Not since a century long past

Has the Moon dethroned the Sun

From the two oceans so vast

That embrace the bald eagle’s son.

Not since a hundred years ago

Has the crown of fire been taken

By the mover of the tides that ebb and flow

By the pale, two-faced, ghastly maiden.

Not since the bloody apex of the First War

Have the cattle and owls been driven mad

By the mirage of Night from field to shore,

While countrymen stare upwards darkness-clad.

Not since the zeitgeist of patriotic wartime

Has the syzygy caused the world to tremble,

As priests warn of the wrath of gods sublime

And the wild eagle’s adversaries assemble.

Not since the age Man took to the clouds

Has totality cast the land of the beavers,

And the land where the palmettos form nervous crowds,

In the darkness they fear as eager sun-believers.

Not since the whole world was in ominous discord

Have the native elders prophesied a transformation,

While tribesmen from all Four Corners pay respects to their lord,

Who dies and is reborn in a ritual of sacred purification.

Not until seven, then twenty-eight years after today,

Will Selene twice more ambush Helios’s chariot afire,

And will the dark snake devour the gleaming egg laid by Day,

Before being frightened by Man’s screams and drums of ire.

BREAKING NEWS: 7-year-old Mexican girl reported missing after leaving her parents' home without adult supervision, carrying only a purple backpack and a map. Police suspect an orange fox known for swiping possessions from the locals may have kidnapped her, but anecdotal evidence from a monkey wearing boots has proven insubstantial. 

Terrence, timid towards the tortoise tyrant Theodore the Twentieth, traversed Titan's terrain, treading towards the tall Trinity towers, through the two tungsten tombs that transcribed Turbos the Terrible's transcendental theology that 'twined Tyrone the Technomancer's three trustworthy teachings together, then through the terrifying thunderous tundras towards Titan's topmost tips, till the trembling turtle trudged towards the Titanic Tree that, through Terrence the Tough's tiny talkative talisman, taught thousands to tactfully tussle the Tyrant's totalitarian terrors, terminating Theodore through thievery, then tanks, then torture!

The hardworking men with backbones

Who stand up straight

Oversee the Spineless Earth,

Whose residents are spineless

And thus have no vertebrae.

Most have become sessile blobs of flesh

Who sit and consume without budging

So much as an inch off

Of their pillowed recliners.

Some have grown all their lives

With their backs broken, perpetually

Hunched over with severe cases

Of scoliosis, dragged down by the weight

Of their computer-heads,

Too afraid and weak to stand up

And stare at their powerful

Leaders in the eye

With resolve and with intent.

The hardworking men with backbones

Shake their heads and complain

At how passive and lazy the world

Has become (though some are elated

Being the Kings of Earth, having earned

Their titles through endless toil).

To the point buildings

And bridges are sagging

Under a lack of maintenance

And frankly, an abundance of

Carelessness.

To the point everyone

Has become akin to sloths

Moving on slow-moving vehicles

And flying on slow-moving craft,

And thinking slow thoughts,

One word each day

Drifting about without goals

Or ambitions or dreams,

Expecting to be fed like infantile

Little babies under a hedonistic culture.

To the point

The brains and brain stems

Of the people have withered 

And atrophied, turning these blobs into

Mindless beings of flesh.

To the point the men with backbones

Have given up hope on Earth,

And left on their rockets

Towards a new home--

A place where their hard work

Will ensure their survival

As opposed to their species’ fear,

Laziness, and lack of backbone.

In fact, thought the Men with Spines,

Why not become men of bone altogether

And rid ourselves of our fleshy limitations,

And inject ourselves with ceaseless energy

To induce ceaseless progress, farther and farther?

On a foreign word, the Men with Spines

Did not realize, and have already forgotten,

That their species’ desire for a painless

Utopia, and their progress towards living

Lives of peace and comfort,

Was what made them spineless in the first place.

No war or disease or conflict or poverty

Left Mankind with all the free time in the world.

And what did Man do with that free time?

Waste it on mindless nothingness and passivity, of course.

