The Aiden, Seventh of the Origin Species “Hey, I caught a little birdie.” “What are you going on about, I’m busy.” “I was using the Zilinth doors to catch some more meteors to make jewelry for the Arts and Crafts Fair, but I caught a little birdie instead.” Cirres rolled over onto his back and tapped his breast plate to retract his armor. His muscles were so sore from the flight he didn’t want to move. He twisted his head to one side, then the other. He was surrounded by a group of men that looked human, but much bigger. The men knelt in a circle around him. Maybe they were going to eat him and end this ridiculous dream. One of the men poked him in the side. “I think it’s a space bird?” Cirres slapped at the hand poking him. “I’m not a space bird.” A man on the other side poked at him. “Ah, it’s a talking space bird.” Cirres tried to kick the man. “I told you, I’m not a space bird, talking or otherwise.” The man shook his head. “I distinctly heard you talk, hence, you’re a talking space bird.” A man even larger than the others pushed through the circle and looked down at him. “That is a Daria.” “Doesn’t look like any Daria I’ve ever seen,” said another man in the circle, also trying to poke him. Cirres kicked both his legs at the man. “Stop poking me.” The man standing knelt… and poked at his left wing. “That’s because it is an ancient Daria, circa. 250,000 years ago during the galactic crossing to New Daria. Dreamer and I knew he was coming, but he wasn’t supposed to be here for a few hours.” Another of the kneeling men grabbed the edge of a wing and lifted it up. “The modern Daria sure have changed a lot in 250,000 years. This Daria’s wings are much lower on his back and extend down to his legs and up to his arms.” Cirres flapped his wings to turn over in an attempt to stand, but he was so sore he only managed to make it to his hands and knees. Another man poked at the thickly muscled humerus bone attached to his hip. “Wow, this answers so many questions. Look at this, we thought the upper wing-blades were the primaries, but they’re not. It’s not a wonder the modern Darai can’t fly well, even with their prosthetic glider wings.” A man opposite from the man speaking poked him just a bit too close to his mane. “The scapulars are double-layered. He’s a flying beast.” Cirres spun around and tried to bite the man. “Touch my mane and you will lose fingers.” “No doubt,” said the first man grabbing his tail feathers and pulling. “This creature is the undisputed supreme master of the avian world.” Another man poked at his foot. “Aww… look at its widdle Terrible Claw… it’s so cute, I just wanna hug him like a cuddle toy.” Cirres slashed at the men wildly. “Stop poking me!” shouted Cirres. The man laughed. “He has sass, I like him.” A young woman with a face flushed with anger pushed through the crowd. “All of you should be ashamed of yourselves – grown men picking on a little boy.” The woman grabbed Cirres’ hand and pulled him out of the circle. He followed her away from the men to a set of wooden stairs leading up to a main road. The road was lined with unlit torches waiting for night. Along the sides of the road were wagons lined up one after the other, and all of them loaded with tens of thousands of arrows, bows, spears, lances, swords, and rocks. The rocks confused him until they came to a row of… catapults? He’d seen catapults in old movies, but to see them in real life! There were at least a hundred of the catapults; these people were an army, and well stocked. And every man tending the supplies looked like the next. They were all twins, or something. They had to jump off to the side of the road as a company of the men marched past, each armed with a sword at their side and holding a spear. The men were all at least nine feet tall, and if that alone wasn’t terrifying enough, walking next to each man was a tiger as tall as a horse. The wagons pulled out to follow behind the army of giants. “Where are they going?” asked Cirres. “Jack Charisma is at the edge of the desert with his company defending a human settlement from a herd of Sand Walkers. We received word this morning they need re-enforcements. This Company is being led by Jack Warrior himself.” “What’s a Sand Walker?” The woman looked down at Cirres. “Imagine a creature born in hell and standing two-hundred feet tall; now imagine twenty of them charging at you.” After the army had gone past, they crossed the road and followed a path lined with white-washed rocks. The woman stopped at the dunes above a beach looking out over a vast ocean. Cirres looked up at the woman. “Who were those men, what’s going on, why am I here?” The woman squeezed his hand. “They are Aidens, but other than that, I don’t have any answers for you. Lady Cael only told me to make sure you get your gifts and continue your journey.” Cirres grinned. “Gifts? I like gifts, but why?” The woman knelt next to him. “I’m sorry, we don’t usually have anything to do with events in real space, so I don’t know what’s happening.” She held out a small wooden box with a ribbon wrapped around it. “This is from the Zilinth, it’s a very pretty box, don’t