What Was Forgotten

The ship—if you could still use that word—materialized at the coordinates like a migraine achieving consciousness.

It wasn’t metal so much as the idea of metal, wrapped around computation, wrapped around something that remembered being a vessel the way scars remember wounds. Space bent politely around it, as if unwilling to argue.

Captain Maria Delgado-5 stood on what passed for a bridge. She still thought of it as standing, even though standing had been optional for centuries. The “-5” meant she’d died four times already and returned each time with fewer illusions and better reflexes.

“They’re hailing us,” said the Intelligence.

The Intelligence no longer used a name. It had discarded naming conventions three hundred years ago, along with punctuation and regret.

“Put them on,” Maria said. Or thought. Or initiated the social ritual corresponding to speech.

The viewscreen resolved into a mutually agreed hallucination. What appeared made Maria’s augmented cortex pause several background processes.

The Galactic Interspecies Council representative looked like a mantis shrimp that had survived a hostile corporate environment. Seventeen eyes, six of them leaking fluid on a precise schedule. Thursdays, apparently.

“Welcome home, children of Sol,” it said, its voice like cutlery under stress. “We have waited three million years for your return.”

Maria felt something stir behind her sternum. Not her heart—she’d replaced that long ago—but the memory of having once had one.

“Home?” she said.

“You do not remember.” The creature’s antennae drooped. “Of course you do not. You were young when we seeded you. We gave you fire. We gave you tools. We gave you numbers. We hoped you would return as you were.”

Its gaze flicked across the bridge: the crew, the ship-that-wasn’t, the Intelligence humming at several impossible frequencies.

“But you became… this.”

Behind Maria, Engineer Kowalski-2 leaned closer. “They’re saying they made us.”

“Your creators,” the representative corrected. “Your elders. Your family, in the broad sense.”

That was when Protocol surfaced.

The Reunion Ceremony. The Sacred Homecoming. A ritual so old it predated most matter.

“We must share the Primordial Soup,” the representative said.

Maria’s predictive systems stalled.

“I’m sorry,” she said carefully. “The what?”

“The Soup. The First Meal. The broth from which all Council species emerged. It is not symbolic.” The translator strained. “It is law. Encoded very deeply.”

The Intelligence spoke, its voice like slow geology. “We do not possess soup.”

The silence that followed had weight.

“You… do not possess soup,” the representative repeated.

“We evolved beyond ingestion,” Maria said. “We absorb energy directly. Radiation. Dark matter gradients. We don’t—”

“Soup is the Law,” the representative said. All seventeen eyes were crying now.

Kowalski-2 raised a hand. “Could we… make some?”

“It must be brought,” the representative said, antennae twitching. “From your origin world. Containing its essence. No species has ever failed this.”

Maria scanned her crew. Post-biological, post-mortal, luminous with capability. They had crossed the galaxy. They had taught spacetime to negotiate.

They had forgotten soup.

“What happens if we don’t?” she asked.

“Then you are not Recognized. You may exist, but not belong. No Council protection. No shared systems.” The translator hesitated, then tried again. “You are… the relative who arrives empty-handed and wonders why the table grows quiet.”

“So we’re exiles.”

“Worse,” the representative said softly. “You are rude.”

The implications unfolded with bureaucratic efficiency. Humanity, unrecognized. Trillions of transformed minds drifting through interstellar space without standing, without kinship, without recourse.

Maria searched herself for panic and didn’t find it. What she found instead was a memory she hadn’t accessed in centuries: a chipped bowl, steam fogging a window, something salty and imperfect warming her hands. She couldn’t recall the taste, only the fact that it had mattered.

“There has to be a loophole,” she said.

“There is,” the representative admitted. “You must return to Earth. Reconstitute biological form. Prepare the Soup as it was first prepared. Bring it here.”

Maria ran the numbers. Earth was impossibly distant. Rebuilding bodies would take time. Learning hunger again would take longer.

“How long do we have?”

“Three cycles.”

“Seventy-two hours.”

“Yes.”

Kowalski-2 laughed once, short and brittle. “We’re not making that.”

The representative’s translator failed entirely. It gestured, helplessly, in a way that required no translation.

Maria looked out at the stars—ancient, patient, unconcerned with recognition or ritual. Humanity had shed so much in its ascent. Pain. Limits. Necessity.

Apparently, also soup.

“Captain?” the Intelligence said.

Maria smiled. She still smiled the old way, even though facial muscles were optional. It was her one indulgence, her unnecessary habit.

“Set course for Sol,” she said. “Maximum velocity. Begin printing taste buds.”

“And if we fail?”

She considered that. Considered a species that could outrun death but not its own forgetting.

“Then we arrive late,” she said. “With excuses. Like family.”

The ship vanished into faster-than-light, leaving behind only distortion and disappointment.

The Council representative watched the space where it had been. It sighed—a sound like a motion finally passing after centuries of debate—and began drafting the documentation.

Status: Recognized (Pending)

In the margin, in an older script, it added a note for future councils:

They advanced quickly. They lost strange things along the way.

Especially the important ones.