The Dreams

these dreams will be modified and integrated into the main story line in key places leading up to his discovery of the fated galaxy he came from. For now enjoy them in their raw state.
        

Dreams:

The fire wrapped the air around him yet he was untouched. It hammered the landscape, waves of flames turning everything that would burn into heaps of ash. It felt as though he was right there, standing midst the unimaginable devastation but he wasn’t. Those he saw still clinging to life writhed in the suffocating atmosphere of their once lush planet that was now only a simmering hell. This world was now held tightly in the clutches of death and was quickly nearing the same fate so many before had suffered, no one would escape, nothing would be left their end had come.

 A form of black inky smoke floated hundreds of feet above the surface. It was darkness, pure evil the inky smoke at its center was shaped like a woman’s body watching with pleasure, her victim’s suffering while feasting on their souls. This dark spirit with a power step through the barriers between the physical and spiritual realms was without equal in this place. He watched his presence unnoticed as the inky form lashed out with countless thousands of dark tendrils, slashing the air, latching onto the souls of those who were trapped here on this doomed planet. Death, fear, apathy, they permeated all reality and all senses here in this place. The cloying stink of it, the vile presence and the hopelessness emanating from those still left living filled his mind to where he felt he had to get away or he would go insane trapped here forever.

One moment his presence was on the surface of the doomed world, the suffering and death saturating his senses and in the next he found himself high above in the sky looking down on the dyeing world floating on the edge of where the atmosphere would have been. He floated there, a witness as the surface of the planet began to crumble. Lava burst up through fissures as the world slowly splintered, the crust fracturing as columns of plasma rained down from behind where he floated. The oceans fell away drifting into space, giant sections froze instantly as the water hit the vacuum of space. Gravity was entirely lost now as the planet was nothing but a cloud of rubble and then a flash, a glimpse of a bigger picture, the solar system and the horror that filled it and then he was gone.

He awoke with a start, disoriented but safe. He lay in his bed aboard the United Earth Explorer ship. He sat up shaking, drenched in sweat the sheets he had wrapped himself in as he fell asleep thrown far from where he lay. “They were getting worse” he thought as the familiar tremors wracked his body, convulsions that seemed to follow these so vivid dreams without fail, recurring dreams that felt like more than just random unconscious nightmares. Sitting up he ran his hands down his face and then up through his sweat soaked hair. He felt dizzy and shook his head in an effort to clear his addled mind. He couldn’t let it slip away, he had to remember and had to record what he had seen. “How can they feel so real? It's Like I am viewing another galaxies reality somewhere out in the universe". He gathered himself working to control his breathing in an effort to force his heart rate to slow and to push down the adrenaline that was racing through his body. He reached for his tablet and began entering the details, the images and the feelings, everything he could remember about this latest dream. All that he had seen in the dream he sketched: the dark inky smoke in the loose form of a woman, he noted the how the evil one had seemed to enjoy the slow drawn out destruction of life under her hand. He sketched a diagram of the solar system as best he could, recalling the medium sized star in the center and the five planets all in different stages of being harvested by swarms of the black glossy ships. 

When his notes were finished he laid back, rolled to a dryer spot on his bed and closed his eyes. He was determined to find his way back, hoping that he might for once return to were this dark one lurked in the deeps of his dreams and learn more but he knew he would not get his wish. If there were something out there, something dangerous, something unknown he wanted to know about it. It drove him, a feeling inside that told of a necessity to find the answers. There had been many of these horrific dreams since the first had left him confused and afraid to close his eyes. After the first time he had been afraid and forced himself to stay awake for days until the fatigue finally pulled him under. He had awoken after hours of calm uneventful rest, startled when he awoke; cursing himself for giving into the need for sleep but to his relief and surprise there had not been a relapse of the nightmare. He returned to the strict eight hours out of every twenty four that he had always tried to follow and for more than a week there was nothing until as suddenly as the first time it happened again and he awoke in the same fashion as before. This time though he was intrigued more than afraid and went directly back to sleep to find only the calm rest he was accustomed to. From that point on they came randomly and it took only a few more of the terrible visions before he saw the patterns and begin making detailed notes to track and compare similarities from one to the next. 

Dream Two.

A voice filled his mind, another joined it, they cried out, hundreds of millions of them reaching for him in their last dying moments. Their tragedy and their despair filled his mind as life after life was extinguished. It seemed an endless ocean of voices thick with desperation and hopeless fear. It was the darkness, the voices, cries of the countless all of them the feast for one. They screamed numberless in his mind reaching for him to witness their destruction. The shrieks increased in their intensity and the darkness shifted to a scene. Billions of sparks flickered over the surfaces of three planets the tinny sparks dying as quickly as they came to life, a vast space filled with the pieces of broken moons and that of one of the larger world’s plaid out in his view. The victims of this solar system had breached a veil of darkness preventing them from calling out but their small victory meant nothing, there was no saving them and each and every one of them knew it. The sparks of life glimmered as they transitioned to the spiritual plane their life energy glowing bright for the brief moments when they felt hope before being captured and devoured, erased for eternity from all existence. The three larger remaining planets began to break apart now, shattering as the locust ships made short work of them. He was left floating, searching, hoping to find just half of one of those lost voices that had somehow brought him here but they were gone now, only the complete silence and the calamity of destruction was left a tapestry of destruction spreading out through the vast distances of this solar system.

A star and around it the remains of planets and their moons, now no more than masses of dust being harvested by the swarms of black glossy ships so numerous they would be impossible for one mind to count he thought. A ripple in space, a shimmer of substance, an obsidian diamond materialized, huge, dwarfing the large sun that had until now dominated the space. It slid into existence creating a new center in the solar systems gravitational field, shifting the balance for a few brief moments before it all came to an end. A flash of light filled his view followed by a shrieking trill that reached deep into his sub consciousness, a historical cackling, malevolent laughter and then he felt something new as though the dark one had touched him somehow latching onto his presence but before it lasted long enough for him to name the feeling he was gone.

He snapped back to consciousness, drenched in sweat and shaking more violently then he had ever experienced before. They were becoming more frequent and more intense he thought. He rolled to the wall side of his bed, away from the puddle were he had been thrashing moments before in a dream that had as usual felt to real and repetitive for it to be only just a dream. His head spun as he reached up to the shelf in search of his tablet. He felt the tips of his fingers find it and pulled it down to begin recording everything he could remember.

As he sketched and wrote his notes he flicked his fingers triggering the room’s wall display. A starry night, the Milky Way galaxy flashed to life on the fifty thousand square foot half sphere of his rooms ceiling. He sat with his back against the padded wall and noted the moisture on his skin and the way his bed sheets had been scattered. He sketched the diamond shaped ship, the solar systems star and its planets marking groups of X’s where the swarms of ships had been. In some cases were the black glossy ships were more densely packed he gave an outline of a cloud where the hundreds of thousands if not millions of moon sized ships floated along the orbits of each planet in the system. He noted details describing the emotions he had felt wile witness to the events, the deaths of worlds and stars, the darkness, the voices and their cries, how they had lit up as they transitioned from the physical plane to the spiritual and how the aura of darkness had somehow maybe sensed him and touched him ever so briefly.

Aboard the explorer star ship were his friends, the few family members they had left and Daniel currently made their home they traveled at light speed through solar systems to and from planets and asteroid belts where construction of new installations for future human expansion were currently under way. His breathing was heavy and his mind swam as he made a few more sketches with detailed notes from his most recent dream while the images were fresh in his mind. He sketched the formations of the locust ships and then sketched and noted the diamond shaped ship that had dwarfed everything with its scale. He described in writing how it had slipped into existence near the end of the dream right before he had felt as though the dark one had reached for him and briefly touched his presence. Feeling like he had recorded all he could, he put his tablet back and activated his command center screen. He wouldn’t try for more sleep this time, not now that his mind was so active with new ideas and new possibilities. He wanted to analyze these most recent notes and compare them to previous notes to hopefully at last find some concrete answers.