you think, open it.” Cirres took the box, pulled the ribbon off, and lifted the lid. Inside was an object the same size and shape as his Crane Operator’s license, but made of crystal. Across the crystal card was written in Daraian script: The Great Library. Crystal Membership. Darai Emissary, Cirres Morning Star. The woman nearly squealed with delight. “Oh, that’s an elite v.i.p. library card for The Great Library, wow, you can go there anytime you want now.” Cirres examined the card, turning it over in his hands a few times. “How do I get to the library?” “Just hold the library card in your hand and say something like, open a door to The Great Library.” Cirres didn’t open a door, but instead placed the card back in the box, then pushed the box back into the woman’s hands. “Give it back to the Zilinth.” The woman smiled kindly. “It’s not magic, you don’t have to be afraid of it.” Cirres rolled his eyes. “I didn’t think it was. There are three advanced technologies at play here. The first is a two-part device, one inside the library, and the other outside, probably in orbit. The two devices create equal opposing gravitational bubbles; one in real space, and one in the 4th Dimension. The second technology uses string theory to fold space into past, present, and future instances. The third is atmospheric controls located in the door frame, because though the travel seems instant for the traveler, it is not. I would guess v = -a tr (k) for duration of travel. But, you know, that’s just a guess.” The woman grinned. “Smarty pants.” “I see the arrogance is the same,” said a gruff man’s voice. Cirres turned around to see a man with grayish-green skin that looked rubbery and wet. The man wore a long coat, a wide-brimmed hat, and had two ancient long-pistols slung cross-draw fashion on his hips. The man was elderly, but still looked hard as a nail, the same as Senior Chief Gillian, and with the same penetrating eyes that never missed a single detail. “Be nice, Toran’Sar, he’s only a child,” replied the woman as she jumped up to greet the fish-man. “Anything for you, Flower of the Sea.” The woman wrapped her arms around the large fish-man and gave him a squeeze as if she were hugging a favored grandfather. The woman handed the box with the card inside to the man. “Here, he won’t take the Zilinth’s gift.” The fish-man took the gift box from the woman. “I’ll take care of it.” The man walked past without so much as glancing at Cirres. “Come along, Daria.” The Atan, Sixth of the Origin Species Cirres walked a healthy distance behind the amphibian man. The man hadn’t looked back once to see if he was following. Cirres shrugged, there were more interesting things to look at then the man walking ahead of him. Strange objects scattered across the beach caught his attention. He poked at them, but couldn’t figure out what they were. Some of them were very pretty. He took one and held it between his fingers. His curiosity peaked and he called out to the man. “Hey, what are these?” The man stopped and looked back. “Those are sea shells. They’re the exoskeleton of highly venomous sea creatures, their bright colors and shapes appearance are how they attract their prey. Cirres eyes widen and he dropped the sea shell he was holding. He had lived his entire life in space, and knew nothing of what it was like on a planet. The final generation aboard the Morning Star would unseal the restricted vault and re-learn everything about life on a planet, but his generation had only been taught what was needed to live on the Morning Star. He glanced up at the man just as he was turning back to continue walking; there had been a slight smile at the corner of the man’s mouth as he’d turned away. Cirres narrowed his eyes and glared as the fish-man walked away. He continued to follow the man, though it didn’t seem like they were going anywhere. He had the feeling the fish-man was playing the same nonsensical game the Zilinth man in the orange bow-tie had been playing. Cirres splashed in the water and jumped over waves as they crashed against the beach. He was a little surprised when he discovered the water was salty. What was the purpose of the water being salty? But, it didn’t matter, the beach was amazing. He imagined if he could have been in the final generation of the Morning Star, he would have chosen a place like this to land and build his house. Something large swimming in the water made him hurry back up to the beach. He watched it for a minute, and decided maybe it was best to stay on dry land. A pile of white bones on the beach caught his attention, and he went to it. He picked one up… but… no, maybe they weren’t bones. They were bleach-white like bones, but also looked like wood. The man had been ignoring him as he played and continued walking. “Hey, what are these?” shouted Cirres. The man stopped and turned around again. “That’s driftwood, they’re the branches of deadly poisonous sea trees that broke off and floated ashore,” shouted the man. “I’m holding one and I feel fine,” Cirres shouted back. “The water probably washed most of the poison off, but you never know.” Cirres saw