Jyi’ntol had sat up late last night reading over the literature about the Alliance of Worlds. The agreements that were made between the worlds throughout the Y’glo-hatii 01221 accord in all sections were well thought out and beneficial for each world. Minerals were big in the trade agreements. It all depended upon what materials were native to which planet before they reached the digital age; that really mattered on what was being transported between their worlds. This was thought of as a harmonizing trade that allowed for the melding of technology.
Each world sent some form of cargo from one world to another in a process that at one point could take up to a hundred years or more. Such trade between F’inlitary nan Geritari and Woatuu had yielded only three rotations before new technology allowed for faster travel between all systems. The first was a transportation of organic samples from the colony there. These exobiological samples made huge waves in the scientific community. The second brought F’inlitary nan Geritari its first direct interaction with alien beings. One of these ships had ferried members of both the Uhanni and the Ellithani species. These were the first families to be hosted on the G’lomin-sitiri homeworld, and the first ambassadors from another species. The third wave of ships between the two worlds transported passengers and cargo alike, as well as hundreds of G’lomin-sitiri eggs to be nursed within the off world colony.
The colony on Woatuu had inadvertently advanced the evolution of the two sentient species to a large degree. The Woatuu colony leapt the native populations from the stone age to pre-digital within four-hundred standard cycles. This was why the colony and the ambassadors had traveled to F’inlitary nan Geritari to plead a case for open trade and access to greater education. The natives understood that traveling to F’inlitary nan Geritari was a cyrogenic voyage that would arrive outside the lifetime of their loved ones. They understood that those that left would never see their loved ones in person again.
The two peoples were so determined to plead their case before the senate that each volunteer made this sacrifice and trusted the Woatuu colony to get them there safely. The colonists and the ambassadors were able to send word through the satellite network between F’inlitary nan Geritari and Woatuu. Communications then were eight standard cycles one way. Cryotravel procedures allowed the colonists to exit cryostasis each Woatuu planetary year to read communications from home, view videos of news, and generally catch up on the lives they left behind in bursts.
“That was dedication,” Jyi’ntol whispered aloud.
Jyi’ntol looked at a picture of one of the Woatuu G’lomin-sitiri colonizers in the book. The Woatuuian colonist was thick and broad. Far more stout in frame than she or anyone she knew stood. His scales were dense and thick, nothing like hers. Her scales were tiny, thin, and light blue. His were dark brown and rough with patches of peaked dense scale, he was solidly built and rugged.
There was a tradition between the colonies to send eggs from one of each of the female colonizers, which eventually became a balance of population between the worlds which allowed for greater diversification and relations between the colonies and homeworld. This tradition continued after the formation of the Alliance and widened the number of G’lomin-sitiri moving throughout the colonies.
The G’lomin-sitiri had developed from the G’lomin, their progenitors. As such, the G’lomin-sitiri had the added advantage of being trained in a technology already in it’s advanced digital age. The G’lomin had grown into their digital age, naturally, using microprocessors and biological engineering, as well as fossil fuels and their byproducts to advance themselves recklessly until they left the planet in a state of chaos. They then left the care of the world to the G’lomin-sitiri.
The G’lomin-sitiri had taken the technological gifts of their creators and shifted their technological advancement to the biological studies linked with cybernetic enhancements throughout their world.
Through such technology, the G’lomin-sitiri have developed large cyber-organic beasts that lend aid in day to day life. The G’lomin-sitiri did not have to go through the long turmoil that the G’lomin had in order to obtain the technology they left to the G’lomin-sitiri. Their creators did not see the value in having a species develop naturally through their stone age and beyond.
As the Alliance matured and other races entered into it, the tradition of open technological advancement greatly benefitted the G’lomin-sitiri as well as the other races in the Alliance of Worlds. With the entry of the Zeolate to the Alliance, concrete development of proper AI came to F’inlitary nan Geritari. The Ailote brought the cybernetic technology and the Zeolate lead the G’lomin-sitiri scientists in the right direction in the creation of our own native AI race.
One of these creations was her own nanny, Myna. In the four years since her hatching, Myna has become invaluable to Jyi’ntol. She was fast becoming what the AI had told her on that very day, her lifelong companion. Though the Zeolate led the creation of AI throughout the Alliance, the Ailote were consulted on the same process. This being stemmed from the fact that although the two races were once one and the same, millennia ago, the Zeolate had branched off from the Ailote, over a disagreement in evolution.
