possiblylisle

[possiblylisle]

After the worst slump in my writing career so far, I have finally managed to sit down and crack out 2 chapters of On the Pond’s Surface. Now all I need is to not lose the momentum!!!

[possiblylisle]

FORGOT THE TAG LIST

@vagabond-starsong @leahpardo-pa-potato @leahnardo-da-veggie @humbleartspawn @tamiveldura @orion-lacroix @lorifragolina @oliolioxenfreewrites @sarandipitywrites @dragonedged-if @revenantlore

Snippet Sunday: A Brief History

Grant drummed his fingers on the armrest, the glowing threads beneath his skin pulsing with each tap of a finger on the cold composite surface. His other hand played idly with his new reader that sat on his lap. He folded and unfolded the device, watching the digital pages of the textbook he had been reading as they morphed from a two-page layout to one page with the unfolding of the screen. Then he folded it again, and the single page shrunk and moved aside, making room for the other that would continue the text.

            He’d gotten bored of the book in the two hours they’d left him alone in the room, not that the book itself was lacking, it really was quite interesting, but he’d read the same one multiple times before and the content of it had practically encoded itself in his head.

            It was a history textbook, one that was essential reading for every Martian, Yggdrasilin, Elysian, and Flotilla child like him. It told of times that were centuries long gone when Earth was still humanity’s home and almost all common people lived in misery, save for the elite few that had made that misery. It would tell of the laboring and the suffering of regular people, how they were beaten down, worked to death, and no better than slaves. It was that misery that his teachers had wanted every child to remember, and to understand that it was a terrible life that had been brought about by the greed of the Conglomerate.

            He didn’t understand the point of it all in the early years of his schooling, when the history lessons were dumbed down and carefully scrubbed of any horrors that may hurt the developing mind of a child. All he knew was that the Conglomerate were bullies, and everyone else would eventually get tired of being bullied. Then life moved on, and both his body and mind grew. His teens were when he finally understood it.

            The bullied fought back.

            The Conglomerate was too greedy to back down.

            And when they were close to dead, they tried to take everything else with them.

            They failed, of course, because if they had succeeded, he doubted that the Shaza would have made first contact, and humanity would have never learned just how big the universe was outside of their tiny solar system.

            And if the revolution hadn’t won, then he seriously doubted he would be alive, and waiting to meet some professor of reversal physics who seemed to be taking their sweet time coming to the meeting they had organized.

[possiblylisle]

Snippet Sunday: A Brief History

Grant drummed his fingers on the armrest, the glowing threads beneath his skin pulsing with each tap of a finger on the cold composite surface. His other hand played idly with his new reader that sat on his lap. He folded and unfolded the device, watching the digital pages of the textbook he had been reading as they morphed from a two-page layout to one page with the unfolding of the screen. Then he folded it again, and the single page shrunk and moved aside, making room for the other that would continue the text.

            He’d gotten bored of the book in the two hours they’d left him alone in the room, not that the book itself was lacking, it really was quite interesting, but he’d read the same one multiple times before and the content of it had practically encoded itself in his head.

            It was a history textbook, one that was essential reading for every Martian, Yggdrasilin, Elysian, and Flotilla child like him. It told of times that were centuries long gone when Earth was still humanity’s home and almost all common people lived in misery, save for the elite few that had made that misery. It would tell of the laboring and the suffering of regular people, how they were beaten down, worked to death, and no better than slaves. It was that misery that his teachers had wanted every child to remember, and to understand that it was a terrible life that had been brought about by the greed of the Conglomerate.

            He didn’t understand the point of it all in the early years of his schooling, when the history lessons were dumbed down and carefully scrubbed of any horrors that may hurt the developing mind of a child. All he knew was that the Conglomerate were bullies, and everyone else would eventually get tired of being bullied. Then life moved on, and both his body and mind grew. His teens were when he finally understood it.

            The bullied fought back.

            The Conglomerate was too greedy to back down.

            And when they were close to dead, they tried to take everything else with them.

            They failed, of course, because if they had succeeded, he doubted that the Shaza would have made first contact, and humanity would have never learned just how big the universe was outside of their tiny solar system.

            And if the revolution hadn’t won, then he seriously doubted he would be alive, and waiting to meet some professor of reversal physics who seemed to be taking their sweet time coming to the meeting they had organized.