the same coy smile on the man’s face before he turned away and continued walking. “Okay,” Cirres whispered to himself. “You want to play games, we’ll play games.” He spread his wings and lifted up off the ground. The man wasn’t paying attention to him as he sailed out over the water – and that was perfect. He did a few lazy circles above the water until he saw a shadow swimming just below the surface. He let his instincts take over as his claws flexed and he dived for the water. The creature was heavier than he thought and nearly dragged him under the water. He fought the thrashing of the beast as he dug his claws in deeper and pulled the angry monster out of the water. Flight was much more difficult than he expected with the sharp-toothed creature twisting around and trying to bite him. He was exhausted and panting heavily by the time he was close enough to the man to drop the monster, but the man didn’t startle as he’d hoped and only stepped casually to the side while the beast fell onto the sand. The man then quickly dropped down next to the thrashing beast, placed a hand on top of its head, and in one obviously practiced move, drew a thin bladed knife from a sheath at his belt, and ended the beast’s struggles. The man moved the beast around to a better position and began cutting the creature open. “That’s disgusting, what are you doing?” asked Cirres. “Do you know another way to gut a fish?” asked the man. “I should have realized you were hungry after such a long day. This is an excellent choice, the bull shark makes a fine meal. Fly back to camp and tell Aliana there will be a cookout on South Beach, there’s far too much meat here for only two people. And bring the grill back with you.” Cirres was more than happy to comply and leave the man to his gruesome work. There were no living animals aboard the Morning Star, so he’d never had real meat, and never once thought about how you went about getting meat from a real animal. There were DNA samples of every known animal, microbe, bacteria, and virus from their home world in the vault, but those wouldn’t be re-created until the ship reached the colony world. It seemed odd that they had brought bacteria with them, but according to the biologists, they wouldn’t survive long without the bacteria needed to create a compatible ecosystem. Not an hour later Cirres took his first bite of real meat, and nearly fell over from how good it was. There was a twinge of nausea involved, but mostly because he couldn’t keep his eyes off what the Aidens were doing to the shark’s carcass. The Aidens said that they were forbidden any kind of advanced technology on the island, so they wasted nothing from the natural world. But, the odd part was he’d seen cleverly hidden solar panels when he’d flown back to their camp. Someone might be forbidding technology, but they were still using it and pretending to be living as their ancient ancestors had. The day was waning as Cirres curled onto his side and cocooned inside his wings as he wiggled into the pleasantly warm sand. He closed his eyes and relished in being the first Daria in countless generations to sleep on real ground. The cook-out had been fun, and the food good. There had been music and dancing, and even a story teller recounting fanciful fairy tales and glorious battles. He heard someone sit next to him, and raised a wing just enough to peek out and see it was the fish-man, Toran’Sar. “I’m tired,” said Cirres. Toran’Sar sat the gift box and an old bottle on the sand next to him. “I need to explain something to you,” said Toran’Sar. “I don’t want the Zilinth’s gift, but that bottle looks interesting.” “We found the bottle here on the beach two years ago.” Cirres stuck a hand out from under his wings and tipped the bottle over. “Let me guess, it contained a lethal toxic sea poison extracted from sea shells and drift wood.” Toran’Sar chuckled. “No, it had a note inside.” “Why would someone throw a bottle with a note into the ocean?” “It’s a child’s game,” explained Toran’Sar. “The idea is someone finds the bottle and sends a note back to you.” “Does it ever work?” “No, but what’s interesting about the note in this bottle is that the note is in my handwriting, but I have never thrown a bottle into the ocean.” “That’s weird. What did the note say?” “It said: RA = 17h 45.6m, Dec = -28⁰ 56'.” Cirres, somewhat interested now, sat up. He pushed the gift box towards Toran’Sar, then took the bottle and lifted it to his eye to look inside. “I’ll trade you the Zilinth’s gift for the bottle, I’m going to put sea shells in it.” “Any thoughts on the note?” asked Toran’Sar. Cirres kept the bottle to his eye and used it like a kaleidoscope to look at the fish-man; the curvature of glass at the bottom of the bottle made Toran’Sar look like he had googly eyes. “Those are the space coordinates to the galactic center of the Cordae Galaxy as measured from Terra’s equator.” Toran’Sar raised a brow. “How could you possibly know that? I spent an entire year in the Great Library searching for the planet those coordinates were taken.” Cirres giggled and held the bottle out to Toran’Sar. “There’s a