Chapter 11: 2100 October 14th, Thursday

So today was a bit interesting. Before I write about the events I need to go into some history I think. I realized I covered the Peace Day deal and some tidbits about government and laws and stuff. However, I never really wrote about the war itself. I think that’s important to mention, cause it’s the other big reason why some humans don’t like Zenith. A big cause for the “red-eyes” slur flinging and stuff like that.

But before I can write about the war, I have to write a bit about what I learned about life before my kind landed on Earth.

A long, long time ago--so long we don’t even know the exact date--our people fled our home planet in a big ship: roughly the size of an island, though perhaps just a small one.

This ship was called the “Zera”, which is a rough translation from truespeak: particularly a word that means something like ‘hope’. Pretty corny I know, but it was built and named far before my time.

Anyways, it was a huge colony ship on a mission to search for a new home. It was equipped with very advanced hydroponics, life support systems, and much more. Since it was designed to take us to a new home, it had to serve as a home in and of itself right?

Within its massive interior there was advanced farming systems set up. Not just nutrient-rich grounds for gams to grow in of course--a valuable food supply--but also for many crops that were native to our planet. There was also plenty of equipment to help build and set things up on any planet we landed on. Most basically, seeds and the like for said crop plants, but kept in storage.

Speaking of storage, the Zera wasn’t just going to help us set up on our new home, but it was also acting to preserve the history and culture of our homeworld. Tons of information, stories, and more were stored in datalogs on the ship. Of course, we wanted to save the creatures of our planet too: at least many of them. So, there were live specimens of fauna kept in enclosures as well. Flora was preserved as well, even if it didn’t offer much in terms of crop potential.

Now one of the biggest questions when anyone learns about this stuff first, and I imagine humans ask the same, is ‘what happened to the Zenith homeworld?’

And that’s the big thing, we don’t know! No one does. People on the ship used to know, but they are gone now sadly. The ship was faster than light, but space is big. Like, really big. The ship couldn’t just zip wherever it wanted with a warp drive or by making a worm hole or something. It wasn’t like the movies. Our technology wasn’t there yet and still isn’t.

We were searching for any inhabitable planet, not Earth in particular (we didn’t even know Earth existed at the time I imagine). Still, space was so vast that the journey went on for decades and decades, then centuries and centuries. Probably over a thousand years at the least.

Now that’s a lot of time to spend on a ship, even a cool one with enough food and, presumably, entertainment. The original people from homeworld started getting tired of it. Maybe some of them lost hope, and maybe others were just bored. Others, I imagine, simply felt they had done enough to ensure future generations of Zenith were ready for the journey, and decided they had enough. So, they willfully ended their lives by heading out airlocks. The extreme cold and depressurization of space is one of the few things that can kill our kind I suppose.

And so, one by one, everyone who originally came from homeworld was gone.

Now this wasn’t viewed as a problem by the survivors. After all, it was their own life to live, or end, I suppose was the idea. The other reason this wasn’t too worrisome at the time was due to all the stored datalogs. Probably the equivalent of petabytes of information on homeworld, the history, the terrain and stuff like that. On top of that you also had written works from people who lived on the ship, both those from homeworld and those who originated on Zera. Many of these were journals or diaries.

Kind of funny that I’m writing a diary now for a college assignment!

So, yeah everyone was presumably like “yeah no worries it was nice of them to stay with us long as we did, but we have all these datalogs to remember the important stuff with anyways.”

And years went on, with the general trend of the oldest Zenith getting bored and ‘heading out’ so to speak, while younger ones took over as leaders, increased the population, and so on in a cycle.

Personally I can’t imagine wanting to throw myself out an airlock ever, but I guess I never had to grow up and live on a giant spaceship. Seems more boring and trial-some than life here on earth.

Unfortunately, as the journey went on over many years, a disaster hit. There was a glitch in the datalog systems. Far as we know, everything was lost. Just like that, the history of homeworld, why we left: poof, gone. No one knows what caused the glitch, but the theory was that it was an EMP like effect from some errant star flare or something.

From that point, data recording amped up a bit on the ship, both written down and orally. That’s how we still know there was any data lost at all in fact.

More years went by and, at last, Earth was detected via ship sensors when the Zera was very far away: a year or so out still I think. Maybe more. Maybe way more in fact. Anyways, the Zenith onboard didn’t know what life was on the planet, only that it had some, and had plenty of water and stuff too. A resource-rich world in the so-called ‘circumstellar habitable zone’ of its star. It was perfect.

