It had been so long since the StarDroid had seen home.
Centuries had passed, countless lifetimes - but he could still remember the violet grasses, the verdant waters, the emerald-tinted skies. He could still feel the sharp winds teasing his hair, and taste the siiarish, the microscopic life forms his people were dependent upon. He still dreamed of the rivers and oceans, the great underwater cities he had only heard tales of, the rustic lake town where he had spent his short life. Yes, that all too short life before he became the...creature he was today. For he was neither mortal nor immortal, living or machine - he was the Destroyer of Worlds, the Great Judge, the StarDroid called Venus.
The never-ending years between his New Birth and the present hardly seemed like a true life. Venus was not the naive, hopeful adolescent he had been at the time of his Taking; but neither was he the man he had been journeying to become. For Venus had been Chosen during his Rite of Manhood, after two weeks of wandering the Great Plains of Mardarach with no sustenance other than the life-giving siiarish. He had been on a quest which would have determined the course of his life, had he been given the chance to finish it. The Rite of Manhood, the Siiaquedac, would have given Venus his man-name, and revealed the gods-given profession he was destined to pursue. All he had to accomplish was the finding of a birthing dainarii, and procure the newborn calf, still wet with its mother's fluids. Venus would then have brought the calf to the village shaman, where the animal would be slaughtered, and its spilled blood and entrails deciphered for the shaman to obtain the voice of the gods. From the death of this new life Venus would have been reborn, and the shaman would have seen his new name and lifestyle.
But the creature called Venus would never finish this ritual. He remembered it all clearly, as if it had happened but yesterday. His former self had finally heard the distinctive cry of a female dainarii in labor, and had dashed to the animal's side. The calf was partially out of its mother's womb, and the boy Venus had been knelt down beside them, and helped the calf free. He remembered feeling…sad for the newborn, and distressed that he would have to take its life so soon. These were wasted feelings, however. Venus never returned home; he never received his name, his calling. Unless Venus was to become his name, and a killer his calling. But that would make the Starhaven his home, and Starhaven would never be home, despite the years he had dwelled there.
Venus. Millennia ago, on the planet called Earth, that was the name for a goddess of beauty. In his rotund, burdensome armor, Venus did not feel beautiful, and his and his fellow StarDroids actions were anything but. Unfortunately, the name "Venus" was all he knew – the gods had yet to provide him with a way to know his truename. And Venus would never again go by his childhood name, Aritagat, "Little Storm," for he was no longer a child…but was he a man? A man with no title bestowed on him by the shaman; such a man would be outcast from any town back on his home planet. But what of other planets, other cultures? Because those peoples had no Siiaquedac, did that make their husbands and sons any less men? Alas, Venus was not of those peoples, and their ways were not his ways…if his ways were even his anymore. Who was to say which rules and ideals a StarDroid should adhere to? Wasn't he practically immortal, merely a step below a god, with life and death at his fingertips? Oh, but in the depths of his all-too-mortal soul, Venus knew he was still that young boy journeying on the plains.
And there was the crux of all his struggles. To be a mortal, sentient being – a "human" -, or, to become what he had been for thousands of years, a (dare he say it?) machine, a StarDroid. And was there a difference? What is it to be each of those things? And what if…Sunstar had been acting on behalf of the gods, and his Rite of Manhood had really been fulfilled? Oh gods…what if where the poor, dissolute Venus is now was where he was suppose to be all along? Death…life…so many questions, and no answers…no answers.
It had been so long since the StarDroid had seen home.