Tan still sat in the lawn chair with his eyes closed as he listened to the forest around him. Jack was asleep in the tent behind him, his breathing slow and steady. The boy had run and played with the Ruk children all day, and returned to the camp to collapse exhausted on his sleeping bag. He now slept the peaceful and deep sleep of the young. The Ruk were not far away. Tan could see the blue glow from the heating rocks at their campsites. Several of the adults had come to visit, and though Tan couldn’t understand their language, he was certain they were expressing their concern for Luca. There had been complications and Luca had been in surgery for fourteen hours now. The tree/man, whom Tan had discovered was called, Gala, had come earlier to explain. The 850 million light year jump, combined with channeling the energy needed to protect Jack, had damaged Luca’s bio-mechanical augmentations along his spine. The surgeons were now repairing those augmentations. Jack was going to have to be checked by the doctors tomorrow as well. The Ruk had noticed that Jack was frequently short of breath while playing; it was possible his lung augments had been damaged by the excessive heat he’d endured during the jump. Tan was just starting to drift off into sleep when a voice woke him. “Excuse me, Sir.” Tan opened his eyes. It was Gala, the tree/man. “Yes?” “Luca is out of surgery and doing well.” Tan let out a breath. “Thank God. Can I go see him?” “Of course.” Gala turned his head toward the darkness and spoke in the Ruk language. Tan followed his gaze and saw one of the giants at a nearby camp rise. Gala turned back to Tan. “Kalu’s mother, Latu-dagas, will stay here with Jack while you’re gone.” The Ruk woman made her way across the short distance between camps in a few strides. Tan was amazed at the gracefulness of the giants. They weren’t like in the movies, lumbering around and stomping the ground, but sure-footed and remarkably quiet as they walked. The giantess entered the camp and nodded her head to Tan. Tan returned the greeting with a bow from the waist. “Latu-dagas, thank you for watching Jack.” The Ruk woman smiled, displaying teeth Tan was certain could bite steel in half. “Magu-Tan, du ney meke.” Tan and Gala left the Ruk woman sitting next to the warming rocks and headed towards the Sunth forest-city. Tan tried to prepare himself for the chaos that would enter his mind, but Gala stopped at the border of the Ruk’s forest and waved his hand at a pulsating orange light just beneath the surface of the soil. “The Sunth live in two worlds at the same time,” Gala began. “This is partially the reason for your double vision and inability to determine what is real. If you enter our forest, you will be walking across millions of connections from our neural network, and that is too much for your brain to process. We laid this neural connection earlier this afternoon. We hope that the dampening effect of the Ruk forest, and only a single connection, will allow your mind to process the information at a slower rate.” “I’m game,” agreed Tan. “What do I do?” “Lie down next to the connection and let your mind flow into the Sunth awareness,” replied Gala. Tan stretched out on the ground with hands behind his head and closed his eyes. He felt something move across his chest and opened his eyes. A root with a pulsating light had come up from the ground and was wrapping itself around him. There was a moment of panic, but he pushed the panic aside until he was again calm. The sounds of the Forest-City came to him, but unlike earlier where it had come at him in a solid wave of chaotic sounds, this time it was like listening to a distant highway. “Very good, this is working better than we anticipated,” said Gala. “You may get up now.” “How, I’ve been rooted to the ground?” Tan opened his eyes, but he wasn’t in the Ruk forest anymore, or rooted to the ground. He sat up and was startled to find himself in a city park, with tall spiral buildings that glowed with orange and yellow lights surrounding the park in graceful arcs. “Wha…? How did I get here?” “You are in the same place you were before,” explained Gala. “But now, you are in two realities at once.” Tan rose to his feet. The edges of the city were further away than they had first appeared. The nearest building had to be at least several miles away. He took a deep breath of the heavy orange scent the Sun trees produced; it hung in the air like the perfume of a woman that had just walked past. He was surprised to see Ruk couples walking together on paved walking paths. The path was lit by lamp posts that glowed with a soft blue light, and just far enough apart to allow some darkness between. Though it was plain to see the couples were using the darkness to embrace and perhaps steal a kiss. He smiled, they seemed almost human in the darkness. He saw no Ruk children, of course, the night belonged to couples. He imagined the park would be filled with Ruk and Sunth children playing once the sun came up. A wave of homesickness passed over him; the park was so much like the city park back home that he could almost smell the Grugle Worms being grilled at vendor stands for the hungry patrons of the park. Gala laid a hand on Tan’s arm. “This is partially from your mind as well. You are adding elements of your home to ours. Everyone adds a little something of themselves to the collective of minds.” Tan pulled himself from the memories of home. “This looks like a permanent colony. I thought you and the Ruk were a nomadic spacefaring species.” “We are, look up,” replied Gala nodding up at the sky. Tan looked up. It took a moment to comprehend the massive object he was seeing. “Is that a spaceship, it’s the size of a continent?” Gala smiled. “Not quite, but it is very large. That is the RS-47, we leave one ship in orbit on guard while the fleet is on the ground. Ah, look, they are in the middle of a shift change.” Points of light were leaving the ship like streaks of lightening across the sky. “Those are patrol fighters heading out to the edge of the solar system to relieve the patrol that is out there now.” “Those big ships can actually land?” Tan shook his head. “Your technology dwarfs the imagination. How many of those ships do you have?” “Come, we can talk while we walk,” replied Gala. “There are seventy-six fleet ships, and all but one are here on the planet doing a rebuild. The RS-26 is scheduled to finish first and will replace the RS-47 on guard. When we are in deep space, the fleet forms into a single cube. We will spend many thousands of years in space, but even we need