Alas, the Zera was not. There was another glitch in the ship. This one was even more unknown in origin, but affected the farming systems. Crops we’re dying off. Now we weren’t idiots, we knew how to manually plant food. However, the farming system used complicated processes to make sure the soil always had nutrients. The highly detailed information on the design of those systems, their maintenance, how to repair and stuff like that was lost when the datalogs were.

Gams still did ok. Given their low need for nutrients on an individual level, they were able to survive still, eating out whatever nutrients they could to fully form and mature. The actual crops though, they needed more nutrients and water. Eventually the soil wasn’t enough for them and they started dying.

So, we now had food issues. Gams were still around as a staple of course, but the more filling vegetables and fruits were getting in short supply. Eventually the last crops were harvested from everything in the farming system itself.

The food my people had taken for granted was dwindling. Crop flora was entire lost. By the time the Zera entered the Solar System, the Zenith had already started eating whatever remotely edible plants there were in storage. When those weren’t enough, much of the fauna stocks were consumed as well.

Keep in mind that, from what I was told--and Zenith from that time are still around on Earth of course--it wasn’t like a panic or anything. We were apparently civilized about raiding the stores of life we had on board. But, it was still an unfortunate affair. We Zenith did, apparently, try and make sure to save at least a few samples of every bit of flora or fauna onboard.

No one was ever at risk of starving to death, everyone was nourished, but it came at a high cost to what we were trying to preserve, I imagine.

Anyways, Zera finally neared Earth’s orbit. Given the food situation everyone on board was super eager to land. So, landing protocol was engaged, and the Zera started descending towards Earth.

But it was not that simple. The last kerfuffle to strike the Zera struck, and it was a big one. If anyone were to ever read this diary, they might guess that, yes, there was another glitch. The landing systems and protocol this time.

To put it simply, the ship descended way faster than expected. At the same time, life support systems started to malfunction. It wasn’t a meteoric speed, but fast enough that the Zera would have issues landing.

And it did. The ship didn’t land so much as crash on Earth. It did so with intense heat in the ship’s interior too, both due to the failure of life-support systems and the whole ‘descending faster than you are supposed to makes things really hot’ part of flight I guess.

Now, we Zenith are of course very resistant, so not as single one of us was harmed int he process. The gams are pretty sturdy too, and small, and very plentiful. Though many died from the ones yet unconsumed, many more made it out well enough.

Alas, the same couldn’t be said for the fauna and flora storage. Their life support systems also gave out. Many needed climate-controlled containers to live in. They were presumed all lost.

So, Zera crashed into the planet, dented and bent and beyond repair. Power out. The only bits of our homeworld preserved was its dented wreckage. And, of course, we Zenith and the gams. That was it. But, there was not a single Zenith casualty from the landing at all.

The Zenith quickly fanned out from the crashed landing though. My people weren’t just gonna give up of course! It wasn’t long till we found life as the history goes, then civilization in the form of humans.

Admittedly, the humans probably had reason to dislike us at first. Viewing the planet as their own, they probably thought us very rude ‘guests’. My people were hungry, impatient, and curious and didn’t yet understand the human tongues. The first meetings between Zenith and humans often consisted of my kind testing their strength and durability and finding it lacking. Think Zenith yanking at these strange, similar looking humans and inadvertently tearing their arms off. Since humans (or the vast majority) had no real psionic index to speak of, that meant we couldn’t use telepathy to communicate either.

Now we Zenith are fast learners of any mouth-language, but our first encounters with humans were obviously very fatal or maiming for them, and so they didn't say much other than screams, yelps, ‘leave me alone’ and stuff like that.

Again, so the history told.

Eager for resources, the Zenith pioneers spread out and claimed territory for their own, much to humanity’s dismay. They also wanted revenge for the initial ‘meetings’ between our kind.

So, just as the Zenith started learning human tongues from exposure, the war was officially started.

As you can imagine, no sooner than it started officially did the Zenith start winning. A single Zenith could rip through entire squads with her bare-hands: our weapon of choice even to this day. The planet’s militaries, which were spread a bunch of different nations at the time, were pretty advanced. The USA, the region I call my home, was chief among them there.

However even the most destructive explosives served only to stun. It also didn’t help that we Zenith at the time didn’t really have a home base. Yeah, the Zera was guarded but we were spreading out across the globe to whatever city we pleased, and fast. We would just kick people out of their homes at the time and claim whatever food or whatnot we saw fit while briefly setting up camps in the region. Camps, again, being just kicking humans out of their homes and living there ourselves.

