Aquari by DD White
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(Some galactic history from the Nephaprican databanks preserved by the Eigalli)
Although the formations of Magphoreus began in an orderly calculus, in the first billion years of the universe there existed a time of chaos and violent destruction in all the great galaxies, which echoed the chaos and violence that originated as our understanding of a Big Bang. This stage of the first age of Magphoreus had been the extreme of what began with simple fusion of condensed gas, which then resulted in a super massive black hole fed by the massive potential matter and energy encompassed by the first stars of the age. These mother stars were too large to live very long lives. The light blue population III stars, or mother stars forged the original complex molecules of the universe like the original wombs of life. They also fed the black hole known as Ralus Xnoga in the high-language of the galactic beings that inhabited the Nephaprican Empire.
The Nephapricans were able to document interventions of intelligent beings during that time when Ralus Xnoga cleared the center of Magphoreus of millions of ancient stars. Perhaps the fact that the Nephapricans knew of Aquari helped them to document a life form that evolved during the first 4 billion Earth year long age of this galaxy. This had not been terrestrial life, and somehow it found its origin with the destruction of population III stars, and the formations of population II stars that consisted of less mass and heavier elements. The Nephapricans believed that beings such as Aquari evolved during this first age. The Incapricans, on the other hand, tend to speculate that these beings of light are from a higher dimension who have long been exploring our universe with two of their dimensions.
From the technologies that evolved out of examining ancient photons came the discoveries of pre-life life who were beings that emitted photon energy, and struggled with other pre-life enigmas related somehow to Ralus Xnoga. The millions of stars that quenched the super-massive black hole’s initial appetite ultimately ushered in the second galactic age that began around five billion Earth years after what we understand as the Big Bang. Toward the end of the first galactic age a period of tremendous galactic activity began. Current Earth understanding would quickly dismiss fairy tales of beings of light that existed in the first galactic age, and probably point out that they don’t exist now. The Nephapricans would simply point out Aquari.
Aquari had become known as a being of light who probably even came at least from the time of the first galactic age. Aquari may even actually qualify as immortal with no known beginning or end. Aquari remains however, a mystery and subject of speculation among thousands of life forms who have had the pleasure of meeting him/her/it/Aquari. The ancient Nephapricans of the second age definitely would not have passed up the opportunity to study Aquari and they probably obtained an incredible knowledge of Aquari’s nature, history and origin. One such unresolved mystery about Aquari would be the question of where are other beings like Aquari to be found? As far is known there are no other beings like Aquari, at least not in this part of the galaxy. Perhaps each galaxy has some beings like Aquari zooming from star to star faster than light in the form of impossible comets. Although the lore recorded by the Nephaprican Empire has many stories of Aquari it is always just the one Aquari. It also might be that such beings are impossible to tell apart. His appearances on many worlds have often resulted in a recorded history with some mention of a being of light.
Toward the end of the first age of Magphoreus it appeared that there were many beings very similar to Aquari. They apparently met their demise with the rise of Ralus Xnoga. The galaxy’s super-massive black hole devoured much of the first stars along with civilizations of Aigon-Sophin, which translates as a word meaning children of the first born light. After the first age the nature of reality seemed to change in a way that no longer supported the kind of life that were the Aigon-Sophin. The first age ended after putting out the quasar formed by Ralus Xnoga’s feasting, and with Magphoreus becoming a massive manufacturer of the complex elements that had to be formed before life as we understand life could come to exist.
After the demise of the Aigon-Sophin with the first galactic age, the beginning of life as we know it fueled by complex elements and a mysterious alchemy of the stars had became stirred by light itself. In the second age life forms were now much more than just a trick of the light from before there were molecules complex enough to create life. With the sacrifice of the light of the first age, Magphoreus forged new elements that had never before existed, and stirred their wealth to the ends of its seven mighty arms. The first 200 million years of the universe’s dark beginnings saw the faint blue light that emerged from the population III stars, which would dwarf thousands of entire solar systems like the Earth’s in scale. A few million years later these stars began giving way to gravitational pressures that created the havoc, which resulted in the super massive black hole, Ralus Xnoga, currently about 2.7 million solar masses packed into about a tenth of that size itself in the center of the 13.6 billion Earth year old Magphoreus.
