This story is pure Animism. I did not even know what Animism was when I wrote it. Many Native Americans practice it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMXuuYnoRdI

It’s been a dozen generations since this all started and none of the adults, or much later, even I ever expected the things that eventually happened. Within a decade in the mid-21st Century, we all came to a deeper understanding of Space and what might be out there. It rapidly became obvious that humanity had crossed the line and the things that kept us alive on earth were quickly failing. Very quickly we had to leave if we were to survive.

My parents and others, all the descendants of the originators, had been traveling among the stars in a Colony ship until it broke down. The Colony Ship, called Aspiration, left old Earth hundreds of years previously. They started building the ship in 2108, and would not actually depart Earth orbit until 2214. Aspiration was a hastily constructed deep space vessel, carrying only 680 people in crude hibernation, and with around 25 or so to fly the ship and finish building it. They’d waken various of those in hibernation when they needed a problem solved and then they’d go back to sleep. The hibernation pods consisted of two cylindrical tanks with 20 decks each. Each pod used its own power plant, with the ability to feed energy to the other pods and the rest of the ship. Hydroponics consisted of two more pods that grew vegetation, and water-based plants. The pods were attacked to the central frame like the cylinder of a pistol.

On their way out of the solar system, they stopped to lurk just retrograde of Jupiter’s passage, behind Jupiter in the same orbit, but ahead of the Trojan Asteroids that followed Jupiter but were within easy reach of the Shuttles. As they left Jupiter’s orbit, it must have looked quite odd because the slowly departing ship had a string of objects trailing behind it. They were kept out of the engine exhaust by matching crane and cable affairs that suspended them as equal masses on either side. The Asteroids became the source of raw materials to make the metals and other materials to finish hydroponics and living quarters for all the occupants, once they were wakened. At first, they also provided Reactionable mass but as they gained more understanding of a drive that I can’t explain, that was much less. Almost all the construction of the ship was metal, with things like plastic almost non-existent simply because they discovered no hydrocarbons along their journey. They used one of the larger Asteroids to set up their factory.

During that time, the research on the front shield finally yielded results that would hopefully prevent frontal impacts from objects they encountered in space. On especially large objects, power from all the power plants could be routed to the shield for a short time.

The group understood that Earth would be uninhabitable soon, so haste was the key word for them. A combinations of viciously hot summers and ice age like winters made life increasingly difficult. The numerous space facilities orbiting Earth and the Moon made an unauthorized and largely unfunded installation able to slip by without being noticed for a long time. They used scrap material, and sometimes pilfered equipment to build her. And a rag tag group it was. The Captain of the ship had only ever been Master on a small sea freighter. The medical staff included one aging MD and several Nurses. The list went on and on, but they all had the desire to live and to leave the planet while they still could. Very up to date robotic medical equipment helped so much. There were several very rich and connected supporters on Earth that provided help that was invaluable. Most were very old, so they did not bother to come on the trip. They also helped with a knowledge database that was more robust than anything ever built. It was much easier to procure very good equipment than people, though the propulsion system included parts from China, Indonesia and what was left of Africa. The propulsion from each of the engines was not the same, so they had to be close together and never finished, throttling systems had to be invented.

To make all this even more ludicrous, the project leader was an aging, and retired Electrician and Inspector named Judy Brown who was a post-operative male to female transsexual. That issue made her “unsuitable” because of not so subtle discrimination, to employ in most installations. She was serving beer to several of the scientific community at the Luna Orbital plant in a nondescript bar, when she began to answer questions that solved an issue they were having in the logistics unit in the water management system. It didn’t take long; a few well lubricated meetings, to eventually ask her to become the project manager. The caveat would be that her salary would be room and board and impossible working conditions with killingly long working hours. When these guys finally got around to popping the question, she laughed at them, and took her apron off, depositing it on the bar, and walked out with them trailing. She left her minimum scale wages unpaid; a week’s worth, behind.

