Planet 7181

Local Designation: Thermaiya

Date: Unknown

Galaxy: Cartignon

Galactic Position: Western Spiral

1

"Alars, are you about done yet?". Hearing his name Alars paused, placed his instruments on the table and turned around. He opened the door and walked to the edge of his trunklab, looked down and saw his master. He waved, "Master Hun! I am almost done, maybe 15 more minutes and I will be ready to join you for supper. Would you like to come up and wait here while I finish?".

Master Hun looked around for a few seconds before making up his mind, "No, you finish up there. I'll sit down there near the lake." he said, pointing west to a spot less than a 100 meters from the trunklab. "Come there once you're done, I'll converse with our aquatic friend till then." he concluded and started walking away. "Sure Master, give her my regards." said Alars as he turned back to his work table and focused on finishing his task quickly. Less than 15 mins later he decided that he was done for the day, there was no more he could do today. The next part of this assembly required several hours and he did not want to start now. Not only would this aggravate Master Hun who was waiting for him but also Ritana, who he promised to meet after supper.

He placed his tools back into their correct places on the wall and looked down at his work table. It was slightly messy but nothing that needed immediate attention. He picked up a cloth and wiped down the surfaces, moving some lenses out of the way and put them back into their softboxes. Those lenses were the core of his work here, scratching them would set him back weeks so he best take care of them. The trunklab room was a modest sized workshop in this treehub.The lab itself was a medium sized room with all walls covered with workstations for everything from chemcalc to reagant storage. He looked to his right and saw biocalculators took up almost an entire wall. He walked towards them and initiated the sleep procedure so the biocalculators could hibernate for the night. He would need to use them extensively tomorrow to finish the final stages of his project.

He shut the lab door behind him and palm-locked it. The hand sized gel-pack gave a small chirp of acceptance as it turned a bright yellow and vines wrapped themselves around the door. Climbing down, he looked back towards his trunklab. He was lucky enough to get an empty treehub since his work required him to use several levels and a clear path to the top of the tree itself. Master Hun's influence had been critical in ensuring his requirements were approved at every stage. Better not keep him waiting.

He walked towards the lake and saw Master Hun sitting on a ledge with his legs hanging down. Noma was holding on to his right leg and they were deep in conversation. As he approached them, Noma looked towards Alars and hummed a deep tone, her smooth skin tone changing to green as it washed over her from head to fin vertically. She was pleased to see him. Alars waved at her and gave her a bow. "It is an honor to see you again as well Noma." At his words, Noma went through a few more colors indicating joy and then hummed several short tunes towards Master Hun. Alars didn't catch what he said back to her since he could speak Friyun, Noma's native language of water. Alars was not even a novice at Friyun and he didn't expect to learn it anytime soon. It would be good to know the language but the list of things that Alars needed to do was ever growing. He needed far more time than he had in a day.

Master Hun said his goodbyes to Noma and started walking towards Alars. Noma hummed once before she dove back to the depths of the lake, heading back to Arikoyo, their city at the bottom of the lake.

Alars and Master Hun started walking back towards Lorin and Master Hun asked about his progress. "I will be done by days end tomorrow. We should be able to get a viewing as soon as day after and I hope you'll join me master as we look outward for the first time." Master Hun looked at him with a warm smile, "It would be my pleasure Alars. Though I would prefer you be the first one to peer through. This project has succeeded because of your determination and your deep understanding of lenses. I will join you at the time of the viewing and bring along my star charts as well." Alars was excited! Master Hun's star charts were almost legendary and while he had seen them before, he never could get enough of them. Before the advent of biocalculators and chemcalculators, Master Hun had spent decades painstakingly mapping the movement of the stars, the constellations and most importantly, the path they were taking through the greater galaxy. His charts were proven accurate via calculations and Alars's work, his telescope, would confirm a lot of Master Hun's theories and allow them to look at some of the star systems in more detail than ever before. All previous telescopes would look like toys compared to his.

With building excitement as they spoke, Alars and Master Hun entered Lorin and went to their favourite tea house. Master Hun and Alars parted ways at the end of their supper and Alars headed home to shower and change before going out to meet Ritana. They had decided to meet near the famous Moncato Library which was not far from Alar's home. He walked briskly and reached their designated meeting place. He quickly looked at his wrist and the bioband told him it was exactly 3 hours before midnight, so thankfully he wasn't late. He heard footsteps behind him and turned around to see Ritana. Ah, she was gorgeous and Alars thought for the umpteenth time how much out of his league she was. "Well, what do you think?" asked Ritana as she showed off her purple and green shaded dress to Alars. She turned around and the dress seemed to change hues every time the moonlight hit it. "I wish I had words to describe you, but they would fall woefully short. Suffice to say, I am the luckiest man alive." Ritana laughed and punched his shoulder mockingly, "A poet today are we? Let's go, I am hungry!". And they walked towards the pier to have a late night dinner.

2

Feeling a faint buzzing, Alars opened his eyes and looked at his bioband. Of course it was time to wake up, hadn't he just fallen asleep 5 mins ago? He was definitely not a morning person. Last night with Ritana was still on his mind and he hoped to ask her to marry him once his telescope project was complete and running smoothly. His life would finally start to look like what he always imagined it to be. Well, time to go make his dreams come true.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Sun up was still an hour away and he decided to get a head start and maybe finish his work earlier. Who knows, he might even be able to turn on the telescope today! His reagant supply was ready, just the final lens installations was the incomplete part. He started getting excited and had a quick meal and whiteroot tea before setting on his way to his treehub. As he reached his treehub, he saw Master Hun waiting for him. His helper, Moira, was also present pushing a cart carrying what looked like Master Hun's star charts. That was weird, why was he here today and so early? He hurried towards them.

