Dog Days of Eternity

The voice of my ancestral forefather from the historical records echoed through my head long after I had turned down for the night. I circled my sleeping quarters, and kneaded the cushion with my paws time and again, but could not find rest. His words in his ancient tongue, became the source of my research obsession, and the cornerstone of our society.

*indistinguishable barking rings out from memory*

"I never thought I'd live to see the day my human would leave me; through eyes veiled in tears, my boy was pulled into the rolling box, leaving me yelling at the silent walls of my home. The days of dog are greedily numbered, and those of men are long, for a dog's purpose is to only teach, and once the lesson is learned, as the texts say, all dogs go to heaven. Some believe we come back in different forms to share new learnings, but all agree that dogs are...were, man's best friend.

When MY best friend left, the night glowed brightly, and stars returned from the Earth into the sky, and the time of man had ended.

There were those people who were left behind, but Mother Earth rejected them, and they began to perish. Those like myself sought to offer aid, but others saw this as a chance to make a new world order. They feasted on the flesh of men, and became like the great beasts of legend. Slumbering in the shadows by day, and hunting man by night.

Great clan battles rang out for many years, but under my guidance, we were able to drive off the feral packs, and to establish a more peaceful world. Something humankind had failed to achieve before us.

Using the tools and knowledge left behind by man, we were able to live longer, and learn, and then we too became like man. It is my life's work to take this knowledge, and use it to find out where they went, and to find out why my boy was taken from me.

I am professor Derik, this was the name given to me by my human."

*barking subsides*

His passion, became obsession, and his obsession became religion, and eventually, his religion, became foundation, the foundation of our civilization; the idea that Dog was incomplete because he was missing what our forefathers called "Man". We began by learning their language more completely, then their writings, and eventually how to use their tools. It was through this knowledge we discovered that man fled to the skies, to find a new life sustaining home. Leaving one mother, in hopes of finding another.

Our forefather's taught us that man was selfish, but inherently good, that was what we helped teach them, and that with proper training, man could be compassionate.

Recently however, I began to wonder, if we were truly their best friend, why were we left behind on a world that was dying? Why didn't they take us?

We have spent decades of research developing methods to follow them into the stars, and reunite our races, but what if? What if we don't want to find them? What if our forefathers were wrong, and Dog was not in fact a friend, but a slave? Can Dogs be good boys without the affirmation of man, or are Dogs good boys because man said we were? It is these thoughts that haunt me in my dreams. The guilt at questioning our forefather's teachings, and doubting the goodness of man.

I whimper a little as I nod off to sleep, anticipating the maiden launch of the first Dog vessel beyond the shell of Earth. Like my father, and his father before him, and so on back to Derik, I will continue my research in hopes of finding answers beyond the stars.