Her uniform was a denim mini skirt and a big cotton T shirt. Judy could be seen in pants at times, but everyone eventually learned to keep away from her then, because wearing pants pissed her off. Eventually, Medical figured out that her cranky, implanted sexual organs had blood vessels that were blocked and that caused her hormones to go nuts. Once the blocked vessels were healed, her mood once a month was much better, but she still wore pants only if nearly forced into it. Judy was a very hands-on manager and she knew how to fix most equipment and the things she could not fix, she knew someone who could. Her manner with working people was wonderful, but she had a habit of pushing those just below her. Those above her hid.

As it developed, the lack of funding and the dedication of those involved made it imperative to invent systems that were much superior those that government controlled projects produced. It took the occupants of the Aspiration years to complete the construction required and to get the Hydroponics working correctly. Propulsion power was furnished by a reactance unit that was more sophisticated than previous Fusion or Fission equipment. Some of the more scientific technicians said that it seemed to reach into another dimension to gather energy. Even the Engineering people did not entirely understand how it was so efficient. There were independent power sources for the various functions of the ship such that by the time they accelerated out of Jupiter’s orbit and above the orbital plane of the solar system, there were 11 power plants of various sizes. The gravitational system was still cranky, and would remain so for the time being. As long as the toilets worked, they could get by.

Thus began their long journey.

Hundreds of years later, they had landed on a non-descript planet that at least had vegetation to gather material to repair their ship. At least it had a breathable atmosphere. Lots of volcanism and earthquakes made them want to get out of there.

I found her when I was 9. She looked like she was fresh born because part of the umbilical was still there though at the time I didn’t know what it was. Close by, I found a curious wet sack and some fluid that looked like blood. Where had she come from? There were only around 100 adults from the Colony ship and the 20 or so children who had been born planetside, so who had the baby? There was no other place to take her where she could live and be safe because anything else on the planet finding her might kill and eat her.

Small screen data sets were around, and Mom had one that she left in the hut and admonished me to use it to educate myself. The software was very good; even talking to me and unfortunately ratting me out if I did not study. So, not knowing what to do with a newborn baby I looked it up and followed the instructions. Basically, I was to use a string to tie it off short and cut the rest off.

Food had been scarce when I was born, but we were doing better now. Mom was very concerned about stunted growth in us children because most of us had nearly starved at first. Several of the males from the shuttle had somehow reverted to a primitive state, and wondered around, grunting and sometimes speaking incoherently. So far, they hadn’t been violent but who knows what they would do with a baby lying in the woods? Everyone but the little children were feverishly laboring to get the Shuttle repaired or provide food, and then get back onto our reason for landing here, and that was to find materials to re-provision and repair our ancient ramshackle colony ship.

They used one of the shuttles to search for what they needed to fix it when their shuttle crashed here. Mom had me early because of the crash. Dad was alive but he was so busy working that he never came here. Us children grew up with no supervision and eventually we older ones started taking care of the little ones. There were no diapers but we learned to keep the babies as clean as we could. Some of the younger women could breastfeed and we learned out to make a watered-down vegetable broth.

In the hut that my mom built against an embankment at the bottom of a hill, in back was a cave she dug out. It was my room and it was cool when the heat came and sort of warm when the cold came. Last fall, I was playing and digging in the back I found a little passage, and it was big enough that crawling down it was easy. The passage opened up into a bigger room that was pretty comfortable because warm, almost hot water ran through it in a little stream along one wall. The room, much larger than our hut, and was warm, and cozy. On the wall above the tiny creek there were softly glowing things that were either rock or lichen, I could not tell. I remember there was enough illumination to get around without falling, but not enough to sew or to do other work at first, but later we found ways to make the rocks glow more. They seemed to like water with anything organic in it poured on them.

