Categories > Books > Animorphs > The Yeerk Chronicles
DISCLAIMER: See the Prologue.
CHAPTER 1
Yeerk date: Generation 685, mid-cycle
Earth date: 1966 C.E.
My name is Arklan 256. I am a Yeerk.
We Yeerks are small creatures who have the ability to enter the heads of some other species and take control of their bodies. No one really knows how we got the ability to do such a thing - although there have been myths passed down from generation to generation suggesting that we were granted such an ability, and that there were once creatures other than what we call Gedds which we could inhabit and control.
I have my theories, though...
One could say that we Yeerks have a thing for knowledge. Through hosts, we can see things we normally cannot in our natural bodies. Through our fellow Yeerks, we learn things we would not know otherwise. Through everything else, we survive together.
I have these ideas just running around my mind, beginning to be explained or to manifest some physical form... things which I just can't describe...
I am strange like that. I often think about things which other Yeerks don't really think about.
Even my brother and poolmate, Arklan 228, whom I get along with the most, has trouble keeping up with me sometimes.
He - I refer to him here as being male because he typically uses a male Gedd as a host - and I were trekking along through the area surrounding our pool. (Often, we Yeerks tend to "assume" the genders of our hosts.)
For some reason, Gedds evolved with one leg shorter than the other, so one arm was needed to keep balance as they walked. They were imperfect, but at the same time, I was also thankful that we had any hosts at all.
In our calendar - our system of time measurement - it had been 685 generations since the Founding Generation. Back then, there were all kinds of unique and fascinating creatures which we Yeerks could infest. But something happened - something to all those magnificent creatures. It must have been an illness, and a severe one at that, but it is said that in the length of time a Yeerk can live in a host and without Kandrona rays, all these different species died out, leaving only Gedds as the only species we could infest.
The Yeerks who lived back then realized that whatever killed all these creatures could threaten them too, and had already known about the existence of other Yeerks in other pools. They had unified in the hopes of finding a way to stop whatever this disease was. Well, whatever it was, it had passed, sparing the Gedds and the Yeerks. Well, the Yeerks who hadn't died within their dying hosts, anyway.
"We're almost there, brother," I said, using "Gedd speech," as opposed to the Yeerk language, which was impossible to use with Gedd mouths.
"Good," he grunted. "My host is getting tired, anyway."
"You wouldn't believe what I found the other day."
"I probably would, since you haven't stopped talking about it since."
"Sorry," I said with some sincerity. He had been right. Ever since I found it...
"Here we are," I announced.
Before I had left this site the last time, I had taken a large leaf that had fallen from a nearby tree (a leaf so big that it could cover at least four Gedds) and had pinned it down with rocks to protect it from the nightly acid rain.
After my brother and I removed the protective covering, I took a moment to gaze upon my find.
I had managed to unearth some bones that looked like Gedd bones. But the strangest thing was, they were made out of /stone/, not out of - well, /bone/.
I had removed half of the find so far, and now I was using my webbed Gedd hands to scoop way the soft dirt. My brother just looked on, watching me, except for when I needed him to help me.
I had unearthed the remains when I let out a gasp. It was a complete Gedd skeleton!
However, as I saw the legs, I noticed something odd.
Looking around, I found a stick that had fallen from another tree. Using that stick as a unit of measurement, I compared the lengths of the Gedd's legs.
To my utter surprise, /both legs were exactly the same length/.
"Am I seeing this correctly, or is it just my host?" My brother wondered.
"No, I'm definitely seeing it, too," I said in response.
It was clearly an old Gedd skeleton. Aside from the fact that it was made of stone rather than bone material, both legs on the skeleton were the same length.
"It's an old Gedd skeleton, and yet it looks different..." I mused. I then turned to my brother. "Do you think... it's possible that Gedds could have changed over time?"
My brother made a kind of grunt which indicated that he really didn't care much for ideas or theories at the moment. In fact, he really wasn't interested much in science, anyway.
