“Is Central sure that this is a distress signal?”

Captain Moirah Slovidougt, commander of the all volunteer Emergency Assistance Ship Sunbeam, sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose. If her communications officer asked that question one more time…

“Yes Alyssia, for the twelfth time, Central is sure it’s a distress signal.”

“What else could it be? We’re five days out past the Edge!” Shameous Crestlin called from his position at the engineering console. “If I was this far out of the Net, I’d be popping a distress signal too.”

“Yeah, well, it’s still weird.” Alyssia pouted, her tail swishing behind her. “I mean, it’s just a single pulsed tone. Who does that? If you’re going to bother sending a distress signal, at least say something with it!”

“Possible equipment damage or failure?” S@3-187236 (Sae for short) asked, adding in his two micro-creds.

“So damaged that they can’t even send a binary signal?” Shameous snorted. “Fat chance.”

“I bet I know what it is.” Alyssia giggled and grinned. “I bet it’s another couple out on a ‘romantic’ get-away. Remember that pair we rescued last month?” She smiled at the memories.

“Oh yeah, I remember that one. ‘Come with me darling, and we’ll sail my yacht past the edge of the Net, so that we may consummate our love in the privacy of the deep stars. Beyond the Net, we can become one with the universe, and with each other!’” Shameous snorted, dropping his imitation. “I can’t believe anyone would fall for such a load of bio-effluent.”

“Well I think it’s kinda romantic.” She fired back, then frowned. “Even if it is really stupid.”

“Previous subjects located half an hour past the Edge. Current subjects located five days at max speed beyond Edge. Romantic rendezvous unlikely.” Sae replied in a calm monotone.

Moirah sighed and closed all of her eyes for a moment. After spending five days in an enclosed environment with these three, her patience had been worn thin. The fact that she’d be spending another five days with them on the way back did nothing to improve her mood. Sure, anyone willing to leave the safety and comfort of the Net was going to be a bit eccentric, but seriously, what had she done to deserve this?

“All right, that’s enough. We’ll have our answers momentarily. We’re here.” Moirah glanced over at engineering as the Sunbeam dropped back to sublight. “So what sort of mess have we got to clean up this time Shameous?”

“One tic.” Shameous's eyes were focused on his console, even if most of his work was being conducted wirelessly. “Looks like single ship. No debris apparent.” The engineer frowned in concentration.

“The ship doesn’t match anything in the database.”

Silence descended on the bridge, as the crew took in that fact.

A single ship, out this far past the Edge. Of a design that could not be found in the very comprehensive database of existing ship types. Broadcasting a non-standard distress beacon.

There was only one possible explanation for such a vessel.

upon reaching the same conclusion all four crew members spoke in unison.

“Fringers.”

Of the four, only Alyssia sounded excited. Sae was stoic, as always. Moirah and Shameous just groaned.

“OOOhhhh! I can’t wait! I wonder what this Branch will look like!” Alyssia was practically jumping up and down in excitement.

“Judging from previous reunifications? Weird and freaky.” Moirah grumbled, once again massaging her nose.

“Oh, come on Captain! Don’t be like that! Remember the Human Coalition slogan!”

“’We’re all human on the inside.’ I know, I know.” Moirah rolled her eyes as she repeated the mantra that was taught to every child more or less from conception onward. “I just wish more of them would make a token effort to make their outsides match their insides.” She grumbled under her breath.

It wasn’t that Moriah hated Fringers or anything. She just couldn’t understand why so many of them went so far from baseline. It was just freaky!

Sure, it started off logically. Way back in the early days of the Diaspora, not long after humanity had achieved the Singularity and begun reaching for the stars. If you were colonizing a heavy gravity world, it was only logical to tweak your genome to withstand the crushing forces. Found a world that was mostly oceans? Underwater cities and citizens with gills made perfect sense! Want to live on a carbon poor planet? Downloading your consciousness into an android body instead of a biopuppet the ideal solution!

Of course, it wasn’t long before what was once necessity instead became a matter of vanity. And so Humanity started to branch out into a myriad of body types, even as they began to branch out into the furthest reaches of space.

It was all perfectly logical and reasonable, and Moirah had absolutely nothing against individuals with non-standard body types. She was just a bit disturbed by people who seemed to live to push the envelope.

