“I wonder how much I can get for this integrated node module,” I say, looking at the old piece of military hardware in front of me.

“It's not bad; I guess I can take it home and have it cleaned up before taking it into town to have it sold.”

I take the module and stuff it into the duffel bag I have strapped to my back.

I take a quick peek at my watch to catch the time.

“Man, its already noon, and I’ve only picked up this old module. Shit, I need to hurry up and find something else if I’m going to make enough money to buy the ticket for this weekend's AFC matchup.”

I continued searching this old junk heap for salvageable military or civilian hardware. After spending the next four hours going through the different piles of discarded hardware, I finally had enough stuff in my duffel bag to make an honest day's pay.

“Finally, I’m done,” I say as I look out into the ocean that lies adjacent to this old military waste zone.

Even though it's late afternoon, the sun still shines with immense radiance.  

Standing atop the old scrap pile, I look out into the beach and see it riddled with human and beast bones. It looks like there was heavy fighting at one time in this area. Probably many years ago.

I just shake my head in disbelief.

Even though I’ve been here for almost three years now, I still can't get used to it.

This island was once part of a beautiful archipelago within one of Titan’s vast oceans.

White sands and palm trees surrounded this island at one point. Not anymore.

Now, only the rumbling of the waves can be heard all around, like a sweet, melodious song that has repeatedly been playing like a broken record.

Wave after wave rolls in, crashing against rock and sand, washing away all that was once pure here, leaving only the whiteness of bones strewn throughout the sand. The purity this place once had is long gone, and the beauty it encompassed is nowhere to be seen, as if letting everyone know that life has no place here.

The year is 2457, and yes, humans live on Titan, one of Saturn's many moons.

Humanity has been venturing out into our solar system for nearly 300 years now, starting at the start of the 22nd century.

We started with small steps at first, but once we made the technology to make space travel more reliable, we rushed out from Earth like a swarm of ants chasing down new territory.

Mr. X started it with his reusable spacecraft, and other institutions followed suit. We branched out, pushed by big conglomerates and governments alike. What followed was a lot of discovery, innovation, and greed.

One of the technologies we developed quickly was terraforming.

We used it in what we thought were the most hospitable places for us to live, such as the moon, Mars, and some of Jupiter's, Saturn’s, and Neptune's moons. We even went as far out as Pluto and set up some waypoint stations for future galactic travel.

It took decades, if not centuries, to make some of these terraformed places livable, only to ruin them with what we found after we moved in.

What did we find you ask?

Dimensional Rifts, or Wormholes as some scientists call them then. Today, people refer to them as gates.

But they didn’t lead to a far-way galaxy, no. Instead, they connected to something even more remarkable: an alien utopia.

Home worlds of alien life forms the likes of which we had never seen.

It was something totally new, different, and exciting for us; it was a Fantasy World.

While exploring these alien utopias, we found that they housed the most diverse and abundant alien life forms yet discovered, from single-cell microorganisms to unfathomable life forms. Many of these complex life forms had unprecedented strength or other attributes that made them unique. Some even exhibited control over the natural elements. This discovery was something unimaginable to us.

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Seven different Gates were found throughout the terraformed sites. The closest one to Earth was found inside the moon's core, and the farthest one found so far is located on Neptune's moon, Triton.

Humans went into the exploration of this alien world like a fat kid walking into a candy store. Filled with excitement and anticipation.

A quasi-global alliance, the 7th Bloc, was formed to explore these sites. It was comprised of the seven continents, with a local ruling government representing each.  

Earth's government and large corporations invested a lot of money and time in exploring and harvesting alien lifeforms from these worlds. At first, it was smooth sailing, as the explorers did not encounter many unforeseen situations. To many, it was like a walk in the park, very smooth and tranquil.

It was a time of great progress.

But later, as the explorers made headway into these worlds, the situation became harder and more difficult. Many lives were lost as some of the more advanced lifeforms in these alien worlds fought back fiercely; it seemed they had some intelligence.

