Go ahead and have a read of the first chapters on the download. If you enjoy the adventure and want more I'll email you when the full book is available and you can download it before it hits the stores.

The year on the human home world calendar is 2220.

Life is a bit like the tv shows of the 20th Century. In some ways.

In others? Not so much.

I'm on an League of Civilizations star ship. Yep. Star Ship. In space. To be precise I believe we're somewhere between the Section 6 and Section 7, en route to the nearest League Space Station.

The League is like a federation, or an alliance of various species. You'll have seen similar in various shows from your home world. You know, the ones where various alien races live together in harmony. Well, we've achieved some of that, so your writers weren't far off. The League consists of Humans, Vegans - pronounced Vay-gans - not as in people who don't eat animal products, but as in 'from the system Vega'. Then we've got what you would call Taurians. Also Ae-tols - who are empaths, and Zorkians. Zorks were the guys responsible for your pyramids. You're welcome. Oh, yeah, and the Drass. They're kind of in the League and kinda not. That's a longer story. 

Anyway, Earth still exists. Just about. It took a hit from nuclear weapons and climate change. It's still populated and operational in some areas. And no, before you ask, they don't have flying cars.

Actually, while we're on that, lemme disabuse you of a few more notions.

Teleportation isn't a thing.

Wormholes for space travel - also not a thing.

Holodecks. Same.

Actually - wait. Hold up. I need to have a rant about wormholes for a moment. Honestly, I don't know how these concepts became so popular. Even when most sci-fi tv shows were created your scientists KNEW the realities of wormholes and the process of spaghettification, and yet they used a generous dose of handwavium to write their stories. I mean... seriously guys. Irresponsible much? If you haven't heard of spaghettification they basically overlooked the fact that any ship coming close to a black hole-like phenomenon would be torn apart looong before they reached the event horizon.

And yeah, that's the sound of me rolling my eyes. 

Anyway - wormholes - not a thing. Never were. Never will be. Not in any reality. Blame your writers for giving you dreams that are easy to shatter.

Holodecks, as I said, also aren't a thing. Unless you count the VR worlds that have been built. But making holograms into solid objects? Come on.

FTL. Okay, well, that's kinda possible. Theoretically. I have it on good authority that there are groups making some strides on that. But it literally means cheating the space-time continuum. It's also suuuuper experimental. For all intents and purposes it's safe to assume that c, the speed of light, is the speed limit of the universe.

We do use sub-light travel, though. Liberally.

That's what we're under at the moment. From the feel of the ship right now here in sick bay I'd say we were probably going about 0.4c. That's 4 Alcubierres. Or 4 Al if you're reading a console.

With our top speeds at fractions of the speed of light though we're not exactly zipping between star systems. But it gets us around, mixing with the vast world of possibilities. Species. Cultures. It's not a bad time to be alive.

Until of course, sh*t hits the fan, which, it undoubtedly does.

And yeah, yours truly has ended up right in the middle of it.

If it were just my life that hung in the balance, that would be one thing... And not to sound overly-dramatic or anything, but we're talking about the fate of all the aforementioned civilizations. Including the Drass even.