Ah, science... a synonym we Yeerks have made, derived from the Yeerk word for "knowledge". It's something which not all Yeerks are interested in, I'm afraid. But for those of us who are interested in it... a lot of work is hypothetical, since even with clumsy Gedd hosts, it's difficult for us to lay out our ideas and thoughts.
It is something of a shame, since we have all these ideas, but no real efficient ways of expressing them.
As my brother went off underneath a Wide-Top Tree, I just continued to stand there, contemplating the old yet different Gedd skeleton remains lying in front of me. One common thought from that time in my life came back to me once again at that moment: I just hope of these days, something changes our world, and for the better.
I, like all Yeerks, was content with my life back then... but that didn't mean I couldn't have more, did it?
It was this kind of thinking which I came to reconsider and even regret in the years to come afterwards. More specifically, after they came.
TO BE CONTINUED...
A/N: There we go... the first chapter...
Note about the dates: Yes, I got those from the Hork-Bajir Chronicles/. Also, the term "C.E."... there are some people who don't like to use the religious dates B.C. ("Before Christ") and A.D. (/Anno Domini - "Year of the Lord"), and instead use the secular terms B.C.E. ("Before Common Era") and C.E. ("Common Era") respectively. Just so you know. Also, such calendars like ours often use a certain year of significance as a base year from which things are recorded before or after. In the case of the Yeerks, I took some liberties and made it so something happened during the base year/generation used in the Yeerk calendar - in this case, I made it so the base generation was the generation of Yeerks which truly united between all their different pools on the planet.
Note about the thing with science and knowledge: Actually, the English word "science" comes from the Latin word scientia/, meaning "knowledge". That's kind of how I came up with this little idea. /(Shrugs.)
Note about the "Wide-Top Tree": When Elfangor was in that artificial and fragmented universe he helped to create in TAC, he mentioned a kind of "tree" which grew some feet before spreading out horizontally several feet. So, I took some liberties with that and made it a "Wide-Top Tree".
The next part is the chapter where Seerow shows up... -Quillian
CHAPTER 1
Yeerk date: Generation 685, mid-cycle
Earth date: 1966 C.E.
My name is Arklan 256. I am a Yeerk.
We Yeerks are small creatures who have the ability to enter the heads of some other species and take control of their bodies. No one really knows how we got the ability to do such a thing - although there have been myths passed down from generation to generation suggesting that we were granted such an ability, and that there were once creatures other than what we call Gedds which we could inhabit and control.
I have my theories, though...
One could say that we Yeerks have a thing for knowledge. Through hosts, we can see things we normally cannot in our natural bodies. Through our fellow Yeerks, we learn things we would not know otherwise. Through everything else, we survive together.
I have these ideas just running around my mind, beginning to be explained or to manifest some physical form... things which I just can't describe...
I am strange like that. I often think about things which other Yeerks don't really think about.
Even my brother and poolmate, Arklan 228, whom I get along with the most, has trouble keeping up with me sometimes.
He - I refer to him here as being male because he typically uses a male Gedd as a host - and I were trekking along through the area surrounding our pool. (Often, we Yeerks tend to "assume" the genders of our hosts.)
For some reason, Gedds evolved with one leg shorter than the other, so one arm was needed to keep balance as they walked. They were imperfect, but at the same time, I was also thankful that we had any hosts at all.
In our calendar - our system of time measurement - it had been 685 generations since the Founding Generation. Back then, there were all kinds of unique and fascinating creatures which we Yeerks could infest. But something happened - something to all those magnificent creatures. It must have been an illness, and a severe one at that, but it is said that in the length of time a Yeerk can live in a host and without Kandrona rays, all these different species died out, leaving only Gedds as the only species we could infest.
The Yeerks who lived back then realized that whatever killed all these creatures could threaten them too, and had already known about the existence of other Yeerks in other pools. They had unified in the hopes of finding a way to stop whatever this disease was. Well, whatever it was, it had passed, sparing the Gedds and the Yeerks. Well, the Yeerks who hadn't died within their dying hosts, anyway.