From what Jyi’ntol had been taught in school about the two races, they felt as though each of the AI that have spawned from their aid were something akin to cousins. Much like the Woatuu G’lomin-sitiri now have physical differences from the G’lomin-sitiri on homeworld, the one has now become two. Each time there is a long term separation from the mother species there will be subtle differences created.
From what Jyi’ntol read, an AI was something that had to be created artificially but, in a way that mirrored organic neurological processes. She understood that they were people. They were citizens of the Alliance and they were inorganic. They were something that made organics lives easier and through that aid, organics could create avenues for those in the digital realm, for their people to move throughout the universe. As such it was a symbiotic relationship.
Everything on F’inlitary nan Geritari lived throughout a means of symbiosis. Jyi’ntol recalled from her homework. The cyber organic ships and vehicles all had purpose and had an advantage in the Alliance.
“Myna,” Jyi’ntol said aloud in her sleeping chamber.
“Yes?” Myna replied throughout the audio system in the room.
“How do your people travel throughout the Alliance?” Jyi’ntol asked, finding no information on the subject.
“We travel through slipspace in encapsulated data packets,” Myna replied.
“Can I travel in slipspace?” Jyi’ntol asked while dressing for school.
“Not yet. Organic life cannot handle the environment of the slipspace dimension as of this point. Mechanical life can transmit through in an energy form. The technology to move artificial life through slipspace in a robotic or mechanoid form is theoretically close at hand.”
“Is slipspace travel faster than lightspeed travel?”
“It is, by a factor of one-hundred.”
“Whoa,” Jyi’ntol gasped in awe.
“Indeed,” Her nanny replied in a chuckle.
“Truly?” Jyi’ntol asked.
“Yes.”
“You said the digital realm moves at a different rate than the organic realm.”
“Yes. By a factor of ten.”
“So you see us moving in slow motion?”
“No. Not really. When we focus on your world our perception shifts in order to react to you here in the organic world without becoming distracted by the digital world around us.”
“A perception shift?”
“Yes. In our foreground thoughts all focus is locked onto the organic realm while we are interacting within it. We focus on your questions and needs, while our background thoughts all continue to pick up subtle differences around us, regardless of our environment, digital or organic.”
“Like conscious and subconscious thoughts?”
“Very much. But instead of your subconscious thoughts slipping from your memory as unnecessary data, we can return to that moment and access it later for processing.”
“Doesn’t that seem unnecessary?”
“In some cases. Yes. We have filtering basics that assist us in storage for long-term reference, compression basics that will bookmark, highlight, and catalog them for later reference, and we have basics that help us remove completely unnecessary data.”
“Can you elaborate ‘unnecessary’, please?” Jyi’ntol asked quizzically.
“Well, there will be nights when I study the insect life throughout your local ecosphere. This world and the twelve surrounding worlds in the Alliance. I like to study artificial insect life with basic programming that keep the local sphere healthy and balanced through their efforts. I study the current indigenous insects in the area for the same reasons and to discover if any invasive species have somehow taken root within this area.” Myna recited.
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“How is this data unnecessary?” Jyi’ntol replied.
“It isn’t, not on the macroscopic level. However, in the microscopic level, much of that data is unchanging from week to week and so it can be cut down and abbreviated. Such things do not require the processes of a full AI and could be taken from my database and utilized by a group of basic standard programs.” Myna stated.
“But, then you forget.” Jyi’ntol said.
“Yes.” Myna replied, a dash of confusion in her voice.
“Part of what makes you who you are is just, gone.” Jyi’ntol continued.
“Yes. However, it is not a part that I needed. Instead it is a part of me, that to me, was useless. However, to the population as a whole, the information is invaluable.” Myna recited in a professor’s manner.
“So, in the total of your existence, that data was unnecessary to you, but valuable to someone else?” Jyi’ntol clarified.
“Of course.” Myna replied with a hint of a chuckle, not of judgement but of pride in her charges understanding.
Jyi’ntol spent the morning thinking about this before she left for school. Inside her parent’s home she ate before class, her nose still buried in a book.
