When All Else Fails

As the door slid open to the high-security SEEDER Journal section of the Royal Library, Professor Yor Vanderlord recalled how his great-grandfather Yorlik's words led him to this moment. Over a century and a half ago, planet Koda's scientists predicted an environmental crisis threatening to annihilate the humanoid population so the global government developed the SEEDER program, launching deep-space missions to discover habitable worlds. When no livable planet was found, the SEEDER program was scrapped and the DOME project was initiated. The global economy became focused on placing domes over only the most prominent cities to insure a portion of the population's survival. That's when Yorlik Vanderlord (aka Yorlik the Great), who was thought lost in space, returned from his century-long SEEDER mission, but the details of his voyage were shrouded in mystery and never told. On his great-grandfather's deathbed, eight-year-old Yor sat beside him and promised to uncover his past, and the old man whispered in his ear, "Always remember, lies can be just as powerful as the truth." What did those cryptic words mean? What happened on his great-grandfather's epic voyage? In the 16 years that followed, Yor climbed the ladder at the Royal University from undergraduate to professor faster than anyone in Koda's planetary history. He became the planet's foremost authority and wrote the best-selling historical book on the SEEDER program, "Power Over the Future," and he began restoring Yorlik the Great's spaceship. With all this preparation, Yor petitioned the government for permission to read a portion of his great-grandfather's SEEDER Journal to include in the ship's unveiling speech at a planetary celebration. Now, as Yor entered the library, he was more determined than ever to discover the truth even if it meant heading out into space himself.