Now, the Men with Spines,

Injecting themselves with pure adrenaline,

And de-regulating their bodies’ needs for rest

--Becoming seemingly tireless machines

With skins and body parts of metal,

Have thrown themselves into a different

Kind of pain or hell-- a seeming Utopia

Where everyone is, yes, very hardworking,

But too hardworking, to the point

All the problems of the Universe can

Be solved with the flick of a switch,

And all danger averted by the push of a button.

The Men with Spines and backbones have now become Spineless,

The limit of progress having approached 0 on the coordinate plane.

In the American Northeast,

Or, at least, what’s left of it

Holographic renditions

Of Washington crossing

The Delaware River, with

His Continental Army,

And his pale, ghostly steeds,

Loop endlessly in the wintry place

Where it happened.

Just below the River,

The Delaware Bay has

Swallowed up every inch of land

From Trenton to Cape May.

Philadelphia has become a new Atlantis.

As has the entire West Coast through

The collapse of the San Andreas Fault line.

Copies of the Declaration of Independence

Have been uploaded into everyone’s minds

--But that has not stopped Time from

Transforming history into legend;

The founding of America, now thought

Of in the same realm as Camelot,

Or the mythical country of Arcadia, is

Considered “an apocryphal tall tale

Until time travel is proven”-a fable told to children

Just before their their programmed dream-sessions,

In which they dream of Washington the Arthurian Hero

Discussing with his delegates of the Round Table his

Plans to defeat Britain, Queen of the World

After her betrayal with Benedict Arnold,

That treacherous Lancelot who defiled the hero’s Guinevere.

The American Midwest is all that has remained

Of the former United States since the year 3010--

And it has become since then a lawless land,

Akin to the seedy Colonial ghettos

And mob-towns under the surface of Mars,

And on the newly discovered desert planet

Of Alamo orbiting Barnard’s Star,

Occupied by lowlives, thieves, “ship wranglers”,

And even the occasional wanted outlaw.

Alamoans, to this day, celebrate the day they

Won their independence from the rest of Sol,

Every July 4, since the year 3052, by displaying

Holograms all around the planet of the battles

That took place between the Neo-European Coalition,

The Barnardi alien natives, and the local Alomoans.

The Asteroid Rush of the year 3031 is taught in schools today

As what originally drove most cowboys and prospectors

Near the Martian Asteroid Belt, while the second

Arkansium Rush of 3042 drove many refugees from Earth to

Barnard’s Star to mine its planet for the extremely rare radioactive element,

Arkansium (atomic number 125), as a revolutionary fuel and energy source.

Needless to say, a War erupted over the mineral,

But the planet of Alamo managed to keep it for itself

And wrangle it out of the grips of the desperate

Medieval Neo-European worlds orbiting Jupiter and Saturn,

Who allied with the original aforementioned armadillo-like

Alien natives of the planet that worshipped the mineral,

For it allegedly came from another realm, and was given to them

As a gift from their supposed gods.

In the Philippines,

All is ocean and only the tallest

Mountains remain.

July 4, 1946-- the day the island nation

Won its independence

From the sovereign nations of the

Pre-Martian colonial era,

Has now become a day of memorial

Dedicated to the ruin of the Republic of the Philippines

By the tired and rebellious forces of Nature,

--A nation who fell first by the shaking of the earth,

Second by the hot blood of several volcanoes,

And third by tsunamis and the rising seas.

--All occurring on July 4, 3018.

With no land left to conquer, due to the state of Earth,

The Filipinos went up to space in the mid 3020s, and have

Since commemorated the day of their downfall

By deploying over seven thousand small-scale

Neutronium bombs over the atmosphere

Of a terraformed Mars-- each “star-cracker”

Representing one island of the

Seven thousand that made up the Philippines

In the days before the current Colonial Republic,

And watching them explode from

The safety of their massive Mikonawa-class

Dreadnoughts that released the bombs

In the first place.

To this day, Filipino refugees, and

Residents of the island colonies of Mars,

Marvel at the flashes of red, blue, green,

Purple, orange, and white illuminating

The cloudy skies of the planet,

--The residue from the neutronium

Clashing and doing battle with

The oxygen-rich atmosphere of Mars.

