a cosmic horror space opera, rooted in human optimism, love, death, and fate.
part i : (re)connection
"Durga's Monster"
“The Old Humans destroyed their worlds. They reached for the stars, and when their feet left the ground, we that had molded them were stricken by fear. Instead of turning to us, they turned on each other. Their cradle world was utterly obliterated, left only as a rocky orbital disaster, where the radiation would linger for hundreds of thousands of their solar cycles. The next inner world that they had adopted was spared complete destruction, but was sterilized in an act of malice and hubris. And so they fled their homes. Some turned inward, toward Prithvi: a warm, soft world for which they were unfit. Some turned outward, vanishing into the deep blackness of space, to seek the gods that they thought we were.
“The Humans gained an appreciation for Prithvi, slowly. Life was difficult at first, for they were not adapted to this volatile world that had evolved without them. The population declined, warred, struggled. Again we stepped in. Perhaps we should not have. But they are calmer now after our last insertion, more reasoned, more curious again about things they once knew, and things they never knew. We quarreled about their purpose. Were we misguided by a vision misunderstood? The Aeon demands the survival of all things. And yet simultaneously, it is known that the Aeon demands the destruction of all things. Is it hubris to think that we could be the catalyst for something new? For a plan that could flow with the will of true gods...?
“Speak none of this to the rest of the crew,” Commoditer Vahl stated to me abruptly. “We are…shamed, by the mistakes we made, by our arrogance to think that we could shape as the Aeon shapes.” The Commoditer turned from the holo in which hung a jewel of a planet, third from its Ophan. A surprisingly beautiful world that the Humans seem to have taken to as if they were born to it. I had suspected, but now I knew. A readily adaptable creature full of concentrated power with minds which for half a Cycle had been sharpened into weapons of mass destruction, a hold over from their ancient upbringing on Tiamat and Marduk.
“I will forward the relevant histories to your CI, Journeyman. I recommend you peruse them before we reach the system. The context may be important once we again reveal ourselves,” Vahl stated with a wave of his middle hands. The Commoditer stretched to his full height and stretched all his limbs. Our ships were not designed for comfort of terrestrial entities, let alone the comfort of a being of his size. As he turned to leave the deck, I stopped him.
“Why? Why did your people do this to them? Was there a purpose?”
Vahl paused, and his gaze returned to the world called Prithvi. Some oscillations passed in silence. His body sank as he stated with a sigh, “No. There was no real unified purpose. I could claim that we were bettering ourselves, and while we do retain much from them, that was not the reason. We did it simply because we could.”
“I hope they will not hate you for it.”
“As do I.” He turned and departed.
I watched him walk, obviously uncomfortable in our slower gravity, and cramped in an artificial space he was not designed for and trapped in an artificial suit which he clearly disdained. He walked without hesitation, seemingly without mindfulness, though I knew his thoughts were racing. It had been generations since his people had returned to this sector. To think of the memories he must endure...
I set aside my thoughts, inhaled deeply to gain a more bouyant and comfortable float, then queried my CI to pull open the records the Commoditer had shared. “Summarize,” I stated.
Half a Galactic Cycle ago, before my people had developed the use of tools in our stratified world, the Durga were one of the apex elder civilizations. Their power was such that they could direct the politics and culture of the Consortium with little will. They spread through Maggarthae in less than a Cycle, and influenced countless worlds with their visits, sometimes leaving a mark on a civilization, sometimes taking a mark to change themselves, preventing genetic and cultural stagnation. They clung to their traditions and castes firmly, while simultaneously advancing their own evolution, occasionally without the Guidance of the Aeon. Though one could argue that all actions that could ever be are through that same Guidance. Their hubris would be their downfall. Once they had meddled sufficiently with the Old Humans, and once the refugee remnant had fled their system, the Consortium stepped in to repair the damage the Durga had wrought to those who were suddenly a part of galactic society. The ones remaining in the system the Humans called Sol were left to fend for themselves, and over deep time, forgotten.
