Hello and welcome!!!!! This is a Bryce render with post work in photoshop... Thank you for viewing and for any/all comments!!!!! Have a wonderful day and happy creating!!!!!!! *****All stories lyrics/poetry Copyright 2009 Rob Custer******** **All characters, subjects, places, ideas, etc. purely fictional***** Hollow World: The Abandonment (Gliese 581 d the fourth planet revolving around Gliese 581 a red dwarf star) ***Approximately 20 light years from Earth In the future mankind undertook a mission to seed the universe with life.....After many near extinction level events ranging from Great Wars, to disease, to asteroid colliision and countless other threats,humankind had managed to survive....For the most part they had learned to live in harmony because basically they didn't have a choice...They had managed to maintain and advance their technologies by depositing stores of knowledge safely off-world...for when major catastrophes would strike. Not only was knowledge stored, but also vast amounts of embryos and dna... in order to recreate most of the life that was known to exist on the Earth should a major extinction level event occur...This was the most brilliant achievment mankind had ever known. They were able to maintain life in outerspace in a dormant state of stasis until Earth or another world was ready to be seeded again. Sometimes this would take up to a million years. Actually you could say mankind's greatest achievment was the machines they created to foster and protect this life. These machines were capable of repairing themselves for unimaginable periods of time... as long as they had access to enough raw materials to do so.. Outposts were created throughout the galaxy to storehouse these guardians and the knowledge and material they so tirelessly protected. Some were sent on incredibly long journeys through space to places thought to contain earth-like worlds...since no living being could ever hope to make this journey...The machines would be in charge of everything until they arrived at a suitable world to seed. Once in orbit around this world the machines would begin to grow the life on board the main vessel until the humans( and human- hybrids) were of age to understand who they were and where they had come from. In essence the Guardians were the parents and the humans were the children.... This story begins on a world where there has been a critical malfunction and all life on the planet has been left without knowledge of its past or even knowledge of the guardian machines....An unanticipated result of a major extinction level event happening before technological production of raw materials and storehousing for the Guardians had been established. The Guardians were unable to maintain themselves without the proper materials and crumbled into junk. Even without the Guardians life was tenacious and survived the extinction level event...Millions of years later intelligent sapient life evolved without knowledge of its ties to the universe. Cut off from the rest of the universe, they fell into the same pattern of wars and destruction that the other intelligent species had fallen into. It wasn't until one of their kind discovered the remnants of a huge structure that they began to understand their origins and move towards a better understanding of their place in the universe. Since this huge structure had been sunk deep in the oceans of the planet, no one knew of its existence. It was hidden under countless earthquakes and ocean floor shifts....It just so happens that not all the Guardians were completely junk. They too had been in a state of hibernation until an intelligent being could discover them and start them up again. This illustration is of the structure after it was raised from the ocean floor. Inside the mysteries of life and the origins of many exotic and mysterious species are contained. The Guardians are once more free to build more outposts...and the seed of life continues to be spread across the universe...