So, if you wanted to even try to blow up Zenith with heavy weapons, it meant destroying your own cities.

Speaking of destruction, I didn’t even mention the psionic warriors. Those Zenith with higher than normal psionic indexes who could use telekinesis to tear apart vast swaths of people from a distance. Now, all Zenith have some grasp on telekinesis. But for most of us, sadly, it’s little more than a convenience or a party trick to impress humans with.

For some Zenith though, they could tear apart tanks with their minds instead of having to get close and use their hands. Others were powerful enough to level houses with a thought. Bigger buildings could be leveled by cracking the support beams. Psionic warriors were especially effective at pulling helicopters out of the sky. At least that’s what I learned in history class and such.

Now, every time humans or Zenith learn about psionic warriors, there’s always one that asks the same question. ‘Could they fly?’ Sadly, no, since we Zenith, even those not too high on the psionic index, have a sort of resistance to psionic phenomenon. Telekinesis in particular. So, psionic warriors couldn’t fly around with levitation or anything. I mean, in theory the most powerful might be able to hover for brief moments I suppose, maybe.

Then some smart-ass usually asks ‘well, what about standing on a sheet of metal, or a surfboard or something, and then telekinetically levitating that to fly that way?’

Now that is a bit more doable in theory, but there’s a lot of reasons it’s not done in practice. Namely, it’s rather dangerous and unwieldy. We Zenith can run fast enough as it is, so flight wasn’t too needed for us.

Sorry, I guess I’m writing a bit of a tangent.

So yeah, Zenith were kicking human butt. However, humans were crafty. Some of their best soldiers went on a secret mission to the Zera’s landing site. There, in the dead of night, they somehow extracted some of the metal used for the ship’s hull. Not a lot in comparison to the ship itself, but about a shipping-container’s worth I believe.

Then, they took the chunk of metal to some special facility they had to process it where, under intense heat and pressure, they broke it down and smelted it into the casing for bullets.

An important thing about the Zera, is that most of the metal used to make it is incredibly strong. So strong, that even we have a hard time getting through it. It came from homeworld, and the way to make it is lost and, now, studying or trying to study the metal or how to reproduce it is illegal.

Anyways so the humans now had precious few bullets which they thought could hurt us.

They were right.

Launched at very high speeds, the bullets actually injured Zenith forces and, for the first time in the war, Zenith started to die. Only a few. Most were simply injured by the bullets. The causalities were in the single digits (or is it ‘single digit’?)

The humans simply meant to intimidate the Zenith, maybe get them to back down or get us a to a negotiating table. Naturally that didn’t work. The Zenith, my people, were beyond furious. Their ship was defiled, and they kind, however few, were killed by inferior beings.

So the war ramped up in cruelty. Civilians, not often spared to start with, were now being hunted down as ‘revenge’ by us Zenith. Structures were being destroyed with more purpose now. Roads were torn up by psionic warriors as Zenith made their way to the capitals of the nations and wrecked havoc on the centers of government there. Tanks were taken up by psionic warriors and used as bullets of their own to tear through structures and armies alike.

It seemed humanity was at a loss. Chaos was rampant.

But then, almost out of nowhere, the Zenith offered a peace deal for reasons I wrote about earlier along with the deal itself, along with the laws that followed.

Laws aside though, humans were very, very bitter about the war. Many lost their family members but lived on. Today, you have humans who hate Zenith for taking grandparents they never knew (seems silly to me), though so very old people might remember their parents lost.

I also didn’t write about it at the time, but everyone even remotely involved in harvesting metal from the Zera--be it the actual task force itself, or their commanders, the support team, contractors and even the CEO of the company that made the vehicles used in the operation--all of them were turned over and killed as part of the peace deal. Anyone who ever fired one of those bullets, or ordered the firing of said bullets, was also brutally slaughtered after their surrender, a surrender which was part of the peace process.

So, some humans were upset about that too, especially, as it had been seen as the war was over, why kill them? The Zenith view at the time, still held today, was that if the humans involved in killing Zenith were let to live, unpunished, then that might inspire anti-Zenith sects of humanity to fight. They’d be crushed of course, but it’d be a waste.

The metal itself was all recovered far as we know. Even the spent bullet casings and shells or whatever were picked up off the ground meticulously.

Anyways, wow I did it again, turning my diary into a tangent of sorts. The reason I brought this all up though, like I wrote earlier was, again, to show why some humans just don’t like us.

