CIRCA 7000AD (Prologue)

A Story by Sagar Gill

A story of our sons and daughters, thousands of years from now

PROLOGUE

Mankind has left Earth. We ran out of natural resources and caused great imbalance to our atmosphere, making our once lush and vibrant home a cold, barren, wasteland.

That was 2500 years ago, since then we have managed to frontier across the far reaches of the Milky Way, and mankind has evolved greatly, in their own separate ways. Of course, when you send a colony to one planet and another somewhere else, the environment will hugely impact their genetics in order for them to progress and survive. Turns out that Darwin’s theory isn’t just applicable to the Old World.

Anyway, this is the story of how two separate tribes of the Old World, who had no knowledge of one another, crossed paths. You can imagine the outcry from both humanus sub-species. An undiscovered, unknown life form which is so different yet so similar to us? Unfortunately, in the time that’s passed, we still hold our rotten contempt for the unfamiliar which obviously leads to war. From the bloodshed arises love however, but I don’t want to spoil that just yet…

Before we discuss the war between the Arcturians and Orionites, it may be worth mentioning the story of the man who travelled across the Milky Way in the year 4,370 AD to find us a new home. Rinno Kolasti was a skilled engineer, pilot and overall scientist of the inter-galactic variety, with a vast knowledge of the universe around him.

When word broke out that Earth would no longer be hospitable, we already had contingency plans to send an Exodus mission to Mars, where we could contain 85% of the population. Unfortunately, the 15% (consisting of the sick, the poor, the criminals and relatively uneducated) had to be left behind.

Rinno was the type of man that many would call a stubborn romantic, he couldn’t accept the fate of the last 15% left on Earth. So he used his prowess and knowledge of space travel to create two Arcs to venture through the cosmos to find Arcturus 793 and Orion 1844. The Arc and The Orion took the two exodus missions to their respective new homes, following the guidance of their creator, Rinno Kolasti.

30 years before The Departure, Rinno had discovered both planets and returned to Earth to share his findings. However, the World Consulate had already exhausted their funding in creating the New World on Mars, and therefore rejected Captain Kolasti’s ideas for salvation.

Rinno was understandably furious with the Consulate’s decision, but refused to let that stop his plans. You see, Rinno had recently discovered that Mars would not be able to sustain human life, as Earth’s unstable atmosphere was not due to global warming caused by over harvesting of livestock or the effect of industrialisation on the temperature of our world (which now had risen a record 15C in the last 2,000 years), our downfall came from the grounds from which we harvested. The crusts and core of our Earth had become unstable, unknowingly to our brethren of the future, Earth had become a proverbial bomb, ready to explode it’s guts into the Universe at any given time.

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The Arc and The Orion departed safely, carrying the ‘waste basket’ of our civilisation to their new homes. Rinno spent his time after The Departure on Mars, trying to convince the New World Consulate of their fate, yet they still paid no attention to Rinno’s claim. Therefore, in the year circa 5000 AD, when the Earth’s core finally gave in, and the Old World erupted in a violent but beautiful explosion (as was seen from the citizens aboard The Arc at the safe and secure distance of 3.5 parsecs). Rinno’s fears were unfortunately well founded, and it was on that fateful day in the 5^th Millenia AD that 14,000,000,000,000 (14 trillion) human lives perished. While Rinno’s pleas on Mars did not fall on completely deaf ears (Proxima 1236 and Optimus 12 spring to mind, but we will get to them later), three quarters of all known human species became extinct, and all history of the Old World and the New along with them.

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Back to the Arcturians and the Orionites, you wouldn’t recognise either as humanus sub-species, but rather as ‘aliens’ in their own right. You may expect that with the amount of technology aboard both Arcs that each civilization was at the prime of human evolution… Well life as you already know doesn’t always work so smoothly, as was the case with the Orionites..

For the poor inhabitants of Orion 1844, life unfortunately reset back to zero. The Orion malfunctioned upon arrival to their new home, and thus all concrete knowledge of their previous home disappeared with it. This left the new citizens to scribe their own knowledge in order for future generations to survive. The walls of The Orion are now filled with the knowledge of all the citizens of the first generation who were considered to contain worthy information (majority of Earth’s greatest minds are now space dust along with Mars, so we therefore are left with myth, legend and unfounded hearsay amongst our star faring ranks).

Over the course of 1,500 years without any form of technological support, our future ancestors have reverted to a state of living with basic tools, worshipping deities and spirits (which of course means ridiculous ceremonies worshipping non-existent gods). The Orionites have also inexplicably made walking on all fours common, becoming a nervous, shy species. The planet of Orion 1844 allows for this, with wild untamed grasslands (at least in the area of original settlement, our travellers have not branched out too far), low hanging trees, and unsurprisingly, extremely dangerous predators.

Rinno, as smart as he was, didn’t consider the possible factor of the Arc malfunctioning during flight, and therefore did not include a vast array of pre-built weaponry (as the Arc had weapon production facilities onboard), so besides the small amount of fire arms on board, our ancestors have resorted to mostly using crudely built, hand crafted axes, arrows and swords to defend themselves.

With Orion 1844’s slightly elevated Carbon levels, the natural habitat is enormous in comparison to its new visitors (similar to the Old World circa 1.5 million BCE). You can imagine therefore that the Orionites didn’t stand much of a chance against these gargantuan creatures when their only form of weaponry (when not running for survival) are tools that resemble the Old World’s kitchen cutlery!

Which is why in the year circa 7000AD when three explorers from the planet Arc 793, Juno Trenstar, Farris Pneam and Zed Dinnum stumbled across a world filled with their long lost brethren, the reunion didn’t quite go as planned..