>>> Warning to any new readers- reading this page out of order, may spoil some of the earlier posts! Just fyi. ty,DD <<<
By David C. Daoust
The Ark Age began as this outlandish idea on the fringe of society. Indeed, it began with a series of broadcasts from the frontier of Saturn; A civilization of super scientists that were known as the ‘Saturn Colonials’. Most of the system ignored it as more alarmist propaganda; just more politicians trying to convince the masses that the skies were falling. What exactly these distant, far removed, sects of men were trying to gain though? -was the question.
The Saturn Colonials themselves were outlandish compared with the rest of Sol’s System. These were humans that had fused with technology; heightened their senses, sped up their mind, their very thought processes. Organic metal was grown through their very beings, replacing normal bone, muscle, and organ tissue. The average height of such a Colonial neared thirteen feet, their natural bodies all but replaced. Almost nothing was the same after- only their soul alone remained unchanged, everything else was augmented.
Most of these augmentations allowed them to live outside of the natural order. Rather than changing the environment to match their own needs, they changed themselves to survive in the most uninhabitable areas of the Solar System; they could sustain themselves from sunlight alone- Sunlight from one of the earliest Solar Gates ever built.
Due to this Age’s popular belief that humanities very purpose for existing- was to ensure the survival of all life, to some, the augmented were considered anathema to this idea, though many understood what the Saturn Colonials had achieved in freeing themselves of their inherent limitations.
They were the Super Scientists of a bygone age, an entire civilization beyond compare, and now, they wished to lead all of humanity, indeed all of life as it was known upon the now ancient Earth, from Sol’s System, all the way to what they named ‘Ail’s System’; to be known for centuries as the Second Sun.
It took decades to even convince others of the immediacy of their actions, especially considering how long exactly it would take for Sol to reach its climactic end. And it took Decades more to hash out the details of the Ark’s and their construction.
Despite the Movement growing throughout all of Sol’s System, there were still many that refused outright. Most of these were people who had faith that these things would work themselves out, that all was planned and predestined, even those that believed that if it did end- maybe this was how it was predestined to end.
These people, that refused to leave the System, declared it the ‘Rapture’.
The term ‘Rapture’ was recognizable even to the pragmatic Dakota Sun. It had survived all the centuries of the Ark Age and was at the core of the ‘Eternal Night’ church-goers belief system, only in the Onion it was known as the ‘Second Rapture’. She had heard her own sister, Suzanne, declare that the two of them would never experience death, and that this was surely the age the heavens would open, and they would walk freely into their eternal life. Dakota knew Suzanne mostly only talked like this when she wanted to be reckless with her own actions- and how these actions may pertain to the future of those around her. Finding out this terms origin, however, was mind boggling.
Dakota could not imagine people not struggling for life, for every second of life that they could get. Yet more and more she found through the ages, people so set in their ways, so unwilling to change- just to be left as dust in the past.
“Phhft, Conservatives,” Dakota’s thought dismissed with displeasure.
Dakota, still puzzling through the lost technology of ‘augmenting’ human beings, reached histories long lost to her ancestors- Information of the Artificial Intelligence that was used for the trek to the Second Sun. Indeed, the history of this single device stretched back further than she would guess, was in fact linked to a Donaghy somehow, yet tracked back even further to the Ancient Earth. She could not believe the extent of this AIs power.
She never imagined… she found herself baffled again and again, not just at the details, but of what it implied was in control of the entire Onion. Among this information of the Lost Ark, which Dakota now knew she was searching through, she found a startling revelation. A revelation of a malfunction, one that led to a great disaster, a disaster not thanks to human conflict as would be reported by any learned Arkroy of the Onion, but with the AI itself.
A malfunction that led to the loss of this fourth Ark ship, Grandeur II, as it was left adrift centuries past… and then baffled again, as the remaining arks, not only stripped all communication to those lost- but cloaked all survivors from their very systems… which at last explained why that little boy, she pulled from the Wraith, could not be detected by the Onion’s technology.
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