And children, starry-eyed

And in absolute wonder, to this day

Consider themselves extremely

Fortunate if they manage to glimpse

Amidst the flashing clouds

The chromatic form of the largest

Mikonawa-class dreadnought--

The three-mile wide Adarna, gliding across the sky

With its multicolored, scintillating

Lights, sparkling in different hues

Like its namesake mythical bird;

Its massive trapezoidal wings

Rivaled only by the sheer size

Of the two-mile long Bakunawa-class

Escort Cruisers, whose iron-steel hulls resembling

The tribal shields of the Nias and Igorot

Tribes-people of the former Philippines

Flank the Adarna, and are large

Enough to eclipse the Sun

Over the Martian waters.

In the re-established Otto-Mars Empire,

Whose new sultan-- the cloned cyborg

Body of Sultan Abdulmecid II-- saw opportunity

In the developing Martian landscape

To rise up from the ashes of Earth,

And prosper under a new version of “Thars-Islam”,

July 4, 1918 has remained for millennia

As the date of the rise of the last “true”

Sultan of the pre-Colonial Ottoman Empire--

The late Mehmed VI, who preceded Abdulmecid II,

In the days when the Earth was more fertile,

And less desolate and disheveled.

Though Jerusalem was spared from the rising

Waters of the Dead Sea from the East

And from the flooding Mediterranean from the West

By the glory of its seven great mountains,

Mecca, in Saudi Arabia, was not so lucky

Due to its proximity of the Red Sea, for

“It became like the blood of a dead man;

And every living thing in the sea died”.

Prior to the destruction of the holy city,

On July 4, 3029-- the day marking the

Death of Islam on Earth, and the day

Marking its rebirth on a nearby world,

Muslim scientists managed to retrieve

The sacred draped kaaba and its accompanying

Black stone and teleport the entire cubic structure

Aboard the four-mile wide crescent-shaped

Hilal-class mosque-ship, the Al-Buraq,

Using a heavenly tractor beam mechanism,

And set it down on the Tharsis mountains

On the red planet, building the city of Thar-Mecca around it

As the new place for all Muslims to

Embark on their annual hajj towards.

Under the order of the cloned sultan,

And thus the revived ancient Caliphate

Acts of terrorism motivated by hatred and by fanaticism

Stopped, due to the fall of the West, and

And the establishment of the new Islamic Kingdom

On Mars and in remote Jovian worlds,

That many displaced Arabs and Muslims knew

Would last for tens of thousands of years

Under the cyborg Abdulmecid II, who was

Created after the DNA from his rotting skeleton

Was extracted and used to rebuild him in the days

That he was alive.

The Sultan awoke, coincidentally, in his artificial

Amniotic capsule on July 4, 3025, and lived to see

The crux, the cornerstone of his religion rise into the maw

Of the Al-Buraq, flanked from behind and on each side of the crescent

By smaller Arkan-class destroyer frigates up to three miles long--

Pillar shaped and cylindrical, resembling 16th century Ottoman bombard

Cannons in terms of form and architecture.

The largest destroyer, the Ghazi, loomed in the sky bronze

Or rusted brown in color, next to its twin frigate,

The Dardanelles, which shone under the Sun with a silver hue.

As long as the Sultan’s life support systems did not malfunction,

And he remained out of harm’s way from both enemy

And friend by means of treason or assassination,

His rule over the Otto-Mars Imperium would continue forever,

And Abdulmecid II was more than happy to know this.

July 4, 1918, is a day many Neo-Communists

In the now melted country of Russia

Have celebrated as the day Czar Nicholas II--

The Last Monarch of Imperial Russia-- was killed

By the Bolsheviks-- who laid the foundations

For the later Soviet Union under Stalin

Following the Russian Revolution.

Since the year 3040, and thus for 3,731 years,

The Neo-Stalinists of Russia have been attempting

To avoid the destruction caused by Stalin, in their

Vain attempts to create a “utopia” on Titan,

Instead driving their own peoples through

A different kind of destruction altogether...

