What the Heart Desires

by Jaime Derelle

  When he reached the poor creature, O was crouched down beside it and running her hand along its back. It was still alive and breathing unsteadily, its smooth silver skin sparkling in the sunlight.

  “Why do you suppose its beached?” she asked, her eyes not leaving it.

  “I’m not sure,” Vanda replied.

  He looked up along the shoreline and saw dotted along it many other silver shapes. He quickly realised that it was more silver reams that had somehow become beached. He noticed more of them being washed up and realised that there was hundreds if not thousands of them. The waters along the shore were thick with them, all bobbing about helplessly in a thick soup of poor creatures.

  Birds had landed on some of them and were pecking the poor animals, breaking through their thick silver skin and ripping out pieces of pink flesh. He looked down at O and saw a tear leave her eye and cascade down her cheek. She looked up at him imploringly and a pang hit his heart like a soft bullet. He felt so helpless; for the creatures and for O too. There was nothing that he could do, both for them and for her. He heard a commotion above his head and, looking up, saw hundreds of birds circling the reams, squawking their high pitch screams and swooping down upon them.

  Several birds suddenly swooped down upon the ream that the two were stood by and O began to swat them desperately away. They began to overwhelm her. She darted about, Vanda helping her as she did so, shaking her fists at them, but soon the two were consumed within a swarm of pecking birds. O let out a scream and Vanda fought through the mass of darting birds to get to her.

  However, as he desperately searched through the multitude that surrounded him, he couldn’t find her and could only hear the sound of her fading screams getting further and further away until they were gone. He felt a flame go out inside himself and then he awoke.

  Vanda looked up and saw the face of O smiling down at him, sat beside his bed on a chair. Without thinking, he leant out of the bed and grabbed ahold of her, embracing her in an emotional hug. At first, she was slightly taken aback, and looked down at him, as he hugged her, with a slightly awkward expression on her face. She slowly moved her arms around him and held onto him, gently returning his embrace.

  “What’s the matter?” she gently asked.

  He let go, a little embarrassed at his rash action, and looked up at her from the bed.

  “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, “I wasn’t sure if you were really there or not.”

  And patting herself all over, O remarked, “Well, I think I’m here!”

  “How long have you been there?”

  “Only a short while. Neon sent me to fetch you as soon as you had awoken. Here take this.”

  O handed Vanda a red pill. He took it from her and looked at it, a bemused expression on his face.

  “What is it?” he asked her.

  “It’s a nutrient pill. Down here that’s all we have for sustenance.”

  “Down here?”

  “Mmm… I guess you’ll have to see it to understand what it is. Do you think that you can walk?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then come on, there is much for you to be shown and told.”

  Vanda gingerly got out of the bed and to his feet. He ached all over and his enfeebled body moved unsteadily, giving him the appearance of a ventriloquist doll that had somehow cut its tethers and escaped its puppeteer. O giggled to herself as she watched his awkward movements. He took the pill and then followed her out of the room.

  Outside, she led him through a corridor that had many wires and aluminium piping strung from its ceiling. People rushed to and fro, passing them in the hallway. As they passed, Vanda was sure that they kept sneaking little sideways glances at him. He got the impression that he was some celebrity or a curiosity at the very least.

  “Why do they keep looking at me?” he whispered to O, as they walked along together.

  She smiled and said, “Because of what you are and what you mean.”

  “And what is that?”

  She stopped and then looked at Vanda, not sure what to say next.

  “I’ll let Neon explain,” she said finally.

  They moved off again and came upon a huge warehouse space full of people, vehicles, equipment and tech. Everywhere, people operated on the machinery, seemingly making repairs to it or modifications. Around them, people buzzed along determinately, obviously in the midst of some errand, but would momentarily stop to take a look at Vanda.

  The two came to a large combat destroyer; that is, a large vessel with two super photon cannons on both sides and several other large weapons sticking out of its various sides. It was government military, like most of the hardware in that large room, and must have taken a lot of effort to get hold of. Underneath the destroyer was several people attempting to fix something.

  “Neon," O called to one of them.

  Neon instantly looked over at them from underneath the destroyer. He was a tall man of medium build and had a large scar that went down the right side of his face, through his eye, covered with a black leather eye patch. He had black hair with a shock of white running through it. He walked over to the two and offered his hand to Vanda.

  When Vanda looked down at the proffered hand, he observed that it was mechanical. He took the cold metal hand and shook it. Neon smiled at him and the amiability of his smile put Vanda at ease, as it warmed his otherwise grizzled appearance.

  “My name is Neon,” he said in a friendly tone, “and you, my friend, are about to learn of your future. Follow me.”

  With that, Neon walked off and O urged Vanda to follow him.

  Neon led Vanda out of the room, down a corridor and into another room. When they were inside, Vanda noticed a giant window at one end. What he saw out of that window momentarily mesmerized him. He wandered up to it, ignoring the fact that he was supposed to be there for the purpose of speaking with Neon. He looked out of it into a vast underwater world, different strange marine creatures swimming around in it. A short way off from the window, Vanda saw the gigantic stone statue of a woman. On her head was a crown and she wore a solemn expression upon her face. Under one arm she carried some books and her other arm was stretched out towards the water’s surface, a flaming stone torch in her hand.

