I was loosely raised as a Christian. My grandmother was devoutly religious, it helped her cope with the discovery of alien life, and it rubbed off on my grandfather, the same one who choose to protect the people of a small colony over fighting the turians. A controversial choice which stained my family's legacy. He never cared one bit how others saw him, only how is family saw him. I don't remember much about him; what I do is he was a very wise man. I wish I had inherited some of his insight. I need to go talk to *********. He just got back from the mission and now is as any time as.

"Hi *********. How did the mission go?"

"Pretty good. Got to fire some turrets. It was awesome. Didn't even get scratched, but James did. He hopes it scars up and makes him look sexy to the ladies. If only Eve was still around. This sniper rifle feels like a cheat code and that is saying something when I have the cheat codes of existence" he displays the mighty weapon up to the light.

Tali is beside her bondmate "we were able to rescue the admiral and civilians. Thank the ancestors."

"That's great. ********* do you have a minute?"

"What's this about?" he said like a child who knows he's in trouble but not sure for what exactly.

"I need to talk to you. Alone" Tali gets the hint.

Tali squeezes *********'s hand for a moment "I'll see you soon love."

********* wraps his arm around her shoulders and kisses the side of her helmet "You too."

"You're not going to say 'I love you' back to her?"

********* confidently smiles "oh she knows. Trust me."

Tali instantly replies "I know, and I can't wait. Don't take too long Ashley" The quarian walks away displaying "the stride of pride" while ********* salivates like a varren in heat.

"What's wrong? Let's walk and talk. I want to check in on Garrus. He hangs out in the rec room" he asks.

"Yeah, we can. Nothing is wrong. Look, I wanted to apologize for my behavior earlier. I'm sorry. My actions were that of a rookie and I should have been better. I just don't get you. You're a nice guy-"

"Erahghh" Is he trying to cough up a hairball?

"What? You are" I reaffirm.

"That has a different meaning from where I come from. Call me rune god king ********* instead please" He half smiles.

"I'm not doing that."

"But I want brain tingles" ok now that was exactly how a child sounds.

"Whatever. I'm sorry for stepping on your toes. I cannot comprehend why you refused to help your people and instead, are playing make believe with us."

"Simple, they didn't want it" he said as matter of fact.

"What? Why not? My woman's intuition is telling me something is not right. Did they tell you that?"

"No but it was inferred." he said.

"How could you know that?"

"Let me ask you a hypothetical question. You're in a store or on a subway, you're wearing civilian clothes, but a soldier of that country and some punk commits a crime. Assaults a passerby. You stop him or her. What do you expect will happen?"

"Easy, the criminal is arrested and maybe I will get on the news if I'm lucky."

"You're the one who could be arrested for stopping them and possibly lose your job and reputation" he said.

"What! For doing my job? Did you leave anything out?"

"Nope. This happened multiple times, also business owners could be arrested for defending their store, if someone broke into your home and they got injured, the intruder could sue you and win."

"That is crazy. You have to be playing with me."

"Not at all and there were people who defended that crap. So, imagine what they would try to do to me if I did anything."

"Oh lord. A pandemic and going without toilet paper should have been enough."

He looks at me super confused "What?"

"Shepard said you didn't have toilet paper for years because of the pandemic."

"I never said that. I told Chakwas it became valuable because people were panicking and started hoarding it, but I never ran out. Even if I did, I would have gone to a thrift store and buy some cheap water bottles and used it like a bidet then air dry my chocolate starfish."

"That is disgusting on so many levels."

"Hahaha! Oh, you should have seen your face. Desperate time Ash. Desperate times. In all seriousness Ashley, most people don't want help even if they are offered. That's one of the reasons I don't go advertising my powers. Do you get it?"

"Yeah, I do. Again, I'm sorry for making assumptions."

"Good. Now let's check on Garrus."

"Wait before we go in. I have a question to embarrassing to ask in front of others. Is Bigfoot real? I'm only asking because I have a cousin who swears to high heaven he saw one and he's not the type to make shit up" Ashley asks.

He answers "yes and the Loch Ness monster, but not the way you think."

"What do you mean by that?"

"There are entire ecosystems on planets separated by the vibrations. On rare natural occasions when our world and their world shake just right and parts overlap like a venn diagram, light can cross over, but it's distorted. That's why no one can get a clear picture of them."

"Can they hurt us?"

"No only nuclear explosions can cause damage on the other vibrational ecosystems and even then the damage is far less. The people living near their Japan were pretty pissed. Thankfully not many of them were killed and they did the same to us. There is an archeological site where they saw nuke-like elements but the humans didn't have them at the time, but they did."

"That's insane. How many are there?"

"On Earth or my Earth I should say there are 9. One for each realm of the Norse world tree. Mars has a few. One with intelligent life. They're not little green men though."

"How do we look to them?"

"The same way we see Venus. From their point of view Earth is too close to the sun to sustain life."

"Is there life on every planet?"

"More than half. Intelligent life is still rare but not that rare. Come on, I want to see my former roommate then I need to attend to Tali. She got hurt and I need to make her feel better."

"Is she going to be fine?"

"I'm going to make her feel like a new woman."

We step into the recreation room. Shepard said a woman on his other team used to live here until she died on the attack of the collector base. I find it odd they made this space something so festive. I wonder what she was like. Garrus is sitting on the couch and with Javik of all people. They are discussing war.

Garrus says "Everybody was fighting the Rachni, trying to push them back through the relay. Finally, the krogan were turned loose and stopped them."

Javik says "I see."

Garrus continues "but when the krogan rebelled, we had to deploy the genophage to stop them."

Javik says "In my cycle, the Oravores fought the Densorin."

********* says "in my universe the supreme court couldn't define what a woman is."

Garrus says "Well that's hard. I know they look like blue human girls to you but I've had the displeasure of working with one asari in C-sec who was more krogan than Wrex and Krogan combined. They come in all different flavors."

********* "No you are forgetting we didn't have asair. It was just humans."

I ask "Do you mean what the essence of a woman is?"

He says "No I- uhh I guess you just had to be there."

"Ok…"

Garrus says "A thousand years later the geth revolted against the quarians. That was a whole other war."

Javick says "In my cycle, the Enduromi conquered the Vandomar."

"In my universe, we were afraid one of our classmates would shoot up the school. Sadly, it was a trend in my country for decades."

I said "That's messed up."

Garrus continues "Spirits that is horrible. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Anyway where was I. Ah! Then along came the humans. My own people tangled with them for a while- and now to top it all off, we got the Reapers."

Javik says "in my cycle, the Zha'til turned against the Zha."

********* "in my universe, the military had drag queen shows at air force bases."

There is no way they would allow that. "I call bull you're lying."

He says "I wish."

I ask "was your entire country Sodom and Gamora?"

He says "if God is real he owes them an apology."

Javik says "Ah I know what he speaks of. On one of my first explorations to the citadel I followed an intriguing mixture of human scents which led to one of those shows. I thought it amusing. Poor humans did not know I could easily tell who was male or female. Silly humans forgot to mask their scents. I won the contest" The prothean raises his fist in victory and tried to high five Garrus. The confused turrian awkwardly accepts. So that is what a happy prothean looks like.

********* "Javik, that's not the point. They aren't trying to trick anyone."

Javik replies "oh, then what is the purpose?"

********* says "some things are beyond me."