Nandi is a strange planet; it is beautiful, with a pristine atmosphere untouched by industrialization. The water is mildly alkali and the air is unusually dense with radon, but everything here seems to thrive despite it. I heard once it used to be a hellish place, almost venusian, until comets carrying alien spores seeded it with flora that cleansed the sky and made diverse organic life possible.
I sometimes wonder if that is how all life began; one accidental, improbable moment somewhere in the universe that created a few unicellular organisms, and those organisms got swept away and carried along stellar winds to other barren worlds, the process repeating ad infinitum. The blueprints would change over time, of course, but everything, all living things, could be traced back to one microscopic arrangement of salts and proteins somewhere out in space.
If that were true, then, in a way, organics could be considered parasitic to the worlds they infest. Without the earth below, plants could not flourish, fauna could not evolve. Organics cannot survive on their own; at the base of it, they all rely on the ground beneath their feet.
I think that makes us not so different; In the same way organics need their worlds to continue their existence, Gems need organic life to harvest energy from.
But, yet, it is only our kind who are called monsters.
I suppose it doesn’t matter now; the civilization we came from has long since labelled us rejects. At this point I’m not even sure how many years we’ve been on the run.
My companion, Charlie, sits to my right. She’s as tired as I am. I wish with all my soul we could call this planet home; that we could stop and rest and not have to worry about being hunted down.
But they’re still tracking us; more specifically, tracking me. I know not what crime I’ve committed, only that I’ve a horde of bounty hunters on my tail, and I’ve unfortunately drug Charlie into this mess.
Some days I wonder if she hates me. But, if she does, why has she stuck with me for this long?
Quip from the Circinus AU, and a test image.
Fine more info about the AU on my page.