(The autobiography of a young, self-centered Torbe, struggling through space to be the best doctor in the universe, as told through journal entries. Based on the rpg, “Stars Without Number”.)

September 28th, 3223,

I was around the age of twelve when my parents discovered that I was not like the normal, good little behaved Torbe. Madra and Pit’dre caught me delicately slicing open their neighbors dead Terracat, out behind our Sucrose fiends, in the old hut, which I had cleverly converted to my own laboratory. Of course, I knew far before then that I had already risen above the Believers of the Sky in intelligence and wisdom, and prepared myself for my punishment of harsh whippings, harvest duty with the day workers and a hundred page essay summarizing the Book of the Sky and the teachings of the additional Testaments from the past nine hundred years. A drag of an afternoon that was.

Little did they know that Mr. Whips had already died by the time I found him. And I was not about to let the freshest specimen I had ever encountered go to waste. Science would not allow it, and neither would I.

I have always been fascinated by the many different species in our vast universe, and the inner workings of each being. And while I excelled in the religious teachings from school, I never practiced them at home. And nothing ever interesting me more than that of living flesh. And what it does when it dies.

Being the only daughter of the elders of Zhang-Guo-Lao, my “disturbing” inquiries of the Torbe body, and the study of many other creatures from Voulgaris, had to be covered up some way or another. In return for my silence to the outside word, my parents furnished my hut into a fully functional Lab, where I could continue my work, in peace.

They always threatened to have it torn down when my visits to the mortuary became front page news, but they never truly followed through with that one.

Passing grade school at an early age of sixteen, I was provided with a much larger research lab, and my own living quarters, in the bigger city, where I would attend medical school. “Perhaps moving her “studies” out of town will quell her constant state of embarrassment for us,” I remember Madra telling Pit’dre one evening, before they broke the big news to me.

And I applaud them for their efforts, I really do. I also do not intentionally disrupt others faith in their elder status. I simply refuse to keep quiet on the matter of science. It must be shared with the world.

I believe it was just after graduation, when I had announced that I would be working as a professor at my old school in Zhang-Guo-Lao, that my parents made their final decision on their daughter’s fate.

They have spent the last few months making all of the necessary changes and connections, to ensure the move goes as smoothly as possible. They have even provided a small staple of 300,000 credits to get me off to a good start on my journey.

Yes. Tomorrow, I leave my home world, Zhang-Guo-Lao and Voulgaris, to start my traveling from planet to planet, analyzing and dissecting every known species in the universe. Madra Sea-La Mermani and Pit’dre Mao Mermani, I hope that when we finally meet again, it is when I can prove, without a doubt, that science is greater and more important that your “Book of the Sky”.

Although, I still do not see why they were so surprised that I never swallowed that religious garbage in the first place. When you name your short daughter Tiberia, after the “Prophet” Tiberius Crohn, how did you expect her to react? While I admit that Tiberius Crohn is a fascinating figure to read about, I know full well that he is no prophet. It’s all in the writing they told me to read. A shame they could not see that for themselves.

My name is Tiberia Cri Mermali. I was born on Sundai, December 17th, 3200, into the Torbe’ race, in the over-religious Tribe Zhang-Guo-Lao, from the highly advanced, yet frozen planet Voulgaris. We are a curious and dominant kind of humanlike creatures, with skin like the blue sky, markings like tattoos, ears like fins and tails as long as we are tall. (An average height being around 6’5” to 6’9”. I myself am considered a runt at 6’1”.)

I am fascinated by the “Scream” and the real Dr. Tiberius Crohn, and my dream is to study every living species in the universe, known or otherwise.