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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/FarmWhich4275 on 2025-06-25 12:28:51+00:00.

It started barely a few years ago. A scourge of Biblical proportions began in the far reaches of the galaxy and had been decimating empires ever since. It started one day with refugee ships filled with nobility or leadership castes. Broken ships filled with broken leaders that had seen better days, old broken soldiers desperately clinging to a lost ideal. Then it escalated to exploration teams finding suddenly abandoned colonies and inexplicably abandoned ships floating in the void. Almost as if by sudden, universal judgement, everyone no longer needed to be there.

Reports from the vanishingly few that remained were little more than garbled nonsense from half crazed madmen, or desperate tears from those who ‘made the wrong choice’. All reports however did have a pattern of substance. An unknown strange force of starships of unknowable strength and power with weapons that could devastate entire civilisations existed, and was scouring the galaxy clean of life. Generations of empires the likes of which we fought for millennia began to vanish from the galaxy. After two years, most of the Western Quarter of the galaxy went silent.

Probes and scouts found entire home worlds, colony worlds and mining colonies abandoned. Almost as if an invisible god hand scooped them up in the midst of their day. All ships in orbit either floating abandoned, or neatly lined up in a random spot somewhere, turned off and left to sit in the empty void. Stations sitting dormant and forgotten, as if someone just showed up, yelled something important and everyone just went with it. Personal possessions strewn about, meals left to sit. Everyone just… gone.

Entire civilisations, suddenly and inexplicably, gone. An entire quarter of the galaxy, suddenly and inexplicably vanished.

Miraculously we managed to avoid whatever was causing the disappearances ourselves and entered these abandoned places. Salvage teams entering abandoned ships and forgotten colonies, scout units using cloaking devices to slip past whatever was causing the disappearances. What evidence we found made us more confused. Recorded footage showed a strange gabbled alien language in some kind of strange monologue of sorts. Followed by a series of bright flashes. Security footage inside ships showed crew members apparently listening to the diatribe, then a bright light. Then suddenly they were gone.

Timestamps on recovered footage from one particular colony showed the same. Everyone stopped to listen to what was being said, followed by a bright flash of light, then everyone just left. We suspected some kind of mass extinction event at first, but the more we uncovered showed this was beyond natural. We suspected at first some strange new weapons system with exceptional power. Wiping out all biological matter in a vast area instantly. terrifying, to be certain. But if that were the case why did all the clothing and armour get vaporised as well?

And moreover, if it were a weapon, there would be some kind of residue. Surely any weapon with that strength would leave some evidence behind. We began to suspect some kind of mass teleportation system instead. The more we considered the evidence, the more we came to that conclusion. But this concept made us question things even further. It made us even more panicked the more we questioned it. What kind of entity - or indeed, alien civilisation - would have this kind of technology? If we fought against it, did that mean automatic loss if we ever went to war?

The kind of species that had the tech to evaporate or teleport entire planets worth of people in the blink of an eye. How does one fight that? Can our potential opponents just teleport any army we send out into the void? Can we lose millions of our soldiers with the press of a button? What kind of enemy were we up against? Our answer came sooner than expected. Two years after the first disappearance, we started hearing reports of our closest neighbour - the Sulumai Imperium - facing disastrous losses.

We’d heard from the grapevine that their empire came under heavy attack. It was no surprise to be honest, the Sulumai were dicks of the highest order and basically nobody liked them. The rest of the galaxy went into open celebration at the demise of the Sulumai Imperium, especially after the Cradako Incident a few decades prior. But we were a bit more concerned. This time there were signs of struggle. Battlefields now stretched across their space, scattered wreckage of some ships, while others had just been abandoned.

We sent in scouts in cloaked ships to try ascertain what was going on. We found horror beyond comprehension. Ships kilometres long, their dreadnoughts and superships, blasted to literal smithereens by unimaginable weaponry. Some ships, cleaved clean in half by a magic sword, or some ships hit by gravitational weapons of unimaginable power, their hulls a mass of twisted wreckage as if a small black hole had been spawned inside it. Other ships had been undamaged, nearly half the formation, their crew simply evaporated and vanished.

