

Five hundred and fifty million years ago, the fire-god Solis grew bored. The universe was endless, and empty. Solis knew of other beings like her, but she had not seen any for eons. The vast expanse of the cosmos was lonesome. Solis longed for another to share it with, and searched with all of her will for another god-being. Solis's fluid, fiery body swirled in giant plumes. She could create any colour at a whim. Light and flame were her playthings. In massive explosions she would create fireworks the size of solar systems, inviting any who might see to join her. None came. As the millennia went by Solis grew tired of searching. She had a new desire. She no longer ached for a mere companion, she longed for an extension of herself. She needed to be more, bigger. She wanted a child. Solis sent out flaming tendrils and grabbed individual specks of cosmic dust. Over ages she collected billions, and then trillions, and then quadrillions, and then trillions of quadrillions of pieces for her creation. She hardened them into a dense core, and bathed that core in pieces of herself, forming raging seas of violent magma. This was to be her son. Her vision. She named it "Deiterra". Solis had not yet finished her work. At this stage Deiterra was just a husk. A shell to be filled with being. But before she could finish, Solis needed to rest. It would be a very long rest indeed, for the next step would require all of her focus, and all of her power. She collapsed in on herself, and went to sleep. *** 4.5 billion years later, Jonas's alarm whipped him violently out of the pleasant dream he'd been having. It took him a moment to realise he had again joined reality. He was never good at getting up, and got out of bed with a stumble, nearly leaving his bedroom before forgetting to turn off his alarm. While he washed his face and brushed his teeth he contemplated not going in today, but decided to play it safe. He was already on his Boss's bad side for calling in sick the week before. Ten minutes by bus later he came slowly through the door of the NASA outpost in which he was employed. Despite being 7:45 in July it was still pretty dark outside. He scanned his ID card at four different security points before making it into his office area. His friend Mark noticed him come in, but Jonas pretended not to have seen him. He liked Mark, but he had never showed to go out for drinks with him and the others the night before, and he didn't feel like fielding questions about that while he was still half asleep. He didn't know if he'd be able to answer the questions even after a couple cups of coffee. He wasn't entirely sure why he hadn't joined them. He made a mental note to himself to try and organise another night out to make it up to him. He took the liberty of filling both his work mugs with fresh coffee (or what passed for it in the office) and carried them both slowly to his desk. He collapsed into his chair and promptly closed his eyes (just for a second, he told himself). He sat there for ten seconds while he tried to put off acknowledging the human presence that had come to stand over him. He already knew who it would be. He opened his eyes. "Hello Sara." "Have you seen the data from last night? Something's really weird is happening." She said. Jonas blinked at how direct she was being. "Well good morning to you, too!" He said with pronounced sarcastic enthusiasm. Sara ignored him and motioned for Jonas to turn on his monitor so that he could see. Jonas sighed. He'd hoped to get a little more down time before his duties crept up on him. Sara and Jonas' job was to babysit the sun on behalf of NASA. They looked at how it was behaving and checked to see if it was acting up. They looked out for signs of flares or storms or effects that meteorites or other space weather could have on our local star. It was a common misconception that the sun could one day create such a fantastically powerful flare that the earth would be demolished, and when he explained the particulars of his job to people, a question they often asked was what he was supposed to do about it if the sun does suddenly go on a rampage. While the sun wasn't going to exterminate all life anytime soon, a particularly nasty flare could cause complications with any satellites Earth had in orbit. That being said, even on that much smaller scale side of things, there wasn't much Jonas or Sara could do if the sun did decide to remind everyone it was a giant unstable ball of energy. What Jonas and Sara really did was to make a call if things were looking bad, and tell some people higher up, who also couldn't do anything about it.