So, now in the winter, I left the passage open and our hut was warmer and in the summer, I kept it shut to keep it cooler. My Mom was happy about my finding the tunnel, and later she was not so happy about my finding the baby. I named her Habibti because of my Mom’s, dozens of generations in the past, Arab background, which means “sweet heart”. A couple days after I found Habibti, I found Mom standing at my room and staring. I had fallen in love with my baby and her next words buoyed my spirits considerably. “You can keep her Jimmy, but you have to feed her, and take care her like a mother or the reverts might attack and take her and eat her. Drink this tea, it will help some. You will need it every day.” She said. Looking back, mom thought there might be a chance that I could lactate, but that could take time, perhaps too much time. She turned and started to walk away but then said, “I have to work all the time now to help make things the men need, so now you have to get all the food for this place. You know where I get the roots and gourds and fruit. You’ll have to figure out a way to kill prey because you are not big enough to kill what I do. I’d suggest you make a spear. You’ll need it to keep the men off you.” She then threw me a dagger. “You’ll need this.” She smiled when I snatched the tumbling knife out of the air by its tip. The dagger, a Jambiya, was beautifully crafted and from old Earth. It had been handed down for generations, and was mostly for ornamental purposes. Now it was pressed into use for very much less glamorous and practical service. I’d seen mother wear it on her thigh, over her coveralls. “Mom, what will you use to protect yourself?” She showed me a tiny tube with a handle on it. It was very illegal, but in our circumstances, no one objected. It would burn an arm sized hole in the largest animal, but the lightning like bolt would carry on for miles if you missed.

The cavern behind our hut quickly became sort of a community center because of the warm water. I bathed Habibti in the stream inside, and so did anyone with a baby, or on their period, or for that matter anyone who wanted to. Habibti and I sort of moved into the cavern along with many of the other children. It helped sanitation a lot because the warm spring dropped into a gravel bed and flowed out of the cavern, so it was inherently clean. In the future, some of the boys with time on their hands found the spring that fed it up in the hills not far away. They never did understand where the stream went after it left the cavern. There was a suspicious odor at times down in one of the ravines that had a stream running through it, though we never understood more.

Unless there were adults around, most of us wore no clothes, except to keep warm. Later it developed that we should wear something to cover our parts to keep the adults happier. When the girls started to develop, then they wore something on their breasts if they got big enough to hurt from not being supported. Covering their lower parts during their menses helped keep the mess down. In the winter, we all covered enough to stay warm, though it never seemed to get cold enough to make the “snow” the old’s spoke of. The summers were mild, with showers almost every day. The winters seemed OK, with a day of rain at times that gave way to either warm foggy or sunny weather.

We had landed in a broad valley with towering mountain crags on one side and low hills on another. The more adventurous of us had been across the hills to find a deep blue sea on a beautiful coast line. It was almost a day to get there if they moved at a near run. They quickly saw rather large Alligator like creatures with very long necks, so none of them approached the beach too closely. There had been warnings from the adults not to go to the beach, and now we knew why. Those who went usually spent the night high in trees. By now, they had figured out crude hammocks, and used various plant and animal hides to make crude, but warm clothing.

The craggy mountains on the other side seemed too imposing to explore. We did have maps and photos taken from the ship but right now other things were dominant.

There were several streams that ran through our area and we quickly learned to simply scoop arm length fish out of the water to bake over a fire, or to salt and dry for later. There were a few very large plant eaters roaming the area, and we had seen a couple giants who looked fearsome but even children could outrun them. They seemed to feed on what they could capture out of the creeks and scavenged dead animals. Mom explained to us that the physics of being a very large animal usually meant it moved more slowly.

Most of us were sort of feral children, so we learned and taught each other things. We children didn’t know the difference, but the adults felt that some strange things were happening, especially to the young. It was as if the planet was changing us in strange ways. Mom knew I could defend myself and hoped it was enough to keep the men that had genetically reverted off me. None of us children born here were old enough to remember where we came from so we did not know that we were developing skills and coordination that no child before us had. At the time, the theory was that something with this planet, that we had dubbed Endita, destabilized our genes. But at first all we knew, was that some men had changed. So, a whole new skill set developed among the children without the adults really knowing, and if they did, they felt our circumstances were too dire to pay attention because other things were more pressing. After the first two years, food got much easier because we knew what plants were safe and what was not. I followed mom, or she carried me, around as she gathered food. It was fearsome when she killed animals, especially those who intended to do the same to us.

