From the article archive
The Builders: A Silent Death Story
It begins anew as I wake in a strange new world. Already our benefactors have cleared the way for us and prepare for the long sleep until the universe calls them to duty. For a moment I feel the joy of another day until I realize again what it has cost when I look about and see that some of my comrades did not survive the voyage. I am afraid that if the conflict continues that one-day we will no longer exist as a race. What will become of our friends then?
Reflecting back, I still remember it as if it happened yesterday. Once we were alone in the cosmos. Just a simple people dedicated to the pursuit of science for it’s own sake. Long ago, our more adventurous people leapt to the stars never to return. We were left to ourselves, and we engineered our planet to a veritable paradise. While we still knew of space travel, none of our remaining people wanted to leave our beautiful world, and our interstellar vehicles were dismantled and their elements used for other projects. The only contact we had with the universe was our communication and astronomical equipment--we kept this going out of respect to our brethren that had left for the stars in case they might one day tire and return to us.
One day as we scanned the void, terrible news awaited us--in sculpting our world to our liking, we failed to realize how fragile our own sun was. It appeared that it would soon die and we would shortly follow. With a frantic fury our people worked as one to try and dredge up the long unused art of space travel to avoid our fate. We worked valiantly to cheat death, but soon it became apparent that we would not be able to save ourselves--the power that would be needed to take us to safety was not within our grasp. In vain, we tried to rebuild our ancient energy converters. All our efforts failed miserably. Without the power to drive them the ships we created to save us would be our tombs.
Then one day they fell from the sky--strange, alien creatures, some hovering on death’s door. Fate had dealt them a cruel blow also as their world had been ripped from them and made their race little more than nomads. With no place to call home to renew themselves and no one to repair their ships, they had simply run out of time and tried to land their damaged craft on our forsaken world. Since they showed no hostility or threat we offered aid and used our science to communicate with them. Much to their dismay, they found out about our dying sun. At our request they allowed us to examine their ships--most of them were no longer spaceworthy and we were surprised that they had made it this far. The ships did have one thing we lacked however& a convertible power source! For the first time in what seemed like a lifetime, we had hope. While we could only power up a fraction of our fleet, both our races would survive! We worked fervently to escape our doom. The aliens being mostly genetically engineered pilots and lacking the scientific know how to fully understand what we were doing tried to help as best they could. Finally, on the eve of our apparent doom, we watched once more as our people took to the stars with our new friends. Fate being ever cruel was once more set to doom us--our sun was going Super Nova ahead of schedule! Casting our lot to chance, we flew into an uncharted wormhole to save ourselves.
When we came out of the wormhole we had no idea where we were, as there weren’t any familiar stars to set a course by. Quickly, the wormhole sealed up behind us as we gazed out upon the void. While hopelessly lost, at least we had a future. The combined efforts of our people tamed a planet to call our own, and we grew until we had established ourselves once more. This time, however, we resolved not to repeat the mistakes of the past, and developed a fleet of space vessels.
After we had settled on our new world, we began to think about renewing ourselves. Our people are extremely long lived by most standards and conceive very seldom. This is heralded by great ceremony as our people rejoice in the renewing of our race. After the celebration of conception had ended, we eagerly awaited our young to be born and grow. Our friends--not quite understanding the rituals surrounding our renewal--chose this time to go into hibernation.
For what seemed like an eternity, we waited with marginal results. Frantically, we examined our people to see why most of our efforts to renew had been in vain. To our horror, we found that quite a few of our people were barren and beyond the help of science. Something about the wormhole had changed us, and our race would slowly dwindle until we faded from the universe. Why must fate be so cruel?
Uncannily, our friends awoke amidst our grief. They told us that they could feel our pain in their minds and woke to help us. Sadly, we told them of our fate, and for some time they paused until the leader of their clan spoke. While they liked this world, they wished to leave and try to find their original home. Since we didn’t have any future here, we asked them if they would take us with them and we would tend to their people until we faded into the night. Deeply moved, they admitted that they had hoped we would want to come, as they didn’t want to be separated from their new friends.