The Strangers We Know -- Part One

AW 4284

here were four worlds in the Algo Star System. Secure in its second orbit was the heart of Algo, Mota: the shining jewel, a political and economic powerhouse, the center of all of Palman, as well as Native Motavian, culture. For millennia it drifted aimlessly, barren and without promise, through the void between worlds. It thrived endlessly for a time under the despotic Mother Brain, then suffered uncountable horrors during and after the Great Collapse. It spent the next two thousand years rebuilding itself, and behold the untold splendor it had come to know!

Then there was Dezo, a world of mild but endless winter and the spiritual heart of Algo. It was from there that the Faith was born. Dezo was its womb and its cradle, and it was from Dezo that priests sprang forth who would, in time, spread its teachings of love and brotherhood to all of the many peoples of Algo. It was also a world of bountiful resources, such as the metal laconia, and was, in addition, the center of the study of the ancient, arcane art of Esperine Magic.

In the deep darkness beyond Dezo, in the farthest, coldest reaches of Algo's realm, floated Rykros, the pristine, untouched world of mystery. It was said that on that world dwelled beings of pure spirit - some even called them angels - sentient and eternal forces of benevolence who forever watched and waited for signs of the unlikely yet never forgotten dread possibility - a return of the Dark Forces, or even their wicked mistress, the Profound Darkness.

There was once another planet, a sister to Algo's other worlds. It was known as Palma, and it was the true birthplace of what is now thought of as Algoian Civilization. But it was lost long ago, a victim of fate and evil intentions. Yet even in its later form - that of an asteroid field which filled Palma's old orbit - it served Algo well, as a source of raw materials, as well as new frontiers for the restless to explore.

But once again Algo was to be graced by a fourth world; a world she had helped to create.

It was Palm II, the fifth torch, the fifth tolling bell, the infant child of Algo, a world of steel, and plastic...and dreams.

Men and women of Algo had explored much of the universe then. In the last five hundred years, Algoian culture had spread out from the mother system into those of nearby stars. The Dezorians had colonized Stoi'ra, an icy moon in the Vendai System rich in laconian ore. The Native-Motavians had claimed the desert planetoid Trask, also orbiting Vendai, as their own off-world prize.

But the Palmans were lucky, for their second home was right in their own backyard.

Palm II had been a dream of generations, a project which lasted more than three hundred years from inception to completion. It began simply enough. One of the larger asteroids from the Palman Asteroid Field was towed out of the rubble in AW 3380 and placed into a stable orbit between those of the Field and Mota. For centuries it was used, first as a mining station and then later as a penal colony. As the station's population grew, so did the ambitions of its occupants. In AW 3578 the idea for an "artificial world" was first introduced, but limited technology prevented the plan from taking off. But in AW 3956, after leaps and bounds were made in deep-space engineering, the spark of the plan was rekindled, and construction began.

Layer upon layer of plastics and steel and laconia and titanium were built upon the asteroid, one atop another. The layers were honeycombed with passages and internal colonies, each demolished and replaced as the planetoid grew thicker. In AW 4126, the terraformation of Palm II's surface began. Even in her time, it remained unfinished. The ocean was not completely filled. There were often shortages of food. Despite Palm II's abundance of habitable territory, both on the surface and in the burrows beneath the planet's crust, the new world was called home by less than a million pioneers.

But all in all, the operation had been a triumph. The men of Algo had created a world. Nowhere else they had gone in the universe had they ever seen such a thing. There was none other than the Great Light herself who could boast the claim that Algo made.

And she had helped it all happen.

She was Dahl Mallos, an engineer and biologist who had risen to the top of her fields after graduating with honors from Piata West University on Mota. As she stood on the surface of that nearly-finished world, she could not help but smile as she thought of the smiles those engineers and scientists of long ago would unfurl if they could only look upon what she was seeing then.

Beside her stood Erol Grant, her partner in the ecological stabilization of Palm II. Though their work was far from finished, they felt nothing but pride as they viewed the fruits of their handiwork.

What had once been a featureless sea of metal had come to be a fertile, tree-dotted plain. They stood atop a hill, and below them and to the east stretched the feral prairie until it reached, many kilometers distant, a blue, dancing ocean. Far across the waters, their peaks just topping the horizon, loomed the beclouded peaks of snow-capped mountains.

Erol sighed. "It...it is beautiful."

"No," Dahl corrected with a sigh of her own. "It is beauty."

Erol looked at his Numan companion with a smirk and leaned back against a tree, his arms crossed on top of his head, an air of utter mirth and relaxation about his young and ruggedly handsome face.

"You're right, Dahlia," he said. "I stand corrected."

Dahl scowled at the sound of her full name being said aloud, but it was a fake scowl, crafted only to elicit a chuckle from Erol. Dahl stretched as she watched the warm, mothering light of Algo rise above the oceanic horizon. A salty, warm breeze wafted up from the water and blew luxuriously through Dahl's long teal hair, the color of which matched almost exactly the carbonskirt which she wore. Her silver shune boots made crunching sounds on the soft grass as she stepped over to Erol and leaned against the tree on her elbow, her face beside that of her friend.

"I didn't need this dumb fibercoat," Erol muttered as he unzipped and removed the red jacket he had worn. "It's so much warmer now. I'm comfortable even in short sleeves!"

Dahl ruffled Erol's light brown hair affectionately. "Your Climate Control facility is working even better than expected. It's ahead of schedule, too."

Erol's smile widened with the further stroking of his pride. "Yes, but the credit isn't all mine. Besides, Climatrol would be useless without the plants and free water created by the Biology Department. And you, my dear, have been our guiding light. It never would have happened without you."

"Well, I guess genetics is just in the Numan blood," said Dahl with a smirk.

"I guess you're right," Erol said. After a pause he asked, "So what's in Palman blood?"

A thousand thoughts raced through Dahl's mind. Ingenuity. Hate. War. Love. Pride. Progress. But all of these were just as true of other races as they were of Palmans.

"Sex," she answered, simply.

Erol laughed out loud. "Well, I suppose you're right about that!" he purred with a wry smile.

"Ugh, what have I gotten myself into?" Dahl cried, pretending to be in great distress. With that she turned to the west, away from the sunrise, and walked down a faint path to the chute which led deep below ground to the Terraformation Labs, with young Erol Grant fast on her heels.