No child before had ever experienced this planet and we would more have things happen as we came to puberty. Some of the older ones that developed before me just thought that their strength, speed and mental control were normal so no one talked about it much. One of the most important developments that happened to me is that I could make my spear go very fast, so I could kill animals that were pretty large, and my aim was nearly perfect. It wasn’t that I could throw so hard with my skinny arms, but something happened when I concentrated to make the spear accelerate, or something like that. Later, I might be so grateful if a predator of another kind attacked.

Several days later, a huge animal bore down on baby and I as we were digging roots. It had 6 limbs with the front pair being able to grip things but had no opposable thumb. He was almost on us, bellowing loudly, when I threw and much to my astonishment, my metal tipped, wooden spear went right through his head and the tip protruded from his rear. Later, as the animal was butchered, they found that the spear had somehow entered the spinal column and stayed there until exiting at the rear of the animal. He dropped immediately without even a death sigh; leaves and twigs hitting me in the face. I just dropped onto my now expanding butt and sat there dazed. Habibti cried a little but seemed to understand very quickly that everything was OK. Some other children must have heard the ruckus and came to see the cause. Seeing them I lost it, gasping and weeping so much that I upset baby again. Holding her in my arms felt so comforting and I calmed down very quickly after that, and would later find out that baby had calmed me with this little thing she does. The others around me quickly began to gut, skin and flay the beast. He would feed us all for a few days until the meat soured. Later, we would understand how to salt and dry meat to make it last longer. The adults had boiled the sea water to get what little salt we needed, but one of the kids, digging along a ravine found a wide vein of it, and it tasted better. Later one of the adults showed us how to salt meat and fish and how to sun dry it.

There was no paper and writing. We just survived and someone would die occasionally. Several of us died at first but that seemed to have stopped. We built a log wall around our group of homes by digging a ditch and then put poles in it upright and packed the soil. That mostly kept the huge animals out because they were just too stupid to push the wall down, though they could do it easily. Mom said the animals were similar to Earth dinosaurs, though I had never seen one of them. She told me that Earth scientists must have gotten got it wrong because they assumed there would be big predators, but here on Endita, the large meat eaters mostly just went around cleaning up the dead who had gotten too old or died by falling or some disease.

As the weeks and eventually years, wore on, the adults began to look tired and worn. By Mom’s account, Habibti began to show special faculties when she was about two. I was 14 and now called “Jenny” and by then and had breasts to feed Habibti, I think the tea that mom gave me every day, and special things about this planet made it happen. I didn’t understand it as abnormal but my boy junk was almost gone and in another year, I would begin to fully function as a woman. Breastfeeding was so fulfilling and never having been an adult male, diverting my path to become a female felt normal. None of us children know how this happened and that it was not the usual course of a human child. In fact, the preadolescent of us was no longer even Homo Sapiens. When the adults found out, they would call us Homo Spacia.

One day 8-year-old Habibti and I were out gathering food, she was becoming very helpful and a great companion. We had just dug up some roots that were particularly tasty when cooked. I was sorting through some undergrowth when I heard a commotion behind me. When I turned around, my knife was already in my left hand and the spear was in my right hand. One of the revert men had Habibti cornered but she did not seem afraid. I was ready to throw the spear, but she turned and said, “No Mom”. Lately, the reverts had become very violent and predatory, and a few of us had been attacked. Forming teams, we hunted those within a day’s walk and either killed them or ran them off.

As I watched she looked at the revert and he seemed to calm down and eventually stood there calmly as she softly spoke to him. She was making tiny movements with her hands and in reaction his head tilted and turned strangely. “Now, you can stay and help us or you must leave and never come near us again.”

“I stay and work” he said calmly.

“Do you know where we sleep?”

“I know, I follow many days”.

“Then, please pick up this bundle and take it back there, and put it in the front, then come back here?”

“Yes, I do this”.

After he left, Habibti turned to me and said, “I can easily control the reverts, but not you.” It would feel like a violation of your person. You found me and cared for me and are my Mom. I love you too much to ever hurt you.”

