“Okay, get in.”
I opened the door, ignoring the scroll where it lay on the ground.
I knew it’d be back.
“Hello Fabian.”
“Hello Paulie.”
I frowned at him, but he just laughed. Most of my friends just called me Lana, short for Paulana. But not Fabian. He’d always insisted on being different.
Fabian took off from the curb with a squeal.
“Where we going?”
“To my secret hideout.”
I turned to him in surprise.
“You have a what?”
“A safe house, really, up by the lake, so about an hour away. It’s completely protected from government hackers and satellite tracking. It’s also got a state-of-the-art security system I designed.”
“You never told me about this.”
“It wouldn’t be completely secure if I told anybody.”
I looked over at his familiar floppy brown hair and thick glasses, his eyebrows creased in concentration and he drove.
“So why tell me now?”
He took a quick glance at me. His bright green eyes were, as always, startling.
“You said level 10, code red. This is what the house was built for. I can break the rules for that.”
I smiled at him.
“Thank you.”
We rode along a few more minutes until we hit the highway.
“Okay. Tell me.”
So I told him everything that had happened since last night. He stayed quiet the entire time. It took longer than I expected, as I kept stopping to look down at my hands, waiting apprehensively for the alien scroll to reappear, hard and metallic, into my hand. Because inevitably as I wound down, he asked the question I’d been waiting for since I first called him.
“So where is this alien scroll?”
“I, uh, dropped it at the park.”
He was silent for a few moments.
“We’re almost there.”
This surprised me, because I thought he’d laugh at my claims or at least insist on going back to retrieve the cylinder, but he did none of that. Instead, he turned his car onto a small track that led to the north side of the lake, which was, as far as I knew, uninhabited. We drove right up to a clump of brush that was completely impassable.
“Fabian?”
“It’s okay, Paulie. Just wait.”
He then shifted the car into park, jumped out, and strode straight towards the green wall. He reached his hand out, made some motion, and suddenly the entire middle section started moving, making an opening just large enough for his little car to get through.
He turned and walked back to the car.
“What? How did you… there’s no way you could disguise a gate there. I can see right through that.”
He smiled to himself as he put the car in gear.
“It’s not a fence. That’s too easy to track. Instead, I looped a series of counter weights in the shape of rocks and branches across that section. I then designed a sort of key made of interwoven silk – to look like a rather thick spider web – that activates the counter weights when I pull them in a certain pattern. It took me about a year to get it all together.”
I was speechless as we passed through, for I could see no evidence that there was anything man-made about the gate.
After we passed through, he repeated the procedure in reverse, and the wall closed behind us. We then drove forward towards a tumble of rocks.
“Fabian – are you Batman?”
He laughed at me in his quiet way.
“No, Paulie. But this is pretty close to a bat cave.”
He pulled the car up to the outmost rock and just before we ran into it, he swerved sharply left and wedged it under an outcropping.
“See, it’s completely invisible from three sides.”
“Wow. So, how do we get out?”
He slanted me a mischievous look.
“We climb.”
So saying, he opened the sunroof and easily popped himself through the top. With a sense of surrealism, I unbuckled my seatbelt and followed him, though with a bit more struggle. He slid forward off the car towards a black recess in the rock. I followed suit.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.”
He bent down and reached under the edge of the wall. His muscles contracted and suddenly the ground slid back to reveal a narrow hole. He fiddled at something then stood back.
“There you go.”
It was a rope ladder, which he had unbound and let fall down.
“Are you kidding me?”
“You first, Paulie-girl.”
I shot him a glare but he just chuckled, so I started down. It did not go down very far, so it only took a few minutes to reach the bottom. As my feet touched the ground, a dim light flickered on. I looked around in interest, but before I could do more than register a round room, Fabian dropped down beside me. I turned to ask him how he built this place, but as I opened my mouth, a familiar cold swept my through my hands and I fell unconscious.
~*~
We broke our chains and we destroyed our oppressors. We embraced rage.
And when we returned to our home, we found broken bodies and spirits, broken ground and empty oceans. We swore to rebuild our planet.
No matter what and who we broke in turn.
~*~
Soft hands shook me, snapping me out of my faint.
“Paulie?”
I tried to open my eyes to reassure him, but the words I were reading didn’t want to let me go, trying to push me down under again. I tried to raise my hands, but they were clutched tightly around the cold cylinder.
Then I understood.
I gave in, and relaxed. In that bare instant before surrendering, I whispered, “My hands.”
Fabian immediately reached toward me and his warmth closed around the scroll.
~*~
However, though there is no remorse and compassion left in my DNA, still there is exhaustion. That was never erased. I am exhausted from spending all this life trying to stop potential threats. Haven’t we traveled far enough? Eradicated enough species similar to our own, satisfied our aggression enough to finally return to our world, which is alive again. Aren’t we safe enough?
