Akmir was bored. He had been on this assignment for nearly twenty years now, and the most exciting thing he?d found was bacterial life on a planet in a binary star system.
Akmir was an explorer. He came from a civilization that had been travelling the stars for millennia. But in all that time they had only managed to journey to a mere thirty other galaxies, had only completely mapped three, and found no other signs of intelligent life. This filled Akmir with an need to explore, to join the effort to seek out new life and new civilizations. Akmir was exploring an uncharted galaxy, much like his own. Its blue spiral arms majestically sweeping through space. Akmir thought it unjust that, at least for now, it?s only name was G-64. He made a few last notes in the ship computer about system G-64-0023, completing his nearly two weeks of study in this dull and lifeless planetary system. He looked at the assignment list, next up: G-64-0024. He sighed deeply, and found himself beginning to loose the enthusiasm he once had for space exploration. He began to wonder if maybe he would never find anything.
With that on his mind Akmir made the hyper space jump into history.
Akmir didn?t want to leave. But his time on this assignment had expired. It had been nearly seven months since he made his discovery, since he found an alien civilization in G-64-0024. He was going to miss this beautiful planet. More particularly this city.
Primitive, yet respectable, with such beauty to the architecture, and the culture alike. The great buildings, forged from stone with such carefully worked mathematical precision, and supported by tall, elegant columns. And the incredible waterways, beginning in the mountains carrying the water of rivers and springs across incredible distances along canals elevated above the ground at incredible heights to the city. The mathematical harmony of the buildings, that made use of such properties as the golden rectangle, and structural strength far ahead of its time. The colosseums served as excellent examples of both the strengths and the weaknesses of this society. They served as excellent centers of culture and entertainment, but frequently featured savage and barbaric forms of entertainment, sacrificing members of a less fortunate social group to armed soldiers and even great carnivores that would tear them to pieces.
This society had much advancing to do before they would be ready to meet Akmir?s people. They had yet to move past their depnedacy on fire. They would be quietly observed for hundreds of years by some of the greatest scientific minds in Akmir's society. And perhaps as soon as two or three thousand years they would be ready to take their role as inter-galactic neighbors.
Akmir had been the first person to fill such a role while he waited for the science teams to finish the two-hundred day journey to this remote galaxy. He had welcomed them two days ago, filled them in on his observations, received incredible praise, and then given orders to return to Rebila, his home world, for a hero?s welcome. He would be a champion of his time, assured an eternal place in the history of his people.
Yet he was reluctant to leave. Rome had captured his heart. The savage beauty it possessed, the culture. It all filled that part of him that had always felt so alone before. It filled him with a joy to know that his people were not alone; a joy that was shared by every one of his people, and some day the people of the planet Earth would experience that same feeling all over again when Akmir?s people made contact. The feeling of no longer being alone in the universe.
