Images of the Dawn
"How we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn't you say?"
-James T. Kirk "The Wrath of Khan"
---------------------------- HOW did it all begin?
Ironically enough, one could say that the heavens themselves began in darkness and fire, an image more apt to describe a hell. Two molecules, spinning around each other since time immemorial. Dancing an endless dance, but never touching until the day where one was pushed a little too close to the other and sparks erupted.
Be they literal or figurative, those sparks were the solitary pebble tossed upon the still waters of the Universe. The waves spread throughout all of creation until, out of that single split-second collision, life formed and civilizations rose. The Progenitors; the Preservers; the Iconians; the Bajorans; the Vulcans and, by extension, the Romulans; the Klingons, the Andorians...
The Humans.
Infinite species, in infinite space, inhabiting the fragile, spinning stones we call worlds. All born of the same moment in time, each vastly different from all the others, but each possessing the same goal: To rise above the muck and mire of their birth and improve themselves. For some, that meant conquest. For others, it meant cooperation. In an effort to ensure this universal goal, several species banded together to create a new civilization. An economic, political and philosophical alliance where different races could come together and discuss their ideas and cultures as equals.
The United Federation of Planets.
It began small. Founded in the Earth year 2161, it consisted of three races. The Humans, the Vulcans and the Andorians. Slowly, but surely, the fledgling alliance spread to other worlds, embracing different cultures rather than conquering them. Yet, even as it grew, it discovered adversity from several of the cultures it encountered. Mere months after its founding, the Federation faced its first conflict: The Romulan Wars. Fought with primitive atomic weapons, the war was won by a narrow victory for the Federation at the Battle of Cheron. The Romulans retreated to their own space, and remained there for over a hundred years. It was the first war fought by the allied races...
But it would not be the last.
The Romulans were defeated, but new challenges arose. A cold war was waged with the Klingon Empire for nearly a century; In 2365, a cybernetic race known as the Borg Collective launched a war on the Federation, leading to the massacre of the Federation fleet at Wolf 359, followed by the near destruction of Earth years later in 2373;That same year, the Federation went to war with both the Dominion and the Cardassians; Soon after the close of the Dominion War, the USS Enterprise-E fought a pitched battle in the Bassen rift, narrowly preventing a war with the Romulans and their sister species, the Remans. As time marched forward, the scope of the wars grew, until they were fought across the fabric of time itself. The Temporal Cold War, fought secretly in dozens of different centuries and universes only fifty years ago.
And so the list of wars and insanities goes on.
Through it all, the Federation never lost hope in its vision of peace and unity. Enemies became allies. The Klingons joined the Federation, later followed by the Romulans, the Dominion, the Cardassians, and finally the Borg. By the close of the 28th century, the Federation stretched from one side of the Milky Way galaxy to the other. Four quadrants, each one governed by it's own Federation and each Federation tied to the others through the Grand Senate. Since the end of the Temporal Cold War, the galaxy has largely been at peace, a great civilization reaching across the stars.
The Humans, though, have an ancient saying. "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." And a civilization as vast as the United Federation of Planets should learn at least one lesson. A lesson it has failed to acknowledge.
If all civilizations have one thing in common, it is that, no matter how great they are, they will all fall. If not by their own sins, then by the sins of those who came before...