In a manner of introduction

Life 32, year 50. My name is Andromedo. This is, of course, my unique name. There must be few planetary systems left in which the unique name is not already enforced, but I still prefer to start explaining what it is. After all, I understand that this might be read by people from everywhere across the Galaxy.

I can remember that, a few lives ago, having a unique name was necessary only for using the synchronous instant network (SIN). However, the authorities recommended to start using it right away for every other activity. They suggested to construct a unique name by combining parts of the full name. My full name was Alejandro Olmedo. But no one calls me like that any more.

Now I live in the Galactic Sector 6. When I am asked about which planet I come from, I always answer: "from Mother". This answer never leaves others indifferent: they always react in admiration or incredulity. Planet Mother is becoming something as mythic as forgotten, but everybody recalls that it was the origin of every civilization in the Galaxy.

What hardly anyone remembers is that Mother is, nowadays, that insignificant little world in Sector 3 that people call Jyna. That is why, when I say "I am from Mother", their pupils widen and they evoke in their minds all the stories they once heard about first settlers, adventurers, bodily travelers in their primitive æther-stream capsules.

Of course, I am none of that. I am no adventurer. I did not leave Mother in the age of the settlers, in fact I spent there 30 lives. I have never done a really long trip in capsule, I arrived to Sector 6 via teletransmigration, as any vacation-package tourist would do. I am just a plain scientist. But that is the very reason why I prefer to speak properly, so I do not like to use the name "Jyna" to refer to my planet, because "Jyna" is the name of just one continent in the planet, but the planet's name is, and always will be, "Mother"... It is true that Jyna is the only populated continent (since the Great Catastrophe), but that is a different issue.

As I say, I am a normal guy; however the truth is that I belonged to the very first generation of transmigrators. Believe it or not. This means that, in the time when I first existed, people did not live more than one life. At the end of that life they would disappear, their organic matter would dissolve, their neuronal bonds would get erased, all the experience they might have accumulated would vanish into oblivion. Then, if I am correct, came the time when the program for clonation and transmigration (in experimental phase) started. And it seems that I somehow joined the program and managed to persuade my parents and siblings to join as well. But actually I can hardly remember those times, or any of my first few lives, before the settlers left in their capsules, much before the Great Catastrophe. In the long term one realizes that the number of neuronal bonds that one has is limited, which means that the new memories end up displacing the older ones.

For this reason, I am decided to start writing the memories that I still keep about the past, and also my new memories about the present, so that I can remember everything, if I want, in the future.