  Neon came beside Vanda and informed him, “They called it the statue of liberty. It’s over six hundred years old and once greeted people to the shores of old New York. She represented justice and freedom to people, but now she sits here underneath everything; buried and drowned like every other moral principle of our civilisation. When they destroyed the previous world with pollution and the oceans swallowed everything up, they just built over it, like it never even existed. Now we hide down here with everything else that they destroyed, waiting for the day when we reclaim Earth and lead it out of the darkness and into the light.”

  “Like a flaming torch,” Vanda added.

  Neon smiled.

  “Like a flaming torch,” he repeated. “Yes— exactly so.”

  He then walked over to a desk that stood in one corner and sat down behind it. Vanda still stood staring out of the window at the submerged city of yesterday, wondering how such a once thriving city had been allowed to be extinguished like this.

  “Sit down, Vanda,” Neon commanded. “I have much to tell you.”

  Vanda came and did what was asked of him, sitting down opposite Neon, who rested back in his chair.

  Once Vanda sat down, Neon pronounced, “Do you know about the great Founder of the Cause?”

  “No,” Vanda said.

  “Of course not. It’s because his name is deleted from the records. But down here we keep his memory alive. He was a time shifter like you; one of the first to come back from Kessalon. The government weren’t sure what exactly he was at first and quietly released him back into society thinking him no more than an invalid. They were wrong.

  “When he had been in the hospital waiting to be released, he would have the most terrible nightmares about a great genocide that
took place somewhere in the future - a genocide that would claim the lives of over seventeen billion people here on Earth. I am told that you too have had the same vision. He didn’t just see the end, though, he saw the beginning of it too. He watched as children starved to death in the streets down below while those at the top reaped the rewards of the bountiful colonies. He watched as men and woman laboured to death on those same colonies to bring back the profits of Earth’s imperialism and then see its profits shared out amongst a few while everyone else suffered under a terrible toil. When he came back, he walked the streets telling everyone that would listen about what he had seen. He scared them as he told them of government camps all over the universe, including here on Earth, that saw people caged like animals as scientists experimented on them in laboratories. He saw the souls of men blackened. He learnt how to control his shifter abilities so that he could fight and then teach others to fight with him.

  “Now, I want to show you something, Vanda.”

  Neon turned to a telescreen on the wall behind him and pressed a button on it. The screen immediately flicked on. It was some old surveillance video. In it a man stood in the centre of many government shock troopers and attack droids of differing sizes, their weapons all pointed to him. Neon paused it.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think that that guy better give himself up or have a solid plan for his escape.”

  “That ‘guy’ is the founder.”

  Neon started the footage again.

  The troops and the droids began to attack, but the Founder simply moved in and out of their fire, as if he knew exactly where it would be directed next. Then Vanda witnessed something that confused him. The Founder ran up to a sentry droid, moving his body in and out of all the energy bolts that came his way, and pushed his palm out towards it, about a foot in front of it. The droid immediately began to implode into itself, its metal frame screaming out as it folded into itself. Neon again paused the footage.

  “Do you know what that is?” he questioned Vanda.

  Vanda leant forward in his chair to gain a better sight of it.

  “No,” he slowly pronounced, a little confused at what he was seeing.

  “He has opened up a vortex— a tear in time and space and he is pushing the Droid into it.”

  “No— only star gates fuelled on spice can do that.”

  “Or humans whose genetic makeup has been fused with spice," Neon corrected.

  He started the footage again. The Founder began to move about, ducking in and out of the projectiles so efficiently that much of them hit other government troops or droids. Suddenly he appeared to vanish and in a second he was on the other side of the government forces. Neon again paused the footage.

  “Here,” he began, “he is stopping time momentarily; I believe his record for this was a whole minute, but it took a lot of his strength to hold off the flow of time. He described it as being a one man dam against a great raging river. That is why you saw him disappear— he had actually stopped time so that he could move unspotted.”

  The Founder then opened up more vortexes and each one pulled in more of the troops and droids until nothing remained but him. Far from facing the most terrible of massacres, he had been the sole survivor and he then began opening another vortex, of which he jumped into it and then, in a flash of light, he had disappeared completely.

  Neon turned the screen off.

  “How did he do that?” Vanda enquired.

  “He did it through complete control of his abilities. He was so strong that he could control the temporal field to such a degree that he could fold space and time. He could travel across the universe in seconds, emerging anywhere that he liked. He could open up a tear in space and have whole armies pulled into it and then dumped into space somewhere a billion light years away. Through him, we very nearly gained the victory that we so deserved.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “The government began testing others who had been exposed to the spice and began to develop equipment and drugs primarily designed for their control. They turned the time shifters against us and tricked the Founder with false visions until they captured and then killed him. They thought that that would stop us, but they didn’t count on the determination of the human spirit and us, the laymen, carried on the fight. We awaited the day when another shifter so strong that they could take on the government would emerge and I believe that that day has come with you, Vanda.”

