by DD White
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Eventually it came time for Aquari to say goodbye to Goag Ralus, and also all his friends from the galactic core. There a cremation unit had been readied to scatter the molecules of Nieniel’s body after Aquari finally departed and removed that incessant image from Nieniel’s psychic horn. Aquari remained adamant about the body being disintegrated this way. Deliadre perceived an exaggerated concern that Aquari had about this, considering that he continued to insist that the ego phantasm that they all spoke to had been nothing more than a brain’s over-active imagination. Perhaps it remained beyond Deliadre to accept that who she was, her own ego itself, was nothing more than an illusion of an overactive imagination. All intelligent sentient life forms seem to have this problem.
Goag Ralus had been spending these last few moments with Nieniel before Its old friend left to visit the far away planet called Tze-Doldus-2. The star-door had been up and running these days although it still had not attempted to connect to any other star-door out there anywhere. The Eigalli were currently being cautious, and holding open debates of concern since the sabotage attempt. The star-doors were known to be associated with unexpected nova events in ancient times from their stars, and a Haflaxo nova would exterminate Eigalli civilization. Begalius defended its star-door as having the capability of actually preserving the Eigalli civilization in such an event. Goag Ralus had been able to quiet that debate down by pointing out that Haflaxo powered Goag Ralus, and that the star-door was not powered by the star, but by Goag Ralus, and so no star would be directly affected. On the other hand, the star-door had been utilized by the Eigalli to introduce new alien plants, foods, and animals into the environment from star-door teraforming programs along with its stored DNA databanks. This provided new and interesting foods that were becoming a selling point to skeptical Eigalli, who were apparently at least as easily influenced through the stomach as lesser-evolved Earthlings.
Nieniel/Aquari had been discussing the Tze-Doldus-2 mission with Goag Ralus on the way to Nieniel’s next death. “The Tze-Doldus-2 aliens speak a language that is chirped and whistled really fast. They speak much faster than I’m able to duplicate with this body’s vocal chords. As far as how the language existed 135 teks ago, I’ve become very fluent in how it was written and spoken. There is no telling how this language will have evolved when I get there, or if any part of it still exists at all. Letters are line and beat marks written on a system of stanza lines that show how to whistle and in what note and pitch.” Nieniel/Aquari started to whistle a strange sounding chirping noise kind of like a bird. “I can’t exactly do it justice with Nieniel’s voice.”
Deliadre stood at the disintegration device waiting for Goag and Nieniel so she could say goodbye. She became misty-eyed and emotional again like she had recently become while saying goodbye to the apparition. The Goag Ralus avatar had one more embrace with Its old friend once they arrived.
Deliadre also insisted on an embrace before Aquari let go of the body he inhabited. No doubt this would also be a final embrace for her mother whom she had realized that she still loved very dearly. Nieniel/Aquari then turned to Goag Ralus and assured It that the galaxy had been getting smaller all the time. Then Nieniel collapsed in a brilliant flash of light. The body of Nieniel fell to the floor lifeless with no more circle-of-light shows to broadcast from her blunt telepathic horn. The broadcast had changed to the actual form of Aquari who lit up the room. They all said goodbye again, and Aquari hung around a bit longer until witnessing the body of Nieniel finally dissolving under the rays of the disintegration beam. There would be nothing left to bury as she dissolved in a burst of quantum energy that dismantled her molecular structure, and shook off weakly interactive sub-atomic particles that evidently were strongly interactive with disembodied forms of life.
Then Aquari flew away from Goag Ralus and the galactic core. He chatted with Goag Ralus on radio frequencies on his way out of the core only to be interrupted by other Eigalli fans that were wishing him luck with radios and telepathy from the ground. At unimaginable speeds the fastest object in the known universe departed the only known oasis of life in the rapidly churning and crowded core of the galaxy. Aquari sped away toward the slower moving Norma arm beyond the baby Fybrolus arm of the galaxy. Aquari has over 42,000 light years to travel before the white dwarf star Tze-Doldus would even be visible. The journey would take over sixty Earth years at Aquari’s incredible natural speed of about 707.2 times the speed of light.
Nearly sixty Earth years later, the star Tze-Doldus still smoldered in the skies of its habitable planet Tze-Doldus-2. Deep in the white dwarf star’s fusion powered core suddenly an unexplainable appearance of massive amounts of neutrinos appears within the blazing plasmas near its core. The neutrinos, which could not remain in that place that they had suddenly appeared in, suddenly slingshot away from where they magically materialized to shoot out of the star’s reddish surface in the direction of the planet Tze-Doldus-2. The consequence becomes a massive solar flare that tore away from the surface of Tze-Doldus to speed off into space toward the unsuspecting planet. As the solar flare once again set fire to upper-atmosphere vegetation, the lights of civilization across the single continent of Tze-Doldus-2 also suddenly all went dark in another unexplainable power outage. It took a few minutes before the lights of the planet’s cities flickered back again to life, and the air would smell like smoke again for several days as they witnessed fires blazing in the skies above them. Some Uranians below who witnessed this were in fear that the end of the world was at hand.