Aquari

by DD White

  * * *

  (More history from Eigalli databanks)

  After the Nephapricans accomplished Goag Ralus at the height of the Nephaprican Empire, Nephapricus suffered yet another devastating nova event 586 million years from the empire’s birth. The star-door star Holdus in the heart of the empire blew up destroying perhaps the most beautiful home world inhabited by the Nephapricans of Nephrican decent. This had been as unexpected it seems as the previous events. Whatever the Nephapricans were observed scrambling to do at the time, it evidently worked to prevent any other star-door stars from copying the destroyed star in some explosive dance of the synchronistic time/space folding technology that after the first two novas now bound only 12 stars in the galaxy together. That terrible event seemed to trigger the great disappearance of Nephapricans, taking with them seven star-doors along with an indefinable adhesive that had held together the greatest galactic civilization ever known to have existed on Magphoreus.

  After the destruction of the star Holdus, only twelve of the original star-doors still existed. Of these existing star-doors, seven disappeared along with most of the Nephapricans. After almost 600 million Earth years of evolving galactic civilizations, the Nephapricans evidently remade themselves, perhaps finally genetically solving the problem of not really living long enough to really claim the mantle of greatest galactic life form. The development of Golimechoid life probably played a part in their remaking. The Nephapricans, because of short life spans, were more like terrestrial life forms on the level of a mere planetary civilization who were suddenly handed the secret codes of the most advanced technologies ever developed by beings of a galactic culture. The problem always seemed to be life span, and Eagolim did much genetic meddling with themselves in order to attain the multi-thousand year life span that their species had been capable of. The infrastructure of the empire had been still inhabited by even shorter life span beings, and it began to crumble in the wake of the Nephaprican withdrawal because any real knowledge of the technology’s upkeep also faded with the Nephapricans.

  The seven stars Ea, Oa, Pea, Po, Koa, Ko, and Paz disappeared or were probably destroyed with the disappearance of their seven star-doors, which each actually existed on nearby planets in technological constructions the size of large mountains. It remained a mystery to this day what happened to the seven star-doors and the stars that fueled them. Not even Aquari knew what happened to the Nephapricans and the seven star-doors, but few didn’t see this historical event as a well orchestrated great escape. The Nephapricans seemed to have stepped out of reality altogether, and although the technology linked all the star-doors together regardless of physical distances, the star-doors that the Nephapricans left behind still worked among themselves, yet they could not reach the seven star-doors that had disappeared. There could be found evidence that these star-doors still existed but the seven lost star-doors could not be reached by the remaining five. The empire continued under the less evolved governments of more common life forms who still could use the star-door technologies of the stars Dol, Yat, Poa, Tze, and its white dwarf companion Tze-Doldus. These stars stretched the fading remnant civilizations further away across the galaxy still, however fragmentation continued to set in this more temperamental version of galactic empire that rose and fell into three, possibly four dynasties to encompass the last 114 million Earth years of an age of galactic civilization. With the fading of this culture also faded the 4 billion Earth year long Second Age of Magphoreus, which in turn resulted in the present, 3rd Galactic Age where our planet Earth now evolves life.

  Nephapricus then began to fall after the disappearance of the Nephapricans although its glory had been much coveted by the life forms who inherited the abandoned infrastructure. In the mere mortal hands of other life forms who were fortunate enough to have gained the acquaintance with the legendary Nephapricans, and thus inherited the empire, much became lost and dysfunctional with the passing millennia. The once great empire fractured and began to crumple into disarray, rivalry, war, and economic hardship. Then the red giant star Tze, burned out its fuel and collapsed into a supernova around 600 million years after the great star cluster Nephaprican empire began. The original cluster of stars were arriving at the ends of their own lifetimes. The disarray of this period contributed to the loss altogether of Tze-Doldus, the white dwarf star that orbited Tze, and it probably survived the Tze nova event. The location of this dim white dwarf star had been lost in antiquity. If the star-door at Tze-Doldus existed it malfunctioned, but it had been understood by those who had since acquired knowledge of this time in the 2nd Galactic Age that Tze-Doldus did still exist. The Tze-Doldus star-door seemed to have undergone a similar malfunction that the seven disappeared star-doors also had gone through. In other words, it had been likely that the Tze-Doldus star-door still existed, cut off from the remaining 3 star-doors like the 7 lost star-doors, and therefore probably connected to, and could reach those long lost 7 star-doors.