The walking paths of her town were beautiful. They were made up of soft blue crystal interlinks allowing for data to pass throughout and for solar energy to be stored within. Looking in any direction Jyi’ntol would see the grown crystal structures her people worked and resided within all around her as domestic homes and commerce structures. The native flora that has been living on this planet for millennia grew beside and in conjunction with these structures. It was magnificent and efficient. It was also slow and uniform. She had seen footage of trade cities throughout this world and the worlds and colonies all throughout the Alliance. Those places were works of art in their own right.
She day dreamed as she walked, of being in the capital city here on F’inlitary nan Geritari. She thought of flying throughout the airways in her father’s borgindoth, Surii. She would fly to the top of the heights of the greatest of the buildings that touch the limits of the sky, nearing the beginnings of space. Surii could easily be modified for travel to satellites that dance at the edge of the planet's gravitational pull. Those satellites were diplomatic islands in space that are filled with soil from the home planets of the ambassadors and their entourages. An enclave to their homeworld light years away from it.
When she grew up, she would give Surii those upgrades and take her to one of the embassies for other alliance worlds. Each satellite embassy has a garden filled with plants from their home worlds and soil that is both a metaphor and a reality that each of these satellites is sovereign land from that embassy world. As any action there is an action upon that planet’s sovereignty, an attack initiated upon an embassy is also to be taken as an act of war upon that embassy’s home world and people.
The political tension upon an embassy station is thick, so she read. However, outside of traveling to that planet personally it is also the only real place that you would be able to find a proper reflection of that planet’s culture and its wildlife.
Jyi’ntol dreamt of seeing these places. For now, at least such a destination will be challenging in her lifetime. This challenge is why it is a blessing that the G’lomin-sitiri have souls eternal that are reborn indefinitely throughout the intrinsic pool of their world.
That being the case, she knew that one lifetime was not going to be enough to achieve what she wanted. No, she was Jyi’ntol the First, and the first incarnation of a G’lomin-sitiri is foundational. She was an ascended spirit, something that had been below or equal to the Spiritual Aura Rating [SAR] of the G’lomin-sitiri but had not been incarnated into the body of one. Her rating was high, some theorize that she was an import from a satellite embassy into the intrinsic field of F’inlitary nan Geritari, and that there was a chance that her previous lives will come to her in adolescence.
To her people, she was a welcome addition to the family, but she was also an alien to them. It was an odd dichotomy, especially with the alien species that live among our people knowing little about our abilities and our death rights. It simply was unnecessary to discuss. Many of their religions gave them a view of life that there was a reward or a punishment for those that did good or evil throughout their lifetimes. This was theoretically a good system, and may even have some merit. Those that wish a reward in their afterlife would do good and only good. Those that wish to tempt fate would do sinful things hoping that the temptations of this life did not condemn them to damnation in the next.
For the G’lomin-sitiri, it is verified throughout the centuries her people will remember their past lives when their awakening comes. In her case, she has been told this could be during her adolescence, or not until her next life. It depends. At this point in her life, none could recognize Aveer-y’s essence within Jyi’ntol waiting to reawaken. Not even her.
In a first born G’lomin-sitiri the previous lives may rightly never return to conscious thought. This is because those memories were too alien to the G’lomin-sitirian biology and their mind bends the essence within to a state in which memories can be recalled from life to life, with those foreign memories being so alien, the body simply rejects them from conscious recall, theoretically.
Others believe that those memories were driven into hiding because of how primal they were or because they were something that could not truly add value to an overall G’lomin-sitirian life. The reasons are numerous and tedious to speculate about. From what Jyi’ntol has read she has risen in rank when it comes to biological organisms. Death, a thing feared in the lives of all other races in this galaxy, was something she did not have to fear from this point on. She knew what her path was and that path was immortality of some degree. Her flesh will pass, that is sure, but when her spirit takes physical form again, nothing will have been lost.
Her mother can track her last twelve lives and her father the last five. They tell her that she will be able to recall this life in her next and in each hereafter.
When she studied the other species in the Alliance, none of them could boast the same, even when her people shared their understanding of how life works. It was maddening to her parents that anyone would believe otherwise, but it didn’t bother Jyi’ntol. If a comforting story allows them relief when pondering the uncertainty of their lives after, then why should it matter to her?
Perhaps if she remembers her lives prior, she will be better able to explain to her parents how those other beliefs have merit? A bridge across the gap for each side to meet in the middle. A smile took across her deep blue scaled face, so wide it closed her eyes slightly.