We have visited what we once considered atrocities on hundreds of worlds. We have erased harmonious and advanced societies, many for whom war was naught but a myth. We have fought because we now know nothing else, cannot understand our own histories.
I fear that we have lost sight of our original intent. We know nothing else now but to search and to destroy. We have lost the way of peace.
Yet we deserve little mercy. Even now, through my exhaustion, I feel no remorse for the thousands I’ve killed. For the cries I’ve silenced. I cannot feel that which was taken from me without consent ages before I was conceived.
Still, there is a weight I carry behind these eyes that tells the tale of what I’ve seen and shows what paths I might have chosen. Therefore, I write this now hoping that perhaps, if some world were told, were warned, they might prepare. Might be ready to fight us, to convince us that the cost is not worth the price. That our lives, as few as we are, are worth so much more. Perhaps then we might realize that we need to return home, and destroy no others.
But I’ve not the power for that.
And so this message is for a journey of one… and it may not be enough.
We are coming. We will show no mercy. We will not stop. All within our sight will die.
Fight.
No… stay out of sight. There is no defense, for you have not the technology to find us.
Save whom you can, for you have no more time than the fleeting revolution of your planet around your sun.
I will do no more.
~*~
I woke up, the indigo lines fading from behind my eyes. I felt Fabian stirring next to me, his body also prone on the floor. His hands encircled mine, and I knew that he’d read the message with me, his touch so
mehow enabling him to see what I saw.
I turned my head to face him and read the sadness in his eyes. Tears came to mine as well and in an instant we were holding each other.
The alien scroll was both a history and a warning.
“There’s not much time, is there?”
“No.”
“Should we tell the government?”
He was silent for a long time.
“Yes, but…”
“But we should also tell whoever we can.”
I sat up and stared at the cylinder. It lay, inert, finally warmed by the heat of my body. It was spent, its message given.
“Who will believe us?”
Fabian sat up next to me.
“Only those who choose to listen and believe.”
I nodded slowly.
“We will become the remnant.”*
“What?”
“It was part of the earlier message. They were remnants of a time when their own world was nearly destroyed. He was telling us… not to do what they did. Because their people really are gone. What is left now is… what destroyed them. In their effort to be strong, they forgot what they were. And now they truly are no more.”
Fabian looked away. I grabbed his arm and forced his faced towards me.
“But we will be the remnant that remembers, that passes on, that stays true. Don’t you understand? He, or whatever it was, was trying to give us an alternative to a new beginning. In his own way, he was trying to bring us hope.”
We sat there in silence, feeling the absent presence of the alien in the space between us.
~*~
I was discovered returning to my ship, but it is of no import.
We are a proud race. We do not yield. We do not forgive. We do not fear. Therefore, I go now to my death, facing it proudly. I would rather end this way than participate in the newest genocide of yet another inferior species.
For we will be there soon.
It is fitting that my own kind should destroy me for what they perceive to be cowardice, which is punishable by death according to our laws. Yet better they believe that than understand my true intent.
We are a lost people, eaten away by the bitterness of long eons spent roaming the frozen, hostile universe, one galaxy at a time, never stopping, never submitting, never loving.
And never truly living.
We no longer fight to keep our planet alive; we fight because we know no other way.
This is why, despite my combat fatigue, the urge to destroy still burns within me - even as I understand how we have deceived ourselves.
Thus, I deny myself any true satisfaction of death in combat. Instead, I will firmly close my eyes one final time. In this absolute way, I may finally find my rest.
~*~
1. Inside the Light, Outside of Time
By
C. M. Bratton
It began with flickering lights. No one was truly bothered until the lights grew weak and sickly. Then the air itself changed. A haze of yellow and rust began as fog, and then grew until it eclipsed the sky. Noon became dusk, and dusk became moonlit night, and night itself became abyss. No more healing sun. No more mystery-filled moon.
Soon, there were puddles everywhere. Moisture was held in by the haze. The ground soaked and saturated until the earth could bear no more. Instead, it gave birth to millions of tiny lakes and seas – all still and solemn, resisting tides and currents of any kind.
And then time stopped. All the clocks died. It was as if, on that precipice of looming consequence, the world was put in a sealed vacuum while time spun its unendingly complex threads just outside those translucent glass walls. Breath was held, dreams were paused. Life…waited.
One day, the quiet settled in. There were already no ticking clocks, but worse, suddenly there were no singing birds or swarms of buzzing insects. No calls of cicadas or brushes of butterfly wings. No passing ladybugs for luck or bees sticky with honey from their hives. Not even any cries of lost kittens or whimpers of hungry dogs. Perhaps they were cowering under covers and chairs, hiding behind feet and tucked into trembling arms, seeking comfort in familiar scents that still, somehow, said make no sound. Silence ruled, uncontested. And fear filtered out, drowning out joy, leaving only hollow, relentless, deceptive hope.
