In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater (36 page)

“There
is an alley behind this place we can go to, I saw a girl. She somehow got on
this ship and is living underground. You saw how big this place is. We can
escape and live comfortably on our own,” Axe says.

“So
you want to escape here to live in a sewer? I’m not for it.”  

“It’s
better than being looked at like some animal,” one of the others says.

“The
decision is already made, we just wanted to fill everybody in,” Axe says.

Their
minds seem set. Bermea doesn’t feel like dealing with this shit.

“Come
on,” Bermea tells Kelly.

“But—“

She
hesitates but Bermea continues out of the trees. She looks back at the group
and follows him.

Bermea
walks back up to the hilltop. Kelly runs up next to him.

“Why
wouldn’t you listen to them? Maybe their plan could work!” Kelly says.

“Do
you think that a civilization so advanced that they can move across the stars
don’t have the technology to track us down if they wanted too? I’m sure Sherif
wouldn’t like his new display to be missing a few attractions,” Bermea says.

Kelly
doesn’t reply. She doesn’t know how far they would go to find them. Bermea
doesn’t either but he doesn’t want to find out. He sits back at the top of the
hill, Kelly lays next to him, laying placing her head on his legs.

“Do
you ever think they you’re too positive about this place, about our situation?”
Kelly asks.

“I’m
not positive…I just know the reality of the situation, there is nothing we can
do so why try?”

“Well
whatever you chose to do, I’ll follow you,” Kelly says with a smile.

Maybe
he is wrong, maybe they can escape and live a better life underground. But with
everything they have here he just doesn’t know. Sherif provided everything.
Hopefully he makes the right choice.

A
city stands still
,
silent, and extinct.

The
Serephin capital or what it used to be.

A
fake, an
image, and a reminder.

The
yellow glass skyscrapers pierce the sky, a symbol of their power over others.
The sides glean from an ever setting sun, the diminishing
contrast
of its color dulling from the losing light.

The
pale tint of the orange sky paints the city, yet the sky never sets and there
is no sun. Only Leif, thousands of feet above the city,
watching
, seated in his gray crystal throne.  He lights the
sky and
it
reminds him of the cost of the
things he’s done. For the better of the universe.

But
things have changed, he feels an uncertainty he’s
only
felt once before
. He closes his eyes and thinks. Tomorrow, everything
will change.

Cole.

He
simply thinks of him, he should
see
his past,
his present, his future and yet.

He
sees nothing, he only sees darkness, nothingness.

His
powers as an omniscient being fails him. No memories, no thoughts, he can’t see
any of his actions. Although
he
knows he’s
here and that scares him.

He’s
seen the birth of the universe, he’s seen thousands of countless civilizations
and species spawn and cease to be in a spark of a star. He’s seen every star,
speck of life and energy fade into insignificance into the eventual end of the
universe.

And
he cannot see into the life of this one man.

A
single human.

Maybe
he’s the answer to all of this. But to go back on all he’s done so far. He
wants to reverse all he’s done, all the lives he’s taken, but he’s done too
much. Tomorrow is when it all begins, the mending of the universe.

Leif
opens his eyes, Kabus stands in front of him, hands in pockets of his maroon
colored pants. Standing as if there was a floor below him and not a city.

“He’s
here,” Kabus states.

“Yes.”

“What
are we going to do?”

“Let
him come to me,” Leif replies. Kabus looks down, he wants to hunt him down, but
he won’t.

“Do
you have it?” Leif asks. Kabus digs into his pocket and pulls out a ring,
Julio’s. It’s crusted in blood.

“This
thing was harder to get than I thought,” Kabus flips the ring in his hand.

“You
underestimated them. Twice. They are only going to get stronger. While you,
once you hit your peak, will get weaker.”

“Such
is life in this universe.” Kabus stares at the shimmer of the ring as it
reflects light from the clouds. “I’ll kill them before they even think about
ascending. I won’t make that mistake again.” He throws the ring to Leif. Leif
catches it. “What is it for?”

Leif
grasps the ring with his finger and looks at it.

“Even
the ones who surround Cole are clouded and unclear. But unlike him, there is no
blackness and uncertainty that surrounds them. I cannot pinpoint the exact
events in their lives. But I know their names, Julio, Thora, and I know when
they we’re born and when they will die. I can feel how close he was to them. I
can use this.”

