The Voyagers

prologue

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Empyrea Station

Essleon, 3986

"By the time anyone finds this, we will be gone... but that doesn't mean we are to be forgotten."

Those words rang in his head for 15 long years. One event. One discovery. Had it not been, what would he truly be remembered for? Just another ruler, crowned by his father as is expected. The day was one that he wouldn't forget. The life of a 25 year old changed overnight, so it was, and it all came together in a mysterious way. It could have been luck, he predicted, as he spoke his mind to the open view before him, of cold blackness and stars, and to one star in particular, there in the distance.

He was a man of many things; in fact he would be known for an eternity for more than that in comparison to his own people and those who had come before him. He was a leader, a hero. A ruler would simply be an understatement for some would even go so far to call him their savior. What he had achieved in his lifetime was much grander than he had ever predicted for himself as a person, even as a person one who was grown to be in the position he stands in today.

Not often would he feel in such a reflective state of mind, but that was how it came to be for him since the dawn of that morning. The day was secured to be a date he'd become celebrated, his life, his success, his work. Him. It was the date of his birth and though he had no care for such things, it was an event predicted to be scheduled, accepted by him or not.

The man that stood now at 45 years old was lost in his reflection of the glass window before him and was questioning himself. What would his life be had fate not unfolded before him the date of his father's passing, an event alone unplanned for, next to his own findings? He'd asked it countless times but as much as he wondered, he couldn't find the answer. It would be rather cliché to add, it was written in the stars, he laughed to himself. People of Earth did have a very interesting way of putting things, and as the years passed forward with them, he'd learned of their puns, their strange language, and what they really meant by things. It turned out, they'd given him nearly as much as he had given them.

His eyes narrowed in on the shine of the star a bit brighter and larger than the rest before him. That one had become his own. It was his journey, and his project and his life invested there. It was something driven and created by hard work and effort, his readiness, stability and will to reach out for the unknown, unlike others of his own and others on the outside, to let another in. Maybe that's what it is about him that had created a revolution for him and his people. It changed everything they'd ever known. Their mindset shifted after accepting the new people in. His finger was placed against the window, just over the bright dot when his wife had made the entrance to join him.

"Al," she spoke as she entered, and only she had ever called him so. "Isn't it time that we go? You have people waiting." He had turned to see her, a woman who stood beside him all his life, she'd known him in a capacity no one had met. She'd watched him patiently to speak, but he hadn't. "You are thinking again," she realized.

"Is it a mistake to think?" he pondered.

"Should I correct myself to call you doubting?"

"Think you read me only too well."

"Today your life is celebrated by your people. Do you know how many will arrive?" she reminded him.

"Only by the thousands," he mumbled. "Do you think that they come to see me for me, Al, or Alphazar, their ruler?" His head of brown and gray hair had tilted and he'd seen her eyes of gold shimmer into his.

"They come to see a man who they look up to. The one who had done things undone before. They've come to celebrate you, for you are the only one who has achieved what has not been by anyone... in this world or the next one over. They come because of the warmth you embody, something they haven't seen for centuries."

"Sometimes I wonder, if I had not been so curious, if I had not chosen to go further than the expected, I would not be known as anything. Just another heir..."

"If you had not been so eager to know everything you don't know already, it would not be you."

"To be curious is to grow. Had I not been, Earth would be long forgotten."

"That is why you are looked up to," she told him. "You are Al, but you are also a symbol... a symbol of hope. If you couldn't allow for a planet out of your system to be forgotten, now they will forever carry the belief you'd never allow it to happen for Essleon. That..." she pointed outwards towards their home planet where the floating city of Theradan was built. "That's you giving hope to not only people of Earth but to your people. You are the first to collide two worlds. Never has anyone been ready to accept outsiders, but you opened the door of a million opportunities. You opened possibility. You saved them. You gave them a place and a new hom—"

"They are no longer outsiders, Becca. These people are just as us. Essleon would be different now without them."

"And Earth's legacy would be nothing without you," she brought her point back around.

He felt her step back, his eyes noted her suit, a jacket slim and long to past her knees and booted heels that emphasized her height. Her copper hair was the perfect compliment against her navy clothes and lastly her kind and gracefully aging face smiled at him.

"Come now. Don't you think you are ready?"

"As ready as I will ever be."