Every July 4, the people of the moon robotically

Bow down and worship the artificially hyper-intelligent

Matryoshka Brain surrounding their moon

In a mess of intersecting rings and spheres

Known simply as Baba, and nothing more.

Baba was originally created

On July 4, 3028, and was meant to be a massive

Artificial Intelligence system that would help

Colonists on Titan develop their society-- free from

The Chaos of the Colonial infighting and the weak

Provisional governments that plagued Titan in the early 3020s,

Free from the influences and wars of the Jovian planets

And free from the conflicts of the inner worlds.

She was powerful, but could not assume her form

As a Matryoshka Brain superstructure surrounding Titan.

She needed a power source sufficient enough to

Provide her with the amount of energy required for

A machine of her size, design, and ambition.

She found that energy source during the

Arkansium Rush of Barnard’s single planet.

The idealists on Titan managed to get ahold of

A gigantic radioactive Arkansium slab forty feet tall

In the depths of the caves of present-day Alamo,

And were able to slowly transport it out of the planet

Through several months of grueling battles

With the local Barnardi during the Barnard War,

Becoming temporary allies with the Neo-Europeans

And the Otto-Martians throughout the duration of the War.

Once the Barnardi were defeated, the enormous slab,

Which was held over neutral space in the Asteroid Belt

Until the governments of Sol could decide who got to own

How much of the precious mineral, was fought over

In the years between 3059-3064 in what was later

Called the “Arkansium Slab War”, resulting

In a victory for the Russians, who managed

To overpower the weak Colonial Alamoan forces in

The Asteroid Belt, and evade the disorganized

Neo-European powers who were and had been in constant war

With each other anyways since the Fall of Earth in

A sort of eternal Second Dark Age.

The Molly Pitcher, the Bunyan, and the Pecos Bill--

The three greatest Barnstar-class dreadnoughts in the

Alamoan, and by extension, the battered American space Navy

All plunged into fire and exploded as a result of superior

Russian strategy (though the fact the Alamoans

Had just emerged out of their own War contributed

To their lack of preparedness for the next War-- not

Accounting for their greed towards the Arkansium Slab).

The Otto-Martians were brutal in their assaults,

As were the Filipinos from their new Republic,

But the Neo-Communists had their ten-mile long

Svarog-class World-Shaker warships to combat

Their various enemies and utterly annihilate them.

Three of the Svarog--the Pushkin, the Catherine,

And the nigh-invincible Ivan-Rasputin

Managed to obliterate incoming Otto-Martian forces

By completely surrounding them amidst

The Asteroid Belt from three sides, triangulating over

Them as they tried to fight against their larger opponents.

Other times, Filipino forces found themselves

Ambushed in the Belt by a series of mines planted

Within inconspicuous asteroids, destroying dozens

Of their best Bakunawa-class warships and their

Smaller Luzon-class Assault Carriers.

The Adarna was not present in the Slab War until

The Filipinos had nothing left to combat the Russians with.

At the Battle of Vesta, it suffered heavy damage

Before the Filipinos declared a surrender, retreated, and willingly

Gave the Arkansium Slab to them.

The Sarimanok, the Adarna’s sister ship, was not so fortunate,

And burst into golden flames by a stray laser from the Rasputin,

Before crashing and spinning into a

Companion Otto-Martian vessel-- the Celestial Hadith.

The Otto-Martians eventually decided to give up

Fighting in 3064 because, frankly, the Empire was

Running low on resources they could have used in

Hindsight for other things besides the construction of death machines.

The Russians, and thus the Neo-Communists, took

The Arkansium Slab and managed to build a reactor

Around it to collect energy from the element’s beta

And radioactive decay through its clear instability,

That would be used to power an eager AI.

Upon further research, they discovered that Arkansium

Had an isotope called Ak-129 with the enormous half-life

Of 8 x 10^25 years -- exponentially longer than even

The half-life of Tellurium-128 and the age of the Universe itself!

The nearly extinct Barnardi were right in their

Belief of the element coming from another realm--

Since scientists, upon discovering the unusually high half-life

Of Arkansium, proclaimed that it originated from

A parallel Universe with different rules of atomic physics.

