Chapters:

The Great Collision




The Great Collision changed life as we knew it forever. Our beautiful planet, Vula, and two moons were gone. All that was left now floated in space as bits of rock, wreckage, and ash that swirled together binding and breaking as it fought with the competing gravitational pull of the two stars that now circled each other in the center of our system.

Along with the wreckage of our planet and moons lie the remains of the dead and the ships I had created and built in order to escape.

With no other habitable planets in our planetary system, the ships were our only known chance of survival. There were twenty eight in total. With all 28 arks, an artificial planet could be created by joining them together as one. However, there were only 3 left after our mostly failed attempt to leave Vula. We would not have enough room to grow more sustenance so we could not increase our population at all.

We were losing hope as our sanity and circumstances continued to worsen. We needed a new planet. As all remaining debris and planets began their modified journey into the center of our now circumbinary planetary system, we too were dealing with a great modification of our culture and habits.

We had enough energy and reserves to sustain us for 10,000 years more in space, but the depression and worry was killing off the few we had left. We were going extinct, and quickly.

As Head navigator and the one who created the navigation technology for the ships, I failed to ensure every other Navigator knew how to use it and where to use it. It was my extremely dangerous technology and my failure to stress the importance of one simple order: direction

Had I been diligent, had I been more instructive, had I had control over every ark I had built instead of allowing others to control them…

It was because of that, that I was responsible for the loss of the 41.7 billion lives.


It left me struck with deep depression. I sought out the remaining members of the council, expecting some relief confiding in them. But the burden was too great for even them to offer any advice, and I was told that time was the best healer of all.

To pass the time, I took full control of the three remaining arks and brought them to orbit a gas giant that we called Nupta. The gas giant was part of our original planetary system. It had numerous moons and was continually pulling in new debris as it traveled it’s precession around Galo and Valeen.

We knew of the Great Collision long ago, before I was created, before telemental communication, before the Counsel, 500,000 years ago.

The history of the beginning has been told and retold many times, depending on who is telling it. A lot of the original history was lost in natural planetary cycles: Fires, the violent shifting of tectonic plates, floods, drought, two ice ages.

But from what we know, astroscientists of that time had discovered a dwarf galaxy that orbits our own Galaxy, Talo Vein. They called the dwarf galaxy Pesel. We discovered it closer to us than any other stars were. While it was still very far away, we were perpetually observant of its path. There was great concern that the gravity could disrupt our course around Talo Vein. However it continued its path without disturbing us and instead became the halo around a cluster of 9 bright stars we called the Mahap, which, long before those times, were used in navigation.

Over the course of six hundred generations, my species observed Pesel making its way through the cluster of stars. We began building telescopes and small ground bases on our two moons, it was quite beautiful at the time to observe and some dedicated their entire lives to researching Pesel and the effect it had on Mahap.

After nearly 50,000 years of research, our species documented Pesel tangle with the fabric of space around these 9 stars, pulling them into its gravity field. The gravitational pull from Pesel’s massive black hole pulled them in, interrupting their original orbit around the center of the mother galaxy, Talo Vein. The cluster of stars dispersed. Some of them were torn apart and some flung into different directions of the competing magnetic fields of our galaxy and that of the Dwarf galaxy, Pesel.

Mahap disappeared forever. The event passed. Life resumed as normal for almost ten millennia. It was then that an early astro-scientist named Valeen Ira, took interest in the movement of the star cluster to study independently. He had been studying it for just a decade when he suggested one of the stars seemed to be on course to cross paths with us, loaded with sizeable debris.

For over one hundred thousand years, our species was divided over this information. There was so much time to prepare, but the intelligent inhabitants of Vula were a very irrational and uncooperative society of beings.

Some said that because the time of collision was estimated to be 500,000 years from then, the star could get swept up in the gravitational pull of Talo Vein once again and change course. They backed up their theories with a millennia of studies proving their case true. Others were certain it was going to happen because every time they measured its position and path on the waves of gravity by both Talo Vein and Pesel, collision was eminent and they backed up their theories with a millennia of studies also.

Some hypothesized that we wouldn’t even be alive then to witness it, though our species had been around for close to half a million years already, and our archaic ancestors even longer, for 2 million years.

Some believed it would happen sooner than estimated, and alas, some believed the elites of the world would make their own escape ship and leave the poor behind to die.

After merely 250,000 years until collision, the telescopes we built on the most outer planets began sending images of the first wave of debris from the star cluster wreckage. Vula remained mostly unscathed but the two moons Olon and Pyma sustained a lot of damage. Ground bases and telescopes were destroyed and needed immediate attention so as not to lose valuable pieces of our structures there.

