New Hope

From Mal’s Diary

June 3, 3150

To exist within oneself outside oneself is to return to the essence of the universe; To return to the stars, or what we call heaven. But this is also what I call death... one that muddles the soul in primordial thoughts. Maybe this entity—death—is our true soul; Our true nature, laughing at darkness and inviting pain: The murderer of our illusionary selves. Heaven—true paradise —is to escape from the primal, where the truth can be found. It is not what they tell us, nor is hell what they tell us. Instead, We’re the refugees sent from it—Earth is the paradise we seek. The specs of glitter that float above us mask their danger with beauty. Beneath such is the Dark Forest—and my entry into 4th dimensional space time has lit a fire amongst the trees. They’re already close. Time. If only we had more time. Whoever is reading this letter at this very moment…Mankind’s future rests in my locket. Find the locket, and prepare to run…

***

There the message was, projected in front of a room. Only cold bodies—frozen in fear, movement halted in constant hesitation—stood standing. Silence. It glazed the fear already present in the air. Warm breath left their mouths and nose, only to evaporate. It didn’t exist. Not in this moment. There was only the growl of two large generators. Both ran on energy borrowed from the sun—only possible through an organized cobweb, draping itself over the surface of the sun: a Dyson Sphere. The generators, consuming forty percent of the I.S.S(Intergalactic Space Station), sent small, humming vibrations under the metal floors in the communications sector of the station. No one felt even the slightest shaking at the bottom of their feet, numb from the implications of the message: Death, dark forest, 4th dimension. Death, Dark Forest, 4th Dimension. All of them commanded a twisted sense of reverence—far from Christ like. Fear wasn’t just an awareness of divinity anymore; It reared its dark faces to everyone in the room. Their faces: mirrors

While everyone stood still—courage robbed of them, tingly limbs, and empty gazes—a young man broke the spell casted over them with his voice; broken, like violin strings, he failed to deliver them clearly.

“Si…Sir we…” he spoke, clearing his cotton mouth. Heads began to turn from the message. Not all, but some.

“We tried our best to decode the rest of…the message, but this is as far as we got. We’ve never seen anything as complex as this…Doctor Grayson must’ve had a reason to try and hide it like this. It’s far from—

“Enough Maximus!” the voice commanded, loud enough to rumble the metal beneath their feet; Loud enough to overpower the generators. This time, everyone fixed their gaze to the front of the room, right below the message, where a man slumped in a chair—A perfectly rounded sphere from the rear, dove white, riddled with tiny black holes the size of fruit flies that periodically expanded and shrunk in size—hovering slightly above the ground. A blade of grass’ width separated his soles from the floor. The coat he wore was black and nothing else—long enough to smack the back of his ankles. Outside of the folded collar, stitched into the cotton fabric with dandelion yellow laces, was Noli Timere. Translation: Have no fear. Above the collar his hair—a grayed, aged lion’s mane—careened in the breeze of machines laboring above his lap, spanning the entire width of the sector. Beside him sat a man in the same chair with the same black coat. Because his back stood facing everyone else, no one saw the trembling of his enveloped fingers.

“Before anything else, bring me Thomas” he ordered. Maximus’ heart stung—sharper than the cut of a heated obsidian blade, resting on the side of his hip in his belt pocket.

“Afterwards, relay this message to the Armageddon council: We must begin Protocol fifteen”.

“The Council! Doctor Hayes…the council is only to be called upon in times…”

“Maximus! Do as I say. Bite your tongue if you must! We don’t have time for this meaningless banter.

Standing in between each of these chairs, maximus tucked his head into his neck. His hands feel firmly down his sides, red curls fell over his shoulders. He, along with the rest of his squad, wore uniforms matching the shade of black doctor Hayes wore. That was the sole commonality between the two—long sleeved silk shirts, brown pants, hugging the ankles and loosely fitting the rest of the posterior chain, black military style boots, and black belts occupied the majority of the room. Man. Woman. It didn’t matter. Everyone was the same.

“Of course, doctor” he replied. “Leave everything to me”. In the swiftest turn of the hip, he faced the rest of his squad—his demeanor now completely shifted from beforehand. Don’t worry he thought, looking out at all the faces in the group of fifty young men and women, many of their faces still stolen. Trust in me, please. Trust in the will of mankind to prevail. To survive.

Lowering his voice slightly, he spat out orders to his squad.

“Laila and Destiny, you two come with me. We’re going to grab Thomas”. He looked out to the right corner of the group, scanning for a while until he found who he was looking for.

“Charles, I’m leaving you in charge of the squad until I get back with Thomas. Use my squad like it’s your own”. Charles nodded slightly back at him. Like I expected him to he thought. Still isn’t much of a talker.

“I’m also leaving you in charge of relaying the message to the council. Can you do that for me Charles”?

He nodded again.

“Alright Squad B, let get to it!”

