Prologue and Background Info: The Dying Earth

In the far future humans detect a neutron star on a collision course with the sun. It is estimated to hit just over a decade from when it's detected and identified.

When the star hits, the neutron star will pass right through the sun, taking some of its matter with it. The neutron star would remain intact because of its densely compressed mass, but the sun would destabilize and explode. The earth would survive, but its oceans and atmosphere would boil off into space, leaving the surface uninhabitable. Without the sun's warmth or gravitational pull, the earth would freeze and spin off into deep space.

The humans must decide what course of action to take. They must decide to invest their technology on:

1. A way to divert the star - The neutron star is about three solar masses. The humans, even with their highly advanced technology, do not know of any conceivable way to divert the star's course and there is not enough time to research it, so that's out.
2. A way to protect the earth's population - The humans have already built underground. There are layers of subterranean tunnels from past eras in human history. It would not be difficult to adapt them and turn them into massive self-sufficient bunkers. However, they could not live there indefinitely.
3. A way to evacuate the earth's population - On the other hand, they do not have enough time to build enough colony ships to evacuate the entire earth's population before the star hits.

It is decided that they will build the underground city while trying to build as many ships as they can at the same time. That way they can evacuate a large portion of the population before the star hits while the rest wait in the bunkers and continue building ships underground. The survivors (hopefully all of them) will then join the rest later after they've built enough ships to move the rest of the population living underground.

The humans devote all their resources to these two projects and the many sub-projects that are a part of it. For ten years the entire world is dedicated to human survival. Massive life support and life preserving technologies are used for both the ships and the subterranean city. One interesting technology is a gigantic power generator that draws its energy from the earth's core, designed to be able to supply the entire city with energy.

The colonists' destination is an already established colony in a nearby star system. It cannot accommodate the earth's entire population though, so many of the colonists will simply stop there an their way to other colonies, and some to go off and explore new worlds.

The people left on earth decide to turn the earth into a giant monument and museum. They also build a giant homing beacon and imbed it in the planet so that future generations can find it. This was not a part of the original plan, in fact it's a diversion that sets their final departure date back by years, but they do it out of boredom and sentimentalism. Instead of one mass exodus they take off piecemeal in smaller fleets.

The story begins as the last fleet prepares to leave. The planetary monument project is almost complete and they ask CephA to take care of the final details. She is impatient to leave, but agrees just to get them to go already!

The humans have to leave because the massive generator in the earth's core is leaking radiation and the radiation levels in the city are becoming critical. This is no problem for CephA, but she must also leave soon because her kind cannot live without the sun for extended periods of time. Her plan is to leave and go back to the floating alien colony and spend her retirement basking in the radiation of nebulous stars.

Chapter One:

CephA dutifully goes to the task of completing the planetary memorial archives. With only the maintenance robots keeping her company she begins to get a little stir-crazy. She spends some time talking to her "mother", and it decides to make a companion for her. This is simplified from v.1 where she leaves and then returns with Cephus to Earth later. Of course, this also means that CephA will not take on a human female form until much later in the story and for very different reasons. The getting turned out of the collective plotline is pushed back to nearly the end of the series and happens because she has developed more human characteristics due to exposure to Cephus.

Cephus emerges, a young adult homo sapien male and the Mother finally reveals it to CephA. CephA expresses her reservations for "a pet monkey." The Mother explains that "they" were curious about how one of her ancient ancestors would relate to her world and CephA argues that such an experiment is cruel and he has no place. She expresses some pity for this ancient that will barely understand her world, and uses the Quaternary Park story as an example. The Mother explains that when she made him this is what he wanted to be. The real drives behind this incarnation of Cephus is explained in greater detail later in the story, but basically the Ceph have much say in how they are made.