After all, there was nothing wrong with utilizing a standard, normal, traditional form like herself. Bipedal, with bilateral symmetry (like over 68% of the human population.) One pair of legs with a single knee joint. One pair of main lifting arms, and one pair of smaller lower arms for fine manipulations. Binocular vision in the visual spectrum, with a third eye keyed for infrared (always handy when checking for overheating equipment.) A perfectly standard bioform.

Sure, the cyberjack in her temple was a bit peculiar looking. But she had always liked having a hardwired connection port available, regardless of how ubiquitous wireless connections were. And besides, she’d heard the old fashioned jacks were becoming a popular fashion statement again.

Shameous had a very similar Bioform, which wasn’t surprising since they both hailed from the same homeworld. Sae’s body was also of a bipedal design, though there was more carbon in Moirah’s little finger than in the entirety of his synthetic form.

Even Alyssia stuck to a mostly bipedal bodystyle. Though from what the gregarious communications specialist had told her, her form was strongly influenced by Terran feline species. That would explain the tawny yellow fur and long, prehensile tail. Sure, she was as comfortable on four legs as she was on two, but that was still pretty close to standard.

All in all, her crew represented a perfectly normal selection of human body types, and would have fit in on most any world or timeframe from the last thousand years.

So why did some humans feels the need to be so different?

“I don’t care what they look like. I’m worried about their tech!” Shameous groaned, gesturing at the ship on the holodisplay before him. “Even from here I can tell this kludge is total re-emergence tech. I wouldn’t be surprised if these guys are a branch of thousand year old Luddites! Fixing their stuff is going to be such a headache!”

“I hate to agree with Mr. Grouchy, but he’s probably right.” Alyssia tapped her chin as she listened to the signals emanating from the ship. “Their communications protocols are completely non Gal-Stand. I can’t make a bit of sense of it. And… They just started sending a Fibonacci sequence.”

Everyone rolled their eyes / optic sensors this time.

“Agreement with Engineer. High probability of re-emergent Luddites.” Sae generated a low pitched whistle, his equivalent of a sigh.

“Lovely. Everyone did a full backup before we left the Net, right?” Moirah asked reflexively. “The Sunbeam doesn’t have a long range hyperspace transmitter. If these guys prove hostile, we’re going to lose this whole week.”

Being past the Edge of the hyperspace communications network meant that if something unfortunate happened way out here, they’d have to be restored from backups. Which would mean the loss of a week’s worth of memories. Sure, the crew was still sending out regular Gestalt updates, but they were being broadcast at light speed. It would be centuries before the signal reached the Core. Or, more realistically, decades before the Net was pushed out far enough to receive them. Still inconvenient any way you sliced it.

“Yeah yeah. We all know the drill boss. Besides, it’s not like we’d miss much if we lost this week.” Shameous snorted, still working the ship’s sensors.

“Oh, don’t be so grumpy! It hasn’t been that bad!” Alyssia started bouncing again. “And we’re going to get to meet a new branch of Humanity! This is going to b so much fun!”

“Whatever you say Alyssia. Oh, here’s some good news!” Shameous smiled as he looked up from his console. “I’m not picking up any weapons on that thing.” With a thought a holographic representation of the unknown vessel appeared in the middle of the bridge, rotating to show the (limited) details that the Sunbeam’s sensors could tease from ship.

“Positive news. High probability this branch seeks reunification. Low probability of Isolationists.”

“And less chance that my ship gets holes blown in it.” Moirah nodded, clearly pleased. “Well, it doesn’t matter if they’re Fringers, Luddites, Reunifiers, or Isolationists. Right now they’re just another batch of humans stuck in the black. Which means it’s our job to fix them. Confirm?”

“Confirm captain!” came the unified response.

“Good. Sae, bring us in. Slowly. No need to spook them.”

“Affimatve, Captain.”

Moira nodded in acknowledgment, her eyes focused on the image of the craft before her.

---

“Moment of truth time.” Shameous huffed, staring at what they were assuming was a hatch on the outer bulkhead of the mystery ship.

