“Yes, of course.” Vreta responded, leaning forward in his chair and clasping his hands together. “Just give me a moment to think back…however it interacted with my mind, my implants’ recordings did not capture the meeting. I just need to focus on the details…”

Pausing briefly, Vreta concentrated on visualizing his memories in his mind. “I recall aspects of our conversation. It warned again about the Hegemon. It portrayed them as being exceptionally powerful. ‘Indestructible’, in its words, though I was doubtful of that. Though, I suppose they could legitimately be indestructible [i]to us.[/i] They may not be able to be defeated by conventional means. I remember trying to learn more. I questioned the Navigator, asked for proof. It pointed me towards a satellite galaxy of Andromeda. I…don’t know if it ever gave me the exact location of this planet that would hold this proof. I asked it to simply upload the information to my implants, so I may need to sort through the data to see if there was anything it left behind for me.”

As Vreta’s mind sorted through his memories in sequence, he came to a detail that gave him pause for just a moment. His mind had been somewhat muddled before, but this part of his memory was now standing out clearly. “I also remember asking about the Institute. The Cradle Institute; the same organization to which Agent 595 belongs. I asked what it had learned about them, and it told me that the goal of the institute had been to reunite the Navigator and its kind with the Cradle for well over two thousand years.”

Vreta allowed that statement to hang in the air for just a few moments before he continued. “From my knowledge of your history, you were still a pre-FTL species on your own homeworld, fighting with swords and spears at that time. That led me to one of three conclusions. Either the Navigator is lying, Cradle beings have some kind of presence on Earth, or the Institute was not founded by Humans.”