Stars

No one knows what happened to the lights in the sky. According to stories from the old humans and the pictures of the world of the old humans there used to be many of them. I don't know where any of them went and neither does any other scientist in this world. It worries me sometimes how we can lose a whole part of our culture but then, the old humans did it all the time. Maybe we're not much different from the old humans despite what we think. Maybe despite all of the changes we have attempted to make, despite all the differences between our cultures, despite our lives being changed forever we are nothing but our history. We are nothing but are past and our past is nothing without us and the choices we make. I guess you could call it human nature if you really wanted to but considering that half of our inhabitants aren't human, I think that they would find it offensive. Maybe human nature isn't the right word. Maybe the words I'm looking for are the nature of creatures. Animals do the same thing we do really. They base their futures upon their past, their pasts are just less complicated therefore making it so that their futures aren't very complicated. But that brings me back to the lights in the sky and their lives and how long they lasted and how they were cut off so abruptly.

I used to research the history of the lights in the sky. Old humans used to say that they were every single planet in the whole universe and some of them were suns and some of them were galaxies. I don't know what any of those words mean but it must have meant a lot to the old humans because they had millions of books written about them. The lights in the sky are also a significant part of their strange histories and the stories that they wrote about what the future would be like. I don't understand all of them, but I know that sometimes the lights in the sky make us feel bigger but that sometimes the lights in the sky make us feel small and insignificant. I don't understand how lights that used to hang in the sky could be scary at all. Maybe we just didn't think the right way and nothing is what we think it is. I also found from reading the books that mentioned planet, galaxies, suns, and the universe that the lights in the sky are called stars. I don't call them that despite that knowledge. The word is so strange and foreign on my tongue but I have found mentions of the stars beside stories of the sun and the plants and a thing called the moon. The idea of the stars fascinates me and confuses me and makes my mind wonder on the things of the world. I want to know why the stars left us why they have 'fallen', as philosophers of old say.

I found many books that mention things about the last day that the stars were there. They said the night was the same as it had always been and that the day was brighter and hotter than it had ever been before and my mind was confused by the idea that a day could be any brighter than it is in the world here. Then people claim that when the night fell they heard yelling, they heard shouts, coming from the heavens up above us where the stars were and the light behind the stars changed in an instant. The stars began to 'streak across the sky'. Those are the exact words used in every account of that night. Streak across the sky. That phrase confused me at first and I dug deeper and found in many of the old humans books that when they say that something streaked out of the sky they are making a reference to the way that stars fell from the sky. I still don't understand how something that remained in the heavens could fall from them but Father Cornello tells us that the angels fell from heaven and so if the angels fell from heaven why could stars not do the same. He usually says this, however, when he's trying to convince us that the almighty God has a say in everything. But I didn't believe it. If the stars were there and now they weren't then there had to be a better reason for them disappearing than God decided that we don't need them anymore.

One day while researching in the old archives and reading about the stars in old human books I turned a page and a piece of paper fell into my lap. I had been reading that book for several days and knew that anyone who wanted to slip me a note had, had ample time and so I read it. I was correct in my deduction, it was addressed to me and I read it skimming over the unimportant parts and reading the parts I found interesting to me. I informed me of a secret organization that met and discussed how the world became the way it was today and discussed the disappearance of the moon, stars, and the other things mentioned in those books. It left me a place that I could go if I really was interested in the stars as I claimed to be. I waited for a week to see if I would get another note but I never did and so I went. I was inducted into the great and holy religion of the Stargazers and for the first time in a long while I was happy. I began to wonder if the world had more to offer me than just darkness as it had before. I wanted the stars back. I wished the night to be illuminated by more than my small candle. I wanted it. I hoped for it. And I knew that someday I would achieve it. I would do this if it took my whole life and nobody could stop me now.