We float in space.

 

‘…15th sector...hexagon, repelling 4th sector...infinite light, 8th sector....collective thought buffer repels 4th sector....opposite poles.. Carbon, task location…’

 

To fill the Izran’s banks to the brim. 

 

‘…remaining life detected, …target trait identified,....loading thought lures…’

 

I am nameless, nameless.

 

Through the clear jelly its features were unmistakable. Even at such an early infant state I began to sense the coldness of its fathers around me. Before I secured the hybrid for the trip back I lifted it into the light of its mother’s sun for the last time and wondered what small prospect of peace this unborn could have had if it had remained there. Instead, its destiny was as a child of an infinite number of clones, all one gender and far too powerful. 

 

Back at planet Surleeze, I passed the poor infant over for processing. It might have had what I now know to be a soul if the Izran hadn’t got to it. It was one of these tasks that eventually bought us to your beautiful planet. A task set out before us like so many others

 

The machinations of the Izran rarely lulled and it wasn’t long before we were on our next mission. We didn’t know it at the time but it would be our last.

 

As I stepped into the crew hopper, I passed a glance at one of the defenseless infants behind the pulsing clear gel. It’s still grey eyes, inherited from of it’s fathers, beckoned me to look away. I could never look an Izran in the eye with out a terror building within me. This was exactly what their eyes were meant to do. They made it so. 

 

With the crew of three, myself included, now seated the hopper passed through the tangled sprawl of the incubators before arriving at our allocated ship. I looked at the the two others who would join me, the pilot who would operate the ship, the plotter who would navigate and myself, the scribe who’s job it was to ensure an accurate record of our job. Each one of us had our specific tasks which never varied. We were bred for these tasks. I looked at my two co workers and the usual hidden acknowledgements of each other took place. We did not speak. We never did. If any sound was heard to come from us we were immediately punished by the Izran and placed into the second dimension. We could only secretly pass thought to each other but we had to be very wary as the Izran could enter our minds at any time.

 

‘Lets never come back‘ passed the plotter. Both the pilot and I ignored his comment knowing the risk he took.

  

We blasted away from Planet Surleeze, into the expanse of darkness which is all that we ever knew. I watched as the grey polluted cloud that engulfed Surleeze grew smaller and smaller as we traveled further and further towards another Izran strong hold. Pilot had our destination in his sights. He eased our ship out of the energy belt that was carrying us and punched her through an invisible hole into an unfamiliar galaxy in the third dimension, the one you and the rest of you humans know and trust. We drifted towards a planet that had almost decayed to its core. Plotter located the wet patches on this planet which housed the object of the Izran’s desire and without words he directed Pilot towards it. 

 

In the wet patches was a creature whose species had endured everything that solar system could throw at it. At this stage of this creatures evolution it had resorted to sucking the rich minerals out of the moist rock as it was the only way the creature could feed, this was all there was left. It was calculated by the Izran that this species,  the ‘Jobeorki’ would be the last sign of life before this planet suffocates and becomes a desolate rock glowing as someone else’s star. It was the Izran’s plan to watch this planet, and millions of others, die and take the last sign of life. It made sense to them that what ever was last to live on a dying planet had something which they could use, and in this case the Jobeorkies extraordinary resilience was the trait the Izran wanted. Its resilience would be extracted, modified and harvested into a pinch of an ingredient mixed into an Izran exclusive recipe to eventually infuse into some race, somewhere, someday. Another dirty trick, and the Izran had many. It was not only planets the Izran would monitor. The many dimensions in the multiverse were visited by other enslaved workers of all different types and of different structure, many not of physical make up and some being merely energies or light for instance. Human, it is complicated to explain to you on your first sitting of my story the vastness of what exists.

 

With a healthy Jobeorki in tow, I logged in our progress and looked at the creature and a more increasingly familiar pang of guilt heavied my stare. My head dropped and my eyes slowly closed tight. 

 

‘Can nothing be untouched, is there no place free of its ulcerous ways, we have become them, the Izran’ I thought.

 

‘We will never become them, and they will never become us’ Plotter passed thought. 

With the palm of his angular hand Plotter then gestured to the Jobeorki. 

‘This poor creature is about to unwillingly give the sum of its existence to a dangerous stage of its evolution, one which shouldn’t be, as its home ends gracefully in the way which was intended’ he mused. 

 

All three of us looked at the Jobeorki as it sat in shock at its new alien surroundings. 

