mandercommander | OOM: A (Mostly) Uninhabited World

OOM: A (Mostly) Uninhabited World

On the other side of the door is a large forest. The door opens on a high ridge in this forest; through a clearing, you can see for miles and miles. There's not a human in sight...no signs of civilization, and though the plants are similar to those one might find in a forest in the Pacific Northwest or in Britain, there's also something somewhat alien about the place.

Off in the distance, one can see a large river flowing towards an ocean. There are some splotches of clearings here and there, but mostly the area is covered in miles and miles of old-growth forests.

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Yes, but he'd also mentioned that he liked being in the wilderness once upon a time.

"Then off we go."

Bonzo starts leading the way down the hill, towards the river. It's a ways off and will probably take some time to reach, but they should be able to do so given most of the day if they try at it.

There's a lot of undergrowth in some areas, but for the most part the forests are fairly clear of that being too bad, sorta like the redwood forests in Northern California.

There's not much animal life to be seen, particularly on the large side. There are some birds and a decent variety of insects, as well as a few stray Earth-native species (mostly in the aforementioned categories) but not many animals that seem to be native.

It's quieter there. Less people in his mind there.

Another detail Bonzo knows nothing of yet.

He could have crossed the distance in minutes --

But Edward keeps the ambling pace of Bonzo, though it is with inordinate grace and and ease that he manages it. Seemingly looking around and above himself the whole time, without stumbling or bumping into anything.

"What was this world called?"

"The star is Epsilon Eridani. Last I recall, they'd just tagged it as 'e', and I don't recall what code name it got stuck with during the war."

Pause.

"That reminds me...we're likely to come across ruins sooner or later. There used to be aliens here."

"What kind?"

There's some interest in it while he's watching a bird fly over them, and away. That part isn't so surprising. Animals did flee before bigger predators.

It had an interesting purple line through it's under feathers though.

"Insectoid." Pause. "They were all joined in a hive mind. We...couldn't communicate with them, hence the war."

That response to differing lives and lifeforms so unchanged by time. So unchanged liked Edward's face as he made it over a fallen log without losing sight of the bird who was over a mile away now.

"Are they all gone now then?"

"From this world." Bonzo keeps on walking, looking around as they make it down into the broad valley they'd been overlooking. There's a bit more life here, but again, not much of size.

"They still occupy a couple of worlds, but we...failed to destroy that world."

"Have you found a way to communicate with them?"

Or what were the implications of the difference.

"No." Pause. "It...doesn't seem to be possible. We decided to colonize as many of their worlds...the ones they basically abandoned...as quickly as possible so we couldn't be driven extinct if we lost Earth."

"And yet neither of you has wiped the other out."

No easy balance, no common ground to start on. Except survival of the races. Survival that was everything and nothing in wars -- in all the struggles of lifeforms.

"Yeah." Pause. "I have no idea what's going to come next." He glances up at the sky for a moment. "We've both tried our best, on purpose or by accident, and we've both bumbled it."

Edward glanced over, "Live and let live?"

He doesn't sound as though it is either a suggestion or an insult. It's just obliquely referenced into the stillness of the forest.

"If both sides could agree to it, that'd be fine. Hard to just...let the other guy get in the first word in an interstellar war." Pause. "I mean...even if we had decades of warning..." Shrug. "Who knows what they could throw at us if they got a fleet together to attack us with."

Knowing you were unmatched and outgunned in the eventuality of an if, Edward couldn't help seeing the parallel in the two of them, walking through the forest. How easy it would be, even if it was not something he wanted or had otherwise reason to think on.

Yet that was all he wanted. To be let and left alone.

Even if he was very little like the rest of his kind.

Edward nodded, walking down still, and ever, easily. "Especially when you can't tell a word the other side is saying. It makes for a rather easily broken peace based on offense, defense and assumption."

"Yeah." Pause. "And...if they launch ships off in another direction, I'm not sure if we wouldn't think they were coming at us. And...we wouldn't pick up on the signatures until shortly before they got to us."

