FALAHA'S JOURNEY: A Spacegirl's Account in Three Movements

Episode #75

When the first Maok appeared, the Universe was already old.

Too cold, too hot, too vast, it certainly was a quieter, lonelier place, with occasional islands of life sprouting locally here and there, separated in time and space from each other, not even knowing of one another's existence, wondering whether they were alone in this huge place, whether their unique mind was but a glitch in the fabric of cosmic events, and was there any purpose to their existence.

Wherever the Maok went, life flourished—violently, passionately—and followed them, inevitably spreading throughout Vartra, making their existence a powerful catalyst for life in the Universe.

Their origin was a mystery even to the Maok themselves. They had descended from a single individual that had appeared on their native planet under circumstances unclear. That first being had no obstacles to increase its numbers, mating with a native species that developed some level of intelligence, but his descendants were somewhat different from the original and all carried a serial mark on their bodies. Soon the compatible species went completely extinct, perhaps assimilated into the new species, and the Maok finally topped off the food chain of the planet.

The Sleeping Ones, as they called themselves—the Maok, always plural—were beings who could spend their whole life sleeping, yet never appearing as such.

Their brain was divided into four parts, and they immersed a quarter of it at a time in slow-wave sleep. Thus they retained enough consciousness even for complex tasks. If greatly fatigued, three quarters of their brain could be immersed in sleep, leaving the fourth quarter to observe the surroundings and control body functions in the environment while performing simple tasks, such as swimming. Sleeping constantly throughout their lives, they never were fully asleep, but they could be fully awake, with all four quarters of the brain roused from rest.

They spent their lives in lucid dreams, being both awake and asleep at the same time, and having free access to the subconscious mind, which was involved in the thought process and was responsible for an objective, accurate and rapid assessment of the information received.

Because the Maok were always in a state of sleep with some part of their brain, the stressful neurochemicals were favorably suppressed and the area of the brain involved in processing emotions reduced its activity, yielding to the 'rational' part in the control of emotional reactions. Emotional experience was not stored in the memory during this process, only the memory of the event was saved. Emotional response was increased only during full wakefulness of the person, but after they returned to sleep mode, it smoothed out and recycled. This mechanism protected the psyche of the Maok from the never-ending informational bombardment. If, for any reason, the Maok were deprived of sleep for a very long time, it could drive them insane.

The structure of their brain made ardor one of their primary emotions, which could be both a positive and negative emotional process. They were extreme creatures, approaching the unknown with curiosity, but also with caution. Their response to pain or danger was conscious, evaluating. Of negative emotions there existed many degrees of dissatisfaction, frustration or resentment. They were also familiar with feelings of guilt and sadness. Positive emotions were mostly similar to ours. When the Maok experienced strong emotions, their purple eyes changed color to blue. The emotion that Wen was experiencing, which brought him to tears and which we've been interpreting as fear, was probably extreme displeasure or something close. Fear was virtually unknown to this species. He used the word 'scary' a lot, but fear was something he had learned about from others; the word simply meant 'to be aware of' to him. 'Agitated' was the word he used to describe our men who sensed death: who were actually afraid.

These creatures had six senses instead of the main five: sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and oversight—something very strange for living beings and which allowed them to communicate with thought imaging.