MY LONGINGS STAY
UNSPOKEN AND I MAY
NEVER OPEN UP THE
WAY I DID FOR YOU.
AND THIS IS WHEN THE FEELING SINKS IN,
There are two major (and rather conflicting) theories as to how human beings came to be. The first theory is one that many people are told inside of the walls of the church, that human beings were created by God and in his likeness. That God created Adam from dust and Eve from Adam's rib on the sixth day, eventually leading to the creation of human beings. This theory is one that many find comfort in. That many find themselves relying on when times get tough. A reminder than no matter what goes wrong in their life God had created them to be of his likeness. And no matter what, things would go back to normal. But this theory had no way of being proven. Especially now. Thousands of years had passed by, the Bible had been translated from hundreds of languages since then. And faith could only take people so far. Because at some point, even the most devoted of believers will come to a fateful moment in time where they have to question what they believe in. Which leads them to the second theory — human beings evolved over time. A scientific process that has been seen over and over again with thousands of species. Speciation. Evolution. It's all one and the same, backed up with hundreds to hundreds of thousands of years worth fossil evidence. The not-so-simple yet currently being oversimplified theory that human beings, the species Homo sapiens, evolved from primates into Neanderthals, later becoming the human beings seen walking on this earth today. Science has facts, at least things that scientists believe to be a fact, but little comfort. Nothing that can give someone the peace, nothing that provided them faith in the unknown. Because, to the people who knew science, the unknown was just that. It would never be known, because science would never be able to have an answer for everything.
Including whether or not human beings have continued to evolve since the species had evolved.
Of course, there were a select few scientists who knew. Genetics was key to that, every minute of every hour of every day a human beings DNA was being replicated. Cells rapidly dividing having to go through the cell cycle — firstly by altering their heterochromatin and turning it into euchromatin, being read over and quickly being replicated during the G phase, the chromosomes being paired together as sister chromatids. And suddenly the cell finds itself in the M phase, mitotic phase, going through five stages (interphase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase) before finally undergoing cytokinesis and creating two identical daughter cells. Identical was a funny way to put it. Because any good scientist knows that the amount of human DNA held within a cell can span up to three meters in length if it were held together like a rope. And as magical as the human body seemed to be, it wasn't perfect. It couldn't be perfect. At some point mistakes would be made, errors leading to mutations throughout the process. Mutations that somehow skip through the checkpoints of the cell cycle, saving the cell from being marked for apoptosis. Allowing the cell to do what it was meant to do: proliferate. And these mutations are exactly what cause variations in human beings. The reasons behind why people have different hair colors, different eye colors. The reason behind why some people are more likely to have a certain disease than others.
And there were a specific subset of people out there who possessed a mutant gene (once called the X-Gene in a paper denounced as bogus) on their 23rd chromosome. At least, scientists proposed that there may have been people out there with that gene. A gene that encodes for a protein that then causes genes on other chromosomes to be mutated. A mutation that leads to further mutations, a remarkable idea, truly. The idea that one gene mutation could lead to thousands of other mutations which could lead to physical manifestations.
Which could lead to the evolution of an entirely new species.
At the very least, that's what Charles Francis Xavier was trying to argue. It wasn't an argument of if this could happen. No, not for him. He knew it already had happened. The mutation wasn't purely hypothetical, not for him. It wasn't hypothetical the moment he heard the first voice inside of his head and realized that he wasn't going crazy but that he was able to hear every single person's thoughts if they were close enough to him. So, no, he wasn't sitting in a lab day in and day out to find out about the existence of a new subspecies of Homo sapiens. He didn't need to discover their existence to feel like a scientist. He needed to discover the exact mutated gene to prove it to the world around him that people like him existed. That they were real. That a new species of humans had been around, that they could have been around for hundreds of years and the rest of the human population would have been none the wiser to their existence. Much like they were now. He knew there would be set backs to this research of his during his time at Oxford, he knew people were going to find him strange for believing in such a thing. After all, a man of science (such as himself, he was working on the last of his three PhDs at Oxford) should not be running around looking to prove something that no other scientist believed to be true. It was one thing to run excitements and research off of hunches that altering one thing in a known reaction or pathway could lead to a different result. But trying to pull something out of nothing was a mad man's pursuit. And that's what everyone had written Charles Xavier off as. Even as he came back with evidence of a mutation (unable to show that the mutation at hand could cause a completely new species or subspecies), he was forced to dig further.
