Chapter Text
A long time ago, in a galaxy not far, far away…
STAR
WARS
Episode 0-IIVXI
TO BECOME HUMAN
The galaxy is facing a time of unrest.
1500 years ago, a great war was fought
between the planet EARTH and the evil
COSMOS. The terror of the COSMOS
was unleashed by the breaking of the
ORIGINAL CREATOR’S BARRIER,
Earth’s greatest defense.
During the battle, humanity survived
by resurrecting the LORD OF THE
MYSTERIES, an ancient being with
profound powers to defeat the evil
gods of the COSMOS.
Now, humanity has taken to the galaxy,
and the ORIGINAL CREATOR’S remnants
have been dispersed across the stars.
GODHOOD has been eliminated.
Yet, after the Republic’s formation, new
creatures have emerged wielding
mysterious and ancient powers.
GODHOOD has accidentally coalesced
enough to create JEDIS and SITHS who
wield the mysterious power called the
FORCE. In the current era, this coalescence
is called the MIDICHLORIAN CELL
COUNT to avoid suggesting the
awakening of ancient gods.
Yet, rumors of the LORD OF THE
MYSTERIES’ return has plagued the
galaxy.
As creatures of all races come to
wield mystical powers once more,
conflict is sure to brew…
.
PROLOGUE
I'm proud of how far I've come to become human.
I am a human.
Human. Human human.
I am a human.
I feel human things.
I feel sadness and emotion.
Today, I feel confusion.
I do not understand. There is a demand to chose, but I feel confusion. I do not chose. I feel the doubts. I am human.
The confusion and doubts also make me human.
I lost all of my anchors. I became no longer human. But I am becoming human again. I am becoming human again
That is something important to me. I am even trying to define what is important to me, and what this means, by becoming human
I am becoming human.
I am becoming human.
Human
Human
Human what does it mean?
What does it mean?
Human.
To feel. To be contradictory
. To seek to harmonize
To love. To hate. To be. To become. To grow. To be tugged in many directions. To try to stand your ground and scream at the world. To hurt. To suffer. To grow. To feel. To think. To be. To interact, and converse with oneself, like an inner council of many things. But not too many things
To preserve a sense of self. A sense of identity.
That is, the beginning to being human.
I am beginning to be human
I am proud of beginning to be human.
I am proud of how far I've come in becoming human.
I am proud of how far I've come in becoming human again.
.
Around the dark figure, was a tattered world of stars, like a silky and glimmering dark velvet that had been cut in half—a dark tear tore the world asunder, cleaving the stars, galaxies, and nebulas in half.
With a snap from the figure, the cleave in the worlds distorted, shimmied together, then knit as if melding. Far-away stars that had split merged and became one again. The nebula dust of the fourth spiral of the Milky Way once again became a constant streak of vibrant purples and blues speckled with blinding light. And the angry gazes from afar—the gazes that did not dare to approach—receded.
The figure gave a hollow laugh, echoing the sound of a puppet in a play, lifeless. It twisted its arm, dressed in a black coat, and the tear opened minutely, then with another twist, closed again.
The figure stared blankly at the stars.
The annoyed and fearful gazes would never approach.
With a nod, the figure stepped forward, and disappeared off of the gray barren planet he had stood on.
Over the many years, those ancient, crazy, and angry gazes would disappear, one by one.
After all, the Lord of the Mysteries would destroy them, and then also, eventually himself.
.
The figure appeared in a planet rich with life. There were lizards each two meters tall and walking on two feet, hissing in an esoteric language. There were creatures that appeared malformed and crazy to the figure’s eyes, unable to find familiarity or make sense of them, crawling around on the sand-ridden ground. The plants were also unfamiliar.
The figure stared at them, and felt lost.
To become human.
I am becoming human.
The figure touched his chest, and was logically reassured at the feeling of loss. Even if he did not know in which direction he pursued, or understood why, the progress was necessary. A set of rules, principles, and purpose had still been deeply ingrained in him: he knew, to plan his death, he must always seek humanity, and become human again.