  Vanda felt a little sick at Neon’s suggestion that he may be able to stop time and open up rips in the space-time continuum.

  “But I can’t do all of that,” he said a little worriedly.

  “That’s why you need to be trained. In a day or two, you will be strong enough to begin your schooling. I believe you already know Zilo. He will take you to the training room and start the process.”

  “Whoa!” Vanda exclaimed. “I don’t think that I am the guy you’re after— there are plenty other shifters besides myself and some of them, I’m sure, are stronger.”

  Neon sighed and then, looking straight into Vanda’s eyes, leaning forwards in his chair, he slowly pronounced, “We’ve been watching you, Vanda Kline, your whole life, waiting for the day when the Founder’s prophecy about you came true.”

  “‘Prophecy’?” Vanda repeated to himself.

  “Yes, Vanda Kline; prophecy. He told us about you even before you were born and he told us not to worry because you would come to us. He couldn’t give us an exact date or time, but he told us that it would be love that would bring you here. That you would follow your heart in this. We watched as you grew up on the lower levels of Neo York, following the life of so many of our kind. We then watched as you went off to the spice mines; all in line with what the Founder had told us. We then watched you become exposed to the spice and then become a stooge for the government. At no point did we worry— the Founder assured us that you would always break free and that they would never actually know what or who you were. You see, we couldn’t approach you too early because the government would guess perhaps who or what you were and then have you destroyed before we could get you off of their drugs and train you to lead humanity out of the darkness that it had plunged itself into.”

  “Oh, come on,” Vanda cried in disbelief. “I’m just an average guy trying to get on with life. I never meant to get poisoned by that shit and I should never have gotten involved at Times Square.”

  “But you did, Vanda— against all your better judgement, you did.”

  Vanda sat back and suddenly the most intense feeling of deja vu hit him. He looked at Neon and he felt that he had known that battle-scarred face for all of eternity.

  For the first time, Vanda felt the words of what Neon had just said bore into him and he was sure that everything was going as it should.

  He realised then that he, Vanda Kline, was the second coming.

  ************

  Vanda didn’t wait for the two or so days that he was ordered to rest until he was more healthy to pass. As soon as he had left Neon, he went and sought out Zilo. He found the old man in his chamber, entirely submerged within his network suit, his eyes neon blue and his consciousness somewhere within the giant mainframe of computers that dominated Earth. He was probably hacked into some government feed somewhere fighting through its encryption like a lone soldier fights through a horde of assassins.

  Vanda wasn’t sure if he should approach Zilo. But as he stood behind the old man, Zilo suddenly turned to him and, with his eyes still glazed in neon, he said, “Sit down, I won’t be long.”

  Vanda looked around him and again saw nowhere to sit, so he just placed himself on the floor, sitting cross-legged behind Zilo. Soon the old man’s eyes returned to their natural colour and he stood up.

  “Help me out of this thing,” he said to Vanda.

  Vanda stood up, approached Zilo and began helping the old man out of his massive, cumbersome suit of cables. Once he had finished, Zilo started walking out
of the room.

  As he reached the door, he turned back to Vanda and said, “Well, aren’t you going to join me?”

  Vanda followed him and the two made their way to a large room that had a ring designed for fighting in the middle of it.

  Once they were inside, Zilo stood in the centre of the ring and Vanda joined him.

  “The first thing that we shall start on," Zilo stated, “will be simple time lapse combat. I want you to slow your mind; much as you did with the meditation that those arses at the government taught you; and I want you to try and feel the time stream.”

  Vanda began to control his breathing and closed his eyes. He felt himself slowly melt and then began to feel the temporal field with an intensity that he had never felt before.

  “Feels different when your body isn’t full of government toxins," Zilo said as if guessing what Vanda was thinking.

  It was true: Vanda could almost feel the temporal field as if it were a brisk breeze flowing around him.

  “By slowing one’s mind,” Zilo began, “you can control your time lapse. Push it forward to two seconds. That should be enough to begin your training.”

  Vanda paused his mind and cleansed it of all thought. He then concentrated on the temporal field, feeling it whirl and flow around him. After some time, he was able to do as the old man had asked him and create a two-second lapse.

  “Are you there?” Zilo asked him.

  He then he reached out his hand and touched Vanda on the arm, holding it there. Vanda felt nothing at first, but within two seconds he became aware of the old man’s touch upon his arm.

  “Okay, I’m there,” he said.

  “Now you are ready for fighting.”

  “What you? But you’re only an old man.”

  “Huh! I’m not so old and feeble as you think, boy. But I won’t be fighting you'" and then turning around and pointing to O who stood at the door, he added, “You’ll be fighting her.”

  O stepped forward into the ring. She was dressed for combat and had a solemn expression on her face. She came and stood opposite him. Vanda smiled at her, but she did not return it.