While terrestrial life may tend to be more temperamental when given a short person complex the 2.7 million solar mass black hole suffers from a dim light complex. Ralus Xnoga pushed up against the speed of light established by the Aigon while it tossed whole stars around its orbit like toys at unimaginable speeds, not to mention in spite of the gravitational impossibilities predicted by Earth’s relativity physics, Ralus Xnoga spins the entire galaxy. The incredible ferocity of Ralus Xnoga had been tamed in the Great War of Light and Darkness told about in scientific legends by the Nephapricans to explain the first age of the galaxy.
In the second age Magphoreus began to swallow surrounding cluster galaxies and wandering star burst galaxies. Although stars from these smaller galaxies did not have heavy elements, it appears that terrestrial life may have originally seeded this galaxy with terrestrial life from swallowed peripheral galaxies. This original terrestrial life is the oldest life known, cold-blooded, and reptilian in nature. Being cold blooded, the advanced races obtained the ability to live over a million Earth years as their aspirations of evolution, intelligence, and civilization began to launch across the depths of space to other stars. Even the Nephapricans who rose up billions of years later would only obtain a life span of a few thousand Earth years in length by the end of the golden age of their empire when the actual Nephapricans disappeared along with the seven great star-doors. Short life spans handicapped the Nephaprican’s ability to maintain a galactic culture. Reptilian life proved capable of a genuinely galactic life span, however reptilian life embraced a nature less inclined to rise up to the challenge of space travel or even civilization, or intelligence at all for that matter; being a simpler expression of terrestrial life. The exceptions to this rule however, are some of the most ancient well-established advanced galactic civilizations out there, proving the efficiency of keeping things simple.
Magphoreus has become over 100 trillion stars strong encompassing a spiral ellipse 17,000 parsecs wide, and a light-year thick, and has swallowed dozens of surrounding dwarf galaxies of a few million stars to contribute to the design of the great and ancient Magphoreus. The galaxy remains surrounded by a halo of these simple stars where reptilian life may have began its combinations of chromosomes that were understood by Nephapricans to be one of the molecular mechanisms left behind the demise of the light beings who inhabited the first galactic age.
Whatever way life had actually initially learned to copy itself, it is known to galactic civilizations that the basic codon and chromosome arrangements are fundamentally identical in terrestrial life that evolves in the habitable zones of stars. There are however, all kinds of life forms evolving in the galaxy, even beyond anything we would recognize as life. Magphoreus actually has zones where life will tend toward one kind or another. For example, the area of the galaxy near the center is very violent and spinning at unimaginable speeds. In this zone of the galaxy silicon based life is actually common. Silicon
Most of the life forms that have come to evolve on habitable planets in Magphoreus are exhibited on Earth in some form or another. These forms of life are in varying degrees of advancement based on the environment. A type of life that is an almost inanimate plant on Earth may take a form that speaks a language, walks up to you, and shakes your hand on another planet that probably has an environment requiring you to wear a space suite. Warm blooded mammal life is more rare in this galaxy although very likely to attain high intelligence. One profound mechanism of DNA constructed by the Aigon-Sophin became intelligent life’s tendency to trigger the pentanthropomorphic gene switches. A genome with enough pentanthropomorphic gene switches turned on results in beings that stand upright on two legs with two arms and one head. The five fingers and five toe configuration is the most popular, although there are other exceptions to this code’s application due to the contribution of natural selection by reality. The pentanthropomorphic gene switches are something warm-blooded life forms have in common with intelligent reptile life forms of cold blooded metabolisms. A glaring exception to that rule is aquatic life on water worlds throughout the galaxy, but these forms of life tend to view anything outside their water environments as a whole other dimension altogether. Thus only a few aquatic life forms seem to have evolved to the status of galactic beings that are capable of traveling the unfathomable distance between stars to colonize their popular brand of life on a world far beyond the planet that served as the cradle of their existence. To an intelligent being on a water world even the concept of dry land can seem like an incomprehensible dimension, or the stuff of unsettling dreams.
Magphoreus has even spawned a few million successful galactic races of insect and arachnid life forms during the 8 or 9 billion years since the start of the second galactic age. There has even been many methane breathing life forms that have taken to interstellar travel from home worlds that exist far outside the warm habitable area of a star. On the planets of methane breathers, ammonia gas serves as the refreshing water on a planet where archaeologists dig up ancient arrowheads made of water from the water age of a planet so cold that rocks happen to be made of H2O.