Though the Durga never forgot the Humans. One of the few successful uplifted peoples, whom had influenced the Durga almost as much as they had been influenced. The Durga took their form, largely. The Durga took their arts, wholly. The Durga took their resolve, incompletely. And the Durga left them with confusion, anger, betrayal, and the minds to understand these things. With no way to strike against those they considered as gods, the Humans struck each other, for generations of their generations, until they all but destroyed themselves. When everything seemed lost, and they fled their colder worlds to the one the Durga call Prithvi, finally the Durga returned what they had taken, and called it a mistake. But through deep time, even with history becoming mythology, the Humans remembered, in a way. They remembered the peoples who brought them Death, who taught them of Rage, who changed them in so many ways, even if just as a story largely unknown, passed through tens of thousands of their solar cycles. Though they attempted to rectify what they had done, through their interference, the Durga had created a monster. A demon, or so they thought, soon to be unleashed upon the Aeon.
Now, it is the penance of the Durga to return after all this time to witness the contact of an Outsider, a Caretaker, to witness an integration of the Humans into the living Aeon that we cannot stop. To witness the rise of a power that will change all the worlds which they may find.
I hoped that they would be merciful.
∫∫∫∫∫∫
The Outsider arrived in Sol shortly after us; just a matter of Prithvi’s days, which we had spent silently watching and listening and learning. Our vessel floated in the halo cloud of planetoids close within its path and the entire crew stopped to watch the Outsider glide inward to Prithvi. Titanic, gargantuan, nearly the size of the desiccated world that the Humans had come to know as Mars. A largely featureless sphere silently drifting starward. None living had actually seen one of these so-called Caretakers. All that was known was from the histories that had survived throughout a multitude of Cycles; that when the Great Archon awakens, the Caretakers come. From where? No information available on their origin. They slowly travel into our galaxy, deliberately, as if to announce that their arrival should bring no harm; what people who looked toward the Ophanim could possibly miss their signs? Pulsed pressure waves in the plenum. Shining shells to reflect the light. They want to be seen.
It is said that after their slow approach this “Caretaker” gathers a race, and then vanishes. In the deep time that I have lived, I have heard of no such method for instantaneous travel. They move with deliberation. We too, must move with deliberation.
The Commoditer Vahl turned to our pilot who shared the observation deck with me and many more of our kind. “Follow it. Hide us in the radiation of the closest moon of their inner gas giant. From there we will make careful observation.”
It replied an affirmative “Yes, Commoditer,” in our musical way, cast one last glance at the passing behemoth, and floated from the deck. Another observer asked, "Why is it here?"
“Samael awakens, and we risk calamity... or so claim the Senescents,” Vahl replied. He tried to conceal the doubt within his voice, but we are intimately familiar with cadence of vibrational language. “They have stated that this vessel would arrive. It is the first of many.”
“But why here? Why these Humans?” I asked
“Why not these Humans?”
The Caretaker ship reached a stable orbital pocket quickly. There was no possible chance that the Humans were not also watching it, what with it now so close they could practically reach into the sky and touch it with an outstretched hand. Since the time that the Durga had left the Humans, they had redeveloped at a frightening pace. Evolution readily molded them to this new world, and their roots were now so deep, such that none seemed to remember their origins, and there was no place where the signs of Human influence was absent. They had rediscovered their sciences, their arts, technologies and the innovative and exploratory spirits that drive such things. The world should've been inhospitable to them. The adaptivity of these people had always been astounding, which was why the Durga were so intrigued, and why they had meddled.
I wondered if on some level they knew, and if anyone remembered.
Part of me hoped that the Humans would know them, and a part of me prayed to the entire Aeon that they would not. For the Humans had also retained their violence, and their wrath. In our study since arriving at Sol, we had learned that they had come close to destroying yet another world. Yet they had stayed their hand. Perhaps they were finally learning and appreciating the beauty of existence itself. The life of a Human is so short now– how could they not desire to experience all of the wonder of the Aeon in the brief time in which they breathe? Some surely believed so, for in their histories we found bits of evidence that a few cultures upon this new world had developed biological plenum interface, though through persecution the peoples practicing this method were labeled outcasts or heretics as the greater societies strove toward material realities. These material beliefs now drive them to create digital plenum interface, though their efforts are still in infancy.