[possiblylisle]

posssiblylisle Update

Hello, Hi, Yes, It is Me.

I know that I haven't not been posting any snippets or anything in a while and that is because I have been very busy with college and finishing up my Associate's Degree.

But! I am now done with finals, so my free time has increased enough to allow me to begin putting a lot more work on OtPS!

I plan on releasing a new snippet tomorrow. It won't be much but it is something.

[possiblylisle]

Snippet Sunday: Spacewalk

The bright star before him was getting closer, bathing him in two white glowing beams, taking up his vision and blotting out the far-off stars in the black background.

            The white glow of the stars had been growing large for a while now, he couldn’t recall how long, but he’d been watching them approach ever since he woke up.

            It was weird, he didn’t remember falling asleep during his spacewalk. He couldn’t remember ever starting the spacewalk in the first place. He’d been on the ship, putting the suit on and getting ready to be let out through the air lock. He’d put his helmet on, hugged Kimi, saluted Red, and then…

            The star was a lot closer now. Or was it two stars? It had to be two stars. One star can’t hit you with two beams of light side by side. Yeah, two stars were getting closer.

            He hugged Kimi and saluted Red, then he counted down with the monitor, the moments before the ship stopped skipping and broke through the pond’s surface. Once they were through, he’d wait for the all clear signal from engineering and then leave the air lock to inspect the outer hull. It would be dangerous, the vacuum always is, but he couldn’t get too far from the ship with his tether hooked on its body.

            Where was his tether? If he was on a spacewalk, then where was his tether? It was dangerous to fall asleep on a walk, especially without his tether, he could float away and that would be bad.

            He twisted his body, flailing his arms, trying to make himself turn with zero success.

            Did he have his SAFER on?

            He reached down to his sides where the vacuum jet pack’s controls would be. There was nothing.

            Right, it was supposed to be a routine spacewalk. Checking for reversal damage. He didn’t need the pack, just a tether.

            Where was his tether?

            He’d watched the countdown, the seconds ticking by and he felt the ship lurching, turbulence from the bubble and the rapid deceleration. The timer ticked a little more, one number turning over to the next and then…

            The white stars were close now, but they’d stopped advancing toward him. The two beams of white light stared at him and lit his body with their glow. They left a good distance between themselves and him, about 8 meters if he had to guess but it was hard to really tell without the ship as a scale reference.

            Why weren’t the glowing twins coming closer? Were they scared? No, stars don’t get scared, they don’t have brains. Maybe he could close the gap.

            He waved a greeting at the stars and put his arms behind him, ready to pulse his jets and make the approach.

            Nothing happened.

            Strange. Why wasn’t his SAFER working?

            He tried again, twitching his fingers and compelling himself to move forward. A moment passed and he felt a tiny force push on the bottoms of his boots and the palms of his gloves.

            He moved forward with a tiny puff of jetted air. It wasn’t a lot, but he was slowly drifting toward the twin stars.

            The distance closed little by little and the stars started to turn. They faced away from him, pointing to his left. Then he saw it, the metal body connected to the stars.

            How stupid. Of course they weren’t stars, he’d be burning up if they were that close. And stars couldn’t be that small, not without being far beyond his reach.

            The hatch on the vacuum boat’s side opened and a dim glow lit the inside. The silhouette of a human stood in the opening; their body clad in a large cumbersome spacesuit like his own.

            The figure gently pushed from the ship, and began drifting toward him, a tether keeping them connected as they floated closer, a hand reaching out for him.

            He reached out his own hand toward the figure and felt his eyes starting to burn a little, itching in the back of the sockets.

            I’m tired, he thought and blinked slowly, trying to alleviate the burn.

            He felt his gloved hand touch the other astronaut and then their hand grab hold of his.

            His eyes remained closed, everything slowly beginning to slip away.

            Where was his tether?

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[possiblylisle]

Snippet Sunday: Professor Aoi Wakako

The shadows of the flotilla’s ships floated high above the spaceport; the bodies of the gargantuan Arks were only visible at their height because of their sheer size. Clouded all around the larger ships were the dim outlines and barely seen shadows of the flotilla’s smaller member ships, all of them holding members of the human race, vital equipment and supplies for the flotilla’s longevity, or thousands of sensors and surveying equipment barely tacked together in a way that would keep the inhabited parts of the great fleet safe from anything in the pond that may harm them. They were buoys, placed far from the rest of the fleet, always on the outer edges and always the first and last ships to skip across the pond.