In unison, all fifty bodies embarked on the two doors behind them—each one stood forty feet tall and curved at the peak to match the dome shape of the communication sector of the space station. The pounding of boots faded the closer they got to the doors—it took them around three minutes, moving quickly, to reach them—and when they pushed the doors open, a gust of wind sprinted toward the napes of Doctor Hayes, and Richard, his protégé. Even while the wind ran up the backs of their necks, they remained still, turned away from the door. As it closed, confirmed by a echo of the metal clanging with each other, Hayes and Richard sat silent for a while, until Hayes journaled his internal thoughts out loud.

“Protocol one: In preparation for emergency space travel, every child, starting from the age of three, will be enrolled into GA’s, where they’ll train their bodies to become the strongest that they can be” Hayes spoke.

“Protocol five: To limit the growing number of people on planet earth, everyone will be limited to only one child. If eligible. Anyone making less than fifteen thousand dollars a year will not be allowed to bore children”. Richard, with his fingers still enveloped with each other, let out a chuckle under the crackle in his breathing.

“Protocol eight: No adult, under any circumstances, is allowed to leave earth. The children will serve as the future of humanity”.

More silence.

“Has Satan already won?’ Hayes cried. “Have we not already suffered enough of this madness. These plans were put in place twenty years ago in heed of your warning’s, Mallord. We listened. We sat here while you tried to explore beyond what humanity was meant for. I warned you about the Dark Forest beyond us. I told you what would happen if we stepped into the 4th dimension. Am I cursed? Why do my protégé always stand against me?”

“I haven’t” Richard answered back. “Not yet, of course. It all depends on what you do from this point on”. Richard turned his chair toward Hayes. Half his face was completely bludgeoned—His left eye socket remained empty, and the rest of his left side were full of cuts that revealed the tendons and ligaments beneath.

“Call of the meeting. We don’t have to self-destruct earth. There’s another way and you know it! Mallord knows it too. I know what’s inside the locket, Hayes”.

“Don’t be so quick to trust him, Richard. You can look into the mirror and see why”.

“He didn’t mean to Hayes. You know how Mal gets when he—

“Of course, when he goes against my orders? When he places us in the face of inevitable danger? Yes…I know exactly how he gets, and I know exactly who he is.

“Listen Hayes I—

“There’s no way to undo the inevitable Richard. This is what was written for us. Meant to be! The meeting must take place.

“Damn it Hayes I know what's in the locket!”

He relived that moment everyday—when Mallord had placed the heart shape locket around his sons’ neck. His son was a young boy, only eight at the time, but in that instance, Mallord spoke to him; intensity built up following each word. In here lies the future of us Richard thought, replaying Mallord words. This is hope. New hope.

He’d heard that phrase before: New hope. Tangoing though his thoughts were all the possibilities of where and when he heard it. Just before letting these thoughts fade, Richard spewed out what he’d known for a long time.

“S-153” Richard whispered. His hands unraveled themselves. They fell to his thighs where they crawled up to his knees.

“S-153. This is New Hope”.

What else had Mallord done to my protégé Hayes thought.

“What is this nonsense, Richard. Anything that Mallord tells is—

“Pull up the Interstellar space system and look toward conglomerate S. If I’m correct, the coordinates should already be unloaded into the system. We don’t have much time.

“Richard don’t be foolish—”

“Now Hayes! Listen to me please!”

You Damned fool! Hayes screamed inside of his head. Hidden beneath those screams were a soft spot for Richard, however—he was different than any of his other students. For once, he actually enjoyed his time with his student. He trusted in him: His judgement, calculation, emotional stability among the few. More than anything, he listened to him and his judgement. This was the only time he’d gone against his words, and because of this, Hayes felt the need to see this through.

“Don’t make me regret my judgement” replied Hayes. Turning toward the machinery in front of him, with a slight wave of his right hand, a keyboard, burning brightly with a soft white light, appeared at his right hand. Without hesitation, Hayes began typing in the lock code to open up the Interstellar Space System. In seconds, the bottom of the metal floors behind them spit open, revealing a globe, similar in style with the chairs they sat in. Only now, the sphere glowed with a crimson hue. Both of them turned their chairs to face the globe under the floor. Under his breath, Hayes uttered the words: S-153.

“It’s finished” Hayes said. “Now, we wait.”

A rush of red light filled the entirety of the room for only a moment until it focused itself within a radius five times larger than the globe. Increasingly, the light became more intense—it brightened to the point where both Hayes and Richard covered their eyes. And then there it was. S-153: Another habitable planet similar to earth, projected right in front of then, statistics running down the side of the projection. Blue with oceans, Green with land, and white with clouds

“It’s oxygen levels…identical…but how?” Hayes said, astonished by the image.

“It’s three times the size of earth, but the mass is also identical. How did Mallord—

“Remember, Hayes, you nurtured the greatest Astrophysicist of all time” Richard countered before Hayes finished.

“With this, we have another chance”.