Eden Advance's doctor returned with one of the frosty cryo cylinders from the domestics crate. "I brought you one, Balancer. This... is what we call a chicken. It hasn't been born yet into being independent. It's what we call an embryo. And it's frozen. It won't grow until we warm it up. We've saved non-mobile sun life, too, what we call plants."

The Balancer crouched low with a first look of fear that the colonists had never seen on a Terrian's face before. "It is an exo-machina... cradle?! It does not have a mother!" she trilled in fear. "You took this one away from his! Why?"

Uly stood and ran over to the frightened Terrian. "It's all right. Stay warm, Balancer. We did not steal this egg-without-a-shell from his family."

The cyborg tutor offered more. "In our star place back home, chickens are meant to provide for humans, like the eyestalks do for us now. They grow their eggs and they have body meat we need. And it's okay for us to take them when we're hungry."

The part Terrian boy whispered gently. "Here,..." he said, taking the cyro timer tube from Heller. "The life water in his heart, is fine. This one's just sleeping. See?"
Ulysses carefully guided Balancer's opalescent hands around the icy cylinder. "The chicken is just waiting for us to tell it when to grow. Just like the maglocks are waiting for us to tell them when and how big of an area of land to put to sleep for a while, to end this Phage that my kind release into our world."

True Danziger stepped forward quickly. "But don't wake him up now. He's too stupid to follow us like the eyestalks do. His brain is too small."

Bess Martin added. "We've only just recently gentled birds."
"Ten thousand years of farming and animal domestication is recent?" chuckled Yale.

"On the scale of G889's ecology. Yes, it is." replied Bess.

"He's a... bird? Ah. That is your bigger word for..chick-en. Can he fly like a wind catcher?" Balancer asked in wonder.

"A Koba glider? I think so." Uly frowned. "Mom, what do you think?"

Devon just shrugged. "I've never seen a live animal until we arrived here, Uly. You know that."

Bess stepped forward, reaching out to store the chicken embryo again. "At least they do try. I've seen them in trees on Earth. I'll go put him away, Balancer. Give him here."

The Terrian reluctantly gave the cryotube back to Mrs. Martin. "That is a small life not made well then." Balancer said sadly. "Do you want me to change that?" she asked the boy eagerly, with a tremble of distaste at the chicken's flaws.

John and all of the adults, quickly shook their heads at Uly behind her back.

"Maybe later." Uly's sudden excitement over the offer faded with his sigh. He told the white Terrian no. "We've got other stuff to do first."

Balancer nodded, taking the boy's guidance to heart. "I can move your Half Made, now that I see where they are. Would you like to Go now?"

A shiver of anticipation made John Danziger's bowels flip. "Uh.. not just yet. We need our supplies and vehi- ah, exo-machina travelers, made more condensed. We call it packing up. Makes things easier to move. Can you wait until we're through doing that? We've also this cook fire to put out."

Balancer tilted her head. "Why do you need to heat the food? It is not harmful to you, even after it Ends."

Julia started laughing. "A habit I guess. We have bacteria in our bodies, that are the same sized small things like the Turning, that we need to metabolize our food. It's called digestion."

"Ah,... randomizing bulk solids into uniform energy bits to consume." Balancer agreed. "Does your collection of inside-the-body small life harm you at times? I see how many different colors of them that there are."

Julia nodded. "When they are too few, or too many, or not the right mix; they can. If this population becomes too high or too low, we get sick. We become...weak and start to Turn. We can even die, in just a few sun cycles, if concentrations get really bad.. if things aren't what's normal for us. We call these in-the-body-small-life, bacteria. We cannot live without them, Balancer."

"Please do not End. I am your Mother."

"We'll try not to." John Danziger promised straight faced. He had pre-conceived notions of naivety that wasn't helping matters any, mentally.
::Prejudice is a double edged sword. Even in the best of us.:: he thought. ::I hate that it's a struggle to become widely open minded about this place and everything in it. I guess I'm still too G*d d*mned human.:: But still, no part of him wished to become part Terrian like Uly and Julia had. The thought gave him the willies.

Heller went on carefully, teaching Balancer. "We also have life water small bits, that are the controllers that keep them at the right numbers we need to stay alive. White blood cells."

"Little mothers! They look like me!" exclaimed Balancer in amazement, peering at her own scales and skin.

