Chapter 2

When Kal was young, his Grandfather had once allowed him to watch the trial of a criminal. It had been a rarity, crime being nearly unheard of on their planet. He was a child, bored of listening to the adults talk endlessly. It had robbed him of what excitement he had from accompanying the Duke.

He couldn't remember the details, aside from the sentence of a century in stasis.

Going to sleep, even for years, seemed a silly sentence to a serious crime. As a young boy, Kal had likened it to being sent to one's room for misbehaving. Afterwards, when the verdict was declared, he asked his Grandfather why stasis was a punishment.

"It's a punishment because the body sleeps while the mind remains awake in stasis. Pray that you never feel that torture, Kal." His Grandfather had told him. He hadn't understood at the time, leaving him confused, before it was driven from his young mind by something more interesting.

Years later, listening to the endless beeping of the stasis chamber's computer as it counted down the seconds left in his sentence, Kal now knew the torture his Grandfather had warned him about. His body slept, motionless and untouched by time, but his mind was aware.

After a day, he grew incredibly bored. He searched for things to occupy his thoughts. He counted the beeps, converting the seconds to minutes, the minutes to hours, the hours to days. Kal even thought he could detect fluctuations in the sound, incredibly minuscule changes in frequency. He lost track of how long he studied that noise, seeking some hidden meaning in it all.

Eventually, his mind wandered. Time crept forward, and he began to question his reality. How could Kal hear the beeping? His ears were in stasis. They should not be able to register sound! Did he imagine it, or did some scientist, locked in a shadowy Imperial laboratory, create a method of bypassing stasis all to drive prisoners mad?!

After a month, he raged. His anger was incandescent. Kal screamed silently, cursing everything he could think that led him to this place: the Emperor, the Empire, his parents, his fiefdom. Nothing was safe from his hatred. Time soldiered on, and his rage grew with its passing.

Kal lost count of the times he promised to murder whoever invented the incessant beeping. He dreamed of the ways he would do it. It kept him entertained, imagining bringing death to that faceless individual.

He crafted elaborate scenarios in his imagination where he unlocked the secret of the beeps, exposing a hidden code that would free him from stasis. He would break out of this Prison, eluding the guards, before stealing a ship to take him to the coordinates the code revealed. From there, he would confront the scientist behind it all, taking his sweet revenge.

After a decade, he was convinced he was insane. His imagination became his reality. He would spend months in different worlds, exploring their lands and meeting the people there. He lost track of time. The frequency of the beeps seemed to slow, each lasting an eternity before blessed silence returned. At other times, they sped up until their noise was constant, a horrid keening wail that threatened to shatter what remained of his psyche.

Kal retreated deeper into his mind to avoid the noise, losing himself in the worlds within. He began to forget who he was, why he was here, and for what purpose he was being tortured. He lived in those realities, lifetimes spent as someone else.

After a century, he questioned sanity itself. What was sane, who determined that a mind should be a certain way? Maybe reality itself was insane, and only by passing through this trial could his consciousness be elevated on the other side.

Kal's thoughts turned and twisted. For years, he questioned existence itself. He stopped crafting worlds within his mind, instead seeking the truth of who he was.

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After two centuries, his mind was blank. He had spiralled so far out of control he had leapt pass insanity, landing firmly in a new sense of rationality. Spending two hundred years in the maze of his thoughts, he had found that he simply didn't care anymore. He had arrived at a grand truth that nothing truly mattered.

Strangely, it was this supposed nihilistic view of reality that saved him. He explored his past. By letting go of his obsession with explaining his existence, he arrived in the only place that mattered. He became a child again, growing up on Caledon.

He spent his years in stasis, reliving his days under his Grandfather's tutelage. He revisited the capital city, Caledonia, where his family's ancestral home had been erected over ten thousand years ago. Little remained of those humble beginnings, time had worn even the sturdiest stones to dust, but he had seen the records.

The first explorers had fled a Terra that was on the verge of collapse, overpopulated and polluted. His ancestors had found a beautiful blue and green pearl in the darkness of space, Caledon.

After three hundred years, Kal's mind was firmly in the past.

He was a boy chasing his mother, his legs barely able to keep him upright. He remembered how she ignored him, more interested in her holovids, entertainment shows broadcasted from all over the Empire. He had cried when his Grandmother had seen him. Scooping him up, the duchess had given him his first memory of being loved.

Memory after memory returned to him, playing in an endless loop. His parents were a disappointment. Even as a youth, he knew that. But his grandparents were always there for him. His Grandmother's death had been agonizing, his Grandfather's even more brutal, until he was alone.

That was when the worst happened. One wrong decision after another, Kal had watched his parents squander everything his grandparents had built.

It was through these memories that a new resolve built itself in Kal. His Grandmother had taught him to love and care for others, to cherish what was important in life. His Grandfather directed that love towards their Duchy to cherish Caledon.

Centuries had elapsed, with Kal reliving the same two decades of his short life. Over and over again, he watched the two people he cared for most in the world build something. They nurtured their home and cared for their people.

His Grandmother had made it her life's goal to see that every person under their rule, in their hundreds of billions, had access to food, education, medicine, and shelter. They praised her as a living saint and rejoiced when she visited their worlds.

If his Grandmother was the helping hand, then his Grandfather was the shield that protected them. He led their armies against invaders, chasing down the pirates and profiteers who sought to pillage and rob. She was the light, driving back the darkness with her kindness, while he was the cleansing flame that burned away all that sought to harm them.

When they died, one shortly after the other, Kal had been lost. His Mother was an egotistical narcissist, more interested in how the other Nobility perceived her than in her own people. She had spent fortunes on the current fashions, having specialty goods shipped at exorbitant costs from all corners of the Empire.

His father, the reigning Duke, had never been kind or attentive to their fiefdom. He had spent years travelling to other fiefs, making connections, and enjoying the fruits of life that only one with vast wealth and relationships could discover. Kal's father hadn't returned when his Grandmother died, only rushing back to take his rightful place once Kal's Grandfather was on his deathbed.

As a Duke, he made all the wrong decisions.

Ignoring the advice of others, he had thrown his lot to those who opposed the Emperor, the poison they had whispered into his ear had spoken of gaining more. Of adding more planets under his rule, more wealth to spend on his vices, and more power to lord over others.

As Kal replayed his life, the first half was like a beautiful dream of learning and discovery, guided by his grandparents. It moulded him into the man he was now.

If that period was a dream, his second half of life was a nightmare. Forced to relive the horrors of war, the consequence of actions taken by fools who thought they knew better.

Over and over, a dozen times, Kal relieved those memories. Each time, his Grandfather’s words, spoken on his deathbed, echoed in his mind. They formed a determination that saw him through the madness and anger.

"Our family exists to serve Caledon. Your father doesn't understand that, Kal. But I know you do. Regardless of what happens, I know that you will do your duty. Promise me that you will carry on our legacy."

After 500 years, the endless beeping of the stasis chamber computer stopped. The coldness retreated, and the field of energy leaving him suspended retracted. For the first time in five centuries, Kalen Caledon, Baron of Caledon, felt his feet touch the ground as his eyes opened.

"I promise." Kal whispered, his voice filled with resolve.