If there was one thing that human story taught you at school is that nothing new was ever easy. Time and time again, whenever humanity discovered something new, it took time to properly understand something and even more to make it work in a way that it wouldn't kill people. Space traveling was no different. When humans first reached for the moon in the 1960's, there were many failures and deaths. Still, humans learned, and roughly two hundred years later, they reached for the edges of their solar system, and the century later, they were past that, looking for lives outside Earth.

You were among one of the members of this third wave of humans traveling beyond the solar system. It was dangerous and scary, but it filled you and other humans with the thrill similar to when the Europeans first discovered the Americas. Maybe, you would find an alien race, and be able to befriend them, maybe learn from them. Great was your disappointment when you met the first alien ship. Your captain had sent a greeting to them, only for them to attack. There was no way you could have known that was a space version of a pirate ship and your ship was their new target.

Your crew, naturally, fought back, even though the difference of your technology and theirs was leaps away. Eventually, you managed to win, but the ship was too damaged. Your captain ordered all crew to go to the escape pods and sent a signal so some other human space ship could fetch you all. Your last memories were entering the escape pod and being ejected before the machines put you to sleep.

Eventually, you found yourself waking up. They had rescued you, but what you saw before you weren't humans. You saw two individuals so strange that could easily fit a fantasy novel, or an old sci-fi one. In fact, one of them resembled a Mind Flayer and another a Kenku, in space suits of course. They look at you with both shock and wonder.