**Action post** "Ffion"

**Action** "Ffion"
 
600 years ago
The planet Ffion
6:95AM (Ffion local time)
 
Salli was an ordinary female, she lived an ordinary life, had an ordinary job, had an ordinary home on an ordinary world.
 
She sat at home with her hands between her legs rubbing her nose with her 12th finger. She hated this time of year, the weather was as perfect as it was every other time of the year, but she always caught cold. She sighed and got back to her computer. Typing with 20 fingers was exceptionally easy, she had the astronomy report finished in no time.
 
The people of Ffion were very advanced, they had superb technology but they had not yet opened their minds up to the opportunity of travelling beyond their own planet. The only kind of spacecraft they had used was one to build an observatory in orbit around their world which scientists use to study nearby stars.
 
The observatory hadn't even been built with the main government's support, it had been constructed by the Llyrani corporation which was a small but extremely rich company consisting of the only people on the planet who were actually bothered about what was out in space. The rest of the population thought their world was so perfect there was nothing else in the rest of the galaxy that could be any better.
 
They were probably right, Ffion was a paradise.
 
It was the Llyrani corporation who Salli worked for. Everyday she would use the matter-transporter to take herself to the orbital observatory and run a few more scans and tests on the universe. She probably had the most boring job on/and off the planet.
 
She looked at her oxygen powered clock.
"Oh drell!" she said, quickly getting up and putting some shoes on. She grabbed a coat and ran out of the door, 2 seconds later she opened the door again and ran in to pick up the report she had just printed out.
 
It was another perfect morning with perfect weather, people were already sunbathing outside. Salli ran past them in a hurry, she despised preffessional sunbathers- the whole idea of sunbathing and getting paid for it was an example of the twisted world she hated so much. At least her job was hard work, it was also boring work.
 
But she had a dream. Her dream was that there was intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy- and she made it her goal to find it and prove it to everyone.
She ran to the nearest matter-transporter booth, normally used for travelling from one beautiful area of the planet to another- but she was going somewhere different alltogether.
 
She materialised on the orbital observatory and walked to her bosses office. The observatory was small really, just a few small rooms for the command staff and one central room filled from wall to wall with computers.
Upon reaching the office, she noticed no-one was there. She sniffled and put a hanky down her trousers to blow her nose. Looking out of the window, Salli could tell why her people loved their world, from space it was the most breathtaking shade of green and blue. She looked at it every day, but today it looked different- as if she was seeing it for the first or last time.
 
Then she realised why her boss wasn't there, the alert siren sounded, almost knocking her to the floor with surprise.
Salli quickly ran into the central room where everyone were running about like they only had minutes to live.
 
"What's happening?" asked Salli as she crouched down to ask a radar operator sat at his console, her light hair spilled onto her shoulders.
"We've picked up an object on radar." said the man urgently. Salli felt the cold shudder of exitement and fear, excitement because this could be their first encounter with aliens, and fear because well... same reason.
 
Her boss turned to face her, his face red with excitement. "They're finally here!" he said. "We've been trying to contact them for so long and they're finally here!"
 
Something in his words made a trigger in Salli's head go off, she got a flashback of the planet Ffion from space and then she thought about what the man had just said. He made it sound as if they had invited someone here, given someone a signpost saying "our planet is here, come and get it!".
Salli had never been sceptical before, but now things were starting to make sense, and the sense they had created didn't seem to have been a good idea after all. As the small blip on the radar got closer, the urgent screaming in her head got louder.
 
Gravely she said "Prepare a buoy."
"What?" asked her boss.
"Prepare a buoy." she repeated, just as gravely.
Everyone in the central room looked at her as if she had just microwaved a kitten.
"Why?" asked her boss.
Salli couldn't explain, she felt a huge weight pushing on her shoulders. With the eyes of everyone watching her, she quickly programmed a probe to send out a distress signal and put it into the airlock.
 
"Now wait a minute!" said her boss, but it was too late. With a hard face, she slammed her hand on the 'eject' button.
 
The beeping sound of the radar were getting faster now, the object should be in visual range- but nothing could be seen out of the huge window of the observation station. Salli was beginning to feel a bit embarrassed about what she had just done.
 
Then it appeared out of the inky blackness.
 
"Good gods!" shouted the boss.
"This was our dream" said Salli. "I hope you're enjoying it."
 
And then they died.
==================================Lt. David "Onion" BallAssistant Helm officer/ Pilot  USS Endeavour-ACommander Seymour Niples  JMC Blue DwarfWWW.Geocities.com/BlueDwarf2000Are you being paid for being online? I am! http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=IJU209==================================