All four crew members were standing in the airlock, waiting for their ‘hosts’ to open the door. The approach and docking had gone smoothly, which was a major plus in Moirah’s data storage. The Fringer’s had continued to broadcast messages the entire time of course, but Alyssia still couldn’t make heads of tails out of their communications protocols. All they could do was knock on the door and hope for the best.

“Bets on how weird this bunch is, Captain??” Shameous whispered.

“No bet. I’m just hoping they’re not as strange as the humans on Proxima five.”

“You don’t like the Proxima Five bodystyle Captain? I always thought they were kinda neat! They’re perfectly suited to living in the troposphere of their gas giant. I’ve heard that the sunrise on Proxima Five is a marvel to behold, especially with their range of wavelengths their eyes can sense!”

Moirah manged to maintain a straight face even as she cringed internally. The locals of Proxima Five were more of less floating gas bags with a swarm of undulating tentacles hanging beneath them, and a single ‘eye’ that covered a third of their upper hemisphere with photoreceptors. While there were more extreme body styles out there, they were definitely one of the more outlandish ones.

“It might be interesting for a brief vacation, but I really can’t imagine living a entire life cycle and raising children in such a state.” Moirah replied as diplomatically as possible.

“Firm agreement. Proxima Fivers are outside three-sigma deviation from human baseline.”

“You said it Sae. If I want to see the sunrise on a gas giant I’ll just buy a holo-mem and be done with it.” Shameous agreed.

Alyssia crossed her arms and pouted a bit at being outvoted, and Moirah hurried to smooth over the situation.

“None of that matters right now. Let’s just focus on the situation at hand people.” Moirah gestured towards the hatch. Her timing was impeccable, as a hissing sound began to fill the lock.

“Analyzing atmosphereic composition. 32% oxygen. 59% nitrogen. 4% argon. 2% sulfur dioxide. 3% miscellaneous. Pressure stabilizing at 0.89 atmospheres.” Sae rattled off calmly as his internal instrumentation went to work.

“Great. Nothing too exotic then.” Moirah nodded, then looked back at the rest of her crew.

“Here we go. Smiles everyone. Try to look friendly.” She glanced over at Sae’s two point two meter tall armor plated body, complete with glowing red optical sensors. “You might want to stand in the back, Sae.”

“Affirmative.”

The airlock swung open with a low pneumatic hiss, at which point the occupants of both ships paused to take in the view of the other side.

Moirah was unsurprised that she was surprised by the body style of the Fringers. She was, after all, expecting the unexpected.

If she had to guess where their ancestors had gotten the idea for their phenotype, she would have bet on the intermediate stages between dinosaurs and birds. Their build was quadrupedal, with a certain Centuar influence. The main body trunk was covered in feathers, with some sort of vestigial wings and four scaly legs, ending in raptorian claws. On the dorsal surface was a vertical segment of the trunk, similarly feathered, which contained a pair of smaller arms and claws. The head had a distinct avian flavor to it, with large expressive eyes framing long sharp beaks.

A half dozen of them stood abreast before the airlock, staring back at them.

“Well, at least they’re not TOO strange looking.” Moriah murmured to Shameous.

“Awwww! They’re so cute!” Alyssia giggled, leaping forward and hugging one of them to her chest, rustling its head feathers with her hand. The others leapt back, but seemed to be at a loss as to how to respond. Moirah ran a hand down her face.

“When I said try to look friendly, I didn’t mean that friendly! Put him down Alyssia!” The communications specialist pouted but complied, stepping back to join the rest of the crew and crossing her arms.

The assaulted Fringer staggered a bit before lining up with his own crew as well. Though he remained a few steps further back than before.

After a few more moments of staring, one of the Fringers at the center of the group stepped forward, making a strange bowing motion that involved bending his(?) torso as well as his forelegs. Returning to his formerly upright position, he began to speak, making a strange series of clicking noises and whistles.

Moirah couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Of course, she wasn’t the communications expert of the team. She only had the standard translation suite like everyone else in civilized space. She turned to Alyssia and raised an eyebrow.

“Good news Captain! It looks like we’ve got a totally new language to add to the database! That should bring the count up to 17,385,512 unique identified human languages!”

Moirah resisted the urge to face palm. “That’s really not what I’d consider good news right now Alyssia.”

“But the language geeks are going to love this one! It’s really out there! I’m having a hard time finding any points of commonality with previously created languages!”