It was then that a group of freelance astro-scientists embraced the theory of total planetary destruction and created a lab in space. There they built an entire suit that injected a number of different microscopic robots, into the body. These nanobots were programmed to understand the functions of the organs in our bodies, detect abnormalities and report illness. It was a breakthrough in health science.

Our species evolved that day; it separated the sick and weak from the healthy and strong. It had the potential to extend our life expectancy 100%. Though it wasn’t long enough to ensure that we would be able to leave our planet and thrive in space forever, it was the beginning of cybernetic enhancement.

Soon after this life extension breakthrough, the world broke out in chaos. Religious groups opposed cybernetics, suggesting that cybernetics would destroy a natural species. They were right in a way, but the truth wasn’t that the natural species would be destroyed, rather they would be enhanced.

Nanobots had caused an obvious divide between our kind. Not only did the technology disclose which of our kind were sick or of unsound DNA but further created two classes of our species: Cyborgs and Natural kind.

There were fears that nanobots could get out of control but they were not programmed to do such a thing. A robot could not do what it wasn’t programmed to.

Still, religious spies posing as scientists infiltrated labs and destroyed blueprints and experiment notes. For thousands of years, a constant war waged between the partisans and scientists. Governments did little to help the cause for science. They were not focused on science, but rather helped propagate an imaginary “harm” that was being done by Nanobots.

Rather than prepare for the future, governments attempted to appease Natural kind, those who had hurt feelings over being sick or those of lesser DNA preference. Governments began heavily taxing any registered cyborg to pay for the Natural Kind’s medical needs. Their argument was that cyborgs had the advantage of good health and would live longer so they must take up the responsibility of caring for everyone else.

But everyone had the option to undergo the enhancements themselves and become healthy and extend their lives to begin planning for the future of our species. Those who simply did not want to, for fear or for religious belief, would rather reap the benefits of someone who had gone through the process.

The law was not fair, it took away the freedom of enhanced individuals over the entire planet. They did not undergo the surgeries to become the work slaves of natural kind.

It wasn’t long before the cybernetically enhanced individuals escaped the laws by leaving the planet and taking up permanent residence on our moons, helping to rebuild what was destroyed by the constant bombardment of the wreckage from the meteor showers.

Over time, the laws failed because the minority of cyborgs soon became the majority and they were no longer agreeing to being taxed so heavily. Partisans were still fighting a war on cyborgs in some areas of the planet but there were fewer governments that would stand for their cause.

There was a disruption in the wars as all astral scientists at last agreed that there was going to be a collision with another star. We had less than 100,000 years to prepare for it. It was then that religious extremism began to dismantle itself. The intelligent species of Vula turned to science in hopes to preserve our species.

We set to work creating materials to build ships that could withstand immense heat from a possible close encounter with the colliding system’s star, and collecting and storing energy from our star to supply ships for an extended duration, in case we could not return.

We also began to study the entire workings and structures of our bodies with the intent to develop artificial evolution. Through biological technology we recreated ourselves into a new species that accepted cybernetic implants easily, required less sleep and little sustenance which increased our lifespan 7000%. Every 10 millenia or so, a new Eon of cyborgs were created, eventually we had the ability to telementally communicate.

As a being of 5,000 years in age, I have gone through many procedures to replace joints and organs. I was born a 9th Eon cyber-organism, named Sacha, the only male of my family. I was enhanced while still in utero with billions of microscopic robots.

The nanobots continually monitor the body’s condition and either create stem cells to replenish vital organ cells, heal when needed or signaled by message, a report with instructions on supplements, enzymes or extracts to keep my body thriving.

I had several jobs over the first millennia of my life, dealing with cyborg mechanics, space navigation, ship mechanics, biotechnology, nanobot colony programming, but I most enjoyed energy control and storage. The complexity of energy inspired me so much that I began independent studies of my own. My dream was to create an energy source that could give off billions of years of power.

I looked first to Galo, our star, the closest source of abundant energy.

It was impossible to create a star, it required more mass than was available to me in our entire planetary system. My second idea was to create a black hole which was dangerous in its own way.

When stars die, they either become a cooled, bright, white light, or they collapse on themselves and become a powerful gravitational force that consumes everything, even the very fabric of its own space and time. Not even light can escape these dead, hollow stars. Black holes did not have large mass requirements, the problem was the smaller a black hole is, the hotter it becomes. A black hole five thousandths the size of a moon could be 5 to 10 times hotter than a star. It would cease to look like a black hole any more. It would look like a miniature star.