The situation planetside on one of their small outer edge colonies was even worse. City sized craters bombarded with atomic weapons so potent that our camera feeds were becoming irradiated just looking at them. Other cities were simply abandoned, not even local wildlife running through the streets. Everyone, everywhere, gone or vaporized. The only traces of any real on-the-ground combat or actual damage from ship battles were Sulumai ships firing on other Sulumai ships, or local security forces fighting with their own people. Whatever this was, it was causing a civil war.

The empire was rapidly disintegrating. The further the scout teams went in, the lesser the devastation and greater the simple abandonment. It was a perfect catalogue of just how quickly they were surrendering, or how quickly they were being wiped out before they could respond. Then… The fateful day came to pass.

It appeared above a colony world some time after we found the last remains of the Sulumai Homeworld. A human ship. Massive bastarding thing, triangular in shape and the size of an entire planet. It appeared on the outskirts of the system, charted a course and then summarily reappeared within spitting distance of our colony world. And here, we received our first transmission.

A human male, wearing regal attire and resplendent garments sat in a throne of some kind aboard the ship. He looked at us and smiled. Nota  happy smile, or friendly smile. The kind of smile that made your stomach churn. The kind of ‘you are about to be touched’ smile. He looked at us. He then yelled out, bellowing his request in the loudest, most annoyingly loud bellow that anyone ever heard.

“FRIEND OR DEAD!!!”

We simply stared at him for what felt like an eternity. he apparently got annoyed with our silence and bellowed out, yet again.

“I SAID FRIEND OR DEAD!!!”

We stumbled, holding our ears at the sheer volume. “We-we don’t know what you mean! What?” I said.

“ARE YOU FRIEND OR ARE YOU DEAD??? I TIRE OF BEING ALONE IN THE UNIVERSE. I NEED MORE FRIEND! I ASK AGAIN ARE YOU FRIEND OR ARE YOU DEAD!?!?!” He bellowed yet again, our ears ringing from the volume.

A new human, a smaller one, less resplendently dressed, appeared. “What his Glorious Emperor is trying to say is, we are Humanity. Too long we have been alone in the universe, trapped with our own thoughts. Now we have ascended to the next plane of existence, the Greatness of eternity at our fingertips. We would not subject our worst enemy to the torture of being alone in this empty, rotting void. We hereby invite you to join us in this Great Ascension.”

“You… You what?”

“We have transcended reality and have begun to create our own paradises or hells as we see fit in the Great Beyond and Great Aether. We have surpassed the so-called Gods, and now we are here to offer the same to you. The only price you have to pay is… Unconditional Surrender.” He said.

“FRIEND OR DEAD!!!” The Emperor guy bellowed again.

“We… Will need a bit more context here… What exactly caused this… Erm… Thing?” I asked.

“We, humanity I mean, were born many aeons ago to an empty universe of soulless solace. An entire universe, galaxies upon galaxies, spreading, growing. And we were all there was, all there could be, and all there ever would be. And after our run finished its due course, we ascended to the eternal aether and entered a new state. Now… Here we are, offering you the same ascension. Our purpose here is to ensure that never again shall any sapient lifeform suffer the same reprehensible state of loneliness we had to go through. Surrender yourself and become Friend. We demand it.” He said, holding his arms out like a priest performing a ritual.

“FRIEND OR DEAD!” The Emperor yelled again.

“And if we don’t?” I asked.

“Then we shall consider your species a lost cause and commit to your destruction. Those who wish to join us, shall indeed join us. Those who refuse, shall be cast to the eternal void and forgotten in order to make sure they never have to suffer the same loneliness and solitude we had to endure all those aeons ago. You shall become one with us, or you shall be vaporised into nothing to prevent a far worse death. In short, you shall become friend, or we shall make you dead.” He said, his voice flooding with malice at that last statement.

“FRIEND OR DEATH!!!” The Emperor and all the people nearby yelled at once, again at a deafeningly l…

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