The Story of Sanei, Chapter 13: Alternative Ending: One Billionth

Chapter 13: ALTERNATIVE ENDING: ONE BILLIONTH

Omicron, and Astra before her, had been the only humans never to have seen Earth. The others that had lived on the colony with her had remembered the home world, and often told of it. They had recalled how the forests had stretched on forever, running into the plains, which ran into the swamps, which ran into the highlands, which ran into the ocean, and how millions upon millions of creatures had roamed every inch of the land. This Earth was a world away from the one that would have been recognizable to humans. Their species would not begin to evolve for another 997 million years, and it would be another 2.6 million years after that before the first true humans arose out of the Great Rift Valley in Africa. This world was barren, empty, lifeless, and devoid of anything but great empty expanses of land, mountain ranges, and tiny forests of mushrooms.

“It really is terribly lonely,” Omicron said. She reached carefully behind Astra to pull out the blast gun from its holster. Jumping back, she shot herself before Astra could react. Falling to her knees, Astra felt herself taking the gun from Omicron’s hands, and putting it to her own head. She felt herself pulling the trigger listlessly, and something within her fought against it, but too late. 

The Story of Sanei, Chapter 13: Alternative Ending: Last to Fall

Chapter 13: ALTERNATIVE ENDING: LAST TO FALL

Omicron, and Astra before her, had been the only humans never to have seen Earth. The others that had lived on the colony with her had remembered the home world, and often told of it. They had recalled how the forests had stretched on forever, running into the plains, which ran into the swamps, which ran into the highlands, which ran into the ocean, and how millions upon millions of creatures had roamed every inch of the land. This Earth was a world away from the one that would have been recognizable to humans. Their species would not begin to evolve for another 997 million years, and it would be another 2.6 million years after that before the first true humans arose out of the Great Rift Valley in Africa. This world was barren, empty, lifeless, and devoid of anything but great empty expanses of land, mountain ranges, and tiny forests of mushrooms.

“It really is terribly lonely,” Omicron said. She reached carefully behind Astra to pull out the blast gun from its holster. Jumping back, she shot herself before Astra could react. Falling to her knees, Astra felt herself taking the gun from Omicron’s hands, and putting it to her own head. She felt herself pulling the trigger listlessly, and something within her fought against it, but too late. She crumbled on top of Omicron, and the two lay lifeless for a moment in silence.

Omicron woke up screaming, and Astra awoke moments after in much the same fashion. “Kill me,” they said in unison, staring into each others eyes. Astra threw Omicron another gun, and raised her own shakily. “Shoot,” they said together.

Omicron shot too early, and the other never had a chance to fire her weapon. The world turned as the immortal child of the void screamed to herself and an empty world.

And so it came to pass that the curse was thrust upon the winner,

She who was the last to fall.

The Story of Sanei, Chapter 13: Alternative Ending: Legacy of Earth

CHAPTER 13: ALTERNATIVE ENDING: LEGACY OF EARTH

The ship landed on the shore. It disturbed the film of algae covering the sea, creating a small lake of indigo amongst the ocean of ocean of blue-green, revealing the waters upon which the colonies of algae floated. Astra and Omicron stepped out of the shop together, the latter walking on the homeworld of her species for the first time.

Omicron wandered off a few a meters, taking care not to disturb the mushrooms that sparsely littered the soil. Further inland, she knew, the fungi were more densely populated, and the small spores marched onwards for hundreds of miles. The first forests were only a half a centimeter tall.

The waves broke gently on the shore, leaving a froth of algae and foam in their wake. A thin layer of sand along the waterline served as the beginnings of a beach, as the ceaseless force of erosion had yet to break apart the rock at the edges of the continents to form the vast expanses of beachlands that would line the coasts in latter days.

Earth was still very much a waterworld, with the supercontinent Rodinia as its central landmass, a jumble of continents connected to various degrees huddling together on one side of the world while the other was ruled completely by water. Lauerntia, the largest mass of land, would, over the next three quarters of a billion years, become North America. India would become part of an Asian continent yet to be formed, and Kalahari, Congo, West Africa, Amazonia, Siberia, and Baltica would be resigned to similar fates. Australia and Madagascar would remain much unchanged throughout the next 1000 million years, simply moving through time and the waters of Earth as the formed passed by unheeded.

