“I’m sorry, old friend, but it looks like I’m going back just as I arrived. You have been faithful and true, and I will miss you.”
Seiss Demast stepped forward, taking Candor’s shoulder in the traditional greeting of their race. “I suppose I shall have to come up with some explanation for your disappearance.”
“Just tell the truth, and hold to your honor. I do not think that blame will be placed upon anyone except me. Please, let it be known that I cherished Penticore Prime, and I sacrificed everything that I love, so that my race can endure.”
Demast nodded. “I know that when it is written, you will be known as a true son of Halsshik. Your honor and loyalty are above reproach. I am humbled by your sacrifice.”
The leading Senedos Seiss let go of him, and Candor embraced Thalia, one last time. No words were exchanged, as feelings and thoughts passed between their gentle touches. Their minds were joined together, and in that moment time slipped away from them. Every second was a decade, and their love stretched to eternity. As they bid each other farewell he kissed her, savoring the feel of her lips against his skin, and the loving caress of her arms around his waist.
“I’m ready,” he said to Amron. “You should have told me before now. All these centuries and you said nothing. I could have prevented the pain that will now be inflicted upon my family.”
Amron began to cry, which surprised Candor. She wasn’t just an avatar, he understood that now. Yet wasn’t she a construct, a Penticorian who had relinquished her corporeal existence? Was she not the resident of a city that lived only in the photonic memory of the Tulacoss City Interlink, and by that admission, what could he possibly mean to her?
“Why do you weep for me, Amron? We don’t know each other, not really.”
Amron wiped at her face with the hem of her long sleeve, and then looked up at him. “You’re wrong, Candor, and I so wanted to tell you. Each day I wanted to scream it to you from every corner of Tulacoss, but I couldn’t. There are rules that govern time-tunneling, and I must follow them. But I was content to see you, and to be with you each day, even though you did not know me as your wife.”
“I don’t understand?”
Amron moved closer to him, almost touching, so that her next words would be for him alone. “I wasn’t always non-corporeal, and I didn’t always look like this. Once, a very long time ago, I looked no different from the wife that stands behind you.”
Candor felt his legs shaking, and he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he recognized her. His feelings of déjà vu were now explained. And it wasn’t just in her features, it was in her voice and her mannerisms, ever since the day he’d first met Thalia. He always assumed that Amron was only attempting to mirror his wife, and thereby lure him in. Over the centuries she had tried to get him to spend time with her, and have sex. Now he knew why.
“Thalia, is it really you?”
She nodded, folding her hands in front of her as she looked away from him. “It’s not fair. I won’t have you in my time, and I can’t have you in yours. I told you once that I would cross death itself for you, and so I have.”
Candor reached out and wiped away her photonic tears, as he gazed into her eyes. They were gold now, the color he so loved. “Oh, etts imád, I am truly a fiend. If only I did not have to be parted from you twice.”
“The Goddess is cruel. You and I seem destined to suffer, etts esstoné.”
“You should have told me,” he said, managing a sly grin that only she could see. “I might have acquiesced all those centuries ago, and let you have me.”
She laughed softly, placing a hand over her mouth in a demure gesture. “No, you wouldn’t have. Believe it or not, I love you even more for it. You remained true to me even before you knew me, and watching you all this time I know that you were telling the truth. That as soon as you saw me, there was no other to take my place.”
“And there never will be, etts imád, there never will be. I love you.”
Amron offered him her hand, and he took it. “And I love you always, my husband. It is time, you must go. I cannot keep this portal open for much longer.”
Candor nodded, took one last look at the family he was leaving behind, and then stepped through the portal.
“He’s awake! Doctor, he’s coming around!”
Voices rang in alarm, as footfalls echoed in the distance. Candor Shubin attempted to open his eyes, and was blinded by the light over his bed. He was also choking, his neck constricting as he drew in a putrid oxygen breath. For so long he breathed through his skin, that now he had to recall how to breathe through lungs all over again. It disgusted him, the flimsy mortal shell that surrounded him. It was an old body, one that was wracked with pain. It was a body that was never meant to last more than a handful of years, which was far less than that of the Penticorian inside of him.
“Candor, can you hear me? Come on, take a breath and calm down. It’s me, Theo, your old buddy!”
“Denomast olins phetar etts Theoss! Vrintucass et-tuess Penticoress! Atsunne meolensicat vo-kets humanss!”
Theo didn’t understand a word that Candor said. It was the Penticorian equivalent of telling him. “Get your grimy hands off me, Theo! I’m a Penticorian! I want nothing to do with you, filthy humans!”
“What happened to you, Candor? Come on buddy, tell me what happened! You touched that thing and then you dropped like a stone. You’ve been in a coma for almost two years for Pete’s sake!”
“Thalia!” he screamed at the top of his lungs as tears welled up in his eyes. The pain of being a human again and parted from his family was too deep for him to bear. “Thador, Vesspa!”
“Candor, you’ve got to help me out here! That thing that came out of the ground, what was it? Is the race that built it hostile? Can you understand me, Candor? You’re safe now, in a guarded facility outside of Washington D.C.
