History's Constellations

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Before them were the vampires, and they were gone over a hundred years ago. No one alive today has had to experience a surge before this one.

They would surely fade out as time went on just as the invaders before them had. But that didn’t make it any easier to live with. Natural order, inherently, responds only to itself. Records establish the vampires’ reign lasted close to two hundred years, one of the longest. The average Zenith spike lasts about fifty years, with the lull between surges ranging from fifteen years (albeit contested as the transition was between fairies and pixies and many still argue that the difference is not great enough to qualify as a Zenith Arrival) to as long as the hundred years between vampires and our current dragons.

Therefore, it is possible for some to live long enough to see the end of one wave and the beginning of another.

Fjinijor found the online article too dry to continue reading. She needed something that could help compensate her propensity for flair, but not outright crush it. If another of her papers hit Dr. Croison’s desk and came back with less than a ‘B’ solely for its storytelling undertone, she would lose her mind. The assignment required a certain amount of speculation in order to reasonably hypothesize the agenda of the dragons. She’d chosen to report on each Zenith spike since the early 2000’s, up until the current era; the leniency she’d received in grading for her submissions was due to the limited amount of historic anecdotal data that could be drawn upon.

The article on her screen was already over twenty years old, one of the last written before age defining laws were enacted that prohibited the supposition of the origins of Zenith Arrivals let alone the possible manufactured functions. Fjinijor knew without anything newer, and the moratorium on academic materials older than fifty years, this assignment would not be completed as she would have liked. Which admittedly meant it may not be submitted. She couldn’t handle turning in something simply to get the grade when her whole reason for applying for the Zenith Studies doctorate program was to get ahead of the curve, not just ride the wave.

She believed that the dragons would indeed go away and be replaced with something else, eventually. But she also felt that a perigee was closing in which would affect any Z-spikes thereafter.

She closed the application that had the finite number of articles she could scrounge up given the restrictions. Putting her hands to her face, she sighed and closed her eyes. What else could be done? What could she do to satisfactorily complete the assignment yet remain in the program, let alone out of the eyes of the government? She didn’t have the money for any fines should the assignment be turned over to the authorities.

“Feej?” a tentative knock on the doorjamb didn’t stir her, but the male’s voice did.

“Amos?” Fjinijor peeked out from her hands to confirm it was him, then she sat back in her chair, slightly embarrassed at her defeated appearance.

“We’re heading out for a bite.” She pursed her lips in thought. “Just to the old diner a few blocks out. A bunch of us, so we figured keep a variety of options.” Amos chuckled. “You in?”

Having glanced out the window, her stomach growled now that her brain and sense of time were catching up with the rest of her body. “Sure.” She jumped up, grabbed her jacket, and closed the door behind her as joined Amos.

The diner was an American classic. This area was one of the few that still had them around. While not too much of society had changed drastically with Zeniths, the food industry had been completely overturned.

With the Vampires, meat was harvested with the near sole purpose of satisfying their needs. A primarily vegetable diet was adopted by most humans around the world. Scientific advances made it simple enough to increase meat substitute production post Vampires, but the dragons were far too insatiable to be mollified. Even with the vaccines to curb the dragon traits, those afflicted still required more than a thousand average human’s worth of meat consumption pre-Vampire to make a consumer market worthwhile, let alone feasible.

With one of the first Zenith spikes, before any clue had been found to what had brought forth these creatures or how to coexist, the jellyfish krakens made much to do with ocean life a near impossibility. Marine life was rather quickly deemed unnecessary to interact with when militaries, which were initially responsible for confronting the creatures, stubbornly admitted no way to subdue the appearances.

Fjinijor and Amos walked into the diner with their small group. Seated, Fjinijor happily accepted the classic laminated menu and scanned it for something to eat.

***

The next knock on her door wasn’t as friendly. Fjinijor woke to the rude pounding and tossed off her covers. Without any verbal requests, she wasn’t about to offer a response, so she slipped on a large shirt from some ex-boyfriend to cover her naked body and made her way to the front door. The pounding ceasing between bursts left only a harsh silence in the darkness.

With the sparse furniture, Fiji had no need to turn on the lights to make her way through the apartment.

“Hello?” her annoyance at the behavior conveyed satisfactorily, she stood before her door waiting for a response. When none came, but the knocking didn’t continue either, she turned to head back to her bed. Figuring the noise to be some prankster who had gotten the result they wanted, simply knowing she had been woken, Fiji made a mental note to address the matter with the building manager.

However, she only made a few steps away from the door before a new knocking occurred. This time it was short and formal; three measured knocks with a brief pause followed by four more knocks. She froze, her mind racing. This changed everything. The first knocker was someone who was trying to warn her and ran before getting caught.

“Ms. Court.” The tenor male voice was simply making a statement. Not questioning if she were the occupant, not seeking to validate her presence; the voice from the hallway had the tone of a formal greeting in an office to acknowledge a passing coworker. They’d heard the attempted warning given to her and had likely not apprehended the person; perhaps they thought they had just missed them entering the apartment.

“Who is it?” she held her lower lip between her teeth as she cringed. Her panic had forced her to answer. She cursed her inability to keep her mouth shut when pressured.

