Markus woke up to feel the cold hospital sheets near his neck. He rubbed his eyes and looked around him. "They must have brought me here," he realized.

As he lay in the bed, thoughts were swirling in his mind. Why was he here? Then he remembered how he stepped in the way of the car, and he shuddered. He realized he was lucky to still be alive...

He glanced out the window, and then he gasped. He was astonished to see a beautiful world outside his window, lush with growing plants of bright colors. Beams of sunlight shone outside, and there was a deep aura of peace. It looked nothing like the earth that he had lived on for so many years.

"It's so beautiful," he thought, gazing at the flowers that were growing in rainbow colors on the deep blue ground.

Then the door to his room opened, and a nurse walked in. Markus noticed she had very intense brown eyes. Her skin was a mocha brown color, too, similar to his own.

"Are you feeling better?" she asked, and she smiled.

Markus muttered, "I guess so."

"Good. You really needed some rest. We were very worried about you," said the nurse.

"What happened to me?" Markus asked, and he frowned. "Did I get really hurt?"

"Well, the damage that happened to you was quite extensive. But we were able to heal you very quickly. We used the AMS to repair your body," she said.

"What is an AMS?" asked Markus in a puzzled voice.

"The Automatic Mahaba System. There are many people like you who get hurt," she said. "Especially when they go to the earth. We have a technological system to repair their bodies and transport them here when it is necessary."

Markus was becoming even more puzzled. He suddenly started feeling anxious. "Did you notice anything unusual about me?" he asked. "And what is a Mahaba?"

The nurse looked at him in surprise. She sat next to his bed and murmured, "Wow... you really don't know much about where you come from, do you?"

Markus looked impatient. "I don't think that's any of your business," he said.

"But it is definitely my business," said the nurse, gently pushing against his stubborn words. "Apparently you weren't told much about who you are and where you come from."

Markus noted that once again, her eyes were similar to his own. Suddenly his intuition began to piece together answers to to some of his questions.

"Are you like me?" he asked quietly.

The nurse nodded. "Yes. I am probably just a few years older than you are," she said.

"Then where am I?" Markus asked. "Am I still on the earth?"

"No, we took you back home to our world. We didn't want to interfere for a while, but we had no other choice when you had that unfortunate experience with your earthly mother. I'm not blaming her for what happened; it is just unfortunate," said the nurse in a soft, rather pensive voice.

She went on, "My name is Layna. I have known your family here for a long time. Your father passed away, but we all still remember him. You were born in this world, but your mother decided to take you back home. We also felt it would be best for you to have some earthly experiences, because you have that human ancestry, too. And you have a mission that you need to complete while you are on the earth."

Markus listened intently. "What world is this?" he asked quietly.

"It is the world of the Mahabas," replied Layna. "This is our world. We created it thousands of years before the earth existed. No one knew who we were for a very long time, until humans finally came here to visit."

She looked thoughtfully out the window as she spoke, and he noticed a hint of sadness in her voice as she talked about the humans.

"They came in a large spaceship. We thought it was interesting how they traveled so far to see us. They had called our planet another name - Astrix or something like that. I really didn't know why they came at first," Layna said.

Markus snapped his fingers. "I remember my mom telling me about that. She said there was a space mission to Astrix in 2750. She didn't tell me much about it, though. She just said it happened and it was a big deal," he said.

"Well, it definitely was a big deal," Layna said, laughing a little. "We had never seen humans before. We couldn't believe that anyone from another planet would come to visit us. Then we found we had more in common than we thought."

She explained to Markus how connections began to grow between the earth humans and the Mahabas. The Mahabas knew how to build a society of peacefulness, so the earth humans began to learn from them. The relationship between the two species seemed to be going well, and there were many interesting similarities between the two of them, because they both were carbon-based lifeforms.

Eventually, the Mahabas even began to visit the earth. It was during this time that occasionally, relationships would form between a Mahaba and a human being. Some of these relationships were friendships, while others went into more romantic directions. However, because humans sometimes mock those who are different from them, the romantic relationships were often discouraged.

