The Eternal Duty Preface

Warning: this preface is bonus content and not in any way relevant to the reading experience

In order to make it easier for you to decide whether or not this story might be worth a part of your limited lifespan I added this preface. This serves a triple purpose:

1. It gives me the chance to say "told you so" when the story turns out to be something different then you expected, which it very likely will. You may still complain about that though, I encourage expression of all kinds and I am not easily offended. In fact, as in general on literotica, you as a reader can be more then a thankless, stingy leech feeding of other peoples sweat and tears to fill your vast inner ennui. Not to mention the wankers. Be creative yourself and possibly share something to help this story along or make it better or more easily accessible for those reading after you. For this reason I intend to be a bit more transparent about my writing process then is probably warranted or even healthy. See it as an experiment.

2. It spoilers scope, intend and tone of the story which can likely not be guessed at from reading the first few pages, or truly any number of them, as it will often times change wildly and may even manage to surprise myself while writing. This quick search and discard technique is something I myself employ at literotica to swiftly filter out stuff that does not interest me and it therefore wouldn't work as well on this one, hence this 'service'. If you prefer going in blind, which is smart with a well told story (of which I am of course a poor judge with my own), do so now.

3. It means stealing even more of your time that you need to read this unnecessary drivel and thereby introduces the concept of contradiction between purpose and content/action, a recurring theme in this story. It also makes me a pompous, arrogant ass of an author prone to droning, who thinks of his musings as in any way relevant or interesting to anyone. You are welcome.

Synopsis

So as to a rough and largely spoiler free description of this hard to categorize and most likely novel or even multiple novel long story: it is basically about a non-human intelligence that has a certain goal and goes beyond everyone and everything to achieve it. Nevertheless it is also a story about truthfulness with oneself and others. It shoves people in situations in which they struggle to maintain some sort of human decency, facing the problem of sustaining it under challenging circumstances of all kinds -- or failing to do so catastrophically. From a human or half-arsed philosophical point of view it is about the traps and tribulations our life-story (upbringing, experiences, social attitudes, genetics etc.), minds and emotions throw at us when trying to do or at least trying to find "the right thing to do". All in all it is therefor a story about freaks.

For anyone who is inclined to leave nasty or not so nasty comments after reading this story I preemptively include some long winded finer points about expectations one might harbor:

Erotica: Slow burning and in some small parts romantic there will likely be no too explicit sex scenes as the story does not need them and including them would mean smutting things up for the smutt of it, which I am fine with generally but not if it breaks immersion, is of bad quality or otherwise counterproductive to the reading experience. So consider this Nonerotica until further notice and instead search for one of the many superb erotica stories here on literotica that might cater to any of your smutty needs.

Story volume and publication method/interval: This is a long and as of yet not fully written story, born out of a thought experiment. I publish it in parts so I might get feedback as to my shortcomings in writing (I am a total noob at this and English is not my first language), its underlying thinking/logic and/or its factual/scientific basis. It might also help in order to direct the storytelling or flesh out things according to the feedback I get -- within reason of course. If you prefer reading finished stories or stories finished within a reasonable time span patience will be a useful virtue here, lots of it perhaps. That being said there will be multiple rather closed in story arcs that I will try to finish without too much of an interval, so there is still something to be found here even without the final chapter (for an up to date status see the series title page). I also dislike leaving readers in the dark about things in order to cheaply string them along with some poor suspense, or methods along this line like purposeful cliffhangers. So there is that too. As an unpaid amateur with a real job that takes writing not all that serious: this is a project of leisure, so do not expect too much or you will likely get disappointed. Encouragement or better yet productive criticism might help but as of yet I have no idea whether or not I have the practical skill set, imagination or sheer patience/time to see this beast through to its possible end.

Story setting: While this story at first seems to be about the more or less present on this fine planet we all lucked out to be on: this is deceiving. There is a lot of world-building involved around it, so consider this story to be about a parallel universe with a different past, present and future then our own. Its setting just so happens to look eerily similar to planet Earth and its current residents up to and including everything you have ever seen, heard, read or listened to. Out of respect for my dear readers I will of course refrain from including anything too personal from the files of their doppelganger, should he/she make an appearance.

Story character: As stories tend to drive reader engagement with either a lot of wit, entertaining violence, gripping suspense, tear-jerking, horror or good old tits'n'arse I am saddened to warn you beforehand that this is (mostly) not the case for this one. While not being the goal in and on itself I would be surprised if any given person is unable to find something that offends him/her about what I am about to bring into prose, either directly or throughout one of the characters. If the reason for that is me being an asshole or worse yet a poor story teller -- shame on me, if the reason is you being unable see beyond some more or less simplistic worldview -- shame on you.

It might get really ugly at points and I neither tend to hold peoples hands by over-explaining or even moralizing things nor do I cater to human sensibilities about what is right and what is wrong in general. This mostly because the characters you will deal with in this story often have no reason to do so in the specific form you might think the only sensible one and I intend to be truthful to the way I imagine them to think and act, which will be hard enough especially with the non-human ones. That being said I have to somehow explain things here and there as there would be no way for an observer to make sense of things without access to some background info and loads of inner monologue. Especially the first ten or so chapters are therefor filled with a lot of world building and exposure that might be a bit of a slog to go through.

I decided to start my story that way for a reason though: the goal is not for you to read through hundreds of pages drip feeding what this fictional world is all about by some clever inclusion of the world building into the action, character development and so on until you can finally make sense of it all and then je vous présente -- the end. This world building and the challenges it puts on the more or less interchangeable characters portrayed is the whole point and final origin of this mess I intend to write. My hope therefor lies in making it as interesting and engaging as possible so as to be a kind of worthwhile story on its own and hopefully none too boorish or superimposed. If I fall for that trap though you are more then welcome to prod me for it. Perhaps though the world I will draw might serve as an inspiration for your own thoughts on it all, which would be also welcome. It is in this regard that when all is written and done I would like this story to be something that connects to what I think of is the most integral part of what we call science fiction: let our imagination run wild towards what could become out of what is and what we -- as all kinds of limited human beings -- might be able to do towards it. Or if what could become turns out to be a nightmare as it is looking right now -- against it towards something better. (*megalomaniaoff*)

The difference between author and character: Be aware that the musings a character might entertain are exactly that, musings of an imagined and likely deeply flawed character in a fictional story. They are therefor neither my believes as the author nor philosophical treaties of some kind, I do not write socratic dialogue here. Their purpose is to immerse the reader into the inner world of a character (especially introverted ones), not to teach you something. If that is confusing the prologue has enough of that to give you a good idea, as it introduces one of the main characters.