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Years before the existence humanity itself, astronomical units away from Helios, the sun we know today, there flourished a solar system whose planets moons and dwarfs orbited their lord, a blue giant with a radius 74.1 times that of the Sun and an estimated mass of 21 solar masses, a star whose human given name is Rigel A or Beta Orionis but was referred to in those times as Clymene.
2,200 astronomical units away, two twin stars named Coeus and Phoebe revolved around each other in an eternal dance as they orbited the main star Clymene. Simultaneously, another star whose name was Oceanus revolved around them both, Coeus and Phoebe, creating a triple star system
As one could imagine, this situation didn't make things easy for the planets forced to orbit them, the ones revolving around the secondary and tertiary system were living in an eternal torture that consisted on being pushed around by the three star's gravity, going from extreme hellish temperatures to freezing cold in mere minutes, being stretched and squished by excruciating pressure, agonizing until the day that cycle came to its end by meeting a burning death, or, if they were lucky, by being expelled from the solar system to roam the vast emptiness of space in solitude for the rest of eternity.
Luckily, Prometheus and her three siblings all orbited the main cluster.
Prometheus, or Prometh as her siblings called her was a burning brown dwarf of an incredible size, with an unthinkable amount of mass inside her, which made her the strongest of all her siblings and one of the most powerful in the system right after the stars, and one of the only ones who ever dared to defy the orders of the mighty Clymene, apart from her brother Menoetius, that is.
Menoetius, despite being of smaller size and mass than his sister, was the one who had been alive the longest of the four, but not the wisest one for sure. He tended to be irritating even to the ones he agreed with, amongst them his equally short-tempered little sister. He was never the sharpest tool in the shed, but he had something burning inside him, and that flame was the one of rebellion.
The one that came after Prometheus, whose name was Atlas, was a peculiar one. He followed orders, not because of loyalty to the system but because he liked having something to hold onto. He thanked the relatively safe position he had been granted and never dared to question the ones that could change it. Needless to say, he appreciated his older sister but nevertheless thought her attempts at uprising were useless. He appeared to be unfazed most of the time, but the way his face twitched and his usual serious tone changed when threatened by the stars gave him away. At the end, fear was what motivated him to stay put.
Epimetheus was the youngest of them all, barely half a million years old and too small and vulnerable to sustain himself alone in that treacherous system they had been born in. A great majority of the planets that orbited the main star were gas giants or even brown dwarfs, for they were the only ones strong enough to defy the gravity of the secondary and tertiary system, but he himself was a simple rocky planet the size of Mercury amongst them, being forced to stay near his older siblings to not be pulled by a bigger interstellar object. Despite his situation, he was always a positive and loud one, a flash of light in a system full of stars that took it away. But he was still no child.
Prometheus, being merely two million years of age, had already grown tired of this cycle, seeing all those poor planets being tortured over and over again, as their selfish stars did nothing to help and just watched, focused on their endless ritual. The Older ones were used to it, they insisted on simply ignoring the more unfortunate. It is of no use for you will simply get attached. Oh so many things they said. Of course, due to her nature, Prometheus would not listen to a word she was told. She had a tendency to approach them, a tendency to pity them. A tendency that would and could only end in the despair of an inescapable death.
The small planets could leave their orbits for a few Earthling hours, sure, the stars weren't always watching, but doing that was only delaying their destiny; not even one of them was able to escape the embrace of death. And for most of the planets, that was reassuring. No demon in the fiery depths of hell was able to compare to the uncertainty of what they could have been if not born that way, born in there.
So many times had Prometheus tried to convince the great one to change its ways, so many times she had failed to get a drop of pity out of them. But that day she imagined the outcome would be different.
“Don't you understand Prometheus?” Said the mighty one, crossing its arms, its words traveling miles like the one of a god of thunder, its hot fiery breath showering Prometheus's face. “This is the way of the universe. If our solar system were to be any other way, it would be chaos; we would fall into entropy! We were brought to this universe like this for a reason. And that reason we must listen to.”
“But we already exist in entropy!” Responded she, enraged, as the oh-so-great one held her in its open palm. “Can't you see? Can't you see how many of your children are suffering eternal tortures only because you insist on following commands? But the command of whom? Who is making us ache if not you? You have the control to stop this, you are the only one who does, yet you prefer to follow an order no one knows who stated.”
The titan looked at her from its great height. Only the size of his nose was the one of Prometheus's entire body, but she did not feel terror at his might or power. She only felt anger. How could someone be born into such power? She wondered each time he stared into those empty, shining eyes. They shined, yes, but lifelessly, they produced not a bright but a mere light, a light that brought more darkness than the dark matter out there.
“You are one naive child.” Laughed Clymene as all the other planets in the system watched in panic, thinking this time she might actually get crushed. “I will not be changing the way of the universe only for you, small one. Some day you will realise that this is for the best, I'm doing this for all of you. A few small rocky planets’ lives are worth it if their losses are what it takes to follow the great plan.” It declined like it had done a million times before, right before turning its hand and dropping its planet to what was considered the ground.