“Maybe
I can see through it,” Kabus suggests.

“No.”

“But
I’m strong enough now, let me—“

“NO!”
Leif yells.

His
voice shudders through the empty city, echoing across the sky. Kabus backs off.
Leif’s hands run through the scars on his face.

“You
don’t understand. How it is like to peer through the seams of reality for the
first time. To see the past, present and future all at once. The darkness, the
emptiness of the universe. You are not ready and you may never be ready.”

With
his head in his hands, he looks up at Kabus, who becomes reserved.

Leif
immediately regrets his outburst. This is not how to teach his student. Yelling
at him when his curiosity is peaked. That will make him more zealous and will
make him more likely to go against his wishes or at least try too.

“Close
your eyes,” Leif says. Kabus looks up at him curiously and closes his eyes.
Leif gets up from his crystal throne. He steps up in front of Kabus. He lifts
his arm and places his hand on Kabus’s head.

“Think
of nothing, empty your mind, think of the Skyeater and of nothing else, think
of tomorrow. Think of everyone going about their daily lives and their normal
day. What do you see?”

It’s
not too much to go on, to be able to see into the future, but if he is truly
his student then that should be enough.

“I
see—“

Darkness,
deaths, too many to count, screams, stars, quick flames and then silence, then
the absolute darkness of annihilation. His eyes fling open and he grasps for
air. “
Wha
—
“ He
struggles to
speak.

“Because
of Cole, there is an uncertainty about tomorrow. They are other titans on our
ship and most likely countless people will die.”

“How
can you be sure that what I saw will happen?”

“I
remember the feeling from before. At our home world. When it burned to the
ground. But because of the cloudiness because of Cole, I cannot be hundred
percent sure. You can only get a feeling on what’s going to happen. Make no
mistake, without him, everything we see will happen. This is just a minuscule
drop in a vast ocean. If you attempt to peer into the entire universe, you may,
will, go mad and destroy everything around you.”

Kabus
gets on his knees and bows.

“Numenwolfe,
I apologize for my previous outburst.”

“Rise.”

Kabus
rises. Leif walks up next to him.

“Set
our fleet on high alert for tomorrow and get prepared for anything.”

“What
about our people? What do you want me to tell
them.
”
 

Leif
pauses to ponder on it.

“Don’t
alert them, for if it’s their last days in this universe, let them enjoy it in
blissful ignorance.”

“Yes,
sir.”

Kabus
disappears in a flash of light. Leif sits back on his crystal throne and
watches over the City.

Thora
sits against an oak tree and stares out of her enclosure.

Her
prison.

Her
new home.

It’s
elevated twenty feet off the floor,
eye level to the television in front of the window. Caer raised the cage so
they can get some Eliite culture.

A
projection of the stars and planets float above her. The ceiling is gone, yet
no window or sound comes in.
It’s
night time, the
Skyeaters sun is a dull black, giving off no illumination at all.

The
only reason she can tell
it’s
still there is because
of the random black hole that’s floating where it’s supposed to be. A black
hole in the background to the tremendous throng of stars in the sky. She stares
up at the fake stars and planets, they spin around the center of the room. It’s
beautiful.

Caer
sits on a couch in front of the television. Slumped back as if he had a hard
day at work. Eating purple flakes out of a bowl in his lap, the television
remote lies limp in his hand.
There might not be that much of a difference
between us after all.
He flips through the channels and stops.

The
screen shows the current state of Earth, a barren wasteland. An announcer talks
over the images. Luckily Caer flip to the channel just in time for the start.
Thora gets up from the tree and walks up to the glass of the enclosure.

“If
you’re just tuning in, it has only been twenty-four hours since the main attack
on Earth and the votes are piling in,” the announcer says. The show changes to
a female Serephin announcer standing in front of a backdrop showing the
Skyeater sky line.

“You
watched the videos, you heard the stories, now it’s time to vote on which city
has had the best invasion!!” She motions to a table of judges in front of her.
The camera focuses on the table.

It’s
a panel of judges, like a singing game show. There are five judges. All seated
like the pompous Serephins they are. Gold and maroon jewelry deck their fingers,
arms and necks. High quality colorful robes drape on their shoulders.