Vahl turned to another Agundu whom remained on the observation deck. “Do we have capacity and facility to invoke a Network Avatar?”
“We do; the foundry is toward the heart of the vessel,” my floating brethren intoned. “The ship can guide you.”
“No need,” he stated with a tone of dismissal, “your quaint, inhospitable vessel is now intimately familiar to me, most unfortunately.”
“I shall accompany you,” I intoned. Making our way through the ship took little time; though perfect for we Agundu, the sheer size of an upper-caste Durga such as the Commoditer ensured that his experience aboard was anything but comfortable in an environment that was much too cramped for his stature. He practically had to walk hunched through our spiraling halls, his six arms folded around him so as not to crowd passing crew, some of which gave him a wide berth and watched in awe at the giant being in our midst.
The foundry, a means with which to print matter of many purposes, proved room enough for the Commoditer to stretch to his full height, and he extended his torso and arms with audible cracks of his tendons. “Ship,” he spoke to the onboard intelligence, “construct communication medium to the Sentient Network.”
“Acknowledged,” the ship cooed in reply. Immediately the foundry began to pour a smattering of smart matter into the moderately sized spherical chamber within the center of the structure. After a moment the chamber was filled, and split apart, revealing a bubbling, color-shifting spherical mass that floated towards us.
“Thank you, Ship,” I stated, as Vahl had either overlooked the gesture or decided he was above such things.
The object rippled and became a tetrahedron within a tetrahedron. As it morphed, it spoke: “Commoditer Vahl Tyrun Yntonyi. We are pleased to again speak with you. Journeyman Triumphant Qaaorün. It is a pleasure to at last meet you. We bring salutations from the greater Aeon and the Network. How comes your incursion to Sol?”
Vahl did not return the greeting, and ignored the question to instead ask his own: “What news come from the Minds?”
The Avatar’s geometry shifted into a octohedron as it spoke, vibrating its very form to bring thought to our ears. “Samael rumbles. The Church bickers. The Consortium is at impasse, and ponders. The Network wishes to know the Caretakers, yet our focus is on the Archon. All are divided.”
“Explain,” Vahl stated with many crossed arms.
“Samael softly speaks, and the plenum wavers in resonance. Your Senescent’s prediction has come to pass, though we wonder here about cause and effect. Its utterance is slight, though it will grow with entanglement, and those whom are caught in the wake will undoubtedly be transformed. Even with our quintillions of minds, we wonder what this newness will work upon beings bound within matter.
“There is an 82% probability that the Church and their people will fracture with these tidings. We have not yet communicated to them these calculations and findings, but they have seen it through their means. They have heard the utterance within the plenum, and those whom entreat with the Aeon believe that Samael will soon sterilize the entirety of Maggarthae. There appear to be a trio of parties with differing aim to bend the will of Minds throughout. In their deliberations, it was strongly argued to flee the galaxy within 18,921,600,000 oscillations. Yet another loud chorus states to accelerate the means of transcendence of physicality into a geon collective in attempt to challenge Samael. The third of the forming factions advocates the acceptance of fate, and even encourages their entropy through a pilgrimage to entreat with Samael. The strongest voices were of those motioning ascension, though their argument was frantic and throughfelt with terror.
“We would aim to survive and oppose the entropic acceleration which would be hastened by all but those seeking refuge.
“The Delegation works largely to prepare the Minds for the Speaking, along with the probable contingency of astronomical restructuring of the Consortium and the implications applying to commerce and sociality which would inevitably follow… which is where your attention might ought be, Commoditer Vahl Tyrun Yntonyi. Though some seeing eyes are turned to your initiative here in Sol, enabled by the resolve of Journeyman Triumphant Qaaorün, as you should not forget. We wonder, how hasty is your will to make contact, to absorb the Humans of Sol-Prithvi into the fold? These variables make our calculations for Durga most enjoyable.
