Marie Sanders: Planet Taraya, third cycle, the planetary year 2052

Marie was bored. Tarayans turned out to be regular humans who inhabited their planet during the exploration phase of humanity. The time long ago when Earthlings launched numerous colony ships toward the planets they assumed habitable. That was how her people found themselves on Corwala too.

Regular humans. With their regular problems, fears, insecurities, same technology, art, architecture, and philosophy. Everything was provided to them by their great ancestors, who no one knew much about, and of whom so few people talked nowadays. The only connection they had with the people who sent them drifting through the vastness of space was a video of Earthlings’ leader encouraging them to explore the unknown. Ancient humans also included an almost endless database containing all the prior knowledge of humanity.

It was not like she did not like her brethren, but she preferred meeting someone new. She admired alien things, cultures, and history. She missed Ferlans. They were the cool aliens, not the long-lost relatives. They were the master builders. Their cities were a work of art. Tarayans, on the other hand, had interesting ideas about fancy space cities, but their designs were so industrial and soulless. They valued usefulness over beauty.

Terayans were mostly planet-bound with their space exploration in its inception. Their space-faring vessels were rudimentary, and their knowledge of physics and space was limited at best. Most of their space exploration was focused on the celestial bodies closest to their homeworld. They were fascinated by her telling them about how a star’s magnetic field can be affected by dark matter seeping out of the subspace. She solved more than a decade-old mystery for them. The mystery of how the anomaly, as they called it, was killing their star and home planet. But is there any joy in hearing the answer and not solving the puzzle yourself? They were so like Corwalans. Also, a carbon copy of those men and women who packed them onto the ships and hurled them toward the ball of mud they hoped to still be habitable by the time their vessels got there. They reminded her of herself before she had sold her soul for eternal life and knowledge. All this annoyed her. Incredibly so.

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She sat at the giant table. Scientists flocked to her, all pecking around for any piece of her knowledge she would be kind to throw at them. The big meeting they promised, the one where they would finally decide to assign a few people to lead her to something they called Nordis polis, was already delayed many times. Tarayan officials were too lax and ceremonial for her taste, and, in her book, there was no bigger sin than ineffective bureaucracy. It must be a human thing. It was the same on Corwala.

They were hospitable though, as much as they could have been considering all they had gone through. They gave her the complete Nordis polis schematics to inspect at her leisure, but she could not care less. In her attempt not to be rude, she forced herself to skim through them and nodded to everyone around her, trying to appear impressed. The Nordis polis was a freaking bunker nested into the mountain and connected with the telescopes mounted on the surface. It doubled as a research facility and somehow managed to record the moment of the anomaly's appearance. That meant she needed to get there, dig through the data, and find some clues.

Finally, someone opened the door and orchestrated her salvation from the jaded old scientist explaining his theory of orbital mechanics to her. He was so happy to tell her how he found a way to predict Styxa’s position in space using the supercomputer in the research center. The same one that was now a pile of rubble baked by the dying star’s radiation every day. She smiled at the old man, praised his insights, and almost ran towards the man who entered the room. He was some commander of something who was to lead her group. Finally, soon she would be free from curious science folks.

Poor newcomer staggered a little, most likely scared of how suddenly she bolted towards him. He was good-looking and appeared young, with only a few gray hairs decorating his beard.

“I am Marie Sanders of the Exonerated. Nice to meet you, mister? “ she tried to sound soft and friendly. It worked to some extent because the man’s frown softened a little.

“Marcus Pane, nice to meet you too.” and his bear-like rumbling voice fit him perfectly.