Humans in Space

This story takes place in the same shared universe as many of my other stories. This one details some stories about the humans and why our history seems disconnected from the rest of the world's

The world of the mind is a dangerous place. Everyone exists in the world of the body, or the physical world, with their spirit trapped within a living body. Their brain, however is not truly the control centre for the body. Simply, each brain is a highly complex machine facilitating the existence of a tiny portal to the world of the mind, where a person’s consciousness resides. Unlike the gravity portals between planets, or even each planet’s portal to the world of the spirit, the only portals to the world of the mind are those which exist in the brain of every sentient being. The first people to discover these portals were a group of humans. Hidden deep in the mountains thousands of years ago was a small monastery with its own humble cluster of monks. They practiced meditation and sought the greatest possible self-awareness, and in this moment a group of them were together in a room, surrounded with religious symbols, when one of them disappeared. Some immediately reacted with shock, but so focused were they that others could not be interrupted until they too found themselves pulled into the world of the mind. When a sentient being finds itself pulled physically into the world of the mind, they gain power beyond any magic the strongest could ever hope to garner save perhaps the legendary Go’oth, creator of all things. They possess a portal in their mind to the power of the very world they exist in, and all the machines necessary to control that power. This power will therefore manifest as the thoughts and emotions of any being who physically steps into the world of the mind, and such is the case for our group of monks. No one remembers what they were called, for shortly after entering this world, they manifest fanciful, magical creatures none the likes of which had been seen outside of the most imaginative tales the men told themselves huddled around a fire, or when they could not get to sleep at night. But of these creatures, the one that mankind would come to fear the most would be the snake. Hundreds of feet tall but possessing the ability to grow and shrink to any size at will, with twenty legs beneath it, each a different color and one a color mere humans with our weak eyes cannot even perceive, the beast felt strongly the emotions that the monks tried so hard to stifle in themselves. Fear, greed, anger, and above all a tremendous hunger. Out of their own fear the first monk wished for a way to escape this place and in doing so created a portal back to earth, but that did not stop the creatures which they had created from following the monks to their home. From here many of the creatures dispersed, some even going so far as to travel to other planets, but the serpent remained. In its terrible hunger it devoured entire species, devastated ecosystems, and could very easily have brought mankind to its knees. But there was a trickster; some believe him to be the first of the trolls, while others claim he was merely a skilled baker’s son. He promised the snake something that could appease its hunger, and if he could not produce this in a single day, the snake would be free to devour the earth. He took a gamble with the lives of everyone that lived on this planet, and when 24 hours had passed, he came before the snake with nothing but a single loaf of bread. The serpent consumed this and was still hungry, and so he lashed out in anger, growing to tremendous size and wrapping his cosmic jaws around the earth, but it was then that the snake reached his limit. He could not grow larger than the scope of everything the monk he’d been spawned from could imagine, and he could not stretch his jaws quite far enough to fit around the planet. Still, he thought, he could force the planet down his throat by pushing at it; but no matter how he wriggled and thrashed, the snake could not get the earth down its gullet. Then the snake had another idea; perhaps it could bite the planet into chunks and consume them one by one, and so he bit off the largest bite he could from the planet, but it was the last bite he would ever take. The chunk of earth got stuck in his throat, and try as he might he could not get it free. The snake required no breath to survive, but it was unable to consume any more food with its throat clogged, and eventually succumbed to its hunger. Over the next few thousands of years, dust and asteroids would be attracted to the massive snake’s body, and it would curl up under its own gravity with these rocks forming a shell around it, eventually becoming the moon. The snake during its life shed its skin only once, and it is said that all manner of reptiles, serpents and dragons alike were born from its cells. 

 