to resupply and repair occasionally.” “I can’t imagine the resources it takes to outfit a fleet that size,” remarked Tan. “There will be nothing left of this planet when we are done,” said Gala. “We will push the planet husk into the sun.” Tan’s mouth dropped open. “You’re going to destroy the planet?” Gala glanced at Tan. “We are doing nothing you and every other species does. You will live on your world until you exhaust all of its resources, then colonize another world. The difference is that after we harvest this world, we will adjust the planets so that one of the other planets is pushed into the sweet zone and eventually becomes habitable.” Gala shrugged. “Who knows, we may need to come back here someday and harvest again.” Tan shook his head trying to imagine a species so advanced they could move planets around, or even planned on a level so grand as to prepare worlds to be harvested millions of years from now. A thought came to Tan’s mind. “Do you… harvest the ocean as well?” “Yes, of course,” said Gala. “All of our ships can store water, but fifteen of our largest ships are designed to host our fifteen seas. Perhaps you will get a chance to tour one, you’re Aeden boys would very much enjoy some time relaxing on an island similar to their home world.” Tan thought of the beach they had landed on. He had thought it unusual for a beach to be over a mile wide, but now he understood why. He tried to comprehend just how much water was taken by the Ruk and Sunth to lower the sea level so significantly. Tan shook his head in confusion. “I’m sorry, I mean no offense, but how is all of this possible? You’re a tree!” Gala stopped and was silent for a moment as he looked up at the sky. “There is no offense, it is a valid question.” Gala waved an arm at the cosmos above. “It’s beautiful isn’t it?” Gala looked back to Tan. “We evolved on a brown dwarf.” “I don’t know what that means,” said Tan. “A brown dwarf is many times larger than a planet, nearly a star, but without enough mass and density to ignite a hydrogen-fusion reaction to become a star. The brown dwarf doesn’t need an external source of heat, as it creates its own heat. As the dwarf cools, simple fungi was able to grow. In time, that fungi covered the entire planet and became a neural network, but instead of a single consciousness, it allowed more complex plant life to communicate with each other, not yet sentient, but on the correct path towards advanced intelligence.” “Okay, but when did sentience happen?” asked Tan. “Two billion years later when the entire planet was covered with primordial forests, the neural network became so large that the spark of intelligence began.” Tan ran his hand across some tall grass at the edge of the path. The grass changed color as he touched it. “And the Ruk?” “As we advanced, we discovered that our brown dwarf was cooling. We needed a plan. So, we searched for and found the last remaining pocket of proto-life, the necessary ingredient for life such as yourself. We nurtured and protected it, until in another billion years we had the Ruk. But, the clock was ticking, we had to leave our world before it cooled to the point it could no longer sustain life. We built the fleet and left our world when the Ruk were ready.” “It almost sounds like the Ruk are your pets,” said Tan. Gala smiled. “There is a saying that goes; I can’t tell if you’re my house plant, or I’m your pet.” “Did you always live in such perfect harmony?” asked Tan. “No, I gave you the very short version of our history. There was a time in the Ruk’s adolescence that they became very war-like and nearly wiped us out. If not for the wisdom of Saludethian Moruk, a great Ruk leader, the Sunth would not be here today. Ah, here we are, this is the hospital.” Tan blinked in confusion. He was no longer in the park, but standing outside a hospital that didn’t look much different than any hospital on his world. “How…?” Gala grinned. “It’s easy when you’re creating your own reality. Come, I’m told that Luca is out of recovery and been taken to a room. He will wake soon.” Tan followed Gala into the building. There was even an elevator, with a soft ethereal music playing. Luca’s room looked like any other hospital room. Tan paused at the door. “This isn’t real.” “Yes, it is, though most of what you are seeing is being created by your own mind. Our experiment with the single neural connection is working. There is some bleeding over from other neural connections. The music in the elevator was obviously added by Rok-tuka, a rather famous, but radical, young musician from the RS-53. But overall, the Ruk forest is dampening the affects. I was concerned when you were able to interact with the centhan grass, but you handled it well and kept the color to only a simple orange and blue.” “What color was it?” “To me, it is like the golden strands of plasma coming from the corona of a sun.” Tan entered the room and went to the bed Luca was lying in. He took Luca’s hand and held it. Luca’s eyes fluttered open to reveal his bright blue eyes. “Daddy?” “I’m here, Luca, I’ll always be here, nothing could ever keep me away.” Gala smiled and wiped at his eyes. And though Tan was unaware of it, millions of Sunth and Ruk were watching, and all wept at Tan’s fatherly declaration. Tan had crossed the river of a million realities to be with Luca. Tausenth, the Large Tree in the center of the Sunth forest, and leader of the Sunth, stood with Nak du Ney, Commander of the Ruk Fleet. “The Lesser Humans are ready, we will begin First Contact Protocol with their worlds.” Nak du Ney shook his head. “This will not save the Aedens, their extinction is still inevitable.” Tausenth clucked. “You are still thinking like a sapling.” Nak du Ney, the 22 foot tall giant, grinned at the old tree referencing him as a sapling. “And what is it you see, old tree.” “We only need one Aestar to be the catalyst for change,” replied Tausenth. “The other boy?” said Nak du Ney. “No, he is brave, but impulsive. Intelligent, but possesses a temper to match any Aeden. He is not the one.” “You forget, this boy was made a ward of House Aestar. He is an Aestar now. And, though he was not born on Aeden, he is still an Aeden. Yet, he has a gentle soul, and his own gentle giant to guide him. There lies your Aestar that will change the face of their world, and the Universe.” Nak du Ney grunted. “Yes, I see it now. I thought the Great Tree had sent the other boy out into the universe to be tested, but no, he was sent to find this one and bring him to Aeden. You are right, old friend, there may yet be hope for the Aedens.”