Overlap: The Other Side

<11/24/46,790 {Avion 50 (BF)} - 14:25 | Ly-Rain Outskirts, Karnak, Genosis>

Even without the freedom Lady Q wanted us to have, we were once a proud and peaceful cluster of people, always gathering together, to sing our sacred hymns echoing throughout the white sands of snow and frost. We were once together, once in harmony, but that time has long slipped away from us.

What Lady Q had planned for our public defiance against Legasso's reign was well thought-out, but the issue with her plan was that the results relied on a wider collective of Altiri preparing to act on their own, swiftly. Very few followed our example after what happened that day at the Empyrean Temple. Our soft murmurs and whispers of uncertainty were met with Legasso's most fierce disciples. They didn't go easy on anyone who dared to question any loyalty, not even for a moment. Banishments and threats were loud spoken, and spread as news throughout our world.

Yet, nobody got together to rebel as Lady Q expected, and for a short time, she once again went into hiding, fearful for her own life given what she tried to set into motion. Legasso showed his true colors long ago, proving by Lady Q's own directive that all he cared about, all he wanted from all of us was absolution, no matter what we had to pay in tribute beyond our own promise. Public opinion of Legasso and the sanctity of the Empyrean Reign fell to new lows, and so many more stopped coming to worship in the temple as a result, a change that took hundreds of years over time. Even with all of this, Legasso remained ruler of our world, our own people too stricken with fear to do something about him, or too concerned with keeping a long-lasting status quo.

For thousands of years, our world has been peaceful, never changing, never evolving, never growing in any significant manner. The discomfort of breaking from stagnation is likely the reason why our people didn't try to act directly against Legasso. Most of us moved far away out of town to live in other areas, building our own structures and purifiers on the far side of the planet, so that we can get further away from the problem, but as Legasso's team of brainwashed and tortured disciples grew, trouble always tried to find us.

Not everything resisted change though. Those secret plans against our society that Lady Q once mentioned turned out to be all too real, and while the first great change has never been able to be linked to his involvement in any manner, some believe our negative prodaption is intentional, while others believe it is natural, unknown for the reason in its trigger. This prodaption we speak of, it became the very reason our entire population went into a very slow and dangerous decline, for this invisible disease spread to all of us, to myself included, inflected before I ever had a chance to realize it existed.

At the age of 108, every single Altiri woman will give birth to a daughter, sometimes more than one in a single pregnancy, through parthenogenesis. This rule has existed in our nature since the beginning of our entire existence. In the year 45,000, this rule was broken for the first time, the effect spreading from family to family. I am 1,429 years old, so I was supposed to give birth to my own daughter so long ago. However, when that year for me came, it never happened. My mother went investigating to find out why, only to find that I was not unique to the issue. It had only effected the latest generation of people, and not all at the exact same time. It wasn't long before our birth rates were crashing all the way down to zero percent, with myself included, a daughter that could no longer become a mother.

Some questioned whether Legasso had something to do with this, without any proof or idea to how it could be possible. Scientists who thought it was a natural phenomenon had no explanation for why it would happen either. It was the first saddest day of my life, though it was nothing compared to what I was going through now.

Hundreds of years ago, Legasso launched his real campaign against our defiance, hiding his plan from everyone until it was too late to stop it, a plan that made total use of 1,436 small transport starships.

When I look up to the sky, be it day or night, amidst the beautiful dark blue hue of our background skybox, I also get to see our incredibly large and beautiful moon, a secondary habitable planet called Zinod. Lately, many Altiri explorers have been mapping out Zinod of their own personal volition, while some have even moved there permanently to stay and live. Many have sent us visions of this planet using their own memory sharing techniques, and despite what warnings my mother used to give me, I did not deny sharing the memory of those who gazed into the abyss of beauty.

Zinod is one of a kind, a world with higher thermal energy, but just enough cold for us to survive in the warmest zones, zones that contain unfrozen ponds, mycobacterial life as well as larger variety of animals and other species, including abundance of many large trees, and an atmosphere similar enough to Karnak for us to breathe. When Legasso put his plan into action, that secondary beautiful world became the world's largest prison we would ever know.

