Everyone looked at Aphrodite with a confused look on their faces, The Major most of all,
"What are you talking about? You mean Earth as in the planet where humans originated?" she asked,
"Yes, every continent is how it looks in the historical records. I read up on my ancestors a lot when I lived in the sanctuary, so I know. I know about the flora and fauna, about the history of man, the artists, the poets, my knowledge of my heritage is super detailed. And I'm telling, that is definitely Earth."
"But our records say that the humans came from the third planet in the solar system. And there are remnants of an ancient society on there too. Why would Earth be here in the first place? And how?" the Major continued,
"You're right about that, it was definitely the third planet in our solar system. Uh, do any of you guys have a map of that by any chance?" asked Aphrodite.
Ava nodded and used the touch screen of the nearest computer to navigate around the browsers and files. Eventually, he found the Serv data files on known planets in the solar system. He searched for the third planet and touched the picture, expanding it to full screen.
It was a perfectly spherical rock covered in ice. It had countless impact craters, created most likely from the known belt of rocks that surrounded the planet. There were oceans, but they were more spaced out, and there was a dense blue haze surrounding the atmosphere. It looked dead and somewhat creepy. There were statistics on the top right of the screen displaying the planet's size, density, and estimated composition. None of those stats sounded matched what Aphrodite knew about Earth.
She stared at it blankly,
"I have no idea what planet that is, but it sure as hell isn't Earth." and frowned, "What the hell is that? There's no record of anything like that in our solar system according to ancient human records."
"Well, a planet can't appear out of nowhere, and there's evidence of another civilisation living there in ancient times. We know that mother sense some of her own Evos there for research too." said the Major, her arms crossed,
"And it's not like you can just move a whole planet from one place to another..." Sylvie added.
"Maybe you can't." Aphrodite frowned. "But who knows what humans were capable of."
There was a moment of pondering amongst the group as they thought about how advanced such a race could possibly be, and how they could have gone extinct in such an abrupt manner if their levels of technology truly were enough to move and create planets.
If they really did somehow cause all this planetary chaos to happen, the question was, why?
"Listen, we need to land." said the Major, "enough wasting fuel. Just pick a suitable planet Ava."
"But this planet is huge!" said Ava, "I've got no idea-"
"Here," said Aphrodite, she touched the screen and opened up the live feed of the planet's surface. She pointed at an island, "Japan."
"Why there?" Asked Sylvie,
"There were three areas on Earth that excelled in technology. Japan, America, and Russia. I'm guessing that Mother would live somewhere with access to high levels of tech. And look, this city looks more developed than these others ones," she zoomed into one of the cities in Japan and then compared it to several others. "I mean, apart from that meadow, this one city is almost all synthetic!" she chuckled, "besides, didn't you know? Serv-type robots were all created in Japan, your body types are based on the Japanese. That's why you guys look different from me, I'm caucasian."
"Cau-what?" asked Ava.
"Never mind. Let's just land in this city. Tokyo."
***
The ship landed on the cracked roads of the city, thankfully there was more than enough space for it.
The buildings of the city had somehow managed to stay standing despite clearly being vacant since ancient times. Giant trees had managed to smash their way through some of them, and the streets were largely made of rubble and plants.
It was obvious though, this city had technology far beyond levels the Servs were used to. Indeed, the buildings themselves looked unreal, they were made out of some sort of alloy material they'd never seen before, clear and white, but obviously very sturdy. Some of the wreckage seemed to have crashed from the sky, indicating that there were perhaps houses and colonies that floated in the sky, and even more curiously:
"Teleportation?" Ava rushed out of the ship and looked at a pod on the side of the road. It was a pile of ruins, difficult to make out what the original shape was, but a sign was placed on top of it saying quite clearly: Teleportation pod. "This civilisation really did have incredible technology..." he muttered.
The others walked out,
"And now they're gone," said Sylvie as she put her foot on the ground.
The group surveyed the area. There were animals, some that were quite big, standing on four legs and wandering around eating from the plants. They were much larger than the mammals on Mars, some of them went past a Serv's torso, and had huge antlers. They looked scary and yet harmless at the same time.
The animals glanced at the group from time to time but then went along their merry way, not paying much attention.
Aphrodite's eyes were glowing. This was her homeworld. This is where her people came from. She slowly spun around and looked at the futuristic but ancient buildings, the wonder of these structures blew her away.
And then it hit her, then she really really realised it.
She was alone.
There was no other human in the universe. No other being in this reality that could emote like her, who could feel this feeling of wonder and nostalgia. This heart of hers that she could feel beating from excitement, it was the only one. And the tears that she couldn't explain, the tears that were streaming down her face, they were the only tears to have ever been shed for thousands of years. And the only tears that would be.
"Hey are you ok!?" asked Sylvie, "You're doing that thing again! Where water comes from your eyes!" she rushed over to Aphrodite, "I don't really understand this kind of stuff but, it's not good when a human cries, right?"
"Hah," Aphrodite wiped the tears from her eyes using the sleeve of her jacket. She put her goggles on, "it's fine. It doesn't mean anything."
"Enough drama," said the Major, who clearly knew more about emotions that the other two Servs, "this isn't helping. We're in the middle of nowhere, with no leads at all. We need to think about how we're going to find Mother."
She walked ahead a little and crossed her arms,
"We could potentially spend decades searching for her and not find what we're looking for," she muttered,
"Uh... first thing maybe can we get me some food?" asked Aphrodite, "the ship will run out of supplies for me in a week or so. I need to find water at least."
The Major had a frown on her face.
Aphrodite could tell already that the Major was finding her to be a nuisance. Frankly, she didn't understand why the other two Servs hero worshipped such a crabby person.
"Fine," said the Major, "your knowledge of Earth is helpful, so keeping you alive is important after all."
What a crabby person.
***
The group walked around the ancient city for quite a while, hours perhaps. There was bound to be water around somewhere because there were other mammalian creatures wandering around. So whether a stream had formed around the city, or if there was some sort of lake with clean water, they'd have to find it.
Eventually, it was getting dark, the lamp that was illuminating the sky started to set and after a few minutes of warm and beautiful orange light, it disappeared.
The darkness crawled all over the ruined city, the shadows that were once phenomenal footprints of the towering buildings had become twisted and pitch black.
It seemed it was only Aphrodite who was feeling any sort of fear though. For her benefit, they decided to sit down for a while, and that was nice of them, but she really didn't like being out in the open, on such a dark and bitter night.
And that's when she heard it.
Some sort of growling, a deep and mutated voice, a noise that sounded like it was coming from a disfigured mouth.
Aphrodite looked around in a rush to the place where the noise was coming from. It didn't sound friendly. The other three looked around too, it wasn't long until there was even more growling in the shadows, several mysterious creatures were lurking. What were they?
Eventually, the creatures stepped out of the shadows.
They looked like nothing Aphrodite had seen in the history books. Bipedal beasts, tall and muscular, black, bald skin that was too tight for their bulging physiques. Huge drooling mouths with spiked teeth, and deathly, fierce eyes.
Every creature looked different from the other though, in terms of stature, facial features, proportions. They looked like they weren't natural.
They were monsters.