My black hole energy source plan was put aside as I didn’t have the immense energy needed to collapse particles let alone contain a black hole if I could even manage to create one.

It wasn’t until the twelve day gift giving holiday, Moddalin, while I was spending time with my family that a solution to my problem was realized.

My youngest niece, Ayitulu, brought me a small package, wrapped in silver paper.

Upon placing it in my lap, she said simply, “This gift will hold together the turbulent forces of a black hole by trapping “Reverse Life” inside it.”

“Oh Tulu… You know mother doesn’t want you talking about things you don’t know about.” her oldest brother, Tinji, sat beside me, spoke with obvious contempt.

“I’m not talking to mother, I will talk about them to my Mother’s brother!” she insisted.

“You don’t even know what anything means! Mother’s brother will find you unsound!”

“I’m not unsound…” she was clearly distressed by his mocking, almost as if she might believe him.

I waved my hand to stop their quarreling, “I don’t find Tulu to be unsound, if she wants to talk about something, don’t discourage her, encourage her and teach her.” I told him.

“Uncle, she spends half the day talking to sand.” Tinji revealed. Lots of younglings played with sand, and especially female younglings.

I ignored his criticism and instead continued my conversation with Ayitulu, “So Tulu, what is “Reverse Life” then?” I asked her, particularly wondering how a youngling could even make such a statement. I was intrigued.

“The ’Reverse Life’ is emitted by the black hole at the first moments of its birth.” she explained. Tinji laughed at her assertion.

To the untrained scientist, her words seemed strange indeed. To me, these words harmonized with my theories.

Ayitulu was a shy and quiet youngling, she kept to herself mostly, perhaps because she was not treated kindly by her brother and my sister. Yatti was a bit hard on her because Tulu liked to take her time and Yatti had always been impatient.

My niece was only a decade old, still very young compared to my 1000 years of life at that time. Vulians her age had little to no knowledge of the science of black holes or collapsing particles, but somehow she knew I was studying them on my extra time.

When I asked her how she had become so smart about black holes she waggled her head side to side with a bashful grin, a gesture meaning she felt modest.

“Nallie taught me.” she answered in a whisper, trying to keep Tinji out of the conversation now.

I inquired who Nallie was, to which she replied by tapping her hand on the paper wrapped gift in my hands.

Opening it, I found an opaque, indigo colored crystal. It was an artificial crystal called Rudimite, considerably rare, as it wasn’t found in nature and required all elements to create it.

Tulu casually mentioned to me that Nallie’s request was to be put to use in my black hole reactor.

The females of my species can hear crystals but it’s rare for the crystals to speak in a clear manner. Most often, females heard a simple buzzing or ticking from them. On rare occasions, one word phrases, but full sentences were unheard of.

It was common to keep and maintain a crystal garden on Vula. Crystals were part of nanobot creation and they were often grown and sold for profit or used in youngling creation. We did not understand it fully, but information was transmitted easily through the crystals to nanobots, or at least, we did not have the technology to detect the information running along these atoms to the nanobot.

Rudimite, however, was rarely used in bio-robotics. It didn’t occur in nature, it was fabricated in a lab, and because Rudimite contained every single element known to us, it had super magnetic properties.

Ayitulu blinked at me with her great orange eyes then turned away, leaving me there with Nallie in my palm. I stared after her in awe, watching her return to her crafts of making different sand sculptures. She spoke to the sand in a quiet, unique language as she poured small handfuls of it into clear, glass containers.

Before leaving their home that evening, my sister, Yatti, asked for the crystal back, affirming that Tulu would later wish to have it. It was a rare crystal and was expensive.

Yatti had not been as successful as I was so I understood her need. However, the very next day, Yatti brought Nallie back to me while I was working in my laboratory. She was upset and confused.

She explained that it was making a loud, irritating ringing sound and whenever she picked it up to put it away, she felt she needed to bring it to me. I asked her if the crystal had said anything to me but she became angry. She clarified that crystals don’t speak and she wasn’t hearing voices in her head.

I imagined maybe the crystal simply found Yatti unpleasant to speak with and decided to annoy her instead.

I paid her double the price of the crystal and she left with a smile. The weight of the cold, heavy crystal in my hand gave me a strong sense of satisfaction.

