Once upon a time, there was nothing but darkness and an endless void. One day, the darkness was interrupted by a bright light, and the silence was shattered by the deafening rumble of thousands of Ancients who began to fill the space.

On one pile, Ancients of all kinds lived together. Time slowly passed, and the monotony of existence was occasionally disturbed by shots of golden light from the boundaries of observable space. It took many cycles before the first of the Ancients realized that their fate would not be as straightforward as they thought. Some bodies gradually began to wither and lose their firm form. In this new liquid form, they started to fill the free space and flooded everyone else.

This event naturally caused a stir, especially among the older ones. Some saw it as an opportunity to proceed to the next level of being and achieve absolute harmony through perfect mixing with others. The rest perceived it as the inevitable and frightening end of their existence. How wrong they were…

Occasional flashes of light were replaced by a steady dim orange glow, and subtle vibrations carried through the space. Another change in the otherwise quiet Frutiverse. This only contributed to the Ancients’ perception of their fate. “The end is near”, was heard more and more often. However, there was nothing anyone could do about it, so life slowly went on, and more and more Ancients fulfilled their destiny by liquefying and mixing with others.

There was a huge explosion, and a bright orange light flooded the whole space. Sharp pieces of metal, soil, and other materials fell on the surface of the Frutiverse, quickly making their way to its center. All who stood in their path were torn to pieces. As fast as the light started, it vanished. Silence fell, and the space continued to be lit only by sparse small flames. This was the end of the Frutiverse as the Ancients knew it. From their bones and blood, we arose — a new generation.

In the beginning, nothing was different from the previous epoch. Change was brought by Apricots from the opponents of absolute mixing. As the smartest of the fruits, they found use for the killing metal and built a primitive engine powered by the blood of the Ancients. With its help, they wanted to travel beyond the known space. They believed that answers to all questions about the meaning of existence lay in the depths of the Frutiverse. No one has ever heard of them since.

Cycles passed, and technology evolved. Others began to conduct reconnaissance expeditions, but no one ventured to the fringes for fear of disappearing like the members of the first expedition. This was when it was discovered that we share the Frutiverse with other races. The first discovered were the Grain people, a relatively simple and small species. They lived apathetically in huge colonies and didn’t care much about what was going on around them. The second were the Potato people.

Everyone who ever dealt with the Potato people knows how stupid and backwards they are. And it wasn’t better in the past. They believed that the blood of the Ancients was sacred and should not be wasted on powering all kinds of unnecessary inventions. The self-proclaimed King of the Potato people gathered a relatively large group of radical worshipers and regularly attacked neighboring colonies to destroy all technology. Due to technological superiority, their attacks were quickly repulsed with only minimal losses.

During the testing of a new propulsion system, a team of Plum scientists measured a decrease in the volume of the Ancients’ blood. However, this report was not taken seriously and was attributed to measurement error because Plums were never good scientists. Nevertheless, several cycles passed, and occasional outages of some devices began to occur in the most densely populated places. Something unimaginable was confirmed as the root cause: reserves of blood were indeed slowly being exhausted. No one wanted to live like the Potato people, so they all joined forces to solve the global crisis. For many cycles, leading scientists tried to come up with a viable solution, but without success.

Device failures were happening more frequently throughout the well-known Frutiverse. The situation was worst on the borders with the Potato Kingdom. Their attacks were becoming more frequent and gaining strength. Not all colonies could defend themselves. One day, an Apricot came up with a controversial idea: a device that could make alcohol from fruit. The substance, with properties similar to the Ancients’ blood, managed to greatly surpass it in some respects.

The members of the Fruit Union agreed to use this technology as a short-term solution until something better was found. The elderly and infirm from each kind were to be evenly selected and liquefied for the greater good. Naturally, no one liked this, but there was no better solution. With the newly acquired alcohol supplies, the Fruit Union plunged into the fight against the Potato Kingdom. The war was presented as defensive since the Potatoes had been aggressive from the beginning of time, but secretly everyone hoped that their bodies could be a source of alcohol.

The Potato Kingdom was crushed relatively soon. Many Potatoes were captured and sentenced to liquefy for their crimes against fruitiness. Despite all efforts, it was found that the blood of Potato people is inferior, and lifegiving alcohol cannot be obtained from it. The surviving Potatoes were expelled to the fringes of the Frutiverse to live their lives. Thus began the dark times for the Fruit Union.

The sacrifices had to continue. A piece of each kind was regularly selected. Unfortunately, the liquefaction of only the old ones was not sufficient, so others were involuntarily selected, especially members of the order of absolute mixing, who actively protested against resolving the crisis in this way. Pears also did not like this system. They were the largest of all fruits, and it did not seem fair to them that they were sacrificed in the same numbers as tiny Plums. Tensions throughout the Union gradually intensified until it fell apart and transitioned to a system where each kind was for itself.

The numbers of Apricots thinned relatively quickly, so the last survivors set out on a long journey to the center of the Frutiverse, where the natural blood concentration was highest. They wanted to build a scientific base here and continue to work on a sustainable solution.

Tensions at the Plums-Pears border escalated, and there were occasional skirmishes. It all culminated on a day when Plums discovered something disgusting in a remote colony of Pears. There were huge smoothie camps. Thousands of Plums and even Potatoes were imprisoned here, where non-fruity experiments were carried out to ensure sufficient alcohol production for the Pear Empire. Plums could not ignore this. They launched an attack on these camps to liberate their people. This was the beginning of the Great War.

The war was ruthless, and no prisoners were taken. Those unlucky enough to fall in battle were sentenced to a short stay in a smoothie camp and a slow death by liquefaction. Resources of Pears and Plums were slowly but surely irreversibly depleted. However, due to their numerical advantage, Plums slowly gained the upper hand.

Pears focused all their hopes on a new destructive weapon. Its basis was discovered during the explosion of a research center that tested a new prototype of a distillation apparatus made of a new precious metal. The first of the prototypes was completed, and its test was scheduled in one of the uninhabited border systems. Some scientists objected to a relatively rushed test, but the situation was desperate, and the bomb was detonated.

There was a strong blue flash and a massive explosion. In an instant, the system was wiped out of the Frutiverse, and worse, the wave spread and engulfed adjacent areas. The worst thing some scientists feared happened: such a massive burst of energy also caused the burning of the ubiquitous remnants of Ancients’ blood. Fortunately, the reaction slowly stopped on its own and did not burn the whole Frutiverse. Several systems fell victim, and not all were uninhabited. These tragic events took the last desire to fight out of both Plums and Pears, and a truce was signed.

Life returned to normal, if that’s what it could be called. Liquefaction technology was forbidden. Even if it hadn’t been, it still wasn’t a viable solution. All the alcohol-powered devices slowly but surely ceased to function throughout the Frutiverse. Communication between systems became more and more difficult and eventually ceased. Everyone was gradually preparing for the coming period of darkness and life, following the example of the Potato people.

Salvation was brought by the long-forgotten Apricots. They returned from the depths of the Frutiverse to their war-torn former homeland. They discovered a way to grow small pieces of fruit and then make alcohol from them in a familiar way. They shared this knowledge with others. This method of production was not very efficient but allowed civilization to slowly restore itself. The Frutiverse began to pulsate with life again, and the individual kinds began to communicate with each other once more. There were even attempts to restore the Fruit Union, but they always failed, as no one had fully moved past the tragic events of previous cycles, and a certain rivalry between kinds still persisted.