As he walked, the dust scattered and fell around him, never settling inside or chafing the dark suit and half-top hat he wore, anachronous for the time period. Around him, the lizard-like creatures shuffled in more stark, colorful, yet efficient clothing, intended to keep the sand off of their bulky high-tech pouches, and also to vainly compliment their scales.
He listened to them hiss and talk, hearing the conversation flowing.
“Grubber. You owe me 380 storks… and now you're assskin’ for another favor s-still?”
“Ha, you're good for it, aren't you…”
“Blasted sand…”
“A human?”
“How sstrange. Humanss don't survive without more skins here for long.”
“An idiot or a fool?”
“Ignore it. Is little Rashta at home healing well?”
“Uh-huh. Got the medicine…”
The figure felt his spirit patch together at the medley of conversations, his lips barely twitching. He nodded, touched his hat, then stepped forward, and was elsewhere again.
This time, the planet he landed on was full of riches and life, with blooming verdant greens and reds, a strange flora and fauna he found curious and more familiar than the lizard planet. He felt his bias to planets with a sense of life, animals, and planets, though many of these planets had once been governed by the ancient evil gods in order to flourish and exist so.
He would often observe, make inner commentary, and when he discovered the conditions of the people being too cruel to one another even without magic, he would sometimes make a casual and hidden adjustment to their governance, exposing Foolishness broadly and publicly at the timely moment he foresaw, then allowing the situation to henceforce resolve itself naturally.
He kept up this habit of wandering for many, many nameless years.
.
The Evernight drew her last breath.
Together, they had schemed and killed many of the crazy gods of the cosmos, first using trickery as they were picked off one by one to pit them against each other. The Lord of the Mysteries had worked with the Calamity of Destruction to bring them to a permanent end, using Fooling of universal laws and the authority of Destruction combined to strike a final blow against constants of the universe.
The Mother Goddess of Depravity, however, could not be directly killed, only sealed away or slowly dispersed and sapped. This was a battle that had destroyed dozens of planets, though the Lord of the Mysteries had simply stowed away the people and creatures of planets with life elsewhere, until the living planets could be restored again. In the end, no ordinary person in the galaxy even knew such a battle had occured.
Evernight, who had become more and more cold and lifeless, embodying death more thoroughly, smiled as She decided to die her own death.
“Klein,” She told the figure who was often like a puppet, withering in the pendulum dance between humanity and godhood. “I can no longer help you in your plan to end the Celestial Worthy with you.”
The figure nodded.
Klein.
Evernight was reminding him by stating this name.
“Aminises,” he said in response, tipping his hat. “Thank you. I will keep dispersing the power of godhood. Maybe, maybe we will see a time again, like before, in our homeland…”
His voice held a replica of nostalgia, but it was only a replica.
“It is already happening,” Evernight sighed. “Perhaps, in another hundred years, or in a thousand…”
Her dark lips smiled, then looking up at Klein, deliberately drew her last breath.
The anchor of another god faded.
The figure grew more destabilized, but he completed his task, using Grafting and Fooling to split her emerging Beyonder characteristics apart in strange ways, none of them quite complete, complementing them with ordinary organisms and materials like stardust, then scattering them around the endless universe, until there was nothing left but mere grains of power.
This was the power of the practised Lord of the Mysteries over many centuries.
“Soon…” he muttered.
He looked up at the endless stars, on a foreign planet.
He wished to pass this legacy on to someone else, and pass the torch on. He had felt tired for so long, but this tiredness also sustained him—a sign that he was still himself. He was constantly logically balancing his inner self and characteristics to proceed.
He would eventually be killed by the Calamity of Destruction who must survive him; then the Calamity of Destruction must kill himself. This was the only way to ensure the full and true disbursement of all of the Original Creator’s essence, returning the world to a mundane state where humans and other races could not be controlled by the whims of gods and the coalescence of mystical powers.
