The vast stretch of cosmos where human life cannot survive, where mankind should be better served by huddling on their planet trying to survive... But then, they really wouldn’t be human, would they? Humans always want what they can’t have, they spread and colonize and grow and grow and grow, endlessly thirsty for knowledge and new discoveries boldly going where no human has gone before, hoping to find things no human has found before.
Space has no emotions, being too vast, to incomprehensible to personify. However, by all accounts, the space that swaddles the desert colony X-rx5 has been hungry lately. Incomprehensibly hungry. On its own merits, X-rx5 is not a pleasant place, hostile to outsiders staying for very long. However, that’s exactly what the settlers were looking for in a planet, the arid climate lending itself to very stable and repeatable results for their experiments. As a whole, X-rx5 was first and foremost a scientific community, more interested in studying that which can be studied than politics.
A human world, though not one of the Federation’s world, their work was shared and traded for those little things that were conclusive to life with whoever the highest bidder was, be it Federation, Klingon, Romulan, or smaller factions that pass by them. Hungry world. Hungry space. Thirsty only for knowledge and willing to ignore all other thirsts.
Well, almost. There was still work that needed to be done, resources needed that couldn’t be bought, jealousy of their works in progress that outsiders were denied to stay long both by the planet and it’s inhabitants, atrocities arose. Slavery, human experiments... Things that would sicken humans became offhanded for X-rx5, a necessity and something of a strange badge of honor that separated them from the weakness of the Federation.
A hungry world. A snake that chose to eat its own tail not out of necessity, but vanity. A strange, sick world, and yet...
Beautiful. If it was only science they sought after, they would have bend to any resource to continue. Their pride, their pride is what drove them. Their science had to be beautiful. They crafted the desert into beauty. They share their works while they could transcend and be GODS on their world, make it bleed water, cause the world to crack and spew out fruit, because they MUST be seen, have their beauty and cleverness marveled at. It has sunk into their skin, this strange philosophy, being genetically modified not for strength, but for beauty. Golden figures crafting golden science.
On the day that the space around them smiled and consumed them, it was with a contented purr that echoed through the rest of the cosmos that the hunger was stated. Their pride had created the hunger, and it ate them. A desert planet was crafted into a jewel and then eaten.
The colony of X-rx5 was snuffed like a candle.
The hunger that they had created had opened an eye and looked to the rest of the universe
X-rx5′s last gift to the universe was its greatest hope of destruction, a hunger that would eat all the stars in space if left unchecked.