            Flashes of white blinked through the Martian atmosphere and through the transparent, filtered composite of the city dome. Once each flash faded, the shadow of another ship was seen waiting where the light had been. The last strays of the flotilla coming into orbit above humanity’s home world.

            Each flash of an arriving ship squeezed her heart and her lungs a little more, the hope trickling in her chest. But it would die in her chest too, because none of those ships would be carrying what she wanted.

            Then, far above the world and far from the flotilla, another flash and in its wake, the shadow of an unnaturally smooth ship. Its body was a smooth outline from the beak-like tip to the long, finger-like splayed engines at its back. It would be another few hours before the ship could send down a landing boat and another half hour for the boat to land and dock at the port. After that? Too much stalling, halting, and checking, and then too much of her waving her credentials around accompanied by the unnecessary number of letters of approval from her superiors.

            Hardly anyone was still alive who remembered the war, and yet the people who would receive her guests at the port would still act as though Mars was at gunpoint and her guests were there to plant a flag.

            Still, that was for later, she had time to kill that could be better spent answering messages, drinking coffee, reading or taking a tram to the port.

            Snapping out of her thoughts, she started moving again, realizing the awkwardness of her sudden stop in the middle of the University’s quad.

            Students were moving all around her, most in small groups that chatted as they walked or sat on benches under stubby trees. Others were alone, some reading on a bench, or leisurely walking along the brick paved quad, others were hustling across the communal space, racing to the other end of campus to reach a class for which they were most likely late.            

The activity of the students was simple, but it was nice, reminding her of her days doing the same on that very quad as all the younger people around her. And it reminded her to keep walking and to stop losing her train of though in such an open space. She had papers to grade, a lecture to prepare, books to read, coffee to drink, and a meeting with foreign academics to mentally prepare for.

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[possiblylisle]

Sometimes a Family can be:

A depressed twenty something capable of ripping apart reality.

A middle aged physics professor

A nerdy sapient mass of tentacles

And that is perfectly fine!!!

[possiblylisle]

Snippet Sunday: Leech Children

Who was this angry little boy standing between her and the other boys? This little angry boy with messy curls, beige olive skin, and a bleeding nose? Why had he jumped in between her and the gruff boys that had pushed her around? He was so small compared to them, a little twig in baggy patched clothing. Why had he fought them on her part, punching one in the face and another in the stomach? It didn’t do him any good. His nose was bleeding and broken, his knees were scraped, and his knuckles were raw.

            The two larger boys were just staring at him, their faces beginning to bruise and on one of them, a bloodied lip that was beginning to scab. They didn’t raise their hands again or try to move closer to the little boy, they just kept staring.

            The young boy sniffed and wiped a hand across his bloody mouth. Then, with little warning, he let out what sounded like a small dog’s growl.

            “Leave her alone,” he snarled, clenching his fists and shifting his feet.

            “Don’t tell me what to do, leech.” One of the boys responded, his position amongst the two clearly was one of power.

            “Yeah!” The boy with the busted lip jeered. “Don’t tell us what to–“

            His continued sniveling was halted as the young boy threw himself at the other boy, tackling him by his legs and slamming him into the composite flooring. His clenched fists rained down on the other boy with little thought or grace.

            The sneering boy was crying out, shouting for his friend and at the young boy to stop. But the boy didn’t listen, and his hands continued to hail down for a few seconds more before he was yanked away, the other older boy having grabbed him by the arm and thrown him to the floor.

            The young boy was quick to get up again, his fists raised in front of his face.

            The older boy hoisted his friend from the ground and spun around, glaring at their small assailant. His face was red and she could see his jaw moving back and forth, his teeth griding against one another as he clenched his fists and slowly stepped forward.

            “Grant! What are you doing!” A voice came from down the corridor, and Kimi turned to face its owner.

            Stalking down the corridor with his shoulders pulled back and his face set in a hard glare was Mister Burke, an older man whom she recognized from the community ward. His eyes were stern behind a pair of thick square glasses. His forehead was wrinkled, his brows stiffly stuck at a hard diagonal that didn’t seem to go away even when he wasn’t glaring.

            The young boy didn’t turn his gaze from her assailants, but his voice came out as a high-pitched growl, failingly deepened to sound more serious than his age would have implied.