However, it’s not as though the Zenith were unfair. We just wanted to integrate the two species. Yes, we’re on top, but humans aren’t wiped out, or enslaved or, worse, turned into a source of food and fun not unlike cattle: all would have been quite easy for us Zenith.

It was, and still is, important for us to try and live together. Colleges are forced to be mixed Zenith and Humans, for instance. Now, education before that can’t be for practical reasons, but even then my earlier, non college classes were spoken language rather than telepathy or the like. Most of them at least, just to help us settle in further.

I’ve written it before and I can’t say I pity the humans too much about all the stuff they had to put up with. Yeah, having to rebuild and repair some capital cities after the war was a pain, and there’s no denying technological advancement wasn’t set back a bit due to all the effort put into that.

But, things are better now! And, also, I’m just trying to get a degree, get a nice job, and live my life like any human in the USA or on the planet. I hatched here on this planet by the way, not on another planet or on a ship. We Zenith have a lot in common with the humans, as much as I or other Zenith hate to admit. I admit it, even if I treat humans as fragile annoyances to break now and then. It’s just how it is.

Some humans just can’t get over it though.

That’s why I wrote all that, to give some background for why something that happened today might happen.

Anyways, yeah, 3000 words later let me actual go back to treating this diary like a diary and cover some events of the day.

So, classes ended this Thursday and I was walking along with Wojis, who shared my last class. This time, Soaph was here too as she was gonna stay on campus to grab dinner. And last but not least, as a rare occurrence, we had Veldel with us as well.

I guess I haven’t written much about Veldel yet. I kind of just spewed a bunch of background details already, so I won’t do that here. I’ll just mention a few quick details about her for now, whatever is relevant.

Appearance wise, she stuck to mostly the same attire we did: tank or crop tops--any top which let the skin of our taut bellies be bared. She sometimes wore skirts, but more often shorts and today she had a black pair of the latter on. She usually wore sandals--again, like the rest of us Zenith mostly. However, she usually chose those with more straps than the rest of us. Hers for the day were a more gladiator style, in brown, only the straps didn’t ride up her leg all that much: stopping at around the ankle area.

But that’s just clothes. The most distinctive part of her appearance was that it was always changing, sort of. We Zenith can change the colors of our hair and skin, naturally. However, Veldel liked to do that all the time, constantly. Not in the sense of a new color every day, but more that her skin and hair would constantly shift in colorful patterns.

This is a skill of us Zenith. We can all do it, some better and faster than others. I guess you could say it was a gift of hers to do it as fast and with as much control as Veldel did.

In our culture though, this is seen as kind of tacky. Almost flashy or show-off-y. But, Veldel didn’t much care for that critique. I asked her once why she did color-shifting almost all the time, and she said simply that she liked it. It was fun to her, and a fun way to impress the humans. I expect she meant more a fun way to sort of lord a sense of superiority over them though, not that I could complain about that.

Anyways, it was rare for her to hang out with us outside of meal times. Even then she’d sometimes disappear. So, I was surprised when she run up to us and joined us as we were walking. Today, she started with tones of black and white for her body and hair. The black bits would be like spots, shifting around her predominantly stark-white body. Others would be like less defined shapes, scattered like dots of ink. It was like one of those Rorschach tests or something. I think that’s what she was going for.

Wojis playfully suggested that when the black parts of her patterns were more spherical, there was sort of a ‘cow’ vibe to the design. We all had a good chuckle on that, Veldel too in good sport. At that point she swapped to shades of blue and green, so then her body had a living lava-lamp like pattern to it. It was admittedly neat but, again, yeah kind of tacky if you ask me. I guess the important thing is that she likes it though. More power to her.

It’s not as though the skin and hair color combinations are needed to identify us. Our features are typically flawless, but in their own way. We have facial differences and stuff varying heights and some shape variations to our bodies.

Anyways so we were walking, chatting about not much of importance really. Mitch’s party this weekend was mentioned. Then, from our side, came a rock hurtling through the air.

It was a small stone. We turned our heads to it as it neared. Veldel caught it telekinetically before it reached her head. She reached up and crushed it in her hand after.

Anyways we knew someone had thrown it, and could see them briefly. We were walking by one of the many mini-arks on campus. The assailant ducked behind a tree after throwing it, but we saw her run out from behind it afterwards.

So, we gave chase. A very brief chase I should add. We caught her real quick. We could’ve used telekinesis to get her faster, by levitating a stick in the woman’s path and Veldel probably could’ve telekinetically tugged on the woman herself. But, it seemed she wanted the thrill of a more physical chase, as did we to be honest.