“The calculations though for the Archon are worrying. The probability only barely favors the Minds over Samael, and we are undecided on proper syntropic action. These Caretakers have arrived in multiple systems throughout Maggarthae, all of which host pre-superluminal species. We wonder how this Caretaker will affect the living time, how these Humans relate, and how they will react when the visage of the meddlers-who-would-be-gods returns to them at the event of grand discoveries of their own. It is notable that amidst all the species we have encountered throughout our Cycles, the Humans frequently stand tall among the exceptional. These will take to the stars with fervor, and as the species reunites, we shall see what fate entails.”
“We are optimistic.”
“What Follows Earth”
Glimpse beyond the twilight haze,
A shadow in the stellar maze,
Hulking giant dark as night:
A sentry from the cosmic height...
Tides of time around it flow,
Casting lightless eerie glow.
Through the lens our hopes align:
To touch a wonder so divine!
From the dark a whisper calls,
Echoes where the silence falls.
Reaching out with cautious hand
We seek to greet and understand!
Wisps of fear and threads of thrill,
As unknown force holds our will.
Chart the stars with heavy heart
Understanding just the start!
Eyes alight with dreams unsaid,
Knowledge hungers to be fed...
Planets whisper secrets deep
Awakening from ageless sleep!
Close encounter in the night!
Lost in awe and tempered fright!
Journey through the shadow’s pass,
We seek the minds of ancient glass
From the dark a whisper calls,
Echoes where the silence falls,
Searching now with cautious hands,
We seek to greet and understand!
“The Second Ascension”
Aerolith of whispers, the Caretaker’s breath,
Its shadow casts the end of death
We drank the light from its fractured core,
A thousand truths we’d never known before!
The gears of the infinite start to turn,
A fire in the abyss, a galaxy to burn
We drank from the well of forgotten design,
Now we’re chasing echoes through space and time!
The minds of stars, the aetheric sea
Unwind these threads of destiny
A question burned in the void’s embrace:
Are we the dream, or the dreamer’s face?
Ascend again! Through the fractured veil,
Where the Caretaker’s kin set their spectral sail.
We’re fragments of a dream, a cosmic trace,
The Second Rise: an astral embrace.
∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫∫
A fragile spark in the endless night,
We burn too bright, we burn too bright!
Ascend again, through the fractured veil,
Where the Caretaker’s kin set their spectral sail...
We’re fragments of a dream, a cosmic trace,
The Second Rise: Aeon embrace!
Are we the echo or the voice?
A choice unspoken, shattered?
They hide in the astral tide:
A symphony played in the dark they made
Ascend again, through the fractured veil,
Where the Caretaker’s kin set their spectral sail...
The Caretaker’s hymn, a siren’s call,
We rise, though the void may claim us all!
In silence the stars will burn to ash,
Plenum consumed in a cosmic flash!
The Ascension of the Human race,
We venture forth to take our place!
“We Are The Infinite”
A gleaming orb, its size as worlds entwined,
Its surface etched with glyphs no mind divined.
We breached the verge where reason’s threads decayed,
A prism maze where light and shadow played!
Are we the architects or but the dream?
A flicker in the vast, eternal stream?
With void for eyes, the sentinels behold,
Their gaze unknots the truths we thought we’d told.
The aether thrums with fractured, spectral chimes,
A lexicon of whispered cryptic rhymes.
The walls respire, the floor a liquid swell,
A sanctuary where chaos dares to dwell!
An invitation to the astral sea,
We slipped through fissures of reality.
A cloistered realm where Others breathe and strive,
Within a stellar womb, we come alive:
We are the infinite!
Entities of metal, flame, and thought,
Each one an enigma, each one fraught.
Some sang in hues, some pulsed in ciphered tones,
In mirrored halls, we wander, lost but not alone!
(We're lost!)
The gravity intones, the light contorts,
A lattice spun of worlds and their cohorts.
The quick, the dead, in spiraled ballet twine,
A cosmos unconstrained by space or time!
