PART I
In the Beginning…
Fiat justicia et pereat mundus - Let there be justice though the world may perish.
~Motto of Emperor Ferdinand I of Germany
CHAPTER 1
“Ah, fuck.”
“Shit-fuck.”
Mars opened his eyes. He breathed a strong lungful of air which burned his chest, as if he was breathing for the first time. The lights in the chamber were dim, thankfully. He was certain that if the lights were any brighter, his retinas would burn. He tried digging through his memory to figure out where he could possibly be. The last thing he remembered was…was…he didn’t know. He couldn’t remember anything. He didn’t even know his name.
He looked around, soaking in his surroundings. He was laying on a small hospital bed in a dark room. Red and blue lights were flashing on the wall to his right, but he couldn’t see anything that indicated what they were for. The floor was a slick silver, immaculately clean, with a small, circular device moving back and forth cleaning it. He painfully moved his legs across the bed and swung them over the edge, uttering a, “Damnit all,” as he did. He couldn’t believe how exhausted his body felt. He took deep breaths, massaged his legs, and stood up. He looked around again, this time noticing a call button above the headboard of the bed. Without a second thought, he pushed the button.
He waited for less than a minute before a strange looking creature entered the room. It had the general appearance of a human, but it looked to be built entirely of robotics and stared at him unblinkingly with sky-blue eyes. The same blue light emitted from its forehead like a third eye, and a fourth blue light radiated from its chest. Its outer shell was a smooth, white metal, and it was draped in white robes with a hood and a flowing cape. Noticing the confused and concerned look on Mars’ face, the creature said in a powerful voice, “Hello, Marston Kane. I am SYMBYTHU. I know the questions which abound within you, but please follow me. I will provide you the means of explanation.”
Without waiting, the creature turned and left the room, expecting Mars to follow. At least I know my name now, he thought. Marston Kane…Marston…Mars. It rolls off the tongue. Mars followed as fast as his weak body would let him. He hobbled through the door and found himself in a passageway resembling something that seemed familiar to him…but he couldn’t place what it was that imbibed the familiarity in him. The passageway he was led through was like a tunnel, but with wires running everywhere along the ceiling and the walls. The creature, SYMBYTHU—the hell kind of name is that?—was rushing along the corridor, unaware of the struggle Mars was pushing through. Mars figured that the corridor would lead to a room or one singular point where he would find SYMBYTHU again, so he paused and leaned against a door. He peered through the window on the door and saw a beautiful woman on the other side, asleep in a bed like the one he had woken up in. He felt as if he knew her, but that couldn’t be possible—he didn’t even know his own name until a few minutes ago. He gazed at her for a few moments before he finally pushed himself away from the door and walked away, feeling a strange longing for the woman as he left.
SYMBYTHU had noticed Mars not following anymore and accessed the ship’s cameras from within himself to see what happened. He found Mars walking slowly away from Ella Fleury’s room, and a small piece of him understood that Mars had been drawn towards the woman he had loved in another life. It gave him hope in his mission.
SYMBYTHU waited where he stood for Mars to make his way to him—he knew that the shock to come might very well be enough to overstimulate Mars’ brain and cause a breakdown worthy of a Homeric epic. He needed to be more cautious…this time.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Mars tried to push the longing away from him as he walked down the corridor. Where have I seen her before? She was stunningly beautiful—curly, long, chestnut-brown hair, skin as white as snow…he couldn’t get her face out of his head.
“Hello, Mars. Glad you found your way back to me.” SYMBYTHU was standing there in the center of the passageway with a queer look on his face—a smile, perhaps?
“My body is weak for some reason yet to be explained and I had to rest. You were walking too fast.” He didn’t feel like mentioning the woman he saw.
“My apologies. I will walk slower. You can take my hand if that will help.” SYMBYTHU reached out his hand towards Mars.
