Roteny & Neytor

 
On Roteny, a distant foreign planet, three of the four suns shone high in the sky. It was always snowing on Roteny, small crystalline patterns that never accumulated enough to get cold. Always bright, always cloudy. The glow from reactions of alien phosphorus illuminated everything from within, the strangely large and oddly shaped buildings, the megafauna that had grown everywhere, entwining every part of odd structure with natural construction. Many had speculated that the planet didn’t seem to fit its most intelligent inhabitants, these small insignificant creatures towered over by their food and construction.
These aliens have long limbs and necks, eyes, ears a nose and mouth, and dark green, shiny emerald skin. Aquifers underground supply most of the water necessary to their life, and these inhabitants have harnessed some of the power of their suns to move and shape and build with phosphorus and water. They seem to be the only intelligent inhabitants of their planet. There are hundreds of moons that show brightly in the sky, both day and night, and the shadow of another planet nearby.
There are two inhabitants of Roteny arguing with each other. They are brothers, and one of them even serves in The League, an organized group of fighters trained to keep the peace on Roteny:
“Find your mirror, what does that mean?” Akismeal looked slightly distressed.
“I’m going to a nearby moon to try and find my mirror from that other planet.” Rigard said, sure of himself.
“You really believe that Roteny has this mirror planet?” His brother Akismeal asked puzzled.
“Not exactly, but what if part of the reason we never visit is that we would be visiting ourselves?” Rigard said plainly.
“I have a report to share with you, I got it from The League, I thought you might be interested…” Akismeal offered suddenly. His brother turned toward him, slightly annoyed.
“Sure, hand it over.” He opened it carefully. In heavy type from a sort of scroll it read the following:
This is an interstellar report from the planets Roteny and Neytor: here, there are twin planets with four suns locked in a paradigm. One of these planets definitely has the capability to time travel, but have never visited their closest neighbor, though they easily could. Some say one of the planets was created when the other started to time travel, but there are no definitive records of that event. On Roteny, they time travel and on Neytor they have no sense of time at all. At least, that’s what the Moon Chronicles have said. There are many encounters that have happened between inhabitants of both planets, but only on the many moons between the two, never on the planets Roteny and Neytor themselves. It’s even said that no inhabitant from either planet has ever been on the other. Of all the reasons given by inhabitants of both planets, the main one is upsetting the paradigms in space and time and being forced to observe time again, though no one can remember when they had. Some have speculated that Neytor is really just an absence of Roteny, that traveling time caused a paradigm to split present into more than one moment, and they coincide and exist as mirrors to one another. Others say that Neytor got rid of time and caused a mirror planet to actually exist where they technically no longer could. In any case, both planets are sure of one thing: wanting to keep immortality. Partially why no one has ever visited, part of the romance in the Moon Chronicles. This is the end of the interstellar report.
He closed the report and handed it back to his brother.
“Nothing we hadn’t heard before,” Rigard said almost bored.
“How do you intend to communicate? You know it’s forbidden.” Akismeal said, putting away the report.
“Already have, got my mirror construct convinced I’m in love and female.” He said with a wry smile.
“And what happens when you’re not what you’ve said you are? What if they’re violent?” His brother said, worried.
“Don’t worry, I know myself pretty well.” Rigard said, still grinning.
“But that’s not you. And couldn’t they just be tricking us with doppelgangers?”
“Why would they do that? Couldn’t they just be as curious as we are about what these planets really are to eachother?” He said, as he was packing up the last of his things. He turned to his brother, now silent and brooding.
“I’ll be back soon, don’t tell the parents.”
Rigard turned to leave and caught his brothers hand on his chest.
“Be careful, okay?” He said, worried.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. Be home before you know it!” He finally left.
The next day, he is seen boarding a ship to a neutral moon. The ships are huge, round metal structures built to phase from one dimension of space to another, time traveling vessels. The interior is fitted with rows upon rows of seats, and each isle has a window to see through the metal of the machine. These ships don’t exactly use fuel, but instead depend upon the dynamics in time travel to phase from space to space. It’s more like a simple machine than any sort of motor or engine that propels this craft. Rigard disappears into the giant round metal machine and he finally sits down in his seat and looks passed a couple others to the window outside, the moons lighting up the sky and the landscape being continually dusted in snowflakes that never stick, that never get too cold. Within moments of sitting down, the craft has made its way and is already at its destination, a neutral moon between the planets Roteny and Neytor.
Upon arrival, he quickly exits the craft, finds his meeting place nearby and waits. Finally, he hears someone entering the old hotel that he had chosen as a destination. He’d never remembered feeling this nervous before.
“Hello” He said furtively.
“Hello” was the easy reply. The voice itself sounded so much like his it was difficult to tell if it was an echo he was hearing. He waited, watching this form come from beyond the hallway into the well lit lounge slowly, cautionary gait. Finally, the figure came into full view. It appeared to look almost exactly like him: tall, long limbed green skinned, but lacked facial features save for a mouth. Rigard stayed in the corner where he was, watching and waiting.
“I should have figured it wouldn’t be a lover.” Rigard’s guest said unenthused.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come out otherwise,” Said Rigard honestly.
“Well, here we are and neither one has died or disappeared yet.” Said the featureless mouth.
“True, though who knows what happens when we actually touch?”
“Well, seein as how neither of us are actually in love, that shouldn’t be a problem.” Rigard’s guest said stiffly.
Rigard of Roteny smiled wryly and asked if his guest had a name, and if he was aware that he has no facial features. His guest just smiled and answered:
“Not much to actually see beyond the imagination, and my name is Rigard.”
This made him grimace a little, blinking he easily replied, “Hey, how’d you know mine?”
The inhabitant of Neytor turned his featurless face to the ceiling and then back to Rigard, having gotten close to where he was standing in the corner, holding out his hand in exasperation, saying, “Are we eachother?”
In that moment, Rigard of Roteny reached out his had too, and in a single snap and wince, saw that upon contact, Rigard of Neytor had disappeared. He stood alone for a few moments, finally saying something along the lines of “we weren’t even in love”, upset and a little disappointed with the quickness of this meeting, he decided immediately to head home to Roteny again, all his thoughts racing around his mind. Where did the other go? Home? Was he upsetting the delicate space time continuum in even having these thoughts, much less having acting upon them to this degree? Would he disappear before he got back to Roteny? Would the League find out where he had been? Would this become another Moon Chronicle?
He arrived home on Roteny that night, having decided not to stay, and tried contacting Rigard of Neytor as himself and not the character he had come up with for hours to no avail. Finally, a single message came through: “I’m alive on Neytor, let’s not do that again”. He stared blankly at the message, in disbelief, wondering fervently about the possibilities in travel without vehicles and finally decided to give it up. He didn’t know any more about ending this terrible paradigm than he had to begin with, and meeting himself featureless was unsettling to the core. Knowing that Roteny can time travel and knowing the inhabitants of Neytor don’t depend upon time at all was a rare knowledge to have and most of these creatures avoided the subject altogether.
There is no solving this dilemma, this paradigm of the twin planets. There are the moon Chronicles which outline similar happenings and there is the general fear of the dilemma itself, of all the possibilities to be worked out between the planets, the most effective they have found is ignorance, and ignoring the problem so far had worked out fine. Or well enough that immortality was still actual for every one of them, and not many were willing to risk it to find out much more about ending the paradigm. Most had conferred that the planets need each other in one way or another, and also that neither planet nor any of its inhabitants could go visiting anytime soon. Even as aware as the most aware individuals could be of this problem, there were no active solutions or even probable actions to take. Here, there are twin planets with four suns locked in a paradigm.