Hello! How are you kids doing out here today? I see you guys have been walking for a long time, so come on into my little café for some leg relief! What? You have other better things to do with your time? How about your chaperone, oops, I mean, teacher?

Hey, he thinks you should come in as well! So all of you get in and take some of those nice cooling drinks I’ve prepared but nobody wants to spend money on. Don’t worry, it’s all on me!

Now, how about I tell you kids a story while you relax? What? Don’t say you’re too old. You’re never too old for a story.

A long, long time ago, before this universe was born, there was another universe that existed before it. This universe was almost identical to the one we live in now. The physical laws were the same; heck, even some of the races were the same. What was different was the comparatively low number of sentient races. In our universe, you cannot travel for more than 3000 light years without bumping into another sentient species, and then getting into a playground scrap. In that other universe, there were only about 5 races in each galaxy on the average. The result was that most races have more than ample room to grow and expand without the wars that was so prevalent in our world, our universe.

So these races grew, and expanded. After several billion years, they all came together to form a grand alliance, a meeting of sentient minds, and living souls. Pooling their resources together, they prospered as never before. Time travel, resurrection of life, omniscient thought, nothing was beyond them. They thought themselves gods, with the authority to do whatever they wanted.

Now, I’m not saying they were wrong, or that they were right. All we can do is to try to avoid their mistakes. Somehow, though, I have a feeling we may never reach their level of ‘progress’. Good or bad? That’s a question for the philosophers to debate till the end of time.

Things were fine and smooth sailing until a genetic freak, a mishap of a genetic experiment gone awry, somehow survived his termination. He was dreadfully powerful, and grew up with hatred and ambition, as well as a ruthlessness that was rare among their ‘civilized’ society. Not much was known about his actions. What was known were the results.

War after war was instigated by him, weakening the entire alliance. He slowly built up his own territory, out of the wreckage caused by the massive destruction. He proceeded to built up a cult of worship among the populace of his worlds, evidently so battered senseless by the fighting that they were willing to pledge their allegiance, their lives to whomever could promise them safety.

He amassed massive armies, and developed terrible weapons, then proceeded to expand his power. According to the records, he had attained immortality, so he had all the time to prepare, and to learn devious tactics.

He conquered world after world, system after system, galaxy after galaxy, until he had almost half of the entire universe in his hands.

Even now, that sort of thing still boggles my mind. Half of the entire universe! Wow.

The remaining races finally gathered their own power, and launched their own last ditch counterattack. It succeeded in destroying much of his strength, but he had one last card to play.

Seeding countless incredible gravity inducing devices among space, he managed to overcome the natural expansion of the universe, and induce a contraction instead, culminating in a Big Crunch. He figured that if he was going down, he was not going alone.

The cosmological constant overcome, the remaining races tried their best to destroy the devices. But they could hardly muster enough force to decisively destroy enough devices and protect their homes at the same time. Thrust and counter-thrusts were launched by both sides, but the universe continued shrinking.

After a few more billion years, it was becoming clear that as the universe shrank, a form of momentum had built up. Even if the gravity devices were removed, the Big Crunch would still occur. But the Dark Master had one last trick up his sleeve.

He would employ a time travel machine coupled with a singularity field to travel into the future. There was no reason not to assume that another Big Bang would occur, though theories about the start of time when the universe started were not exactly very confident of the results. But something was at least better than nothing to the Dark Master.

By traveling a few million, maybe billion years into the future, he could build up another empire using the young, naïve races of the new universe. Then with the might of the entire universe behind him, he could challenge the Creator, whom he believes exists. One thing was clear about the Dark Master. He had an abiding hate of life and beauty, and he may even blame God, if he even exists, for his wretched life.

Knowing his enemies would also be trying the same trick to escape the coming apocalypse, he launched his empire’s final forces in a final orgy of destruction before he exited for the future with seven of his most faithful followers and all the technical information he possessed.

The rest of the universe suffered greatly from the final attack, and lost almost all their advanced temporal engines. Well, all except one. Quite convenient, eh? Actually, it wasn’t so much saved as prematurely launched. Its sole occupant was a soldier-scientist, who would later be known as the Survivor.

The problem with a premature launch was that the exit time had not been determined yet. Not all the knowledge of the times had been stored in the engine either.

As it happened, the engine appeared at the time where the first civilization in the universe was starting agriculture. Very fortunate, and an incredible stroke of luck.

The Dark Master and his followers, however, would be fifteen thousand years late. Obviously, their calculations were a little bit off. Maybe they should have tried waiting instead. But that might have meant years of staring at boring animals scratching for survival, not at all an interesting idea!

So the soldier-scientist, whom we shall now call the Survivor, stumbled onto the very first civilization in the universe, in an incredible stroke of luck. He didn’t waste any time in making his presence felt, in various little ways.

He would prod and nudge the emerging civilization through their development. A Promethean gift of fire here, a boon of bio-engineered harvest crop there. This resulted in the First(their real name is a bit to difficult for us to pronounce) achieving spaceflight and interstellar travel rather faster than anybody in the previous universe. Of course, they never did find out who their mysterious benefactor was, even after they obtained the scientific method. The Survivor disappeared into the depths of space, confident that his charges would be able to prosper on their own. He had more pressing tasks, like finding out what his enemies were doing, if they had even appeared yet.

