The Tracker of Goliath
Chapter 7
In the eyes of a modern galactic community, the Ions had it easy. For eight millenniums while species fought over control, wealth and most recently their existence, Ions spent all of that time plugged into a digitized world.
As the Rachni perished and reappeared during the Reaper War, Ions were oblivious as their starship's AI flew from system to system, waiting for the day someone in this galaxy revealed themselves.
Declan had been twenty years old ever since the cataclysmic event occurred, a supernova, destroying their home and nearby colonies; just on the cusp of spaceflight expanding to travel towards the mysterious Relay network, built by at the time, unknown sentient life.
For the last eight thousand years, Declan could only be a young adult. Without a body or mind, no one matures in the virtual world. His species never expected to have their temporary home become permanent, and the ship's AI never constructed simulated organic decay.
His people couldn't age, and they couldn't die.
His older sister, Ira, had her baby born on the day before detonation. For the first week inside what would become his new home, Declan watched his sister live the happiest time of her life. Despite the horror and destruction, all that mattered to her was her baby. The predictions made it seem as though it would be too late, that she would need to upload her being into the ship's supercomputer before she could give birth.
But her daughter wanted out, she arrived three days early; all Ira could feel was relief.
At the beginning, Declan's species didn't have to work, sleep or worry. Personal responsibilities were drastically reduced without health or jobs to uphold. Their ever decaying planet was replaced with a virtual Eden, a digitized paradise so endless that it boggled their coded minds. All these people had were themselves and their wonderland. Yet after that first month, Declan witnessed his sister change. Ira's bliss became the illness, a pain emitted whenever her baby cried and screamed, when her husband stopped looking at her, and when there was nothing new to see in this gorgeous utopia.
One month became two, two became four, and four became eight, until nearly a year had flew by. Never ending and never changing.
First day of the New Year, Ira took a kitchen knife and screamed as her blade pierced the skin of her wrist. Her former husband lived too far away and was too entranced with another woman to hear her cry. Her tears and shriek culminated when Ira realized the point she'd been driven too. Suicide; something that in this simulation, couldn't be done. She'd have to live with this for potentially, the rest of her endless life.
Ions, a race proud of their rationality, objectivity, logic and reason, were beginning to snap. The leaders of Declan's people realized what had happened to those like Ira, their vacation ended, their minds accepted Eden as the norm and they needed to return to their lives. That couldn't be done, but their leaders began to try; volunteered workers built structures, buildings, and businesses.
After the failed suicide attempt, Ira gave her child away to an adoption group, Declan moved in with her, and went to go to work.
Currency was re-introduced, economies expanded, companies were started.
One billion people lived for eight thousand years, nobody died, nobody aged, and nobody could be born.
Declan made friends, worked hard and tried to connect to his sister. His friends considered the life he had a success, but even with the flashes of light that came from Ira, he knew that she could only wait. Spending her days sulking, waiting for the opportunity to leave this place, and truly live her life.
When rumors began to spread of someone new entering the virtual world, someone who found their ship and came in as a representative for the galactic races living in the galaxy, Ira smiled by her own admission, the first time in five centuries. Within the year, four hundred specially selected members of the community volunteered to leave their virtual world and enter the uncharted world, in a new body, as a new species.
Declan and Ira entered their names for consideration, but thousands, perhaps even millions wanted to leave, and those four hundred nominated won the lottery.
Ira was crushed that she wasn't selected, but Declan expected it, and assured his sister that their chance would come.
Dr. Jordan Detweiler was the man who entered the virtual world, as much of a step for his species as it was for the Ions leaving. He laid low upon his first encounter, only wanting to converse with the world's leaders, but as the years passed by, he became a public icon to Declan's people.
This "Human" only made things better for them, as other species from outside of the virtual world volunteered to join this Eden paradise that Declan and Ira despised so much. To them, it was an opportunity, an incredible place that people were willing to sacrifice their real lives to exist in.
It helped alleviate a problem that the Ions had been hopelessly dealing with and that was the lack of new citizens. Now, new people arrived by the boatload, and even if the people coming and going were a small amount compared to the Ions overall population, it still benefited their species as a whole.
Companies that had been previously stuck in a limbo had new resumes to read and people to hire.
At long last, all the pain, misery and waste of breath begun to pay off.