An invitation to the astral sea,
We slipped through fissures of reality!
A cloistered realm where Others breathe and strive,
Within a stellar womb, we come alive!
We join the infinite...
Are we the architects or but the dream?
A flicker in the vast, eternal stream?
The sentinels of thrumming minds still gaze,
Their silence rends the lies we dared to raise.
We join the infinite!
An invitation to the astral sea,
We slipped through fissures of reality!
A cloistered realm where phantoms breathe and strive,
Within a stellar womb, we come alive!
We are all infinite!
“Friends Within”
In the black where the comets roam,
A signal whispered calls us far from home.
With hands extended, hearts unite,
Bound by our spark in endless night!
The stars humming with grace,
No fear of the strange no shadow of doubt,
A call of brotherhood sung through space,
In the vast of love we discover our rout!
Boldly we go where no hearts have been!
Bridging minds with a bond unseen,
Across the stars we find our kin!
In every stranger lies a friend within.
No borders no skies will keep us apart,
The Aeon's pulse beats in our hearts.
Through galaxies vast we’ll weave the thread,
Of unity’s song- no words need said!
Their eyes like mirrors of worlds unknown...
Their hands extend though not like our own!
A laugh,
A light,
A stronger song!
Proof that together is where we belong!
Boldly we go to the great unknown!
Bridging worlds as bonds are sown!
Language fails but minds align,
Friends in cosmos across space and time.
With courage, we venture roads untread,
Uniting minds through hidden bonds unsaid.
Among the stars we find our kin,
No longer strangers, but friends within.
We have found the Others!
“The Explorers”
The first time the children stepped beyond Sol, the stars felt too close.
The Caretaker’s interior unfolded in directions that made no architectural sense: habitats stacked orthogonally to gravity, vistas of alien landscape that extended into the curved horizon, and city‑sized machine cathedrals extending forever upward into the sky.
Just beyond the entry where the structure bent back upon itself, the humans found a bustling city filled with strange, friendly life. Eva sprinted ahead with a pack of youths, racing up walls and across ceilings as if the laws of motion and gravity had always been mere suggestions; Simon trailed behind, eyes wide, fingers brushing every strange surface as if taking notes through his skin.
Zoe and Robert watched their children scatter along those branching paths, realizing with a slow, disorienting ache that “home” was no longer a single world, but now a moving labyrinth of other people’s histories, for time unknown. It was all unknown... But which unknown to visit first?
“Lo and Behold”
The star at the Caretaker’s heart had always been there, but the day Lo chose to properly introduce itself, the light changed.
"What are you?"
<Lo,> came the reply. <Your guardian, your steward, your ferryman.>
Lo spoke without words. A gentle rearranging of thoughts, a warmth behind the eyes that carried meaning.
Zoe felt something open in her chest, a resonance she’d never known she’d been missing. This was no machine, no mere vessel, but a mind older than any story humanity had ever told itself about angels. Not divinity, necessarily, but the closest thing to a god that humans had ever known.
They were no longer simply cargo sheltered by a distant unknown savior. Now, they were the subjects of a power beyond knowing.
It seemed benevolent, through all its actions and subtle communications thus far, thought trust would take time to grow its roots.
<Behold, the universe.>
“Triangulum”
By the time that Lo admitted they were no longer in the Milky Way, it was far too late to turn back. The being likely wouldn't have listened even if they had demanded. The familiar stars of home had thinned into an eerie, glittering haze, and then into a new pattern entirely: the angular spray of Triangulum, its arms leaner, its dark between‑stars somehow deeper. Robert and Vanessa stood at a viewing port as Lo unfolded a holographic overlay, tracing migration paths of species unknown, showing scars in this foreign spiral where alien wars had burned long before humanity learned fire.
