Hybrids and Aliens

Alright, this is a whole lot of stuff, much more than I thought I could do in one night, but I'm very glad I finished it. I really don't like how I haven't gone into much detail about Dordonia and that the story up to this point sounds like a really bland science fiction. This is getting it much closer to what I want it to be. This post is an introduction to more of the aliens in this story world, including my favorite "race" the Hybrids. I'm going to go into more depth about their culture and ideals like I did with Dordonia but later, I really don't want to tackle everything at once now, and I'll just be making little mini posts about their stuff. Like the other large post, I didn't have names for some of these things so they sound a bit odd, though I really like the alien names Er and Siom. I doubt they'll have much of a role in anything as things expand, but they were fun to think of still. I just really liked idea of a political debate between a guy and piece of moss with a glowing button on it. One last note, towards the very end there is a section that would spoil a lot if I talked about it, though you can guess the general idea of what happens. I don't have all the details worked out but writing this out definitely helped me better think out the order of things for later. Enjoy.

After their first encounter with Extraterrestrial life in 2240, mankind discovered that the humanoid aliens seen in every movie were non-existent. The first two encounters were with the friendly Er, and Siom on a moon they had colonized together. The Er (pronounced “Air”) were a race that very much resembled an octopus, however was reptilian and had developed in the sands of their high gravity desert world. They were nearly as tall as a teenager; their heads three to four feet above the ground with ten tentacles each nearly double that, making them massive creatures. Their movement required the high gravity and sand of their home world, many wore padding under their tentacles or full body suits to move through the rougher soil layered Siom buildings and smooth clean surfaces in human structures. The Er also

The Siom were a highly evolved plant race, similar in appearance to moss, the Siom grew and moved as large patches of green sludge, sharing hive mind intelligence. The only way to differentiate between individual Siom was by a light green sensory organ that had evolved almost as a giant “leaf” above the group. The sensory organ was able to change its pigment and coloration for speaking with others. A conversation with a human and Siom for example was difficult, the Siom was a slow patient organism, and a single sentence would take about 5 minutes to form, humans would respond by holding a chip or plate that could convert thoughts into the appropriate colors, the differing wavelength would strike the Siom’s body and allow them to “hear” the conversation, think of it almost like a type of sign language with color. This made the Er much easier to deal with compared to the Siom, a conversation between two individual Siom could take twelve hours, as they were “speaking” as quickly as they could with humans.

Both of these races were friendly and eventually traded technology that would allow the Union and Earth to move farther into the stars peacefully. Some other unfriendly militant races such as the Jarah, an insect race that hatched (unfortunately for humans) from the carcasses of rotting mammals, these races however usually kept to themselves, being openly hostile to other races got you nowhere in diplomacy with other races. Unless you were far technologically superior than everyone as the Alterans were. However there was a growing theme that nearly all alien races were not mammalian. After discovering several destroyed civilizations, some still surviving but in a self inflicted nuclear winter, mankind discovered how lucky it was to be alive. A problem with mammalians is that they required a lot of food to keep their metabolism going and nearly always seemed to be hyperactive in comparison with most slow moving races. Mammalian intelligence was almost always extremely curious which had nearly always led to their self inflicted demise. They’re hyperactive life cycle also resulted in very short life span, at best one hundred seemed to be the most the body could take before it began to fail, meanwhile Er could easily live to be two hundred and Siom even longer than that give optimal conditions.

In 2499 a small icy moon was discovered orbiting a Jupiter-like gas giant. The moon was very similar to Jupiter’s moon Europa that had in the late 21^st century proven to have a vast ocean with many creatures and sea life underneath the surface. For a scientific comparison of the two, a Union research group led by Robert J. Falson dug through the mile or so crust of ice covering the moon. They discovered what would the race popularly known as Fal.