“Agents of the University, Ms. Court.” Now her panic turned to confusion. She thought it were Prominents on behalf of the Elite Notoriety Commission coming to seize her for her recent document searches. Sure, it would be an extreme response, but the possibility still existed. She put a hand to the doorknob and halted with the next words. “The ENC requests your presence at the main office for an interview at eight a.m. We have been delegated to inform you of the summons.” The formality set her on edge. They didn’t wait for a response before continuing. “As the occupant of a Stocks University campus apartment, you are declared to be informed of this summons and failure to comply will result in disciplinary action.” The carpet in the hall swallowed all signs of their exit as it had their entrance.

Fiji stood there, hand still on the doorknob. Once she felt a tingling in her right leg telling her she’d been putting all her weight on the one side, she shivered and released the knob, letting her hand fall to her side.

A gentle knock startled her. With wide gray eyes, she went to speak and realized her lip had still been between her teeth. Now dried and sore from the unconscious pressure, her mouth wouldn’t operate. She gave a small moan and reached for the door but couldn’t bring herself to actually grab the knob.

Twenty-nine is not the age to be taken in for questions. At this age, you were either matriculated or already interred. Yet, the pressure she felt from her inquisitive mind to find out more about the Zeniths had finally gotten her into an irrevocable position.

The need to do more than just be involved in research and development for Zenith control support had landed her at the feet of the ENC. Her mother would never talk to her again. She’d obligingly gone through with her duty. Fiji knew she’d never be able to get into the scientific aspects, such as blood plasma generation like her mother, but reviewing historical data seemed innocuous enough yet sufficiently involved to quench her curiosity and appease her family.

Twenty-nine is not the age to be living in a university campus apartment, and yet here she was. It was not the age to be unwed and without child. As far as most around her would say, it was not the age to be doing anything she was doing, except for her work at the University. Her application for the doctoral studies program had been what kept her in the good graces of many, yet here she was.

She’d managed to pursue her work at gathering historical data best she could, she’d surely manage to use what information she had to justify her research and validate it to the ENC. They couldn’t write her off so easily if she came up with a way to correlate what measly information that she’d gathered with some way to benefit the premise of societal inclusion and value ergo of the Zeniths. Then again, what did she even have? She’d felt stymied in her research until this happened. How could she be getting summoned for something so horrible that would warrant a request by the ENC?

Her tension and panic eased at this conclusion.

“Woman?! Will you open up?!” Amos’ frantic whisper pierced Fiji’s awareness. Pulling open the door, she found herself immediately embraced by Amos. The second of affection squelched as he released her, shut the door and dragged her to the couch.

“What is wrong with you?” her sense of calm perturbed him. Vexed, he asked,

“Me?! What is wrong with you?! University agents are sent to your apartment, and you don’t even seem fazed.”

“Was it you pounding on my door at,” she realized she didn’t even know what time it was and looked at the glowing numbers on the wall, “three in the morning?”

“Of course! Kerlia called to tell me you weren’t answering your phone. She’d tried to get ahold of you as soon as they left the security office checkpoint.”

“But what,”

“What did they say?!” realizing he was getting too frantic, and that the room was still in the dark save for the glowing clock numbers, Amos reached for the table lamp and pulled the chain to give them a little light. “What happened?” he asked in as much of a casual tone as he could muster.

“I had just gotten to the door from you’re banging when you stopped. Then it was them. They said the ENC was summoning me for eight. That was it.” She glanced back at the glowing numbers. Just under five hours to figure out what the ENC wanted with her. It couldn’t possibly be related to her research, she had none worthwhile.

Amos sat there on the old fabric couch, one leg tucked under himself as he was positioned facing Fiji beside him. She sat slouched forward, elbows now resting on her knees, the hem of the baggy shirt mid-thigh. If she looked to her left, she would see his incredulous gaze. As it was, when she finally felt his stare and acknowledged the conversation needed to continue, she mirrored his position as she spoke further.

“Ok, fine, sure, yeah, at first, I was completely done in. My life, my whole reason for living flashed before my eyes, I couldn’t bear to,”

“Hyperbolic sarcasm doesn’t suit you.” He interrupted plainly. “You were scared, clearly. If you weren’t, well,” he paused, reading her enough to know he had to go in a bit more briskly, “I know I’d be, and even though you act like you got your shit together I know you don’t. Being a little older than the rest of us graduate students doesn’t mean anything, and you know it. Kerlia is the only girl left you haven’t snubbed and without her, you’d likely have been outright taken tonight since I wouldn’t have been able to wake you up to answer their knock. As for me, well, lucky I’m gay or you would’ve slept with me and fucked me over like plenty of others.”

“Oh screw you.” She said softly. Knowing he was right, she had nothing else to say. Amos sighed. “And thanks, my phone is dead so I never would’ve gotten up otherwise.”

“You’re brilliant but a blank. I can’t imagine what you’ve gotten yourself into, but I’m here as long as I can be.” Amos shrunk into the couch, relieved he got through to her.

“Thanks. But that’s just it, I don’t know what I have. I was at a dead end of materials last night, just as I’ve been for the past few weeks.”