map etched into the bottom of the bottle. I bet if you shine a light into the bottle and pointed it at a wall, the map would be projected onto the wall.” Toran’Sar took the bottle and held it up to his eye. He had to point the bottle towards the campfire to see it clearly. The map was there, along with equations written around the edge at the bottom of the bottle. “Well, call me a clown fish and send me home. I searched tens of thousands of star charts to find the map I was holding in my hand the whole time.” Cirres shrugged. “So what’s it mean?” “Once I found which galaxy those coordinates were for, we sent a probe, and that’s how we found the Morning Star. She’s been on an elliptic orbit at relativistic speeds around a black hole at the galactic center bending space and time for the last 1.2 million years. The result is she’s been slowly traveling backward through time, and I don’t think it was an accident.” Cirres shook his head. “No, we’ve only been in space for 400 years.” “We’ve been able to measure with a fair bit of accuracy. The probe followed the Morning Star for one year, then disappeared. During my research, I discovered the Zilinth recovered the probe 120 years before it launched. They knew there was a time-paradox in play and tried to hide it. I don’t think you should take the Zilinth’s gift either, they’re up to something and I think they’re trying to frame you for a crime you didn’t commit.” “What crime? Why?” “Listen carefully, this is our theory. You are in a time-paradox created when you flew into the gravity-well created by the Morning Star’s Sun Shield. You make First Contact, so the Origin Council sends you on this meet-and-greet tour to all the Origin Species. You return to the Crane Ship, and then the Ruk show up and take you back to the Morning Star. You arrive at New Daria two years later with the help of the Ruk. You settle the planet, but for reasons not important right now, the Atan attack your world and destroy it. The Zilinth can track every library card they’ve issued, and during the investigation into the attack of your world, the Zilinth falsify the tracking records of that card. The Origin Council finds you guilty of treason against your own people, and a warrant is issued for your arrest. The Daria are outraged by the injustice of it all, and leave on the Morning Star.” “I would never betray my people.” “I don’t think you would either, but there’s more to the story. The Daria vanish and weren’t heard from again for one-hundred thousand years. During that time, the Daria genetically altered themselves to the Daria you saw at The Great Library.” “They did that to themselves, on purpose? That’s horrible, they are a nightmare.” “Yes, but in doing what they did, they became perfect assassins, and when they came out of hiding, they hit the universe with a thirst for revenge that was pure evil. In the age I’m from, the Daria are at war with nearly every sentient species.” Toran’Sar held up a hand. “The rest of the story is pure speculation, so take it as it is, just a guess. We think that the Origin Species got tired of the Daria, and organized an attack to destroy the Daria forever, and maybe even your allies with you, the Humans and the Daiami.” “If that’s true, then the Morning Star was an evacuation ship.” Toran’Sar nodded. “Yes, and we think the reason you stayed in space for so long was to give your gene-breeders time to fix the genetic damage you did to yourselves. Cirres, you are not an ancient Daria, you are a future Daria. The reason I wasn’t here to greet you when you arrived was because after I saw you with the Eroden at The Great Library, I went to find a photograph of a real ancient Daria.” Toran’Sar reached into his coat, and retrieved a faded photograph. He handed it to Cirres. Cirres studied the photograph for a moment before replying. “What the heck is this? It kind of looks like me, but where’s its claws, its fur, and why are the wings so small?” “That is an ancient Daria. Your gene-breeders didn’t just fix you, they improved you significantly. And, I think the most change was what we can’t see. You have been made so intelligent, you don’t even use computers for anything other than the most mundane tasks.” “Everything I know about my own species is a lie?” Toran’Sar reached a hand out. “You have to break this time-paradox. The bottle proves we’ve sat on this beach before and had this conversation, and there’s no telling how many times you’ve been through this loop. I think to break the loop, you first need to decline the Emissary position.” “I already told you I don’t want it.” “And second, you need to understand the event that caused the Daria to descend into a cycle of revenge and hatred that led to their insanity.” “Throw the bottle with the note back into the ocean. Just in case I can’t break the time-loop. Maybe the next me will figure it out.” “We’re going to fix this,” said Toran’Sar. “Now it’s time for a little nap.” Cirres fell back onto the sand as the darkness took him. End of Part 2. Part 3 continued at: https://www.renderosity.com/gallery/items/3084345/children-of-the-morning-star-chapter-15-part-3