The Fal were of the approximate height of an adult human, nearly five to six feet. They are best described as a mix of a jellyfish and a lobster. The Fal have two long slender claws but have multiple pincers, forming something similar to claw like fingers. Similar to some jelly fish, the Fal store charges of electricity and are able to send out an arc between the gaps in their claws stunning pray they’ve caught or close to their claw. The main body is slender compared to their large pincers that it supports, with a large tube extending from their lower back and up to their head, which is long and slender except for a strikingly human face. The tube contains stores of waste carbon dioxide which can be expelled for a large burst of speed when chasing prey. Throughout the body, except for the chitin containing armor, the Fal have bioluminescent insides because of the depths that they live at. They communicate similarly to the Siom, in a sort of color sign language, able to distinguish many more hues than the human eye.

When mankind arrived they had not expected to find a civilization below the depths. The Fal were not as civilized as the others they had found and the region they had made first made contact with had a class based society similar to Middle Ages feudalism, with upper class “knights” and lower class peasants working algae farms and hunting for them. The church played a massive role in the Fal’s society, exerting control nearly half of the moon’s habitable sea floor. The church had oppressed science and had limited the world view of many, because Fal lived on the surface they lived under massive water pressure and were unable to get close to the icy surface naturally. Several rebellious scientists had built pressure suits to allow them to move to higher levels, discovering the icy crust of their world. This Fal version of Galileo argued that there was a surface that could be broken and that heaven lied beyond it. A generation after he had asserted this humanity discovered them, nearly triggering a civil war between opponents of the church, largely abused peasants and the suppressed scholarly class. Humanity attempted to mediate this despite eventually causing the church’s grip to falter in many areas.

The Fal had inspired one scientist professor Ryan Halberd, who had been looking into genetic modifications to be used for troops against the aquatic Alterans. He had done great work with the Fal for most of his scientific life, understanding their biology and the benefit of life on their world, having spent most of his life on the Atlantis research colony on Europa, on which several Fal scientist were sheltered from the growing conflict.  In 2528 he had created the first Alien-Human hybrid DNA strand, eventually creating the first Hybrid named John Halberd in late 2528. He called the new race Falinoids, the Union had originally been supportive, funding the Atlantis colony as a proto-Dordonia. He and his team had worked on the “Falinoids” with Singularity technology, quickly resulting in a human hybrid. These hybrids had both Gills and Lungs, able live in the water or on the surface. They were predominantly human, resembling many of the humanoids from early 21^st century science fiction movies. They had a clear blue skin, but pigment had been applied to their face and hands to make them more able to converse with humans. Pigment was not applied to their backs, chests, or legs, and was clear, with bioluminescent organs and blood. The only parts of their bodies not humanlike were their heads. Unintentionally there remained an elongated section going down to their backs, though it was nowhere near as pronounced as the Fal themselves. They also retained some of the Fal’s electric storing abilities. This was part of what was supposed to add to their military appeal, a walking teaser, the Hybrids were able to force all their electrical activity from a part of their nervous system into one arm and send it into something they were touching. This was very dangerous though, despite retaining the Fal’s greatly increased lifespan and regeneration, they would burn out their nervous system and lose control in that arm until it was able to heal which could take several days. As all Hybrids are the “Falinoids” were sterile and unable to procreate amongst themselves or humans. They would adopt a practice that would be used by Dordonia after the war, using similar (though less advanced) technology to recombine strands of human and Fal DNA into a use able Hybrid sequence, the child being adopted by a Hybrid couple.

The term Falinoids also did not stick, and when it was used it was more of a racial slur than anything. “Hybrids” as they were simply coined, though still not as kind as Falinoids, became the adopted name of the new race. Citizens of the Union and officials in the Union failed to treat the Hybrids well and instead tried to suppress them, few of the young hybrid children reached Earth. Because of this many stayed on the Atlantis research base that was expanded by the Union to keep them sequestered there.  Though they would only be around for nearly ten years before the Earth was invaded the Hybrids had caused the expansion of the Atlantis base on Europa. The Union trusted them more than Dordonia in the later years of the War as they continued to produce weapons and more easily parted with them because they were so much closer and the Union was able to apply pressure to them more easily. Two months before Alterans boldly attacked Earth the Atlantis base had received a package from Dordonia, hoping to preserve its ancestor and the Hybrid race. Atlantis secretly implemented a phase shield generator under the safeguard of a team of highly defensive Dordonian scientists. When the battle came Europa, Atlantis, and its nursery of Hybrids was saved.

