Leaving camp early was the first rule of every Chronicler, and I had just succeeded in breaking it. The loud buzzing of the vibrant life of Primordial Earth was both exciting and bothersome at the same time. Having just barely slept through the never-ending humming of the overgrown city forests, I was in a hurry.

“Come on Silver. Don’t stay behind. We still have some way to go before we arrive,” I said, covering long strides of ground while in a hurry. And by long, I mean long enough for an average build woman like me to walk fast around the unearthed roots. I turned my focused eyes to watch my apathetic Android.

“Yes, Eladia. I’m right behind you,” the metal woman uttered, her mechanical tunes giving off the same indifferent feeling.

I couldn’t help but shake my head. Of all the assistants, I had to get chosen by the one with the advanced artificial intelligence.

I, a Chronicler, and my partner Silver, the conveniently named robot, were chasing an important relic of the past. Chroniclers, like archeologists before us, were interested in cataloging and studying important historical events. Divided into many different majors, I was particularly interested in the extinct race of the Nusae and thus, I followed that particular way.

However, today, I would rather have stayed back home, on the new human planet, Yaerus, than ran around on the primeval place called Earth. Even though my job as a Chronicler always led me to all sorts of interesting and rough places, Primordial Earth was probably one of the worst, certainly at the top five of my least-preferable places to be. And the next time a mosquito bit me, I was sure it would rise even higher on the list.

I sighed and kept moving forward, checking around the decayed metal structures that humans used to build in the past. It must have been rough, building all those monstrosities. They were just plain ugly and impractical. Every destroyed building seemed like a gutted, gray giant, devoured by green and mossy plants. And yet, the beauty of it was unmatched.

I stared at my watch, unable to remember if I had adjusted the time to fit the local system. “Silver, could you please remind me of Sol’s and Earth’s day/night cycles?”

“For the third time since we landed, it’s 23,56 hours. And yes, you have already adjusted your watch even before we set up camp.”

“You know, I’m your boss. You should show some respect every now and then,” I said in a mocking, annoyed tone.

The android woman started cackling with short, electric sounds. “Well, if we finally find one Nusae artifact, I’ll make sure to reconsider.”

I was in the middle of climbing atop what it seemed like an old, religious place, an ancient church. On the top of a stone pillar, I stopped to catch my breath.

You shouldn’t have those snacks for breakfast Eladia.

The wind up here was fresh and less humid than down on the ground, in the center of the wet forest. It caressed my face and swept away some of my fatigue.

Earth was considered the Mother Planet of the human species, the third-ranked, Expanded Empire of the Known Galaxy. The stories still told for this place were numerous, but none did justice to the miracle called life. Everywhere my sight fell, a new color sprouted from the ground and all kinds of bugs and flying creatures dwelled the land.

Bugs? I hated bugs.

I turned and searched for my assistant, but Silver was still on the base of the leafy pillar.

“For god’s sake, can you please change and come up here Silver? I can’t find the trail all by myself.”

In what sounded like a monotonous cluck, the Android transformed into a small box equipped with thrusters, abandoning her feminine figure for the comfort of flying all the way to the top in a matter of seconds. I looked as she ascended with ease, holding myself back from having a long talk about responsibilities and professionalism. But still, I always forgot that Silver was bound by Asimov’s Laws of Robotics so that she would follow my every command even if she didn’t want to.

With both of us finally standing on the top of the shattered pillar, I took out my flask full of water and took a long and satisfying sip. By the time I lowered my head, and tightened my ponytail so that my hair didn’t get in the way, Silver had changed back to her usual form.

Some parts metal, other parts holographic, details that made her look like human, Silver seemed like a beautiful human, which was the complete opposite of me.

“Okay, this should be high enough. Can you please run a scan on a five-mile radius? We should get some kind of reading from up here, not like yesterday.” We had already searched all the adjacent areas around our camp, except this one. It was getting late, however, and this was the last place in our list. Tomorrow we would venture deeper into the woods and change our camping site.

This time, Silver seemed to lose some of her rebellious personality, and she lively followed my orders. A short string of beeps and laser lights traveled through the horizon. It would take some time for her to complete the analysis so I thought of recapping the information I already had about the Nusae relic.

Back on Yaerus, during one of my lengthy visits to the Institute, the place where all human knowledge and archives were stored, I had just found something fascinating. While going through a source about the pre-colonization era of the Primordial Earth, I stumbled onto a testimony of some kind, on a newspaper about an object of unknown origins.

The human that testified about the object had seen nothing like it in his whole life, said ‘it vibrated like a living thing and changed shapes in a matter of seconds.”

Nusae, the first of the Lost Species, were known for their cryptic technology, specifically what they currently knew as morphing. Silver, for example, used morphing technology to change into various and practical shapes that helped her achieve her goals easier. The schematics about this kind of technology were discovered back in the early days of Humanity’s Space Boom, making it one of the first complete and detailed info about the Nusae, until today.

Yet, this source was one hundred years old. Bits and pieces were found around the galaxy during that time, but no one could link all the pieces to what it amounted as the Great Mystery. Nusae just vanished at the same time Orihans started to appear. And even though there was little to none Orihans around the known galaxy now, Nusae were close to legendise.

Well, not if I find this relic.

“Eh...there is something strange going on,” Silver suddenly said.

“What? What did you find?”

“I can pick up two weak energy signals, both of similar nature coming from different directions. One northwest of here, the other southeast.”

“Did you run a pattern scan? Any forms of alien DNA? Did the signal’s energy resonated with any of the last relics?” I asked the questions all at once, not sure if she understood what I said.

“I don’t want to disappoint you, but both of those signals seem entirely foreign to each other and to my database, yet somehow similar. Maybe from the same era of some sort? I don’t know. I’m not sure if any of them are of Nusae origin, but they’re surely not originated from Earth. The signal and the complexity of the pattern are out of this world. I haven’t seen anything like it.”

I tightened my ponytail again while falling into deep thoughts. I didn’t have enough time to investigate both of them today. What should I do? Which one was most important of them? As a scientist, I pledged to follow only the facts and nothing else. But, in a twisted joke that fate came up with that, my gut was the thing that made the decision.

“We’re going forward Silver, to the northwest point. We can check the other point tomorrow.” And just like that, I jumped my way to the ground.

Throughout the way towards the northwest point, I didn’t speak at all. My mind was in overdrive, running all the parameters and trying to come up with a logical explanation. Alien signals, possibly not of Nusae origins. Yet, two of them in just a short distance? Could it be a trap? No, Silver would have noticed. But what could be so sophisticated that the combined knowledge of the Known Galaxy Archives wouldn’t recognize?

With every step I took, the anticipation built in my chest. My dark eyes and sun-toned skin almost glistened under my excitement. Many of my colleagues had doubted me up until now, but this was the time to retaliate. I would be the one to find out everything about the Lost Species.

Or so I thought.

“We’re here,” Silver said.

“What the hell is this?” I stopped to gawp at the large, pyramid shaped construct in the middle of what must have been a building square. Black in color, with shining silver marks sparkling under the sun. “If this is a Nusae spaceship, then I’m a prehistoric ape,” I said, irritated as hell.

“Do you want me to run a scan?”

“Yes,” I replied while at the same time tried to hide my discontent.

In under a minute, Silver stretched her hand and cast a beam of intense, greenish light to the black pyramid. When the warning sound came, Silver and I watched each other in surprise.

“It...it…” Silver tried saying something, but she couldn’t.

“It doesn’t appear in the archives.”

I couldn’t hold back a cheer; I had just discovered O. Tech.