Life here was reaching a tipping point. While in the past its hold had been feeble, the creatures of Earth were securing their purchase. Where single-celled organisms had reigned, multi-celled organisms were beginning to flourish. Specialized cells were developing, and colonies of algae becan to form into simple flat plates or more advanced complex spheres. Hormones evolved so that cells working together could communicate more efficiently. Fungi served as decomposers in the forming ecosystem as eukaryotes evolved to feed on dead matter. Algae grew larger than protozoans, and were not eaten as easily.

The newly oxygenated skies gleamed blue for the first time just millions of years ago, and under it, Rodinia’s reign had begun 200 million years ago, and would not end for another quarter of a billion years.

Astra looked up at the sky. She had been here before, alone. It had looked the same: an ocean covered with algae and blue-green bacteria, the land barren save for nearly microscopic fungi, and an off-blue sky utterly empty. The ocean slipped over the horizon unbroken, tiny waves punctuating the hypnotizing stillness occasionally. The land seemed jagged at the edges, where the Grenville Mountains were forming as Laurentia and Amazonia met. “It’s lonely here,” she mused, leaning against the edge of the ship.

“Earth, circa 1 billion Before Human Era. Precambrian, Mesoproterozoic Era, Stenian Period.” Omicron spoke slowly and softly, as if she were trying not to disturb something.

“Come. Let’s take a walk,” Astra offered, walking to Omicron and intertwining their fingers. She pulled the other along the shoreline, setting the pace at a casual stroll. Neither spoke for a while, and the stillness quickly became unbearable. The slight breeze of the ocean died a few feet over the land, finding nothing to blow against, and the waves were too small to make more than a faint noise. No creatures stirred under the ground, as multi-celled organisms were still in the earliest stages of their evolution. The shuffling of their feet was muted by the sand, but neither of them wanted to break the silence. There was much to say, but the words they left unspoken were understood and speech seemed inadequate, even impossible, to both of them.

The sun was halfway finished with its arc across the sky, and its heat was oppressive even at a respectable distance from the equator. It burned hotter than it would during the brief jaunt of humanity on this world, and the ozone layer had yet to form, so its unfiltered rays were stronger as well. Nightfall would result in a drastic temperature plummet, as neither the land nor the seas were able to hold their heat after sunset. The dark wouldn’t be as complete as it would be in the future, though, as the single moon spun closer to its anchor.

Sanei and the world it orbited had been different from Earth in that multiple satellites accompanied them in their journey across the sky. Sanei had been much larger than Earth’s moon, and it had been sentient as well. Astra had often wondered if all planets were sentient, or if Sanei were unique because of the time anomaly. She had decided on the latter.

Omicron, and Astra before her, had been the only humans never to have seen Earth. The others that had lived on the colony with her had remembered the home world, and often told of it. They had recalled how the forests had stretched on forever, running into the plains, which ran into the swamps, which ran into the highlands, which ran into the ocean, and how millions upon millions of creatures had roamed every inch of the land. This Earth was a world away from the one that would have been recognizable to humans. Their species would not begin to evolve for another 997 million years, and it would be another 2.6 million years after that before the first true humans arose out of the Great Rift Valley in Africa. This world was barren, empty, lifeless, and devoid of anything but great empty expanses of land, mountain ranges, and tiny forests of mushrooms.

“It really is terribly lonely,” Omicron said. She reached carefully behind Astra to pull out the blast gun from its holster. Jumping back, she shot Astra before she could react, before she had a chance to see the look of betrayal in her eyes. She turned the gun on herself then, in this barren and empty wasteland of the planet that might one day give rise to the human empire, and shot herself.

The world fell silent as her body dropped to the floor, crumbling under the weight no longer held up by a functioning network of muscles. It fell haphazardly, on an otherwise empty patch of land, but a tiny, nearly invisible mushroom was growing in the soil where she had fallen. And it was in this barren and empty wasteland that humanity was crushed before it had a chance to arise from the soils of the world.

The earthen legends turn to dust,

Lost in time upon her river’s flow,

Once told of tales of nations’ bloodlust,

But it was the forgotten child of earth who delivers the final blow,

She alone who destroys the Legacy of the Earth.

