Out In Space

Armageddon.

The much anticipated end of the world.

The proverbial last days.

The time that came much sooner than we ever anticipated.

It's funny how humans were programmed to expect the end of the world. To expect a sort of cataclysmic event that'd lead up to one kind of catastrophe or the other, maybe the evolution and invasion of AI technology, invasion of otherworldly species, nuclear disaster, or if we're being dramatic then we'd throw in a zombie apocalypse.

Oh, and that last one is very VERY real.

To understand what am saying we'd have to go back to before 6085, before my time, to when there was still a planet called earth.

But that'd be too long and boring so let's just carry on from here.

All you need to know is this... the world finally came to an end, earth died and 90% of humanity was lost along with it.

The rest of us moved on. It wasn't easy but we struggled and fought for our place in the universe, we survived, and grew, and advanced and evolved.

Today, although all that is left of humanity is the female species, we are stronger and greater than ever.

My name is Mitchell Yang, and I am one of the silver occupants of space city Orus-47. Like all the other occupants of Orus, my position, purpose and future was determined on the day of my genesis, what you probably would call birth.

And since then I have lived to serve my home and city, to bring order and prosperity to mankind just like the rest of my sisters.

Oh! And did I mention that there are no men left?

You see... it's just best if I explain this.

The male of our species survived with us, at least until the 5000s, when we first discovered the planet Utrea. The brilliant and unique planet was found in the Gammenon galaxy by one of the numerous expedition teams of that time.

Although Utrea held much promise, as it was a planet greatly similar to the original earth, it soon revealed a dangerous secret. It's atmosphere which contained large amounts of oxygen, also held a terrible virus. One that affected only the men of our population, erroding their brains, festering on their sanity, turning them into wild, rabid, cannibals.

The virus began spread across the colonies faster than we could control, and not long after, we had to abandoned all the known inhabited planets for the shelter of the space cities. Fortunately the virus had a lesser effect on females, as it was treatable as long as we were above a certain age, a treatment which was impossible for males.

After the loss of man-kind, quite literally. Natural birth was impossible, and attempts were made to stop our extinction as well.

The GAIA project was launched, and after numerous trials, errors and dissapointments, it succeeded. And the first ever artificial woman was born.

Fast-forward to the present 6085. I had my genesis eleven years ago, and for the past eight years I have lived and worked as a pharmaceutical scientist and researcher.

However for the first three years after my genesis, I served as a paediatrian and matured at the GAIA facility where my genesis occurred. Receiving treatment and teachings on a daily basis, while watching over other birth pods that were assigned to me. My first duty as a citizen of Orus-47 was to serve at the facility where I was birthed, my sisters and I were tasked with ensuring that no error occured, even though the AI technology made that clearly impossible.

Children and childhood no longer existed. Since the virus was still in our bloodstream, every woman alive had matured well past the age of eighteen before being released by their respective pods, afterwards simulations much similar to the said childhood were uploaded into our nano membrane, and through it we learned and downloaded basic information.

In these simulations we had our own individual families, parents, brothers and fathers, a luxury that didn't exist anywhere outside LAZARUS program, one of the extensions of Gaia. The Lazarus program provided a realistic experience of the life we would have had on earth, and nearly all the occupants of space cities appreciated it, they lived their dream life inside of it afterall.

The Lazarus program was our escape from reality, and to many of us, it became a part of it. Numerous women got married in the simulations and had families, this required them to share the second part of their nano membrane with their male partners in the simulations, thus making the experience far more realistic and giving both partners ascess to each other's mind.

The women who chose this would be able to connect to the consciousness of their spouse, and after the probation period, they would pull them completely out of the simulation.

The Lazarus program made our wildest dreams come true, and it was a measure that helped us retain our emotions and humanity. But in the end much like the Gaia project, Lazarus was still just an invention we made inorder to survive.

Ultimately the family and friends we had there could never be with us in real life, although the spousal contract made it possible to connect on a different level of consciousness, it didn't change the situation surrounding our existence.

That is why I made a vow to discover a cure to the virus, to find a way to save mankind (quite literally) and restore humanity. And after my service on Orus-47 I lived only to fulfill this goal.

The Ovid Alliance of the 13 space provinces, approved and funded my initiative, providing me with the next generation starship ZERA-15, a team comprising of the best researchers across the galaxies, as well as cutting edge technological gadgets.

And for eight years we served nothing but this mission, traversing the dead of space, we discovered new worlds and old ones, we found different species of aliens, and sometimes were hunted by them.

My team and I visited abandoned colonies and many times, they paid greatly for my miscalculation.

Sample after sample, trial-failure, error-failure, mission-failure, sample-failure, mission-success, sample-failure, mission-failure, mission-failure, sample-success, trial-failure.

And it went on like this over and over again, till my team of fifty had no more than thirteen members, all of whom were beaten, bruised and broken.

Yet I wouldn't give up.

On the eight year, towards the end of our first expedition, we came across a barren, orbitless planet in the dead galaxy of M.W•00101.

We found the original earth.

And yes despite Captain Sarah's warning, the teams apprehensiveness or the alarms that blared as our exploration shuttles entered earths atmosphere, I stubbornly made the decision to explore this dark, abandoned world, and what a stupid decision that was.

The galaxy M.W•00101, formerly known as the Milky Way galaxy, had died two thousand years ago, along with the planets and stars inside of it. Earth died long before that time, which was why humanity fled in the first place, but now we had come back in search of answers.

As expected, the world was anything but habitable. She had evolved in the darkness, her along with the organism that still dwelled in her. On the hunt for life forms, three more of our crew members were killed by unidentified creatures. They were fast, possessing an almost impenetrable armour, and a grotesque combination of legs, claws and teeth. They had the ability to eat away at just about anything they encountered, and my comrades were no exceptions.

And they were humans.

The last of our ancient species that were unable to leave the ruined planet.

After loosing another important member of the team, we were finally able to capture a Macadvar (as I named them), but with great damage to our shuttle.

There was no time for tears, and we immediately set out to work on the subject, while a fuming Captain Sarah along with our surviving crew worked on repairs.

It was unexpected, at a point when I had almost caved in to defeat, when the walls of my failure had nearly crushed whole, that's when we finally got a cure from the virus.

Gotten from modified blood samples of the Macadvar, it was all we would ever need to completely eradicate the virus.

We'd won.