Colossi Old and New Sate Yourself on the Fruits of the Graden

What if the first thing we found, stepping from our world and into the stars, was the skulls of an entire species piled high and left in display of a message we could not parse?   Now, imagine that we found that the universe was full of life; plants, animals, and sentient, but we had seemingly just barely missed some sort of great threshing of all those we could have considered our equals or betters. Not one had deigned to leave a message or a warning of some great threat, nor did they even simply lament that something was coming for them.   What do we do then?   Do we relegate the concept of spreading past our homeworld, our cradle, and reaching for the stars to the realm of fantasy and fiction? Do step blindly into a universe that could kill us, just as it has all others?   What if what was left behind by the uncountable dead species was far beyond anything we had ever seen. The kind of technology that tore holes in the fabric of space-time, breaking the impossibility of faster-than-light travel down for us and open up even the farthest reaches of the universe. All of those resources, the life.   Could we really leave it on the table?   What if that technology asked you a question when you used it? What if it asked for a piece of you in return?