The Story of Sanei, Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13:

The ship landed on the shore. It disturbed the film of algae covering the sea, creating a small lake of indigo amongst the ocean of ocean of blue-green, revealing the waters upon which the colonies of algae floated. Astra and Omicron stepped out of the shop together, the latter walking on the homeworld of her species for the first time.

Omicron wandered off a few a meters, taking care not to disturb the mushrooms that sparsely littered the soil. Further inland, she knew, the fungi were more densely populated, and the small spores marched onwards for hundreds of miles. The first forests were only a half a centimeter tall.

The waves broke gently on the shore, leaving a froth of algae and foam in their wake. A thin layer of sand along the waterline served as the beginnings of a beach, as the ceaseless force of erosion had yet to break apart the rock at the edges of the continents to form the vast expanses of beachlands that would line the coasts in latter days.

Earth was still very much a waterworld, with the supercontinent Rodinia as its central landmass, a jumble of continents connected to various degrees huddling together on one side of the world while the other was ruled completely by water. Lauerntia, the largest mass of land, would, over the next three quarters of a billion years, become North America. India would become part of an Asian continent yet to be formed, and Kalahari, Congo, West Africa, Amazonia, Siberia, and Baltica would be resigned to similar fates. Australia and Madagascar would remain much unchanged throughout the next 1000 million years, simply moving through time and the waters of Earth as the formed passed by unheeded.

Life here was reaching a tipping point. While in the past its hold had been feeble, the creatures of Earth were securing their purchase. Where single-celled organisms had reigned, multi-celled organisms were beginning to flourish. Specialized cells were developing, and colonies of algae becan to form into simple flat plates or more advanced complex spheres. Hormones evolved so that cells working together could communicate more efficiently. Fungi served as decomposers in the forming ecosystem as eukaryotes evolved to feed on dead matter. Algae grew larger than protozoans, and were not eaten as easily.

The newly oxygenated skies gleamed blue for the first time just millions of years ago, and under it, Rodinia’s reign had begun 200 million years ago, and would not end for another quarter of a billion years.

Astra looked up at the sky. She had been here before, alone. It had looked the same: an ocean covered with algae and blue-green bacteria, the land barren save for nearly microscopic fungi, and an off-blue sky utterly empty. The ocean slipped over the horizon unbroken, tiny waves punctuating the hypnotizing stillness occasionally. The land seemed jagged at the edges, where the Grenville Mountains were forming as Laurentia and Amazonia met. “It’s lonely here,” she mused, leaning against the edge of the ship.

“Earth, circa 1 billion Before Human Era. Precambrian, Mesoproterozoic Era, Stenian Period.” Omicron spoke slowly and softly, as if she were trying not to disturb something.

“Come. Let’s take a walk,” Astra offered, walking to Omicron and intertwining their fingers. She pulled the other along the shoreline, setting the pace at a casual stroll. Neither spoke for a while, and the stillness quickly became unbearable. The slight breeze of the ocean died a few feet over the land, finding nothing to blow against, and the waves were too small to make more than a faint noise. No creatures stirred under the ground, as multi-celled organisms were still in the earliest stages of their evolution. The shuffling of their feet was muted by the sand, but neither of them wanted to break the silence. There was much to say, but the words they left unspoken were understood and speech seemed inadequate, even impossible, to both of them.

The sun was halfway finished with its arc across the sky, and its heat was oppressive even at a respectable distance from the equator. It burned hotter than it would during the brief jaunt of humanity on this world, and the ozone layer had yet to form, so its unfiltered rays were stronger as well. Nightfall would result in a drastic temperature plummet, as neither the land nor the seas were able to hold their heat after sunset. The dark wouldn’t be as complete as it would be in the future, though, as the single moon spun closer to its anchor.

Sanei and the world it orbited had been different from Earth in that multiple satellites accompanied them in their journey across the sky. Sanei had been much larger than Earth’s moon, and it had been sentient as well. Astra had often wondered if all planets were sentient, or if Sanei were unique because of the time anomaly. She had decided on the latter.

Omicron, and Astra before her, had been the only humans never to have seen Earth. The others that had lived on the colony with her had remembered the home world, and often told of it. They had recalled how the forests had stretched on forever, running into the plains, which ran into the swamps, which ran into the highlands, which ran into the ocean, and how millions upon millions of creatures had roamed every inch of the land. This Earth was a world away from the one that would have been recognizable to humans. Their species would not begin to evolve for another 997 million years, and it would be another 2.6 million years after that before the first true humans arose out of the Great Rift Valley in Africa. This world was barren, empty, lifeless, and devoid of anything but great empty expanses of land, mountain ranges, and tiny forests of mushrooms.