Amos looked around the living room from his spot. “You don’t have any of your stuff here?”

“No. I know if I bring it home, I’ll just drive myself out the window.”

“Probably the only reason they didn’t just come in then. They likely already have it all.”

“I didn’t even think of that. I had started to figure maybe being able to pull something together to show my historical anecdotal data would benefit the scientific development research teams, but now…” she trailed off, returning to her elbows on knee position.

Amos scooted over and adjusted himself to put an arm around Fiji. He was right. If he wasn’t gay, she would’ve enjoyed his company, sexually, right now. Just another way she was too quick to act when faced with pressure; and this pressure came from inside.

She leaned into his warm body. Feeling his bare shoulder against her cheek. He’d come to alert her in just boxer briefs, and she was just now actually seeing his concern for what it was; someone who actually had compassion for her.

For the insight he had, albeit pretty surface level, Fiji knew Amos couldn’t actually perceive the origin of her desire for connection, admittedly sought after through meaningless sexual relationships.

“Listen,” Amos said, giving her a playful jostle, “just go in there and be as dumb as you are.”

She scoffed and withdrew from him. Realizing his word choice, he quickly amended.

“You don’t know what they want. You can’t play dumb, you are dumb.” he emphasized the disparity. “You have nothing to hide.”

She leaned back against him and sighed as she glanced down at his dark skin.

“I’m not good at this.”

“At what?”

“Having friends.”

Amos chuckled. “What do you mean?”

“Like you said, I alienate other women and just fuck guys for a good time.”

“First of all,” he turned to hold her by the shoulders and look into her eyes, “I said it like that to halt that sarcasm and get through to you. You know I don’t do sarcasm.” She glanced away. “Second of all,” she looked back to his eyes, “I’m not stupid.” He let these words hang between them for a moment before hugging her. She embraced him and released a few small tears that wouldn’t even drop onto his skin. She was surprised at them but held solace in the minute amount.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now get to bed and charge your phone so you can call me after you show them how dumb you are.” He smirked as he pulled out of the hug to see her annoyed face.

They stood and glanced at the clock.

“You’ll be ok Feej.” Amos declared too confidently for her to take as anything but snark from anyone but him.

“As long as I can keep you as a friend, surely.”

***

The main office resembled a town hall. With all the classes for the university having their own professor, and each their own office, there was no reason for the lack of activity at seven-fifty a.m. on a Tuesday morning.

Fiji had stopped by the research labs before heading to the main office and just as was thought, her entire desk appeared as if no one had been fastidiously surveying documents for several weeks. She pictured herself sitting in the chair as she had been last night, at a dead end, but ignorant what this morning was bringing.

“Ms. Court? Fjinijor Court?” the young woman, presumably an agent in training, had approached Fiji.

“Yes, uh, please, call me Fiji, or Feej.” She said nervously. The woman gave a curt smile and gestured toward the old wooden doors directly across from the bench where Fiji sat.

“Your summons as requested by the Elite Notoriety Commission will begin promptly at eight o’clock. You’re welcome to enter and take your seat at any time before then. Note that once the meeting begins you will not be permitted to leave your seat until dismissed. No food or drink is allowed in the room at any time except for that which is medically necessary. Your entry into the room signifies your compliance with expectations. Veerence will result in disciplinary action. Adherence is encouraged for the safety and wellbeing of your peers.”

The clock above the doors before her read seven fifty-six. The woman posted herself perpendicularly and stood still as if on guard. Fiji was unsure if this was merely what mundane behavior was required of the agent, or agent in training, after her speech or if it was as a measured antecedent behavior in anticipation of the vague disciplinary action should she attempt to leave through the glass revolving doors fifty feet to her left that led outside, rather than pass through the ornate carved wood of twenty-foot tall doors that led to another room she would be forbidden to leave until dismissed. She suddenly felt that perhaps dismissed or dead could be synonymous.

Standing, she stared forward, and counted the twenty-five steps it took to get to the doors. Without much knowledge of wood, she guessed the deep red hue of the material suggested mahogany. Her knowledge of the Zeniths however, was useful in noting that representations of every Zenith Arrival was carved into the door. The dragons displayed a foot above her, the rest of the door above clean and smooth. She went back in time, mentally reviewing each Zenith depiction. She squatted to see the ones carved at the bottom, starting a foot from the floor. With the earliest Zenith surges being primarily marine, the lower panel of the doors was given a wavey, oceanic, appearance. At the point where the two doors met, she noticed a chunk of the wood had been splintered off. It had been sanded and refinished so as not to be noticeable unless as close as Fiji found herself now.

She imagined whoever damaged the door might’ve been killed on the spot, or worse. She had reached out to brush the void in the carving with her fingertips when a throat-clearing warning from directly behind her brought her attention away from the unknown vandal and back to her own problems.

“Observe the time.” The woman’s voice was so matter of fact that Fiji didn’t doubt the woman might’ve been looking forward to the idea of disciplinary action. She bolted upright and arched her neck to read the clock above. With one minute to go, she grabbed the lavish metal handle, pulled the latch and pushed the door open.