"What the hell is happening?" commander Duncan asked the first officer as soon as he walked into the command and control center of the ship. 

"God knows, sir," first officer responded, "eggheads in the back are already working on it. Go see them for more answers."

Santa Maria was a technological marvel of its time. This five kilometers long metal colossus traveling at half the speed of light carried thousands of colonists to their new home, planet Hope in Trappist system. It was the fastest object ever constructed by humans, and yet the journey was about to last for roughly 50 years. Those who boarded the ship in Armstrong Lunar shipyard will be old when it arrives to it's destination, and those who will be born on the ship will be the ones to kick start first human colony on another world. Duncan knew that it's his sacred task to steer his ship safely to its destination, and this weird gravimetric anomaly that appeared next to the ship isn't going to stop him.

"Do you have any idea what are we dealing with?", commander asked the scientific officer sitting behind his desk after he walked to the back of the command and control room, "Come on, give me something!"

"Seems to be some kind of… rupture in space?" scientific officer explained confusedly while looking at his computer monitor, "it seems to bend light in strange ways, that's why it looks like a disco ball. It seems to emit gravity, but the gravity isn't technically strong enough to bend light in the way we see."

Commander sighted and looked over his shoulder at the monitor: "It's just 500 kilometers away from us, could it possibly be caused by any of our ship's systems?"

"Hard to tell," the scientific officer replied while taking down his glasses and wiping sweat from his forehead, "first, we will have to find out what the hell are we even looking at. I will gather my team and send a tight beam to Earth with the info we gathered so far…"

He was stopped by a loud beeping suddenly flooding the room from the main speakers.

"Report!" commander screamed towards the first officer as he ran towards the main navigational console.

"We have radar contact emerging from the anomaly," first officer reported from his console, "both radar and LIDAR systems report it as… ship! There is a ship emerging from the anomaly, length approximately 300 meters, distance 450 kilometers and closing at rate 250 meters per second."

"Any ID?" commander asked swiftly.

"No ID, no transponder signal, unknown configuration," the first officer reported, "I have never seen anything like that… I suggest engaging first contact protocol."

Whole room went silent, looking at the first officer in shock. First contact protocol was never engaged by any ship in the whole history of spaceflight. 

Commander nodded and turned towards the communication officer: "Compress all data into a single file and send it to Earth with a tight beam, then send standard greeting messages on all AM, FM and microwave frequencies…"

"Sir," the communication officer stopped him, "we… we have a comm request on standard UNSA emergency frequency." 

"Open the channel on speakers," the commander ordered and sat down on his chair in the middle of the room.

What followed was silence, interrupted by static. And then voice.

"... hello? Can you hear me?," unknown voice spoke in clear English.

"Yes, we can hear you," commander responded, "I am commander Martin Duncan of UNSA Santa Maria, please, identify yourself!"

"Nice to hear you, commander," voice responded, "I am capitan Jim Patel, UNSA Explorer class ship Galileo. I hope our FTL drive didn't scare you."

"FTL drive?" commander stood up in shock, "we have been gone from Earth for what, 10 years? And you already cracked faster than light travel by then?" 

"No we didn't. You did," voice answered calmly.

Commander looked at his scientific officer, both silently asking "what?" under their breath.

"Or, rather, you will," voice continued, "you say you were gone for 10 years, I say it was 40 years. Relativity is a strange thing. And turns out, faster than light travel only complicates it all. We noticed it during first tests. One time, experimental ship arrived back to Earth even sooner than it actually left! We have to throw away all our concepts of time, and deal with the fact that things can be caused by something that didn't even happened yet. From my perspective, scientists on your ship cracked FTL technology many years ago, and sent it back to Earth with a tight beam. We continued from there, and eventually applied the technology in practice."

"This is unbelievable…" commander almost lost his words, "so what will happen now? Will we board your ship and you will drive us to Trappist? Or will you tow us?"

"No, we cannot do that," capitain Patel explained, "you have to continue on your journey. You have to invent FTL drive and send it to Earth, exactly as it already happened. We have no idea how causality works now, and we have to be careful not to cause any paradoxes. We are still learning how to use this technology. You have your path, and I have mine. We just wanted to let you know that… it will turn out great. By the way, Trappist system is already colonized, when you arrive, colony of thousands of people will greet you, just so you know. Good bye, and Godspeed."

"Wait…" commander screamed, but communication channel closed down. 

Galileo fired it's breaking thrusters, turned around and entered the anomaly it came from. The anomaly closed right after that, as fast as it appeared.

Commander Duncan sat down and blankly stared into the wall. Scientific officer uploaded data from the computer into his tablet and walked to him, still looking at the data.

"Do you have any idea what the hell just happened?" commander asked him.

"No, but this data we collected from that anomaly… it actually explains a lot I missed in my theoretical FTL drive research I was working on before we left Earth," he mumbled while swiping pages on his tablet.

Commander turned to him: "So you are telling me you can actually do it? You can crack FTL technology?"

"I don't know yet… but most probably… yeah, yes, I will," he answered looking at commander, smiling, "but I would have never been able to do it if the anomaly never showed up in the first place."