“What are we going to do now,” Omicron wondered.

“Explore the stars, go places, do things, maybe find some extraterrestrial life, if there is such a thing,” Astra replied.

“But why do that? What’s the point of it all,” Omicron said dejectedly.

“Well, for one, because it’s what we always wanted. That was the plan! You and me, exploring the galaxy for the rest of eternity. You wanted that.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Maybe. But, technically, it hasn’t even happened yet.” Astra observed.

Omicron shrugged, jerking Astra’s shoulder and prompting her to playfully nudge Omicron. “So, what do you want to do? We have... Well, not forever, but a long time.” She laughed.

“Anything... I don’t know how to say it... Anything where we don’t... Feel time. That’s it. Anything where we don’t feel time.” Omicron finished.

Astra frowned. “Timeless?” she asked doubtfully. “Well, the wind... You dissolve into the wind, an eternity passes in an hour.” She said hesitantly. “But what’s the fun in that?” she asked.

Omicron didn’t answer, and Astra felt uneasy. “You want to wait for the humans?” she guessed. “Wait for them to... build cities, and then live as one of them? Or maybe just wait until after their gone? That might be fun, to inherit the human empire after the year 4000 or so. Maybe a little earlier, just so the would still be a human empire without the infringement of the natural world reclaiming its rightful property. It wouldn’t take long at all. And we’d still see what was happening, get to watch all of evolution...” Astra trailed off.

“Let’s become God,” Omicron said suddenly.

“Which one,” Astra inquired quietly. She had a sickening felling that they were about to do something fundamentally wrong, to interfere with human history and perhaps urge it in a direction it was never meant to travel. There was a chance, though, that whatever Omicron wished to do was the way things had always happened, that this was just another result of the time anomaly and that they’d interfered with humanity in the true timeline, that there was no interference at all.

“All of them,” Omicron concluded with certainty.

“I don’t think anyone was ever meant to be a god,” Astra noted quietly. She knew Omicron had already made her decision, and nodded silently. Omicron faded into the wind, and Astra followed.

The winds of Earth blew ceaselessly for a billion years, travelling around the planet as the unseen force driving the sky of one side of the world to the other, overseeing the evolution of life and all its variations. One eon bled into another as time flew past on silent wings and the galaxy turned its grand arms, once, twice, and suddenly humans were there, thinking up a million gods and praying to each, fearing and worshipping every one in a special way as the wind listened to their tributes. And the wind blew onwards still, until day dawned for the hundredth time in year 3998, and the darkness never turned to light.

TO BE CONTINUED...

Fallen Through Time: Chapter 22

CHAPTER 22:

She’d given them the city, her city, Arbolos. They’d been there, in it, always, since the beginning of time, until the end. They’d built it, and they’d burned it through time, ripping a hole in time on the small world of Sha-zha with the burning city. They’d been there when the world was still molten, burning the city. They’d been there when the sun had expanded to engulf Sha-zha’s sister world, tearing the atmosphere from the planet. They’d been there always, falling through time, looking out upon all the dark stars dead because of them.

They’d been there until the universe died, succumbing to the same fate their universe had, billions of years ago, trillions, a lifetime ago, a second ago.

And the city, her city, stood still, lording over the universe, and all it ever could have become. 

Fallen Through Time: Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21:

She had felt ill, looking out upon the carnage caused by her decision. She’d learned that the first Warped Dream Shadow Stone had made its founder end the human empire as it was, to corrupt it, in a way, to thrust it out upon the Rivers of the Night and end the perpetual childhood humanity had seemed to be stuck in. The human children had been innocent, though.

She’d felt ill when she learned what her universe had done to live, but she’d felt sicker when she saw the creatures that had suffered because of it taking out their anguish upon the life that had grown to flourish in the vessel that had caused their destruction. The ghosts of the old universe no longer processed morality, if they ever had.

She blamed them. It was the most important thing. If she had taken even an ounce of pity on them, she might have been kinder. She might have picked out a section of the universe to give them, a cluster of galaxies in which life had never arisen. But she hadn’t pitied them.