Everyone called it the exodus. Legasso, using his grown team of evil disciples, tracked down and captured any and every Altiri woman who even looked like they were fully grown, separating us from our mothers. They only seemed interested in removing anyone who had either given birth before, or who was capable of it still. The youngest of us, if ever found, were totally left alone.

As for me, I was more lost than ever before, treading and drifting my legs through the heavy snowfall in the outskirts of the village of Ly-Rain, my face away from the sky, turned adrift from any hope and any happiness. It had only been twelve days ago for me, twelve days since it happened to my own mother. The Exodus had been going on for a while now, so me and my mom got as far away from the temple as possible, heading to the far side of Karnak, where we could live a more quiet and peaceful life.

But Legasso was too thorough; combing every sector of this planet to find any stragglers. He couldn't catch every single person, but he was always only after a vast majority, the sole purpose of the Exodus to separate all mothers from their children. Those who were taken prisoners were shoved onto those transport ships, and taken all the way to Zinod, to a place the rest of us would never reach. Some attempted to force their way into those ships, so they too could go to Zinod and reunite. Any who dared tried were taken prisoner elsewhere, to a place where they would be dejected and beaten to a bloody pulp if ever they were released at all; most of us knew not to try it too often.

Even though all of us knew how to invoke telepathy, we never did figure out the range problem. Our telepathic link, which isn't supposed to be affected by distance, never could reach and contact those on Zinod, at least, for most of us. Few who were trapped on Karnak, knowing how to get around the issue tried to teach us how to use telepathy to its fullest form, but they were soon discovered by the disciples and taken away as well.

As for clairvoyance, Lady Q never got her opportunity to teach any of us how to use the ability, since she has been missing for a very long time following the beginning of the Exodus. None of us knew what was going on in Zinod, where our mothers really were, or even if they were still alive and well. They probably had no idea how we were holding up either. Those of us who were left on Karnak, were either too depressed, too confused, or too disconnected with the world around them to formulate any kind of plan to put a stop to the horrible things they were doing to us. Even with some of having thousands of years in age, we didn't know what to do about this, because we were still only children, and this had never happened before in all of our entire history.

Legasso doesn't hold back anymore. Any who dare make even hint of threat to his position or his life has their own life taken instead, by Legasso himself, or by the slaves he has working for him, sharing in the same evil. I was just like everybody else now, motherless, alone, disconnected from any light in my world, for it was all taken away from me, still too recently for my tears to stop.

Even as I slowly slumped my way to the direction of Ly-Rain, I lost all the hope I had of ever feeling right again. My mother was likely on Zinod by herself, to a place I could never reach, less I risk being executed by the Legasso loyalists. There are thirty-two million of us left on Karnak, and about one million now residing on Zinod. With all of these people, we greatly outnumber Legasso, but we do not overpower him by any means.

By the time I finally reached Ly-Rain, a town turned desolate from the recent intrusion by Legasso's forces, I kept my head down, my eyes fogged with grief and worry. I wasn't home; I was merely seeking refuge with the others, surrounded by strangers I knew too little about, for my previous friends did not move away from Anncoya with us. For hundreds of years, me and my mom hid and avoided those trying to find and take her, and now they have finally found and removed her from my life.

The few that seemed older or more mature tried to take me in, but all I could do since was curl up into a ball and let myself shiver in the darkness swallowing me. The same had happened to countless other people, full of fear, worry, and woe. Even though Legasso claimed to be ruler of our entire planet and of Zinod, anarchy now settled in, dividing every town and city across the planet. None of us knew what to do; none of us even knew how to fight, and after some witnessed a new ability to kill that only the disciples had, using some kind of crazy beam of ice over and over, nobody dared to try a real rebellion, not for the longest time.

Days turned to months, and months turned to years, as I buried all my thoughts and feelings away, nomadically moving from city to city, all in a lazy effort to try and stay alive. It was as if time had zoomed by me without a care in the world, leaving me behind like a spec of snow made to be forgotten. No matter who tried to console me, I accepted help from no one. No matter how much fun some could have during the chaos, I lost my smile so long ago, something I knew I would never get back. All hope and faith were drained out of me the day I saw them take my mother from me, as I was powerless to stop it. Little did I know, by waiting long enough, there was still a glimmer of hope waiting for us, a small light at the end of such a dark and painful tunnel.