Chapter Theme Music: Aurora ~ (Hans Zimmer – Aurora) [Forgotten Temples]
> The date tags used in this story are locked in on the setting of the Genosis Galaxy only, and not that of Earth. For example, the star-date of 2020 pertains to the time since the estimated beginning only for the Altiri, and does not represent the same year as the Earth time frame. Translation on both will be used in the near future. Avions are a measurement of time for the Altiri, represented for one unit = 970 (earth equivalent) years, until it was altered to equal 1,010 years during the 49th Avion.
<07/14/2020 {Avion 2} - 18:22 | Karnak (Zone 3), Genosis, Altiri Sector Space>
I cannot remember exactly when our species began, what point in time the Altiri came to be, as can nobody else. We reach for memories of the ancient past, never getting to that exact truth. Were we put here by the creator of the universe, by God? Or were we brought to this planet, our bodies genetically altered and engineered for a project far beyond the understanding of our future scryers? All that seems clear, is that whatever entity brought us to this beautiful desolate world, intended for us to thrive, survive, and procreate in a place where no other life would exist.
Karnak was and always is a world of cold lives, a monument forever frozen in time by the rushing blizzard winds blasting arctic snow into hills, building mountains of ice. The air here on Karnak is -360oN, or -340oF for conversation. The winds blow frequently, constantly raging in some zones of the planet. The air is perfectly breathable for us Altiri, and our rough exterior skin and internal organs handle this cold air perfectly fine.
We don't need food to survive. We don't need sleep to recover. We don't need an immune system to protect us. We need not worry about time aging us. Are we natural, or artificial? Were we born, or engineered? Were we brought here for a purpose, or for no particular reason at all?
All of us think back to the beginning, as far back as we can to determine the answers, but none can fully remember when the year of our collective birth was one or zero. The history of Avion 0 and the time before it will never be known to any of us; such is the mystery of our sacred origin.
The people of the past need not remember in order to survive. I could envision the memory so clearly how our ancestors lived. Despite aging too slowly to matter, we all still needed the atmosphere of our planet to breathe, and the melted water of the surface to drink. Altiri seemed to be immune to natural causes of death, but thirst could still end us, as could heat, if ever given a chance to spawn on this frozen world.
The planet is always a massive frozen cluster of water, without any rivers or ponds, without any channels or oceans. The water is all around us at hand's reach, but frozen in its state, cannot be consumed for the sustenance we need. Using a power that even I am amazed and bewildered by, the ancestors of us past, accessed what they needed so easily.
"Make sure you don't let melted water sit too long. This water can freeze again instant." The friend standing before me in a widely dispersed crowd gave me her advice as she took to her own.
All of us were standing out here, outside of our homes encased in solid ice, using our sacred technique of survival, as it was now my turn. I already carried the chunk of frozen water in my hands, ice which I extracted from the ground I stand on now. I had no external tools, only my own hands and feet, so I extracted this rock by punching the ground with all my might at a ten degree angle. I had to punch the same place more than once, but my brute strength loosened up the ice against the crater of my might below it, allowing me my share of consumption.
With the ice in my right hand, I firmly caressed and hovered my left hand over the surface of the chunk, exerting so much energy, my body shaking enough to notice. My hand began to glow like magic from a spell, dimly, but certainly. I had to hold this painful power on for several seconds, letting the sting of a thousand needles penetrate the pours of my palm. Once it was over, some of the ice had shifted to cover and stick to my left hand. As for the chunk however, the block of ice was already liquefying, its surface warming from the immense vibrations spreading inside from this power, ultra-sonic.
As the water from this chunk dripped down onto the ground, I quickly lifted the stone above my face, shutting my eyes and opening my mouth wide so that I may drink. It wasn't a lot of water to gain from what I had just done, but I was getting more energy back from what I just used, the cycle repetitive until my thirst would be satisfied. I felt the delicious water trickle down my throat, reaching all the way down to the core of my stomach, before the flash sensation of a chill shot through every vein in my body. I knew without understanding how, that this water which entered deep into my body, froze on the inside, becoming colder than my skin, colder than my thick blood, colder than every organ within me. As the frozen water slowly flowed inside of me, so did its energy rejuvenate me, slow as the process was.
Those around me were doing the same, satisfying their thirst by melting the water so that it may become drinkable. With the entire planet a massive sphere of ice, there was plenty to go around, now and forever. So I shall continue to melt more of this ice, drinking more and more until I am ready to return home, repeating the cycle. I never once thought of this as strange or abnormal. This is what we Altiri are used to, all we have known.
The memory of this stuck strongly within me, carried over by their offspring. We populated slowly in the beginning, quickly afterwards. Our bodies are always 100% female in genitalia, but we still give birth to at least one child, every single one of us once we reach the age of 108, not one year earlier, and not one year later. There are no men in our world, our birth possible by parthenogenesis, a phrase we never knew until long after discovering the human world.
Our people grew over time, and as we did, so did the length in our latent psionic abilities. The brief moment of memory I recalled just now is not a memory I carried specifically, for I am Lumina, born in the year 45,361. Though it was so long ago, the memory never fades, preserved through telepathic memory sharing techniques we mastered so long ago. All of us Altiri can learn these abilities. We learned to communicate our language in telepathy, our thoughts and our emotions, our love and our memories.
I know not of the lady who shared that memory we just witnessed, for it was never a detail included, and the time was so long passed. We are now The Unity, our world changed, our bodies further adapted and altered. The power to melt ice with our hands at will is no longer, the process ever mysterious to us all, the ability extinct. Thankful we are to have long before invented the machinery we use daily to extract ice from our world, melt it with density separators, purify it with filters, and sustain its state with atomic isotopic infusions. Our time now is so different than it was back then, and for most of us, those who lived as they did then are long passed, never to be reborn or seen again in our world. However, despite how much has changed, many of us have lived for eons, some who escape all of death, and others who cheat death when they are resurrected through our modern technology.
Even though this important monument is not my memory, it is an important testament of time long past. We were once healthy, once growing, once numerous, and once powerful; but we were also young, naive, impressionable by the faintest change to a world never changing. Our race is now in a state of decline, our people slowly dying from pure entropy. We produce no offspring anymore, and resurrection is not a perfect process for every Altiri who dies in accidental causes. Though it will take more than a million years, our time will end for sure, unless something changes once again, fixing what has broken in our genetics. Perhaps, we shall still see our end, maybe to atone for the mistake we made so long past, or maybe because nature will decree the end of all life one way or another.
In this world where very little ever changes, peace and prosperity prevails, some of us sad, some of us wary. In this world where time moves so slowly, I live.