“Wonderful. How long before you can translate it?”

“Well, without the resources of the Net, I will take a long time. At least twenty four hours? Maybe longer?” Alyssia offered hopefully. Moirah just groaned.

“Seriously? In twenty four hours I had wanted to be twenty two hours closer to home.”

“Sorry Captain.” Alyssia's triangular ears drooped as she frowned. “That's just a rough guesstimate, but honestly? It's probably on the low side. There's only so much I can do without the rest of the Net helping out.”

Moirah shook her head sadly. “I understand. It's not your fault

She shook her head, then shrugged. “Well, what the hell. It’s not like we need to talk to them to fix their ship. Let the boys back in Central figure it out “

“Shameous, you and I are going to go check out their engines. Let's see what we're dealing with here. Sae, Alyssia, you two see if you can interface with their computers. Maybe get some navigational data so we can send these guys home.”

“Sure thing boss. Just one question.” Shameous glanced at the Fringers, who had been silently watching their conversation. “What if they don't like the idea of us wandering around their ship, and get violent?”

Moirah shrugged. “There’s enough space in the Sunbeam’s databanks for all four of us plus twenty passengers. If they shoot us we'll just have to use one of the ship's drones to make repairs.”

“Ugh. I hate those things. I always feel like my skin is rusty when I drive one of them.”

“Preils of the job Shameous.” Moirah shrugged. “Besides, they didn’t shoot Alyssia when she leapt at them, so we'll probably be okay. Now quit talking and start walking people. We have work to do.”

“Affirmative Captain.”

“Yay! Let's learn some languages!”

Watching Alyssia leap towards the same Fringer she'd assaulted earlier, Moirah groaned.

“And no more hugging the locals!”

---

Half an hour later, Moirah and Shameous were still running their sensors over the engine compartment of the stricken vessel. And still trying to wrap their hands and minds around what they were finding.

“By the Matrix, this drive is a mess!” The engineer shook his head again, crossing his upper arms while his lower limbs continued to adjust his hand held scanner. “This stuff reminds me of some of my friends who like to build old Diaspora era spacecraft. Only none of those come even close to this level of kludgery!”

“Ugh. I know! Who in their right mind runs conduits across a Tachyon generator?” Moirah replied from another section of the compartment.

“I swear, these guys must have regressed back to the atomic age before they uplifted themselves! This entire drive looks like somebody designed it from first principles! While drunk!”

“That's probably a good bet, now that you mention it. Sae's been scanning them, and nobody on this ship is properly augmented.”

“You mean…?”

“Yep. Fully biological. No major augmentations. No network links. No uploads or backups. Not as far as Sae can tell. Definitely the descendents of some Luddite movement or another.”

Shameous frowned and glanced around at the numerous Fringers surrounding the pair. “These poor bastards.”

Ever since they had left the airlock, they had been surrounded by a constantly shifting selection of the crew. They pointed and chirped and conversed amongst themselves, but they did nothing to obstruct Moirah or her crew. Sure, they'd flail their upper limbs and flutter their wings when she or Shameous started working on some of the more delicate systems. And they got really loud when they triggered some of the system's alarms. But so long as they let her tend to her job in peace, she was happy.

“You know, if this drive is such a mess of non-standard parts, it might be quicker to just leave it as is.”

Mopirah raised two eyebrows at that suggestion.

“So, after traveling almost a week past the Edge to fix a Fringer starship, you're solution to the problem is to… not fix their starship?”

“Now now, I never said that. I just suggested that we don't need to fix their drive.” He grinned toothily. “All we need to do is make sure they can get home, right? So why not yank one of our spares and bolt it to their hull?”

“It's a thought.” Moirah rubbed her chin as she considered it. “A single drive node would be able to bubble a ship this small easily enough. And we could just fab a new one when we get back to the Core. It wouldn't move this thing very fast though.”

Shameous just snorted. “Probably move it faster than this nightmare would.” He gave the drive a smack with his upper arm. “We'd have to throw in a power core too though. I took a look at their power distribution system, and there's no way I'd subject any of my hardware to such erratic power fluctuations.”

“Fine, fine. I get the picture. How quickly can you do it?”

“Shouldn't take more than an hour. Hour and a half, tops?”