With his intellect, a mind that had lead him to see past the limitations of earths sciences he had revolutionized technology, designed Ai systems to manage mining, terraforming and construction projects in space and started migrating the poorest peopled from earth to installations off planet where they were given luxurious accommodations, education and a future with expansion as their purpose. It would have been a gross miss step for him not to study these so intense recurrent dreams that lead him more and more to believe they were a key to finding some new revelation beyond what anyone could imagine and maybe, maybe he secretly thought, maybe he and mankind were the only hope for the victims who seemed to call out to him and summon him to witness their destruction.

A ten meter wide holographic display appeared floating in the center of his room. The screen shimmered for a moment as it came to life. To an untrained eye the activity on the display would have been incomprehensible. Columns of numbers read out, icons cascaded, lists of new star systems surveyed appeared with corresponding columns showing planetary sizes, types of life, habitability, areas of interest, mass, elemental makeup and spatial coordinates for each celestial body. He saw that over the past twenty four hours there had been three hundred million new systems scanned noticing the overall number of planets with organic life now at just over two hundred million. He saw there was a new max diameter in the water world class of planets coming in at over ten times larger than mankind's home world, Earth. There were systems with multiple stars at their centers. huge rocky planets moving on strange elliptical orbits in and out of their solar systems habitable zones and gas giants whipping around tinny dense dwarf stars so close the side facing the star was a storm of flame. There were belts of ice and rock making up massive formations of debris along these orbits. He flipped desktops to view images of the most interesting newly discovered planet surfaces, quick play footage of landscapes the Ai had selected as unique or most similar to earths environments flashed by as he watched for some kind of sign. The Milky Way he was beginning to see was filled with habitable worlds stringing out around stars in the Goldilocks regions of each galaxy, large, small and plentiful. Planets lush with plant life; mammals known and yet unseen and in some cases indigenous humanoids resembling the early history of man on earth when we still lived in caves.

After a few minutes of reviewing the active exploration programs and their newest findings in the hope of finding a clue to what was happening in his dreams he called up the custom software Staz and Jimmy had created to track and analyze his notes and got started. When the display finished loading the new desktop with the custom software he saw that the most recent dream had the same characteristic signature as all the rest, no surprise. His body had risen in temperature the moment it had started accompanied by the signature spasms that were getting progressively more violent with each episode. He rubbed at his sore neck as he looked over the charts and graphs showing a consistent increase in the activity of his nervous system when he was linked to a dream. The charts also showed that they were lasting longer and longer each time giving him reason to believe that he was reaching deeper into that other reality. The Ai's intuition algorithms highlighted trends and assembled strings of image sequences showing the sketches he had made in those confused waking moments when he would push himself to record the still clear images in his mind.

He was beginning to have little doubt that these dreams were somehow connected to a reality that was happening in the very moments he slept in some other far distant corner of space. Dreams where he felt certain he was crossing the unknown distances to witness events of horrific magnitude. Somewhere in the ocean of galaxies he felt it, they were connected and it drove him. He felt a strange connection to a people and a place he believed existed on the brink, in the clutches of some malevolent destroyer. From the notes he had been taking there was no doubt that what he was witnessing was the feeding grounds of some star destroying force with a hunger for souls.

The images and notes danced across the display listing passages from his sketches and their accompanying notes. They showed a progressive time line, the first of them disordered and scribbled as he rushed to produce them still confused and afraid of what he had seen but when he had made the decision to embrace the nerve wracking experiences focusing more towards recording everything in detail in order to look back from where he held power a clear picture began to develop.

He never considered that he was ever at risk while in the dreams. His world as he knew it was one of limitless potential leaving him naïve to the potential dangers that lurked there in the unknown. These intensive dreams that felt so real and spoke of new possibilities, levels of reality he had never considered, possible destinies far beyond what his conscious mind had ever considered and the more he learned and the more it scared him the more intrigued he became.

The loss of life, countless lives, a walker of the spiritual plane, one who takes the souls of its victims wile leading an armada of unstoppable strength, the swarm, the locusts. The Ai had recognized a trend that showed the swarm was consistently increasing. The length of his dreams were getting longer and through the monitoring of his cerebral activity the charts showed the levels of synaptic activity were gradually increasing, he was sustaining higher levels of mental bandwidth with each consecutive experience. These findings gave him the idea that he could be getting drawn into the realms sooner while at the same time gaining strength as a presence and then he remembered the feeling of the dark one reaching for him and that fear he had long forgotten returned new with a sharpened edge. 

Dream Three

He saw it all from a wide angle, a dual star system with seven huge planets orbiting in the habitable zone and among them the clouds of black glossy locust ships. Beside him he a white wisp of smoke appeared in the form of a person, a person sitting perfectly still in the lotus position clearly fixed in deep meditation. He blinked and saw that there was not one but hundreds, all in the distant corners of his mind, white ribbons of smoke all fixed in a state of meditative focus. Everything felt calm until suddenly it changed, it began. His presence shifted, pushed to the surface of one of the planets, buildings collapsed, landscapes broke apart, impacts of plasma rained down from the sky and the bodies rising weightless, writhing in agony their skin burned and melted from an acidic mist that had filled the atmosphere for days leading up to these final moments. The mist had paralyzed the people of these worlds trapping them in agony, weakening them while keeping them in a pain filled stasis barely clutching to their lives but unable to find relief in death.

The ones causing this he thought were finding new slower ways to weaken the minds of their prey before consuming their souls. From where his presence floated he could see hundreds of millions nearly all still living, all of them floating fifty feet off the ground somehow levitating in their semi unconscious states. They were blinded, their skin pocked with sores from the strange acidic mist holding them helpless to their fate. Soft tissues had been the first to go, eyes, lips and ears were eaten away leaving black horrid openings were beauty used to be. By all rights they should be dead, the suffering should have ended days before but while the chemicals filling the planet’s atmosphere corroded their flesh it also kept them alive and helpless. He was there among them, floating at their level, the dream taking him where it willed. He saw the dark one far in the distance, a black hole of a being completely unaware of his presence and then his fear crept in. He watched the life being pulled from the floating victims their sentience ripped from them in waves of thousands and hundreds of thousands as the dark one fed. The form of inky black smoke moved in sudden moments of power, pulling the last beings life from them before snapping out of existence, disappearing completely, the dark tendrils, the deep pounding throb in the aura of souls was suddenly gone. In the next moment he found himself watching again from a great distance as the landscape of the nearest planet shattered. The now all too recognizable signs of escalated volcanic activity signaling the beginning of this worlds end. Continental plates began breaking up into splintered shards jutted up from the centers of the destabilizing planets until they finally crumbled, falling away from their centers into space the pieces systematically atomized and harvested.

The Diamond shaped ship appeared again moving towards the stars changing the central gravitational force in the entire solar system with its sheer mass. The stars expanded, growing at an insane pace, joining as one and then passing critical mass before going supernova. The massive explosion one would expect was not what happened, all of the energy from the stars destabilization was funneled into a stream that fed into the skin of the diamond shaped ship. The entire mass of the sun was absorbed in what felt like only a few moments. This was something he had never before witnessed in these dreams until now. This time the dream had not ended. He felt it, the presence of a power dark and evil, the meditating figures in their wispy forms on the boarders of his mind began wavering and distorting until the cold laughter of a demon broke through into their minds.

A voice boomed in their minds, high pitched and shrill, “One who was lost, I can feel you but cannot see you. You hide in the shadows of a world unknown to us but we will find you. Those with you, those who will end in the same fate as the ones here and now, waiting in fear for the day when I stand over you and take your souls, know that there is no hope for your kind. I am coming for all of you and there is no where you can run”.

A clashing sound like two planets colliding filled the dream. The meditative figures were gone leaving him alone except for the dark figure that had somehow taken hold of him. A mental force he could not resist encased his presence searching for a way to tear him from the neither here nor there of the dream. The shrieking laughter rose in pitch, the dark tendrils throbbing with black energy increasing in frequency as it squeezed him, he was trapped, pain stabbed in his mind and he thought it was his end.