"If you were seen with a Mahaba, some of the earth humans could gossip and get very critical," Layna recalled. "Maybe there was some jealousy involved in that."

"I think you're right," Markus agreed. "My mom always looked embarrassed whenever people started whispering about me and how I look."

"Yes, the eyes always gave it away. Mahabas have very intense eyes," Layna said.

She went on to explain how the connections between the Mahabas and the earth humans gradually deteriorated. Greedy governments on the earth were having a harmful effect on space relations. When the everyday earth humans began to talk about how there were valuable minerals on the Mahabas' planet, including huge diamonds, the earthly government officials began to rub their hands and smirk.

"We need to go over there and grab those diamonds!" the officials thought.

One official, Mr. Clayton Harris, even planned a huge mining expedition on the Mahabas' peaceful planet. He made these enormous plans without even notifying the Mahabas' about how he was going to grab their resources.

"That was when everything collapsed," sighed Layna. "For the first time, a lot of us were really angry. Your father, Starden, was certainly against this mining experiment. It was his resistance that led to his murder."

Markus gasped. "Whoa!" he cried.

"That's right," Layna said sadly. "A fight broke out when he came to protest against the exploitation of our planet. One of your government's officials shot him with a gun in cold blood. Your mother, who was his significant other at the time, was in shock."

"Damn..." Markus murmured.

"We all gathered together to decide what to do. You were still just a baby at the time. We decided we ought to let you stay on the earth for now, because your mother felt you needed to know what it was like to live here, and we knew that it would be necessary for you to complete a certain mission while you were here. We had planned for your mother to educate you about your heritage, as a dual-planet person, while you grew up. By the time you were an adult, you would be ready to take on the role as a peacemaker and ambassador between our world and your earth. We knew that with the right guidance and education, you could heal the rift between the Mahabas and the earth people," said Layna.

She heaved a deep sigh. "But things didn't turn out the way we planned. Your mother didn't follow the instructions we gave her.... So here we are," she said.

"For a long time, we lost touch with you. She wouldn't respond to the many messages we tried to send her through our communication devices, or through her own consciousness," she said. "She would ignore them all. I think she couldn't handle the stress of the whole situation."

"But she kept me in the dark," said Markus bitterly. "I should have known this long ago, years ago." He felt an anger towards his mother begin to rise in his heart, anger he had not allowed himself to feel until this moment.

Layna patted his shoulder in an attempt to calm him. "I know this is so hard for you, Markus," she said. "It was hard for us, too. We were debating about whether to interfere or not, because we knew how badly things turned out the last time we came to the earth and intervened with the earthly plans. I think now that we should have come sooner. When we felt the shock of your unconsciousness through our whole being, we knew you were in trouble. We intervened and brought you here."

Markus wearily laid his head on the pillow. "I don't understand," he murmured. "I don't understand why I even need to go back to the earth. I'm tired. Do you know how exhausting it is to live on that planet? I would rather stay here, where there is peace. I've longed for peace my whole life."

Layna looked at him with deep compassion in her eyes. Markus felt her compassion as deeply as if he were feeling her emotions in her entire being, and he realized that he connected much more strongly with her than he had with anyone on the earth. He understood there was a kind of emotional telepathy among all the Mahabas which connected them to each other.

"You don't have to go back," she said gently. "You have to decide for yourself whether it is worth it for you. I can only tell you that it would mean a lot to us if you could repair the connections between the earth and the Mahabas. We lost so many loved ones and so many relationships to the bitterness that developed during our quest to connect."

Markus understood how much she desperately wanted him to bring peace back to the Mahabas and their earthly counterparts. He felt guilty for not wanting to return to the earth, but he understood that Layna was not trying to force him back to the planet. She was only expressing the deep pain and longing for the recovery of so many lost connections, and so many lost dreams.

"Thank you, Layna," he said. "I'll think about it." He smiled slightly, and Layna began to smile, too.

"Thank you so much, Markus. Please think about it," she said, and then she quietly walked out of the room.