Habibti walked over and we hugged. It was then I knew that she was a special girl. We’d done genetic tests on her and it seemed likely that her Mother was one of the women that went missing. We did not know how to test for the sort of changes that we children were experiencing.

As the years passed, we found that most of us children had special qualities, many of them common to each other and others completely unique.

When I was 25 and Habibti was 13 she came to me and said there was someone special. We talked and agreed that they would wait a while to make sure it would last before they did it. She and he would build a hut close to ours, and they would dig a passage into the same cavern that we used. I hoped that we would always be close. Her guy was Nick, a young man that I had cared for communally when he was little. He even called me Mom like Habibti, but for him it was merely a sign of respect and endearment.

We walked out together to find my Mom and tell her. “Oh, honey you are so young, are you sure?”

“We think so, and Mom has asked us to wait a while to be sure.”

“That’s really wise”. I could see a tear on her cheek and Mom just stood there a moment.

I said, “We are going to go find Dad and tell him.”

“Oh, I am not so sure that is a good idea sweet heart.”

“But Mom, this is really important and Dad should know”.

Mom seemed to be really set against our going but suddenly calmed and acquiesced to the idea.

As our little group walked toward the shuttle, I looked at Habibti. “You did that to Mom, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Habibti was smiling when she said it, “but I would never hurt anyone and never do it to you.”

“Did you do that to the revert man?”
“OH, he was much more difficult to change, and him I changed a lot. I would be very reluctant to do that to any of us”.

We got to the shuttle and found it larger than we thought it would be because we seldom went there, so forgot its size. We walked up the ramp and Mom opened the hatch. I’d never been even close to the shuttle and when we walked into the scene of complete chaos there I didn’t understand what I was seeing. Mom just gasped and started softly crying. She sank onto a box sitting there. Dad was just sitting up in the crew bay looking like he was completely lost, and none of the crew seemed to be doing any better.

Dad said, “We just can’t get it to work and don’t know why.”

Habibti and Nick looked confused at first and then Habibti began to speak softly and waving her hands in that funny little way. Dad was the first to seem to recover a little and Habibti walked over to him; actually, she seemed to float a little. Dad got up and walked her over to one of the library screens and showed Habibti some things. To my great astonishment, she sat down and slowly at first began to use the machine’s keyboard, but then stopped. It looked like she was just staring at it but later, as I walked around to see the screen, we would see that she was drawing information directly from the storage unit and probably as fast as it could work, Mom said. Usually, a non-keyboard connection took a lot of training and was exhausting to the operator.

After what seemed like hours, she stopped and walked over to me and my parents. I am tired, and Nick and I need to rest. If it is acceptable, we will use one of the crew quarters. Mom, can stay here and learn how to help them or do you want to go back to our home? I am having to learn their letters, alphabet, language and science, and doing that has me very tired so I must eat then sleep.

I was overwhelmed with the change that happened to Habibti in such a short time. Later I would learn a truth that was both wonderful and heart breaking at the same time. As I walked back to the hut, the young ones that I encountered seemed sad and exhausted and those who would talk would only say that Habibti was very tired and needed rest. Was Habibti even more special than the rest of us children? Then I smiled and giggled softly because at past age 25, I still thought of myself as a child. Later it would become clear that we really were like children and would be for years to come.

When I got to the hut revert Tom was sitting outside and seemed sad. He too said that Habibti was tired and he was sorry. After that, he got up and walked off into the woods.

The next morning as I walked back to the shuttle, I noticed revert Tom in front of me, walking toward the shuttle. The walk took us a good while. As we approached it was clear that most of us that had been born on Endita were there also and more were coming. I talked to some of them, and they taught me that many of them were talking to Endita and she was teaching them. It was clear to me that my own experiences were similar to theirs, but I was not of the feeling that She was teaching me, why not?

As I voiced my hurt that Endita was not communicating with me, one of the other girls was talking quietly to me, and a light buzzing feeling began in my head. The girl told me that since I had changed gender, it took longer for my communication to open up to Endita, and she told me it would happen in the soon future.

