In the vast Union, there exists a unique dwarf plan­et known as Long Shot, char­ac­ter­ized by its unusu­al coex­is­tence of humans and native sen­tient beings. This remote world orbits a gas giant and is sit­u­at­ed near­ly twen­ty lights away from the near­est colony around an M‑class star. Long Shot’s name derives from the remark­able jour­ney that brought humans there, mark­ing it as the longest suc­cess­ful jump ever achieved by humankind.

The native inhab­i­tants of Long Shot are tree-dwelling cephalopods, observed leap­ing grace­ful­ly among the branch­es and skill­ful­ly chang­ing their col­ors to blend with the lush canopy, often only vis­i­ble in infrared spec­tra. These beings are con­cen­trat­ed in the cen­tral high­lands of the plan­et’s sole con­ti­nent. Despite their sci­en­tif­ic and cul­tur­al sophis­ti­ca­tion at the time of human arrival, they lacked mate­r­i­al devel­op­ment com­pa­ra­ble to that of pre-agri­cul­tur­al humans. This dis­par­i­ty has led to much spec­u­la­tion, with one the­o­ry sug­gest­ing humans pro­gressed tech­no­log­i­cal­ly out of neces­si­ty, as they strug­gled in their nat­ur­al con­di­tions.

In stark con­trast, the natives of Long Shot excelled at adapt­ing to their envi­ron­ment with­out the need for advanced tools like rifles. Upon human land­ing, the aliens were ini­tial­ly obliv­i­ous to the colonists because the beach­head was far from their moun­tain­ous habi­tats. Like­wise, the set­tlers remained unaware of the natives due to their elu­sive and local­ized nature. For the first twen­ty years after col­o­niza­tion, there was no inter­ac­tion between the two species, allow­ing both to con­tin­ue their lives undis­turbed.

His­to­ries of the encounter between these two intel­li­gent species lack pro­found insights into why their rela­tion­ship devel­oped so unique­ly com­pared to oth­er col­o­niza­tion attempts. One the­o­ry posits that the lev­el of fear held by the colonists dimin­ished over time, fos­ter­ing a more open envi­ron­ment for inter­ac­tion. Thus, the pas­sage of time emerges as a cru­cial ele­ment in the dynam­ics of this unprece­dent­ed coex­is­tence on Long Shot, sug­gest­ing that with patience and con­tin­ued pres­ence, under­stand­ing and respect could evolve.