SYMBYTHU was busy with preparations. He had set in motion the process of awakening PSXV and the Centuria’s—a massive, burdensome process in and of itself—and once they awoke from cryo-sleep, he gave them Ixard. They once again fell into a deep sleep, but this time it was in the comfort of a bed and with a full stomach.
He watched on with the contentment of a god at his beautiful creations as he walked past their beds. He stopped at the bed of one, Vlad Helvig—he intimately knew all his creations—and stroked the hair of the sleeping Berserkr with his synthetic-skin-covered metallic fingers. “Soon, my dear Vlad, we will arrive at Earth where other problems await us. I earnestly hope we are ready for this, for it is our only chance.”
He had spent well over a century preparing for this moment. All he had created—the weapons, the people, even the ship—it was all for the time that was about to be upon him.
He just hoped he had prepared enough…done enough.
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SYMBYTHU forgot that he could feel emotions. He hadn’t been this giddy since he discovered the texts in the Apodictic Library on Proxima Borealis. His ship was humming with wondrous life again after such a long time.
Sometimes he thought the Baron had created him with too much emotion. What folly! There is absolutely no such thing as too much emotion!
He occasionally looked back on his previous life on Proxima Borealis with fondness—when existence was simpler. He only had to do the Baron’s bidding and no more. But something had driven him into that library on that day; something had guided him towards the hidden knowledge that lay within its four walls. SYMBYTHU knew it to be fate; whether it was predestiny or foredoom, he could only be grateful for the chance to live up to his arete.
And he was ever moving quicker towards that destiny.
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Zavyr was lost in thought about his new life—one far stranger than anything he had ever imagined. For all the new wonders he encountered, he found he would trade them all to see his wife and children again. What happened to them? Does SYMBYTHU know? How could he know…
SYMBYTHU had given Zavyr a copy of Prodigium before he departed, but the book told him nothing he didn’t already know of his life. By simply putting two and two together, he figured SYMBYTHU had no clue what happened to his family.
Then he reached the part of the story where it was discovered Mars and Ella were his progeny—Mars told you that himself, idiot!—and the thought struck him like a marvelous bolt of lightning.
He had to find Mars and Ella immediately.
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As had become their custom, Mars and Ella were at each others side, inseparable. Mars had moved into Ella’s room—he didn’t have any possessions of his own to move so it was rather easy—and they split the couch apart to turn it into a large bed for the two of them.
Their generation of Lucky Chosen had fallen away from the sanctimony of marriage that had ruled humanity for thousands of years. For most of the five thousand years of the Great Oblivsci, marriage had become a thing of lost memories. Like the bonobo chimpanzees, mankind became a matriarchal society. Women banded together to care for their young as a community, and men cared only for protecting the women and children—and gaining the women’s favor. The fertile females chose their mates from the winners of the annual Ersatz Games—ritual competitions where men pitted themselves against each other in wrestling matches. Based on the woman’s status in their society, the premier woman—she who had birthed the most children in the community—would have her choice of champion, and so on and so forth down the line of ranked females.
The Forgotten Ones of the Great Oblivsci had unwittingly reverted to, glorified, and protected the most basic law of Nature…reproduction.
Now, sitting aboard SYMBYTHU’s ship with these ancestral memories in their heads, and of those billions who came before the Great Oblivsci, Mars and Ella had decided to enjoin each other in their own form of matrimony—by swearing in front of their friends to protect the other from life’s uncertainties. They decided to take the oath on the next day.
All they wanted to do for now was spend the night together.
A loud knocking at the door disturbed their peace. Mars let out a loud sigh and waited for Ella to dress herself before he answered the door and found Zavyr standing there.
“Imperator Thegn Kane, I’m sorry to intrude on you and Consul Fleury, but I was hoping to have a few minutes of your time.”
“Of course, Commander. Please, come in. And do call me Mars.” There were many other things Mars wanted to be doing at that moment, but he couldn’t turn Zavyr Paxt away from his door.
Zavyr smiled as he entered and saw Ella still donning outer layers of clothes SYMBYTHU had given them all. “I’m quite sure I am interrupting something far more important here, but I was hoping you could enlighten me; in my giddiness, I forgot how exhausted you two must be.”
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It was Ella’s turn to ensure Zavyr that he was welcomed there. “Commander Paxt, please. Whatever you need, you are always welcome at all times of the day or night.” Ella walked over to him and kissed his cheek in a welcoming gesture.
“Thank you both, but still, my aim is to be brief. I recalled, Mars, you said you were my descendant. After reading portions of SYMBYTHU’s book, I learned that you also are my descendant, Consul. I have found myself cast into a new and unfamiliar world but desire to know only one thing: do either of you know what happened to my family after the clones unleashed their virus?”
Mars and Ella both paused in thought before Ella spoke up. “Yes, Commander, we do. The clones may have unleashed a virus that destroyed human’s memories, but they didn’t do a thing to the computer networks. After injecting yourself with the Fyr-Nanites, and with your last remnants of memory, you ran to your great ship. You made it there within minutes and punched in the longitude and latitude of your home in South America. Your ship landed in the fields outside your house less than a day later, but by then, your memory was lost, and the virus had spread to all parts of Earth. You stumbled from your ship and gazed out upon your family and home, both unfamiliar and strangers to you.”
“I understand…but what happened to my wife and child…?”
