It all begins here…

Koar, Friends —

It is not without hesitation that I commit the following to this modern medium. What I am about to relate was entrusted to me privately, and I have weighed carefully whether it ought to be shared at all.

Several years ago, during a quiet evening in Helium, I spoke at length with John. What he told me that night is why this site exists and why you are reading these words now.

He began with his characteristic candor.

“Ulysses, I once believed I understood this world’s history. Having witnessed much of Earth’s own past. I’ve seen how men record events—sometimes faithfully, sometimes poorly, sometimes dishonestly. I should have known better than to trust that Barsoom’s chronicles were immune to the same maladies.

Yet what I have uncovered surpasses anything I could have imagined. It answers two questions that have long troubled me: why does our living, breathing world appear to the people of Earth as a dead and barren planet, and how is it that some of us are able to travel between them? I believe I now understand.”

He went on to explain how his discovery began during a return to the Atmosphere Factory—an edifice he had avoided for many years after it had once cost him so dearly.

We had all heard of his choice to serve as an Attendant, the first noble to do so. I knew, given his love for his wife and family, that it was a difficult decision to be separated from them for a year (two Earth years). But he told me it was his duty as Jeddak of Jeddaks that he be an example to all our people, showing that we all held common cause to protect our beloved world.

It was only days into his service that, while replacing failed radium lamps along a darkened corridor, he noticed something subtle: a faint seam of light where floor met wall. Only the darkness had revealed it. What followed was frustration—an unresponsive panel, and no visible mechanism, no sign of entry.

Others might have abandoned the mystery.

But he persisted, returning for several days until her had a sudden insight. Using the same keys he used to enter the factory, he triggered a mechanism that had long been dormant. The hidden door shifted—barely. Only by using his Earth-born strength was he able to force an opening sufficient to pass.

Beyond lay a circular chamber beneath a crystal dome. Alcoves rose tier upon tier, filled with volumes—thousands of them. Dust lay thick upon the floor; the air had not stirred in generations.

It was a library.

Not of official proclamations or curated histories—but of diaries. Personal accounts written by prior attendants of the Factory. Men and women whose names, he lamented, had faded from memory like the dust all about.

John told me he spent months within that chamber, reading. What he found there challenged long-held assumptions—not merely about engineering, but about the epochs preceding our own.

When his service there ended, he brought many of the recovered documents to the Helium Academy of Archaeology for preservation and study. It was there that I first encountered them.

I confess that what began as a curiosity soon became something far deeper. Among the thousands of accounts I read, several stood apart—intimate, immediate, and astonishingly candid. They spoke of an era predating our accepted histories. An age when vast oceans still shaped the planet. When alliances shifted like tides. When the survival of the world depended not upon machines alone, but upon the choices of a few extraordinary individuals.

The period we referred to in scattered references as the Time of Oceans.

The memoirs I will begin sharing here are drawn from that collection. They are presented as faithfully as possible, with minimal editorial intrusion. Where gaps exist, I will indicate them. Where translation has required interpretation, I will note it.

How these records crossed the gulf between worlds is a matter I may address in time. For now, understand only this: they should never have been allowed to vanish into history, for what they mean to both our worlds cannot be understated.

If you choose to follow along, you will encounter struggle, sacrifice, political fracture, and devotion fierce enough to defy extinction. You will meet a young woman of Helios whose voice—preserved against all odds—forms the heart of what survives from that era.

I will post further transcriptions as I am able.

Until then—