[ WP ] `` To explore the universe , we had to sacrifice our humanity . And we did . ''

Twelve thousand, nine hundred, ninety-nine years, three hundred and sixty-four days, twenty-three hours, fifty-four minutes. 
 
 That's how long I've been alive. That's how long I've been searching the universe for some~~one~~thing like me. It's been so long and I've stretched from star to star, planet to planet, ocean to ocean, to find another. 
 
 I do n't know much about my past, if anything really, but I remember being born, I remember hearing a song about that day, and I remember my parents giving me up. Just like all the other children. I do n't really know why they did it and I could never ask during my training, but slowly, everyone who was like me learned to give up the basics of life. We were trained to explore, and to only *want* to explore. I remember there were a hundred of us at the end, when we were all given our directives and sent off in our ships to explore. 
 
 There were a hundred of us. I remember that. They told us that we were to be pioneers, explorers for our people, men and women who would do great things for the world we lived in. But in order to do so, we had to leave... 
 
 Humanity. That's what they called them. I remember the name. We had to leave humanity behind in order to save them. But above that, we had to leave something else behind. 
 
 We were trained to be... immoral, in a way. We were to have no emotions, no sense of right or wrong, no feeling of hate or of love. We were trained to be explorers who only had one directive, to find the secrets the universe held. 
 
 So, to explore the universe, we had to sacrifice our humanity. And we did. 
 
 Not by choice perhaps, but by necessity. Growing up, the hundred of us knew that exploring the galaxy was needed to save humanity. Our world was dying, still is, and we needed to try and save her. And if not her, I remember our trainers saying, then the entire human race. A hundred of us carried the weights of nineteen billion people on our shoulders. And we did n't back away from the fight. 
 
 For when we graduated, if you could call it that, we *wanted* to explore the universe with every fiber of our being. For thirty years we were told of what laid ahead in our paths, of the beautiful ocean of stars that we needed to scour in order to learn the secrets to life itself. We wanted to go out and we wanted to do what we were born to do. But we lost each other in that journey. A hundred of us left... 
 
 Earth, our planet was called Earth. We left her behind together, as a group, and we journeyed from star to star. And then a few of us left, said they needed to cover more ground, more stars, more places. They would use our buoys to communicate, to tell us where they each stopped and searched. It was an obvious choice, the abandonment, and I knew it would come. 
 
 But it has been so long since then, so many years in fact that I forget what the other ninety-nine look like. I forget what humanity looks like. Surely it can not be the thing that stares back at me each morning in that glass mirror, it can not be *that*. The other ninety-nine are out there, exploring like I am. 
 
 Our only difference is that I realized that the secrets to the universe long ago. A few thousand years of searching led to one, incredible fact. The Secrets to the Universe will *always* be secret. And whatever we are, whatever the ninety-nine has become, can not wield that secret. Our exploration will go on infinitely, and our minds will forever thirst for the answer that can never come. 
 
 I must find them; the other ninety-nine and tell them the truth. For seven thousand years I've explored. Not for the secret, but for *them*, the others that left with me. They're out there somewhere and I'm slowly tracking them down. It has been so long since I've seen them and I do miss them; and I will keep exploring, searching for them. 
 
 But today's my birthday. And it's been so long since I heard that song about being born a human. 
 _____ 
 /r/BlankPagesEmptyMugs for more of my work about space and infinity.