Daniels eyes opened as he gasped for breath. It felt like he had not breathed for longer than someone should be able to hold their breath and live. Wheezing his eyes were full of tears as he coughed the room spinning as he chocked painfully this was far worse than anything he had experienced before he thought as he fought to recover his senses. The Tears ran down his face both from the pain of being nearly choked to death while asleep and the hurt he felt from the emotions that came with witnessing the brutal extermination of life on those entire planets. The rooms Ai had saved his life when it had administered a large shot of adrenaline when it had confirmed he had stopped breathing and would soon go into cardiac arrest.

Shaking he reached for his note pad and started into sketching the images and writing notes about the dream before they faded away as all dreams seemed to have a way of doing. He detailed the star system, the timing, the numbers, the meditating forms a new element he had never seen before, the seemingly real contact with the evil one and then he paused, “the one who got away? What did that mean? Who else could that dark one be referring to other then him” he thought. He had heard those words specific “the one who was lost, the one who got away”, There was no mistaking it. “This creature of the darkness knew of him, the souls he saw meditating in his dream, they must know of him somehow” he wondered. Entering all of the details into the tracking software he switched a section of the display over to the developer tools work bench. There was no sense sitting idle when there was something so incredibly impossible happening in his mind and so without pausing he dove right into it.

The work bench window quickly started flashing. Modules appeared as he called them into the new programs architecture that he was creating. His fingers danced through the air, writing a few commands here and there before transitioning to just pulling icons together watching the big screen in the center of his room while flicking at the holographic key board in front of him. The node based software work bench Jimmy and Staz had developed using all of the different building blocks of code they as a group had created over the past years while building the United Earth Corporation together made creating custom programs specially designed for specific tasks super-fast and easy.

He wanted this simple Ai to take the planetary sketches he had made from past dreams and sequence them in every possible combination and pattern before then comparing them to old star maps for possible matches. He knew that if the dreams were in fact his presence experiencing an event happening in real space somewhere in the far reaches of the universe then in present time the dimensional mapped point data for the now destroyed planets would no longer exist and could not be compared to the planetary system sketches from his dreams. It had to be old star maps and the thought of that gave Daniel a feeling of dread. Sure it could work but it was a long shot.

The next thing he did was create a new sub routine in the main Ai's objective list. A new Surveyor drone force was born, the Galaxy spore. The Spore drones were ten thousand cubic miles of miner flotilla mother ship. Their sole purpose was to process large bodies of space rock and use it to print out complete mining, storage and printing flotillas with the purpose of spreading resource acquisition and mapping activities outside of the Milky Way Galaxy in an ever expanding sphere of discovery.

He recalled the time when unknowingly he had set into motion the laser scan survey of the entire Milky Way. The Ai had taken his off handed design requirement so literally that it had started a search emanating out from planet earth looking for prehistoric genomes needed for the genetic recreation of dinosaurs he had off handedly made a requirement in the new India installations tropical park. This time though Daniel was initiating the new survey on purpose and on a much greater scale. He wrote the specs for a new drone he coined the spore and created new mission protocols for it. When he was done the design and mission criteria descriptions he initiated the new galactic exploration program and the Ai handled the rest. The main purpose for each Spore ship was to travel through galaxies leaving new printing foundries that immediately generated mining, refining and storage flotillas. The next stage once the first resource gathering flotilla was complete and online was to print a foundry dedicated for printing surveyor drones assigned to that region of that galaxy. As the Spore drones were created and sent out to the corners of galaxies farther and farther away from the Milky Way there was an immediate need for data centers in all of the star systems that were being scanned and mapped in order to store the data and make it available for the central Ai. Billions of one meter diameter spherical drones went online executing their tasks quickly and efficiently and a detailed picture of the surrounding galaxies and beyond began to take shape. Daniel hoped there would be some sign or encounter with the demons from his dreams soon. He did not believe the historical star charts would lead to anything and was worried of the possibility that if he didn’t find them soon there may only be empty space of a long dead civilizations ruin left.

A week went by and there was nothing, no dreams, no contact. Another week and he felt a concern that the destroyer had possibly found a way to block him from being a witness. He began going to sleep with a slight sense of disappointment and urgent anxiety hoping that this time he would find himself back there and maybe by chance find another way to figure out a way to locate that part of space but at the same time that last encounter lingered in his mind and he worried that if that beast of a spirit latch on again he may not make it back.

Dream Four

 He drifted through a landscape of stars a white mist wrapping around his legs as though he were standing half submerged in a cloud that was racing across the universe. It was peace, it was safety and then there was a flash that blinded him for a moment before finding himself standing in an enormous hall, a cavernous white hall with glittering gold trim glittering in the filtered light, the mist from before fell away from around his legs dissipating and revealing more and more of where he was. The hall was immense, so large that its ends were beyond the distant horizon as far as he could see in every direction. He stood high on a central platform looking at the uncountable numbers of people blanketing the floor leaving not a space anywhere, all of them sat perfectly still in that lotus pose he remembered from the misty figures in his last dream. There was only stillness, a silence that stretched out in every direction for hundreds of miles. In Awe he slowly turned taking in the spectacle until coming full circle he wondered what was to happen next. Once he was still and the question entered his mind those who had gathered here answered him in a smooth unified single voice. “The one, who escaped, felt by all, the memory of a day so long ago, you, the strongest of our hope from the first days of the Sethrey, the first days when the Gods of Death came to destroy us”.

They spoke as one but no audible sound was heard; instead there communication came to him directly inside his mind. They told of the destruction their galaxy had been subject to ever since the dark ones had arrived and how he had been the only one to escape their clutches, something they all sought to do but none had found the strength to accomplish, only him. As they paused he tried to reply with a thought telling them that he knew of the destruction and then asked how he was to help, how was he to find them, to save them. Their reply was not what he expected. They were resigned to their fates and told him to create a new Olomnri in the peoples he had found far from the hopelessness they faced. They had thought he and all they knew was lost until he had returned in a form none of them had ever known. A new hope emerged and they had decided that they would protect him as much as they could while letting him learn their story in the hopes that he would carry it on long after they were gone. He had appeared in their minds when he walked among their dying worlds enabling them see what he saw. While he dream walked among them so close to the dark one they shielded his presence as much as they could and for a time he had been safe, but now their enemies strength was far more what it had been and there was no way they could protect him when he was so close to the daemon. It had taken many dreams for them to break through to him they said until finally they had found his presence drifting in the stars and brought him to this world of refuge were billions huddled far from where the swarms of destroyers ships lurked among half dead stars feeding on those who had been stranded and left to that fate. They huddled and waited, searching the universe for the hope they had all felt so many years ago. He stood there now, unable to respond with anything but the fierce emotion welling up inside him, “I will find you, you will be saved from this evil, this you cannot prevent”.

It happened with a sudden thundering crash. Audible cackling laughter filled the temples space, laughter that he recognized instantly. The Shrieking insane laughter of the dark one pierced their connection slicing through the meditative calm held by the billions of refugees gathered around where he stood. The destroyer had found him. The mind of the lord of death had followed the disturbance his presence had created when they had brought him here. The distance the daemons mind had traveled to disturb their meeting was too far for it to have real power over these people but there was still a strength left to deafen them with a thunderous penetrating tone.

“You have been protecting him from me! The one who escaped has not witnessed the destruction of your worlds these past cycles, what is your purpose for this when you know there is no hope for any of you", and again the laughter louder now slammed down upon them hurting their ears and filling their minds, "I am Drakon, and to you the one who watches, the strong hope, safe in the distance beyond our awareness, know that we will one day find you and all who exist among you”, silence and then a pounding throb entered his mind. The dark tendrils lashed out at him reaching for him just as they had done before. This time though those who had summoned him gathered their strength and before he was firmly in the clutches of darkens he was gone. The Olomnri had not been overcome by the Drakons mind and were able to send Daniel back safe before ousting the unwanted presence of the one who they feared would have all of their souls soon before long.

