"First Contact" and "Immortality". See how simple they are to say? Eight simple syllables...and yet they changed everything.

The Republic had been around for more than a thousand years. It was the single most durable government Humanity had ever known and looked to last at least another thousand years. A representative government providing a stable standard of living for all its people, stabilized by a ruthless control of science and communication. Education was granted to all, but subjects furthering science were only taught by the Republic behind closed doors to students that passed specific aptitude tests. They were an elite caste that could not, upon penalty of death, fraternize with non-scientists.

Eventually, the Republic stabilized into continued, controlled growth without the masses having the knowledge or desire to forment revolution...ever.

The Military existed to control the Scientists, and theoretically to quell the masses of Humanity should they ever revolt...although that was unlikely.

But then came Auraxis.

The moment the Warpgate was found, all information about the Contact was sealed away and became "eyes only" information. The masses never found out that Auraxis had even been discovered.

But on Auraxis, there were no masses. Just Military and Scientists. And they talked...a lot.

First Contact could mean so many things. It could be a wonderful time of opportunity as we meet technologically superior beings that raise us up to their level so they can have comrades in the universe. It could also result in us being squashed like cockroaches for having the temerity of touching the toys they left behind on Auraxis. Either result was just as likely as the other.

The trouble was...no one really agreed on what the correct approach was in dealing with this threat.

But also, no one was naove enough to ignore the fact that these aliens might very well be "bug eyed monsters that eat children" who would come back one day and destroy us. Therefore, Humanity must be prepared...even if it was just so they could be embarrassed at assuming danger when there was none later on. But no one agreed on the Solutions and the arguments were moving scientists and soldiers into different camps of thought.

And now, after all that...we had discovered Immortality?

The Republic killed that pilot six more times before they gave up and realized he wasn't going to stay dead. Everytime they destroyed him (and the last time, they blew him to pieces to ensure there wasn't enough left to scoop together into a pile), he would just reappear on a Warpgate platform a few seconds later, stressed that he had been killed again, but none the worse for wear.

They examined him with every instrument they had. They psychoanalyzed him, made him take IQ tests, checked his DNA structure, watched his bio systems carefully, even put him through emotional and physical stress tests to see how he did. He did no better, and no worse, than he had done before being repeatedly killed.

For all intents and purposes, it was exactly as if he had never died.

He seemed to even be aging normally. He didn't revive at some pre-saved state of being. He revived each time exactly as he had been just before he was killed, but completely healthy, rested, and without aches, pains or hungers. He remembered every thing that happened to him, except for a small period of time just before his death, when it seemed that the trauma of dying blocked memory.

Why did he come back? Careful measurements at the base of the platform when he revived revealed that a small amount of energy was used at that time, but it was similar to the amount of energy used when an object was Gated through from one continent to the other.

So what was going on?

Experiments with all sorts of domesticated and undomesticated animals never resulted in a "revival". Non-sentient life forms seemed to just stay dead. So eventually, a thought-crimer was selected and killed. And he stayed dead.

The obvious assumption was that the pilot's passage through the warpgate had somehow attuned him to some planetary immortality scheme. So once again, they shoved all sorts of animals through the gates, killing them on the other side. They all died and stayed dead.

Finally, they picked another thought-crimer (there seemed to be more of them every day as the alien Contact discussions caused tempers to flare), and made him step through the gate. Then they executed him on the other platform. Moments later, he broadcast to them that he found himself in the center of a swampish area. He had been revived and "warped" to another location.

Eventually, the Warpgates were just too attractive of an option. Even the Republic sanctioned their use, since none of those people were ever coming back through the wormhole anyway.

They considered it a "test on a massive scale".

The test was successful. The gates became highways for travel around the world, and all those that went through them became free of the worry of death. The military minds dreamed of unbeatable armies and scientists began to realize that a "life's work" might be only one of many projects and their minds soared. Pre-fab facilities sprang up around the globe as Humanity devised ways of "shunting" the warpgate energy to directed nodes at those facilities, allowing "revivals" to occur at the facilities.