Chapter 3

The next day, Joshua was woken from a strange dream of exotic blue skinned women by his alarm clock. Drowsily, he fumbled until he managed to find the snooze button and shut off the alarm. He turned over and was about to go back to sleep until the memories of last night rushed to him. He sprang up in his bed and hesitantly as if he doubted the events of last night, he called out,

"Ahaui?"

"Yes," Ahaui reply came and Joshua sighed as Ahaui asked, "what is it, I felt your adrenaline level shot up a moment ago?"

"Nothing, I just remembered last night and I have to admit, I hoped that it was just a dream."

"I see, do you wish for me to remove myself to the nugget?"

"No," Joshua reassured Ahaui and explained, "It's just that I'm trying to accept the fact that my life has just been irrevocably changed by your presence in my head. Which is a very strange way of answering the question of whether mankind is alone in the universe?"

"Why would mankind believe they're alone in the universe?"

"Because ever since we began to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life, we have found none and we began to wonder if we were alone in the universe."

"Simply because there is no evidence of life do not imply that the universe is barren of it. During my long imprisonment, I have passed by countless planets filled with life and all at various stages of evolutions."

"I thought you said that you were trapped in that nugget and that you haven't been on a planet since you were imprisoned?"

"That's right; I couldn't escape my prison unless I make a physical contact with a sentient being. But I discovered during my incarceration, that I could 'scan' the minds of any sentient beings on the planets that I passed. When I scan the minds, I learn about their people, societies, and if they were space faring people, also, if possible, I try to learn the location of their planet in the galaxy. It was what saved me from becomes completely insane. It was the only entertainment that I had."

As Joshua went about his morning business, he thought about what Ahaui went through, even now as he got out of the shower; it was hard for him to come to term with what Ahaui had told him. After he dried off and got dressed, he went downstairs to the garage and got out the coffee pot with the concentrates. He also rounded up his gold pan and a metal tub that he used to pan the gold out of the concentrates. He took everything downstairs to the recreation room where he had laid out a corner of the room with tile floor and a water faucet and a drain. While he filled the metal tub with water, he asked Ahaui,

"Do you remember everything about the aliens life that you passed by?"

"Yes, my people have eidetic memory or what you would call 'photography memory'. Why?"

"Would you be willing to tell me about the people you scanned as I pan the concentrates?"

"Yes, I can do that, in fact, I will tell you about the Meni people. They were the specie that helped me discover my ability."

Joshua panned as Ahaui began his recital.

Meni

I do not know how long it has been since I was imprisoned but one day I drifted past a planet that looked so much like my home that my heart ached. I wanted to be on that planet so badly that when I felt my mind stretching toward the planet, I thought that I had gone mad again. But when I felt so many sparks on that planet, I began to wonder what it was. Some of the sparks were dim but there was also some sparks that were so radiant that I wondered why I couldn't see it from space. Curiosity consumed me so I reached toward one of the brightest spark and to my utter surprise, memories and knowledge that were not my own began to fill my mind. It was then that I realized I had stumbled across the Meni people.

From the memories I got from Saiu, the individual whose mind I scanned, the Meni people were a warrior race that were at the peak of Iron Age. Even though they had discovered gunpowder and had the knowledge to create projectile weapons, they refused to build them, preferring their regular blade weaponry such as swords, axes, and knifes. They believed that the guns remove people from the consequences of taking life.

When a Meni kill another Meni with a sword, they are face to face with the people they kill. They will be forced to watch the emotions on the face of those they kill as they come to the realization that they are dying. This will remind the Meni that there are prices for taking a life. But with a gun, a Meni can kill from a distance without seeing the emotions and this makes the Meni people numb to the consequence of taking a life.

It may sound as if the Meni people are bloodthirsty race but they are in fact the complete opposite. They take great effort to avoid taking a life, the reason for this is because there was a great catastrophe in their past that left a very small group of Meni survivors and all modern Meni tribes descended from this small group, so every tribes view other tribes as families. In tribal warfare, the goal is not to kill but to disable their enemies. It is actually much more difficult to disable the opposition than it is to kill because of their physiology.

The gravity of the Meni's homeworld is three time that of Earth and as a result, their body is much denser. This meant that it is much harder to disable an opponent than to kill one. Their skin, while not naturally armored, is just as tough as your alligator or crocodile skin. They also have extremely high regeneration abilities; any blows that do not decapitate or bleed out the opponent within one minute usually do not kill the opponent. That means in order to kill a Meni, you must either decapitate or pierce the heart or any of the major veins in the body of a Meni.

Their body makeup is very similar to both yours and mine in that they are bipedal specie but that is where the similarities end. As I have told you, their skin is much denser, and the skin color varies based on their regions. Those who live in jungle region would usually have green or brown skin. Those who live in the snowy region will mostly have white or blue skin. Desert region mean tan or light brown.

All these, I learned from my scanning of Saiu's memories. I also learned that Saiu was a chief of a small tribe in the jungle region. He was among the strongest and the smartest one of the tribe and that attributes are the reason why he was the chief. Among the information I gained from Saiu's mind showed me that a Meni gain status by the number of battles that he won. It may be either a tribal warfare or a duel between two Meni. It matters not, victory in either one is a victory and the Meni gain status with each victory. They also do not differentiate between genders, both the male and female fight equally.