With all of the serpent’s thrashing, it had managed to move the earth quite some distance; hundreds of millions of miles from the other planets before being caught in the gravity of another star that we would come to call our sun. And so the earth grew up, its populations developing their own cultures and technologies far away from the other planets, but it seems they could never truly be outside their influence, for somewhere under the surface of Tir Na Nog, a hu baby was born with an extraordinary planetsense, far beyond what had ever been seen before. She had a life force affinity, and upon being born was immediately observed to be able to see things happening far beyond what was normal. As she grew older, her family discovered that she could even sense what was happening on other planets. While still only able to view what could be traced back to her through life force, she one day noticed something she could sense very faintly off in the distance, and went to ask the village guide about it. Most hu villages have a guide, the title given to a hu who can use portal magic and assist in transporting its villagers to far off places they might need to go. The guide told her he knew nothing about this, but was curious about what she was sensing. He of course knew of her ability to see all four of the planets, and wondered if perhaps what she had discovered was a fifth one. While the hu generally remain isolated from the surface populations of their planets, most peoples are at least vaguely aware of their existence, and so the hu guide decided to send up a messenger to a bookkeeper he knew of on the wildlands, asking about a possible fifth planet, and despite the seemingly strange appearance of the hu, this messenger ultimately managed to obtain a story from the gombs telling of the existence of a fifth planet. With this insight, the guide devoted himself to creating a portal to the fifth planet (this of course being earth) that the young girl had discovered, and after a few weeks of trying, he managed to do it. Finding this world’s underground relatively uninhabited, various hu began to travel there to form their own villages on this new unconquered and resource-rich world. Eventually, these villages were discovered by humans, who treated the hu with more or less the same distant indifference that they’d come to expect from other intelligent creatures. 

 

Thousands of years passed of human history, and of this you probably already know, but there came a time, a few years beyond what you might be aware of, that an epidemic began to spread across the world. This was a deadly virus that was transmitted through sound. Once a person was infected, they would continue as normal, manifesting no symptoms, for three to five days. During this time, anyone who spoke with this person, or even just heard their voice, would become infected with the virus. After a person was infected to a sufficient degree, the virus would then attack the muscles and organs in areas of the body with the most nerves, and would stimulate the pain and speech centers of the brain, causing the victim to scream and beg others to help them. Of course any who heard these screams and cries would become infected themselves, and eventually the infected would die of organ failure. This virus had no vaccine, and no cure or form of resistance to it was found. Humans had far less exposure to magic than did the other races, and so they knew nothing of its form of disease control. Within only six months, billions had died, while billions of others were already infected. The best humanity had come up with was a way to detect whether a person was infected or not, and so the remaining 2 billion or so uninfected people turned to the hu for help. Due to their vastly different physiology, the hu were unaffected by the virus; and living underground they did not care much for the surface world, but nonetheless some of their guides offered to show the uninfected humans how to use portals to escape to another world. The humans, with no other choice, created hundreds, thousands of portals and fled en masse unto the wildlands. The gombs were generally gracious. Their religious heads supported the expansion of life and the sharing of all resources, and so the human refugees were welcomed onto this planet, but they knew it was best they not overstay their welcome. The gombs were kind, but they were not powerful, and so the humans turned first to the angels for help. The approached the angelic gods asking for their help in creating a new world to live on, but they were refused. Why should we help you? Said the angels, it is the law of nature that the strong should outlive the weak, so why should we, the strong, give the power we’ve worked for to a weak species like you?

 

The humans turned next to the fairies for help, but again were denied. Why should we help you? Asked the fairy godparents, When we have our own people to worry about. The humans turned next to the elves, but were again denied. The elves were too weak, they said, they could never accomplish something like this. And so finally, the humans turned at last to the demons. 

 

When they journeyed to Hell, the human representatives were greeted with a grandiose golden city, and within it they were told of the greatest devil to ever rule over the country of Stophel. They journeyed to the palace, and they requested an audience with the king. One of the devil’s idiot sons tried to stop them, telling them to know their place and laughing off their request for aid, but he was silenced when his father appeared at the door of the palace. He told them he already knew of their plight, and that he even had the necessary tools to help them, but they would have to pay a price. 

 

Humans, over the course of centuries and in a time beyond the history you know, had developed technology that allowed them to select from the millions of possible combinations, the single strongest gene combination of an egg and sperm. There remained a few purists, who considered the technology to be unnatural, but most people embraced the technology, as a way to guarantee their babies would never have to suffer genetic illnesses and would always be the best they possibly could. The human race in just a few centuries grew notably stronger, faster, smarter, and better equipped for a harsh world. Humans had also been slowly but surely mastering the art of life force manipulation, more colloquially known as magic, and even most children were able to perform a few basic spells.

 

The devil demanded as a price for the construction of a new home planet for the humans to live on, that they seal away this power. In addition to granting him access to the life force of many, the humans had to revert to how they had been hundreds of years ago, and give up their ability to use magic almost entirely. Only a few humans, through years of training and by meeting very specific conditions, would be able to use these powers again, and they would come to be known as potential. In addition, they must always remember that when no one else extended a hand to the humans, it was the demons who helped them.

 

The humans readily agreed.