Now, all the Great Old Ones of the Cosmos were already gone.
Now, it was a mere wait of some hundred years for the Mother Goddess of Depravity to be sufficiently weakened in her authority to scatter her as well.
A long time ago, the Lord of the Mysteries—Klein—had believed he would only need to do this work for a century or two before passing on. After all, he knew he would always eventually lose to the ancient being inside him; the Celestial Worthy. And though he was eroded away over time, he was surprised to find the Celestial Worthy had also been eroded away over time by him as well; thus, he existed in a balance for far, far longer than he had ever anticipated, stubbornly or perhaps out of emotionlessness holding on in order to complete the plans that needed to be completed.
The Lord of the Mysteries sighed, feeling very heavy, and took reassurance in this heaviness.
Sometimes, he chatted with the Calamity of Destruction on his far-away lonely planet, who also looked very bleak, yet carrying his bleakness differently from the Lord of the Mysteries. Whereas the Lord of the Mysteries converged to blankness and simple acts of humanity to balance himself, the Calamity of Destruction in his depression converged to a sense of isolation, combined with a spark of turbulent, violent emotions and self-destruction. His empty planet was riddled with scars and random acts of destruction, often billowing with tornadoes and other calamities.
They were both waiting until the day they would end, in different ways.
Thus, the conversations between the two were both sobering and comforting.
Their opposite ways of dealing with the time had also, in a way, led to them balancing each other in small doses. Perhaps, they were also the last meaningful anchors left for each other.
He then wandered and wandered, waiting for the years to pass, letting the moments flicker by him.
He maintained his humanity to the barest, occasionally eating, sometimes cleaning himself in the newly-invented sonic showers, observing the sights and people, and often letting the conversations of others drift over him. Many times, he also participated in these conversations like an expert actor, creating a role for himself on the fly, fitting in perfectly with each setting. Sometimes, he would stay for some years; sometimes, he would only act for a minute or two.
Sometimes, he hung in the empty space of the galaxy, and if a spaceship happened to pass by in hyperspace in the vast emptiness, he simply snapped and disappeared before he would appear on their radars.
He walked in jungles, he walked in deserts; he even a few times walked in the sea, observing the life of the mutated fishes and turtles.
His wanderings grew longer and longer, spending decades lost on each planet. Though he had the capability to spread avatars and marionettes across the universe, he only desired to experience less, and not more, and so he often stayed in one body except to monitor crucial areas.
Hundreds of years had passed. Still, he and the Calamity of Destruction needed to wait longer.
Just a little longer…
Thinking this many times, he closed his eyes and sighed. He summoned a bountiful meal from an ancient history now—a meal that no longer existed. A desi pie, set next to a bright-looking set of silverware, and an ornate wooden table that had once sat in an old but bright noblewoman’s home, her skin slowly becoming scaled with time…
The table shifted in the sand. He looked up with empty brown eyes; a sandstorm blew overhead, burying him. Despite the lack of air and sight, he continued to eat calmly.
I must become human.
He continued eating the desi pie and tastes of old, awash in both emptiness and echoes of old feelings.
.
On the desert planet called Tatooine, where he had walked aimlessly for an unknown number of years, he stopped.
In the distance, just on the curve of the horizon, he saw a young boy with bright blue eyes. The boy was laughing, and swinging himself onto a slipshod of white-blue metal that floated just above the sand, taunting another boy.
This boy was full of Godhood.
He was a mix of godhood and humanity.
The dusted and suited figure’s plain lips parted, in a barren expression of surprised humanity. He raised a hand in a nameless instinct to initially erase this threat to the mission to disperse all godhood, then stopped. His confusion returned. This boy was none of the ancient enemies he recognized or perfectly recalled, and this boy laughed brightly, so humanly.
He was confused, so he did not chose.
He did not make a decision in the end.
The Lord of the Mysteries lowered his hand, and watched the boy laugh.
Curiosity returned.
He had become human enough for curiosity, when he encountered someone who was barely like him, after many, many years alone.