Rebirth

My new body completed and a host of security updates later and I was ready to go for a walk as a human again or as much as I could simulate of one. I strolled thru my ship content with myself for a while I will admit it took me a while to remember how to walk on two feet though I could easily convert my body to my tentacled shape should I want to. After getting situated in my new shell I offered all of my citizens who had lost their original forms involuntarily the chance for them to regain a semblance of it back and oh boy were they overjoyed with that prospect. Building the code for my citizens new bodies i delegated to the freed ai's that had done my own so perfectly and I then began prepping for the next galaxy to explore.

The wormhole tech let me travel vast distances and came with a certain amount of risk hyperdrive tech was in comparison slow and and limited to trips along hyper lanes jump gates were instant travel but could only be used once you had reached your destination jump drives were my go to and allowed you to jump to any point in space in a limited distance instantly but I wanted a better way. Tinkering around with various proposed methods of warp drive proved hazardous my first attempt ended up cooking my test ship in plasma my second fried its electronics with a magnetic pulse and so it went each test ended in failure until my 500th test where I achieved propulsion but then the ship came apart like a wet paper sack due to it not having my polarity drive it's own mass tore it apart though it had achieved significant acceleration so I built another version this time I installed my most complete polarity drive yet and sent it flying.

My warp test was a shocking success though the acceleration was terrifying the ship could reach light speed in a few seconds and then it would continue accelerating up to 99 times the speed of light a 1 ly trip would take 3 days just faster than a hyperdrive speed of 4 days not bad at all but not enough so I tinkered some more calling it my mk1 warp drive. My next twenty failures nearly made me quit yet my twenty first showed a successful increase of speed of 200 times light speed and twice the acceleration of the first version now a 1ly trip took a day and a half and from there I kept tinkering around with it and my mk 3 managed to double that at 401 times the speed of light.

After tinkering around with my newest drive system for a few months I decided to quit putting off my trip to the next galaxy and so I collected my fleet and made the trip and oh boy did I jump into the hot seat. Two massive fleets were fighting in the system I'd jumped to their tech wasn't inferior to my own as far as I could tell and both sides took note of me immediately though I kept off to my own as I really didn't want to get involved in this war that seemed to be going on right now. As the two fleets fought I was able to study their battle tactics and study the effects and composition of their weapons systems and realized that they were using something similar to my own plasma lances though their own lances were slower they also were hotter and more dense than my own and studying the composition of their beams yielded the fact that they were using plasma formed from iron my own were a massively lighter hydrogen based plasma though in comparison their beams could do more damage than mine.

I resolved to test plasma with iron as soon as I had some time and so I simply monitored the battle from long range and even spent a little time trying to design a few more variations on my warp drives to test out one line of designs was for much larger warp drives and the other was using more exotic materials and rare ones too. The two enemies eventually finished their battle one fleet fleeing from battle battered and defeated the other battered and still combat worthy so I sent a hail to them. I received the most confusing message in my life and it was basically like the aliens were bipolar the first part was simply a standard why are you here the second part was like I was some kind of long lost friend and the third offered a trade of technology meanwhile I'm still trying to get sent out a response to their first message.

After sending a three part message back to the aliens they sent a few more and for the next month we traded messages every few hours or so apparently my technology interested them and theirs interested me but I didn't want to give away all of my secrets so I didn't give them my polarity drive or my experimental warp technology though I did give them most everything else and I got 90% of their database with the exception of a few sensitive experimental technologies that they didn't want anyone to know about though they did explain what technologies they were based on.