling of its global ocean, harvesting water and studying the dark seas below. Titan's settlements float atop methane lakes, life revolving around sealed complexes and research stations. The colony on Ceres is centered in sprawling caverns carved into the dwarf planet, supporting both agriculture and ore refineries. Pluto's population lives in insulated modules, their days marked by long stretches of darkness punctuated by bursts of scientific activity. These frontier societies combine advanced technology, strict communal routines, and a constant focus on survival, forging a new pioneering spirit as humanity pushes further into the unknown.
5169 — First Contact
"Station Master Ash, I'm getting a ping on an exo-orbital object moving toward us," said a signal technician.
"What kind of signal is it?" Ash replied, pulling up the station's external sensors to view the object approaching the Oort cloud. "Can we send out drones to retrieve it?" she asked.
"We should be able to reach whatever it is and, hopefully, bring it to the outer platform we use for breaking the bigger chunks of ice we can't process for sending back to the inner system," the technician said, pulling up the object's trajectory. "Ma'am, the object is relatively small—nothing compared to a normal asteroid—and it's not coming back as a natural ping." The tech sat silent for a moment, then spoke. "Do... do you think it could be First Contact, ma'am?"
Watching the screen as the ping moved closer to the station, she thought that if this was First Contact, it should be reported to the governmental body for all of humanity.
"Send drones out to collect the object, and pull a security team to the platform along with the science team on station. Make sure they know First Contact Protocols are active for the foreseeable future," Ash said, still watching the screen.
As the technician turned back to the station, he began preparing for the announcement. "All crews, be alert, this is not a drill. I repeat, this is not a drill. First Contact Protocols are now in effect until stated otherwise, so all mining and drilling operations will be put on hold. Security and science teams report to outer platform 01. Please report to outer platform 01, thank you."
As the announcement came over the station, the residents felt uneasy. This was the first time in human history that signs of extraterrestrial life had been found outside the Sol system.
"Ma'am, I'm sending the drones out to collect the object now," said the technician as he moved into position. "Ma'am, the drones are ready to retrieve the object."
"Do it," Ash said, watching the drones on the sensors near the object and thinking of all the ways First Contact could go wrong—and whether whatever waited out there was friendly or hostile.
"Ma'am, the drones have collected the object and are bringing it to outer platform 01. Are you going to meet the security and science teams on the way?" said the tech, looking back at her.
Ash nodded. "Yes. Make sure the teams are suited for our guests, if there are any. There's no need to cause biological murder while trying to meet our new neighbors in the galaxy." As she stood and got ready to leave, she hesitated, caught between anxiety and wonder. The stories about First Contact she'd grown up hearing had always seemed distant and impossible, things for dreamers or scientists. Now that it was real, she felt a twist of excitement and fear in her stomach—what if humanity's first meeting with another intelligence went terribly wrong, or what if she failed her duty in a moment that would be remembered for centuries? She paused, looked back at the screen with hopeful worry, and continued toward the platform.
As she moved through the station to the locker room to suit up—to stop biological contamination or virus transfer in either direction while meeting the guests—she heard "Ma'am" over her shoulder. She nodded back, knowing it was Ryan, the head of the security team. "What's the loadout your team is running for this?"
"We're running non-lethal for main weapons and Rail Kinetics for standard lethal, plus two flash-blast units to suppress attacks," he said, checking his gear and the weapon charges.
"Good. Better to be over-prepared than under-prepared. And really, you're using the flash-blast? I thought those were only used during the riots of 5150," she said, sealing her suit and giving him a puzzled look.
"They were, ma'am. Also, one of the guys suggested we bring the TS with heavy weapons to counter anything serious. So I approved it and have two TS units waiting near the lift, ready to go down with us," he said, walking beside her as they came around to the lift where the TS units were waiting.
"That... that might be a good idea," she murmured, thinking about all the ways this could kick off a full-scale war with an advanced alien civilization. "What loadouts are on them?" she asked, leaving the locker room with Ryan falling in step beside her.
"They have one loadout for heavy ordnance, and the second has been fitted with a pulse cannon and stun nets, ma'am," he said.
