LF Friends, Will Travel

Innovation is Impartial - Chapter 14

Date: 77 PST (Post Stasis Time)

There is something special about returning home.

No matter how long it's been, no matter where it is, the melancholic feeling of returning to where you spent your childhood is universal and unchanged amongst all beings in the universe. Of course, for some it's more powerful than others: species will often return to their places of birth for more specific reasons, repurposed into breeding grounds to create the next generation. But no matter the person or where they came from, where they came from has a special place in their heart... or whatever counts as a heart for them.

Streets that to other people look just like any other were the center stage for many journeys during their childhood. Buildings and dilapidated shopping centers, discarded by everyone else, are the backstop of important purposeful events in their young minds. Trees that look just like any other, once upon a time climbed by the curious young, are forever etched in memories as gigantic monuments to their successes in conquering them.

Even the air tastes different. A subtle taste, one that triggers a simple thought, one word for any that breathes in the oxygen of where they grew up: home.

Xavius, like any other sentient being, couldn't help but feel these feelings as she sat amongst the trees, looking down upon the village where she'd once been a child, a child with far more hope and wonder for the world around her than Xavius currently had.

"Little Green" was a small forest planet the Hagorthians had colonized, lived on by a few hundred thousand members of her species, spread out amongst primitive, mostly wooden villages. It was a harsh world, which suited the reptilians well as it meant they had a variety of things to hunt and fight over.

Slipping her stolen vessel through the planet's orbital defenses was child's play: she still remembered all the old codes, and the Hagorthians were not a species that changed things. In fact as she watched the village from afar, her gaze augmented by several miles through a simple viewing device, there was a sad dull realisation that nothing much had changed at all.

It had been over two hundred years since she'd fled the planet, and in that time the total progress of those she had left behind, was a big fat zero. A few people seemed to be missing, a few new ones added, but aside from the general progress of time, the only thing she could see was... Stagnation.

The same buildings, the same fighting pits, the same cruelty over and over that she'd left behind so many years ago, all still exactly the same as it was before. It was a perfect picture of why she was right, a concept that the Terrans would never understand: A culling of those holding her species back wasn't an act of evil, it was an act of mercy, stopping the entire culture from slowly collapsing and degrading as nothing ever changed.

Xavius had seen enough, mapped out the town where she'd once lived, all that was left to do was slowly begin the first stage of her work. The first group in her experiment had already been selected; a variety of individuals chosen, spread over genders and ages to properly check if the compound's protective qualities were successful in all circumstances, to ensure full immunity against her creation.

The Terran's initial demand that she create the vaccine for her weapon was one that had originally annoyed Xavius, but in retrospect was an exceptionally useful tool. Being able to choose which individuals lived or died would be critical in rebuilding Hagorthian society from the ground up, and there was nobody more qualified to make that choice than her.

She watched from a safe distance as her nanobots got to work, the telltale swats and flinches from each Hagorthian as the invisible swarm delivered their payloads of scientific mercy. Each one would think it was a simple insect bite, instead of a sign of them being spared from the upcoming slaughter. Mostly Infants and children, a few of the less aggressive elders and adults, those who were the closest to be considered civilized or 'good' people in her eyes.