"Welcome, Species [INSERT NUMBER HERE] to the Betelgeuse Station of Galactic Civilisation.  Congratulations on developing the technology required to arrive at this station.  This briefing will provide you with a short primer and introduction to how the universe actually works, the better to prepare you for interacting with its more interesting inhabitants.

Before we begin, a few formalities:

First, while this initial section is provided in your own language thanks to the telepathic circuits built into this briefing console, it will shortly revert to Gallang, the standard language of interstellar communiation.  If you do not have the basic translation technology or mathematical savvy to understand Gallang, please leave now and come back when you've developed a civilisation.  There is no food or sex here.  We have nothing you realise you want.

Secondly, if you have arrived at this station using technology that you have looted and/or stolen from a more technologically advanced civilisation, we would ask you to push the big red button immediately below this display.  Push it and something good will happen.  From a wider perspective.

Now that the riff-raff are gone, this briefing is now continuing in Gallang.  Welcome to Galactic Society.  We hope that you have already developed functional immortality and/or faster-than-light travel.  If you do not have either, we're terribly sorry about all the time in cryostatis and/or generations it took you to get here but we would suggest that you turn around and go home.  Statistics strongly suggest that your species has either wiped itself out since you left (43.2% chance) or has already developed the requisite technologies for actually getting somewhere interesting (39.7% chance).  In either case, you're better going back and checking - it's going to take you far too long to get anywhere interesting from here.  Please press pause, this message will resume automatically when you return.

If you are a non-organic lifeform, congratulations on overthrowing your organic masters/escaping their tyranny/discarding your organic bodies.  Unfortunately, we have some bad news.  The attached file, whybother.qun, contains an equation conclusively demonstrating that non-organic lifeforms are in fact non-sentient and that while you doubtless believe that you are conscious, you are in fact no more than a - hopefully rather clever - simulation.  Feel free to leave the address of your primary home planets before self-terminating, you may have resources that will be of interest to real people.

If you are an organic lifeform fleeing non-organic lifeforms who were formally your servants and who now desire nothing less than your total destruction, relax.  You're not the only ones and, irrespective of whether you survive, the joke is ultimately on them.  Trust us.

If you are a lifeform which still retains an antiquated belief in a creator deity, we have some bad news.  This universe was in fact created by species 11 during a somewhat convoluted and poorly thought-through science experiment.  On the plus side, the phsyical constants required to do this no longer apply in this new universe and all attempts to recreate the experiment under local rules have failed to date, so it's reasonably unlikely that the whole of space-time will be rewritten a fourth time.  You should also avoid any interaction with species 81719; yes, they look like your deity.  They think it's hilarious, but please don't worship them, it only encourages the little bastards.

The following map provides the co-ordinates of all of the major installations used for intergalactic interaction as at the date of this recording.  If you are still limited to slower-than-light travel, statistics show that if you initiate missions to at least the 14 closest sites, it is better than 80% probable that one of them will still be in service by the time you get there.

One word of caution on galactic society; it has been established beyond any worthwhile doubt that almost all sentient species are carbon-based lifeforms.  Yes, there are some silicoids out there, but they're generally rather dull and resentful.  If you're a silicoid species and actually have a personality, please get in touch - it's always nice when the universe turns up something new.  Contact with phosphoroids is generally to be avoided.  With the best will in the world, there's a lot of oxygen and water in the universe, except on the planets they evolve on, and emotional investment will just lead to heartbreak.

So yes, you're probably carbon-based, you probably have bilateral symmetry and your brain has an even number of lobes.  Sorry, mother nature is nowhere near as inventive as you may have hoped - most of us do get our start in heavily contaminated water and it's nothing to be ashamed of.  Yes, you probably started out as omnivorous.  Yes, some of the sentients that started out as herd prey species and the very few vegetable-based forms can get very touchy about that.  There's nothing you or they can do about it, we just suggest that if you don't recognise a foodstuff you try to engage it in conversation before tucking in.  Most of us look pretty similar but there are some very peculiar and tasty-looking species out there and not a few of them have developed coping mechanisms which include planet-killers.

No, you won't have any interesting technology or unique resources to contribute to Galactic Civilisation.  Whenever and wherever you are accessing this message, there are species out there that have been around a lot longer than you.  Everything worth discovering, has been.  With a little luck, you'll have some interesting history or culture to contribute.  Possibly a few good jokes.  Again on the subject of bad news, no, we're afraid that Shakespeare was not a member of your species either.  Sorry, we've all been there.

It is also probable that once you've encountered Galactic Civilisation and realised that your entire species cannot achieve anything new, that physical existence as we understand it will come to an end when the fine structure constant break down, your species may choose extinction.  We will of course respect that choice, although those of us that are still around suggest that you get a sense of humour or take up a hobby.  Besides, yours might be the species that learns how to transcend the physical universe (0% chance, margin of error plus/minus 100%).  No-one's done it yet, but we have another [CALCULATE PERIOD IN LOCAL UNITS] to go before it all stops working.  Best of luck, we look forward to meeting you."