One day, it was to be expected, our planet became too small to have fun. One could still live there his little man of life, cultivate his plot, smile at his neighbour, but for those who tried the adventure, there was nothing left to explore. Faced with the fashion of stellar tourism, faced with population growth, swarms of volunteers rushed into space exile. Urgently, discover new lands.
The seven clans
The world government has formed clans of adventurers prepared to conquer space. These clans were seven — sacred figures in all ancient traditions. Their members were called planetary sowers or time-travellers, as their interstellar journeys lasted several decades and they spent in cryogenic sleep. “Cryogenic sleep, also known as cryogenic stasis, cryostasis (cryostasis) or hyper sleep, is an exploitation of the cryogenic preservation technology (or “cryonic”) used by UNSC during sub-space travel. Anyone who sleeps is considered out of time.” (source)
Scientists, technicians, researchers, engineers, the sowers had all the required specializations, coupled with an appropriate space training. Their mission: to find habitable planets, or almost. Adapt them. Adapt them. Tame native species, or destroy them if they are invasive. Implant terrestrial domestic species, if necessary genetically improve them to adapt them to the new environment.
Each of the seven clans was assigned a list of star systems. Once the planets were arranged, the clan gained another star. Each clan had a million or more seeders — not to mention countless wildlife and livestock. The clan, its passengers and equipment were housed in a gigantic sub-light vessel, which science fiction calls mother ship.
There was recreated the terrestrial environment in paradise version, while to do. Nostalgic for the Earth, the clans were in great need of entertainment.
Given the length and difficulty of the missions, they deserved the best comfort and the best quality of life. Despite the great longevity enjoyed by humanity at that time, many stellar adventurers never saw their home planet again. Their ship was their homeland.
The Titans clan
When cryogenic stasis was widespread, the crew and passengers traveled sleeping out of time. At the dawn of the space conquest, we had built accommodations on the arranged planets, to accommodate the sowers. With the discovery of hyperspace shortcuts and stationary propulsion, a new step has been taken. The mother ships became the norm. The clans had long since ceased to live on the ground. The planets under development were not comfortable enough for them.
There’s no need to complicate their lives. Wherever they go, the sowing clans have their world with them. On their mothership, there’s everything. You find what you want — and even more. To house this world and its pleasures, to put in the necessary and the superfluous, you had to think big. Very large. Hyperspace opened the era of gigantism. These days, the motherships are so huge, they’re called wandering planets.
Ours is called Titan, after some giant gods of old. A gigantic spaceship. Spherical and transparent at will, this fascinating ship measures 13,000 km in diameter. Yes, huge. My clan is the largest of the seven, with no fewer than 3 million inhabitants. The crew, the sowers and families. Our homeland is a country. A planet. A world. I wasn’t born there but I will die there.
Our pet is the Wolf. That’s what we should be called, the Wolves. The Wolf Clan. In fact not at all: we are called the Titans, like our ship. That all who have seen it say hallucinating. And to be fair, our true identity is him, our ship. It’s Titan. And we, the Sowers of the Wolf, see ourselves quite differently. Lost to light-years of our race brothers, isolated in unexplored confines at the mercy of stellar catastrophes and indigenous revolts, forgotten by our friends and acquaintances who remained chained to still time, we needed a new psycho-social environmentsatisfying and reassuring. Our profession gave it to us.
Hypertime
Our vital paradigm. Our garden. Our time element. And liars. We intervene on wild planets in unimaginable amounts of time. We can leave a planet and come back a billion years later. We have not aged in the meantime, it is thanks to hyperspace. You don’t have to wait millions of years for evolution to work. You just come back later. Hyperspace opens on hyper time, which is out of time. We, the time pirates, striking out of time, feeling out of time, we are always at home.
For the user, for us, hyperspace is non-temps. We don’t age in shortcuts, because they are out of time. That’s important. Hypertime loses so much. And so do we, torn from our previous lives.
By hyperspace shortcuts, our missions are journeys without return. It is difficult to keep in touch with those who live billions of years away. For us, time is an open space. For all the others, it remains one way. So, it is not planets that are sown, but relatives. Nephews and nieces, cousins, school friends, horse friends, they kept our hearts warm, we left them far behind, disappeared at the corner of a lost street, in the darkest of corridors of time.