When noise returned, it held the tones of the acrid grumble of the earth, testing the endless layers of atmosphere above, changing position without warning. It shifted and broke, ignoring the chaos it caused, pushed by movement deep below that only it could feel. It shifted, seeking to settle down into itself, trying to adjust to the strangeness deep in its belly.
But no one spoke to the earth. Instead, people poured out of their homes and storm shelters, heedless of the harsh air and flashes of light. Out was better than in, up was preferred over down, go was better than stay.
They streamed out by the thousands, eerily silent save for gasps fighting the heavy humid air and faint cries of hastily shushed children. They headed for the hills and mountains, hoping they’d pick one that was dead because all the sleeping ones were waking up, just like the layers of earth beneath the cities. But surely – surely – there was at least one stretch of ground still safe enough.
Life turned into a surreal survivor’s camp as everyone waited to hear something from someone, anyone. Someone had to know. The government, the media, the lawmakers, the hackers – they had to have answers. Why was the earth erupting? From where had the haze come? Why had the lights flickered and nearly died? What day was it? What season? When would time resume?
But when news finally arrived, they learned to regret that last question.
Word came in the form of a battery-powered radio when, on a day identical to the one before, the worn knob was switched on yet again by grubby, desperate fingers that tensed in surprise when a voice actually rolled out.
“ – and so, much to our sorrow, there’s little to be done. We have no promises we can make. This may in fact be the last broadcast for the foreseeable future, if indeed, there is any future left. We can only offer suggestions – stick to high ground and move upwind and away from any distant lights or sounds of explosions, because it is likely that yet another bomb has been triggered. We do not know yet who or what placed these destructive devices deep inside the earth, nor what has triggered them, because, according to our limited sources, they appear to be exploding on every continent on the planet. Sadly, we have no way of knowing if they will continue until the ground is completely broken and we are all swept away. We can only hope and pray that –”
The radio cut off, sharp and jagged in the silence. Ripples spread outward, as heads turned and hands gripped each other. Nothing else was said, or needed, in that moment. For those who were too far away to hear the radio, the news was read in other ways – bowed heads, clenched jaws, streaming tears, shaking fingers, covered eyes – their worst fears reflected in every face shining dully in the dim yellow–tinged red light. And they knew in that moment that it was nothing good, nothing to inspire hope.
But hope they did – clinging even more desperately to distant, unpromising, unrelenting hope. As days bled one into the other and they learned to live apart from time - with no way to gauge the setting of the sun or the passing phases of the moon - still they believed, in some way, that something would come and rescue them. That they would survive.
Until the day they saw the light.
It began with an eerie glow that warmed each uplifted countenance in the same way that dawn might gently kiss a face. Many people thought at first that the clouds were clearing away, that the ugly, pollution-filled miasma of murky vapor and mist was giving up its grip on the ground and the sky. They didn’t question why – didn’t want to question why. Lit by hope, they pushed out all remembrance of reason.
The light also allowed people to gaze across distances that had been previously hidden, to see the hillsides and slopes dotted with countless blurry faces, all turned and raised upward towards the growing glow. They believed
– knew, even – that they were not alone, that the hope of so many people could turn solid and hard, a shield to wield against the dark, a force to push away the haze and bring back time.
But… the soft orange color turned lurid red… and then cold blue. Instead of gently touching the hands raised toward it, the light began to burn. People started to scream in fear and pain as realization flashed through their minds and faces and bodies - much too slowly, much too late – turning hope into ash. Even so, as one entity, the mass of people turned and began to run, trying to get away, remembering belatedly that any light at that point was the enemy.
The ground began to fight them, shaking and tumbling them to their hands and knees, piling bodies on top of bodies, readying them for the end. Some of them evaded the flailing piles of limbs, but a wind started, hot and invasive. Like the ground, it pushed and screamed and tore through the running remnants.
Then they lit up.
For some unknowable instant in that space outside of time, they lived inside the light. They became lit from within, shining, floating. They lived inside the light – magnificent, awed. They were glorious…
But the glass finally shattered their sheltered vacuum, and time rushed back in. They were filled to the brim, bursting with heat and wind and lightning. They could see the bones in their hands, could see inside that cold white light to the red flowing through their bodies… just before they turned into smoke. But for the barest sliver of awareness, they were blissful. Beautiful.
They died before smiles could even finish forming on their faces. But there was no pain. No more fear. There was no time for that.
Just simple release.
It was the end, but they met it with joy.
~*~
2. Lifetime in a Moment
By
C. M. Bratton
There were, of course, some who turned away from the light. They were connected to the slightest tremors in the ground, the kind that vibrated deep in the bones and stayed there, a constant hum that jarred teeth and knees. They were the ones who kept part of their focus always on the subsonic vibration, waiting for it to change, knowing what it heralded. Readying themselves for the inevitable, knowing that no matter how much they begged and pleaded with others to listen, they would in the end stand alone, because they had the instinct – and the will – to survive.