Beginnings[]
-219,652,387.45392 GST - that was my time of birth, to the nearest Galactic Minute. I grew up in a time of great eagerness, when Antheonic life was dominated by the search for alien intelligence. When I reached adulthood, I joined my elder brother Chronos in the Galactic Search Mission, a government project to search the entire galaxy on a small scale for any sign of intelligence - for any sign of the Antheon body type, for we did not believe that intelligence could take any other form.
To aid in our search, our minds were seeded with links to a galactic quantum computer network already in place. Our mission was not to do the grunt work of visiting every location in the galaxy - the entire population of the galaxy would not have been enough for that. Instead, we were to manage and perfect the computer, allowing it to extend into every corner of the galaxy and detect any sign of Antheon-like life. I need not go into details; there was nothing there.
The Zea[]
My younger brother, Ozana, joined a private organization that had given up the search for intelligence. Instead, the sought to create life, to fulfill our desires by our own power. They succeeded, in the sense that they did create intelligent life. But there was something unfulfilling about it - their creations, the Zea, had no capacity for love, and somehow we knew all along that they would never be able to imagine anything that we had not already imagined for them. They would never satisfy the Great Search - but they did something else. They started it.
The Exodus[]
The Zea were a hardy people, filled with the Antheonic dreams of exploration and seeded with thoughts of gravity and quantum interactions. In our search for outside life we had let our research in to transportation falter, but now the Zea took over for us, taking the final step to intergalactic travel by braving the black hole at the center of the galaxy. Immediately the Antheons leapt outward, fleeing their barren galaxy in a mad search for life.
I heard the plan from my own brother's mouth. Ozana spoke of endless multiplication, of bringing galaxies to heel with our very thoughts. The hardy and adventurous Zea would expand our horizons forever, and we would never lack for new territory to explore. He was so caught up in his own work that he forgot the Antheonic dream - but he spoke in terms of it. In days, half the galaxy was gone; in a month, I heard that the Zea had explored three new galaxies, and we could no longer occupy every system in the galaxy.
As the Antheons fled, new dreams entered my mind. It was clear that we were giving this galaxy up for lost, but I was a bit hesitant to leave the home that I had labored over so long. I knew that although there was still no Antheonoid life, the galaxy had changed since I saw it last. What if I were to have it all to myself?
My announcement stunned what remained of the nation, and removed any chance of my having to share the galaxy. Everyone knew that with the Zea's penchant for expansion, we would each have room to spare soon; why should anyone try to share this empty galaxy that had grown so small in our species' long life? Thus I was left alone in my great, empty empire.
Another Beginning[]
Though I remained behind, something of the Great Search remained in me, and over time it united with my general loneliness. I wanted to see something like an Antheon. I suppressed the desire, and fought against it with all the power at my disposal, and I won... I had peace. I had changed myself, given myself endless patience. I would live forever in an empty galaxy, and I would accept that.
But this acceptance did not extend to my subconscious. While I waited patiently, my subconscious worked, creating Antheonoid species after Antheonoid species. First the Helics came... I considered them pure coincidence. Then the Highlords came. This time I realized that something special was happening... the same thing does not evolve three times. But I went into denial, considering them outsiders, having nothing to do with me. The Great Search was dead.
Then the Kelosians came... and from them came a lone, foolhardy spaceship headed straight for me. If I did absolutely nothing, I would die. This weak mortal, whose entire race I could vaporize with a thought, had given me a terrible decision. If I destroyed him, or harmed him in any way, it would be the greatest affront to my race, to the Great Search, and to what I had done to myself. But to kindly turn him aside would be to accept him... to accept everything that I had made against my own will.
Hollowstar[]
In the end, it was my loneliness that made the difference. I wanted a friend. I helped him as much as I could with as little effort as possible - I gave him the self-focusing wormhole, what they now call "Negatron's Gift." I trusted that with the controlled wormhole, the heart of Antheonic technology, he could save himself. And I was not disappointed.