Precisely one year from the date after I started writing this, Summer of 12563, Ciphrus made contact with an alien civilization.

    The notion that aliens have existed is hardly news to all-kind. Indeed, microbes and multicellular compositions similar to that of the lichen and algae found on Ciphrus were discovered on a sister planet in our own system known as Decaelus some thirty years ago. However, another civilization was far beyond any prospect we could have imagined, and its origins will change the way we see Ciphrus history in a long while.

    I managed to make personal contact with these entities in 12562 with direct contact, thereupon I was transferred to the One Wall in Selahktia to oversee something with far more urgency than the Parcel tree.

    The alien civilization had donned the title the “Third Humanity,” which consequently infers that there was a first and second beforehand. I was unable to elaborate these points mainly due priority matters, but as one of the representatives had described to me, they were “early ancestors of the Third Humanity.” While that may have been implied, their connotation was not apprehensive or hostile in any way, which provided me with a sense of relief.

    The Third Humanity’s appearance was perhaps the most enlightening of the present condition of all-kind since my meeting with the Collective, not because the Third Humanity taught us anything valuable (because they didn’t), but instead determined that our intrinsic nature is to meet the unknown with suspicion and hostility. We fear the unknown not because it may be hostile to us -- but that it may change the way we live life, even if for the better.

    The Third Humanity’s discovery of us was by complete accident, and the philosophical notion of meeting a relatively new civilization from a far off world was an exciting precedent, but as we continued to interact with these entities, it became clear that their origins were not so majestic as we had originally conceived.

    The Third Humanity had expressed very similar attributes to us, as they did to themselves. Both entities were bipedal beings with free hands extending five fingers each. Both had incredibly similar structure in facial and body orientation: two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and hair in virtually identical places.

    These similarities were of such unusual coincidence, that it became an open investigation within certain departments studying this phenomena -- of which, I have no information regarding their conclusions. The uncanny resemblance between our two species consequently led into an investigation as to its findings by the Third Humanity as well, as we were contacted precisely a week after my sector began honing in on the Third Humanity’s vessel. Understandably, they had gathered much more evidence in a much faster time rate.

    I was able to communicate first-hand with an entity known as Ganymede, a feminine Human who stood at a tall and lanky nine feet. She walked with wide gaits, but was abnormally agile for someone of her size. Ganymede had relayed a series of experiments to find incredible results which would yield answers for my investigation which started all those years ago at the first anomaly.

    The Third Humanity had been studying Ciphrus’s geography since their arrival, to which they had found discrepancies in certain tectonic features versus larger geographical structures across the surface. One named example of which is Olor Mountain, the largest on Ciphrus. Olor Mountain stands at a measly four kilometers, but its width and span is hundreds of kilometers in all directions, sitting like a pimple just north of Tornun. Its location and size baffled a good portion of my geologist friends, but the mystery fell much deeper than I had ever known.

    Ganymede had told me of a once ancient civilization that inhabited either all or most of the planet. Her story sounded fantastical -- it’s astronomical that after two large, technologically advanced empires that this knowledge would have been lost. However, my visible confusion proved to the contrary, and in support: I was also talking to an alien.

    Olor Mountain was no mountain at all, but instead the accumulation of decay, debris, and an apparent attempt to hide the history of the past -- it was an ancient city, buried beneath time. This city had to have been home to over a billion people by Ganymede’s estimate, which confounded me, and many other researchers at the time.

    With the world in its current state, starting an expedition to Olor Mountain was only a dream, but this alone posed answers to the larger questions that have bespoke my mind for over a decade now. Indeed, the anomaly which we encountered in 12553 was a portal through time, either accidentally incited or devised through premeditated notion as a way to communicate with the future. Through all of our rigorous calculations, such a morph through time would require an excess amount of energy never before seen on this side of the galaxy.

    Ganymede and I kept in touch quite often, for over a year, until the attack on the One Wall, and my subsequent thrust into the dangerous world of Selahktia.