As an Energy scientist, I had the energy and equipment to recreate its structure in my lab. I only needed to obtain the elements. When I wasn’t pruning my magnetic crystal garden, I began collapsing simple protons and neutrons to try to measure some sort of “reverse life” event. This collapse was not dangerous. Black holes did get hotter and more volatile the smaller they were, however protons and neutrons held different laws of physics than complete atoms did.

Protons and neutrons were smaller than nanoparticles and it required periphiscopes to see them. We also used these periphiscopes to help build nanobots, study electrons and measure periphiparticles of force.

Protons, neutrons and electrons were never found on their own. They always carry a field of energy, sometimes referred to as “cosmic foam.” Black holes did not have high temperatures in this “cosmic foam” because they were considered large compared to its environment, as if cosmic foam was more like “small scale space.”

As I examined them, I discovered that Ayitulu was correct about an emission of some kind of periphiparticle in the black hole’s beginning stages. However, this force was unique. I did not recognize it and first guessed it was just the kinetic reaction of the implosion. Upon further examination, it was like the nuclear forces had been reversed. Instead of holding atoms together, it dispersed them in all directions.

I called my discovery “X-Gravity”. My work was made public and I found myself declining teaching positions and requests to write periphiscience journals. I didn’t want to waste a moment teaching and going over what I already knew but continue to build the Black Hole reactor. I wanted to be able to build the reactor before the Great Collision happened.

After successfully collapsing atoms of gold, I began experimenting with sealing it inside a Rutonmite crystal core.

Trapping the X-gravity inside the crystal at the precise moment it was emitted was more difficult than I imagined. The X-Gravity lost its strength the further it traveled from the black hole. I found that if I did not trap the X-gravity but only the black hole, the black hole decayed quickly and I was left with a hollow crystal. Eventually I experimented with growing the crystal around the gold atom.

I was then able to collapse the gold atom inside the crystal by concentrating strong lasers through certain points.

Upon the collapse, I viewed the crystal through a periphiscope. The atoms of the crystal bubbled and vibrated in their crystalline structure. The X-gravity fought the high powered magnet to push it apart while the gravity of the black hole fought to pull it back together. The heat from the small crystal was incredible and I had to build another chamber around it to collect the heat and vibrations, converting it into usable energy.

The end result was three centuries of power from an object the size of my fingertip. From my creation, I became a known figure of black hole science with a new theory that was being applied and studied across the planet and our moons. The theory was that the strong forces were not obliterated in a black hole, but transformed into a reversed force, X-Gravity.

Before registering my invention with the Council, I visited Tulu and gave her the very first crystal contained black hole reactor. Now that Tulu was nearing 400, she had many gardens of crystals and had become a crystal manufacturer. I told her that without her idea, none of this was possible. She still urged that it was not her idea but Nallie’s. I could not prove or disprove her words, I accepted them and thanked her anyway.

Ayitulu thanked me in return, for granting Nallie’s wish, though Nallie had been destroyed as I cut it into slices to help clone new crystals. In a way, Nallie had still been used in the black hole reactor even if in small pieces.

To build a larger scaled version of the power source, I required many more sources of energy until I had enough to collapse a large gold plate. Though I had done many experiments on microscopic scales, I still did not have a clear answer of if it would be possible in large scale space. Dimensions and equations changed and I needed to be exact in all of my calculations. The crystal chambers had to be larger which required more time to grow.

My energy requirements to create a large scale version involved getting clearance from council and I had to create a lab in space to perform the procedure far and safely away from our planet. In the event that the magnetic crystals failed and I could not contain the black hole, I set course to the outside of our planetary system. I would die along with my work but it was a risk I was willing to take.

The time it took to travel in my lab to reach the outside of our planetary system was a little over 8 years. To a being of several thousand years in age, 8 years is but a blink of an eye. I filled my time double checking my calculations and improving upon them.

Upon reaching the furthest and safest area of our planetary system, I began to prepare the reactor outside the lab.

With the labship’s external mechanical arm, I positioned the chamber of Rutonmite with the gold plate inside of it, on a platform outside of the ship. It worked just as I had planned, except collapse itself was so strong that the mechanical arms were ripped off, and the power source to my ship was destroyed.

The black hole reactor was now loose, floating in space and there was no way for me to retrieve it.

Metallic bits and eventually asteroids began pummeling the ship as they made paths directly through it to attach themselves to the reactor that had become a super powered magnet.

With holes in the ship, the radiation of space was getting in and the air supply was getting out I quickly took my only option of survival, to escape via Minute Pod.