            “They started it! They were picking on Kimiko!”

            Burke stopped before Grant, slapping a hand on his shoulder and wheeling the young boy around to face him, not even bothering to stoop down to properly look the boy in the eye.

            “I don’t care what they did! Their parents are responsible for reprimanding and controlling them, not me!”

            “But they were–“ Grant started/

            “Don’t give a shit, Grant. They are not my responsibility, but you are! And you continuously test the limits of my patience!”

            Grabbing grant by the arm, Burke pulled him along, forcefully leading the young boy down the corridor as the older boys snickered and whispered to each other.

            “Mister Burke,” Kimi started, gathering the older man’s attention, “Please don’t punish him! He was only trying to do the right thing.”

            Burke scoffed. “Violence isn’t ever the right thing; have you not been paying attention in your history classes?”

            “But–“

            “I don’t care what naïve ideas you have. I am the adult here and you will listen to me. Now go back to the community ward and don’t even think about trying to protect this – this little shit! Or I will have your luxuries seized for an entire month!”

            Kimi clenched her fist and grit her teeth. “I don’t care about my luxuries! He didn’t do anything wrong! They did!” She swung her hand around and pointed at the other boys, their faces and snickering going still, awaiting Burke’s reaction.

            Mister Burker glowered at her and reached into his pocket. Pulling out a communicator he spoken into it, his voice barely edging on a neutral tone.

            “Missus Huang, please come collect Kimiko from the education ward. I will brief you later on her grievances.”

______________________________

WOAH! Would you look at that! More OtPS stuff! And even better than that, this is the first snippet of the first chapter from Kimi's POV.

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[possiblylisle]

Snippet Sunday Monday: Expression

“Well, what if my preferred form of bodily self-expression involves climbing hooks and a grip force capable of crushing steel like it’s paper?” Teller let out an electric sigh and adjusted their cloak, turning back toward the workbench and the incomplete arm. “You’re missing the point, my friend.” Kodi squinted at the Sozon, ignoring the ache in the stump of her right arm. “I want a grappling hook,” she finally grumbled, leaning to rest her back against the wall.

WOAH! Lisle? What's This?

Thank you for asking. This is a snippet from the little bits of scenes I've pieced together for the next book in the Pond's Surface Series/Loosely connected universe of books.

Why are you working on the next book when you still haven't finished OtPS?

Because inspiration is a mistress that only comes to me when it's most inconvenient.

When will you finish OtPS?

Fuck if I know.

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@humbleartspawn @orion-lacroix @vagabond-starsong @abiteofhoney

[possiblylisle]

Snippet Sunday: OtPS

It was disturbingly pleasing to fantasize about how they would all react if he simply chose to end the pain and disappear. Was that wrong? Was it wrong to take pleasure in imagining the anger Wakako would feel knowing that her test subject was dead, or to wonder in what ways Bon’s alien brain would handle the knowledge that the only dreamer It had ever met was now a corpse. They surely would not miss him beyond the lamenting of losing the chance to use him for something greater. Forever hating him for ending the pain simply because they could not wield it and refine it into the next rung on the ladder that would bring them renown.

Tom, Sam, and Huck may mourn him briefly, saddened by the loss of a familiar face. But they would forget to be sad in due time; there were many more important things in life that needed attention that weren’t the passing of a human being - someone not even born of their species or their blood - whose life was steeped in suffering and wallowing. They’d already done their grieving after all; what more could they do if he were to truly disappear? They may even be thankful for the loss, glad that they no longer had to feel obligated to give up a corner of their home for a quarter of the year so that a single human could experience the comforts of a home and family that were not his. Thankful that they no longer have to pretend that they had not moved on from his initial loss so quickly.

The three of them had expressed and lamented already, telling him how glad they were to know he was safe, to know he was alive. They made it a performance, a grand act of playing their moral parts to let him know that he was a person who had been mourned. It was a loud, after-the-fact mourning.

They mourned Kimiko silently, but he knew they earnestly cared to mourn and feel that loss, as they rightly should. They loved Kimiko. Everyone loved Kimiko. She was the oxygen in his lungs and the fresh air so many others needed. She was someone worth mourning, someone who deserved the tears her loss had shed. She cared and she loved. She was like a perfect star that held the orbiting spheres of a life-given world. And he was just the barren rock that always tagged along.