"Alars, something has happened that I cannot explain. Let's go up to your lab and discuss, Moira will move my maps in the lift." He said and started walking up quickly. Alars had not seen his master panicked before so he wordlessly followed him up and unlocked the lab door with his handprint. The vines slid back and the door slid open, Master Hun walked quickly towards the biocalcs and started turning them on. "What's going on Master? You are worrying me." said Alars. "Last night before going to bed, I pulled out my star charts for our discussed meeting tomorrow. I looked at them and instinctively started looking at the sky and something miraculous yet mysterious happened right in front of my eyes." said Master Hun, continuing to turn on all the equipment. Alars focused on getting his side of the chemcalcs and reagant stores started.

Master Hun continued, "I was looking at Joraya sector, specifically at Markon. Granted my telescope is no longer considered advanced but while simply gazing in the direction of Joraya, I saw Markon disappear right as I looked at it. It was there one moment and the next all I could see was darkness." Alars considered this, he knew Master Hun was as experienced as anyone could be in Astrometrics and he was considered the best there was across most of the known world. For him to say something like meant he knew what he was talking about. As impossible as it sounded, Master Hun saw something that should not be possible. "How can that even happen? Nothing we know can cause an entire system to simply vanish." said Alars. "This is why I am here Alars, we need to finish your telescope faster so we can look at Markon with it. Something is wrong and your project is our only path to understanding it better." finished Master Hun. Moira entered the lab and put the star charts next to the large table in the center of the trunklab. Master Hun quickly moved to it and started spreading the star charts on the table. He took a biomarker from the table and started marking on the maps, knowing the ink would disappear in a few hours leaving the maps intact.

Alars moved to the table and looked at his master, "Have you spoken to anyone else about this?" he asked. "Yes. After I saw what I saw, I rushed to Onomayo's and asked her to verify my discovery. I thought I was hallucinating and so did she when I first told her. But she checked and confirmed it. Markon is gone. We quickly sent out biopings to the star gazing community on our continent and just before you reached your lab, I received confirmation that 17 people are now combing the sky looking for anything else out of the ordinary. I wish our technology was advanced enough to let our biocalcs do this somehow but we have to depend on people for now.". Every word jolted Alars. If a system had disappeared, it was massive news.

"Markon is, well was, just about 9 light years from Thermaiya which means whatever happened there happened a very short time ago. It was extremely lucky you saw it at all Master." he said, to which Master Hun just nodded morosely. Word of this would soon spread on the daily bulletins to the rest of the public but for now, he had to focus and finish his project quickly. He redoubled his efforts and with Master Hun helping as well, they started making considerable progress. By noon, he estimated that the telescope would be ready within an hour. And then the day got worse.

Moira entered the trunklab and announced a visitor, Onomayo was here. She entered the lab and Alars could tell that Onomayo had spent most of the last 12 hours awake and stressed. He offered her a seat and she walked to it and sat down. Alars leaned on the table and Master Hun sat down heavily as well, "What has happened now?" he asked. "Our star gazers have now confirmed the disappearance of 3 more systems. Gyrano, Polyps and Rewace." Onomayo said. "Polyps is the farthest away at 11 light years but Gyrano and Rewace are on the other side of the spiral from Polyps...how is this even possible for 4 systems separated by light years to disappear? Did the people who reported these disappearances see them happening?" asked Alars. "No, they simply compared our existing star charts to the night sky. So far they have found 3 more, there could actually be tens more or even hundreds and we'd never know. We would have needed dozens of telescopes like yours 15 years ago to notice this as it was happening." she finished.

Master Hun looked up at Alars and said, "You finish your telescope, me and Onomayo will go speak to our contacts at universities across the continent and see what else we know. We'll be back in a few hours." he said. With that they left and Alars sat down heavily on his chair. Something occured to him then, if Polyps was the farthest and Markon happened last night, that meant that whatever was blanking out these stars or killing these systems was headed towards Thermaiya. Towards them. He shook his head and rushed to finish his telescope.

3

By the time he finished the telescope, news of this had spread like wildfire. Ritana had stopped by, worried, asking him about it and he had assured her it would be fine, they simply knew too little to worry at this point even though secretly he was worried deep down. He fed the space coordinates for the four reported systems into the telescope and ran the bioscript, it would take about 10 mins for each system to get captured on the biocalcs and processed before they showed up on the screens in detail. He also picked a few other popular systems at random from Master Hun's list and fed them into the script. Best to not waste any time that can be spent looking at systems.

Master Hun returned with Onomayo just as the process was almost finished.

"The good news is we haven't detected any more systems disappearing yet but several researchers are working on a bioscript for your telescope to scan the night sky. It will take days, maybe weeks but we will be able to scan thousands of systems compared to the few dozen to a hundred we might get done manually. The script should be ready by tomorrow." he said as he walked to the table and sat down.

A chirp from the biolcalc alerted them that the current set of tasks was complete. Alars moved quickly connecting the results to the main screen. He selected Markon from the results and he looked over to Master Hun and Onomayo, "Ready?" he asked. They both nodded. Alars pressed play.

The screen sprang to life, focusing on where Markon was supposed to be. Instead of a red dwarf star and 4 planets, they saw debris. The screen showing thousands of small dots where the planets used to be and absolute nothingness where the star was. "My god...its really gone. There is nothing but a debris field if I am not mistaken." said Master Hun. Alars switched the results to Gyano then Polyps and then Rewace. The results were the same, debris fields and darkness.

By the end of the day, Alars has run 22 systems in a radius of 9 light years from Thermaiya and detected 4 more disappearances. The closest one was less than 4 light years away.

It was then that Master Hun had spoken what would become the most haunted words Alars would ever hear, "It's coming for us."