"We're almost there, brother," I said, using "Gedd speech," as opposed to the Yeerk language, which was impossible to use with Gedd mouths.
"Good," he grunted. "My host is getting tired, anyway."
"You wouldn't believe what I found the other day."
"I probably would, since you haven't stopped talking about it since."
"Sorry," I said with some sincerity. He had been right. Ever since I found it...
"Here we are," I announced.
Before I had left this site the last time, I had taken a large leaf that had fallen from a nearby tree (a leaf so big that it could cover at least four Gedds) and had pinned it down with rocks to protect it from the nightly acid rain.
After my brother and I removed the protective covering, I took a moment to gaze upon my find.
I had managed to unearth some bones that looked like Gedd bones. But the strangest thing was, they were made out of /stone/, not out of - well, /bone/.
I had removed half of the find so far, and now I was using my webbed Gedd hands to scoop way the soft dirt. My brother just looked on, watching me, except for when I needed him to help me.
I had unearthed the remains when I let out a gasp. It was a complete Gedd skeleton!
However, as I saw the legs, I noticed something odd.
Looking around, I found a stick that had fallen from another tree. Using that stick as a unit of measurement, I compared the lengths of the Gedd's legs.
To my utter surprise, /both legs were exactly the same length/.
"Am I seeing this correctly, or is it just my host?" My brother wondered.
"No, I'm definitely seeing it, too," I said in response.
It was clearly an old Gedd skeleton. Aside from the fact that it was made of stone rather than bone material, both legs on the skeleton were the same length.
"It's an old Gedd skeleton, and yet it looks different..." I mused. I then turned to my brother. "Do you think... it's possible that Gedds could have changed over time?"
My brother made a kind of grunt which indicated that he really didn't care much for ideas or theories at the moment. In fact, he really wasn't interested much in science, anyway.
Ah, science... a synonym we Yeerks have made, derived from the Yeerk word for "knowledge". It's something which not all Yeerks are interested in, I'm afraid. But for those of us who are interested in it... a lot of work is hypothetical, since even with clumsy Gedd hosts, it's difficult for us to lay out our ideas and thoughts.
It is something of a shame, since we have all these ideas, but no real efficient ways of expressing them.
As my brother went off underneath a Wide-Top Tree, I just continued to stand there, contemplating the old yet different Gedd skeleton remains lying in front of me. One common thought from that time in my life came back to me once again at that moment: I just hope of these days, something changes our world, and for the better.
I, like all Yeerks, was content with my life back then... but that didn't mean I couldn't have more, did it?
It was this kind of thinking which I came to reconsider and even regret in the years to come afterwards. More specifically, after they came.
TO BE CONTINUED...
A/N: There we go... the first chapter...
Note about the dates: Yes, I got those from the Hork-Bajir Chronicles/. Also, the term "C.E."... there are some people who don't like to use the religious dates B.C. ("Before Christ") and A.D. (/Anno Domini - "Year of the Lord"), and instead use the secular terms B.C.E. ("Before Common Era") and C.E. ("Common Era") respectively. Just so you know. Also, such calendars like ours often use a certain year of significance as a base year from which things are recorded before or after. In the case of the Yeerks, I took some liberties and made it so something happened during the base year/generation used in the Yeerk calendar - in this case, I made it so the base generation was the generation of Yeerks which truly united between all their different pools on the planet.
Note about the thing with science and knowledge: Actually, the English word "science" comes from the Latin word scientia/, meaning "knowledge". That's kind of how I came up with this little idea. /(Shrugs.)
Note about the "Wide-Top Tree": When Elfangor was in that artificial and fragmented universe he helped to create in TAC, he mentioned a kind of "tree" which grew some feet before spreading out horizontally several feet. So, I took some liberties with that and made it a "Wide-Top Tree".
The next part is the chapter where Seerow shows up... -Quillian
Sign up to rate and review this story