If she was Sol, then he was Mars. If she was Odin’s Eye, then he was Baldur. If she was the universe, he was the Reverse.

If she was a tender grin… …then he was a dripping snarl.

They all loved her because she could love and they accepted him simply because they had no choice. Where she went, he went. Where she shined, he orbited.

Is that why? Is that why it was so thrilling to think about the effect his death might have? Because it was relief? A savior from his throbbing hurt and a weight lifted from the shoulders of every person around him? An easing of the burden. He could never make the others who mourned her feel better, he couldn’t give them the words they needed to hear and the shoulder upon which they needed to cry. He was hurting too. More than the others, he could even say. They all loved her, they all knew her, but she was his to truly mourn! She was his friend! His companion! His only earthly bond! She was his to mourn! This was his grief! And if he went the same way as her. If he dropped the idea of continuing for the sake of continuing, he could let go of that pain! He could let them have it! He wouldn’t care if they remembered her the way he did! One little slash, or trigger squeeze, or rattle of pills. That’s all he needed to stop caring. That’s all he needed to inflict the misery he so desperately wanted Wakako to feel.

Cause the pain and annoyance that he knew would be the last thing she would ever remember of him. He could be the one to get the final hit, swing the final fist!

His mind snapped forward and he could not feel his hands. They were cold and shaking, that was obvious, and damp patches stained his sleeves where his aching fingers gripped.

What was he doing? What was he thinking?

What sadistic tendency was allowing this train of thought to meander onward, pushing new ideas to the forefront of his mind and delivering to him the chemicals that bring the body pleasure? Why couldn’t his glands save those precious, joy-catalyzing, chemicals for the times and the thoughts that did not make him squirm and writhe at the shame of his own sadistic desire to cause pain while ending his own?

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[possiblylisle]

Big news for all the OtPS enjoyers!

I have finished the full novel’s outline and begun writing!

[possiblylisle]

I shared “On the Pond’s Surface” with an old English teacher. She read it to her students…

I am now receiving fanmail… from 12 year olds.

This is awesome.

Also @insecure-pilot they also really liked your art of Grant :D

[possiblylisle]

Snippet: "Bleed Vermillion"

It was flesh; tender, bleeding, quivering.

His hands felt sweaty, and his nails dug into his palms, stabbing at the slickened skin.

The bleeding mass writhed, pulsing and moaning as it lay on the floor, crimson ichor leaking from its pores, the fetid air of rot cloaking it from fresh breath.

Something churned beneath its surface, rolling, roiling, boiling under the skin. The movement came with crunching, ripping, and spraying all muffled by the flesh that blocked its view.

He inched closer to the mass, vomit lingering like an unwelcome guest on the precipice of his throat. The air passing into and from his nostrils shook and shivered, quaking with each tiny step towards the boiling flesh in the darkness.

The rotting, roiling, writhing hunk of animate flesh jolted toward him, his approach seen by a sense unknown. A bubble of flesh expanded and popped on the mass’s surface and a tendril of blood and bone snaked from the opening as the churning beneath the surface lessened.

The tendril snaked toward him across the littered floor, jerking this way and that, its movements startling, erratic.

He stuttered backward, his arms thrown wide to catch his body should it faulter and fall.

Sweat beaded on his forehead, slithering down his temples and over his cheeks.

“What are you,” he stuttered, his voice coming as nothing more than a frightened squeak.

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[possiblylisle]

“Are you the witch who turned eleven princes into swans?”

The old woman stared at the figure on the front step of her cottage and considered her options. It was the kind of question usually backed up by a mob with meaningful torches, and the kind of question she tried to avoid.

Coming from a single dusty, tired housewife, it should’ve held no terrors.

“You a cop?”

The housewife twisted the hem of her apron. “No,” she muttered. “I’m a swan.”

A raven croaked somewhere in the woods. Wind whispered in the autumn leaves.

Then: “I think I can guess,” the old woman said slowly. “Husband stole your swan skin and forced you to marry him?”

A nod.

“And you can’t turn back into a swan until you find your skin again.”

A nod.

“But I reckon he’s hidden it, or burned it, or keeps it locked up so you can’t touch it.”

A tiny, miserable nod.

“And then you hear that old Granny Rothbart who lives out in the woods is really a batty old witch whose father taught her how to turn princes into swans,” the old woman sighed. “And you think, ‘Hey, stuff the old skin, I can just turn into a swan again this way.’

