113 RE

Everyone in the Renewed Union stopped what they were doing and stared. We had been let out of stasis just a month ago, and we got to see this sight, a galaxy rushing towards us. Stars grew brighter, and bigger, and then, we were there. There really is nothing like it. My ship entered a system with one enormous blue star, and a smaller red one orbiting it, naming it the Demon’s Eye system. The ten planets that orbited it, three of which were gas giants, shone brightly in the first real solar system I’d seen in over one hundred and fifteen years. I gawked in awe, however, my amazement was cut rather short because of a loud screeching sound, and a complete stop of the stretched light.

“No need to worry passengers,” a voice with a friendly Heiive accent announced into a small transponder embedded deeply in my ear. “That was absolutely normal, just the sound of the dark energy riders being shut down. Kept them on for another second, and we’d have been hundreds of lightyears past our destination!”

I looked at the large planetoid we were entering orbit of. The three blue dots covered about an eight altogether of the surface, the rest of which was jungle, and rocklands. Very little of the soil was at all suitable, with there being very little soil to begin with. The rest of it was grey rock ,with bits of lichen covering parts of it. The blue dots were ferocious thunderstorms, containing and releasing roughly 89% of the water in the air combined. Lakes dotted the surface, with no real oceans to speak of. The world had one plant that was going to be repurposed into farming, a kind of long stalk with small bumps along the sides. These bumps would turn into flowers, and later, fruits. These fruits were rich with salt water, and incorporated a special kind of juice into it. Sour and salty, a unique mixture.

The dirt was very rich in gold, but that was the only part abnormal about it. There was already ongoing research on how to do a spectacular sort of locking of the molecules that could turn it into a reinforced, high density fluid that could be solidified. There would be 29,000 people settling this world, an extremely small amount. However, there were new methods of reproduction that were extremely quick, and safe. Women had half of their eggs taken, ones that would not end up being used. Then various sperm donors, such as myself, would fertilize those eggs in ‘birthing factories. The to-be children would be grown in pods, and would continue to grow until 24 years old. They would then be released, up to date on all kinds of information, they would also have their cybernetic and genetic enhancements, and would have had eggs extracted from when the women were on their period, the eggs being put back into the factories, and many sperm donations taken. Then the process would repeat.

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I had mixed feelings on this. There was no consent for this process, and it just felt… wrong. However, technically nothing bad could come out of this, because after release from the birthing pods they would be fully-grown adults, and independent. However, everywhere in the empire was extremely underpopulated. However with this process, every year, except for the first 24 that the factories were set up, new people would come out. That is how it worked for all of the races, due to us having similar reproductive systems.

We touched down, in enormous transports that split off from the ship, and taking my small bag of personal belongings, I got off the ship, and became one of the first on an alien world. The ship started releasing swarms of ABCD’s, autonomous building and collecting droids. The ship then reopened it’s gates as the swarm of bots leaving left. I re-entered the mildly claustrophobic ship, as the bots took samples, and set up mining sites.

I felt a pang of guilt remembering Mantis. The tall, powerful Mugani was the strongest of all of us, but when you were that big and powerful, it was hard to dodge a surprise orbital bombardment. The voice that roamed the back of my head decided to approach.

“You know you could’ve saved him.” It whispered.

I immediately swept that thought away, I was too busy rejoicing the moment. I got to my sleep pod, and took another long sleep. The ABCD’s worked around the sleeping ship, as we took time off to go figure out how to turn the soil into a building material. Meanwhile, the framework for the city was being built, and meant it would not be a long process, the building of the city when we finally figured out how to lock the soil’s molecules. As that happened, I slept For another eight years, I slept.