The Alternate Universe of Steve Cross, Science Fiction Author

Toward the end of the 21st century, interstellar travel was made practical by the discovery that in interstellar space contained multidimensional passageways called “wormholes” that greatly shortened the distance between stars. So planet Earth became “First Earth,” the mother of other inhabited Earths.

However, the wormholes did not always conveniently connect one solar system with another, so that a mission of colonization would still require generations to complete. For instance, the liner Girolamo Bruno, which colonized Fifth Earth and Sixth Earth, required 75 years to make the journey from Earth to Fifth Earth (orbiting Epsilon Eridani) and another 50 years to reach Sixth Earth (orbiting Tau Ceti). Without the wormholes, the first leg of the journey would have taken 175 years and the second another 135 years. Because of the large mass of their payloads, the liners were unable to travel more than 7 per cent of the speed of light.

As a result, despite the help of wormholes, space liner journeys still required generations to complete. People were born, lived their entire lives, and died on the liners, without ever seeing the destination. (These generation starships were given the quaint name liners, after the ocean liners of 150-200 years before.) On board the Bruno, the passengers amused themselves by inventing new languages and even new religions. Thus originated the Aaklo language and an early form of the Kadmonian religion, although the latter did not receive definitive form until Lileen Roz (listed in the Bruno’s passenger list as Lillian Rose) began her ministry on Fifth Earth. Although the history of the original settlement of Fifth Earth is clouded by mythology, it seems obvious that the first settlers of Fifth Earth had long abandoned English, Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, and other languages First Earth languages in favor of Aaklo.

(Parenthetically, one of the myths about Lileen Roz was that she was a native of First Earth, an error which has been unfortunately propagated in several widely respected scholarly works on the Kadmonian faith.)

Fifth Earth not only had water, appropriate gravity, an oxygen-and-nitrogen rich atmosphere, and an atmospheric pressure suitable to Earth colonists, but a wide variety of plant and animal life biochemically incompatible with the plant and animal species which the colonists had brought (in the case of the animals, in embryonic form) from Earth. For instance, Fifth Earth life-forms can metabolize lead and mercury, which are poisonous to Earth creatures. Earth creatures can metabolize calcium and phosphorous, which are poisonous to Fifth Earth life-forms. An ecological catastrophe resulted, in which many of the native and First Earth transplanted species died, including many of the colonists. So many people died so rapidly that vital technical skills were lost. By this time, the Bruno had moved along to the next wormhole and was beyond recall. However, some colonists apparently believed it was still in orbit around their new world, though not responding to emergency radio messages for some reason.

The conflicting plant and animal forms achieved a sort of equilibrium with each other over time. For instance, as I mentioned in Discarded Faces, ruzonthos (a Fifth Earth animal) ate human garbage until they died of calcium and phosphorous poisoning. Their carcasses were eaten by rats (descendants of escapees from colonial laboratories) until the rats died of mercury poisoning.

The plant life of First Earth did achieve dominance in some parts of the new world. For instance, the mountains of Manaar in northern Danallo were eventually covered with familiar First Earth species of tree. The hardiest native Fifth Earth plant life survived best in desert regions. In fact, the ecological incompatibility of the two sets of organisms is a likely cause of the widespread desertification of the interiors of Fifth Earth continents.

<< More to be added later about the formation of Danallo, Amrath Kalb, and Amrath Der, which are the largest Fifth Earth countries. >>