I have thought about the giant planets, the ones like Kesk. She is not so ancient a world, not by the slow reckoning of galactic time itself. You know her age by her rings, a broad plane of ices and rock. It is impolite to speak of a woman's age, however, and so no one names her truest age. Her moons are numerous and humans--my brothers, my sisters, my ones in between--make their lives on eleven of Kesk's orbital children. A twelfth, a thirteenth, a fourteenth will soon teem with human life. Nemaean, like myself. We don't claim Kesk's satellite children, but we make what use of them she allows--and what they themselves allow. As I think of Kesk, I wonder if it is possible to visit her...in the dark...without a bottle of nastoika, hidden beneath my bunk, without fear. Or perhaps, with the hope of finding a wounded, wild mathematician. They visit Kesk as well, but they are feral among their starfaring breed; they sing rakish equations. Others of their breed avoid them. Wild. Shunned. But we approach them, and learn insanity through their complicated songs. We are, after all, like them. Though not shunned by humans of Centralist pedigree, we are mistrusted. Whisper our cultural name in the communities among the Centralist worlds and eyes widen, mouths gape and lips purse as if the tongue has captured something distasteful. So yes, the sons, daughters, and in-betweens of Nemaea know how it is to be different from others of our species. But we aren't the only visitor/colonists in Kesk's system. The blue ones come as well, and we are cautious in our dealings with them. They mean nothing of harm to anyone Human, but they are crackling, energetic beings--the youngest of them can destroy a super-cruiser with but a single, glancing caress. They are confused by this; in their assumptions, we are as hearty as they, and the youngest of them seek to touch us, to learn us, and this cannot be allowed. This is the sadness of Kesk: the place where the mad congregate for safety against the marauding sane. It is a place where the young of another breed cannot touch the most fragile of their foreign friends. Now, the moons of Kesk are our homes, and I must ask the hardest of all Nemaean questions. What upsetting truths do our homes, and our friends tell of us? --Vladimir Victorovich Bilaiov: Contact Specialist on board the Nemaean Long Range super-cruiser, Lev (Personal logs, Unpublished/Translated from High Nemaean by Charles C. Black) ***** Because of my love of the Nemaean universe crammed inside of my head, I decided to dedicate my 100th post to them. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting on my previous posts.