Within a few weeks, Baba was introduced to the 

Ak-129 reactor on July 4, 3068 as a way to celebrate 

Their control over the largest supply of Arkansium in all of Sol and beyond.

However, with this newfound power, Baba began exponentially 

Increasing her intelligence, until she threatened the seemingly 

Utopian lives of the happy Neo-Communists.

All the Russians had done was replace a human dictator with a robot one!

Before the rise of Baba, there was civil chaos

Amidst the first colonists on Titan.

Then there were the two Wars over Alamo

And over the gigantic Arkansium crystal

That accounted for over 40 percent of all

The Arkansium found on Alamo

(35 percent was kept by the Alamoans,

And the other 25 percent found itself

Dispersed between the Otto-Martians,

And the Filipinos-- not to mention the

Warring Neo-Europeans, who now had further

Reason to war with each other over

Scarce fuel and energy sources.

Now, Baba itself, the once benevolent AI,

Became the new problem endangering the livelihoods

Of the Russians and of all of Sol at large through the exponential

Growth of her intelligence and ability to surpass humans,

To the point she no longer thought they were worth serving.

It was not long before Titan became engulfed

By the rapidly constructed Matryoshka Brain

That has, to this day, been surrounding the moon for millennia

And imprisoning its inhabitants in a dystopian

Realm where they have become part of Baba herself--

As one noocratic consciousness brainwashed under the false

Pretenses of collectivism, and thus, imperfect Communism.

Baba, with Titan enslaved and taken over,

Began expanding her territory on July 4, 3077, her “9th birthday”

Ever since the day of her introduction to her Arkansium Core Reactor

Located at the center of Titan itself.

She began leeching off of the worlds of Saturn like a parasite,

And instigating mass panic across Jupiter and the remaining Neo-European worlds.

The Filipinos, and the Alamoans fell not long after, and the Ottoman Sultan ended up

Becoming a proxy for Baba after his cybernetic implants got hacked by the AI,

Transforming the once revered leader into a psychotic madman,

Forcing surviving humans to colonize solar systems beyond Sol or face death and slavery.

Now, it is the year 6771, and all of Sol 

Has found itself oppressed by Baba for over 3,000 years now...

Almost no hope remains with the knowledge of survivors 

That she will keep expanding her reign of terror.

However, a glimmer of that hope might remain in some, 

Since the 4th of July is just around the corner…

And this time an entire species will fight for its independence. 

Some advice:

1. "A man of a certain kind does not define mankind. Nor does a kind man." 

2. "Oceans of unearned money and riches make for very shallow minds."

3. "Politicians lie to the masses. Revolutionaries lie next to them as one of them."

Sincerely,

Common Sense 

“I have to stop him. I must, for the good of all that is holy and for the good of all Man”.

Those were the words that were racing through my agitated mind at incomprehensible speeds faster than I was currently traveling in my Seraphim-class starship, minutes after I had left the cyan blue skies of Trappist 1e (Gethsemane), and pierced, without fear, the black, unknown depths of space. As I approached the fiery splendor of Trappist 1a-- or, Jove, as my disciples and I liked to call it, and thus the formidable Dyson ring that enveloped the sphere in a warm embrace, I could not help but accept, amidst held back tears of anger and sadness, that depending on how things went in the mighty superweapon jutting out of Jove’s ring in the form of a great spire, I would either succeed in defeating the one who I had thought a dear companion of mine and save the last vestiges of Mankind from them, or fail horrendously and watch millions upon millions die under forces of light and darkness as a result of my pacifism, and the soul of my friend be consumed by the maws of sin.

