Star Trek '12: 1012 AD - Zetar

It isn’t a pleasant thought, but on every world where sentient life exists, that sentient life will one day cease to be.

Such is the case with Zetar.  This was the last year of recorded history on Zetar, for all life ceased to exist at this time.  The survivors are still unable to voice exactly how this came to be.  The fact that there are survivors seems to be a contradiction, but the survivors no longer have bodies of their own, and as such are not recognized as sentient beings as generally accepted by each other.

That’s the real trick, isn’t it?  Life exists in a variety of forms, but only tends to recognize itself in similar forms.  Even the survivors of Zetar will admit this, eventually anyway, once they can make themselves understood, which is a fairly experience, too, the need for beings of their kind to lack comprehension of sentient beings with bodies of their own, even though they once had bodies, too.  They’ve forgotten.  It’s been a long time, and that life no longer has meaning for them.  Zetar has no meaning for them.  Sometimes they want to try and remember, and they don’t have much sympathy for those who are caught up in these attempts.  Again, perfectly normal, even if no less distressing with repetition.  After all, individual experiences are the same as individual modes of living.

The survivors of Zetar are eager to remember what they’ve forgotten.  Their only failing is that the more they remember the more they want to know, and it’s an impossible desire to fully satisfy, because there now exists no one who knows as much about Zetar as they themselves once knew, and since they did not find it important enough all those years ago to make a permanent record, it’s a source of permanent frustration.  No one ever thinks ahead.  Even when they think they are, they’re warping their expectations, and thus the exercise is worthless.  Imagine if your perfect future isn’t so perfect.  Who’s to know the complications that succeed the ones you already know?

Anyway, Zetar was once like any other planet you can name, Vulcan or Andor or Earth.  It isn’t anymore.  That’s as much as can be said about that with any definitiveness.