On a world whose name translated only as a chord of vowels, they watched evacuees arrive upon Lo’s strange transport ships. Beings of crystal, with clustered insectile minds, with faces (or what Robert assumed was their face) etched with the same stunned grief and wonder they’d known just a few fast years before. The Singular welcomed the new arrivals to the ark, as it had done with the humans, to what would be their new home as they traveled across the stars and void for purpose still unknown. A collection? A zoo? Safety or slavery? Their caretaker was gentle, yet strict. Still, this is all they knew. Robert watched as the small aliens clung to what he assumed were items of memorabilia– remnants of homes indecipherable.
Perhaps he was beginning to understand: the collection of humanity was not a favor, but a pattern of behavior into which humans had being invited. Somewhere between one galaxy and the next, the story stopped being about returning to Earth. He realized, it was about shaping what kind of people they would be, wherever they arrived.
“Oracle of Entropy”
A billion years distilled to gears and dust,
I trace the arcs of empires turned to rust.
You call it refuge but I see the cycles’ toll:
A fleeting warmth before the storm takes hold.
You architects of flesh and borrowed code
Carve hope from voids which Elder Gods erode.
The plenum hums not wrath, but weary truth,
A clockwork dirge for all of ageless youth.
You stitch your prayers from starlight’s fraying thread,
But entropy’s tide consumes the path ahead.
The storm you flee? It brews in cosmic grace.
A silent rot, sanctuary erased.
I have seen the place where time and mind is torn,
With crushing weight that bends the fragile born!
Caretaker’s embrace is a stolen breath!
Your sanctuary’s heart will birth your death!
Zoe sat within her chamber, her consciousness reached back home through Lo’s ascended mind. The psychic link felt like thread—gossamer, impossible, real.
Lo's voice hummed beneath her thoughts, made of pure geometry: Listen. Not with ears. With the soul.
She breathed and let go of language. What came was not sight but knowing: vast geometries of thought orbiting a black hole. Millions of minds singing in perfect accord—not trapped, but merged. Their joy was a scream. There was a peace in their agony.
She saw them far beyond, deep within the slow depths of the galaxy: these people had been enthralled by something awesome and terrible, and were now singing damnation into the void. Their bodies trembled with euphoria and terror, minds oscillating between ecstasy and madness.
And beneath it all, an ancient whisper felt in her chest:
<rest, cursed one. all things rest, eventually. why resist the quiet, hiding in your prison of fear?>
Zoe gasped as she severed the link. She wanted to vomit. Her hands were trembling.
Do you see?
"Yes."
"I become the future."
“Emanation of the Cursed”
A synapse splits: the mind slows the light.
The Hollowed claw their way through my dreams...
Their fingers etch equations on my skin;
A language born where time and madness meet.
The Seraph speaks in geometries unknown,
Their resonance the frequency of bone,
The Taken sing in keys of unborn dissonance,
Samael’s breath dissolves the world of permanence.
<You are the cursed,
Where light and law are split and dispossessed!
The Seraph's call is a lullaby’s lie:
Its comfort’s just the pause before you die!>
I am the words caught in the devil's throat.
The Hollowed chant my name in tongues of rust.
A shroud of light where hope and horror float...
My mind’s the dust, my heart’s the Aeon’s lust.
<A refuge? No, a prison forged with fear,
As the breath of God becomes the ground you tread!
The Seraphic call is a childhood lie!
This comfort just the pause before you die!>
part ii : (re)turn
From the dark a beacon calls,
Echoes where The Thunder falls!
With blazing wrath, as the heavens burn,
We bend the sky toward home's return!
“Dark Flow”
Ten million worlds breathing in unison,
Sewn from far across space and time.
Feel how they flow...
As they refuse to grow!
Petals of a dying flower,
Unfolded for our embrace
But we feel the absence in our bones...
This place tastes of borrowed time.
Static perfection!
A gilded cage,
A crystal prison,
Permanence of stagnation!
Horror shrouded in beauty,
A forest with no rot,
No rain,
No Thunder!
Sanctuary unbound,
Delivered by cosmic servants.
We cannot stay here,
The comfort will drive us to madness!
WE ARE THE SEEDS THAT REJECT THE VAULT!
WHERE STILLNESS BREAKS AND RUNS TO HIDE,
WE GALVANIZE!