He awoke, his eyes snapping open. He turned his head to look at the motion sensor read outs showing how much he had moved in his sleep. The charts showed that he had not moved more than a few millimeters for over three hours until those last few seconds before he had come too where the signature characteristics of when he was in the presence of the dark one had started. He wrote down verbatim what he had heard the Olomnri say and then what the demon had said. “They had been protecting him? Well, maybe that was best, the dreams had been taking there toll but how was he to save them without knowing their galaxies location and seeing how the Drakons armada operated”?

CHAPTER 2 EARTH BORN

John walked down the stairs from their bedroom that morning and as he entered the kitchen the look in his wife’s eyes was enough for him to understand that their child was on its way. Susan was sitting at the table, her eyes said it all. She had a look he had not seen since the times of unease and imbalance she had been prone to from before their marriage. She looked afraid and unsure as if what was likely about to happen she would prefer to postpone for as long as possible. “Good morning” she said, with a faked sense of ease. He could tell she was trying to hide it, he knew that she was fully aware that they were going to make a trip to the hospital today regardless of the outcome. In an unworried tone he replied “good morning darling, how are you feeling today, ready for a car ride?” saying it with a mischievous smirk on his face.

Replying in a subtly sarcastic tone she said, “Just wonderful but our baby though, seems to have other things on its mind”.

Just then he saw the muscles in her face clench and tighten as what he guessed must have been a contraction coursed through her body. Immediately he was at her side asking how long she had been having them. Before she could reply he was helping her out of her seat and towards the door to the garage, in his hart he knew that this time it was urgent. Wordlessly she let him guide her gently through the door towards the car, he smoothly helped her into the back seat and without hesitation he was at the wheel backing the car out onto the road.

On the car ride to the hospital Susan went into labor. Up until this point her pregnancy had gone without complication but now her contractions indicated their baby would be born 6 weeks early. Her water had broken on route to the hospital and from that point in the ride until they made it to the hospital John had taken on a more urgent method to his driving style. Her deepest fear was to have a child malformed or incomplete, but their doctor after looking at the mammograms a few weeks earlier had assured them both there would be nothing to worry about even with a premature birth. How could she not worry! This would be her first born and she had just turned thirty five, she knew today would be the day, it was time. Her baby was on the way, early or not there was no getting around the fact that she would be bringing a new life into the world in the very, very near future.

John calmly drove the car to the hospital, his white knuckles on the wheel and the extra few miles an hour over the speed limit were the only indication of the urgency he felt inside. He had been given the time he requested from his demanding job to be with his wife at this crucial time. His ham had nearly completed the onsite consulting assignment in Dubai his firm had been tasked with. His role as acting chief director on the construction of once again, one of the tallest buildings in the world had kept him onsite nearly full time. But they had moved the project along and it had only taken a few telnet presentations and a series of conference calls to wrap up the loose ends from home. They had counted on him to pull all the pieces together on their biggest project to date and he had, leading the project to completion ahead of schedule, under budget and at a higher quality assurance level then had been required of them.

Now as he had promised seven and a half months earlier, he was here for her. As they got closer to the hospital, he reached back to hold her hand speaking to her in gentle tones. He had a way of making her feel so safe, always facing life with the attitude that everything would be fine one of the characteristics of his that made her love him so very much. His positivity and can to attitude in life had translated to her, giving her confidence and a drive to get through whatever she faced. John’s calm strong perseverance in life had helped her rise above the endless emotional turbulence that had consumed her life before she had met him. Throughout college and then after her graduation she had been stressed, confused, afraid and unsure about who she was and what direction she was going to follow. She had nearly fallen prey to a psychiatrist who had tried to convince her to use antidepressants to solve her emotional problems giving her an evaluation that declared she was a clear cut case of generalized anxiety disorder and likely suffering from a mild case of bipolar disorder. Luckily though John had come along right around then and everything had seemed to change for the better. With his help she had gotten away from the suppressive boss and low income job that had trapped her for so long with its false sense of security. Ever since she had met him, a tranquil calm had washed all the fears in her life aside. It seemed everything now, just, went well. She thought things happened for a reason and now her life was happy and safe. She felt that someone must have been watching back then giving her the chance to pull through those difficult times and maybe fulfil some purpose that was yet to present itself in her life.

As another contraction came she snapping out of her revelry and realized they were just now arriving at the hospital. Once again her husband’s instincts had been correct and she was thankful he had taken it upon himself to get her to the hospital before it would have become an emergency. Once inside, everything went smoothly. It was a perfect birth, one that went quickly without any complications. Later on that day, once she had recovered and the baby had been cleaned, stabilized and checked for any health hazards the nurse entered her private hospital room carrying their newly born child. John had left the room on the pretense that he needed to use the washroom but when he followed the nurse who was carrying their baby she knew he had gone to see how soon their child could meet its mother. Lying in her hospital bed, she cradled their new baby boy. He was wrapped in a hospital cloth and she held him as close to her chest as she could without squeezing the life from him. She lay there holding her new child with a mother’s gentle loving embrace.   Susan and John both grinned from ear to ear as their child with his tiny little sausage arms reached out as if trying to touch the sky. They both had tears of joy in their eyes, hers spilling out and running down their cheeks. The nurse and their Doctor Paul watched over the events amazed at the premature baby’s health.

Cradled in his mother’s arms he stretched and reached out in an unexpectedly controlled and relaxed motion. He was a very good looking new born with deep dark blue eyes, thick tufts of dirty blond hair sprouting evenly from all over his head and milky almond colored skin. Susan lay there savoring the happiest day of her life as her husband watched his new born son pull on his pinky finger. He calmly laid there, eyes wide, unblinking while gazing up at them. Everyone was astonished at how healthy this new child was. Doctor Paul said to her and John that their new son was in perfect condition. Stating in a clearly amazed tone, “he is as healthy as any child you would typically see” expressing his astonishment as he pointed out the controlled motor and vocal skills their baby was putting on display. He exclaimed how extraordinary it was for a child less than a few hours old, let alone 6 weeks premature to have such a developed sense of control. Doctor Paul confided in them that he had been a little worried about the potential complications of giving birth to such a premature baby, but from the now completed tests and obvious look of the child, he adamantly expressed that the only explanation was the development of their baby had simply happened faster than most cases and the infant had decided it was time to exit the oven.

John could only laugh at the child as he rubbed his own balding head where he had once kept hair years ago. looking at their new son and his thick dirty blond tufts of hair he said with a chuckle, "So that’s where it all went", leaning down he planted kisses on both Susan his new born sons foreheads. I love you she said in a warm soft voice, seeing his eyes begin to water and his she knew this was a rare moment.   He had never been one to show his vulnerability, she could see how happy and proud he truly was.

Transition.

One moment he had been in full control in his limitless state of his spiritual existence, floating in space enjoying the freedoms and power that came with being a fully conscious sentient being. He had been analyzing the life forms of a blue world that he thought could be a good place to call home. He felt safe, far from the danger he had escaped from, yet there was a cold feeling within, he felt a chilling sense of dread creeping around the outskirts of his mind, images and emotions of what had happened in his previous existence pulsed through him in rushes of uncontrolled grief, it felt like it had happened just moments ago he thought a little confused having no relevance to time when being in the realm of spirits, but then, it had he thought trying to push the feeling away and return his attention to this beautiful blue planet he had suddenly found himself looking at. From above and from all around he looked in on a thriving world of semi sentient people, interested in their patterns of life and seeing how many lived in drastically different conditions, then, without warning, it all changed.