Maia Astrophel was no stranger to diving straight into the deep end for her pursuit of knowledge. She had done exactly that with her first PhD (aptly in astrophysics) (you know, because her last name starts with astro) (was that it?), she dove straight into her research. Straight into trying to understand dark matter more than they already did (which wasn't that difficult, the world of astrophysics knew practically nothing about dark matter, it did not take her very long to find something that put her name on the map), to push the boundaries of science just like her father had before her. Her father wasn't a physicist, no, he had studied genetics. More along the lines of the simple, Mendelian genetics used with the creation of GMOs for the farming industry. But it was her father that had pushed her into the world of science, that fostered her thirst for knowledge and gave her the independence to seek it out for herself. It was because of her father that she chose to become a scientist. To study things that one day could ultimately help people. Things that could ultimately better the people around her. Because that's all she wanted, to help people through her pursuit of knowledge. There was no possibility of hurting anyone with knowledge, she couldn't risk anyone's lives by putting words to a page.
In fact, as Maia Genevieve Astrophel began her research for her second (and if she had it her way, final) PhD, she hoped she would be saving lives. Because one day there would come to be people, that much like her, held a mutation on a gene that caused them problems. Made them live in fear of themselves and what they would do to others around them. Made them live forever with the knowledge of what they have done to others around them engraved into their mind. Maia Astrophel knew very early on in the manifestation of her mutation that she did not want for it. She did not wish for it. And she knew that one day she would fight to find a way to remove it from her genome. She would fight to tooth and nail against all technology until she found a way to even begin to think of how to edit and splice DNA. Maia Astrophel wanted an out.
She didn't believe people with her mutation were superior (much unlike her classmate Charles Xavier who quite frankly had dubbed them a subspecies of Homo sapiens called Homo sapiens superior), she didn't think they were less than other humans. She just happened to believe that humans without the mutation were the lucky ones. They never had to live in fear of what they could do to others or themselves when their eyes are closed and their subconscious took over. Charles Xavier wasn't quite fond of that mentality.
In the end, it all works itself down to this: stars are stars and the galaxy is the galaxy. But when comparing them, both stars and their painted versions are stunning. In the end, only one of them will know what it feels like to be there when the planets are destroyed and everything else around them is destroyed.
I DON'T WANNA MISS YOU LIKE THIS.
MAIA GENEVIEVE ASTROPHEL, PHD
portrayed by kiera knightley
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OTHER CAST
Caroline Rivers-McCoy — Phoebe Dynevor
Katherine Rivers — Violet Brinson
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AUTHORS NOTE
ALRIGHT WHO FUCKING EXPECTED THIS? Not fucking me. Like many people I feel like I have fallen back down a rabbit hole and now I'm here. 🧍♀️ Anyway, after forty million years I hope you guys enjoyed that summary. It was a long one (as all of my summaries seem to be at this point), so I apologize. I also apologize bc I got very science-y in that summary so, I hope you guys were able to follow along. And if not, it's okay I honestly hated genetics (I did very good in the class just learned very early on that it was not what I was going to do for the rest of my life) so 🙏. To be fair most of that was more along the lines of cell biology/biochemistry with the cell cycle and DNA replication but alas. If you have any questions fr comment them and I will try to answer them I'll just act like I'm studying (which I should be doing I have exams coming up) (gotta love grad school).
But I am, once again, emphasizing on here that we know me. I talk about my ocs and edit them and make graphics but actually writing them takes a lot of brain power. And ... as we could gather from the above statements I am back in school (getting my masters in biomedical science teehee), so updates may take a little bit more time to happen. Which is saying a lot bc I am self aware and I know I already take forever to update. But, I'm putting it here and now that it will be a while before this is updated so. Yolo. This one's for the girlies and the girlies only.
Let me know your thoughts! I missed them ur honor.
While I'm here though, please please please take a moment to look through these links & speak out on your own profiles about Palestine:
palestine carrd: https://free-palestine.carrd.co/
one click a day to donate: https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/
who to boycott: https://boycott.thewitness.news/browse/1
more educational resources on the history of palestine etc: https://decolonizepalestine.com/
DISCLAIMERS
1. I do not own any of the plot lines and or characters created for the X-MEN series (comics and movies included). Any and all other characters and plot lines that are not seen in the comics/movies are my own, please don't steal.
2. This book may contain some of these things: violence, blood, gore, death, drugs, alcohol consumption, sex, crude language, mental health, etc. Please do not interact with this material if it will mess with your mental health!
DEDICATIONS
to the hogwarts founders: ownthelight, angeIeyes,
findtheforce
to the milfs: halosnite, foxgIoves, fxllmoons, awfulmoons, bananapopsicIes, -punisher
and to my many other friends whom I love and appreciate: spacemania, silksenses, sombersuns, arsvenal, aethrastic_dreamxx, bayports, luckyvirgo, elfaouly, bokuroos, xonceuponatimex, dunbonnet, protectremus, sanktham, luckyvirgo, REGULUSBLVCK, svperboy, starryeyedturtle!
thank you for reading,
PAINTED STARS.