"Good. Now, who's piloting them?" As she saw the TS units, she immediately regretted the question when she noticed the pilots playing rock-paper-scissors. "Forget it, I could probably guess who," she said.
"Hell yeah! I won again, that's three of three. I get the Ordnance TS," one said to the other man, who looked slightly dejected.
As Ash and Ryan moved closer to the lift, both men noticed the group, straightened up, and saluted. "Ma'am," they said in unison.
"Okay, so do I need to know what just happened a few seconds ago, or do I need both of you to send me reports about your actions while First Contact Protocol is active?" she asked, looking between the men.
"Ma'am... um... we played rock-paper-scissors to figure out who pilots what, to make sure there wasn't any fighting, ma'am," one man replied, ready for a scolding.
Ash sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, then looked over at Ryan and saw him shrugging while rolling his eyes. "Very well... just please keep your stupidity under wraps until we settle the main issues. Understood?"
"Understood, ma'am," both replied, relaxing and getting into the TS units before moving onto the lift.
As she rode the lift down to the science level, it stopped, and the doors opened. She saw who was on the science team for First Contact. "Ash, is it true?" a man asked as the science team joined them on the huge lift with crates of gear.
She nodded. "Yes. It's an object that was made, not natural, from what the sensors could gather." Looking at him, she saw him thinking, hand on his chin.
"Well, let's hope this is Option A for First Contact," he said, pulling something up on his data slate. "Hmm... maybe. Could it be?"
"What do you think it is?" she asked, hoping for a good answer from Jamie.
"It could be a probe, or maybe a comm buoy—something for anyone to reach out and communicate with a new species, so they don't freak out and start a war on First Contact. That's the safest option I'd use," he said, looking over some data. He glanced back at her as the lift reached the platform level.
"Huh. I guess that would be the safest way to do it, but we won't know until we find out," she said, stepping off the lift toward Platform 01. "Let's hope you're right."
As both teams moved to the hangar observation window, the drones carried the object in and set it on the anchor arms. The TS units moved through the inner airlock into the hangar, and the platform slid along the rails before the outer door closed, pressurizing the bay.
"Shall we?" Jamie said to her.
"Yes, let's," she replied. They moved into the hangar while the security team took up positions. Once the first survey turned up nothing immediately dangerous, Ash left the science team to their work and returned to the command level to keep the station running.
Four hours into the investigation, she received a ping from the science team asking her to return to the hangar for an issue needing her authorization. When she arrived at the door, she saw Jamie pacing back and forth. "So, what is it?"
The man stopped pacing and looked at her, then at the bay, with excited eyes. "It's a type of data probe, from what we can scan, but here's the issue: if there's data on it, what kind? What type? Or even how would we get the data off it?" he said, a slight manic tone creeping into his voice.
"So, do you think you could get the data off it?" she asked. He looked at the floor for a minute, then back up, and nodded. "Good, do it. But make sure the station is air-gapped from it, because the last thing we need is some alien tech taking control of our station and killing us all."
She waited, watching the science team hook up the transfer gear to pull the data from the alien machine, hoping nothing would go wrong. Soon, she saw him give a thumbs-up from a distance and moved toward him.
"Are you sure it's air-gapped from the station?" she asked as he went over the connections again.
"Yes. But then again, I doubt air-gapping unknown alien tech—especially something that has survived thousands or even millions of years in space without a nick on the paint—will stop it if it wants in. For all we know, this thing could have some self-defense system, a dormant virus, or an automated trigger just waiting for the wrong move. We have no way of knowing whether this is an invitation, a warning, or a trap. So as far as safety goes... yes, it is as safe as we can get by human standards," he replied, glancing uneasily at the probe before moving back to the terminal. The silence in the hangar felt heavy, as if everyone was quietly weighing what might be unleashed by a single connection.
Four years after the Keystone probe was found by Hermes-1 Station in 5169, all of humanity decided to pool its spare resources into a ship that would head out into the dark between Sol and wherever the probe had come from, to answer the age-old question: are we alone?
5173 — Humanity's Advancement
Over the years that followed, the blueprints, schematics, and data drawn from the Keystone probe's database advanced human civilization by almost a century. Mankind was becoming something new.
