The Traveller Effect (LGBTQ+)

8 ✖ Family Name

Song of the chapter:

Amanda Palmer - Runs In The Family✖

"The Family Name's planet is quite different than Earth," they started, eyes moving away from the surrounding park towards the pond in front of them. They regarded the body of water carefully. "Our planet has a considerable atmosphere, making it appear like a gas planet from the outside with bands of gas. Because of this, most of the starlight from our system's sun is reflected or blocked. It makes the entire planet dark, the only real light from the luminescent animal and plant kingdom. That is why our eyes are primarily accustomed to the dark," they started, one bony finger tapping at their sunglasses through the glove.

"The majority of the atmosphere is made of nitrogen, as you can suspect. We do have water, but it is only deep within the crust of the planet. Barely usable except to the insect life. That is why the Family Name and the other living things have evolved in very strange manners to accommodate long nitrogen molecules being explosive, although self-combustion is common to some species," I frowned at their words, thinking about a poor dog or whale suddenly exploding themselves.

"You said that your only water is deep within the ground, so you have no oceans?"

"No," they stared onto the pond. "We do not have aquatic life,"

"But doesn't like all life start within the ocean? Or, obviously, that's just how we come to know it,"

"All of our life began as plants," I looked at them with utter confusion. "Our planet was once completely plant-based before the Parent Ships came,"

"Is it another species?"

"In a sense. The Parent Ships are mechanical lifeforms from deep within space. Whether they had been engineered themselves, we do not know, but they had nurtured us. They had sent down proxies onto the planet and had created a single entity from the complex biosphere that had formed by then. This entity is the progenitor of the Family Name: EENNG'ELLLZZ.

Tree of Life.

Tree of Life is an excellent translation, as that is what they are, in essence. Tree of Life is the person who produces life-carrying spores once a century. To use your words, Tree of Life is our biological parent while the Parent Ships are our adoptive parents. The ones who take care of us.

When Tree of Life gives off spores, the spores spread across the planet and gets embeds into various terrains. With every century, two Parent Ships return to the planet. One is referred to as the Protector, as their duty is to release protective shells every century to the planet and enclose the new spores. These shells keep outside influences at bay while the spores develop and feed information so that when the sporeling is released into the world, they already have enough knowledge to survive and start a living on.

This process also takes one hundred years.

That is why a second Parent Ship, a new Parent Ship from wherever they come from, also arrives alongside the Protector and takes in all the new sporelings when they are released from their shells. There is enough of these sporelings to be considered an entire civilisation of sort, and the Parent Ship is that large as well.

The new sporelings are educated and tested for various skills on the Parent Ship as it takes them away from the planet, assigning them different roles within their pseudo society. The Parent Ships also play favouritism, and the Family Name that gets to rule above the others is considered as the Favourite One. Sometimes, for whatever reason, a Parent Ship might trade one of their sporelings for another from a passing Parent Ship.