Zaigu: Part One

On the edge of a swirling elliptical galaxy called Xaizier, in between the Ambigulan galaxies, the Traeche sector hummed with bright signs of activity. To the sides were the recently colonized sectors, Gildzar and Anad, and beyond was a mystery. These three sectors extended over nearly a third of the great galaxy Xaizier. Each of these imaginary boundaries encompassed approximately thirty billion solar systems, nearly all of which were uninhabited. Each sector was subdivided into millions of different star groups. On one of these threads of the cosmic web of stars within Traeche, the mother sector, the Hoplan region could be found. Hoplan was the furthest away from all other regions, both spatially and technologically. It encompassed the most primitive, underdeveloped, and unstructured worlds in the entire galaxy. Towards the edge of the sparsely scattered star systems of Hoplan, at the very end of the galaxy itself, was the Noiarah system. Three orbits outward from the Noiarah star, beyond the fire planet Promitho and the gas planet Hurayvo, a world of generous foliage and elegant skies beamed with brilliant signs of life, and perhaps hope.

Everywhere else in the Xaizier galaxy mixtures of hate and greed were prevalent. Once upon a time, people had thought that their dark future was infinitely far away. Once upon a time, they thought that the diseases they brought among themselves would evaporate with the coming of their evolved children. But nothing ever changed. It started on one planet when possession and ego arose in the masses, two dangerous forces that would bring war and misery for millennia to come. Little by little, people lifted their own needs above the needs of the whole. And little by little, these needs intersected and overlapped to form an entangled web of conflicting desires. As all of humanity expanded and developed, more people cried out. Some cried out for more land, power, and money, while others simply cried out for air to breath and food to eat. As peoples continued to blindly pursue their own desires at all costs, the galaxies only fate would be to sink deeper into turmoil.

But even in the midst of such pain and pestilence, there had always been something keeping a humanity teetering on the edge of the abyss from falling in. The Laru Empire had once ruled all of mankind under relative peace and harmony. Relative, that is, to the unbelievably chaotic present situation. Man set out to the stars in disarray, but after hundreds of years of petty wars and insignificant struggles, it was decided that a universal law was required. All of the colonized star systems came together to form the mother sector, Traeche. Some of these star systems actually came together with good intentions. Others united hesitantly. And some (just a few) were forced to join The Laru Empire. With mankind’s chaotic past, it was no surprise that universal peace would come only at the cost of many individuals’ freedom.

The Laru Empire knew that such peace could only be kept in a tight unit. Their greatest fear was that Traeche would expand beyond what a single empire could control, and would splinter into multiple empires. To prevent this, strict rules were set on colonizing new star systems. People were forbidden to travel beyond the boundaries of the Traeche sector. The great limitations of expansion laid down by this plan were followed for quite some time, until all habitable star systems in Traeche were filled to the brim. Even then, paranoia prohibited The Laru Empire from allowing expansion. Instead, advanced technology was used to make unsuitable star systems habitable. The project took decades to complete for just one star system. Virtual naked singularities were created to reposition the star with tremendous gravitational force. Then, each of the planets were terraformed. It was not an easy task, but nearly every planet of every star system eventually had a human population. Humanity was as dense as it had ever been.