Volume 1. Chapter 1.

• Dictated by Commander Elinor Sturgeon (no number assigned, no classification given) in its original Parian. Translations available upon request.  
• Dictation begins: Day 96 of year 51,080,905,672. Location: Sharron, Quallitia 

Reminiscent of multi-colored mountains, five figures loomed over my half-conscious human form as my mind floated out of stasis and into reality. My body had somehow found its way onto an alien vessel while my thoughts continued to wander around space. Approximately three hours must pass for a human to come fully out of stasis, and during those three hours the mind is aware but the body is helpless. As the kaleidoscope of colors, that I would later learn were members of the species Par and a part of the 27th squadron in the Kara Warrior forces, picked me up from where I lay in my stasis chamber and carried me into a very white, echoing room, I could hear them speaking with each other. I didn’t understand a word at that time, but the sounds reminded me of the ancient romance languages of my species.
I could sense I was moving but the alabaster labyrinth made it hard to tell how far. The frosted walls closed in on me, and I was placed on what I took to be an iceberg while a pink cloud hovered overhead. I felt calm and tried to reach out and touch the cloud but my brain did not send the request to my hand.  
The pink blur, which would soon be introduced as Urralysttical 8655 Class V, shifted me onto my side. I have a hazy memory of wondering what would come next. Then suddenly, without warning, the most intense pain I have ever experienced surged its way up my spine and wedged itself firmly in the middle of my skull. Everything went black.
On the bright side I eventually woke up, but I suppose there was no real suspense in that regard since we’re at the beginning of the adventure not the end. The pain eventually subsided but there was a sense of growth and searching left behind, like I was trying to remember a character’s name from a book I read as a child. I attempted to put words into place and organize my thoughts but fuzzy mumbles kept pushing their way to the center of my cognitive process.  
I was alone. The room was sterile, begging to be smudged. and begged to be smudged. I remained where I was and let my eyes do the searching. I realized I was in no way constrained and so I sat up to get a better view of the bleached void. I heard someone approaching and immediately became aware of my nakedness. I was in the process of curling myself into a ball in order to cover all the necessary parts as one of the large colorful blobs entered the room. There was no door, just an opening that lead into an identically white hallway. The purple blob that had carried me from my stasis pod now stood two steps in front of me as a fully formed Par male.  
The creature leering at me was massive and ugly, but not as alien as I originally had thought. This was the male that would soon introduce himself to me as Lesshoosha 7866 Class V, Les for short. His muscular form lined up with mine perfectly except for the fact that he was a half meter taller and weighed at least 75 kilograms more than me. His appendages added to the same number as mine; as did his facial features. The biggest difference between our physical appearances was the deep purple hue to his thick, calloused skin. Also, as you know, human’s noses protrude from their face and only have one set of nostrils. We greatly suffered for this in the thin air of Qualittia.
Les wore tight black booty shorts, which would soon become my common attire, as it was for all Kara Warriors. The sharp spikes sprinkled along his head, arms, and spine are another characteristic unique to Kara warriors. His large black eyes with clear eyelids locked onto mine in a never ending stare. His lips were by far the most appealing part of his face. Full and wide but at this moment contorted into a sneer as he eyeballed me from across the room.  
He started making an attempt to communicate with me but all I could make out were a bunch of “Whooshes” and “Glunks.” It wasn’t like he was making noises I had never heard before, but they certainly didn’t add up to equal any language I understood at the time. I translated my confusion as best I could into a facial expression, which was immediately comprehended and he fell silent. At this time, I was not aware of the LiquiParian flowing through my cerebral cortex; working on embedding the Par language into my memory, and allowing me to communicate with ease.  
He approached me and I unintentionally shrunk away. I didn’t fear him nearly as much as I should have at that time, but his size alone caused me to cower. I could tell scarring me had not been his motivation as he set a cup of red liquid down on the table before backing out of the room.  
He didn’t restrain me or close the opening when he left. I could leave whenever I wanted. I considered the possibility that I could still be floating safely in my pod having a stasis dream, but if that is true this has been a very long dream indeed, since I am now an old woman with a head full of memories. At the time of my discovery, I had spent half of my short life working as a Searcher, but never once thought I would find anything on my search missions. I just enjoyed the solitude.  
