Legitium Order

Chapter One

The Maltopyian Wars

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. Josephina took off her headset for the last time. She was going into the jump pod despite all of the warnings and red flags. What would really kill her was not going at all. Most of the chemicals they gave the initiates were beta blockers which never really had much of an effect on her. She’d miss her giant dose of anti-love that kept her warm, dry and just out of harms way. The sugary pungent pills that eked saliva from her mouth like a leaky faucet, who’s only aim was to nullify her senses for touch and tenderness. Those were lost to her from the moment she was orphaned. But that was the whole reason she was going she told herself despite her knowing what really drove her to leave.

To feel…something….anything…no matter how intense or painful or stupefying. She craved that intangible idea of something beyond the numbness and the clockwork injections of rectifiers. Her future, her very sanity depended on her finding a way out of her comfortable existence into the thrust of reality and life’s truths. She was insatiable in this pursuit even as they were watching. Josephina had quietly prepared, secretly studied every wreck and corpse they let her examine. She earnestly maneuvered this perfection of a folded time departure. She saw all this coming, even dreamt into existence the approval and qualifier mods so she had her genetic blueprint virtually sealed into the Jumper. How could they leave her out of this last effort to save our dying species when she was already Jump codified? She knew the exactness of their plan before they did. She plotted and won.

She was born for this. The discomfort it would bring she knew would never phase her. She’d scoff at the legends and the warnings and filled her memory glands with the imprints of the failures she autopsied. They never suspected her efforts and when they thought she may be out of line, the simply increased her dosage of anti-love. Her whole life to this point was pristinely neutralized as was written in the epitaph of her rearers. “See to it no harm will fall on our beloved”. And so it was. Clueless captors wreaking havoc on Josephina’s small frame. Poked, sliced and rewired they thought would keep her from her legendary destiny. Every Coregulator from her Keeper’s legions made sure she was between the lines of the variants the Legitium Order laws stated.

Or did they? If this was her destiny, would not a convert find a way to assist this legend? Would not someone help her be found and rewrite her course to save them all? “To chart a new trajectory into the unknown and out into the pain, wrapped solidly in the their suit”…so the Extinction Log goes. Long before there were the Antelligentor Squadrons watching us die at the codified whim of the Cognition Drones and leading us into the edge of our species existence. Long long ago.

Josephina was told of the time that the Legitium Order formed when our species was just learning to regulate the disparities created by our own misguided beliefs. The ancestors knew yet they were over shadowed by the New Orders that secretly formed to create an illuminated few that would save us all. The Fearless Elders were the first to teach and hold the truths, still nothing was saved of their words and teachings. It was as if the Cognition Drones sucked the life and light right out of their minds and left vacancies to try to manage what was left. Instability became the goal and regulation was lost. The very acts committed as our saving graces were the ones codified to kill us, planted in our thinking by the Elitades when the Cognitors created their drones, we were obliterated and divided.

Josephina’s keepers managed to flee to the Zones of Incubation and were able to hide in the cartilage debris that the Squadimytes saved from the parts of the beings still breathing but useless. How they lived is beyond belief until the Legitium Order was formed and restored benevolence to all sentients. They soon barked their masked decries marking the variants of righteousness and Annihilation mandates. They formed the Elitades, careless mercenaries whose only mission was to keep the sentients in between the lines. They birthed two variant metallicoids to weaponize their new world order. One called the Cognition drones, shape shifters and hellish little bots that roam and wreak order among the early survivors. The other variant birthed itself from the discarded parts of the drone bots righteously calling themselves the Antelligentors, squadrons of artificial intelligent bots self-perpetuating themselves to outlive, outthink and outlaw any naysayers of this new world. What ever spirit was left in the sentients had to be protected from these bots, drones and squads. How many paid the price to win us a chance at finding freedom.

Freedom.

Josephine’s snapped out of her memory gland dance and reminded herself this was why she was going to the outer edges of space. Freedom from the Legitium Order. Freedom from the Elitades and their Squads and the Bots. Freedom to be her-selves. All 6 tons of hydroponic foils and calipers to hold her humanoid vessel together. She would be slathered in the jump gel that would carry her to the other end and beyond. All of her selves rolled into that 86˚ flask of biospherical madder stained portal of galactic goo pod.

A calculated chilling dive out of our space and time to ride her benevolent armchair to the quadrant in that last newly formed galaxy that everyone in the Order believes will give us life and sustainability again. We’ll get to watch her float out into the ether, disappear from our eyes and then fade away from the millions of eyes that are always watching us. Josephina will save us all or die trying.