"Heh heh."
Scar Dog casually knocked the ashes from his cigarette into the teacup in front of him, smiling slyly at Charlie Lewis, "What do you think?"
"..."
The atmosphere in the room was slightly awkward.
After a lengthy silence...
Charlie Lewis seemed to resign himself to it. He sighed deeply, leaned back on the sofa and turned to Carl Jacob and the others to say, "The universe has been around for a long, long time..."
"A time much longer than the existence of the Nicholas Galaxy Federation."
"And in all that time, the Nicholas Galaxy Federation is just one civilization that has risen. There were many others before it, but for various reasons, they have all been wiped out by the sands of time."
"The remnants of these civilizations are preserved in many special ways in the universe."
"For instance, the widely used Federal technology of Remote Space Teleportation Gates was developed through research on objects discovered in these civilizational ruins."