“But even if that was true – which I haven’t said if it is or if it isn’t – I’d say that I can only do it to make people miserable. I’m an awful person. I can’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I have no goodness. I can’t use magic to make you feel better. I only wish I could.”

Another pause. “If I was a witch,” she added.

The housewife chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she drew herself up and, for the first time, looked the old woman in the eyes.

“Can you do it to make my husband miserable?”

The old woman considered her options. Then she pulled the wand out from the umbrella stand by the door. It was long, and silver, and a tiny glass swan with open wings stood perched on the tip.

“I can work with that,” said the witch.

[possiblylisle]

Snippet: "Killer Queen"

The walls shook with the movement, the distance between the compound and the screamer becoming shorter and shorter with each second. All along the railings behind him, the engineers were scrambling, panicking, making a mess of the operation.

A touch on his shoulder. "Jens, the plug is ready for you. Brace yourself."

His handler moved away as the yellow, standing lights around him began to flash and spin, a warning siren bleating out along with their movement. The metal grate beneath his feet lurched and pulled away from the rest of the catwalk. Ten meters away, it stopped and before him was the open white metal of the plug.

He stepped in, dropping into the pilot's seat and allowing himself to melt into it; the smooth composite designed just right to cradle every arch and curve of his body.

The hatch closed and he was submerged in darkness. The unmistakable feeling of movement shimmered through him; insertion was beginning.

The plug moved smoothly. He imagined the way it must look, its almost brain-like shape gently floating along the open air, suspended and pulled by metal cables thicker than his own leg. When the plug softly lurched, he knew it was close. Suspended above the open cranium of the giant machine where he felt most at home.

Then, it lowered, and he felt the rush, the adrenaline of anticipation. The movement stopped, but the sounds outside did not.

Through the skin of his suit, he felt the fluid lap at his feet as it slowly began to rise. It hugged his entire body, surrounding him in a blanket of pure sensational transfer. It reached his neck and he emptied his lungs, keeping all the air out until the fluid had reached past his eyes. He breathed it in, and it felt like bliss.

The plug's internal lights zapped themselves awake, dimly giving him a view of his cramped domain. He felt the seat's neural cable latch onto the base of his skull like a hungry serpent. Sensation was doubled, and life flooded his nerves.

Gripping the controls, he felt the link complete itself as the lights inside darkened themselves. The darkness lasted only a second before it was killed completely. The plug's insides lit themselves with a view of the dock and all the people that scrambled so far beneath him.

His communications crackled as the heads up display finally bloomed in his eyes.

"All signs are good. Sync rate is optimal. Artemis 022 is ready for launch."

His jaw rattled as he let out a shaking breath into the fluid and allowed himself to be taken by full immersion. After so many launches, so many missions and so many battles, it was not hard to give himself over to the Artemis. The meat of his body was not his, it hadn't been for years, not since his first time in complete sync with the Artemis. This, the giant metal shell, the hulking humanoid beast designed for destruction, this was his body.

His communication line opened, and he spoke through both it, and the mouth of the metal shell.

"This is Killer Queen, ready to launch."

This has been a snippet from my WIP "Artemis Zero"

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[possiblylisle]

ANOMALY: Homeworld Part Three

Putting a break here because this is a long one.

Earth Humanity

Before: Earth was a failing planet a century before humanity would ever even begin to dream of first contact. Corporate greed fed into the slow death of humanity's original home, and eventually that greed became too much to bear. Corporate consolidation of power led to many governments either bending the knee to the financial conglomerate, or being quietly wiped off the map.

The desire for power reached beyond humanity's means, leading to innovation and advancement. Cybernetic augmentation became commonplace and was heavily monetized along with all other luxuries and necessities.

Soon, Earth proved itself to not be enough for the unceasing hunger for more and the conglomerates turned their eyes to the rest of the solar system. The moon was the first and most obvious target, its stores of Helium-3 would be needed if expansion was to continue. The first extraterrestrial mining colony would be established alongside a residential leisure colony designed to house only the most powerful. This lunar colony was not only made as a place of status but as a haven from the dying Earth whose changing climate and rising seas were becoming too much of an unpredictable threat.

The expansion into space would continue advancing moving from the moon to Venus where new mining efforts would continue and the first stages of terraforming would begin.

