Sometimes I wish we’d known, before we set out to find the Progenitors, that they would have none of the answers we sought.

Their traces we detected in tumbledown ruins and blown-out spheres. Their ejecta, in orbit around long-forgotten stars, we studied and gleaned hints to their majesty.

We tracked them through vacuum, through nullspace and subspace with ever increasing urgency, praying to discover a civilisation, not a tomb.

And then, one more slip between the folds of space and we made contact.

The elder race of our universe, not dissimilar to ourselves; too close, in fact, for they had faced the same hardships. Loneliness, inequality, the crushing abyss of mortality, they had fled the same woes that had carried us in their wake.

They too had been brought low by sorrow and the unceasing march of entropy. Their advice was nothing we did not already know.

When we returned home, there were riots.

We had not fully appreciated how heavily the hope of our people rested upon our journey. Broadcast across the continents, we spoke of the Progenitors, of their kindness and their sorrow, but we had no more answers than when we left. That night, cities burned.

Now, those of us who returned quietly preach the messages of the old ones, acceptance of our sorrow, and hope for a future yet defined.