Cephus awakens and CephA, eventually getting frustrated and giving up on him, orders some robots to take care of him. From here a variation of chapters 3 and 4 of CephV.1 begins. More emphasis is put on Cephus' development, where he begins with a child-like mentality and gradually becomes an adolecent. Cephus tries to find a place with the robots, but keeps screwing up until CephA finally loses patience with him and orders a couple robots to take him somewhere where he cannot do anymore damage. In this version, the insane behaviour of the robots is mainly due to Cephus' bad influence. He flees and makes his way down into abandoned depths of the city where he then meets the derelict robots.

List of Important Initial Characters:

The Alien Collective

An ancient race and possible one of the earliest, they drift through space studying other life around them. At some point they evolved into what could be considered living spaceships and somehow are all connected as one mind, regardless of the vast distances between them. They have no desire to interfere with the workings of the universe, but are intent on recording everything they can. They have no external technology and tend to solve problems by re-engineering themselves. Only a few specialized ones go down to live on planets and study the natural life there. Most of their kind tend to float aimlessly in space and bask in newborn nebulous stars. They can grow to the size of planets and have a kind of virtual immortality; Because they are all one mind, when one of them dies it is still a part of the whole and the others will often create another body for it to reside in. The largest of them have grown to such immense sizes that their brains can store vast amounts of knowledge, so they end up partitioning their brains into separate sentient beings--though being of "one mind" they can hardly tell the difference most of the time. There is only a vague awareness of them each being separate. Perhaps the best way to describe their thought process and the way they communicate is 'gestalt'. They tend to be benevolent but have a few rare enemies.

Mother/Ship

Originally the alien that landed on earth billions of years ago during the Silurian period. Living deep within the earth's crust, It gradually merged with the planet. Later it created Ceph as an avatar in order to get closer to the human race and study it. It is unknown whether or not it has done this with other species. Though its mind is always connected to Ceph it rarely imposes itself, preferring just to watch.

As the planet dies the alien slowly extracts itself from the planet and forms a shell around itself with ample space for the Cephs to live in as well, thus becoming their ship.

CephA always refers to it as "Mother", but Cephus later calls it "Ship."

CephA

Our first protagonist had lived on earth for some time before its ultimate demise. Referred to as a "she" because she chooses to take a female form when human (homo sapien opposed to the future humans). She spends most of the story in a slightly more alien form because she has been raised in a world where homo sapiens are considered primitive ancestors of the far more advanced future human race. She is fairly serious minded and has little patience for fools. Her ultimate goal is to rejoin the her creators, the alien collective, as one of them.

Cephus

Originally created to keep his elder sister company, throughout the story he seems to be more of a burden to her. He takes a male homo sapien form most of the time, so she tends to treat him more like a pet monkey or a child. Cephus is practically raised by insane robots, and rarely understands the consequences of his actions; in fact, though he is highly accident prone he rarely has to deal with the consequences because he bounces back so easily. He starts out with the mentality of a hyperactive five year old and gradually makes it to adolescence by the time they leave earth. On the surface he seems to be a complete fool but does actually have some rare hidden depths. Completely oblivious to the commotion he causes, he is the focus around which the story revolves. His ultimate goal is to find somewhere where he feels he belongs.

The Future Human Race

The future human race is somewhat sickly by our standards. They have only vestigial legs and their weak bony arms must support large malformed hands. Their heads and eyes are large, with a thick external skull. Their bodies are tiny; Too small to contain a full set of functional organs, they cannot live without life-support and move about in self-contained mobile life-support suits. They are however, very intelligent and creative. They express their individuality with custom made suits; Each formed to ultimately express themselves, they end up looking quite strange and no two suits are alike. CephA has taken a form similar to the basic form of one of these suits, with her own individual flair. The basic form of one of these suits is a protective shell with a main body and attached helm. Appendages are custom fitted and a long robe is often worn over top. These suits move by hovering at a height above the ground that can vary between one inch and fifteen feet (though greater height cannot often be maintained for long because it exhausts the suits energy reserves).