April 2086

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending this meeting. We have been taking your questions via the Google document. If you will enable your FaceGoog implants to turn to the topic of Precursors from the 2085 lecture we can begin.

We will assume you have gone over the classified materials from the recent Emdrive test.

As a reminder, the general public has not been brought up to speed on everything that was found on Ceres. The rumors of the so-called "Arilou" consultant working with Darius Robotic on the emDrive remain just that -- rumors. Today will focus only on the facts and not rumors. Suffice to say, we do not have little green men running around Darius Robotics.

Prototype EmDrive powered ship "Discovery"

Overview

You may recall that the relics returned from Ceres raise a lot of questions about our place in the universe. What the general public doesn't realize is that the answer to whether we are alone in the universe has been partially answered. These so-called Precursors definitely existed at least 250,000 years ago and their various devices remained active all the way up to around 300 years ago.

It is our belief that the devices stopped recording when they detected radio signals from Earth. Why that is we have no idea.

Topic: What do we know about these "Precursors"?

The information I have is sketchy, fragments based on recovered Precursor relics from the caves of Ceres from 2074.

Sketches recovered from the caves of Ceres.

About 250,000 years ago there was an advanced civilization we refer to as the Precursors. We don't really know much about them other than they disappeared suddenly. As many of you know from the data recovered, a "Faction of Eight" power structure grew in their absence.

Topic: What do we know about the Faction of Eight era?

We know little of the Faction of Eight other than fragments such as the word Drall and Dnyarri. What we have pieced together is that around 20,000 year ago, a malevolent species known as the Dnyarri came to control much of this area of Orion's Spur. An alliance of other species came together to form the Faction of Eight to contest their power and over many centuries slowly drove the Dnyarri out of this area of space. There is no mention of the Faction of Eight within the last 7,500 years. Either they disappeared or the data recordings found on Ceres are incomplete.

Artist descriptions of some of the members of the Faction of Eight based on recorded descriptions.

Topic: What aliens do we know about today?

As of today, in April 2086 we know of no other aliens in existence. We have not met any aliens that we are aware of (rumors of little green men at Roswell not withstanding). But what we do know is that there were aliens a long time ago that appear to be gone.

There is a good historical video that explains why we may not have met any aliens. Perhaps once a civilization reaches a certain level it ascends to a higher state of being. Perhaps civilizations simply die out or destroy themselves eventually. We do not know. As we get more data from the "Ceres Tapes" we will report on them.

If you have questions, you are welcome to stay after the briefing and add them below. Please remember to disable your FaceGoog implants after class. Seriously, you don't want to leave those on.