“I’ll manage fine but thank you. Lead on.” SYMBYTHU turned and continued walking. Mars struggled along, refusing his weak body’s pleas to rest. Before long, SYMBYTHU stopped in a large room with a white couch in the middle. There were white lights emanating from what seemed to be windows and a large white light in the ceiling that looked as if it could be a light-canon pointed inwards at the room. SYMBYTHU led him to the couch and bade him to sit.
“I can think of no better way to conduct the extrapolation of your memories than for you to read this book I am about to hand you. It is the story of your life…well, the highlights of your life. When you are finished, save your questions, and instead read it again. I will leave you until you bid me return. If you desire nutrients of any kind, just think about the item and the light you see above you will create it and phase it right to you.” He pulled a thick book from his robes and handed it to Mars. “I bid you adieu, Marston Kane.” Without giving Mars a chance to pose a response, SYMBYTHU left the room, leaving Mars with the supposed book of his life.
He inspected the book first. It had a hardcover and looked well-worn as if abused by decades of inconsiderate time. The cover was mostly black with a captivating picture of a red serpent with a…wolf’s head? devouring a planet. He opened the book as he sunk deeper into the couch and let the words carry him into another life.
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Mars slammed the book shut and threw it at the other side of the large room, where it landed harmlessly on the floor. “Bullshit!” he yelled at the air. Ten hours had passed as he sat on the sofa, captivated and unable to move or think about anything else. He didn’t care for a drink or food the entire time—he just wanted to know what happened. And then it simply ended…everything. Everything he had spent his life on, which he had dreamed of…everything and everyone he loved—annihilated by the energy emitted between him and Odina during their first and final battle. Earth was destroyed, the second home of humanity. They had already lost their first home, Mars, eons ago, and now because of him, they had lost Earth. So where am I now? Proxima Borealis? Did they survive however much time has passed? How am I alive? How can I know how to read?…
Memories had rushed into his mind as he read, reminding him of the first time he had taken Susurrus. Yet this was worse because when he had first taken Susurrus, he already had his ancestral memories for he was a Lucky Chosen, one born after his parents had awoken with Susurrus. He couldn’t understand why unlocking the memories was so much more painful this time.
Ella. It was Ella he had seen lying in the bed when he first woke, he knew it. Her face had been emblazoned in every core part of his being and he wanted nothing more than to see her immediately. He knew he should take SYMBYTHU’s advice though and read through the story again, selecting what to spend more time on and taking the time to release more memories as he read. But first, he needed to replenish and relieve himself.
He looked around and saw a closet-sized room in the corner that seemed to be labeled as a bathroom and walked towards it. After using it, he picked up the book of his life from the spot where he had thrown it and sat back down on the sofa. He thought about a strawberry milkshake with thick whipped cream on top and a juicy, medium-well-done New York strip steak. Instantly, the exact items appeared next to him on a black-metal tray. Mars devoured the steak and inhaled the shake, as if he’d never had food before. Then he thought about a giant glass of ice water with two slices of lemon in it, and that appeared instantly in the same manner as before.
He took a drink and dove into the book again.
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SYMBYTHU checked on the others he had recreated, the ones who had yet to wake up—Ella Fleury, Zavyr Paxt, and Atticus Payne. He thought about introducing different medicines to help speed up the awakening process but thought against it; he wanted everything to be as natural as it could possibly be. He had waited an exceptionally long time for this, so he would wait a while longer.
He had separated the ones who had woken into different sections of the ship: Mads Wolfram, Jaxson Landry, Luanna Spektor, and Marston Kane. He provided them the same means of memory retrieval as he had Marston. He hoped it was going well. He had seen Kane’s outburst after finishing Prodigium through the live-feed cameras he had throughout the ship, but he felt relieved when Kane ate, drank, and sat down to read a second time. The other versions hadn’t made it past the first reading.
It seemed to be going nearly as good with Spektor, Landry, and Wolfram. SYMBYTHU allowed himself to hope that all would be well this time.
He didn’t have much more time to wait. The humans had created the very Burton Izcir who would destroy them, and the battle for Earth would begin soon.
All SYMBYTHU had seemed to do, despite his good intentions, was rapidly speed up the timeline to destruction.