The next stage in expansion pushed humanity to Mars, the one place humans had dreamed of inhabiting for centuries. The red planet would prove to be hostile and terrible place to live, but compared to the worsening situation back on Earth, the Martian colonists believed they had it easy. The first round of colonists were preceded by a giant team of robots that laid the ground work for eventual human arrival; constructing habits and building hydroponic farms to ensure as little difficulty for the first Martians.

Back on Earth, life was horrid for those that had no influence or money. Billions of people starved or worked themselves to death under the heels of The Conglomerate just to survive a little longer. Those that were lucky had their names placed in a lottery for future extraterrestrial colonization efforts. Many of the people living in squalor even opted to place themselves in indentured servitude with corporate colonization teams just to escape the slow hell of Earth.

With its expanding population and growing major colonies, Mars was quickly becoming the new best place to live. The first - and largest - colony would eventually be renamed "Opportunity" after one of the ancient robots that had scouted the planet it humanity's pre-conglomerate days; other colonies would follow suit with their names.

The distance between Mars and The Moon/Earth was a hard gap for the influential and powerful to continue bridging especially when accounting for their desire to keep Mars under Conglomerate control. This gap in management capability and Conglomerate control would be exploited with Martian workers using the travel and communication delay to ease the burdens of their own lives.

The exploitation of Martian workers would reach a boiling point almost a century after Opportunity's foundation. The Conglomerate had managed to create faster and more efficient ships and means of communication, bridging the gap and allow them to slowly strangle the population of Mars for more gain. Martians were built tough, though, and many of those now living on the planet were born there. The native born grew tired of answering to an oppressive outside force, so they fought back. The Martian revolution would last for nine standard years and in that time, many settlements would be wiped out and the population of Opportunity would be decimated, but the Martians would win, killing the Conglomerate heads living on the planet and driving back those that came from the outside.

The Conglomerate would leave Mars to its fate. Many of the higher ups believed that Martians would slowly die off without support from Earth, and they couldn't have been more wrong.

Inspired by their fellow extraterrestrials, other colonies would also seek emancipation from the Conglomerate and would win their freedom easy as the Conglomerate had stretched itself too thin fighting on too many fronts.

Once again, back on Earth, the situation only worsened. Many saw the way the Martians, Venusians and other colonists fought back against the Conglomerate and this fed the Earthborns' rage. They too fought back, but to no success. The Conglomerate knew an Earth revolution would come sooner or later, especially after losing their grip on their most essential colonies. The Conglomerate, in the first stages of the domestic revolution, quietly moved its most important employees into a flotilla of starships that would leave Earth behind.

The plot to abandon the planet was found and the revolution targeted the ships. Only a few of the ships managed to escape earth in the slaughter of the flotilla and those that escaped decided to finish their plan. The Earth was bombarded with nuclear weapons, killing billions of people and turning the planet into an uninhabitable wasteland. Those escaped ships would not survive much longer as the parts of the flotilla that had been captured by the revolution were in pursuit and they were angry. The ships were boarded and the last of the Conglomerate was killed.

What remained of humanity now lived beyond their original home. The flotilla tried to seek asylum with Mars and Venus but both planets would not afford to suddenly take in thousands of survivors. The colonies did give the Flotilla the means to become self sufficient and continue to survive.

In the century that followed, what remained of humanity would work together, trading and forming The Solar Alliance. Eventually, a group of researchers from the University of Opportunity would mysteriously receive ground breaking information about something known as "the reverse" and it would change humanity's course forever.

After: Humans took to the stars as quickly as they could, but they did not expect that their first venture into another solar system would also be the first time they make contact with an alien species.

Greeted with open arms by the Shaza, humanity was quickly told everything they needed to know about the reverse, the galaxy and the nearby stars that were home to habitable worlds. Additionally, the Shaza forced their way onto Mars and Venus, deploying much more sophisticated terraforming technology that helped the planets see more progress in a few decades than in the centuries before.

Earth however, it remained as it was: an uninhabitable hellscape seen by humanity as a good lesson of what happens when greed wins. Efforts to restore the planet were refused as much of humanity no longer wished to live on their ancestral home. Earth was declared a nature preserve and attempting to land on the planet is treated as a serious crime. Those who dared to break the law and visit the old homeworld have spread rumors that the Armageddon did not kill everyone and the descendants of its survivors still roam the ruined lands of the old world.

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