In the Shuttle, Habibti was animatedly talking to Mom and Dad, and as I got closer it was clear to me that Dad was much encouraged from the previous day. As I listened, it became clear that Habibti felt that the much of the power to the shuttle had failed even before it crashed. Actually, the crash was not bad piloting or a tunnel cave in.

Habibti wanted to take part of the propulsive unit out and take it to a place to fix or “heal” it. The crew felt that getting too close to that part was far too dangerous and were not going to allow it, but when Habibti called to three of her friends, they came in with her and went into the machinery bay. I could hear them all speaking softly and when they came out, their hands were swaying like Habibti’s did once in a while. The sick part was suspended between them, just floating. There seemed to be a transparent ball surrounding it and they walked it outside and down the ramp. They stopped at the bottom of the ramp and spoke to the rest of the children, then the four of them walked the piece off into a ravine that led in a direction that none of us had ever explored.

Mom and I had followed them out and down the ramp and I was going to follow them, but one of the girls told me it might be too dangerous. What? My own baby Habibti was taking a risk that everyone felt was too dangerous for me? I wanted to go anyhow but Mom and another girl held me while I wept and when I calmed down they stayed close to comfort me. While we were waiting, many of the others began to discuss what they could do to help. Mom and I walked over to that large group. “All of the crew are so discouraged, they won’t be able to make the shuttle fly again unless we help them”, Mom said.

There weren’t many words exchanged but then most of the group started speaking softly, and waving their hands in slow, low circles. Slowly and with purpose they spread out to form a loose circle around the shuttle. The ground vibrated a little and then the shuttle began to rise out of the tunnel, straighten to the horizontal and move off to a flat place where it once again sat on the ground.

The whole crew of the shuttle came running out when they felt the shuttle straighten and then the slight bump when it sat down. They were so astonished, wondering how this could have happened? We all slept that night under the shelter of the shuttle with the shield on and them pumping some of the heat from the power unit down. In the morning, the sky was overcast and it was raining slowly. Everything seemed so dismal. After more than 25 years on the surface of Endita it seemed the stranding was suddenly going to be over if the others could somehow heal the propulsion unit. And, yet we knew that the mission had changed even if everyone on the ship in orbit had survived.

Later that day, the others returned with the power unit in the middle of a heavy downpour, so heavy in fact that we did not see them coming until they called to us from the edge of the murk. The power unit had a light blue glow that the crew had never seen in any power unit. It only took a few minutes to put it back in place and then the four who escorted it came out. They looked near to collapse and some of them looked burned. I ran over to Habibti and asked how she was. “Mom, I am so ill that I can barely stand. Mom, help me, please?

This time all of us took Habibti and the others back to the ravine, carrying them between us. The path descended into a cavern and the trail went deep until we came to a place with glowing walls, and a pool of molten something, and we could not tell what it was. The whole group but I began to cry out to Endita to save the burned children and for a long time it did not seem like she responded. How could I not be a part of this? How could I be made to sit idly by and let my little Habibti suffer or even die?

Habibti seemed very weak but as she laid down, I heard her cry out in anguish. I quickly scrambled to her side and laid her feverish head in my lap. This was too much and I wept for her. She was so young, but smart and energetic, how could this be? Not knowing if I could also talk to Endita, I cried out to the planet, asking for help. I started to get a strong feeling of confusion from the planet and then one of the children perhaps, started talking to Endita; explaining human knowledge and physiology as much as she understood. Then, when there were questions between them, Sarah, the child started speaking to Endita about the human knowledge base on the shuttle and how to get into it and cautioning her not to make it work too hard or it would break.

Endita, as a living planet, had intelligence beyond any known measurement, but her lack of knowledge made her seem childlike. Then, much to everyone’s surprise, Endita went silent; as if she were not there. Later we would hear that the computer system on the Shuttle went crazy, and then started streaming back and forth from the orbiting Colony Ship for days.