Wojis was the one to actually nab her, tackling the student to the grass. Veldel looked to all the other humans in the area and released her pheromones.

“Leave.”, she barked, and they obeyed.

The assailant tried to leave too, but I used my own pheromones to negate that command. Obviously we wanted her to stick to find out what was up.

Wojis shook the gal a bit.

“Uh, why’d you throw a rock at us you jerk?”, she said.

The student had glasses, and short brown hair. She was wearing a hoodie and some jeans with wide bottoms. She had on some sneakers too.

“You red-eyes, you took everything from me. I lost my grandfather in the war...”

I remember rolling my eyes and thinking ‘not again’ and ‘how cliche’. But, she continued.

“My dad was killed by one of you in a work accident and now, finally at college, my girlfriend goes missing. I know it’s one of your kind who got her. Probably accidentally broke her leg bumping into her, and figured it’d be easier to get rid of her than pay a fine. I know you, you’re all the same, you think nothing of us.”

“I mean, that’s not entirely true.”, said Soaph.

“I can’t focus anymore. My grades are gonna go to shit now that she’s gone. I’m just done. I know you’re gonna kill me, just like you would if I scuffed one of your shoes. So go ahead and do it, fucking cowards.”, the human said.

“Well actually I would’ve settled just roughing you up a bit, but if you insist.”, I said.

At that point though, Veldel actually stepped forward, gently nudging Wojis aside.

She moved her color-shifting fingers towards the woman’s hoodie and pulled down the zipper.

“What?”, said the human. “How surprising, are you gonna try and fuck me too-”

“As I thought by what little of the design I could see. Your shirt has a piano design for its emblem. Do you play?”, said Veldel.

“I mean, yeah but I don’t see how-”

When I say Veldel acted without hesitation, I mean it. She was fast. Not a moment of waste in her movements. She leaned in and moved her hands atop the humans. Pressing them close together, she squeezed and worked her fingers to utterly pulverize the woman’s hands. Pulverize isn’t even the right word for it I think. It was more like Veldel treated her hands like paper, and crumbled them up as tight as possible. Blending them like a blender would or something. Completely mashed.

What was left was a gory mess of mangled bones on flesh past the woman’s wrists.

She let out the cries of physical and mental anguish one would expect.

“I play too.”, said Veldel. “Now we have even less in common though, how fitting for an inferior being like yourself. Die if you feel like it, beg my friends to do it too if you want. It seems that despite the ‘tragedies’ you went through, you still needed more to learn that everything you have can be taken away by us with ease.”

Veldel wiped her hands together, then shook them off of blood.

She turned to us.

“Sorry to rush things, but I guess the timing of this works out. I had to get going, I have some lab work to finish up. So, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Uh ok.”, I said. “Cya around Veldel.”

“Take care. Maybe I’ll see you at Mitch’s party.”, said Soaph.

“Yeah!”, said Wojis.

“Maybe.”, she said as she walked off.

So now we had a screaming, mangled woman to deal with.

“Hmm, we’re definitely in fine territory now. I was just gonna break a finger or something.”, said Wojis.

“Yeah same, but the rock would’ve hit Veldel so I can see why she did what she did.”

“Alright, let’s get rid of her. She was kind of requesting as much earlier.”, said Soaph.

The human woman seemed really distraught as Soaph sunk hair into her neck. I think she was talking to the talk before, but after losing her hands, realizing that, while dead, she won’t be able to play the piano or anything else she liked, well, I guess the notion hit realer than before.

I note as much cause she struggled a bit through the shrinking process. Wojis was able to hold her steady enough that no paralytic was needed.

Soaph was doing the hair-plugging, so the woman shrunk all the way down to one inch tall. I picked up her clothes and chucked them in a nearby bush.

With Soaph’s hair out of the woman, Wojis stepped forward and hovered her flip-flopped foot above the student.

“I’ll take care of this I guess. My shoes are the easiest to clean, wearing cheap foam ones today.”

I laughed. “Today? You always do that, Citrus.”

She huffed, then slammed her yellow-skinned foot down on the student. We all heard a big crunch, then some more as she wiggled the foot in the flip-flop, settling her ped and, in the process, further grinding the woman beneath the sandal’s sole.

Soaph clapped her hands.

“Alright, that’s over with, lets get some dinner!”

“Great, I’m starving.”, I said. Wojis echoed the sentiment and we ate on Campus. Veldel was absent, but the rest of the gang was there and we had a fun time chatting.

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