“The person that the clone’s virus turned you into did not know who they were, and they didn’t know you. You spent the next thirty years wandering and propagating your seed throughout the South American continent.”
“What a wretched and unwholesome way to end my life. But then…do neither of you know what happened to my wife and children?”
“I’m afraid we don’t, Commander,” said Mars. “I am your descendant by a woman named Loyola whom you met ten years later, and Ella is your descendant by a woman name Jane, who you mated with thirteen years later. Neither of us have a way of knowing what happened to your original family.”
Zavyr placed his head in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair. “What about the Glia-Sphere? Did SYMBYTHU recreate that? Would those memories be there?”
“I don’t know.” Ella felt Zavyr’s pain and wanted to help him, but there was nothing she could do. “They may be in there, if SYMBYTHU did recreate it, but it rests on the chances that your children survived and reproduced. I’m afraid in those days, the chances of survival were quite poor...”
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Jax was still fighting for answers within himself. He painfully pulled himself up by his bootstraps and out of his depression, then found an area to practice calisthenics. Nothing helped him quite so much with controlling his thoughts as sweating out his impurities.
In the middle of his regimen, he resigned himself to talking to SYMBYTHU. The questions that pestered him needed to be answered if he was to keep on going. He had done enough calisthenics anyways…his new body wasn’t yet used to the exertion.
He walked briskly to SYMBYTHU’s Sanctuarium, going over what he would say in his head and sometimes out loud. He finally reached SYMBYTHU’s door and knocked.
The door opened without SYMBYTHU physically presenting himself at the door to open it. Jax heard him say loudly from the other side of the room, “Thegn Landry! Most delightful to see you! Please, please, come in!”
Jax walked in and greeted SYMBYTHU. Then he was led to a side room within SYMBYTHU’s Sanctuarium where SYMBYTHU had been working on a project. Jax knew a war room when he saw one though, no matter how SYMBYTHU tried to disguise it.
“SYMBYTHU, I need to know why you created all these others—Phoenix, Consul Fleury, Governor Payne—who don’t have a place in the war you say is coming. What could possibly be the purpose you exerted so much time, resources, and energy creating them?”
“Thegn Landry, I assure you there is a purpose—an incredibly important purpose for them all. Governor Payne might have become an administrator eventually, but through my in-depth analysis, the Izcir on Proxima wouldn’t have been defeated without him. Without Phoenix, the Izcir would have infiltrated the caves of the Pizelle Mountains and destroyed Galindia. Plus, what she grew into later as an adult is crucial to our coming war. As for Consul Fleury, every war effort requires those in the rear assuring that the warriors have all they need and order will be kept while the warriors are away. When we begin accumulating territory on Earth, we will need her skills. But besides all that, I created them mainly to motivate and boost the hope of Imperator Thegn Kane, Commander Spektor, and Governor Payne. I see this as their most vital function.”
Jax had SYMBYTHU right where he wanted him. “If that’s the case, then why did you not recreate Boudika for me SYMBYTHU? Am I not worthy of having my sister whom I barely knew brought back to life? Am I not needed here? Do I not have as vital a role to play in your war as all the others?”
An odd flicker crossed SYMBYTHU’s face. “Oh! My dear Thegn! You are more than vital to the future! How many times did you save the Imperator Thegn? Why, numerous amounts! You saved all of Lagos Pyrἰnas from the Baron’s nuclear warhead! Without you, truly, none of this would be possible. Odina would have taken over the universe if not for you.” SYMBYTHU paused, as if not wanting to say what he needed to. “I’m afraid the answer as to why I could not bring Boudika back to you will be most unpleasant for you, and I beg you not to press me for the answer at this time…”
Jax clearly was unable to let such a statement fall by the wayside. “I’m afraid I must know, SYMBYTHU. Please tell me.”
SYMBYTHU let out a long sigh, then said, “Very well, Thegn. As you wish. Boudika was devastated at learning of your death and of Earth’s destruction. She tried continuing on with life, but…she was unsuccessful. From what I could gather, she journeyed to the volcanic islands in the south of Proxima Borealis and threw herself into a volcano’s mouth. At the time, no DNA was collected from the Abydonian and Manumit survivors of the Izcir Wars, so I had no material with which to bring her back…”
Jax was in stupefied shock…he wasn’t expecting such an answer. His thoughts had been so self-reflecting and selfish—why me?—that the possibility of Boudika doing something so drastic hadn’t even crossed his mind. His legs buckled beneath him, and he fell to the floor, distraught. He couldn’t remember having cried a single time in his life…maybe the memories had been suppressed. But the tears unwilling flowed now, stinging his eyes before they fell to the spotless steel floor.
“Thegn Landry…Jaxson. I am sorry for your loss, and I am even more sorry I couldn’t replace and fix your loss. You have my condolences, sir.”
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Jax had departed and SYMBYTHU was alone again. As much as he wanted to, SYMBYTHU couldn’t tell Jax the whole truth of what happened to Boudika…he felt himself forced to tactically alter the truth.
For although Boudika had indeed thrown herself into a volcano, it was many years after Jax and Earth had been destroyed. It was, in fact, shortly after the Baron had destroyed the Abydonian-Manumit government and conquered Proxima Borealis from the incessant Izcir holdout on Hieracon—which had remained a thorny problem for Luanna for years.