ÆTHEREA: The Age Beyond Proxima [ONGOING]

The Proxima Centauri

It was a usual sunny 6PM Earth-time on this moon, year 2230, when Vlenka finally managed to get up from her dusty bed to compose herself from a day of sobbing, and from listening to audio files about a dead planet to search for answers. Just three days ago after Vlenka finally discharged from the military enlistment and met her mother again after three years, a what-the-fuck-this-can't-be-happening situation happened. One among other law breakers, her mother Eula- the prime pedagogue of Central Academe, was banished and sent to Abasement after the Central Union discovered that she was an avid fan of Earth and started teaching young scholars that the ancient Earth has now been healed. She was the power daughter of the late Vice-President Tamara and the first Maharlikan to head the Ministry of Galactic Transportations, and also, a pedagogue, Yosef. Her parents were the founding councilmen of a small secret cult named Earthlinks. Both were banished in 2201 after being disclosed to the authorities. Eula was secretly reviving the group for almost three years, recruiting hundreds of Æthereans to join her great cause. Their mission was to bring the human race back on Earth by finding the lost NASA project- The Genesis. This mythical project was believed to be a twin ground system plan of Project Proxima. But no one really knows how and where to find it, how the plan really works, and if it really is real. Some said it was stolen by the Chinese during The Flight. Some said it was the Maharlikans who stole it after they accumulated the first deadly alien virus here on Ætherea. Some said The Great Americas still has it and kept it as a secret weapon for future purposes. Some said there was actually no Project Genesis at all, but just a myth to give hope during The Leviathan Drought.

It is illegal under Central Union's one government Apodeictic policy to coalesce a clandestine group that believes blasphemous and stupid Earth rumors. Those who oppose the Central and its laws will be thrown away to the other side. The 106 year old Central government is the universal ruling system for the last surviving human race, with only one religion, one currency, one constitution, and one nation with almost zero crime rate and very much controlled population growth via one-child policy. There is only one rule if you want to live: follow the Central. This government strongly disagreed the debatable millenial issue of checking in on Earth again and adding it back to their galactic missions to study. As per NASA and scientists said, it would just waste Ætherean resources building missions on a very dead planet.

The Abasement is the other side of this heavenly body served as the Ætherean prison and penance. It has never seen a proxima light for millions of years, much probably since its creation, and it is far way cooler than the surface of Ætherea where light from the red star can only reach; the other half that never experienced sunsets and starry nights. And since it's a rogue moon, it was torn from its orbital planet and flung outward outside the system to drift through space, may be as common as stars in the universe. Just like any other moon, Ætherea doesn't rotate, and the area where proxima light can reach became tidally locked, forever pointed toward the red sun; leaving the other side in cold dim, forever.

The other half of this moon- the Abasement, is a Brobdingnagian, dark, dry, death-freezing ice cap burning from −84° to -103° Farenheit, much cooler than the winter temperature of Earth's South Pole. It is an icy Valley of Hinnom somewhere in Milky Way Galaxy. It is their hell. No one was even reported to have survived the dimmed zone's icy mountain boundaries, not in this rogue moon's hundred and twenty-two years of contact history with tellurians since its discovery, except for Crazy Dux who claimed he had escaped from there and had seen a glimpse of a paradisiac scenery.

And bleep! Vlenka's personal AI smartwatch, an Ætherea Voice Assistant stunned her thoughts. "G'day, digger! Rebooting is succesfully done! Take a Captain Cook at my new and grouse features. Give it a burl!" The small screened, female-voiced device stated in a Stryne accent.