Moirah grinned. “Get to work. I'll get Sae and Alyssia working on the interface.”

“You got it boss!”

---

A little over two hours later, the crew was once against sitting on the bridge of the Sunbeam, floating free after undocking from the Fringer's ship.

“Ugh. Thank goodness that's over with.” Shameous grunted. “I can not believe what a mess their systems were. Completely non-standard!”

“Well, I thought it was great! I don't care if they're a bunch of re-emergent Luddites, they were really friendly! Plus I've got tons of language snippets to categorize on the way back! Ooooh, my friends on the linguistics nets are going to be so jealous! Whatever language they're using, it's going to be so much fun to crack!”

“Agreement. Fringer software and communications protocols highly divergent from Gal-Stand. Analysis of technological drift will be interesting.”

“Well, I'm just happy we got the job done despite all the little setbacks.” Moirah lened back in her chair with a pleased smile. “Good job everybody! Now it's time to get back home!”

“Sae, set a course back to the Core.”

“Affirmative captain.”

“You guys have to admit though, they certainly were a weird bunch.”

“I dunno, I thought they were kind of cute!”

“You would.” Shameous eyerolled. “There was something kinda odd about them though.”

“They’re Fringers. And they’ve probably been isolated for centuries. Of course they’re going to be weird.”

“I agree with Shameous.” Alyssia said unexpectedly. “There was just something… otherworldly about this bunch. Like, further out than all other remnants we’ve run into.”

“Well, I'm betting they've been isolated a really long time. Perhaps even since the start of the Diaspora. A thousand years of backslide, reinvention, and cultural isolation is going to create a lot of drift.”

Sae nodded. “Agreement. Conclusion matches available data.”

“Well, It’ll be interesting when the Net stretches out to their homeworld. I wonder if they’ll want to reintegrate, or maintain isolation?”

“I guess we'll find out when the Net reaches their homeworld, wherever it is.”

Captain Moirah Slovidougt leaned back in her chair and let the sounds of conversation wash over her. It would be almost a week before they reached the Edge and she could once again feel and hear the buzz of the Net. But until then she'd make due basking in the glow of a job well done.

As far as she was concerned, things had gone quite well. And despite being a bunch of Fringers, she had to admit, whatever branch of humanity they hailed from, they were far from the weirdest or most unpleasant looking humans in the galaxy.

They weren't even in the top ten.

---

“Alien vessel is departing. Alien vessel has gone to FTL. Speed is one hundred lights. Two hundred. F.. five hundred! Twelve… Fifteen… Fifteen hundred… And out of sensor range at fifteen hundred Lights and still accelerating.” The officer manning the sensor console reported in shock. He sounded quite shaken up.

Nearly as shaken as his Captain.

Unlike his officer however, Captain Narflazion managed to keep his shock from showing. As the commanding officer of Her Imperial Majesty's Ship Farwind, it was his duty to set an example for his subordinates. 'The scent of fear at the top leads to bloodshed at the bottom' was an adage as old as the Imperium itself. And in the three thousand years since its founding, it had proven itself true more times than could be counted.

“Well. That was a thing that happened.”

'The Captain's Executive Officer get's to tell it like it is.' was another well known adage. Albeit one with a far shorter lineage. It was only as old as the Imperium's FTL Exploratory Core. Which made it less than fifty years old.

That didn't stop Chief Slainshist from taking full advantage of it however.

“Agreed, Chief. The question now is, what exactly just happened.”

“Well, it looks like we just encountered a ship run by a coalition of at least three alien species. Whom proceeded to board our ship and viciously…repair or replace our equipment. Refill our consumables. And provided us with a new propulstion system and power supply that's generations ahead of our own.”

Slainshist tapped his winglets against his sides in thought. “All in all, I'd say it sure beats drifting in the Black with a dead hyperdrive, eight months from the homeworld. I really wasn't looking forward to dying in my own effluent as the environmental systems slowly fail.”

“You may feel that way Chief. But that is because you are not the one who will have to explain the events of first contact to Her Imperial Majesty.” Captain Narflazion rubbed his beak with a foretalon.

“Well, look on the bright side Captain. At least they were friendly.”

“This is true Chief.”

“But even for aliens, they sure were weird looking.”