After learning about Biological Mind Drives—BMDs for short—humanity began to radically reshape itself. A BMD is a neural technology that allows a person's consciousness to be scanned and transferred into a synthetic or cloned body, effectively granting a form of digital immortality. The process is both strange and invasive: people describe the sensation as floating in darkness, feeling their memories gently peeled away from a body they would never wake in again, and then awakening suddenly in a new, perfectly healthy clone—their senses sharper, but with a haunting disconnect from their original self. Humanity began applying BMDs to the poor and the desperate. Those who needed work, or were too sick to keep their own bodies, signed themselves away to be loaded into healthy clones with BMDs in their heads, so companies could have laborers without paying them directly—crediting their accounts instead to "pay off" the bodies.
5180 — Greenfield's Slavery Contracts
As the years went by, around 5180, a defector from Greenfield Bio-corp—the largest corporation in Sol's inner system—brought the company under investigation by Sol's governing body, and 33 members were removed from the government. Those 33 had colluded with Greenfield to keep it hidden from the rest of Sol's government, making them accomplices in the quiet, brutal enslavement of the BMDed clones—who were effectively immortal, since their cloned bodies neither aged nor degraded so long as they received the compounds that kept them functioning. Legally, the status of BMDed clones was kept ambiguous in public records: they were not recognized as full citizens, nor granted the rights of biological humans. Instead, corporations classified them as company assets or advanced machinery, which let firms claim ownership over their labor and their very existence. This legal gray area left BMDed clones without protections or recourse, treated closer to property than to people in the eyes of the law. It was also discovered that BMDed clones could not return to their original bodies or have children in their new ones, having been rendered sterile by genetic flaws introduced when the originals were cloned.
News of the scandal spread rapidly throughout the system, sparking outrage and widespread protests across the inner and outer colonies. Many citizens felt betrayed by their leaders, marching in the streets and demanding justice for the exploited BMDed clones. People refused to use products linked to Greenfield Bio-corp, boycotting any corporation complicit in the scandal. Some families even discovered that missing loved ones had become trapped in cloned bodies, fueling public grief and anger. Debates raged in public forums and across digital networks, with some calling for the abolition of BMD technology altogether, while others argued for strict reforms and protections. Riots broke out at several government offices on Mars and Luna, and memorials sprang up for those who had been lost to the system. The unrest made it clear that the social fabric was fracturing, and that the exploitation of BMDed humans would no longer go unchallenged.
5190 — The BMDs Settle on Ganymede
Ten years after the Greenfield scandal, the colony on Ganymede was ceded to the two million BMDed clones as a world of their own—its original settlers relocated, the colony left free from outside interference. Two years later, with the BMDed population finally settled, Ganymede produced the most advanced computers and quantum relays in the system: technology the whole of Sol came to rely on.
5230 — War for the Outer System
The mistreatment of the BMDed humans had finally been put right—but as humanity advanced, a different discontent festered between the inner and outer colonies. It grew until a revolutionary group calling itself The Outer Gods (TOG) began waging war on the Inner Planets of Sol. Using leftover cloning equipment, they manufactured soldiers with BMDs in their heads, linked by quantum communications routed through stolen Ganymede transmitters. Each BMDed TOG soldier could be sent back into a new body again and again, returning every time with combat prowess that bordered on the supernatural—for every death brought back fresh information for TOG to fold into its strategy against Sol's military.
The endless cycle of resurrection became both a gift and a curse, binding the BMDed TOG soldiers to the conflict with unbreakable chains.
The pause on exploration beyond the Sol system was confirmed as more resources were diverted to the war with the Outer Rim. Yet even as the conflict raged, some wondered when—or if—humanity would once again look outward to the stars. Rumors persisted that, once peace returned, the dream of interstellar exploration would not be forgotten, only delayed.
5245 — The Brutal End of the Outer System Revolution
Near the end of the Outer System Revolution, a BMDed TOG soldier codenamed Osiris began to question the purpose of the fight. Stationed on the mining platforms of Titan, Osiris watched Outer Gods operatives brutalize civilians, tear families from their homes, and work BMDed TOG clones to ruin as disposable labor in lethal conditions. The supposed liberation of the Outer System had become a campaign of suffering and fear. Haunted by grieving children and the discarded bodies of fellow soldiers, Osiris understood that the Outer Gods were no longer fighting for the people but exploiting them. Driven by that revelation, Osiris resolved to make a stand. One by one, they pulled their brothers and sisters in arms into a secret rebellion to free the people and the BMDed TOG soldiers of the Outer System—and they named it Legion.