After the invasion, Alteran ships searched desperately for Atlantis, however as the Shield was covering the entire moon, it was undetectable. Still, the station was at a disadvantage to Dordonia, which while also secret, had been made to remain secret. The Atlantis base was unable to grab the amount of solar energy it needed being so far from the Sun. Unable to get solar power, and with the geothermal power available on Europa limited, a risky expedition to restore a Geothermal plant on Io, the volcanic moon of Jupiter was mounted in 2542. After several close calls, a fabricated phase shield was placed on Io and the two stations supplied each other, the Atlantis Base of Europa gave food and materials to Io while the base on Io was able to recharge large power cells for use in both colonies.

Culture developed along similar lines of Dordonia, though it retained the ideals of the Union capitalism and individuality more easily. The Io colony and Atlantis bond was firm until the late 2640’s, ironically when the era of peace in Dordonia began. The population of humans had dwindled because the Hybrids were able to reproduce and maintain their numbers more easily and also able to live nearly double that of regular humans. Many Humans fiercely upset of being replaced threatened to leave and find Dordonia, the lost human colony. The Alterans had set up a large presence on Earth, they did not occupy it because it was premium living space. Demanding far different conditions a small base was maintained to keep the Earth as a trophy world, warning other races such as the Er and Sioms that they were far superior. Nearly half of the population, including nearly all humans, wanted to attack this single base on Earth and reclaim it. The council was fiercely against this but slowly new officials were elected so that by 2652 more than half the populations of Atlantis and the Io colony were ready for war.

While working for the Union, Atlantis had specialized in creating new ways to create weapons and to make modifications to Dordonian weapons (which the Union suspected was not producing the most dangerous weapons it could). The crown jewel of Atlantian creations was the Octopoda Class ship. The Union had wanted large Dreadnaughts created faster and more cheaply than it could muster with materials, having most of them consumed in the creation of Dordonia and Atlantis. Atlantis had on file from Ryan Halberd’s early research many different types of aquatic life, from many worlds that had been explored. A massive squid from the Fal home world showed promise for extensive genetic modification. It was called simply a “Supermassive Squid” and though had been catalogued and had many DNA sequences was poorly named by the person who found it (ha ha ha). It was similar to the Fal in that it had air sacks along its tentacles from which air could be jettisoned for extremely fast bursts. However it needed a smaller species of sea worm to live inside large cavities in these sacs, providing it nutrients while the worm aided in giving it nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Altanian scientists before the invasion had plans to use genetic modification and massive amounts of cybernetic parts to be implanted inside a gigantic (nearly the size of New York) sized Squid. Structures were to be built inside the Air jets and engines placed at the tips of the tentacles; the animal’s brain would become the control center and would be used to direct movement of the tentacles. A massive structure underneath the skin would serve as the “city” where most of the officers on board the ship would live. By 2668 the 16 year effort was finished, with 22 massive ships the Hybrids planned an invasion of the Alteran colony and reclaiming Earth. In 2669 a huge fleet of twenty, five hundred mile long ships were brought out of phase above the Alteran city and razed it to the ground.

Between here and 2691 is a huge area of the story that I don’t want to explain yet, parts about the main characters and the people they’re working for aren’t clear enough yet. All that I can say is that they are not in a parallel time fixing something, they’re going back into their own timeline to fix something, which doesn’t happen for several reasons I’ll talk about later.

In 2691, an Ocotpoda Class ship leaves Europa crammed with nearly 9 million people in stasis pods, including Red’s family, heads for Dordonia. The Faster Than Light (FTL) drive is dysfunctional and makes it to Dordonia in 2781.