This is where we began, washed up on the shores of time and space. This is the place. But it has never been the time, it has never been now, until now. 

They, the captain of the priests, the Padri-Kapitang, flex their four arms, biological and mechanical, and struggle into the Exo-Suit. Somewhere, out system, the worlds are turning; the ocean is dreaming, smiling, ta sonu, ta rih. Deus ta chomah. God, in all Their stellar splendor, is calling. 

Jenti Kristang, birah kaza.

Time to return home.

They turn to face the people; their people, their flock, eli sa kandri kung sanggi. Their flesh and blood. The Last People of Earth and Mars, the Moon and the Visible Stars. Yo benseh kung tudu sibrih nomi di Pai kung Mai, Filu kung Spiritu Santu. I bless you in the name of the Father and Mother, Son and Holy Spirit. The Mare Tranquilitatis stretches before them; they, and all the Last People, know the name from data cores retrieved from Earth’s Ruined Roads, the lands that would not stop burning even sixteen generations after the Awakening. 

But since the first, since the first day they, the Last People, climbed out of cryo, and beheld the Worlds Left Behind, she has been called Mar Animu. The Living Sea. The Sea of Spirits. The Sea of the Brave. 

Padri sa Mar. The Priest’s Sea.

“We are here,” says the Padri-Kapitang. 

“Sempri teng naki,” echoes the crowd. Always have been. The Padri-Kapitang opens their four arms wide, biological and mechanical crisscrossed and alternating. One for Earth. One for Mars. One for the Outer Worlds. And one for the Visible Stars.

“Deus kereh, peskadori drumih. God asked,” says the Padri-Kapitang, “and we, alone out of all the peoples of the universe, slept. And when we awoke – ”

“Nus teng onsong,” says the crowd. We were alone.

They know the words by heart. Every one of the Last People grew up with them. They have remained unchanged for millennia. A simple oration, a prayer to the universe, a reminder of their history. The Eresberes.

“Odds and ends,” says the Padri-Kapitang, lifting all four arms high, their eyes darting to the lunar dome, and what lies in orbit around it, “remained unsorted.”

The Padri-Kapitang has done this for decades, as the Padri-Padri who came before them did as well. This was always the place.

But this Padri-Kapitang knows that they are special. That they are the only Padri-Kapitang, who have come in time.

“Deus,” says the Padri-Kapitang, “falah nus ngka onsong.”

And God told us we were not alone.

Overhead, the dome glitters and shimmers in darklight, as the Visible Stars are momentarily blotted out. Magnificence, thinks the Padri-Kapitang, quiet tears in their heart, their own eyes twinkling like the Visible Stars. Their four arms are cast in wraithful, articulated light, and then brilliant, bursting darkness, and then dancing light yet again.

“Deus,” whispers the Padri-Kapitang, voice emanating through the ubidamezi of every single one of the Last People, “falah nus mistih fikah peskadori nubu.”

God asked us to be fisherpeople once more.

And it comes into view as they let the words fall to the ground, always in the right place, and for this single, quiet Padri-Kapitang, in the right time. Jenti Kristang jenti teatru. They have always been people of the stage; and this has been their stage, and their solitary, terrifying stage alone, for five millennia.

In this time, no more.

“Asih?” enjoins the Padri-Kapitang.

“Asih,” says the crowd, light and life rippling through them, “nus fazeh Langgiang.”

When one sees it from Earth, it is like a great, high silver window, janela di prata, visible from the Nusantara and the Ruined Roads. From Mars, it is another Visible Star, a light that never goes out. And from the Moon, one cannot help but see it in its proper place: within the stories and legends of the Great Homecoming and the murals of the astral sea.

The Padri-Kapitang wheezes as they spread the four arms again. Deus ta chomah kung bos, their inner voice says. 

I know God is calling me, they reply, energy racing once more through themselves as they look toward the shadow of the Langgiang falling across their brow, and then at the crowd; but they are calling me too.

For the crowd in front of the Padri-Kapitang is not just any crowd. Not just any space, and not just any time.

For this time, in this year, the Langgiang is finally complete, and the journey can begin.

The first of them steps forward now, in front of the Padri-Kapitang, eyes raised to the great Push-Net, and then toward the delicate shuttlecraft docked on the outside of the Mar that will carry her to her pride, her joy, her barku semesta: her starship, one among thousands waiting for the Langgiang to start on its way, and launch them into the abyss beyond the Visible Stars.

“Bai rintah, bai fora, kapitang,” says the Padri-Kapitang. Go inward and go outward. An ancient greeting, and an ancient farewell.

“Nus bai buskah nus sa irmang,” she replies, her head raised to space. No one bows before the Langgiang. We go to find our siblings.

“Isti nus sa ardansa,” says the Padri-Kapitang, their voice cracking. Others in the crowd of pilots and captains are weeping. This is our inheritance. And it is. For generation upon generation the Padri-Kapitang’s predecessors have learned these words, never to use them. Till now.

The ship captain in front of the Padri-Kapitang is trembling. She knows, as the Padri-Kapitang knows, the immensity and terror of her task, to scour the universe and the worlds beyond the Visible Stars, and find out what became of the rest of humanity. That she will likely never return if she fails in this task.

She will go, anyway.

The padri-kapitang smiles, and she smiles too, in spite of herself. They both know how this ends, and what the last question will be.

“Ki bos sa barku sa nomi?” says the padri-kapitang. 

What is your vessel’s name?

This is how it begins.

***