Anoona had gathered four of her senior-most children in the Throne room or the Eighth level of the Hive, where they stood in complete silence as she stared at 01's cocoon, which had grown to be as big as a small car.
He was still sleeping so peacefully.
He had yet to say anything ever since his first and last and most precious word, but Anoona didn't mind.
She would get him all the time he needed to grow.
She could hear his bones as they formed, she felt his blood as it absorbed the nutrients she had given him, and she felt the potential in the breath he held.
She closed her eyes and took a breath before facing Thunder (515 – Beta), Sabhuku (461 111 – Theta), Dahlia (32 987 234 – Delta) and Rusteater (45 – Gamma).
"Nature knows it cannot win a war of attrition. The longer this goes on, the more of your siblings will hatch and the more of the surface I will absorb. So, Nature is going to try and crush us. Literally. As you know, the surface is essentially the world's epidermis, and I feel as though it's all going to squeeze in on us. Fleshy plants and rocks can't move on their own, so it's probably going to come as a massive Noetic Wave. One which will be impossible to stop with physical means. So, I'll have to either send out my own wave to cancel it out or do something more drastic that may put our lives in just as much risk."
The air froze at Anoona's words.
"What do you have in mind?" Dahlia asked in a voice that was so soft, it would have been lost were it not for the silence of the Throne Room.
"I think the second option is the path to victory. I will gather some strength and send out a ping that will send my scouting cells into overdrive. They will then consume every living being on the surface of the planet in a process that may very well take years until we are the only ones left. Until we are completely safe."
The four silently gasped in their own ways, but Anoona wanted to hear their opinions.
"Your thoughts?"
"What if the enemy wave arrives before you're ready?" Thunder frowned.
"That's why the second plan is riskier. On one hand, it means complete victory and on the other, it means crushing defeat."
The four all groaned at their mother's answer.
"What will you need for the second plan?" Rusteater asked. He was small, even for a Gamma, and was covered in burns, and his left antenna was missing. He could regenerate, but he was going to carelessly get hurt again as he worked, so he didn't bother healing superficial scars.
"For both plans, I'll need a little bit of food and a lot of sleep since I'll need to focus and amplify a single power Noetic Wave. I may be evidently powerful, but I cannot bend the world to my will in an instant."
The four nodded in understanding.
"So, which do you think we should proceed with?" Anoona asked.
She had given it a lot of thought and concluded that, since it wasn't just her life on the line, she should involve her children in the decision-making.
"You are our mother. Your decision is all that matters. We will act according to that." Thunder said rather softly to respect the peace of his sleeping big brother.
"But I'm asking for your opinions. I'd very much appreciate them." Anoona's old self would have never been this patient.
She would have just made up her mind and made everyone act in accordance with her decision, but things were different now.
She wasn't alone.
She didn't want to be alone.
"I think we should proceed with the first." Thunder nodded.
"No. The aftershock will turn everything to mince. We should proceed with the second." Rusteater shook his head, prompting Sabhuku to do the same, which left Dahlia, who clutched her chest as everyone turned to her.
"I… I think we should go with the second option. It makes no sense for us to barely survive the wave only to then continue warring. This may sound grim, but… I would rather have this all come to a definitive end than perpetuate it any further."
Anoona nodded before dismissing them all with the single wave of her right hand.
"Thank you. I also think we should go with the second. I don't know how long I'll be asleep for, but that doesn't mean I'll be silent. Feel free to call if you need anything, but for now…"
She sat next to 01's cocoon, crossed her legs and closed her eyes.
"Please bring me a cup of water and something sweet."
The four nodded before leaving the throne room and returning to their posts, although Dahlia made sure to send a Theta down with what Anoona had asked for.
A small container of water and a lump of a honey-like substance that the Deltas could produce.
Anoona ate and closed her eyes, letting out a deep sigh as this would be the first sleep she'd have gotten since awakening, but… it was alright.
Her Children would be fine without her constant attention for a little while.
.
..
Mankind had finally reached the stars.
That Primaeval dream that the fathers of civilisation passed on to every son and every daughter.
But, now that the oceans of ink blackness and starlight were accessible at a moment's notice, one question remained.
What of home?
Tora was one among several trillions who wanted to know, and his curiosity was further fuelled by the fact that some sort of cosmic interference was stopping mankind, now collectively known across the stars as Newmen, from seeing what was happening on the surface.
Such had been the case ten thousand years after the last humans left the planet.
Something or someone was preventing any kind of signal from returning after having been sent to the Earth, and the Newmen had been too busy spending the following millennia warring among each other to look back from whence they came.
