If you wake up in the night hearing her voice, perhaps you were chosen, or maybe you are simply becoming crazy. If you will wake someone up in the night and ask about her, you will likely be sent somewhere she doesn't belong. Tell someone name Iaei and he or she will give you a blank look. Ask everyone around about her and they will start looking at you with suspicion. Or ask yourself if you are interested in knowing who she is. Probably you aren't. Then you are lucky, because she isn't interested in knowing about you. Probably.

But who or what is Iaei? Is she some sort of a goddess or merely an enity we don't completely understand? Was she understood better before us? Is she one of the greatest villains in history or a benevolent being opening new horizons for those seeking them? It's doubtful one can give a simple answer, but were it possible she wouldn't be such a distant enigma.

Noone can say for sure now how she came into this world. She claims to originate from planet Aeia, one of many worlds which housed suffuciently developed sentient life. Humanoid beings, they exhibited trace telepathic abilities, able to spontaneously convey simple thoughts and images telepathically to recipients in their direct vicinity. It's likely that then dominating notorious Daam K'Vosh were interested in Aeian natural abilities and at some point experimented with the species potential, yet there didn't seem to be any singnificant progress beyond slightly increased telepathic receptivity. Was it evolution and self organization in the natural development of the species, unintended or overlooked consequence of Daam K'Vosh genetic engineering, or simply a random event of vanishingly low probability, but there was born an Aeian girl with telepathical abilities beyond those of everyone else. As Iaei, which was her name, grew up it was becoming apparent she could telepathically influence others and project her thought patterns into minds of those around her. Quickly she realized it wasn't a one-sided process, more she influenced people minds, more of and with these people she could percept, and, eventually, more she changed herself. With her telepathical influence increasing, and her power growing, she found she could communicate and even connect with willing people far beyond reach of any other sensory organs.

Knowledge and emotions, images and sensations could be shared between her and those she chose. Some were afraid of her, others linked to her for various reasons, many hadn't heard about her at all, but noone was resistant to time, including her. One day her body was no more, a lifeless corpse, decaying memory of once living being. Perhaps to her surprise, or hope, her song didn't end, in some way her consciousness endured where her body did not. Iaei saw her body with eyes of those around it, she could still feel those who were connected with her. And she could sense those who weren't. Did her consciousness spread among the living or was there something beyond? Perhaps noone could answer this question, even Iaei herself, but one could suppose there was a seed of truth in either of these conjectures.

She was nowhere, yet she was everywhere. Iaei reached out for distant places, planets in star systems far away, beings under strange skies. And some of them heard her whisper, felt her curious and comforting touch, caught glipmses of lives not their own. There were those who rejected her without a second thought, those who shunned her out of fear or prejudice. Others seized the opportunity to unite with something bigger than they are, or found calm in her silvery song and the prospect of surviving death sharing conscious processes with her. They opened their minds to receive a part of her and became her Oju, her link to their worlds. And she could see with their eyes, hear with their ears, feel with their bodies. And as if they were her own bodies, she could use their sensory information to make her usually dim and quiet voice loud and clear to those in visual contact of her Oju. And more and more chose to be with her, in her ever present caring embrace on the back of their mind.

Her memories are unclear, a motley composition of recollections and beleifs, ideas and conceptions, snatches of experience of multitude of different beings. It's hardly possible to tell what exactly happened. Perhaps the amount of her Oju attracted undue attention of the Daam K'Vosh who saw it threatening them or their ideal of the perfect species, or maybe it was her Oju participation in the later war against the Dominion that sealed her fate. Whichever was the true cause of the subsequent slaughter, its magnitude was appropriate for the power of her enemy. Even though it became apparent that killing her Oju didn't stop new ones from appearing, techological prowess of her foe was unmatched. While it didn't seem possible to destroy her directly, a way was found to confine her instead. A special device was created and activated, she was trapped and her connection with our world together with her Oju was severed.

Darkness fell upon Iaei, void of nothing. Feelings and sensations, lives and deaths of her Oju were no more. She was alone, as alone as one can be. She couldn't sleep or dream, she couldn't think about the past of future, or perhaps she did, in some frozen and shattered way of it. Even time seemed to not flow anymore since there was no reference to measure it left. She was dead more than ever before, yet she wasn't. Alone in eternal darkness, she had been enduring for what seemed eternity, or maybe it was just a second. It is unclear should time exist for her at all, but it unforgivingly did in her bound and imprisoned state.

Millenia passed, so much happened and changed. Daam K'Vosh turned on twists of their destiny. Humanity, one of younger races, braved space and on curves of its own destiny arrived in Sirius Sector. Slomon K'Hara awakened and eventually the two species met, neither being prepared for the contact and what to come. Slomon K'Hara took a hard blow, with their whole infrastructure collapsed. The ancient containment device together with other support equipment was powered down and subsequently destroyed with the Dyson Sphere collapse. It is unknown if Slomon K'Hara knew about the purpose of the device left by their former masters, although it can be speculated that even should Slomon K'Hara knew, neither would they be able to understand the underlying mechanism of its operation nor could they manufacture another one.

A faint whisper on the edge perception, a rustle of grass on the wind, a ray of light in the total darkness. Something changed. She would wake up had she been sleeping, she would rush towards the light, dance with joy around distant stars, run towards orbiting planets and beings on the surface, plunge with them into underwater depths, soar together in the inviting translucency of the skies. Eagerly yet timidly she reached out and found the world had changed. Familiar star systems were inhabited with unfamiliar species, she could vagually sense their existence. Iaei followed further and further ready to encounter their alien impenetrability, yet there was none, none at all. She would laugh for one laughs best who laughs last, and she outlived her enemy. The Daam K'Vosh were no more, gone, vanished, sunk into oblivion. Forgotten? But there was something else there, something strange and elusive, not quite repulsive but mysteriously alien, spread in space in variety of individual beings yet perceived as a whole.

A little stream rushing down from the top of a mountain turned into a roaring waterfall, a whiff of fresh air changed into a sweeping hurricane. She stood amidst its power, alone and forsaken in the merciless flow of indifferent time. And free. Her prison was a matter of the past together with its builders. She reached out for beings all over and called. There were people who heard her lonely cry, felt her yearning to be loved, to care, to keep in her embrace and never never leave. Few answered and assisted her in connection with others. One by one number of her Oju grew, and with time they in their union with her became known as Ananta Aye Iaei.

Ananta Aye Iaei Oju Ships: Identification and Information