200,000 World Odyssey [The 200,000 Contest]

Two hundred thousand souls had been chosen for this journey. Two hundred thousand people from a thousand different worlds, consisting of men, women, and children. Two hundred thousand selected to go on a journey to land across all of mankind's empire. To step foot on all two hundred thousand of its worlds.

They travelled across the stars. Frozen, in a dreamless sleep, waking up only once they reached their destination. They would stay awake for barely a few hours, before they would return to their mechanical cocoon's to sleep once more.

Upon the world's they landed they became legends, myths, of the sign of the glory of man. Sometimes they would arrive on world's only to find them full of pilgrims there to see the travellers, so that they could tell their descendents of how they had been there, when the travellers had come.

Other times, the ship would arrive to world's being consumed by war, and yet the very sight of the travellers would bring back peace.

In such a manner the journey continued for two hundred thousand weeks. Until at last these adventurers had set foot on their last world, and were now to be returned to their home world, to celebrate the greatness of man.

Only, it was no coincidence that there had been two hundred thousand of them. No more or less. It was no coincidence that they had travelled across two hundred thousand worlds, that it took them two hundred thousand weeks to complete their journey, or that now, instead of being returned home as the travellers had expected, their ship instead seemed to travel to a preset destination two hundred thousand light years away.

For this was never truly a journey, but a ritual.

For mankind had spread into the stars, and there it did not truly find itself the ruler of the cosmos, but rather, prey, simply trying to survive by placating the great beast that swam amongst the stars like a shark in a pond.

The greatest minds of mankind had studied the beast, learning what they could, realising that although it did not seem to be bound to the laws of our universe, it did have rules.

Thus the travellers reached their final destination, to be consumed by the great behemoth's two hundred thousand maws. Each person individually selected to be consumed with ease and yet satiate its hunger.

The beast consumed them over two hundred thousand days, each man, woman, and child unable to die until the very end, and now at last placated, the beast went back into its slumber of two hundred thousand millennia.