Julia tried to smile under the pressure of Balancer's microscopic level probing, with her light blue eyes. "They're truly white, I guess. They are part of what we call an immune system. Another kind, identifies the bad bits, marks them, and then clings onto them, to slow them down enough for the little mothers to eat. They're called antibodies."
"Why are they anti or against you?" the curious Terrian asked.

"They aren't. They're against the bad bits, the germs. Antibody is probably a poor word picked for naming them." she shrugged.

Heller gestured empathetically. "They're actually very good things, absolutely crucial for our well being and survival. A person who doesn't have them, doesn't last long."

"I see now. I shall protect you, along with these defending body children you have inside." said the Balancer, shaking her moonlight flecked head.

Julia Heller whispered aside to Yale. "Just wait until she sees our cells' mitochondria, the bacteria that never left, so that they could become human."

"One mystery at a time, doctor. Terrians might be borderline xenophobes like we are." warned the tutor. "G889 herself might decide not to keep us going if we don't learn how to fit in as fast as possible."

Devon Adair agreed. "We can't be very popular in local eyes right now, by any scope of the imagination."

Yale talked to Bess. "Did you save some like we've discussed?"

The fair ringlet curled Martin flashed a few dimples at the tutor. "Do you mean, did I save samples of everybody's sh*t containing all of our gut fauna into cryo cylinders? Oh, yes. I know what diarrhea feels like and I don't have to talk to Julia to know how to fix it. One scoop of personalized crap into each respective dinner bowl cures all." she giggled. "I promise not to tell anybody if that kind of first aid situation ever crops up."

"It's our secret. The doctor's request." Yale winked.

It was time. All three moons were aligned into the last annual eclipse and all of their gear had already been transferred through a nearby moon pool by Balancer, to the edge. Their new Terrian colony member said that she had placed them a bit away from the still living boundary line after the acid mist in the portal had sterilized all of their air touching surfaces. The humans had chosen to be conveyed towards the direction of the sun's dawn so that they would have the earliest first light available to them with which to work the maglocks, after the final Moon Cross. Balancer had already moved every creature and Terrian from the dead zone to anywhere that she knew was safely beyond it.

Julia Heller had asked the question of Balancer. "How are you going to clean us of the Phage like you did all of our equipment? We're so dirty with body children, Balancer."

The albino tilted her head. "I have been sending all of the black, which has been going into, and emerging from you Exos, into an acid lake. The Turning small life, does not stay in the now there. It ends forever. Your little mothers will tend to the rest that I cannot see, until it is gone."

"That's some decontamination process. Continual telekinesis?" Yale wondered.

"Do I move it with the mind? Yes." she replied. "It is a but a simple task."

Julia was thoughtful. "Hmm, we're not sick, but our lab germ should be killed off like normal, in a week to ten days. Thanks for the free bathing you're giving us now, Balancer. Humans are not pure from other small life, that might possible do more harm, when it changes later on. Evolving quickly to new forms is in a bacteria's nature."

"I know how to recognize black. Another Turning, will not happen again. You will no longer be the cause if I remain with you in your travels. Any new black in the yet to come, will not be allowed to use any teeth inside of Xenos or Exos. I and my Mother will not allow it."

John adjusted his dust mask in the red moonlight and finally took a hands on hips stance in the center of their clustered gathering.
"Balancer. We've another Exo people thing we have to talk about. We're not the only humans here on G889. When we first crashed down, we not only found evidence of penal colonists who stole most of our jettisoned cargo pods, we actually met a few of them face to face. It...wasn't pretty."

"Gaal." True whispered, half frightened, half mad at the memory of the scraggly megalomaniac. Grendlers, held enslaved by the power of his Terrian bone necklace, eventually tore Gaal apart in the wake of an insanity that their years long suffering experience, had wrought in them.

John Danziger could only hope those mad Grendlers had died out on their own afterwards. "He was their leader, Balancer. And he was the one who taught Xenos how to... end a being." he said reluctantly.

Balancer didn't have the reaction of shocked innocence that the mechanic was expecting. She asked a question. "Like you would with a chicken? For sustenance and comfort?"

"No... To kill, means to end another's life, with hate, for no reason of survival at all." he replied.

