Human involvement

The history of CA-5354 was dramatically affected by humans.

The earth was running out of time. Humanity was looking to the stars for a new place to live, but lack of meaningful advances in space travel meant it was unlikely that humans would be able to find a habitable planet before the end of Earth's lifespan.

Then, a group of time-travel hobbyists discovered what could be the key to humanity's survival: they unlocked the door to a winding labyrinth of ancient, subspace paths, The Old Roads, which seemed to be constructed by an alien race, and subsequently abandoned.

The paths appeared to lead to countless other planets, and indeed other universes.

The best minds and computers were put to work untangling the twisted navigational logic of the roads, and in a few years the first inhabitable planets were discovered and recorded. As a safety measure, we stocked the planets with different kinds of life - rabbits, monkeys, dogs, plants - and studied the effects of each planet's environment on living tissue. Some test subjects failed to thrive for unknown reasons, and humanity abandoned these troublesome planets and moved on.

CA-5354 was one such planet. The test subjects placed there by the humans were the beginnings of the Animalia.