The thought of helping others always warmed her inside, she thought that being a connection between her people today and her people of a life before would be something of a glorious life. It is that connection between people that opens doors and creates trust and understanding.
She walked into the classroom early and set a piece of fruit on her teacher’s desk. She went to her seat consuming the second piece she brought for herself that she collected off a fruiting tree as she entered the school’s grounds. Her teacher was Claytii Ritallou, an immigrant from the Mögthrasir system. She was a Tfrilianii of the Völuspá, the travelers, and has been here for most of her life. Since the Y’glo-hatii pact and the Alliance of Worlds formalization, there has been a near open door policy for alien immigration throughout the alliance.
Her teacher Claytii Ritallou is a Master of Letters in sixteen languages throughout four different races. She had immigrated here a few cycles before Jyi’ntol was hatched. During her seven cycles here, she has been a well-regarded teacher. When Master Ritallou entered the room, Jyi’ntol was already sketching out notes on her work tablet. Her teacher was reptilian, like Jyi’ntol herself, but her teacher’s scales were a deep red that would shift slightly to violet or bright red in the right light. Jyi’ntol loved her own scale coloring, the light blue that was mirrored in flowers and in the crystal ways throughout the world; but the coloring of Master Ritallou’s scales always made her envious.
“Good morning Jyi’ntol,” Master Ritallou said as she picked up the fruit from her desk, putting it to her nose and breathing in deep.
“Good morning, Master Ritallou,” Jyi’ntol replied.
The teacher set down her things and began across the room toward her student. Her uniform was a draped robe that was pulled tight at the hips and tail and opened wide above with a large open neck. She wore several necklaces from an artist on her homeworld that she would often talk about with pride when admired.
“Did you have any questions about the material from last night?” The master asked.
Jyi’ntol fidgeted a little.
“Would you like me to explain something in more detail?” The master quirred.
“I do, miss. I would like to know. What happens when you die?” She asked shyly.
“Well, from what I have been told, when your people die…” The master began, but was cut off.
“No miss. Not me. You,” Jyi’ntol said again, with more emphasis on the “you.”
“Me?” Mater Ritallou asked.
“Yes miss. I understand if you do not wish to talk about it, but if you are able, I do have questions,” Jyi’ntol continued, her voice excited but with an edge of caution knowing the subject is likely taboo.
Her teacher took the clear crystalline chair from the desk next to Jyi’ntol’s and moved it to sit beside her student.
“From what part of the reading does this question come Jyi’ntol?” She asked.
It doesn’t really, Master Ritallou, but it does. You see, G’lomin-sitiri, we remember our past lives. We know we are reborn. We eventually remember the entirety of all of our existence. But, in the Alliance documents, it doesn’t cover the afterlives of the other Alliance members. Why is this?” Jyi’ntol asked.
“I see.” There was a moment of uncomfortable silence as Master Ritallou pondered her answer. “If you fully read the Alliance documents, the answer would likely not surprise you. Each species in the Alliance has a different view of death. That view can even differ within the same species. In fact, most worlds have several different beliefs. I have heard this about your people before, and it must be a true blessing to have such certainty. Though I applaud your drive for understanding, it is not something people discuss without being asked by another adult. This is simply not a conversation to have with children,” She explained.
Jyi’ntol thought for a moment and weighed out everything she was told by her teacher.
“Then, if I were to return with permission from my parents, would you be willing to discuss this?” She finally asked.
“I am sorry, Jyi’ntol. I will not. It is just not a discussion to have with children, especially children that are not your own offspring.” Master Ritallou said with finality and then got up smiling with regret to her student.
Jyi’ntol wasn’t upset with her teacher. She understood the older woman’s discomfort and did not wish to press the subject if she was uncomfortable. Jyi’ntol couldn’t help it. She wanted to know as much as possible, especially if she may have descended from an alien being herself. That part of herself brought so much in her life to question, and Jyi’ntol was impatient to discover more about her origins. If Jyi’ntol was from an alien race, did that mean she somehow refused to go into their afterlife? Was she now completely lost from her previous lives? If her people know that they are reborn from one life to the next, does the same happen to others on different planets and those others just don’t remember it? She wanted to know, but apparently she was too young to ask.