After I was a safe distance from the reactor and its debris field, I hailed the closest monitoring space station and requested help. For nearly eight years, I slept off and on, waiting for rescue. I had become ill from the exposure to radiation. My body battled with the oxidative stress from the gamma rays and my nanobots depleted their stores of nutrients to repair the damage. My immune system failed as my enzyme system was nearly sterilized. Growing new enzymes required a specific cultured environment.

Under normal conditions with our enhanced biotech systems, enzymes only needed replenishing once every 80 years. There were two ways to replenish the vital enzymes, eating a diet rich in fresh bio-active sustenance, or getting them directly injected into the digestive tract.

Neither option was available to me in the most outer asteroid belt of our planetary system. Somehow in my weariness, I managed to keep near the reactor so I did not lose it. It was becoming difficult to recognize anymore with the collection of asteroids cluttering the outside.

At last, the rescue ships arrived, the medics were able to treat me with the vital enzymes I needed and my body was purged of the radiation.

After clearing away some of the mess of magnetic asteroids attached to the black hole reactor, the rescue crew hauled it out of the asteroid belt.

The reactor brought me fame that I could not escape from and fortune that I shared mostly with my sisters and their families. I found myself only wanting to return to my work. In the beginning of my nano-black hole tests, I found something inside the “cosmic foam” surrounding protons, neutrons and electrons. It was only visible through a periphiscope and an attached radiant light filter.

I discovered and proved the existence of anti-photons, even inside photons themselves. Anti-light only exists for a very short time, and only if there is light. It is a state of plasma that stretches wide and far, searching for light so it can bind to it and become one.

However, it was the strange activities of these anti-photons that I was most curious about. It was within the reaction of binding anti-photons to photons that a stretchy fabric of actively contorting, bending time portals existed. I had found a solution to yet another problem we had, rapid long distance space travel.

The time portals stretched only as wide as anti-photons existed. Due to their short lifespan, the time portals were too tiny to be of any use. That was, until I found that electromagnetic fields blocked the passage of anti-photons. With a cloak of visible light layered around the invisible electromagnetic field, it trapped the anti-photons, preventing them from closing around the photon.

The visible light of the beam agitated the anti-photons which made them stretch and bend, widening the time portals until it filled the capacity of the electromagnetic field tunnel.

The constant stretching of anti-photons pulled the fabric of space inside the beam, in the attempt to pull in photons. Space and time could be manipulated in the essence of light photons, as time became transformed into shortened spatial distances.

Applying my black hole reactor, navigation and time-space portals with anti-light beams, I built a small cargo vessel that could travel out of the heliosphere of our star, nearly instantly.

A new way of calculating space navigation came about and I found myself at last thrown into educating and counseling.

I was instructed by Council to take telemental communication courses. It helped me explain the science to my pupils. Computing devices did not understand calculating distances by time and I had to create the operating information myself, which took me nearly a hundred years.

Eventually my work included changing the old equation designs, calculating distances several times the size of our planetary system, replacing ship power supplies, redesigning the arks to travel inside the portals, and even found a way to harvest the energy from the beam around the portal, recycling some of the power and storing it. Additionally, the arks could be joined together to model an artificial planet that we could survive on in the event that we lost our planet, Vula.

Our species would never again worry about energy supply.

My entire life after taking up my independent studies was spent on this technology. My species would live because of me, but I was only one of many, helping solve problems, and making it possible to escape certain death…

…I should have gone through every one of the twenty eight ships and made sure their beam was programmed to go in the right direction. Even more so, I wished we had had gone through several test escapes beforehand. The more I thought about it, the more I became angered about my incredibly sloppy effort to save my species.

After the entire population of my species boarded the arks four hours before the collision, I gave the command to ignite their beams and open the time portals, called quantum runways. Eighteen of the twenty eight ships did not fire their beams in the Great Collision Escape route that I had mapped out for them.

The moment I gave the command to ignite their beams, screaming flooded my ears, and bright flashes of light blinded me.

The ten that had followed my route were reduced to three by the chaos of the off course ships, and the asteroid belt of Valeen, the colliding star and her planetary system. It pelted our planet, cracking Vula open, to which she gushed molten lava, like life blood, far into space.

Though we did not fear space travel, low energy supply or dying of starvation, it could not prepare us for what we would witness when time forever ended on Vula.

We took to the gas giant known to us as Nupta, which escaped major damage from the collision. We found safety in orbit around the southern hemisphere of it, near an icy moon named Ro. There we stayed for seventy decades, siphoning drinkable liquids from Ro, and watching the debris swirling above the Northern hemisphere.