The ground slowly begins to flatten out. There's a stream here or there as they enter the river valley in earnest; a few areas lack the big trees that have dominated the woods thus far, and there are signs that the area that they're entering may have been logged within the last few decades. It's not a huge area, but it's noticeably different from most of what they've seen so far.

Thinned, without being cultivated. The wildness parsed for other uses that nature had never intended and humans could not keep themselves from.

"Complicated." He wouldn't want those problems.

At least not on top of the ones he already has daily.

He's fine having to watch over just six (seven) people.

"Is anything ever simple?" Bonzo asks this as they make their way through the thinned-out woods. Finally, they come to a road that has some (visibly long-dead) Buggers scattered along it.

Bonzo winces just a bit. There's no noticeable stench, but the sight is something that he...was not expecting.

"People would have you believe so--"

Edward stops where Bonzo does, lifting golden eyes slowly, traversed his gaze, stoically, over the object.

It means far more to Bonzo than it does to him. It's an insect carcass, and even though it is quite large, insects aren't all that interesting on any basic level to vampires.

"--while literature and history frequently prove it otherwise."

Especially that the simplest things to have or want were the most complicated to attain and maintain. Being alive, feeling alive, chiefly among them.

Finally, eyes moving from it to him, peripherally; in a tone that is both indifferent and yet still calmly, evenly aware and musical; "Would you prefer a different way?"

There's a long moment of thought before Bonzo replies. He's really got to think on that.

"What do you mean?" He's perplexed, as Edward might note.

He's rarely had to repeat himself for Bonzo, but he supposes this is a trying enough case in and of what it is. He wonders if Carlisle or Jasper would be more interested in the thing, even as he answer the question he was bid to.

"That we could take an alternate route?"

A forest was full of paths.

"I think I'll be fine." He looks the exoskeletons over for a moment. "Just that I never saw one up close before."

"Never?"

Edward's gaze doesn't change per say.

But to have never seen your opponent....

"No. They were...always light years away. We saw pictures, vids, but..." Shrug. "Space is a really big place."

Edward's expression was slightly wrinkled.

That was so very different.

"We just had no way of coming into contact with them one-on-one. The war was fought with a commander on Eros commanding his fleet over an instantaneous communication system."

Fighting them from a long distance.

Never once seeing your enemy even as you killed them.

It's so very

(inhumane is the word he's searching for)

But it isn't at once, too. It's very human to want to push a few buttons and eradicate what is in ones way, without any due cause to it. His kind would approve.

"That's a very different way of fighting a war."

"It's...really the only way to do something at those distances, I guess." Pause. "You can't have your best guys on all the battlefields of the galaxy in the space of a few weeks, after all."

Only.

How many leaders and wars were recorded having used that word?

"Why not?"

"Physics. The speed of light is...something of an unbreakable law for objects. You can communicate, but not move, faster than it."

Though Edward might well try and disprove that proposition, Bonzo would be hard-pressed to see that done.

As they continue past the ruins of what was probably a Bugger logging operation, Bonzo leads them down the empty road...for ease if nothing else...for a while.

Wars fought through computer screens, across light years. How far that was from the war he'd envisioned entering before his life so entirely changed with the Spanish Influenza and Carlisle.

Edward walked companionably well, at least, appearing unruffled by the differences.

And on some level, Bonzo would have trouble envisioning outright trench warfare. He'd seen something akin to it in his time, but nothing quite on the level of World War I.

"It's strange..." Bonzo looks around at the forests and meadows. "...I never got to see any place this...open...back on Earth."

Edward looked up, from the extensive distance he'd been looking forward into, for the space of the trees and the span of the sky.

"And yet you did adjust to the openness of Milliways."

"It took time. It...wasn't overnight, and I did get into a few fights when I was first there." Pause. "Also, it was limited. It was open, but...there's almost a backdrop in Milliways."

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OOM: A (Mostly) Uninhabited World

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