She had gathered all of the creatures from the old universe, from every corner of the sky, and condemned them to Sha-zha for the rest of eternity.

She really should have known well before she did. The creatures had been on Sha-zha forever, even before she’d condemned them, somehow. They’d been there when she first came to the world in search of the city. They had been there, in her city, burning it, burning it across the ages. She should have known then. But the truth is awful. Some go to the end of time itself to escape it. Other just go about their lives and hide from it, unknowing. She hadn’t wanted to know. 

Fallen Through Time: Chapter 20

CHAPTER 20:

She went to Sha-zha again to claim her city. It was there, waiting, but it was meaningless. Things had changed, for her, for the rest of the universe, for everyone and everything.

It was night on Sha-zha, but Arbolos had never seen a true night on the world her city stood upon. Today, the sky was sick.

And in that moment, standing on Sha-zha, looking up at the stars burning across the sky, going out all across the galaxy, her choice couldn’t have been easier. 

Fallen Through Time: Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19:

There wasn’t much of a choice, really. There wouldn’t be, for anyone one else in the universe, at least. But Shadow Stones didn’t work that way. They got into your mind, made you see the world in a different way. They made you see that ‘what if’ in everything, and that was the real curse. No, she couldn’t let everything die, but what if, just what if dying would be better than what the creatures from the dead universe would do, could do? What if that fraction of a percentage chance was just a fraction of a percent too much? What if?

In the end, it was simple, Arbolos knew. It wasn’t the choice at all; it was how far she was willing to push the limits, how great of a risk she was willing to take and on how big of a scale. But, ultimately, it was simple.

The decision was impossible, and she’d made her choice. 

Fallen Through Time: Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18:

The Shadow Stone took her to the Greater Void. Arbolos couldn’t feel because the Shadow Stone wouldn’t let her, but she sensed that anything alive- anything even vaguely sentient- would die here, in this terrible no man’s land where the nothingness ruled over itself.

The meeting wasn’t fast, but it wasn’t slow either. Time was a function of sentience, a byproduct of being able to think, and Arbolos didn’t know time here. It wasn’t even a meeting, per say, but a whisper, a whisper of mind to another.

The most terrible thing about a Warped Dream Shadow Stone wasn’t that it allowed its discoverer to see all the broken hopes and dreams of every single creature in any given universe with anything even remotely resembling life. It wasn’t that it gave its discoverer an impossible choice. It was that the Shadow Stone- those mythical creatures trapped in stone at the birth of the universe- wasn’t truly a Shadow Stone.

The Warped Dream Shadow Stone was only a thought, a fragment of the mind of the creature that had once survived the death of its own universe and the beginning of Arbolos’s. The Stone was just an echo of a single thought, one individual utterance of a mind, one amongst a billion trillion.

The rest of the creature whose thought was trapped in the Shadow Stone had escaped the birth of the universe, fleeing to the Greater Void. The Stone had taken her here so that she could carry out the creature’s wish.

The creature had told her all she needed to know, planting the information directly into her mind. It told her of how the universe- its universe- had ended trillions of years too early when something had gone terribly wrong, and how her universe had trapped the survivors in stone as Shadow Stones because it didn’t want the creatures that would eventually come to live within it to know the truth. Her universe had killed the other so that it may live.

And, just before it sent her back, it gave her a decision to make. Everything and anything that had died when her universe had killed its universe was brought back to life and allowed to roam freely and do what they may to the cosmos, or everything and anything alive in her universe would die. 

Fallen Through Time: Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17:

The Greater Void was unimaginably empty. Nothing existed, not time, not space, not light- just empty nothingness. Lesser Voids, the vacuums that existed in the vast space between galaxies, paled in comparison to the Greater Void. The Greater Void had always existed, and would always exist. It was never created, and it could never die because it was simply nothing, the deepest nothing that could possibly exist, the deepest nothing that couldn’t possibly exist. And it was there, in such an empty place so full of nothingness- and so devoid of someone, something, anything to find it lonely- that Arbolos and a Warped Dream Shadow Stone borne in a tiny, infinitesimal universe would meet with something that escaped the birth of that universe from the death of another, tinnier, more infinitesimal universe, where a child of Earth would be forced to make a choice that could stop all the meaningless worlds in one unimportant universe from turning. Where she would decide the fate of time itself.