A blanket of darkness and unconsciousness enveloped him. It had been sudden, no warning at all just a whoosh and there he was stuck in a void of darkness. He had gone from a state of total spiritual freedom and limitless ability to this sudden encasement, trapped and surrounded by he did not know what. His ability to reach out and touch stars, whole galaxies, the ability to push his consciousness across the impossible lengths of space where gone to him. Where he found himself now there was no answer, only there was one thing he knew for sure, there was no way out! Quickly his awareness faded and he existed in a state of blank emptiness but from time to time awareness would return but always seemed to be farther and farther away. Control of the substantial consciousness he had long been accustomed to was slipping farther and farther out of his grasp leaving only a mass of garbled confusion and blindness. His once brimming mind had gone blank, empty of all the vast knowledge he had once retained. Now, each moment of awareness he did have was of a cramped perpetually jarring existence. It was a never ending chamber of swishing and swashing, forever captivity. Feeling trapped and stuck was all he knew now and soon his one single purpose was how to get free, how to release himself and return, return to, something? It was there in the back of his mind but unreachable, a place in his mind he had once known, knowledge he had once had but now the feeling was gone, lost to him as though it had never existed. Trapped, straining to make something happen, anything. Time passed, long periods of empty thoughts and then moments of clarity when he focused his mind trying to break free of this darkness, trying to escape from the constant nauseating void he was perpetually incased in. On and on it lasted until there was nothing left of his mind but the sense of walls all around and the constant motions that filled every waking moment. By now analytical thought was rare, the fleeting moments when his mind came back to him he cherished focusing on the body he sensed was his own and the soft walls that kept him in darkness were not, he had in these moments begun to mentally strengthen this new body while searching for a way to be free, working to bring about a change, then finally something did happen.

With a sudden rush, fluid slid past what he had discovered to be his outer shell. As it started he was squeezed hard and unconsciousness took him. When he came back there was the sensation of being suffocated, squished and pushed. Pain came sharp and fast, pulsing with quick rippling strikes. Sounds of effort reverberated from all around. He felt panic but could do nothing! Helpless and in overwhelming discomfort loud sounds pounded in his mind, then again came a squeezing compression followed by the sense of being pushed. He was moving, inch by inch, and again unconsciousness. He felt a sharp pain at the back of himself and suddenly he was awake now blinded by a white brightness all around, it burned his still unopened eyes and pounded in his head! More noise came from points all around as his head spun. There were blurry shapes, large shapes and then he felt a sense of being touched and lifted. What was happening? He reached with his mind but it seemed the only result was his tinny limbs sluggishly lifted. Helpless he stared up at the large shapes towering and moving above, his mind whorled as they looked down on him. It was frightening, but somehow he felt safe.   

His mind was now totally blank, his sentient consciousness wiped away. Millennia of knowledge vanished leaving him as a fragile new born on a strange planet. All his once limitless outer awareness was gone stripped of him as the cost of entering into this new life. He felt himself vomit as more weightlessness sent him spinning into unconsciousness yet again.

Susan and John Thoth brought their baby boy home two days after his birth. Everyone was amazed at how healthy their child was. Other new mothers at the hospital had been evidently jealous but impressed at how thick her baby boy’s golden head of hair was. When people herd that her child was a premature birth they were speechless, he was so healthy and large for one born so far ahead of the expected time. With the technology of the day, premature children were not at great risk but they would normally spend two to three weeks in hospital being stabilized and given supplements to bring them into a safe level of health before releasing them from medical care. But there child had not needed any treatment of this sort.

Their new child was very calm but when confused or frightened he had the shriek and determination of a creature from another world. After coming home from the hospital they had still not decided on a name for their little one. For two people who would find agreement quickly on most anything, settling on a name for their new son had been a drawn out process. John’s Brother Dan had passed away years ago while fighting over seas. He had been a sergeant in the peace core, he had always been John’s best friend. Early in their lives in times of trouble and doubt he had been the fatherly figure they had both missed while growing up, always protecting John from the bullies and helping him understand why some people wanted to hurt those who were weaker then them. Susan and John after a few days of deliberation decided that there new son’s name would be Daniel Alexander Thoth to honor his fallen brother and an uncle of Susan's who had cared for her as a child as his middle name.

CHAPTER 1 PRE EARTH

Far across the universe, midst an infinity of stars, exists a galaxy teeming with sentient life. Humanoid in form, their bronze skin glows with iridescent lines of glittering freckles, as though they were painted with random strokes from an artist’s rainbow-colored brush. They are an ancient star faring civilization called the Olomnri. Most members of the species are slender, tall and beautiful, with bright golden eyes, silken silvery hair and an aesthetic radiance that seems to resonate as much from their consciousness as from their physical form.

They inhabit the galaxy Chronlion, a spiral system where hundreds of millions of populated planets host trillions of peaceful beings, beings whose lives are not limited to a handful of decades, but who live on for several thousand years before ascending from one life to the next. Living such expansive lifetimes at a high level of conscious awareness, the Olomnri have created a society where there is little fear of disease or violent death. Lessons were learned from a past where their people threatened each other to the point of extinction. Such lessons now serve as the driving force pushing them to create and maintain a near utopian galactic civilization.

Long ago when war had so nearly led their race into extinction, a virulent maliciousness ruled their lives. Stemming from fear, hate and greed it was rooted in their hearts and minds driving them to insanity. Their extinction seemingly inevitable was fortunately averted when in a sudden moment of truth as they teetered on the verge of obliteration a great shift in the minds of all Olomnri occurred. A shift that stopped their relentless destructive wars before turning their one and only home planet into a cold and lifeless rock, lost in the emptiness of space.

The shift lead them to discover hidden abilities, inherent talents that had been locked behind their insanity, emotions that had blocked them from their true potential. Through finding themselves and breaking away from the barbarism and savagery they achieved true harmony, rising to a point where upon death as sentient beings they transcended consciously from one physical life to the birth of the next retaining their knowledge life after life. By this retention of knowledge their civilization elevated quickly developing into a culture of rational intellects, forming a perfectly balanced realm where life, science and technology flourished empowering them to spread across the stars.

One of the greatest talents they discovered hidden away in each of them was that they possessed the ability to speak mind to mind. With this insight of extrasensory perception they could communicate instantly across the seemingly limitless distances of space, an ability that quickly became natural and instinctive for every one of their kind.

Peace and prosperity became all they knew for thousands of generations never once encountering other cultures of hostility while colonizing the billions of planets they now inhabit. It had become evident that they were the only sentient species with intelligence beyond that of the genetic entity found in animals across their entire galaxy.

As perfect as their civilization had become, non were ever allowed to forget how close they come to ended themselves more than a million years in their past. Detailed records of how they had lived in hate and fear before the times of prosperity are that of scripture. The memories and lessons from those days are held close to their hearts and symbolized with monuments constructed on every planet they colonize.

In those dark times before the shift Olomnri killed one another for sport, greed and pride. Even between those regions considered allies they held tournaments. Trials of death where battles ranging in weapons from swords and battle axes of the first days of civilization to the most state of the art weapons of the day depending on the theme were used to kill their opponents in the games. Exhibitions between hundreds of combatant’s were held regularly. The savage killings playing out for the masses broadcast to the public and viewed by every territory for the pure joy and display of the slaughter. Those who went to kill and die did so believing their purpose was to prove their peoples skill in dealing death to their enemy in order to keep the other territories from invading and decimating their people.

Regions not at peace were in a state of constant war; fanatical ideologies held by leadership groups perpetually fueled their peoples hate, driving them in a single purpose to desperately try and kill their enemies believing that if they did not destroy the threat outside of their boarders they themselves would be butchered. The state of endless total war tore the surface of their single known habitable planet apart, nearly to the point where it would no longer sustain life. If more weapons of mass destruction were deployed there would have be no hope even for those hidden far under the surface to survive when the planet's atmosphere ionized igniting in a fire storm that would burn until there was nothing left. If that happened even those berried in bunkers prepared to wait it out would die with no surface to return to, no way to replenish their food and suffocating from their quickly dwindling air supplies.

          The fear and hate that held them in this perpetual need for killing had no relief. It drove them blindly seeking more effective ways to destroy their brothers, their fellow Olomnri. Larger and larger more destructive weapons were deployed until they stood on the precipice that would have ended the wars because they had caused the complete extinction of their entire race and death of their planet.