We needed a constant eye out for any dangerous objects that could pass into our course. Mindful of Nupta’s immense force of gravity as its orbit carried us in and out of the collision space.

During Nupta’s orbit into the field of debris, a cluster of four asteroids with a large amount of debris orbiting around them started toward us. We watched them spin faster and faster, until two broke free and launched into different directions. The two asteroids left behind slowed down so much they became trapped in an opposite orbit to that of Nupta’s spin on her axis, becoming two new, very rare moons.

With the two large, planet sized asteroids going in the opposite direction of the rest of the debris orbiting Nupta, their surfaces began to light up with impacts. We had to abandon our orbit as Ro, too, was ripped apart by their competing gravitational pulls. The massive, icy moon glanced against one of the planet sized asteroids, exploding into a white, sparkling disk of ice.

A little after a century, when the moons seemed stable enough to send a probe to surface, I found them to be our best hope of ever being on a terrestrial planet again. They came with their own oceans, not to mention the extra liquid they picked up in the collision with Ro. And so, we named the two new moons the Twice Nuptines, nearest Nuptine and Furthest Nuptine, or N. Nuptine and F. Nuptine when we needed to be specific.

After finding Twice Nuptines, some members of our Counsel pointed out the significance of Nupta’s mythological story to our current situation.

Long ago, Nupta was a bright dot in the evening sky that helped earlier civilizations of our species travel by night. The old story suggested that when Galo went away, we could find Nupta beaming brightly to the west in the winter. On the day Galo took a long journey away, we would take to the west, to Nupta, to live with her in her bright aura.

It was true there was a coincidence in the story and our reality, and it made our love bloom for the new habitable satellites of Nupta, the Nuptines.

The Nuptines are mostly rocky and iron surfaced, with caves that howl in the wind. Both hold immense oceans that crash onto shores creating wind and precipitation that can be purified to drinkable liquids. With air purifying shelters we can breathe without the aid of suits, and at last, they are all we have.

Nupta was constantly in our horizon, its impressive size glowing brightly in the night. It’s radiance increased even more with a second star now rising and setting in the distance.

Over time, I acquired enough materials to apply my warp time technology to a series of passenger and cargo vessels that travel among electromagnetic paths, between several space stations and ground bases. This made it possible to travel to either Nuptine whenever we needed. The Council named my invention the “Quantum Traveler.”

They erected a statue of me at the first ground base of the Quantum Traveler on N. Nuptine, against my wishes. I argued that the materials used to make the statue were too valuable to waste, not to mention there were many Vulians that still despised me for the loss of 99% of our population.

The Council insisted on it because of my accomplishments. They wouldn’t dwell on my failures, I was a hero to them and that was something that should never be forgotten.

Now, it was 3000 years since the second star, Valeen joined Galo at the center of our planetary system. It was still too dangerous to go near to investigate Vula.

From the distance we were from Galo, our stars looked just like any other star, almost lost in the background if it weren’t for Valeen, the smaller white star circling Galo.

However, once again, I see a growing problem. Most of our supplies to create more cyber-organisms were lost in the great collision. We were being born natural again and thriving, but without the enhancements we needed more food sources. We needed fertile soil, we needed materials to build heated shelters for the predicted long, cold winters. We were not safe yet.

The natural population grew quickly, which became problematic with our low supplies. The council asked for my help once again and I quickly volunteered my time with a small crew, seeking out sizable debris in space. I was in charge of navigation, collecting and analyzing materials. However, we were not receiving material as fast as our population grew.

I took up a meeting with Council and persuaded them to allow me to use the ships to travel to other stars to obtain materials from the planets orbiting them.

There was only one way to get things we needed and that was to find them.

Our three remaining ships, designed as arks to carry up to 150 million people and supplies, were stripped down and rebuilt into smaller ships.

We spent another seven decades perfecting the quantum runway system that could bring us 5.6 trillion miles away in one year. We would be traveling just under the speed of light.

The Captain and the Overseers of the ships had a meeting to decide which planetary systems they would explore. The star our Overseer chose seemed to be the furthest away. It would take us fourteen years to get to our destination, but O. Loy said this star, in the center of this system, seemed unique when gazed at under special starlight filters. He suggested that the soil that came from the planets that are being energized by this star would hold more nutrients than the other two options we had.

So, it was decided and we were off to our destination star, named H6138 while the other two ships travelled to P7493 and C3234.