The alien lifeforms were starting to gain the upper hand in the fighting, and the exploration teams were now having to retreat out of the Gates.

Then it happened!  

A major discovery took place in one of the alliance's major Pharmaceutical Conglomerates' research labs.

The first symbiotic relationship between one of the alien lifeforms and a human took place.

Although the conglomerate involved keeps a tight lid on the details of why it happened, the how and what happened after is not.

A new era in human evolution began.

The arrival of Stellar Beasts had come, and with it, the enhanced human.

It was found that a special area in the frontal lobe of the human brain could connect with the Stellar Beasts on a subconscious level. This allowed the stellar lifeform and the human to make a symbiotic connection.

After scientists studied this connection, they found that the more developed the brain area, the deeper the connection could be. The deeper the connection, the more information, and traits the alien lifeform and the human could share.

This was an important find, especially for the military and very high-up groups. It meant the difference between controlling a regular-class beast, which almost any human could do, and a Titan-class beast, which was mostly seen in military applications.

At that time, the Quasi Alliance decided to disseminate to its leading members the process of conjoining a stellar beast and a human for mutual cooperation.

This Beast-human cooperation brought many benefits to the human race as they were able to fight back right away, but it also brought something even more nefarious.

Greed.

Seeing the money-making potential in this human-beast relationship, many of the conglomerates decided to exploit it as they saw fit.

Some developed their military and covert operations, while others ventured into restorative and health applications. Some even used this newfound knowledge as a bargaining chip to rope in support for their own greedy agendas.

The truth of the fact was that thanks to the discovery of the stellar beasts, mankind evolved into something more than human, but our greed and envy remained with us as well.

Seeing that we had gotten the upper hand in the fight against the alien beasts, we decided that this would be the best time to fight against each other, too.

We started what is now known as the first Star War in our history books.  The 7th Bloc disintegrated into different and opposing groups, and an interplanetary war started.

Four major factions appeared from the dissolution of the 7th Bloc.

The Red Earth Alliance consists of China, parts of Eastern Russia, and Central Asia. The Empyreal Union was the Middle East and the African Continent. The Antarctic Coalition, which was mostly Western Russia, with Australia. The Allied Consortium, consisting of the U.S., Europe, and Japan, was the last of the four major powers.

Intense fighting broke out between all four major factions to take control of the Beast Gates. Some factions even deferred to using small tactical nuclear weapons. The fighting was horrendous due to the use of Stellar Beasts.  

After many decades of fighting and suffering many human casualties throughout the whole solar system and losing two of the gates due to the use of nuclear weapons, it was decided by all the factions to signal a truce to the war.

After much deliberation, it was decided to share the gates, and a new governing body was enacted to control all political, industrial, and economic development of the planetary zones. The Earth Interstellar Federation, or EIF, as it is known today, was created.  

It is seated by the seven major powers—the U.S., China, Russia, India, Europe, the Mars Union, and Keiper Bloc—and makes most of the governing decisions today.

This is where my story comes in.

Decades after all the war and famine that gripped the federation, peace had finally come.

Other planets or moon cities thrived in the Renaissance after the wars due to the availability of Stellar Beasts to the general public, but that was not the case on Titan.

The nuclear weapons that were used here many decades ago make life scarce and tough for anyone living here, and as such, the EIF pays little attention to us.  Once a major hub due to the Gate that was once housed here, now it’s nothing more than a dump for old military and industrial waste.

We number less than 1000 in this moon city, and although we might not have the economic or industrial development some of the other cities might have, most of us still live a happy and tranquil life.

I, for one, am glad I’m here. Although I was not born here, I’m actually happy that I moved here three years ago.

I come from a very affluent family back on Earth, but I was backstabbed, betrayed, and almost killed by my family and girlfriend back then.

That is when I decided to move here.