In the last moments before there was no turning back a great shift took hold. A single spark grew into a flame of hope from the heart of one who would quickly be lost to this life. She had in her last desperate moments unknowingly changed her entire peoples future forever. Dealing with her pain wile slipping out of the realm of the living her mind had been pushed to the edge and unconsciously she penetrated deep into minds every Olomnri, touching their hearts with a song that changed them. At the climax of destruction because of one desperate soul in the very last moments before there would have been no reversing the events that were so nearly set into motion an innocent broke through the madness.

A telepathic mind song from a child shattered the insanity. She sang to them, filling every mind on the planet with peace and hope. She had created the link without knowing it, her song of life and love was heard by all.

It had been early evening and her family was sitting at the table in their dining room eating dinner as they always would. Her parents talked about how in the last tournament certain combatants had shown so much courage and cunning and debated on what regions would defeat the others in the war while this young girl seeing her people from a different perspective sat silently, eating the food that was offered her, dreaming of a different peaceful world. It had been as it always was, dinner, gossip speculation on their future when suddenly everything stopped.

A neutron bomb detonated over their city.

The blast caused buildings to collapse, entire sections of the city crumbled to the ground. Her building was one of them and when the dust settled it was just one of the hundreds of piles of rubble where her city once had been a beautiful landscape of artful buildings. When she awoke trapped and pinned under the ruin of her collapsed home there was no sign of her family or any sounds from the living, she didn’t kid herself they had all died she knew. She was alone mortally injured and knew that she herself would not have long. As she drifted in and out of consciousness racked by the pain from her crushed legs she chose to sing a song of life to help deal with her suffering. She liked to sing and would have loved to hear her beautiful voice fill the silent void of her undeniable tomb but she could not. She was pinned by the beam that had stopped after crushing her legs the very moment before it would have crushed the rest of her completely and because of its pressure it prevented her from having the breath to sing or even speak above a short lived croak. As tears rolled down her cheeks from the unbearable agony unceasingly washing over her she sang in the voice of her mind and soul.

It was a song born from sadness, pain and disparity, a song filled with passion and hope for peace, a song one who had seen through the lies and fear ruling her people could only sing. Her song a fluid rhythmic melody of all she wished her people could be, it flowed from her, comforting her, blocking out some of the pain and soon became an extension of her subconscious, continuing in her mind even when she drifted in and out of consciousness. Her song born of desperation and empowered by how she had used it to separate herself from the body that lay dying under the building crushing the life from her filled the minds of every Olomnri, clearing the fog of rage from their eyes and releasing them from the iron chains that had for so long constrained them on a collision course with total destruction.

This chance connection with a hidden ability all Olomnri inherently possessed saved them all. The instinctive telepathic ability she was tapping into was one that in the future they would all use as naturally as walking or breathing but in this moment her mind song penetrate their minds so completely because no one knew how to protect from it, no one knew they had it in them to speak to one another through this extrasensory perception. This first experience of telepathy, this song of peace, forgiveness and love filled the thoughts of every living soul left on their smoldering planet and the shift began.

Solders, commanders and leaders of entire regions stopped in mid motion and mid-sentence, some of them on the verge of turning a key that would have left no life on their planet. The song released them from their blinding blood filled rage. They froze as the song of peace and calm trickled through their subconscious. It washed away the hate and fear that had driven them to insanity. It took mere moments for the vortex of destruction to halt. Tears flowed from the eyes of many as they looked upon their fellow Olomnri across fields of destruction where layers of body’s torn limb from limb carpeted the ground because of the until now ceaseless battle that had been waged on those hopeless fields. Needles battle they collectively realized as the song caused so many to drop to their knees, heads in their hands with the realization of whom and what they had been up until now. For the first time an understanding, the truth of the evil that had caused so much slaughter, pain and suffering was shared by all. Some stood disbelieving covered in the gore amidst piles of bodies, stock-still as they saw clearly the brutality and senseless carnage that had for so long been their sole purpose to create.

After the wars had ended the shift had taken firm hold of the now unified Olomnri people she became known as Lighna but was never found. The mind song lasted for three and a half days before her voice in their minds drifted into silence and the cleanup began. Most believed that she had sung her song of calm and insight as she died from a terrible wound and they were not far from the truth. Her body died in the rubble after the first day, pinned to the ground, short of breath and filled with the pain but her mind stayed, not aware that her body had stopped, something in her consciousness had told her that she had to keep the song alive and so she maintained it, clinging to the lifeless body she had once known as her own while letting the story of life pour from her soul. Her song of how they had to hold themselves in a state of peace and work to release the painful energy locked in their minds from millennia’s of war held every one in place as they listened for the three and a half days. She repeated over and over every detail on how her people would have to use the memories of how insanity had nearly ended them. The story that seemed to come from a place in her mind that she had never known flowed from her in a continues rhythm laying out every step they needed to take spiritually and mentally in order to achieve the true potential and greatness hidden inside all of them. She kept it alive until finally the feeling that she could go came and so somehow knowing she released her hold on the physical plane moving fully conscious into the spiritual realm the first of the Olomnri to ever do so. She knew nothing of the fact that the song she had used to deal with her suffering had ushered her people into a new and brighter future and not knowing that she had transcended from one existence to the next she traveled the stars in peace for eternity.

A state of tranquility became the new reality where knowledge and life was held as the highest of status. In honor of the voice that had saved them they renamed there single home world Lighna. It took three generations before the technology was available to leave Lighna which was still crippled but slowly healing from the scars left by the wars. From the moment of the shift all who had survived spent their time nurturing the inherent brilliance of their people. As a whole they worked to flourish and rise from the ashes of destruction piled high after ten thousand years of never ending battle.

An age of insightful reflection and ingenious discoveries arose and soon they discovered how to extend their life spans to multiple centuries and from there multiple millennia. Olomnrions became incapable of hostility or irrationality. Their civilization spread like wild fire, leaping from star system to star system filling their spiral galaxy Chronlion with their people. Billions of planets were terraformed and populated as they continuously cultivated and expanded the knowledge that had been locked away behind the gates of fear and hate for as long as they could remember. And so, from the start of the shift for more than a million years they spread through their galaxy, terraforming and multiplying their numbers from hundreds of billions to trillions completely unthreatened and safe in their perfect Utopian galactic civilization.

The feeling of utter safety and peace ended as suddenly as it had begun what now felt like an endless age long ago. Emerging from the dark reaches they came, a fleet of destroyers from beyond the chronlion galaxy space. An armada of moon sized ships that had so unexpectedly discovered their Eden, hidden amongst the swirls of stars for so long.

At once it was evident that this new unimaginably large fleet of ships was a threat with battle technology far superior to anything the Olomnri could produce. They had forgotten how to fight with a ruthless abandon after putting that way of life behind them when the shift had saved them from destroying themselves. Because of their complete state of peace they had lost the need for developing advanced weapons systems and battle tactics never considering it a problem after populating an entire galaxy and not finding any signs of another hostile race.

Their arrival had been sudden, ruthless and without warning, a locust cloud of enormous ships all suddenly appearing in the inner zone of a small solar system on the outskirts of the Chronlion galaxy. Images of the enormous ships varying in their geometric shapes were broadcast across the stars to all planets in chronlia. Pictures and video from the inhabitance in the besieged solar system showed the glossy black swarm of ships floating in space like small moons in their skies casting an ominous shadow of what was to come. Some resembled that of huge shelled insects with long legs and pincers while others where just spheres, towers, pyramids and cubes.

The hostility this armada intended was made apparent as every ship that fled towards jump points away from the besieged planets were incinerated as soon as they started moving. The enemy took their time, drifting to locations around all of the planets in the system. When they had taken up their assumed positions around the doomed home worlds they sat in the sky for what felt like an eternity, waiting for no one knew what until without any kind of warning it started.