Long since deserted due to millennia of conflict and the migration of Newmen to other, distant stars, the Earth had been unreachable for the longest time.
Alas, the fires of conflict are destined to momentarily fade, and it was in one of these peaceful eras that the Newmen sent drones back home, only for the machines to cease functioning as they approached the Earth.
It was then decided that a team of scientists would be sent to investigate, and Tora named himself the leader of the operation.
Having lived five hundred and thirty Earth Years, very few people were more qualified to connect the past and the future the Newmen represented.
Tora thought as much.
Standing as the perfect specimen, he was almost two meters tall, had pale skin, ashen white hair, white irises and eyebrows.
He wore a clean white skintight suit that was marred only by the single, vertical blue line that designated him as a scientist or, as he preferred, a thinker.
A descendant of a long line of those who asked "Why?".
He wasn't the captain of the ship that carried him to Earth, however.
That title belonged to Captain Elias, and so Tora had no choice but to patiently sit in his quarters as they approached what was once called the Pale Blue Dot.
They had just passed the deserted world of Mars and would be arriving the following morning, so he still had time to lounge about before he got to work.
"Honey, have we gotten word from the council yet?" He asked while staring out into space from the digital display that was splayed across the wall next to the bed where his wife, Phymn, sat with a floating holographic rectangular display in front of her.
It showed her the current news, interstellar weather reports and various other things.
"Still nothing, dear." She sighed. Unlike Tora, she was short, had long black silky hair, pale skin and slanted eyes
One thing that made her particularly different, however, was her irises, which had a pale golden glow to them, indicating that she was an Artiman—a man-made construct that resembled a human in almost every way, the only difference being the Articores that were housed in the centre of their brains.
These were incredibly advanced and rare processors that allowed Artimen to execute complex computations that otherwise required large, static processors, and they could do so in a remarkably short time.
"Have they already forgotten my achievements? My contributions to our species and to the future?" Tora frowned, clenching his teeth and squeezing his fist, only for his rage to be suppressed by the diffusers in his brain.
He took a deep breath and sighed out some of his anger.
"How many worlds did I terraform for them? How many lives did I change? Do they really think that seven Sapiens awards are enough to represent that?"
"They should reward you with a star of your own." Phymn scoffed playfully, but this made Tora turn to her with eyes that were slightly widened.
"Now's not the time for sarcastic piffle."
"Yes, my dear." Phymn lowered her head a little but maintained her half smile, making Tora huff lightly.
He then walked across the sterile, mostly white coloured room to leave.
"Don't forget to hydrate." Phymn reminded as Tora left his quarters to find himself in the central housing bay of the Santa María. A vast, hollow, egg-shaped space that was at the centre of the large craft, housing nine hundred thousand Newmen.
The Santa María itself was shaped like a harpoon and was seventeen kilometres from front to back. The housing bay stuck out like a bloated gut in its centre, and the helm was at the tip.
It had everything from actual fields of grass and small forests to game parks, hospitals, schools and more.
All of which Tora had witnessed as it was built.
He was older than everyone on the ship, and that was because his genes had been recoded to make it so that his life had no genetic end.
He would be in his biological prime until he died of some other cause, and even then, medicine had also advanced quite far as a field, meaning that if his body was recovered in time, then he could be saved from the jaws of death.
The only problem was the brain.,
As advanced as the Newmen were, they could not bring someone back from death because even if they successfully facilitated the regeneration of a person on a cellular level, which was an incredibly delicate process, the newly regenerated person would not possess any of their old memories.
Any memories that were scanned digitally and downloaded into brain implants would, unfortunately, be a playback of another life.
This is why Newmen were still careful with their lives.
"Good morning, Dr Tora!"
"Morning, Doctor!"
Some people greeted Tora as he walked towards the nearby observatory.
He ignored them entirely, choosing instead to cross his hands behind his back.
This scorn came from the fact that he didn't see himself as belonging to the same group as everyone around him.
To him, they weren't even children.
He had seen so many people, witnessed so many deaths that they all began to blur together in one collective identity, of which he was a dated part.
He eventually reached the observatory, which was a large spherical room that could display anything the ship's telescopes and sensors could see.
He reserved the room for himself, a privilege he didn't have to pay for or wait for, and pulled up a projection of the Earth.
No matter how many times he looked at it, it never failed to widen his eyes.
Once described as a world of water, what he beheld was a hazy, greyish orb that distorted its own image.
Tora suspected that the world was actively trying to hide itself, a rather unpopular belief, but simple electromagnetic interference wasn't enough to explain the fact that they couldn't see the face of the world that birthed them.
It wouldn't be much longer, Tora thought.
The children of the future were finally going to return home.
And he was going to be among the first.