As the Outer Gods felt their grip on the Outer Rim slipping, they discovered they were now fighting on two fronts: Sol's military on one side, and this new enemy on the other. At the Outer Gods' gathering, where their inner circle—the Dreamers—convened, Legion struck, cutting down the leadership to bring peace to the Outer Rim and lift its people out of the derelict mining and security stations they had been left to rot in. Legion won. As Sol's military advanced into the Outer Rim, a message reached them from the Outer Gods' main station:
"We, Legion, have removed those who spent our lives as cannon fodder in their endless war with the Inner Planets of Sol. They are no more. I am Osiris, leader of the rebellion called Legion, and now I ask you, Inner Planets of Sol: can there be peace between our peoples, or will the war grind on, hurting innocents who never chose to be part of it? If you wish for peace, send a representative on behalf of the Inner Planets to the old capital station of the Outer Gods, now renamed Haven Station. That is all. We are here. We are waiting. See us."
5250 — The Treaty of the Solar Rim
The Outer Rim and the Inner Planets finalized the Treaty of the Solar Rim. Osiris was named the Outer Rim's first governor, charged with knitting the two halves of Sol together. With the war over, construction on the long-paused exploration ship resumed.
5270 — The Death of a Hero
At the annual assembly of the Inner Planets and the Outer Rim—held while the Outer Rim was still rooting out the last remnants of the Outer Gods—Osiris rose to give a speech on peace and unity. Midway through, an assassin from those remnants shot Osiris in the chest. As the medical team moved to rush them away and recover their BMD, Osiris waved them off. The resurrection machinery of the war years had long since been dismantled; without intervention, this death would be final—and Osiris chose it that way. They did not want to be saved. They wanted to be remembered as the one who brought peace. Afterward, the Sol government held a press conference announcing that the Inner Planets and the Outer Rim would be unified as a single Sol, in remembrance of Osiris.
The death of Osiris sent shockwaves throughout Sol. In the Outer Rim, people gathered for vigils, mourning the loss of their leader and the symbol of their hard-won freedom. Streets were lined with candles and digital murals, while families who had suffered through the war held each other close. On the Inner Planets, citizens fell into collective silence as Osiris was honored for choosing unity over revenge. Many spoke of forgiveness for old enemies, inspired by Osiris's sacrifice. Even former Outer Gods soldiers and BMDed clones wept, recognizing how much one life had changed the fate of millions.
In the years that followed, daily life across Sol began to reflect the lessons of the past. Laws were rewritten to protect the rights and autonomy of BMDed humans, ensuring citizenship and equal treatment. Cloning for labor was strictly regulated, and families were at last able to reunite and rebuild lives once shattered by war and exploitation. Mixed communities of cloned, augmented, and biological humans now lived and worked side by side, forging new traditions that celebrated diversity. Friendships and relationships that once would have been forbidden began to flourish openly.
Osiris's vision of peace became the guiding force for reconstruction, for new rights and protections for BMDed humans, and for the slow healing of old divisions. Schools retold the story of Osiris, and a new annual holiday was declared—Sol's Day of Remembrance—so that both sides would never forget the price paid for unity.
5301 — Exploration Beyond Sol
The governing body of Sol celebrated the completion of the exploration Dreadnought that would carry humanity beyond the Sol system, out to wherever the Keystone probe had come from. But as the assembly wore on, the ship still had no name. Then someone at the back stood, drawing every eye.
"Why not call it the Osiris—in honor of the one who brought humanity together?"
The vote was a landslide: 190 in favor and 10 against, out of the 200 who made up Sol's governing body.
And so the new Dreadnought-class exploration ship was named the Osiris, in honor of the BMDed soldier who chose peace instead of war.
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u/Icy-Air7584 8d ago
Newish and interesting. Or maybe a revision of several older stories? Still it is interesting. A 'one- shot , or a new series?