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BOOK 1: The Now Time

PROLOGUE


The universe we see is vast, dark, and lonely. This perception occurs because of the limitations of our senses. Indeed, it is brimming with strings (tiny dots that wink on and off, sometimes causing quarks or photons, the building materials of matter), gravity (in which everything effects everything else), and electromagnetic waves flashing this way and that. Nonetheless, matter as we know it is scarce. The evening sky may glitter with the light from billions of stars and millions of galaxies, but the distances between these glimmering dots are measured in light-years. The void between occupies the remaining 99.99 percent of the expanding envelope of space-time. This universe is more than 13 billion years old. Stars blossom, age, and die as must all things. Life is sprinkled lightly on a few planets of some stars. This life evolves even as the environment around it changes. Beings able to survive through change continue and the rest become extinct.

Very few organisms evolve to a point where they become aware of themselves and of their mortality. These are sentient beings. Most of these think so highly of themselves and their planet that they must be the center of all things important. They group themselves in various lumps of geography and commence to war upon one another. Civilizations come into being, age, and die. In the minute fraction of beings that do not destroy their worlds utterly, they transcend civilizations and become world communities. These have evolved to such a degree they look out at the stars and decide to explore for others like themselves. The space wanderers move from the stars closest to their home system outward as ripples in a pond seek the shore. Along the way, they leave outposts to mark the route they have taken so others may follow. Often, an outpost cannot be detected by the inhabitants of a world.

This story is about one of those outposts during its most trying periods.



The Lands of Inchoate

The planet Inchoate is composed of dark matter and has a diameter of 2,114 kilometers. It resides inside the Earth that has a diameter of 12,682 kilometers, six times larger. Inchoate came into being during evolution of the Older Bang, over four billion years before the Big Bang, and cells, plants, and creatures evolved slowly.

At the time of this narrative the largest land mass on the planet is the continent of Gondwanaland. It stretches from near the planet’s North Pole to near its South Pole, from the northwest to the southeast.

Another continent, about a quarter of the size of Gondwanaland, is named Laurasia. It dominates the North Polar area, and is mostly covered with glaciers, ice fields, and snow. It is, however rich in ores and minerals of many sorts.

There are many islands on Inchoate. A large group of these to the south of Gondwanaland comprise the nation of the Oceanæ. There are twelve other major groups of islands and thousands of individual outcroppings of land rising from the often bitter sea.