Redemption: Year Twelve

It is now the year twelve of the new order in which man used to measure time. I suppose that would equate to the year 2039 A.D., but it matters very little because it could be ten, a hundred or even a million years from that time and it would make little difference. I walk through the dark foreboding corridors of the many resource stations in high orbit above what used to be my planet and I feel a sense of decay. Maybe some people in the past would have called that rotting withering planet below us Earth, but that name signifies life and all I see now is death. It could be that I have also distanced myself from such memories of this planet’s past because I am now responsible for its present. The atmosphere swirls with nothing but dark, putrid clouds, the surface of the planet is no longer visible. The only thing that has been a constant since year one are massive resource pods going back and forth in an endless cycle delivering their valuable cargo of water, minerals and countless other elements that once belonged to the everyday natural ecosystems of Earth. My name…well my name is Dr. Caylin Alvarado and I used to be a foremost expert on quantum physics and technical engineering in the highest facets of a long forgotten government. Now what am I…I’m one of the privileged few who get to dictate rules and govern people’s everyday lives because I was one of the ones who brought them to their present miserable existence.

I’m part of a very “special” governing body that we’ve dubbed the Consortium of Human Delegates. Now doesn’t that just sound so important, we should have been called the club of quivering cowards with Napoleon complexes. But no, we have to maintain proper protocol, I’m one of the voices for my dying kind. There are ten of us actually, ten of us who started it all or ended it all, depending on your point of view. Who do we answer to, now therein lies the tale. Our present state of being is all due to some charming fellows known as the Codex Nefarians. Who are they, well let me explain. They are not aliens, in the conventional sense. They hail from another universe or dimension. I always had several theories relating to alternate quantum states of existence. Now many people thought that this meant that they were from a parallel dimension, but this is not so. Think of infinite regression and apply it to whole universes. Well our universe exists inside another, which in turn exists inside yet another one which in turn exists inside yet another one and so forth and so on. The Nefarians are from one of these concentric universes, from which I don’t know. What I have been able to plot out is that their planet was very much similar to ours and roughly in the same quantum dimensional space. So they are not really aliens in the sense of some far off galaxy millions of light years away. Their appearance however suggests quite the contrary. Where do I begin…well they are anywhere between nine and thirteen feet in height and quite reptilian looking. They have four arms two of which are identical to ours, and the other two have only two fingers and a thumb, longer than the other two and quite spindly. Their heads are elongated and they possess fourteen eyes, seven on each side. They have a much stronger resistance to heat and cold than we do and their sense of touch is about sixty times more acute than that of a human.

At first glance they can be quite frightening, yet awe inspiring at the same time. But what really sets them apart from us is their technology. While it far out weighed our own, notice I emphasize the past tense, it does not make them invincible. In fact I myself have become aware of several of their weaknesses in these twelve years since their arrival. Their ships are not capable of long range interstellar travel, but they are capable of traveling between universes, a science in which they have obviously mastered. One thing that struck me was their reserve and strategy. Although they fancy themselves conquerors, they are not the savage mindless barbarians one might expect, that huge brain might have something to do with that. I think the best word to describe their intellect would be- cunning.

As I was lost in thought I heard a faint noise behind me and I slowly turned around. It was four laborers hauling a catch of Derthum stones that power the stations. These poor creatures were withered and quite tired as I just sat their and looked on. I walked up to them and told them to stop. They immediately froze and were afraid to look me in the eye. I asked them what they were doing and one of the laborers, a dirty blond girl looked up “The Codex masters told us to bring some Derthum from the pod chamber, sir”. I saw these frightened young people, cowering from me as if I were a monster. I leaned against a wall and told them to put the catch down, which they did without question. “Who told you to bring the Derthum up, that’s not your job” I said. A cold growling voice spoke up from the shadows and in the darkness a Nefarian outline was visible. Something I should mention about the means of communication of these creatures. Their language is a crude combination of ancient Toltec and Egyptian. This astonished me at first and it suggested that the Nefarians had visited our planet once before, although this they steadfastly deny. “I told them, human” the Nefarian growled. Now although these creatures intimidated me to a point, they did not frighten me. I marched up to him and spoke my charges “Take a good listen, these are my people, me and the other Consortium delegates are the only ones to dictate orders to them, not you. You stand in violation of your own Codex law”. I could see this angered the big fella pretty much and his hand, with its eight inch long metal claws wanted to strike me down. He dwarfed me in size as he was about ten feet tall and me being only six foot two. The Nefarian simply walked away. The laborers shook with fear as the gargantuan being strode past them. I told them to go back to the Winglets and take a rest. They obediently did so. With this little incident in the back of my head I strode down the dark corridor back to mansion in the Upper Winglets. The Winglets incidentally are the small extensions of the stations that dot the massive structures. Its where we humans reside and work. The Upper Winglets are reserved for Consortium members, such as myself. As I walked to my sanctuary my mind raced with all sorts of thoughts. As I reached my dwelling I walked in melancholy, knowing that all I had was at the price of millions of people’s lives. If material was what it came down to, I was living like ten kings. My mansion as I call it would have made the Taj Mahal look like a shed. A palace for my own personal use and comfort. I walked through the wide halls and into my bedroom. The view was a spectacular one, the stars looked like billions of twinkling diamonds. Taking in the marvel, I felt a pair of soft hands caress my shoulders. An instant smile crossed my face. I turned around to face the one person who I thought made all I had done worth it. Her golden tanned skin, those soft lips, the sensual gleam in her eyes. May I introduce my wife, Gabrielle. In her soothing voice “Where have you been Caylin…I missed you”. That was followed by a kiss that almost sent me to heaven. Indeed she was a goddess, the kind of woman that every man would dream of. In fact that was exactly where she came from. Let me explain…my beloved Gabrielle is a scientific creation. She is not a machine or a clone or something of that nature. Rather she is a complete, complex and whole human being. That she was born of my fantasies is besides the point. My wife was given to me relatively by the Nefarians. By means still unknown to me, the Nefarians managed to create the woman of my dreams and make her a real person, with emotions, feelings, intellect and depth of personality. The fact that she was programmed with false memories of how she met me and how we got married raced through my mind as her affection intensified. My hands ran up and down her long velvety, raven black hair. My pulse sped up as she started to undress me, I felt myself getting lost. We tumbled onto the bed and kept up our passionate little tongue dance. One thing I had always questioned was whether she could give birth. That question was answered when she came to me and told me she was pregnant. It finally occurred to me that the Nefarians, had spared no details in creating her. Gabby carried for nine months and gave birth, like a normal human female. My daughter Adriana, who is now six, was born as a healthy and vital baby girl. So there you have it, this is my world…a beautiful wife and daughter who love me, a palace in which to live in, governing power over millions of people…and an all consuming guilt that plagues me. I tore myself away from my wife’s lips and gazed into her eyes. Such innocence and yet under that beautiful exterior a nieve child. This is all she has ever known, she never knew that at one time it was all different. Suddenly the terrible memories came flooding back to me…