 

‘Well, its ugly creature the Izran wants and its ugly creature it must have’ thought Pilot while behind us the Jobeorkies home planet imploded and sunk into itself. The planets last breath of light  became the resonant gasp of a thunderous explosion which shook the universe. For you, human, this would be a vision of wonder for us it was common place. 

 

‘I want to feel what it is feeling now’ thought Plotter. 

 

He tuned the Thought Compressor into the Jobeorkies thought wave patterns until a feint image of the interior of our ship (which we have now, since being on Earth for so long, named The Argos) appeared on the thought compressors screen which was now mirroring what the odd creature was seeing. Plotter then tuned the second channel of the thought compressor to establish its thought.

 

‘It is the sound which confuses it most, it looks over us as if we don’t exist, it is sensing a danger but feels trapped, unsure where to flee. I will place another of its kind, a female, in its consciousness, the familiarity will calm it.’ 

 

Plotter, a master of this machine, he is a true artist as you will soon learn, quickly searched the data base and created a match and placed it within the mind of the frightened Jobeorki. The creature then settled into a pattern of instinctual social habits and then paid no attention to its new surroundings. Plotter set the parameters on the thought compressor and I returned to logging the mass of useless information the Izran required which was being fed into the Argos via its external receptors and instantly analyzed in real time by the Izran millions of light years away. 

 

We were approaching the energy belt to take us back to the madness of Surleeze, but then something happened which changed our lives, including your own, forever. What we now know as a coincidence, improbable by the milli second has led to the story which lies before you.

 

Something of beauty, the likes of which we had never seen before, appeared within our machines. The thought compressor had tuned into a second energy seemingly on its own accord. The colours, sounds and scents that our machines displayed were of a purity we had never expected to exist, anywhere, ever. But there was something else which I couldn’t identify. It was not decipherable by any of my known senses. It was almost like a familiarity. With no regard to our posting we were being lured towards it. We were about to break the cardinal rule bestowed upon us by the Izran and stray to investigate merely to satisfy our curiosity. We were bred so as to not have any free thought but my enslaved kind managed to keep a little of our selves alive and we could tell so much from each others eyes, and at that moment the three of us shared the same defiance. For me though it was more then curiosity which seduced me on that night.  

 

The energy became thicker, stronger and our boards began to tally something with an abundance of life of many types and we watched through the opaque dome in front of us for that first glimpse of this uncharted region to manifest. Then it appeared, your beautiful blue and green planet filled our eyes and I felt something move inside my alien heart for the first time and then spread throughout my body. It has stayed with me since but unfortunately now on occasion during my time here it has been dulled by what I see. The receptors had never shown measures of that magnitude before. This energy was extreme, we were well aware that what we had found had never found its way to the Izran and from that point we knew that such beauty must be protected and kept separate from the rest of the multiverse and stay hidden in this tiny corner in the expanse of everything else.

 

As we got closer to the source we heard a sound that was new to us. It was loud, aggressive, constant but pure and not made by a machine. We then heard higher pitched sounds which again were pure. Then we saw for the first time the most amazing sight. Visions of the rain forest slowly came into focus. We were still not sure what was sensing these images and sounds for the thought compressor to decipher and display them. As we got closer, the image of the rain forest at night gave way to an enormous gentle figure encased in gold, not like a droid, but almost like a human. It emerged from a calm body of water and rose and then hung in air. It had its hands out and was looking beneath it where dots of light where darting in all directions.  The golden body then dissolved from the bottom up. With each receding moment its head turned in our direction until just before it vanished completely it stared at us with a sympathetic acknowledgment and spoke as we do to each other.

 

‘They seek answers to their pain, it is I that their foe seek’

 

Then there was darkness, nothingness. The sounds all stopped.

 

From the blackness a purple hue steadily became more intense. Our dome became filled with this new colour. It then gathered into a single ball of light which had a darker centre. As it grew larger we saw a figure within it. We saw our first human. We were humbled by the form as it resembled us. He seemed to be at rest inside the sphere with eyes closed and legs curled up to his chest. We gazed in wonder. His eyes opened and he too gazed on us. With no words spoken a calmness fell upon us. The human then busted out of the shell and stretched his arms towards us. Instinctively we all touched the dome, I so much wanted to touch his skin but this was not possible as what was before us was not of a physical matter merely our new friends visions from within. He then started to descend until we could no longer see him. Plotter set the course and we followed.  

 

We were now amongst the trees and Pilot put the Argos down on the edge of a cliff which, to this day, is still our home.