Life on Durus only got worse after the realization that no more
paramounts were being born. People’s time powers started becoming
less intense, and less reliable. By 2224, they were in the middle of their
second orbital pattern in the 70 Ophiuchi system, and people were beginning
to feel like they ought to be setting off for a new home. Perhaps another
star system would be kinder to them, or maybe it was best to just not be
orbiting a host star at all, and survive on what temporal manipulation
abilities they still had left. Unfortunately, this was proving to be nearly,
if not completely, impossible. Even collectively, the Durune were not strong
enough to alter the planet’s pattern. It was one thing to stay as they were,
but to try to move off in some other direction just wasn’t in the cards for
them anymore. They tried to contact someone from the past to help, but their
powers weren’t strong enough for that either. Something had to be done to
drastically change everything about their lives, and they would vote for
these contingencies during the 2225 round of elections. The experts writing
up these proposals needed time to work on them anyway. Until then, a
worldwide mandate went out, limiting people’s ability to manipulate time and
space. Teleportation would be used only in emergencies, spatial locks were
replaced with regular physical locks, speed school and other time bubbles
were outright banned. All temporal energy had to be conserved, in order to
have enough to maintain their world’s homeostasis. If they flew back off
into interstellar space now, they wouldn’t be able to protect themselves
against cosmic radiation, and the vacuum. For some, that didn’t matter
anymore, because there was one essential time power that stopped working,
even without the government dictating it. Based on one case, it would seem
that they were no longer ageless.
Agelessness was a right that every citizen of Durus enjoyed, whether they
were rich, poor, smart, or not so smart. It didn’t matter whether they
contributed positively to society, or not. If they were alive, they deserved
to stay alive forever. By whatever interference the Ophiuchi stars were
giving off, people started aging again, and this all came to its inevitable
conclusion when one of their older immortals passed away from age-related
diseases. Of course, no time power was capable of eradicating a
disease—congenital, or otherwise—but their youth made it a lot easier to
treat just about anything without worrying about old age making them more
susceptible. Now that that was gone, nothing was stopping the Durune from
being wiped out. Almost literally everyone attended the first funeral in
decades. The only people not there had to maintain everyone’s survival in
some way. It was a frightening day more than a sad one. This wasn’t to say
that no one cared about this individual, or that no one was in mourning, but
it was becoming clear that everyone was doomed. If death was back on the
table, their whole society could collapse. If they wanted to survive,
physically as well as socially, they were going to have to change a lot more
about themselves than they ever thought they would, and they would have to
do it very soon. While the right people were working on a way out of this
mess, others were making laws and policies to adapt to the ever-changing
present, and to prepare for every eventuality conceivable. Through this,
things continued to get worse, but the Durune continued to endure at pace.
It was going to take a lot more than a little wrinkly skin to get them down.
Unfortunately, fate did indeed have more in store for them, and their
success was not assured.
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