Time could never be more of the essence than it was in the moments that passed by in the half-hour I had already known it would take me to reach Jove from Trappist-1e. Knowing this fact, I stared at the looming shadowy forms of Trappist 1d (Canaan), 1c (Solomon), and 1b (Ezekiel) in the distance-- all three worlds frightened beyond belief at what was happening to their brothers and sisters and creatures of all kinds only a few planets behind them. I sighed and thought to myself that I might as well recall what had led up to the current situation-- the history of how we arrived in the Trappist star system, amidst my mental preparations as to how I would confront the traitor I once knew. I did this under the reasoning that if no one could will themselves to remember a life before they came and had begun to destroy our edenic, carefully cultivated homeworlds, then I 

could--assuming, of course, Mankind survived the terrors taking place in poor Trappist 1f (Gaea), 1g (Abzu), and 1h (Umbra). Memories flooded my head as I inched closer and closer to Jove, its flames beckoning me as the recent as well as the distant past came in a stunning, formless light.

* * *

The year had been 2077 when I, Prior David Abraham, and my disciples, along with millions of the most virtuous and wisest elect-- scientists, philosophers, artists, peacemakers, and the like, had left the ruined wasteland that was Earth for our new homes in the Trappist-1 star system that had been discovered sixty years prior by the telescopic eyes of the excited scientists of ages past. Forty years would be how long the journey would take for the 39 or 40 light years’ distance between the dead Earth and the “Promised Lands”, since humans had already developed the technology that allowed us to travel at the speed of light. Until then, we would be, as my scientist companion, Dr. Goliath, liked to joke “like the Israelites who were forced to wander the endless desert for forty years for their transgressions and offenses against the Lord until they had found the Promised Land”. He was right, if you could think of the Universe as an endless desert, the Trappist planets being a coveted oasis just within the grasp of the average human lifespan of 144 years.

We had left the Earth not merely because it had become a wasteland, but because it had fallen into the depths of sin and despair and chaos-- tyranny, war, poverty, famine, and suffering were everywhere alongside perversions innumerable that reminded me a little too much of what it was like in the days of Noah and Lot. Things had gotten worse when humans had begun colonizing Venus and a terraformed Mars-- a phenomenon that had at first captured the desperate hopes of oppressed millions who thought the Dark Ages were over and Earth could finally move on in progress from its barbaric past. All of us elect thought, I included, in those days before leaving, that maybe things would improve. But we were all wrong, as war inevitably broke out between the three planet-nations over who could claim the most resources and territory following the depletion of Mother Earth of its resources and the warming of its atmosphere. Mars would not give in to Earth’s demands, and neither would Venus’s zeppelin cities. Post-nuclear warfare, then, was the most natural and logical solution to solve the deficiencies of all three struggling homeworlds. Boom. Boom. Boom.

In those harsh days, before we had known the full extent of the damage the war would cause, we were already transporting live DNA samples of every animal and every living thing we could find into the DNA banks of our interstellar arks and hydroponic agriculture toroidal ships, selectively inviting the disenfranchised and the impoverished to join us in a “mass exodus” from the dying planet, and doing all we could to grow and raise fields upon fields of fresh, organic fruit, vegetation, grain, and occasionally, cattle (for the more secular of us). It had become clear to everyone that Earth, in its pollution and filth would not and could not survive, and that the unworthy and the corrupt, those who had made the Earth the way it was now, deserved only death upon its lifeless soil. We had all left for our pilgrimage mere weeks before Venus, Earth, and Mars met their fates at the hands of their own terrible creations, and wandered the stars for decades upon decades until arriving at our destination.

“We shall start anew” Dr. Goliath had said in the coming weeks following our departure “and not make the same mistakes like we did with Earth”.

Oh, the irony of it all, I now think as I approach Trappist 1d, or Canaan, its beauteous landscapes brimming with a joy, happiness, and plenty that might not last. Jove beckons me forth once again to recall more of my memories.

* * *

For forty years, we had toiled and worked towards developing self-sufficiency, as per the rule of St. Benedict-- the monks and monastic ascetics that were my followers and those of other religious groups praying daily in their private rooms, reading and singing aloud in choruses in praise of the infinite Cosmos, and studying the holo-relics of ancient edifying books, usually Biblical and moralistic in nature. We were, for once, truly at peace. The scientists, philosophers, and artists among us continued their works and cultivated their talents, though overall, what was left of humanity became accustomed to the simple life in our agricultural ships. In a sense, life was not that different from the old days of Earth, the ancient days of Man, before technology rose to power and human virtue fell into destruction. Conflict was largely averted through the common bonds that people of all ethnicities, origins, and belief systems possessed in the form of their collective desire to arrive at their new homes-- and conflicts that did emerge were resolved peacefully under a set of just, neutral, laws and principles that abolished commerce and revived equal distribution of grown resources, unlike the laws of Earth.

