Kratos glanced at the screen on the main deck of his family ship reading the summary of the goings on of the planet he watches over. One of his ancestors decided to take up the task of being a watcher, a human who plants a seed of life on a planet or oversees a planet that already has life and has to guide one or more species on the planet to sapience, sentience, or both.

Kratos remembers when he was told that and he wondered what the difference was, and was told sentience is intelligence developed through emotions and sensations while sapience is intelligence developed through knowledge and wisdom. What that means exactly still eludes him.

It had been many years since his parents passed away and he now was growing old himself, he supposed that while human life spans have expanded over the years it would be a ways off before we could reach immortality. He now was eighty years old, the mid point of the average human age, while their reproductive cycles now lasted their whole lives, from the moment their bodies could handle it up to their last days. It was a genetic alteration at the species level, all humans were this way. Earth sent the instructions on how to alter your genes and nobody said no to the extended life.

Some complained about the age range of fertility but earth couldn’t say no tot he range as with the whole of humanity being as spread out as it was it was almost impossible to enforce any rules beyond a few light years from earth. Many communities have appeared with some questionable rules and some that were just wrong. And then there was THAT community. Humanity tried to forget them ever since the war.

Kratos shakes off the thoughts of galactic politics and focuses on the job thrust upon him by his family. His species he is to uplift is reptoid and bipedal. The color of their scales can differ depending where on the planet they are from brown to white to red, purple, blue, really almost any color. They had two arms, two legs and their faces were an odd mix of reptile and human. Their eyes binocular and face flatter than a reptile but stuck out much farther than any human kratos had ever seen.

Thinking back on it kratos hadn’t seen many other humans, his parents and grand parents, the leaders of earth as they came and went, and maybe a few travelers on the rare occasion they happened upon their station. Kratos was human, or very close anyway. His mother was human but his father was one of the species they had to watch, brought back and genetically modified to be more human so they could produce offspring. They needed a child to carry on being a watcher, and soon Kratos would have to do the same and seek out a mate of his own.

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Kratos wiped the rest of the water off of his chest with his towel. They were not allowed to go to the planet except for very specific circumstances and thus created a gym on the ship to hinder muscle atrophy and kratos very much enjoyed working out. If he could he would just wake up and then exercise and eat, but alas he has a job as a watcher to keep the species alive. Well for the most part anyway.

Back in the day when they first started this mission they had it much harder. They would have to manually fly down and inspect the species and it’s habitats and help save them manually as well. But now, so far in the future comparatively, they have scanners that check everything from wars, to natural disasters and how to stop them or lessen their effects. Having to interfere a few times has of course led to plenty of religions popping up with some decent evidence of miracles such as the time mount watana erupted and his grandfather used the ships terraforming equipment to create a ring of smaller mountains around the volcano trapping the magma inside saving the nearby towns.

As he set his towel down kratos picked up his tablet to read the reports. Minor skirmishes, a hurricane hit a coastal town, oh what’s this? It appears one of the countries is almost done developing their first firearm! Simple gunpowder iron ball projectiles just like humans started with, nice. But he really did need to start looking at the dating pool.

There’s only a few reasons the watchers are allowed on the planet. One is to stop the species from starting a war that could end them entirely, another is to evacuate the species if a natural disaster at an apocalyptic scale was going to happen, and the last would be to find a mate. As mentioned before humans were spread thin. Sure there may be trillions if not quadrillions of them now, but the Galaxy is a very big place. It wasn’t guaranteed you would find another human suitable to marry so it was accepted and honestly expected of you to marry one of the species you watched over if you were in fact a watcher.

Kratos pondered to himself as he got dressed, would a bigger city be good to look? More people and a larger pool to choose from, but also likely to be jailed or attacked. Maybe a smaller village farther out? But the pool is smaller and not guaranteed to find someone compatible.

Now fully dressed kratos let’s put a sigh and says to himself, “gotta take some risks if you want something done right, looks like we’re going to the big city.”

Going to the teleport room he grabs some essentials and injects himself with the local gene mix. It allows himself to be in almost every sense of the word, a Silvian, the species he oversees. It is fast acting but only lasts a month, so he punches in the coordinates and braces himself to go planet side for the first time and start the journey to find a wife.