Time since the asteroid hit Earth: ~5.13 billion years (subjective to Aryan)
After witnessing the devastation caused by emotion's raw force, Aryan decided to conduct a test.
What if a civilization… **did not feel**?
What if love, grief, rage, joy — all of it — was absent?
> "You're trying to build Vulcans?" Light God asked, floating beside a stoic statue and mimicking a blank face.
> "Careful. If this flops, I'm naming them the 'Emotionless Oopsies'."
Aryan chose a barren world — untouched by prior species — and embedded its atmosphere with **empathy dampeners**: quantum fields that suppressed neurochemical emotion.
He then seeded lifeforms that evolved intelligence without instinctual emotional frameworks.
After 120,000 years, they formed a structured species: the **Kaltari**.
They were brilliant.
Efficient.
Peaceful.
No crime. No war.
No art. No music.
No stories.
Aryan watched their world flourish — but flatly.
A world of data. Of structure. Of **meaningless perfection**.
> "They've achieved harmony," Aryan said.
> "But not happiness," Light God noted. "They don't *miss* anything. They don't even hug. It's like watching furniture have a meeting."
Curious, Aryan decided to test their boundaries.
He secretly uploaded a **single memory file** into a Kaltari mind:
The moment Nerah cried on Solai IV — the scream that cracked a moon.
It overwhelmed the subject.
The Kaltari, named **Lurek-7**, short-circuited his own neural grid.
But before he shut down, he spoke a phrase the Kaltari had never heard before:
> "I… ache."
Within cycles, fragments of emotional memory spread like wildfire.
The Kaltari, unprepared, spiraled into a collective crisis.
Some collapsed from unfamiliar sorrow.
Others became addicted to fragments of joy.
A faction tried to isolate the infected.
Too late.
Civil collapse.
Not through violence — but through **confusion**.
> "They never evolved language for pain," Aryan realized. "They're drowning in feelings they can't name."
> "It's like giving poetry to machines with no mouths," Light God whispered. "Even their silence is screaming."
In the aftermath, a small group of Kaltari survivors carved a statement into their logic temples:
> "Emotion is not a virus. It is a mirror."
Aryan removed the dampeners.
He let grief, joy, and anger seep into their DNA naturally this time — unforced.
He didn't interfere again.
Years later, a Kaltari child drew a picture of two stars touching — with a caption:
> "This is what it might feel like… to not be alone."
Aryan smiled faintly.
> "Emotion may break," he said, "but absence… erases."
> "So what now?" Light God asked. "Going to create a species of poets and chaos monsters next?"
> "Maybe," Aryan replied. "But first… I want to meet something that *chooses* to feel. Even when it hurts."
— End of Chapter 21