The Balancer turned away from them all, without speaking further. The naturally sparkling rainbow light that usually danced around the Terrian, appeared to dim on her faceted scales, along with her spirit.
She looked up at the two red moons, and gripped her white Terrian staff in both of her clawed hands. "That is ... a flaw ...I cannot understand.. I can't see it." she trilled. "Nor can I touch it in you. It is.. a mind law set into body memory, in a place I cannot change. How do you not go mad having it there so close to your hearts?"

"Genes are integral. They make up what we are. We can't just-" Julia began.

Devon Adair took in a deep breath, and interrupted the doctor. "I suppose our intelligence keeps that instinct at bay, Balancer. If all of any human's basic needs are met, the danger of... being able to kill, doesn't surface in us."

"And for sure, this occurs, not at all, in the normal born." Yale confirmed. "Only in the malformed, either by birth or by experiencing unrelieved long term pain."

"So who was this Gaal, that the small female young life just named?" the alabaster Terrian asked levelly. They could see, that she was thinking hard and very, very long about something, before being given any answer.

"A human who had been so badly treated by his own kind after he was abandoned here, that it warped his soul into committing murder, Balancer." the tutor replied. "He wanted to possess our very own True. And for that, we tricked him into becoming a victim among his own Xeno born slaves."

"And what... is a slave?" Balancer asked, quietly, growing sad and very still where she stood.

Uly replied. "Any person, who's being forced to work, against their will."

"And what are these acts of ending others' free movements or their sacred now time, called? What heart feeling has that name?" she hissed in confusion, an unidentifyable emotion began filling her pale features, as she experienced ugliness for the first time in her entire existence. "I do... not have a speaking... that can describe any ...of what you have said."

The tall lanky mechanic tilted his head up reluctantly, and John found that he had to try twice before he could take in a breath, to speak out loud. Yale saw that he was not meeting the Balancer's eyes with this own.

"No, John." the tutor warned, figuring it out way before any of the others. "This is not a wise thing to do." The burly cyborg took a step forward.

Danziger's huge fists tightened into a ball on each hand, a gesture which stopped the converted convict, mild though he was, dead in his tracks.

"I'm going to tell her the truth about us, Yale. I will not lie to the Terrians any more." John hissed. "For that would be committing, yet again, another betrayal tossed onto the whole f-ing pile that's already been heaped onto this planet a mile deep by humans. Doesn't matter if most of that was done by some of us long before the rest of us were marooned here. It's got to stop sometime. It's going to stop here. Today."

"Danziger.. wha-?" Devon started to ask.

"It's violent, Balancer." Danziger said morosely. "For this ...action and reaction, in here." he said, gesturing to his chest, "Boy, do we do have a word for this trait. My kind, is frequently guilty of it. Earth, our place of origin, is a planet full of... predators. It's our word for those who prey on other beings, as a way of life. Balancer, it's a well known fact, that... we humans... are on the top of the food chain there."

"Have you taken prey here.. Predator John Dan-zig-er?" she asked, her voice barely a whisper.

"Y-Yes." he replied, full of fright. "A Grendler female. Last winter." He began to cry. Hot tears flooded down John's face, during his whole confession, to a god. "To survive a storm, I had to eat her."

The Balancer let out a howl at the moons above her and she leaped as far back from the humans as she could, collapsing all at once into a tight ball of misery. "Save yourselves!" she wailed to the small life watching them. Eyestalks everywhere began shrieking vocally, and then one by one, they started popping back under the ground, sending up plumes of dust and decay as they fled the surface. Sunlight suddenly stabbed down onto the colonists as the third eclipse's deep red shadow suddenly left them fully exposed to blistering heat and blinding luminescence as it ended rapidly.

"Noo! Balancer! We'll starve without them! What are you doing to us?!" yelled Morgan, leaping onto his stomach, taking a desperate snatch at the closest shrinking eye stalk clump. Those he managed to grab, screamed. Morgan screamed even louder in surprise when they began jerking back and forth like startled snakes in his hands. He dropped them all, losing the last of them to the dirt.

The albino Terrian gave the panicking man a new terrified look at what he had tried to do to the small life that she had commanded. She disappeared, diving head first, into the pink sand under their feet, an instant later. Then she was gone.

Stunned, Eden Project found themselves utterly abandoned, empty handed. They had been left behind. Alone on the plain..

Every one of them fell to their knees when seconds later, a telepathic dream message lanced through their heads. They saw, through the Balancer's eyes, that they were in the middle of a vast continent, full of nothing, but death.