A Shadow stared at the serene glossy marble silhouetted against the backdrop of the uncaring galaxy. His people had named it Planet Œ-VII, but he didn’t care about that scientific crap. He only cared about its inhabitants.
With hints of Hunter green peeking through the brushstrokes of blue, it looked like every other planet he passed rushing here. In fact, it bore a striking similarity with the last Project’s failure. But these games would end differently. They had to, if His planet wanted to keep first-class citizenship.
Although many star deaths ago, His whole planet — young and old — knew enough to fear life before. Before they became citizens in the eyes of the galaxy. Before they got their rights recognized by the same extraterrestrials that had thrown their civilization into chaos. Before they could once again trust each other.
They call it the Bloody Times. There was a time even further in the past, but that history got washed away with the slaughtered souls. The only thing that survived into today were the distant memories of peace and prosperity: a sense of completeness. But then came the discovery. The aliens arrived, and then just kept coming. The Shadow’s people got used in a war they had no stake in, by a Race much older and more civilized than they could ever dream of. And there wasn’t a damn thing His people could do about it.
They became proxies in intergalactic wars. They faced other newly discovered aliens, in a virtual game that replicated every competing life form’s planet. It was called the Project, a way to compete for the vast resources of space without the barbaric risks of first-class lives; the first class was much too civilized to take part themselves. Instead, the Firsts chose a gladiator to fight for them. And to incentivize these gladiators, they were promised freedom and technology upon their victory.
In some ways, the Shadow’s people were the lucky participants of the Project. After enough seasons, they managed to win and escape the cycle, gaining the right to exist within the universe in the process; some Races weren’t as lucky. Until you win a Project, you’re considered second-class; and if you happen to lose Project after Project… well, let’s just say that after countless cycles of Alien abuse, your planet has lost anybody strong enough to win the Project.
After holding an untold amount of Projects, war turned into a game for the aliens; much worse, it turned into a type of entertainment. They began to challenge another Race over issues big and small, perverting a system created to protect intelligent life into one that chased profits. Sometimes victory would win the aliens an entire planet filled with heavy metals; other times they won an award-winning recipe book sold at Barnes & Noble. It didn’t matter. Fights were no longer over resources. Instead, they were over the money generated in the war itself.
The true prize was the profits from the Project’s viewership — and to the victor go the spoils. With the infinite bounds of space hosting intelligent life forms in every crevice, all craving the entertainment they were once forced to participate in, the inevitable result was an unholy amount of money. And the only way to access that money was to fight a war, hence the universal bloodlust.
There were a few Races that tried to compete in every Project; this required a deep pool of second-class citizens, something only far-reaching civilizations with the means to fund galaxy-hopping travel could manage. Since only the ultimate winner is given the rights of a First, to circumvent this harsh limiter of entertainment, and to allow the maximum number of participants, these wealthy Firsts form ever-shifting alliances. This allows many proxies to appear in any given Project, instead of limiting one proxy per side fighting the ‘war,’ with the means to consistently win small profits and sustain the lifestyle.
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As the Shadow looked at the planet below, He felt a sense of remorse for their structured civilization that had been built through centuries of struggle. He knew what these so-called ‘humans’ would turn into once his Race made their presence known, regressing into a primal state of mind. It’s inevitable. No matter what Race is discovered, no matter how strong their society was before, it always devolves into animals fighting for scraps. After enough Projects, they forget their history and culture, losing the last thing that had continued to serve as a beacon against the tidal wave of change — their identities.
Once they lost their identities, He knew they’d no longer care about winning any Project — they had no reason to fight anymore. And if they lost their reason to fight, then the Shadow’s people would lose their home. This was their last hope to obtain the money that would allow them to stay autonomous; instead, they’d be beholden to one of the larger Races, with mandatory customs and currencies and practices to conform to. His history would be slowly replaced, their children slowly transformed, their independence slowly ceded until their planet simply became another outpost of the larger Race. The many years of fighting in the Project, living through the alien abuse that came with being a Second to save their people’s identity, would have been wasted. They’d be relegated to somewhere between the Firsts and Seconds — devoid of power to change their status, lacking self-determination, beholden to the rich fucks who think their dicks get bigger every time they control a new form of intelligent life.
That’s why He had to hope this Planet Œ-VII could do what the others could not: win the Project. He feared what would happen if another Race came to collect his debts. He imagined it would be something akin to the Bloody Times — the people would not want to lose their sense of self to a group simply over money.
The Bloody Times, when the Shadow’s people were Second-class, weren’t named after how His Race had done in the Projects. No, only one member of each Race competes per season. They were bloody due to the events outside the Projects — sometimes, it was a quieter death on the screens of the Project than the horrors of the real world.
Mothers used it as a threat to get a restless child to bed, like the humans’ boogeyman. Horror movies used it as the stereotypical setting to explain lawlessness. The elders used it to insult their greatest Bingo rivals. But despite the hell, they broke out of the system designed to push them down. And they’d fight tooth and nail to never return as players. Not in a thousand stars’ lifetimes.
Although the Galactic Counsel, the governing body of the universe, had outlawed the extinction of secondary citizens, there were certainly no laws against the utilization of them — voluntary or coerced. In some respects, being between the two groups was even worse; you didn’t have the rights of the Firsts, nor the ability to escape like the Seconds. Thus, this season of the Project was their fight, their only chance of staying Firsts: there would be no second chances, no challenge to give them back their rights.
The Shadow’s attention was brought back to Planet Œ-VII’s aegean blue surface as another meteor flew into the atmosphere. Any time He used His ship’s fast travel, every hunk of rock within half a lightyear seemed drawn to His destination; it tended to tear up the planets He stopped at, so He always made a habit of stopping a few planets over and journeying to the Proxy planet under the ship’s slow engine. His people were given the fast travel technology when they had ascended to first-class; however, even after hundreds of star cycles studying the damn things, they were no closer at understanding its effects on the environment, much less replicating and creating more of their own. Their dependence on other Races was part of the reason they were in this mess in the first place, dependent on a game of luck for their survival.
His arrival in the solar system meant His Race would soon introduce themselves; the next Projects was for carbon life forms, meaning Planet Œ-VII had no time to prepare themselves. The ‘humans’ would have to adjust quickly. For both of the Races’ sakes. Luckily for Him, winning the Project took strength of spirit, not muscle — because looking down at them, He could see nothing but wimps hiding behind guns.