So finding out that they were indeed alone(so far) in that rather small universe(getting bigger), the First concentrated on achieving the apex of scientific and technological knowledge. They manipulated psi, dabbled in souls through their research into the strange shapeable energy phenomenon that was almost as pervasive as psi in the universe(we call it mana), they did all manner of stuff, some of which are still very much in evidence, like the Dyson sphere tourist attraction over at Galloway’s Stop.

The universe was also one big place, but they did manage to get all over the universe(admittedly, it was much younger and smaller then), playing hard and fast with rules of evolution and genetics. They set themselves as gods of the time, and indeed they were; nobody else was around to argue the point.

To change the situation somewhat, they started tinkering around with other races scattered across the galaxy. These would later be known as 2nd Gen races, comprising of the Precursors, Xel Naga, Galen, Elder, Haydon, and a few more, all immensely powerful, but still pinpricks compared to the First, who had power even over souls.

To settle once and for all the debate over predeterminism, which all the research into souls and creation did not yield an answer, the First decided to have a grand experiment. They located a large number of almost identical worlds in similar galaxies, and set up conditions in the nearby systems that almost everything was the same on those worlds. Then they introduced some unicellular lifeforms, and waited to see their results. By all their calculations, conditions set up identically would result in a bipedal, sentient race on all the worlds, and even much of the same history. However, they were also aware of tiny induced errors that would become more pronounced over time. The difference between each world would serve as final proof of the determinism theory.

Oops, got carried away there! To put it in plain English, they tried to play god and creator, and the fates. That better?

Three guesses what these identical worlds became, and the first two don't count, kids!

Then something happened. The Dark Master and some of his handpicked servants appeared, and managed to grab hold or attract a third of the First's population, through persuasion and promises. He also developed the technique that would later be known as the Horror Mark, a way to create thralls from sentient beings. Most importantly, he had found a way to challenge the Creator itself, whose existence had finally been theorized to really exist.

Don’t ask me what that means. That’s what the historical facts say, even if our own scientists are still stumped. I’m just telling it as it is.

The Dark Master was even more powerful than the First, and wasn't afraid to hide that fact. He started the Soul War, a strong bid for ultimate power. Although the Master was the singularly most powerful being in existence, he and his forces were eventually defeated by sheer numbers. They were banished to several dark dimensions that they had set up as sanctuaries in case of defeat. They weren't stupid.

But the winners were not unscathed either. Shaken by the loss of so many of their brethren to betrayal and death, and the fact that there were even more powerful forces out there, which were only overcome with great sacrifice, the First decided to finally go for ultimate transcension and merge with the universe, thus escaping the horrors of the Dark once and for all. It wasn't suicide, for they had long since managed to prove the existence of a higher power(soul research had its dividends), and they wanted its protection. Pretty irresponsible of them, but they did make some amends.

They made several powerful beings(these later became gods to uninformed primitives, which most of us were), but more importantly, some of them, the most powerful and wisest of their number, volunteered to stay behind. These brave volunteers sealed their souls to the physical plane, forever locked in the circle of reincarnation, birth, and death. They pledged to fight the Enemy for all time, to defend the younger races, and to do so as a part of the new races.

The First also left behind some cryptic messages for the 2nd Gen races, in order to help them when the Enemy came again.

And the enemy did come again, but you’ll all learn more about it as you walk around the museum…

“So how’s life?” The café owner asked the teacher, as his charges went outside to walk around and explore the museum some more after the short impromptu story session.

“Same old, same old,” the teacher, a tall man with brown hair, who looked to be in his thirties, answered. “Everything’s quiet of late, and it seems we have the enemy licked at our borders.” He smiled in satisfaction. “High Command is still trying to get me back into uniform, heck, they want me to take charge of a task force in Gaddenspy County, but I said no way.”

The owner frowned. “You have the skill and the drive to make a difference. As a Lightbearer, it is your duty to fight. It is a real waste for you to be teaching at a small school here.”

The man laughed. “Then having you here as a café owner in a museum telling stories and selling soft drinks isn’t? Pot, kettle, black.”

The owner wagged a finger at the teacher. “I have done what I set out to do at the beginning, so don’t try that one on me. The future belongs to you and the Star League.”

“We’ve come so far, but there’s still such a long way to go.” The man acknowledged. “I sometimes wonder what the Survivor would think of what we’ve accomplished.” He said to the café owner with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“I think, and I know, he would be very proud.” The café owner, also known to a select few as the Survivor, being and remnant from a prior universe, grinned.

Just a short introduction of sorts to my overall universe storyline, incorporating elements from Babylon 5, Battletech, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, Renegade Legion, and a mishmash of other fiction. I did say before that almost ALL my science fiction stories would be connected, and this would be the common thread to link them all together.

The next chapter will describe science in this wild, wild, universe of mine, like FTL travel, as well as the well known phenomenon known as psi, and the more vaguely defined energy known as mana, as well as the interlink between these two forces and the classic four fundamental forces of the weak, strong force, electromagnetic energy, and gravity.

Chapter three will be focused on the bad guys, their hierarchy, their powers, and their tech levels. A potpourri of nightmares from Call of Cthulu, Earthdawn, and Starfire(people-eating aliens).

Chapter four will describe the good guys and their organization, but that one will be a lonnng time in coming, as it will greatly depend on my finishing my battletech epics first. I mean, surely nobody wants to be spoilt on future events, right?;)

And just for fun, I may put up one of the epic battles that I had already envisioned to take place in this world, occurring during the midst of a giant star going supernova and shrinking into a black hole. The premise would be “War is Hell; Welcome to Satan’s Bathtub”.