Way back in 1935, the great space station ARK was launched into orbit, designed and engineered by the brilliant scientist Gerald Robotnik.
Gerald was an extraordinary man, born into a family where science and intellect were everything; the Robotnik family, originally from Westopolis, was not of high status, but over the generations it had accumulated prestige and wealth, as well as considerable charisma.
Gerald, at the time of the ARK inauguration, was fifty-eight years old and had an entire existence dedicated to that gigantic complex destined to orbit around the Earth.
The scientist was a chubby man, with a pleasant and approachable look, with thinning ash-blonde hair at the nape, an immense mustache and ice blue eyes. A widower of ten years now, he had gone to live on the ARK with his eldest son, Richard, and daughter-in-law, Catherine.
His younger son, George, didn't have a good relation with his father, he was lazy and idle and for nothing in the world would have given up his precarious but creative job as a painter. Furthermore, Gerald didn't even like the latter's wife, Florence, older than him and quite immoral.
Gerald, in addition to his family, had taken on board the ARK a small elite of scientists, for a total of thirty people.
Days aboard the space station passed slowly but industriously, and Gerald's joy at working in such an inspiring place peaked when a baby girl was born to Richard and Catherine, named Maria, three years after their departure from Earth.
Unfortunately, at just two years of life, the little girl began to show increasing fatigue, inconsolable weeping crises, and she suddenly fell asleep. The disease, never observed before, was studied by the team of researchers, up to the conclusion: Maria's nervous system was in conflict with the immune one, and the latter saw it as an enemy to be destroyed. A terrifying diagnosis for the poor parents of the child, who, unable to bear all that suffering, eight months after the verdict took a sustenance spacecraft and never returned, directed to Earth. Yet another pain for Gerald, disappointed by both of his children.
The years went by, and with each candle blown by Maria Gerald breathed a sigh of relief, despite the fact that the treatments administered to her were purely palliative, and the chances of eradicating that degenerative disease were practically nil. A few months after Maria's eleventh birthday, one of the supply ships from Earth returned with a letter from the President of the United Federation himself.
In that piece of paper branded with the unmistakable red and blue wax, colors of the Federation, was written the future of Gerald and the whole Earth, but at the time no one could yet know the proportions of that "Project Shadow" contained in those dry, typed words.
Initially, Gerald didn't want to know anything about it: the President's purpose was to raise humanity to a divine level, seeking and conquering immortality, but the scientist was convinced that certain limits existed precisely to prevent the balance of things from being upset, and that humans should learn to accept it. However… His thoughts ran to Maria, to her increasingly precarious conditions, to the development of her physique which was draining her of all energy. He decided to try, he would have given his life for his beloved granddaughter, especially after the abandonment of her unfortunate parents.
The first product of that Project was a gigantic reddish monster, not very different from the dinosaurs that millions of years before walked the Earth: the Biolizard, capable of asexual reproduction and regeneration.
Despite its majestic appearance, the beast was primitive, unable to speak and form relationships with those around it, hostile, ferocious. Its huge body crawled on the ground, unsupported by its legs, and its lungs were unable to supply enough oxygen to the system without additional machinery.
If nothing else, it was able to use the Chaos energy to sustain itself, but Gerald felt he had created a disgrace.
"The first test went badly. I will look for a solution. In the meantime, take care of the Biolizard." Gerald said to Jean, the youngest of the scientists inside.
"But sir, that beast grows disproportionately! How are we going to support another creature of that size?" the boy asked, worried.
"Somehow we'll make it..." the man replied, with a paternal pat on his back.
From the look he had given him, Jean got the impression that the old genius already had an ace up his sleeve.
Indeed, it was so.
Using the ARK's powerful radio telescope, Gerald sent a signal into deep space, aimed several light-years away.
He sent it, and waited.
He prayed.
He scanned the stars hopefully.
He might have gotten an answer the next day, never or a thousand years later.
Gerald desperately hoped to get that answer while there was still life in his body.
Meanwhile, Gerald tried, with his collaborators, to tame the Biolizard, or at least tried to feed its intelligence so that he could communicate with it.
There was nothing to be done: with each experiment, however small, conducted on that beast, its independence from machinery was affected and its primal instincts were unleashed, forcing the scientists to keep it confined in a wing of the ARK.
Before going to bed, Gerald would strip off his lab coat and put on his pajamas, then let himself fall heavily on the mattress, taking off his glasses and rubbing his tired eyes vigorously. Every single evening, regulated thanks to terrestrial clocks, the pall of despair that had tormented him for years descended on him, especially when he saw his granddaughter regress.
Then he joined his hands and prayed:
"Linda, if only you were still here… Help me, please… Protect our granddaughter!"
As per routine, Gerald kissed the photo of his beloved wife and got ready to sleep.
Gerald knew that new scientists on Earth were constantly being trained in the Academy that bore his name, and he hoped that in the future, new generations full of ideas would come to support him.
On April 14, 1950, Maria's twelfth birthday, Gerald gave her a pair of comfortable light blue slippers.
"Thank you, grandpa! They are lovely and soft too!" his granddaughter said, hugging him tightly.
Suddenly, Gerald felt Maria shiver in his arms. She was crying:
"Grandpa, why did mom and dad abandon me?"
It wasn't the first time Maria had asked him that uncomfortable question, but at the age of twelve, that question sounded more painful than ever.
The girl had no memories of her parents, and Gerald himself hadn't heard from them for a long time, since every missive he sent to Earth never received a reply back.
Concerned, over the years he'd asked his colleagues to come check out their home, only to find it hadn't been inhabited since 1944.
When the scientists had knocked on George and Florence's house to get an explanation, they had discovered they had moved and their current whereabouts were unknown. End of family ties.
Desperate, Gerald had then asked his trusted collaborators for a further effort: to sift through Westopolis Cemetery.
And there they had been found, Richard Robotnik and Catherine Williams, buried under the tall branches of an ancient oak. Dead on the same day, October 31, 1944.
They had committed suicide from depression.
They had never gotten over Maria's illness and had preferred to suffer their pain alone for four long years before ending their lives with a rope.
They had been found by neighbors, who hadn't heard or seen them for days.
As for George and Florence, they had organized and attended the funerals, and ten days later they had sneaked off.
This was what emerged from the investigations by Gerald's collaborators.
The elderly scientist, once again plagued by mourning, had never spoken about this to Maria.
She was never supposed to know.
He preferred the torch of hope to remain lit in her, about two parents who could one day mend their ways and come to visit her, loving her as they had in the first two years of her existence.
"They'll come back..." he told her, that time too, "... They'll come back..."
And even that time, Maria gave him a smile.
And Gerald was reborn, rising again from his ashes.