In A Universe Without Stars 1: Skyeater

by J Alex McCarthy

  At the bottom of the hill, Bermea and Kelly sees Axe motioning them into a thicket of trees. They follow him in. The trees block anyone from the outside from seeing in. Five of the other humans sit in a circle talking.

  “I think these are all the ones who matter,” Axe says as he kneels down next to the five. There are three men and only two woman. Bermea looks at his surroundings, there is a tension in the air. Two of the men and women’s face are covered in sweat.

  And it’s not from the heat.

  Bermea doesn’t like the look of this.

  “So what is this? Are you going to kill us or something?” Bermea says.

  “What!? God, no.” He glances around. “Come closer.” He motions toward the circle. Bermea sighs and he and Kelly move closer.

  “I think I’ve found a way out.”

  “What?” Both Bermea and Kelly reply.

  “Yes, I’ve found a tree that peeks over the edge. When this place closes we can escape.”

  Bermea looks at Kelly.

  “A way out. Why would you want to escape? It’s useless,” Bermea says.

  “Why would we want to escape? Are you fucking stupid? We are fucking trapped!! Caged like animals. What fool would want to be caged up?” Axe says.

  “Then where are we going to go? Huh? Have you thought this out? Where we are now is the best it’s going to get.”

  “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.

  20 - The Starless Night

  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.”

  The interviewer is speechless.

  “When I was chosen as an invasion commander I hurriedly chose London as my targe
t. Most of the year they had cloudy days and brutally snowy winters, it reminded me of Uspiri. I wanted the humans of London to feel what I felt all those years ago. I didn’t want them to feel fear or sadness, just an infinite happiness and warmness. So I used the faires abilities to my advantage and painted a wonderful show for all those involved, Serephin and Human.

  The video stops and the announcer looks at the camera. At Thora in her enclosure.

  “A powerful and moving story by a sophisticated and compelling man. Judges Wor and Glepre, why did you vote for London?” the announcer asks.

  Wor is famous for his three time hit single into the night and multiple other galaxy wide hits. His concerts and records sold billions in the Serephin systems alone. Teenage Serephins still buy his CDs but he doesn’t tour anymore since taken up residence on the Skyeater. He’s retired now.

  Glepre is a famous media Mongol, the creator and show runner of this show and most of the Eliite media. He was always just the unknown wheels that ran the industry behind the scenes until he made this show. That’s when he figured if the universe is ending he might as well have fun whiles he’s still living.

  “Well Crys…” Wor pauses for dramatic effect.

  “Anyone who chose anything else are just pompous asses.” The other judges laugh and grin in jest. They’re used to his shit. “I mean just look at the battlefield.” He points up at the London panel. “The humans barely had an understanding of what was happening. It’s just the best, I can’t really describe it. It’s just beautiful.”

  “I think I can describe it, Wor,” Glepre replies. “We all have been to Sherif’s spectacular Menagerie, we all know what to expect and what he can do. But his work in London was, I can say without a doubt, some of his best work.”

  Wor nods to him.

  “The snowcapped building tops, the angelic faires coming from the sky in a coordinated but majestic manner and the humans not knowing whether to run or pray to their gods. Even after they saw what was truly happening, the spectacle was so mesmerizing that once they saw their comrades die they just accepted us with open arms, knowing that we we’re going to kill them. That takes something, all of the other races we have encountered fought to the death, and so did the other cities. To do something so memorizing to have caused them to not only give up but to welcome death is on a whole other level,” Glepre says.