Wherever we travel, Alexandra listens to those in the villages we visit who wish to tell her something and, in return, tells stories of our past to whoever chooses to listen. As agreed, I transform the stories she tells into something more. I expand upon her more abstract recollections to bring whoever reads my writing into the many worlds she speaks of.

Of physical worlds, there are only two: Terra and Damia. I write of the worlds forming a line along the thread of humanity's history. The worlds of humanity are differentiated from each other through our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. The world of our beginnings is very different from the world we left fifteen hundred Terran years ago, physically and metaphorically.

Our metaphorical world has changed as we gradually evolved into sentient beings, able to communicate, remember and think abstractly, into worlds where we learned, experimented and grew. Every subsequent world is created by the generations of choices and actions made before, some having positive effects and those causing damage. The world we live in now is as different to those living fifty generations in our past as their world would have been to those fifty generations behind them.

As to our physical homeworld, which birthed our species? Our ancestors destroyed it. Even once it was understood Terra's resources were not unlimited, they continued with unchecked population growth and runaway technology created and released faster than the long-term implications could be explored. As our understanding of the world increased and technology of all sorts advanced, our birth rate far outstripped our death rate. By then, we had outpaced any creature who might have preyed upon us. Unchecked population growth eventually strained the world's resources, and most were blind to the implications.

We weren't a sharing species before the Catastrophe; certainly, we didn't share our resources equitably with our fellow humans. We created a world of imbalance, too many without, sharing a world with the few who had more than they could ever use, much less need and instead of correcting the imbalance, we created a world where we became our own predator, becoming ever more increasingly apt at creating situations where we killed our fellow humans.

Whether personal or propagandized, we were adept at creating scenarios where we convinced ourselves we were morally justified to take the life of another of our species. Of the 3.3 million years humans spent killing their own kind, only the last thirty-five hundred years pre-catastrophe began the killing of thousands in a single encounter. As technology advanced, it became easier to kill each other indiscriminately. Until a time came when the few with power and weapons made disastrous choices, leading to the destruction of almost everything on the surface of our homeworld. (1)

And then there are the differences of this new world, Damia, the second of three worlds circling Themis, 184 light years from Terra. Damia is larger than Terra and takes much longer to orbit around our sun than Terra does around Sol. And as we came to live here, conscious of the gift we had been given, a habitable world empty of sentient life, we consciously chose to create a world where we ask ourselves the more challenging questions. How shall we live on this new world and keep it pristine for those who come after? Not only do we ask ourselves if we can, but we also ask ourselves if we should. (2)

Even as I've ached to hear these stories, It is not enough for me to simply write down what I hear. I want to fill in the brief recitations and so I research. Those who might read me in worlds I cannot even begin to grasp deserve more than notes of dates and happenings, I want to bring these turning points in our history to life, ancient as they may be.

I want to write the narratives of our ancestors who survived underground for well over the time it became safe to surface. I yearn to know how they lived during such a pivotal and extraordinary time in our history and how our forbears came to live upon the surface of Terra once more. What was it like living on a planet with visible reminders of destruction? What of space travel? How did we come to find and then move practically an entire population to Damia?

I'm also fascinated to learn about the more minor aspects of life lived, whether in the small underground cities sustaining our ancestors for centuries, most commonly referred to as the Habitats, or upon the planet's surface when they officially emerged almost two hundred years after the nuclear war ravaged all of Terra. When Alexandra speaks about her life's details, more of her identity seeps out as she recalls conversations and discussions. Needless to say, I always delight in coaxing these stories from her.

Early in our companionship, I learned how much she loved meaningful conversations. She regularly used stories and historical situations about her own life as examples, mainly when our discussions revolved around philosophical and ethical concepts.

And so it is with this story, set barely two months after Alexandra and her partner Kevin moved into what was commonly known as North American Habitat East, one of seven habitats scattered across the North American continent on the planet Earth, as they commonly referred to Terra back then. She told it during a discussion we were having about gender bias, which I found absurd and misogyny, which she explained to me meant a prejudice or hatred against women. (3)

I couldn't even begin to comprehend how anyone could dislike someone simply for being born a specific gender. After all, both egg and sperm are necessary to conceive a child. To believe one aspect is superior to the other is just ridiculous. It was even more challenging to grasp how much energy could be placed on forcing outward conformity with a label assigned by society's expectations, regardless of who someone felt themselves to be.

DISCLAIMER: Alexandra's words in the video are transcribed verbatim. As always, my thoughts on her companions came from researching available material. I can only hope I captured Jae's spirit.