I set each of the 3 ship’s starting paths myself, to prevent any accidents. However, I could not set the entire course because of the constant traveling of the stars. Small adjustments in direction were needed, every year.

I established a list of rules and had them approved by the Overseers.

Ships were required to send messages daily even if the messages were of mundane matter. I even created a new sensory sector of my nano-robots to read off messages from the other ships the moment they were received so I could keep track of contact times. It would help with navigation as we made our way back home. Overseer Loy liked my idea so much he insisted I create him one, too.

The years of traveling were painful at the start. I could not wait to be back home; there was so much work to be done. I hoped H6138 contained many materials and perhaps different elements not available on our planets.

Around year 2 the artificial gravity of our ship had given us so much trouble that I had to reprogram it. I took the task happily, it gave me something to do while I waited and kept my mind occupied from the depression I was still battling. The newer gravity program would notify us when it needed to adjust so we weren’t misjudging our steps, leaping further than anticipated or stepping short of our intended destination, resulting in tripping and falling.

After three years of traveling, the daily messages from the other ships came months after they sent it. It was an expected delay due to the widening distance between the other two ships and home.

The other two ships had named their destination stars Ceti and Pru. We were beginning to call our destination star, Sul. It meant “flooded with light.”

Suls system of planets was immense. There were only four planets in Galo-Valeens system, while Sul was mother to over double that, with a wide sparkling belt of asteroids sectioning off the smaller inner planets from the bigger outer ones. Though there was much to learn about our destination, I could only gather so much information about it, being so far away.

The days drew on slowly. I had to acquire an apprentice, named Uyta, from our crew to help keep me active and more importantly, sane. I found it therapeutic to discuss operations with someone else rather than dwelling on my giant mistake.

I got a shock of surprise around the beginning of year twelve. Sul’s radiation was beginning to register on our starlight energy extractors, recharging our energy stores. It felt as if it were welcoming us to her, inviting us into her warm blanket of energy.

The last year we spent traveling to the Sul system, I hardly did anything but gaze out the windows. I took down notes, ran through calculations and planetary mass comparisons.

The days became like seconds then, as there was something to occupy my mind every waking moment, be it going over the mechanics of landing the ship with my apprentice, Uyta, or studying materials in dust or gases.

Uyta took me away from my studying to go over the newer and modified ship mechanics and navigation protocols at least once a day. I didn’t mind because the ships had been condensed down in size so there was less to consider.

Uyta had shown herself to be somewhat of a perfectionist. She wanted to be familiar in all navigation tasks, just as she was familiar in all medical-tech since before she was my apprentice.

When we arrived at last to the heliosphere of Sul, we unfortunately and fortunately collided into an asteroid of platinum and gold. Though we had lost one of our eight engines in the event, we instantly had more than enough material to rebuild it. I could not help but think of it as an omen. Not only were we entering into a rich planetary system, we also needed to be wary of being literally destroyed by all the riches.

O. Loy locked himself away in the overseer quarter after giving the order to repair the engine. He stated over the ship monitor that the moment it was finished, we were going to see Sul up close.

Later I advised that we could quickly fill our ship with gold just by scavenging whatever asteroids were swirling around in the outer rings of Sul’s system, and be out of here and on our way back home, but my opinion seemed to matter little to him.

Instead, Overseer was soon announcing to everyone over the ship communication monitor that he had named the planets of Sul.

They weren’t very imaginative names; they were the names of the days in our week on Vula, including two holidays: Eity, Octy, Gala, Vala, Pyi, Yippa, Sarla, Moddalin and Prya.

When we had collided with the asteroid, the power to our calendar that was precisely computing the time spent away from Twice Nuptines was compromised, so we couldn’t visit the planets according to the days. The overseer did not seem as alarmed as I was about the loss of time. However, I knew it was important because we needed to know how long we had been away. Our natural born species was time sensitive and even more worrisome was the calculated seven hundred year orbit of the Nuptines; we had a little over one hundred and fifty years before the Nuptines fell behind Nupta, into a three hundred and fifty year winter. I tried to make that a point in nearly all of my communications with the overseer.

Once we repaired our damaged engine, we proceeded to see Sul up close. To my delight, Sul was going through a star storm maximum, which I directed Uyta and her assistant, to keep track of. I wanted to know how long Sul’s maximum normally lasted as well as its minimum.

The immense star greeted us with an ejection of star surface mass like a massive bolt of lightning far into space. I ordered that we limit our path no closer than the second planet. O. Loy challenged my cautiousness, stating that the ships were designed to take heat, but I explained that it was unnecessary to test our limits. I suggested we could continue prospecting closer during Sul’s minimum cycle instead.

