Story Time

This is my first Story Time blog. Start the music, and start reading - as they are meant to go together. The Mars Volta is another band I hold close to my heart. They were there for very formative years for me. Opened my ears to a whole new realm of music to say the least. This track is a few years old now but it still demands my attention like it was just released...

Imagine a world named “Dusk”:

Dusk is a terrestrial planet orbiting within the goldilocks zone of a distant star system. Weather on dusk is very similar to weather on Earth. Life is carbon based, cellular in structure, and genetically encoded (just like our DNA!). After six billion years of evolution, megafauna on Dusk had grown to a position of uncontested dominance. Efficient predators – but lacking in complex cognitive abilities (almost like Dinosaurs!).

One day, a brilliant cloud of interstellar gases wandered through the neighborhood and got caught in orbit around Dusk's star – blocking a significant portion of its light to all planets in the system. For millenia, Dusk was plunged into a severe ice age which triggered mass extinction of all but the smallest animals.

However, all was not lost. Over time, the same nebula which blighted Dusk slowly dispersed throughout the system and seeped into it's atmosphere. With an influx of green house gases, Dusk's temperature rose by a few degrees every century. After another few millenia, Dusk reached an equilibrium.

Dusk was once again a temperate world, now locked in a perpetual twilight with a sky more glorious than a thousand northern lights.

Picture a day on the planet:

The nebula focuses the sun into an ethereal cyclic spectrum. At day break - glowing auras of ruby and violet cast the terrain a deep garnet. By noon, the hue shifts to pockets of gold wrapped in jade. By sun down, the entire rainbow of colors dance in the sky, only to give birth to a pure azure blanket for sleep at night. Throughout the procession, only the sheen of a trillion glowing stars punctuate the tendrils of incandescent light.

The newly opened ecological niches spurned an explosion of growth in the diversity of the animal population. Competition led to intense conflict to best capitalize on the bounty of available resources. About twenty million years of evolution after Dusk entered its dark phase, the first language bearing society quickly rose to prominence and spread throughout the entire planet. After developing primitive tools and cultivating seasonal crops, they were certainly on the path to enlightenment.

It was at this time that the first human scout surveyed the planet, and pitched a venture capital firm to fund the development of an exclusive resort. This resort was to intended for the richest executives of fortune five-million companies. The pitch was met with warm welcome, and construction of the planetary vacation destination began immediately.

Despite the protests of the galactic organization for preservation, all local fauna was destroyed with a genetic plague so as to prevent the possibility of injury or disease transmission to the guests of the resort. Twenty million hominid-like animals were purged.