Roland Quintaine

Hello, I'm Roland Quintaine. Professor Emeritus of Archeology and Pre-Human Colonization Cultural Studies at Cambridge University. I have combined Phd's in archeology, anthropology, metallurgy and biology. For the last seventeen years I have immersed myself in the study of the artifact record left behind by a race of beings that inhabited Sirius for millions of years. In that time, I have headed numerous expeditions into some of the darkest recesses of the galaxy to try and unlock the secrets of the ruins unearthed there. My findings indicate that the technology and accomplishments of this race were so advanced that we would scarcely be able to fully comprehend it... and yet for all of their achievements they seemed to have suddenly - and inexplicably - vanished almost overnight.

Foolishly, there is a trade that has developed in recent years... a fad really... of so-called art dealers who taken it upon themselves to harvest some of the lesser remnants of this race... shattered shards of their culture, which are loosely and quite simply refered to as "artifacts", and sell them on the open market. I have protested this on many levels, but either through political bribery or greed or sheer stupidity on the part of our leaders, the sale of these precious items remains unprotected throughout most of the galaxy. One of my deepest fears is what might happen if we were to ever recover something fully intact... of any significant power... and by virtue of our short sightedness, let it be peddled to the wrong hands. It might be a Pandora's Box that we could never close.