In 2280 the first space bending ships are built. These ships bend the physical universe to travel millions of light years in a few hours.

In 2304 first contact with an intelligent species is made. They were an insect like species that were eventually referred to as bugs. There were actually numerous sub-species of bugs, all of which were specialized for different roles. It eventually became known that the bugs functioned as a collective unit.

In 2306 ambassador-bugs made contact with the UN, seeking negotiations and intelligence information in consideration of war, trade, or maybe something else entirely. They abruptly cut off all contact without explanation.

In 2307 the bugs declared war by launching an all out assault on the Alpha Centauri system. The element of surprise and highly coordinated bug attack lead to a massive bug victory. Humanity soon learned how to counter attack and no other bug victory was as clear cut, though the war continued.

In 2309 the bugs successfully assassinated Benjamin Chikwata, Prime Minister of the UN and de facto leader of Earth. A few months later humanity won a small victory in Coletta Prime, a small settlement on the edges of settled space. Immediately after this minor defeat the bugs disappeared from all human inhabited systems without regard for strategic significance. Even systems that humanity hadn’t a prayer of contending for were completely vacated.

In the year following the Great Disappearance speculation was rampant. The conspiracy minded believed this was some sort of ruse as the bugs massed for a surprise attack. The more patriotic sorts claimed that the bugs had seen humanity’s resolve and strength and had given up. One professor of literature speculated that the bugs had been overwhelmed by disease carried by humans. The intelligence community was equally as baffled, and though their speculations never saw the light of publicity, they were as varied, and as unconvincing as the public’s reasoning. Ultimately, no explanation was generally accepted, when the history books were written the Great Disappearance was documented without commentary.

Three hundred years passed and as generations came and went, and as humanity continued its spread through the universe the Great Disappearance became nothing more than a curiosity. When the last human who had been told by an actual witness what the Bug War was like died, the irrelevancy of the Great Disappearance to humanity meant that it was consigned as trivia questions on game shows and board games, a curiosity as strange and uninteresting to most as was the lost Roanoke colony.

When the Bug War began humanity was just beginning to expand through the universe, human culture was largely monolithic, as it had been on earth due to the spread of communication technology, and the ability to travel quickly. Racism as an issue gradually had disappeared over the last hundred years before space bending due to the mixing of the races through intermarriage which gave everyone the same skin tone, and many of the cultural issues did the same as dress, food, and language slowly became as uniform as race.

However, after the Bug War, cultural divergence became a fact of life. Space bending wasn’t cheap and so it was used exclusively for colonizing distant solar systems. As a result each colony developed its own unique culture. One particular colony, 51 Pegasi, became obsessed with mysticism. They practiced speaking to the dead, prophecy, channeling, telepathy, dream interpretation and astral projection.

One man in particular Janus Arazo was obsessed with astral projection. He had been born on 51 Pegasi and though his family was incredibly wealthy no one was wealthy enough to employ space bending for tourism purposes. And so Janus used astral projection to travel and experience other parts of the universe. At first he explored centers of culture. Earth itself was fascinating with its settled culture, and old ways of doing things, then he slowly made the other rounds, Alpha Centauri with its somewhat paranoid culture which was a remnant of being destroyed by that first bug attack, and the frantic pace of life on the creatively named Big One located in Ursa Major due to the high gravity of the large planet which put a strain on the heart and other organs resulted in a life span of only 35 years for its inhabitants also fascinated Janus for a time. Eventually, however, he grew tired of sightseeing human cultures. Janus was a born explorer, and anthropology was only mildly interesting to him. So he began exploring outside of the settled universe, in solar systems and planets that had no names, most were so far beyond settled space that humanity wasn’t even aware of their existence.

It was on one of these planets that he first found a bug, in fact he had found many bugs, a whole planet full of them. It had been hundreds of years since a human had seen a bug, but he recognized them from pictures of old propaganda broadcasts he had uncovered in his studies. Though Janus was primarily interested in astral projection he also had some minor talents in the field of telepathy, and using those talents he recognized that most of the bugs had no intelligence of their own. They seemed to be almost machines, like they turned on and set to work at a particular task, and would do so until turned off or dead. So the question became who was setting them to work?

After several days of searching the planet of the bugs Janus found his answer. It or them, no word seemed quite right, was underground. And it was a telepath of extraordinary power. In his spirit form he could see the tendrils of thought reaching out to the non-sentient bugs, directing them where to go and what to do. After observing it for several hours he reached out his own mind and brushed against one of the tendrils of thought. The effect was instant. Immediately it knew he was there and directed its attention directly on him. To Janus it felt like being inside the mouth of a giant who was screaming as loudly as it could after smashing its giant thumb with a giant hammer. After a few seconds the screaming stopped, replaced by the combination of images, and ethereal concepts that was the universal language of telepathy.

“We know you,” it said, “You are one of the independent monkies.”

“Why do you call us that?” asked Janus.

Janus could feel it wanted information, so he let it into his personal memories. He could feel it rummaging around in his memories.

“You are a short lived species, you barely live longer than some of our workers. We badly underestimated your species”, it said, “during negotiations the slowness of your responses and decisions made us believe that you were a stupid race, our first victory which was overwhelming confirmed our initial assessment. The battles following should have indicated to us that something wasn’t right, but we had made our decision and our course of action was set. When we failed to overwhelm your species with force we decided to destroy your head. The operation went without a hitch, to us it was more proof that you were stupid. We expected to be able to sweep through your settlements easily winning victories over a brainless colony. When we suffered a defeat in our first battle we were forced to re-evaluate your species.”

This last sentence was thought with a wave of regret, and maybe a bit of bitterness.

“When you fought back after we destroyed your brain we realized our mistake. We studied you more closely and realized that each of you is a brain,” they continued, “and that you didn’t communicate directly, but through physical sounds.”

Janus was almost overwhelmed by the sense of revulsion that poured through the telepathic connection.

“You were so strange, foreign, alien, we couldn’t cope with the ramifications of what it meant to have every one of you a brain,” it continued, “we weren’t sure if it meant we couldn’t win, or couldn’t lose. So we retreated here to at the very least live on.”

They both may have been telepaths but Janus quickly realized their telepathy worked very differently. Throughout the conversation they had been withdrawing their telepathic tendrils from the workers and had been forming their power into one large mass to attempt the telepathic equivalent of a lightning strike, attempting to burn out Janus’ brain and turn him into a vegetable. Janus could see it plainly, clearly they had no idea their tactic was so transparent.

When Janus had judged he had as much information as he would get from them, he returned to his body before the bug brain could strike. He had solved one bit of historical trivia. For a moment he wondered why the bugs had tried to kill him after revealing so much information first. It made no sense. If they wanted him dead, why not just kill him? Why give him so much information first? Then taking a lesson from history and the bugs themselves he never considered the question again.