Contact Alpha, A story of sci fi fantasy

It begins

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Local hour 0412, June 14th 2367 Earth date

Onboard USS Jamo, New Souther class transport vessel.

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I wake up from my weary slumber. The alarm function in my mind is ringing loudly. Feeling annoyed by the sudden awake I smack my forehead to turn it off, an unnecessary action since all I have to do is to merely think about turning it off. Eyes still half asleep and tiredness still lingers throughout my body due to not having enough sleep hours, but I got used to that long ago.

Good morning, sir.

Morning, A-LAN.

I lie on the bed, half naked and covered in a blanket. I try to force myself back to sleep but my half awaken consciousness prevents me from doing so. Telling me to wake up and uphold my duties. With eyes both agreeing and refusing to shut down I decide sit up and turn my body to the side of the bed. My vision becomes clearer and various UIs appear on the side of my vision. I direct my eye towards the lower right corner of my visions and look for the series of numbers that tells date and time.

4 am, so about 3 and a half hours of sleep.

I stand up and stretch my body, then head to the bathroom. Standing in front of the mirror I gather myself and review my schedule for today as I subconsciously do oral cleaning. Thinking about the overall situation.

I left the Sol system nearly an Earth month ago, embarking on my journey to visit Athena station, the orbital platform built for scientific studies and observation of a particular celestial body. The shorten old name for this planet was SR 4546, it was named centuries ago, somewhere between the 20th and 21st century. And no I don't want to acknowledge its long serial number of a full name. But due to the fact that the first ever intelligent alien civilization exist on this planet, its name is once again open for changes. Officially the name is still SR 4546, but everyone from all over the United Stars debates intensely on this subject, from folks within the scientific community to the people on the Astronet. Some agree upon keeping the old name, some don't. For me, I would rather not rush this process. In my opinion, we should learn as much as possible from this alien world, know about it better. Only then we could decide a proper name for it. Maybe adopt the name from the local aliens? Maybe, if we ever contact them, which I doubt we will.

My mission is to visit Athena and stay there for some time. Other than the usual official businesses, my tasks are to interact with the science team and the staff, some usual official talks with the people working there. In the mean time learning as much as possible about this world and its inhabitants.

Every thing is still too surreal for me, and probably for all of humanity, all 200 billion of us. Throughout history mankind has always wondered if it is alone in this vast universe, in this galaxy filled with hundreds of billion of stars. That question was asked again and again ever since the start of the space age almost 400 years ago. Then, in the 2240s, when experimentation on the Alcubar drive succeeded with flying color the human civilization truly became an intergalactic civilization. The event sparks a fiery flame within humanity's pioneering and adventurous nature that leads to what was known as the second age of exploration. More than a hundred years later the searing heat has yet to die down. We have explored more than a hundred star systems, colonized dozens of planets, even trying to develop terraforming technologies. So far, we have encountered many plant and animal like alien species on multiple habitable planets. But what we truly want is to make contact with sapient life. They must exist. They have to. And they are somewhere out there, so we kept on looking and looking. For more than a century of exploration we find nothing, not even evidences or ruins of possible existed civilizations.