Imagine the lack. The frustration. The nostalgia. The spite. The anger itself! Of those negative emotions, we made a package general delivery. Shortcuts also shorten our lives, but we live on a large scale.
A wolf’s hunger
Legendary appetite of the Titans! Our clan alone devoured a thousand planets, deflowered a hundred star systems, hijacked I don’t know how many comets — they say their name could come from Spanish comer, eat. Meteors and planets, supernovae, comets, and I trade you, and I eat you! We don’t eat them all at once, we absorb them over eons, sometimes engulfing their gold, sometimes their uranium, engulfing various minerals, marbles, sandstone, mercury, food, animals, whatever it takes, even their daughters, entire populations of sex slaves and forced labourers.
We tried to go easy at first, but it doesn’t work, the savages only understand the shots. So we knock, so they can put the program in their heads. To work, to toil, to row, to dig, to build, to suffer, to roast, to fear, to lay, to split, to learn, to defend, to take again, without ever trying to understand.
In our genetic bank, there are billions of possible clones. Yet we all have the same genotype, the Wolf. The Wolf is a genius geneticist who has designed the best human and divine prototypes throughout his endless life.
Wolfgang Le Loup has extended its existence beyond the imaginable. It is whispered that WLL would have exceeded 10,000 years! That’s a lot, even for hyper-time pirates. In any case, through us who are millions of small WLL, he will live millions of years. Time, he will have more and more. For him it will never be over. Wolfgang Clan-du-Loup is named the Father of Time. We are all his children.
Terraforming? That’s what we do. We build wild planets. Each of us must follow the precious manual where everything is said.
Titan
Procedures Manual
To the attention of the Commodore of the Titan, Operations Officers, Captains of Ships, Chiefs of Clans, NCOs and various executives. Here are the principles that should guide any terraforming company of a new planet. The spirit that resides there governs your decisions. Not all conceivable cases are informed to avoid weariness and train you to choose for yourself according to this line of thought.
The Titan mothership has two levels. The upper level says surface, with its four continents dividing the circumference of the ship into four quarters. It is your habitat, your place of life, work and leisure. The lower level says hold, with its four replicas of Titan on a 1/20 scale, that we will call the island ships.
When a planet’s configuration permits, the four commanders will immerse their island ship in an ocean. If only one island can be submerged, we’ll settle for it. These floating islands will provide the same service and comfort as the mother ship, so that many sowers will want to live in close contact with the local populations, as if their presence were natural, if not banal. Never terrify the locals or make excessive use of weapons of mass destruction, which will be reserved for extreme cases: widespread insurgency, viral pandemic, etc.
Whatever the duration of the development mission, the ultimate goal is to leave the viable planet to the care of an intelligent species that will have to take over from the developers. Your role is to initiate the elites. After you, they will take the reins.
Each artificial island is a replica of Titan: circular, its diameter is 3300km. The transparent dome above it is removable. When it is placed on the waves, the dome disappears and is only reformed during takeoff. Like its Titan model, the floating island consists of four quadrant-forming lands separated by canals. Another arrangement can be adopted: a circular central earth, surrounded by four canals delimiting three islands in concentric rings.
The canals are filled with fresh or salty water, populated by all aquatic species capable of recreating a terrestrial environment. This process is a reflection of the entire mission. Transform a wild planet into a near-Earth.
As regards the indispensable creation of species, the number of intelligent species will be limited. As much as possible we will avoid creating gods, gifted beings of great longevity. In the obvious perspective of maintaining the authority of the sowers over their creatures, their lifespan will be limited.
(end of manuscript)
Author’s note
Here ends this excerpt from the Journal of Atlas, commander of Atlantis Island. If other excerpts reach me, I undertake to reproduce them here.
A quasi-land is literally written Ter Re or Ter Ra, that is to say Newfoundland; Ra or Re expressing the idea of renewal: revival, recommencement, replica, repetition, ravaging, raging…
In divine names of the planets, I gave another etymology of Terra: Ra or Re designating the sun. I’ve never been bothered by contradictions. In this case, I don’t know if that’s a contradiction. Either hypothesis can be true.
The RA or RE sound can refer to both renewal and sun. In this case, it would not be the sun we know, but a new sun that would have burst close to the earth. A sun as big as a super bright mother ship. Et très beau à voir. Hyper Beau Ré.And very beautiful to see. Super beautiful D = Hyperborea