They
are the celebrities of the Skyeaters.

“The
decision is up to you Eliite, the judges are split on their opinions but their
vote is only worth fifty percent of the overall decision.”

She
motions to the backdrop behind her. Three panels show up, the left one shows a
still image of Los Angeles and Kabus, The middle shows an image of a burning
New York City and Ulbe, the right shows an image of a snow-laced London and
Sherif.

“These
are the three battles voted for the most and the generals who led them. The
three finalists. The judges are split on the decision. Two for London, Two for
New York and only one for Los Angeles. We will now go to our panel of judges
and discuss their opinion on the matter.” The announcer is very
enthusiastically, but she’s no Seacrest, at least we have that, Thora thinks.

She
motions to the panel.

“We’ll
start with London.”

Sherif’s
smaller panel in London’s panel
starts to play, it takes over the entire panel. It plays a video of Sherif
talking to an interviewer, the camera stays on Sherif.

“So
what was your inspiration for the London assault?” the announcer asks.

“What
was my inspiration?” Sherif ponders “I’m not much of a soldier anymore, nor am
I the kind to lay out a complex military strategy. But I am a man of art, with
the memories of a long life.”

“When
I was just a pup, my parents was stationed on
Uspiri
,
a planet on which it snowed every day of its 526-day year. My parents worked at
a research base that was some miles off from my home on the newly colonized
world. So I had nobody to play with and nobody to talk to, except for my
schooling computer. So I just stared outside my window for hours on end.
Watching the snowflakes fall to the white painted ground. It was boring and
slow, but staring at the snow somehow made me calm and helped the time go by.”

The
judges sit back in their seats and get comfortable.

 “Hours
on end, I would paint, draw while simply staring out into the granite sky. Honestly
that was all I ever needed, whenever I was angry or mad at my parents I would
just walk outside, stopping lord knows when and just become calm. After being
there for a couple of years I’ve gotten used to the loneliness and used to it
being with just me and the snow.”

Sherif
pauses. He looks down.

“It
was all fine with me until one day my parents came home. They rushed in and
started packing everything they could carry. They told me that we we’re going home,
somewhere better, with more people, that I won’t be alone any longer. I was
shocked and scared that I would never see the snow again. This was my home now.
The place we we’re going didn’t have snow, it didn’t have the silence of an
everlasting winter night. It was peaceful there. And they wanted to take that
away from me. I snapped, I yelled, I screamed, I asked them why, why are we
leaving here just when I became complacent, they always did that. That’s when
they stopped and sat me down. My father squatted down and placed his hand on my
shoulder.”

“Now
my father was never one to sugarcoat things, he told me how it truly was and he
didn’t sugarcoat what he was about to tell me. The
Starmakers
,
our forebears, just announced that the universe was coming to a premature end,
that everything that we worked for, everything we’ve done in our lives, every
single meaning we’ve made for ourselves was for nothing. When he told me that,
I didn’t really think about death or the ‘end’ or anything of the sort. It crashed
down on me like the pressure of a million black holes and I just stared at
him.” The light goes out of
Sherif’s
eyes.

 “He
told me to pack up my things because they we’re leaving to find a search for
the cure. Looking at his face, I knew it was useless, that his search was for
nothing, it was just a misguided hope to not feel meaningless in his life. And
he was bringing his kid into futile attempted to make himself feel something.
He left to continue packing up things and he told me to do the same.”

“It
was at that moment that I looked out the window, snowflakes gently caressed the
window as the wind blew kisses toward me. I opened the door and stepped
outside. I didn’t want to die, not in blackness, I didn’t want to end my life
scared or like a coward. I walked out into the white expansiveness, far enough
for my parents to never find me again. And I simply dropped down in the snow.
In the white I felt calm, safe, I suddenly had an understanding that everything
was going to be okay. I was crying, my tears painfully froze to my face, yet I
wasn’t afraid because I was with the only thing that mattered. My arms and leg
froze and I slumped down trapped. Even with the freezing cold, a warmness was
building inside of me and I simply fell asleep. I wasn’t scared, I was just
happy. I could’ve died in an instant because I was finally with my calm. But
seeing how I’m still here, I didn’t die out there in the snow but I never saw
my parents again.”