And so we orbited Sul’s second planet, Octy, which was a violent, stormy disarray of toxic gases and incredible heat. The probe I sent had even melted right where it landed, preventing us from getting a better view of the surface. I reported to O. Loy that once again, continuing further was more dangerous than beneficial.

O.Loy then ordered we look at the red planet, Vala, fourth from Sul as it seemed very similar in color to Vula, but I suggested it would save time to just explore them in order. Even though we had time bending at our side, we still could not afford to waste a minute of it. With most of the ship agreeing with me, O. Loy decided to go with the majority but not without locking himself up in his quarters once again for the duration of our journey to Gala.

Upon our approach, I quickly surveyed the single moon of Gala with a group of drones, checking for any alien structures. It would indicate if there was advanced intelligent life on Gala or not.

Overseer Loy decided to join Uyta and I inside the Navigation deck. I deployed drones as soon as we were locked into an orbit around Gala. Immediately, we found it bursting with life, seemingly more habitable than Vula was. It was completely alien though, the colors were different, the manner of the creatures seemed tranquil yet reactive and vibrant. The sand was of seven different colors in several different places. The plant life was mostly green, and the ocean was blue and contained a lot of oxygen. The oceans were large and deep, alive with gigantic aquatic creatures. The land was of many terrains, lush forests and jungles, crisp, frosted mountain tops poking above clouds, large spans of flat grass lands as far as the eye could perceive.

Everyone remarked on the seven different colors of visible light here. The rainbows on Twice Nuptines are several teals, greens and blues, and even Vula only had red, and purple rainbows.

It was theorized that the quality of livable planets had to do directly with the quality of its star, and Overseer Loy had been right about Sul being worth traveling to. It is abundant with energy, the plant and animal life that fed on Sul’s light hummed with a unique signature of electromagnetism similar to what registered during interactions of the crystals within our own nanobots. It suggested to me that the beings here were capable of communicating telementally.

Our own species had only achieved telemental communication 8,000 years ago, and only with advanced cybernetic telemental receptors and decades of practice and experience.

I notified the overseer about the possible telemental communication capabilities of the beings here. He immediately ordered we land to do further research. I agreed instantly, and suggested an area I found very rich with life. He instead ordered Uyta to navigate.

Though she was more than capable to do so, I could sense the overseer had a deeper meaning to disregarding my request.

Uyta didn’t bother looking over the information to decide on a different area but instead chose to land where I had originally suggested. She seemed irritated by O. Loy’s dismissive behavior toward me.

Overseer Loy had been responding negatively to many of my requests lately. He had even been skeptical of my safety concerns of traveling close to Sul in its active star cycle state. I was beginning to feel I should refer him to the ship’s counselors. He was showing signs of unsoundness. Our species was prone to going insane. It was the downside to having cybernetics sometimes interfering with neural transmission.

I had the experience to evaluate him and I might have done a scan of his soundness myself just then but he had been wearing a telemental nullifier on his head since year six of our journey.

After O. Loy had left the navigation deck to wait at the deployment bay, Uyta delighted me with her opinion about him. She told me she felt O. Loy intended to test the legitimacy of my navigation instruction. As if he thought I could not have taught her how to navigate at all, and he seemed surprised when she had taken the navigation controls without hesitation.

I could only reply that I did not intentionally teach her to navigate and that she had figured it out herself.

She waggled her head side to side with a funny curve on her lips, as if to minimize the importance of her natural ability to grasp complex navigating mechanics.

I suddenly felt different about her, then. She was refreshingly modest, while not afraid to take difficult tasks and make them seemingly simple.

She also spoke to me and regarded me in a way that made me feel significant while I hardly received that feeling from anyone else besides some members of the council and Captain Aio.

Uyta navigated flawlessly, and though she had never landed the ship before, she did so with an unexpected precision that I had believed was only capable by me. We landed on a flat, grassy green bit of land near some thick jungle. The moisture outside fogged the glass of the ship’s starlight shield visor. The entire ship vibrated, and a loud rumbling could be heard, like thunder. I grabbed the nearest wall to steady myself, I could sense the life forms communicating like bolts of lightning. I would have believed it were a lightning storm were it not for the presence of emotion, excitement, fear, hunger, and a kindred joy. It was I who felt joy, closing my eyes and enjoying the sounds and movements of life on another planet just outside the ship… the ship that I designed and built to travel here.