On the morning of the third day, Endita was back with us. “I am sorry to have left you. I was absorbing knowledge and postulating a solution.” Endita’s much more mature vocabulary as she “mind talked” surprised us until we understood that with her access to the knowledge library on the Colony ship, she likely knew more than anyone here.

I could feel the children’s joy first and then what amounted to their warmly embracing Endita, or at least as much as you could do it in your own mind. I didn’t feel as connected as they but very soon it was clear that Endita intended to help us all, and all those born on this planet were her children. In the coming days, we would learn that it was accidentally Endita that caused the breakdown of the shuttle simply because her communications were on a band that was destructive to Human space propulsion systems. Communications? Who was she talking to? The answer was a shock to all of us, something we would learn much more about in the future.

As it developed, Habibti and her companions came out of the cave a few days later, looking much better and with a subtle glow about them, especially Habibti. When she and her boyfriend came together I could almost see sparks of happiness between them. Briefly, I wondered what their children would look like.

Endita simply stopped communicating in the energy band that was so destructive to the space engine on the shuttle, and a test flight revealed that it worked much better than when it had been built.

Mom and Dad were together again, and for a while they tried to “parent” both Habibti and I until I gently reminded them that I had just turned 26. Habibti was 14 now and felt she had a life mate, Nick, though her and he planned to wait for a while, so they could have fun without children.

As the days wore on, we all talked to Endita, and the leaders of the Colony ship through a data link. Eventually, it became clear that the children born here would not continue with the ship. Their parents could stay or continue the journey to a habitable planet. Endita felt it would be too unhealthy for her to allow human industrialization and huge populations. Eventually it would be clear that any sort of use of fossil fuels could not happen. Solar power could be used but not manufactured here. The primitive state of Endita was required for her survival.

In her conversations with her neighboring special entities, mostly meaning other planets, she and her friends located an asteroid belt with the materials needed to resupply the propulsive materials of the Colony ship. As the conversation continued, Endita was astonished with the inefficiency of the engines on it. So, in what seemed like a risky, even terminal maneuver, the huge Colony ship was grounded in a meadow some distance from our habitation. The ship was not built to withstand the forces of gravity, so we were very worried. Amazingly, Endita extruded soft soil supports for the vessel to rest upon as repairs were done.

Rather than risk the health of any of the humans, Endita used her own gravitational influences, working with the humans in safe suits to help overhaul and redesign the engines on the ship, plus the power sources for the environmental facilities. All this work took a couple decades and in the meantime, those in stasis were brought out, conscious for a year or so to have some enjoyment and to gain further education at the hands of those that knew the new knowledge that Endita and the scientists had compiled. Those who continued the journey to colonize other worlds would know to look for sentience in the bodies they encountered and to have respect for it. In return, many of the planets encountered could safely support humans in a sort of symbiotic and cooperative way.

I was in my Fortieth year when the Colony ship was back in orbit, and most of the occupants who would be continuing the journey were once again sleeping. Mom and dad had decided to stay on here on Endita, with her blessings and a small science station. As it developed, planetary communication was instantaneous. The largest issue was gaining the awareness of the humans at both ends. At first the travelers made use of it until fears developed that huge industrial combines would sweep in and devastate the area. After that realization, the communication stopped since it was deemed too unsafe for the sentient planets.

Unbeknownst to the humans, Endita shared what she had learned with other sentient planets, and they developed plans to send expeditions back the way we had come; clear back to Earth, our planet of origin. The journey would likely take a very long time, but the intention was to first educate the occupants, then to make them aware of the pain they had inflicted. If a change in conductance could not be brought about, then to exterminate those populations. Endita could not and would never share the plan with humans.

Along the way, those headed for the region of space that Endita occupied were deflected or exterminated. Happily, they could be deflected almost all the time. Each expedition they encountered got a hidden program in their computing and navigational equipment, the purpose of which was to monitor their location and activities, and to detect encounters with other sentient beings along the way.

For thousands of years, Homo Sapiens thought it was the dominant sentient life form of the Universe. Would they ever understand that was not so?