Welcome to the IMET

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But, to my knowledge, nobody had ever tried either. Space was full of new and exciting experiences, so nobody had really cared much about what they could or couldn’t do in the vacuum. The vacuum seemed like the least interesting thing about space. It was just the space between space, essentially. No, what was most interesting for everyone as they pushed deeper and deeper into that empty vacuum was how full of new worlds and exciting life it was. Entire systems of planets that contained not only the right conditions for life, but life itself. Some of it was exactly the same as that of our homeworld, but far more exciting was the life-forms that were nothing like ourselves. The ones that defied the logic and science we’d worked so hard to establish. The ones we thought couldn’t possibly exist. That’s the funny thing about the universe though. The unexplainable happens fairly consistently to where even miracles become everyday occurrences.

Long ago back on a planet we called Earth, many companies strove to explore the nearby solar system. It was considered a monumental achievement to get to Earth’s moon, much less to another planet. This probably seems bizarre to you considering that now entire galaxies can be traversed in mere minutes. But like I said this was long ago. Eventually, the brightest minds of planet Earth found a way to the other planets of their solar system. It didn’t take long for them to colonize and inhabit those planets, either. As I’ve heard from our fellow intelligent species, humans are the only thing that spreads faster than disease. I’m fairly certain he meant it as a compliment, though. Anyways, as we spread out further and further, we boomed our population to overwhelm first our home planet, then the other planets, then our home solar system, and now our local galaxy, which we referred to back then as the milky way.

Once we spread into the galaxy further and further, we encountered more and more life-forms. Eventually, we started meeting the ones similar to ourselves who, through their own brilliant engineering, had built technically advanced ships with which to explore. Upon first meeting with them they were in awe of how primitive our technology was compared to theirs, yet we had explored further than they had. We quickly explained to them that humanity’s greatest virtue is the ability to be tenacious in the face of adversity, or as others would put it too stubborn and stupid to know when to quit. Luckily, these advanced civilizations shared their technology with us, and together we could spread out even further.

And now here we are spread across multiple galactic systems, a member of an intergalactic council and finally unified as a single species out of many. But with all of that exploration and expansion, there are still many mysteries of the universe left unexplored. Like the original point of screaming in a vacuum. Although most of the other mysteries are more interesting and more helpful. Probably not any safer than trying to scream in a void, but you like the others before you have already signed the paperwork to be part of the intergalactic mystery exploration team. No I don’t have an acronym for it, but I guess if you require one the IMET will work just fine. The civilizations of the council established our team to investigate the various mysteries of the universe brought forth by any council member. This unfortunately means we deal with all mysteries, big and small. So it easily could happen someday that you will be put in a vacuum and asked to scream. Luckily for you we have many other more important assignments.

The first mystery your team will be tasked with exploring is the existence of magic. I know you all just chuckled at that, but you won’t be laughing once you’re planetside and turned. into some kind of frog-like creature so pay attention. Several council civilizations, humans included, have stories of magic dating back to their ancient cultures. Most of these stories have been written off as attempts to explain the unexplainable. However, a large number of civilizations have consistent stories about a few different magical phenomena. The one being given the highest priority is the so-called hex. In human history, the frog example comes to mind. In other civilizations, hexes can be as simple as a shoe that always becomes untied at the most inopportune times all the way to an entire family line doomed to lead a life of poverty all because one ancestor had the misfortune of upsetting a witch. You may wonder why any civilization with the ability to travel the entire universe would still believe in magic hexes being placed by witches, the answer is they don’t pay us to think about such things, just to prove or disprove the existence of this month’s mystery. The other answer is several council civilizations claim to have legitimate proof of hexing and accuse several other council civilizations of placing the hexes. Moral of the story, we are trying to prevent the fallout of the entire intergalactic council. Seems conflict is the most universal thing there is.