I’m going to be honest with you. I was very wrong when I made the claim that
there was nothing interesting about Limerick Hawthorne’s universe, except
for Limerick Hawthorne. Imagine looking at a painting. In the bottom left
corner, the first thing you see is a creature made of fire, fighting against
his water foes. Keep staring at that fire creature, and that’s kind of all
you’ll see. You don’t notice at first how vast the canvas is, and how many
other things are happening in that painting. You might eventually, but
that’s you seeing in three dimensions. I see in four dimensions, which is
more like looking at an infinite number of paintings, and trying to decipher
a full story from them. When I saw Limerick, the metaphorical fire creature,
he took all focus. As I told you, people who travel the bulkverse are more
clear to me than other events across the branes. What I didn’t realize then
was just how fascinating Limerick’s universe was, and what it would become
after he left. All I could see was him, but I see a bigger picture now. This
is another story about aliens. They evolved from source variants all over
this version of the Milky Way galaxy. They’re based on human DNA, but they
developed independently and spontaneously for reasons I don’t understand.
Some universes just have aliens, I guess. When Limerick disappeared, he left
behind a tear in the spacetime continuum that didn’t close completely. It
wouldn’t cause anyone to become lost in the outer bulkverse, fortunately,
but it was still there, and still dangerous. Scientists from all over the
world showed up, hoping to figure out what it was, and what, if anything,
they could do with it. As it turned out, quite a bit. The rift ultimately
sent a group of volunteers to another world, where they came face to face
with their first alien race.
These aliens would end up becoming the real threat, but they weren’t the
only ones in the galaxy, and it was only a matter of time before they met
some new allies. Things seemed okay at first on the alien planet, but the
volunteers learned some things they didn’t like, and it sparked a
philosophical divide with the natives. Both sides tried to keep the peace,
but they failed. That was when the humans knew they had to escape. The
natives weren’t evil, but they felt dishonored, and in their minds, the only
response was war. In their culture, once diplomatic discussions passed what
they considered to be a point of no return, domination was the only way
forward. Someone had to win, and prove the other side wrong. I’m simplifying
all this, of course, but you get the idea. The explorers managed to get out
of there when they found that planet’s Nexus machine, but the conflict was
not over. The good thing about how Nexa work is that you can block travel
from any one machine, so Earth was safe for the time being. But there were
other Nexa in the network, and the aliens would keep looking for a way to
continue the war. The scientists knew that they couldn’t just leave it at
that. What followed was a series of missions from Earth designed to
establish relations with other cultures, determine which others could pose a
threat to them, procure useful technology and knowledge, and generally
protect the galaxy from these warmongers. The aliens, meanwhile, went on
their own missions, now that they had a working Nexus. They couldn’t go to
Earth, but they went to other planets first, and tried to gain some kind of
advantage. This proved to be more difficult than they thought it would, and
it eventually made them start seeing everyone as just as much of a threat to
their honor as they thought Earth was.
