The Songs of Polaris

5. The Everlasting Vigil (Part II)

The Wayfarer gained entry to the city hall building. Its interior was tall, wide, and had colonnades running on four sides. Thanks to the deepwater-resistant design, the hull structure remained intact.

One hand gesture, and the Wayfarer retracted its Sphere. It landed on both feet and found itself in a dark, humid environment. Empty, just the trickling of water beads. The lone exile dispersed a different set of proton molecules, which rose to the top and provided illumination.

It found a stone monument in the middle of the hall, surrounded by white candles. Despite the passage of time, the inscription remained legible. It wrote, 'This is Baiae, the last Hadrian city. May its people live in the echoes of the universe, boundless and forever.'

The words continued streaming, chanting the Hadrian history. They told the rise of a dynasty and its eventual doomed destiny.

Once upon a time, the Hadrians were a space-faring civilization. Hadria, their home planet, was the commercial, cultural, and political center of the Nerva-Antonine system.

That all changed when Hadria experienced a sudden collapse in its magnetosphere. The reason, the Hadrian High Priestess believed, was because the planetary molten core had stopped rotating. So she called on her citizens and slaves abroad, urging them to return and help resuscitate their cherished home planet. Billions answered her call, a grand moment of hope.

But the Hadrians failed.

Despite their Herculean efforts, the thermonuclear warheads they detonated near the molten core were not enough to restart the rotation. Soon, the atmosphere was lost. Breathable air thinned out and drove surface life to permanent cessation.

The last of the Hadrians flocked here. Instead of migrating to other worlds, they chose to hold out and perish. As Baiae's infrastructure crumbled and malfunctioned over time, the Hadrians took to their coffins, ready for the water to take over.

The Rhaetians, their slaves, were set free and allowed to leave. Those faithful and humble aliens were given ships capable of interstellar travel, and a starmap that pointed to their forgotten homeworld. Together, they bade farewell to their former masters and sailed into hyperspace.

The candles. Covered in dust and cobwebs, half-melted. The Wayfarer examined them and found wires running beneath the floor. It was a machine, designed to perpetually keep the flames going. But at some point the lighter fluid dried out, halting the everlasting vigil.

So the Wayfarer snapped its fingers, and the proton molecules came down to huddle around the candles. Friction led to heat, in which flames were born anew.

The light, in remembrance of things past. With warmth, it offered guidance to an afterlife. As the flames flickered under the Malenor'ayva Crest Ocean, a defiant spirit persisted. Meanwhile, it also triggered a chain reaction of a broader system.

The inscription on the monument began to glow. A hologram appeared overhead, depicting a network of Hadrian space probes outside the planet. Lying dormant, they were launched a thousand years ago to form a deep-space communication network.

One fast radio burst from Baiae, and all the probes were reawakened. They brightened up throughout the hologram, like stars that twinkled in the night. Systems check, all units ready to initiate. The network began broadcasting the inscription, using the voice of the High Priestess. "Attention, this is a eulogy of the great Hadrian civilization..." Running on repeat, the radio waves would roam the universe and preach to the stars and the nebulae.

The Wayfarer knelt in front of the monument and murmured a scripture passage. It had completed its second act of penitence. Thanks to the candlelight, the Hadrians would go on living in the echoes of the universe, boundless and forever.