Coming... Someday

It is the year one billion AD.

The human race has long since abandoned its primitive homeworld, and has scattered through the stars, urbanizing the Milky Way. As they spread outward, they inserted themselves into ecological niches, transforming themselves into ever-stranger forms to fit the ecosystems of a hundred million worlds.

In any system, friction is inevitable. A quintillion sapient descendants of a single race can't share a Galaxy in peace forever, and everywhere, petty squabbles eventually gave rise to wars. An unofficial diplomatic corps arose, trying to mediate disputes, to bring the bickering children of Man to the ideal of universal peace.

They know they're doomed to failure, but they try anyway.

Then one day something happened that no one expected. Four billion years before it was due, Sol expanded into a red giant, baking Earth into a charred cinder.

Now there's a peace conference gathering on the ruined Earth. They're there to try one last time to bring peace to the human race. At the same time an investigative team has set up shop on Earth, to try and piece together the mystery of the sun's sudden departure from the main sequence.

And after a billion years of being alone in the universe, the human race may have finally found other life out there.

But if it exists, is if friendly?