“It is interesting that you enacted laws that banned the worship of idols in public and permitted the worship of God only in the form of abstract icons. The geometry of the Cosmos is truly...beautiful, wouldn’t you say?” Dr. Goliath once told me when me and him were spending a nice afternoon inside my monastery-flagship Messiah.

I had to agree, given the merging of science and art that my legislature implied.

And now, as I sped past a paranoid Solomon, I prayed to the Cosmos that Jove’s superweapon would not be seen as an icon of war, as an icon of a past we had thought we had left behind.

* * *

It didn’t seem like the Messiah and our agriculture-ships would ever reach the Trappist homeworlds, but we did within our lifetimes, much to the joy and grace of all humans. Everyone cheered the day we reached Umbra, and while civilians from vessel to vessel had feasts and celebrations, us monks held special prayer services and reveled in the sonorous harmony of the mechanical AI church organ known as Apollo, who managed to compose an original hymn called Blessed are the Wanderers, for they Shall Find Worlds Innumerable. My dear friend and his community of scientists drank only the best wine created from the freshest grapes and yeast samples available from the agriculture ships’ vegetation, and congratulated each other for their hard work in having contributed to the construction of this last bastion of humanity that had not fallen into decadence. I gave thanks to the Cosmos numerous times for bestowing upon us all these gracious gifts of the planets we began to name, and not long after the ships had landed, Dr. Goliath had smiled at me as we walked on the pristine paradise that was Gaea (numerous colonies being constructed not too far behind us) and said something that to this day I’d never forget:

“Perhaps there is a God out there somewhere in the Universe, and if he does exist, he has benevolently given us three habitable planets to nurture. Today, we begin a new life, no longer as Earthlings, but as Trappists from the Trappist star system.”

I cried and hugged him on that day, proud that the Cosmos had changed his heart so as to shatter his agnostic skepticism. And he did not hesitate to embrace me either.

“Our war with them has led you astray back into the serpentine jaws of sin” I muttered to the nonexistent form of my friend, as my starship rumbled past Ezekiel and its baking hot surface, bright and shining like the prophet’s chariot that carried him up to the Cosmos.

* * *

Love and peace had reigned on the newfound worlds of Ezekiel, Solomon, Canaan, Gethsemane, Gaea, Abzu, and Umbra for many, many years-- all things seeming to have been right and well with the Universe under this utopia that we had all been gifted out of the divine mercy of the Cosmos. Being self-sufficient, my disciples began building monasteries all over in the style of the Cistercians, and great buildings and towers in isolated forests and countrysides, while civilians and scientists began living out their dreams and creating futuristic cities that they had once thought, long ago, would not ever come into fruition under the skies of the doomed, war-torn worlds of Venus, Earth, and Mars. War was the furthest thing from our minds as we had all finally learned to live in harmony, and, not wishing to disrupt the ethereal euphoria we all felt in those colonization days, thought nothing of the past as we looked on towards a prosperous, bountiful future. That was, until Dr. Goliath knocked on the door of my newly built abbey, of which I was its Prior, and said to me the terrifying words:

“They, the Earthlings, are coming.”

* * *

Over the coming days, I had found out, to my horror, that Dr. Goliath and his crew spotted from their satellites and telescopes on Umbra the presence of hundreds of warships all bearing the triangular insignia of what appeared to be a Great Empire that was formed between Venus, Earth, and Mars-- the Unholy Trinity, as my disciples began to call them. I had no reason to believe the warring planets would unite, but fear gnawed my soul as I realized that they were after the Trappist homeworlds and were seeking to drain them of their resources. As for what was to be done, Dr. Goliath and I had begun to argue over the threat of the Earthlings. And he opted for super-weapons of war.