I contemplated running, trying to fight my way back to my ship, but then realized that running would go against everything I had been trained for. I had finally fulfilled the purpose of every mission I had ever gone on. Of course, I didn’t move. I continued sitting in the white room silently over-thinking everything and freaking myself out while my new acquaintance did the same thing in his room about fifty steps away.  
*
Suddenly there were two of them. Urral and Les entered the room. Urral did not frighten me the way his purple companion had. I don’t know why since he was a good five inches taller than his purple friend, which put my head at his abdomen, but he was much skinner than the purple lug and didn’t have nearly as much intensity pulsing through his body. He was as calming as his color tone and even gave me a small smile as he entered the room behind his scowling leader.  
Urral started talking in their foreign language as he slowly approached me. He stretched out his hands between us as if I was a dangerous animal he was unsure of. I didn’t move in case the big one was there to pounce on me for misbehaving. Pinkie gave me a concerned look and walked to the wall on the far side of the room. He lifted his hand and swiped it vertically down the wall. The wall to the right of me faded to reveal a view of the space outside. For a moment I was afraid he had opened an airlock to space to dispose of me, but no change in air pressure occurred so I maintained my silence. He then returned to my side and was holding a clear, square screen. He lifted his transparent screen up to align with my eyes and started moving it closer and further away as if to get the picture he was looking at into focus. They continued to talk, ignoring me except for the occasional awkward glance. I persevered in my ignorant silence and waited for them to leave so I could go back to focusing on my inevitable death.  
Soon they came to some conclusion, and I wondered if they shared my sense of hopelessness about our situation. They looked at each other and then me, paused for a brief moment like two adults deciding what to do with a child neither of them wanted, and then big and purple approached the wall directly in front of me and an indention formed along the far left side. A thin door to the right of the newly formed indention opened to reveal a line of cylindrical jars. He pulled a jar from the shelf and placed it in the middle of the indented space on the wall. A beam of clear liquid poured out of the top of the indention and into the jar, which once full was set down beside the jar of red liquid that rested beside my thigh. Tall and pink was over by the wall as well but on the opposite side, and soon returned with a large, fluffy pink blanket. Needless to say, I had few expectations at this point but a fluffy pink blanket was not even on my radar. He crossed the room and draped the blanket around my shoulders and before I could properly contain myself a snorting laugh pushed past my lips.  
“Pinkie are you serious? Your sense of color scheme surprises me beyond your terrifying figures.” I don’t know how or why my brain decided to speak up at that specific moment but I think my shock was wearing off. The only answer I got in return was my new acquaintances backing away from me as if I had just promised to blow up their ship with the explosives I had hidden in my fallopian tubes.
These two males, that would eventually become my close companions, stared at me from the exit and I glared back as best I could. I had no idea what was going on in their heads at that moment, and I didn’t care. I wanted to be back in my pod, alone with my own mundane thoughts.  
That’s the absurdity of the human condition. We crave change our whole lives; searching for something new and different that will set us apart from the everyday bullshit we have convinced ourselves is somehow not really living, but how can that be true? The boring bits of life take up far more time than the thrilling adventures. The boring bits make us who we are.
Yet, we cling to the fleeting moments, blow them up in our minds, and build a reality around them. All the while ignoring the vast majority of our lives as we daydream about being unique flowers that get to live happily ever after. None of us wants to admit that we are all equally significant in our meaninglessness.
I was no more destined for something grand than any other random humanoid. I was just in the right place at the right time. There is no karmic, kismet destiny that chose me for this individualized mission. I’m not unique and deserving of an adventure. I’m a human female like the billions of other human females that have lived and died before me. (I dream of being seen as normal but with dreams of being looked at as a true sui generis, but after my individualized moment revealed itself to me I was terrified and wanted nothing to do with it. Despite the pounding in my heart I certainly didn’t feel like I was finally truly living. I felt like I was waiting to die, but I guess that’s what we’re all doing all the time.


- R.T. Kilgore