Fire rained down from the skies as trillions of Olomnri watched live from across the entire galaxy. They viewed the real time video feeds from satellites still left un touched by the invaders. Every broadcaster had a feed and every station displayed the news casts and footage of the destruction that was raining down on the planets from above. The video feeds lasted only a short time though before the real time communication satellites in the system where destroyed. At that point only thoughts could be felt and heard by those who were telepathically connected with the few Olomnri left on the planets still able to communicate. Their connections lasted only brief moments after the video was cut though, leaving the last thoughts lingering in the minds of those who had heard them. Thoughts describing how their entire planet was being ripped apart and of how there was no hope, no hope, despair, fear, panic and then there was nothing. All of the minds living on the worlds in that star system went silent; a silence that held every Olomnri in the Chronlion spiral frozen in disbelief for a considerable length of time after they had witnessed the destruction of entire worlds. They were filled with shock, disbelief and confusion. After the video and mental connections had been severed they were left only with the images that had been captured, lingering, still framed and repeating on every video screen, on every world, everywhere.

Slowly the mental silence was broken. It started with a trickle of saddened harts expressing their remorse before opening into a tumult of emotion and confusion that permeated the mindscape of these peaceful and Zen like beings. Shock and fear spread across the galaxy as Olomnri who had been telepathically connected to those trapped on the doomed worlds shared the last thoughts with their friends and family members. The fear was amplified when it was identified that the star system under attack had completely disappeared from the galaxy star map that every home world had displayed in their city centers. Even the star had disappeared from the map displays. There was only one possible way this could happen nearly everyone knew. For the star to have been removed from the maps data base it would have to no longer exist. That star system, moments ago under siege and only a day before existing in peace had in less than a full cycle of galactic standard time been erased completely. Every trace of the solar system had disappeared. Some hoped for the best thinking that the subatomic sensors that kept track of every star in the galaxy continuously updating the map in real time were simply out of whack, but the truth could be felt by everyone. Deep down the feeling was in their hearts and they knew what had happened, whoever they were had completely wiped that star system out of existence and no one knew where they would strike next. 

The fear grew as the thought of where the enemy would appear next percolated the subconscious highway of thought they were all tapped into. It took no time for the fear of who would be next to became a viral idea jumping between individual minds until it had reached nearly everyone. There was no sign of where those huge enemy ships were, if they had left the destroyed star or where they would appear next, no one knew and every one waited, wondering, speculating and dreading the possibility that it would be their system falling victim, caught under the destructive gaze of this unstoppable swarm next.

Three cycles passed before another system sent out the alarm, ready this time all of the news and video broadcasters put out a distress call streaming images just as before but this time they had been watching the sky and captured the sudden blasts of light as each of the hundreds of ships jumped into the systems space. It was immediately noticed by the broadcasters that it appeared to them the armada had grown in number from their last encounter. Tendrils of plasma lashed out from the dark glossy ships destroying the defense installations that had been stationed to protect these planets from dangerous space rocks that threatened the systems home worlds quite regularly. The meager defenses proved of no concern to the ships of the armada, some of the huge ships taking direct hits with no evidence of any kind of damage revealing that there energy weapons meant for pushing asteroids off course had no effect. Then as if the enemy had learned the Olomnri were watching they destroyed all of the real time satellites immediately cutting off the live feeds that would have otherwise shown the attacking fleets hovering in the skies of this doomed systems worlds. Only the links between the minds of those who knew Olomnri on the worlds in the system were able to communicate with one another until as suddenly and as brutally as before their connections were severed and all went silent.

The dark threat, unknown as to who or what they were, slowly cast a shadow of death and destruction over the far outer reaches of Chronlion. They moved from star system to star system leaving only clouds of lifeless dust, particles of the resources discarded by these planet eaters. It had become apparent that they were sucking the mass right out of the stars in the systems leaving tiny remnants of suns no longer with enough output to be recognized as stars in the galaxy map data bases. Unsure of their enemy’s true face or reasons for hostility the Olomnri assigned this swarm of destruction a name they had given to the most evil of destroyers from long ago. They called them, “Sethrey”, the gods of death.

Timiat.
The pillars in the hall shook as fire and thundering energy crashed down from the sky. Rippling waves of crackling plasma rolled across the landscape. Buildings toppled filling the air with shattered glass, chunks of concrete and clouds of dust. As far as the eye could see the ground shook, fire and smoke billowed up from the destruction. Plasma shrieked through the air, ripping sections of the planet apart, hurtling mountain sized chunks of smoldering, disintegrating earth into space.

On the Horizon Timiat could see flashes, tendrils of flame lashing and arching down to the planet's surface from beyond the sky. They were up there he knew, he had seen the videos from the other planets that had all ended in the same fate. Death was getting closer he thought. He looked up into the sky cursing the attacking ships that orbited his planet, those enormous ships flashing randomly, each sending tongues of scorching plasma to the surface. Hundreds of them incinerating everything they targeted, there was no where he could hide he knew, nothing he could do but prepare for the end.

Timiats planet, a lush water world located in the outer reaches of the Chronlion galaxy was under attack. These past hundred solar cycles had made apparent to the entire Olomnri people, everything had changed. Whole solar systems of civilized, cultured planets were now wiped away; leaving no doubt that there was in fact once again a real threat to their entire existence. 

He questioned how it could be that no one had any idea of who they were and why they were so hell bent on destroying and killing his people and destroying their planets but like everyone else he did not have the answers. His people throughout their home worlds had felt billions of souls winking out of existence as the gods of death, the destroyers, the Sethrey as they were now referred to made their way across the out-skirting solar systems of their so peaceful galaxy.

On Timiats planet three moons and the large purple world where huge mining operations had been active for hundreds of years would normally have filed the night sky. This season was the time for festivals, gatherings, warm humid nights and the long hot days of summer. People spent their time at ease, relaxing, celebrating and taking in the climax of the warm summer season. Each night the aligning nearby planets and moons crested the horizon drifting across the sky, huge and colorful. Normally it was more beautiful than words could describe as the two suns of this solar system illuminated brilliantly the array of moons and planets each night. Today though, it was not as it should be. In the sky half visible through the smoke fire and debris choking the air he could see the remnants of shattered planets and among them huge glossy black ships raining death down on the people who lived there just as they were doing here on his planet.

Timiat stood on his balcony watching and listening as buildings off in the distance fractured crashing to the ground. He had stood there for what had seemed this day an entire life time as the destruction of his world first came into view. After watching the huge mining planet shatter, spilling lava and debris out into space as it lost all gravity before being atomized, he knew for certain that this day would be the end of this life for him. The wave of destruction on the surface of his planet swept closer without pause, closer and closer over the lands that had once been so plentiful towards where he patiently waited, standing on his balcony watching it approach. He kept himself in a state of complete calm, waiting for what he knew was inevitable and impossible to prevent. He had felt it, a constant outcry from the minds of his people as millions of Olomnri died, passing from the physical plain, ascending to the spiritual strata of existence as they had always done since the great shift long ago. Or so he had assumed would be the case for all those dyeing this day. Of course they were all safely passing into the sentient plain he thought. Again, Boom!! Like thunder from an impossibly evil storm, an arch of plasma rushed down from the sky, the sound wave from it shattering any and all structures left standing in that area of the city at that was at least one hundred kilometers from where his building still stood here on the top of a hill overlooking it all. It ripped into the ground to close this time he thought. Fire slashed the air screaming its destructive joy. He was bracing himself, white knuckles gripping the railing, shaking, barely containing a furry that could well up and consume him for what was happening to his beloved planet and its people if he did not maintain control. He stood stalk still, watching as huge boulders and clouds of dirt lifted into the sky. Each plasma impact slashing open huge canyons tearing apart the planet’s crust, it was as though all gravity was lost where the plasma ripped earth into the sky. He looked out over his city as it was consumed in flames. Once a utopia of tall slender buildings made from white stone, buildings that had stood near on ten thousand years were now being reduced to a landscape of rubble, smoke and fire. Worst of all was the shear amount of death. It could be felt thick in the spiritual landscape as each and every life was being incinerated. Not a soul lived where the shock waves hit, all were consumed. A shattering impact just off the coastline caused the sea to ignite. It rose up in columns of fire reaching towards the sky, the wall of steam and fire were heading for the coast. Up the coastline, closer to where he stood he watched another tongue of plasma touch down, hurling chunks of earth as large as buildings strait up into the air. The wall of flaming water spread fast an unstoppable curtain of death and destruction falling upon the mainland, wider and wider it grew, closer and closer it came, expanding, fork lightning lashing out from its sides, it was as if the air itself was igniting, ionization he thought. Tears dropped from his eyes as he watched flames wrapping around the chunks of his planet as they fell away splitting apart and drifting into space.

