I used to be quite an arrogant and mischievous personality unless one day it all ended.
My name is Ykriti and I am the lone survivor of my species, currently cruising on a starship Crawler.
I grew up on a planet Skrhit inhabited by normal people like you living in harmony till the end of our world.
None of us on our home planet could have survived a catastrophe of that magnitude ever. Even if we had launched ourselves into space on our starships, we would have died sooner or later. That is because our science has enabled us to live immortally till we are terra-bound, but at the cost of gradually losing our ability to reproduce altogether. Plus, the constant rider that we were unable to extend our lives once we were space-travelling as that dilutes our body mechanisms, thus losing our shield of immortality. No substitute our ultra-advanced technology was able to provide to prolong our age while in vacuum.
------
Through our powerful telescopes, we were looking out for eons into deep space far outside our own cluster of galaxies for the signs of life somewhere else beyond us. Few years ago, we had completed our installation of a group of telescope arrays mounted outside our galaxy perimeter, all combined such that it was no big a deal then looking out for signs of life in each and every corner of the universe.
We tasted our first great success just months after this whole system started operating at its full functionality. A primary star system in a discrete constellation was discovered with a string of planets revolving around a bright white star. And a bunch of inner planets seemed to emit chemical signatures of life when scanned under magnificent Q-rays (better than any other spectrum of UV, X-rays, etc.)
We have had our shares of success as an outliving species but this was spectacularly miraculous too. We were not a species planning to pose any kind of threat wherever and whenever LIFE is discovered anywhere else in the universe. But we did want to discover more in that star cluster and sure were excited to plan a trip to know more and if possible, make a contact.
Since there was no way of knowing from our home galaxy whether the life signature discovered recently then in that star cluster is in its primate or advanced form, therefore, we could not initiate and establish any direct contact with them. And the only way to visit there was bounded by the fact that this system was about a thousand light years away and we could not simply travel such an enormous distance afar for so long a time with our immortality no longer tending to exist outside our surface territories.
Thus, it was decided to send an unmanned robotic mission to study the origin and form of life in that star system nomenclatured as SN1000 by then by our astronomical body. It was an Observe-and-Report only mission with no kind of contact to be initiated initially as agreed upon unanimously.
------
No one could have ever expected that within a few hundred light years of all this, we would be faced with such a perilous catastrophe striking our beloved home planet.
It was going to be a galaxy collision. Everything turned into dust as I recall it. Our immortality had no safe-house now.
When this bound-to-be galaxy collision was first discovered to be occurring within a few hundred years only, our team was tasked to find a suitable method to save our long-living species. And the only conclusive theory we could come up to was to start developing technology enabling us to transfer our consciousness into our mechanical robots. Hence, robos would be becoming our new bodies driven around by our conscious mind.
What seemed a great and bright idea at the start as a last measure to protect our breed against the wrath of cosmos turned out disappointing experimental results initially. As the collision time was coming nearer, and the growing premonition that our consciousness-transferring great Save was still in experimental stage, people had already started accepting their end soon.
Our team, though still not fully confident of the positive results, ultimately decided to make a trial case and I was also chosen to be among the first AR, Alpha Robos, the name given to conscious robots, a new species' dawn. It wasn't AI, the Artificial Intelligence, it was natural intelligence inside an artificial body. Our science was finding it probably the biggest ever challenge of its time, and deservedly so.
Amidst all this, fate happened. D-day arrived, and my Alpha Robo, i.e., me, was flown out in a hurry in a starship along with a few other slave robots as my accompaniments.
------
Everything started being destroyed in that clash of two mighty galaxies. It would continue to be so for atleast a few million years before the remnant of this biggie bang started settling again under the gravity of the core thus giving birth to a new star formations.
By then, I would have been far far away on my trip, my consciousness trapped inside a robot body on the starship Crawler.
I am Ykriti, an Alpha Robo, and I have completed first 110 light years distance of my travel towards a distant star system in a galaxy we named Milky Way; towards star system SN1000, a bright star burning rapidly progressing to its middle age as time progresses and hopefully, life brimming with big creatures on its third planet Trhea.
Since there was no way of knowing from our home galaxy whether the life signature discovered recently then in that star cluster is in its primate or advanced form, therefore, we could not initiate and establish any direct contact with them. And the only way to visit there was bounded by the fact that this system was about a thousand light years away and we could not simply travel such an enormous distance afar for so long a time with our immortality no longer tending to exist outside our surface territories.
Thus, it was decided to send an unmanned robotic mission to study the origin and form of life in that star system nomenclatured as SN1000 by then by our astronomical body. It was an Observe-and-Report only mission with no kind of contact to be initiated initially as agreed upon unanimously.
------
No one could have ever expected that within a few hundred light years of all this, we would be faced with such a perilous catastrophe striking our beloved home planet.
It was going to be a galaxy collision. Everything turned into dust as I recall it. Our immortality had no safe-house now.
When this bound-to-be galaxy collision was first discovered to be occurring within a few hundred years only, our team was tasked to find a suitable method to save our long-living species. And the only conclusive theory we could come up to was to start developing technology enabling us to transfer our consciousness into our mechanical robots. Hence, robos would be becoming our new bodies driven around by our conscious mind.
What seemed a great and bright idea at the start as a last measure to protect our breed against the wrath of cosmos turned out disappointing experimental results initially. As the collision time was coming nearer, and the growing premonition that our consciousness-transferring great Save was still in experimental stage, people had already started accepting their end soon.
Our team, though still not fully confident of the positive results, ultimately decided to make a trial case and I was also chosen to be among the first AR, Alpha Robos, the name given to conscious robots, a new species' dawn. It wasn't AI, the Artificial Intelligence, it was natural intelligence inside an artificial body. Our science was finding it probably the biggest ever challenge of its time, and deservedly so.
Amidst all this, fate happened. D-day arrived, and my Alpha Robo, i.e., me, was flown out in a hurry in a starship along with a few other slave robots as my accompaniments.
------
Everything started being destroyed in that clash of two mighty galaxies. It would continue to be so for atleast a few million years before the remnant of this biggie bang started settling again under the gravity of the core thus giving birth to a new star formations.
By then, I would have been far far away on my trip, my consciousness trapped inside a robot body on the starship Crawler.
I am Ykriti, an Alpha Robo, and I have completed first 110 light years distance of my travel towards a distant star system in a galaxy we named Milky Way; towards star system SN1000, a bright star burning rapidly progressing to its middle age as time progresses and hopefully, life brimming with big creatures on its third planet Trhea.
---------------- Chapter 1 End --------------------
~~~ All copyrights reserved with the author ~~~