A change of orbits, a small movement- that was all it would take to mix this mess. She had it all planned; she could be the end of all pain, but no, the stars insisted, even if they made a minuscule change, it could disturb the order of the entire solar system and only cause even more chaos. The gravity of the stars was too strong; it could only be done that way, the way the universe had ordered.
And right then and there was that she realised that nothing would ever change as long as there were stars around. They were the problem.
She groaned as she hit the planetary ground, which was the height at which everyone orbited the star. The planets, they could orbit at the level of Clymene’s eyes or chest, but they insisted they circled them at the height of its knees. So I can watch you all better It said, but Prometheus and her brother knew it was so they felt intimidated by its size, so they felt further away from it. She felt ridiculed; she looked up to see all of the others staring at her, some with pity, but most unamused.
“Get back to your orbits.” Said the star to them all, who soon took their places like nothing had happened.
“You bastard!” Prometheus yelled, knowing from her core that the star wasn't listening. “You are killing us! Do you hear me?! You are killing us! And even if we survive, we will all end up dying from one of you oh so powerful and all-knowing ones , exploding and consuming us all! We are prisoners and prisoners someday we will be no more! All your lives have deadlines, but us planets? The inferior ones? Without you, we would be immortal.” She turned the focus of her cries to the ones like her. “Soon, very soon, you will, my friends, realise what conforming does to one! To all of us! And you will join me in this war. If not, we will all die and my only comfort as I close my eyes for the final time before the light consumes us will be knowing I was right, that I warned you. And you all will look at me with teary eyes as I use my last breaths to remind you of what we could have been. Mark my words, friends and foes.”
She breathed heavily; no more words could come out of her mouth. She saw a blue dot approaching her silently. Of course, it was atlas, with his straight posture and wondering eyes. He stood before her and bowed solemnly.
“My sister.” Greeted he.
“You don't need to bow, Atlas.” She reminded him.
Her brother’s blue clouds swirled around peacefully as they radiated a deep coldness. He was the object of lesser temperature in the entire solar system, for he orbited the furthest from any of the four stars, for which people envied him. Oh, to be away from all of that madness as he was. Perhaps that was the reason of his mostly calm demeanour. Tough, he did have a temper, and he lost it quite often.
He nodded. “My dearest Prometh, what were you thinking?” Said he in his serious tone. “Some day, you are going to pay the consequences of talking to the ones above like this. You must realise that this is the way things are. And this is how they are meant to be.” He finished, holding both hands of hers.
She sighed.
“Doesn't it make you furious, brother? Seeing all of them, innocent ones die and suffer because of those dictators? Being torn apart and put back together repeatedly until there isn't enough of them left for a consciousness to remain? Only because they weren't born with the mass nor with the size of a star? Doesn't it feel unfair?”
He frowned.
“Of course it does, sister! It pains me to see all of that destruction, those poor little ones just like Epimetheus... oh, to think he could be one of them. I can barely hold back tears when I see those three blue dots in the distance. But there is nothing you can do! You are immature for thinking you alone can change this.”
“But we can.” She spoke.
They both went silent, refusing to make eye contact with each other. Deep down, Atlas knew his sister was right.
She looked up and sighed melancholically.
"Look, look at the stars afar, my brother, each of those tiny glittering, shining dots so many planets like us, isn't it beautiful?”
Atlas looked around him; despite all things horrible going on inside, there was still a vast universe outside of their solar system, billions of lives, billions of possibilities. For once he really felt at ease with the ways of the universe.
“It is quite the beauty." He smiled warmly.
“Is it?” His sister faced him strongly “You think its Beautifull how the light that reaches our eyes of all the millions of solar systems are just the remains of ones like us that were consumed by the ones they were supposed to adore? You think it's beautiful that we are actively staring at billions of corpses of helpless planets? Beautiful that they couldn't do anything to face the tyranny of their shining leaders?”
“W-well” He stuttered. “I didn't mean it like that.”
“Of course, none of us do. Look at them, Atlas look at those planets that met their fate, those like us that lived millions, even billions of years, knowing, no, thinking they couldn't do anything about their slowly approaching ends, because, them, the titans, were too powerful. Look at me, look at me in the eyes, my brother, look at those stars and tell me we are bound to end up like them, tell me that we are bound to accept each orbit is a slow step towards death. With each supernova millions of clouds of dust made out of the remains of asteroids and planets fly out into space and go on to create new stars and planets, to create a new cycle of pain and injustice. There must be something we can do. We must do something, if not for us for our solar system, if not for our solar system for every trapped and tortured planetin the galaxy."
The smaller one placed a hand on his sister’s shoulder, brushing her long red hair off.
“But what are we to do, Prometh?” Whispered he.
She responded after a brief pause. “We need to eliminate them.”