He was unaware of the tears streaming down his face. He knew he would need to be at peace as his end fast approached in order to transcend into the spiritual plane in a state of full consciousness. He stood on his stone patio, arms outstretched, his hands on the rail, the thick acrid heat washing his face. Standing in body and reaching in mind he awaited the end to this long yet shorter then wished for cycle of life. The ground shook. Pain and suffering could be herd and felt all around as soul after sentient being transitioned from the physical universe, their physical bodies floating in the air nothing but ash. This cycle of time would mark yet another world in the merciless campaign of destruction being waged on his people.
It was obvious to him now that this destroyer race was concerned not for life but only the raw materials they could forage from the atomized planets. He was sickened as he thought of how they mercilessly decimated whole worlds only to collect the minerals and resources before moving on to the next unlucky star system. He knew that his people had continuously tried to make contact with the attacking armada but there had never been a reply. They were sweeping all resistance aside, taking no damage, totally unimpeded and multiplying.

With his mind he reached out using all of his inner strength and awareness to his family and loved ones. Farina his fifth born daughter who had left their home world years ago came to his mind. She had gone to pursue scientific research in pulse matter disruption on a planet renowned for its scientific schools of higher learning. All of his family had long since headed to the stars. She felt him, and he her, a sentient mind to mind connection spanning countless light years of space. He knew as did she that her and the rest of their family would be safe for long after today. He could also feel that she knew he was about to die. Suddenly a flood of emotion swept over him. He felt all of his children, friends and lastly with a great wave of strength his wife who was off world visiting her mother millions of light years away. They were all there, in each other’s minds, a cloud of sentient consciousness, sharing thoughts, words and emotions. Confusion and fear were at the fore front as they all expressed their initial reaction to the situation at hand. He reassured them that they would re unite in the next life as it had always been or the one after that. His feelings to them where of tranquility and calm, he felt them fight to hold onto the knowledge that he would ascend this day from the physical plain and return in mind as a new birth taking a new body on a new world. He would carry all of his knowledge with him and continue the cycle of the Olomnri. His family would all live for the time being on far off planets and moons, living for many turns of their stars. Then a silence held them and they all had the same thought together, this unstoppable evil, the Sethrey armada would reach their home worlds in time they all thought together, maybe they were all doomed to the same fate! What if this evil scourge could not be stopped! Fear swept through the connection, he could feel their panic as their link filled with turbulent emotion. He calmly issued a farewell and disconnected his mind from the group, returning to the present where in front of him there was nothing but fire and destruction.

He had to fight with all of his inner strength to hold onto his wavering state of flittering calm. With the end approaching he began deeply searching his emotions and analytical thoughts, preparing himself for what was to come. He accepted that he and the rest of the Olomnri on this home world would perish. Nothing was going to change their fate. An observation came to his mind; it was strange he thought how the Sethrey had destroyed the matter transmitting stations on the outskirts of the solar system preventing the escape of any living Olomnri in the very first moments of their arrival. They had knowingly trapping everyone and everything in the system destroying every means of escape before sitting back and organizing their strike. Then they had destroyed a few of the planets allowing those on the more populated worlds to watch the entire mass of each planet under attack get pulled and devoured by the enormous ships. Following the destruction of those moons and planets they had taking up positions around the last few planets in the system and waited as if feeding on the panic that had spread like wild fire throughout the populations before commencing their murderous destruction.

Reaching out with his mind once again, he projected the hope, that someone, one day, could stop this plague of death that was so inexorably creeping across his people's galaxy. He put a seed of purpose out into the universe that somehow one day an end would come to the plague of merciless death that had befallen them. Death was getting closer and fast, an even hotter current washed across his face, his tears dried instantly as everything around him engulfed in flame, vaporized!

He felt himself drift away from where his body had been. Where his physical body had stood seconds earlier was now a swirling mass of flame and melting stone. Feelings of tranquility and peace closed in all around him. The transition to fully sentient existence was always so comforting and natural to his people. Long years of training and experience in the sentient mind had prepared him for this moment, a moment he had experienced many times before. This time though was early and tragic; this cycle of life was being cut short by brutal force.

As he ascended he could feel something was very wrong. A strange imbalance felt in the plane of souls, thick and all around him. He could feel the beings just like him, transitioning from the physical plane into the sentient realm, drifting up away from the planet that was being torn apart below them. A tug in the spiritual weave pulled at his being-ness. He could feel some terrible disturbance in the ora of souls but could not place where it was coming from. Something was different, strange and unfamiliar from when he had moved between physical life cycles in the past. As the moments passed he felt more and more that something felt profoundly wrong. He could feel some sort of sharp frequency, extremely turbulent, a static energy pulsing from where the sky had enveloped his planet. It was pulling at him, ripping at his consciousness trying to take from him his calm control. He sensed the others, a cloud of souls all rising up, drifting, millions of Olomnri who moments ago had been harshly separated from the physical plane, now rising, ascending but at the same time being thrashed upon and buffeted by some vast evil in the sky. The feeling rippled through the spiritual consciousness again and again, he could sense that everyone felt the disturbance and as they rose up getting closer to where the sky had been a shrieking of souls filled each of their minds. Again, Strong, he felt the unnatural pull deep inside his conciseness and the shattering scream filled his mind, blocking him from his thoughts. High above where the sky had encircled his home world, his people in their spiritual form were being consumed, feasted upon by a huge blanket of other worldly awareness, a layer of evil surrounding his once beautiful planet. Something out there was trapping the sentient beings, devouring each and every one of them. Not only were the Sethrey taking the materials from the planets but it seemed they were also destroying and consuming the sentient life. What kind of devils could be feeding on souls he thought as the screeching once again pierced though his mind.

When Timiat was a boy of this life, he had learned from a great philosopher that in theory, a fully sentient being was not restricted by space and time but only in mind. One could not cause an effect in the physical universe unless connected but at the same time while sentient, one would not be restricted by those same atomic laws. Yet, there was still a thread of connection between the two. Not knowing but willing to believe he focused all of his energy and winked himself away from the end to his sentient existence waiting for him in the sky.

With all that he had left of his awareness, he snapped from his position relative to his now decimated home. He flung himself as far as he could reach, and farther. Out! He reached past everything he had ever known, past the concept of space itself, stretching his mind, expanding. He reached out past everything and then stopped to look back at the entire multiverse, the Universe! Every galaxy, every solar system, every quasar and black hole all now just a cluster of bright and dark glittering crystals in his mind's eye, the decimation of his home world had vanished, there was no frequency but his own and he felt safe. Letting himself be carried along he drifted on the currents of attraction until from out of no ware it came to him, a feeling of hope, unmistakably clear and without hesitation he was at once traveling towards it. Not knowing why he was doing so or where he was heading he just allowed his attention to travel, his spiritual body leaping across the universe in an instant pulled by a glimmer of hope. It pulled at him as if he was meant to go there, a small grey galaxy with a simple and unique solar system. There was just one blue planet and from it he could feel an adolescent form of sentient life. He reached out with is conscious mind and was instantly above and all around it. What a beautiful, small and remote place he thought. A place he would want to spend some time investigating. Then, everything went blank.