“Now I’m sorry, but I have to tell you that I was assigned to monitor your activities. I know all about you being a part of the Montauk Project. I’m in big trouble, Candor. My agency was going to bury you so deep that no one would ever find you, along with the object. But I stopped them from taking you! I went public with it so they wouldn’t kill you, and now the whole damn world has gone crazy!
“Every government on the planet is ready to go to war over this thing. Not to mention that every religious leader from the Pope on down is claiming divine right. There are riots all over the world, and a lot of nuclear weapons got dusted off and warmed back up. We’re on the brink here, Candor, so please snap out of it and talk to me!”
Candor glared at him, and he felt as if he was cursing as he used English. “The government tortured me! They made me an assassin, gave me a split personality, and you want my help! If you’re so damn smart, then why don’t you tell me what it is!”
“We don’t know!”
Theo’s eyes were wide with terror, and in that moment, Candor realized that Theo had saved his life. “We can’t open it with drills, or explosives, and we can’t penetrate it with an x-ray, or an axial tomography scan. It’s impervious to our technology. Whatever happened to you when you touched it, it hasn’t done it again. We know that it’s a power plant containing an extremely powerful and exotic form of energy that could light the world forever. Some of the world’s top theoretical physicists speculate that it houses a quantum singularity.”
Nothing Theo said was getting through to him. Candor had no intention of cooperating with Theo, or anyone else. To him they were nothing but brutal and sadistic humans, and he wanted no part of their plans or schemes. Candor’s only desire was to be home with his family. That deep penetrating loss ate away at the fabric of his sanity. “Thalia,” he said with baited breath. “Poskuet sonnnes viet-ess rivan, etts imád.”
“Come on, Candor, stay with me, please,” said Theo as he shook him.
Candor noted the doctors entering the room. At least he surmised that they were doctors from the long white lab coats that they were wearing. Yet what
put him over the top, was that the lead doctor was carrying a syringe, and Candor knew that it would be full of morphine, or some other mind-altering drug.
They’re going to try to make me talk, he thought. What a typical human response. And somewhere deep inside of him, something became aware of itself. Suddenly he felt the electricity in the air around him. More to the point, the electromagnetic fields that surround everyone, and everything.
It really happened! I was there, because the mind-gift is still with me.
That knowledge also elicited another response from him, despair. Now the pain he felt was justifiable. He wasn’t just a geologist that had touched an alien artifact. He was a Penticorian who had lost his family, and the love of his life. He screamed with anger, he screamed with pain, and he screamed for the life that was his, and was now gone forever. Candor was a proud citizen of Penticore Prime, and a noble tale-smith. And more, he was a sentient being who lost everything he ever wanted. His mind-gift reached out, and the lights in the room flickered. A moment after that, they exploded altogether as Candor shouted with rage and sorrow. It was a potent and dangerous combination, and without thinking he erected a mental shield around himself. Theo cried out in agony as he was tossed into the wall at the opposite side of the room.
The doctors attempted to rush him, and it took no effort for Candor to shatter the syringe, and then crush them completely, like broken twigs beneath his feet. The room began to tremble and shake, and the walls crumbled as plaster and electrical conduit was exposed. Yet Candor didn’t care as he screamed with all his might, “Thalia!”
After his scream of torment faded, Candor grew silent. He was as still and as quiet as the grave, his breathing the only indication that he was still alive. From that moment on, he maintained the shield that surrounded him. No matter what the humans did, or tried, they could come no closer than the doorway to his room. The shield also had the effect of sapping his strength, something that Candor welcomed with open arms. He remembered how drained of color, and exhausted Seiss Demast had been while containing Jeremiah. His shield was much larger, so he knew that it would not be long.
A day, two at most, he thought, and then I’ll be dead. I’ll wait for you, Thalia, I promise. For you, and for Thador, Vesspa, and for you, my dear mother and father. Someday we’ll all be together again, even Ghedron, Zyphon, Theniass, and Kythonia, I just know it. The Goddess can’t continue to be a cold heartless bitch for all eternity.
He recalled a million memories of them, and they were so far away that he couldn’t reach out across the void of time and space to touch their minds. Yet he called to them nonetheless, as he prayed to Eos for death, and to his family for forgiveness.
As his strength faded, and he felt death approaching, he reached out with his mind-gift one last time. On a shard of wall that wasn’t cracked, he left the only clue that he would ever share with the humans. A tiny spec of information about what he knew. It was a simple picture really, with two large ellipses, and a series of smaller one’s circling those. While beneath it, his mind dug the letters into the wall, scratching the language of his true race, and his true family.
Candor knew that it would take years, perhaps centuries, for the humans to decipher the words. And he felt that he was being overly optimistic in that appraisal, because Thalia said that they were going to stop the humans from destroying the planet. So, it was only a matter of time before humanity would face a catastrophic setback. He smiled as he considered both the words and the picture. Enos Penticoras, he thought as his strength faltered. In the end he was wrong, it took him four days to die, not two, and only Theo was present when Candor stopped breathing.
The last word that fell from his lips, was the name of his beloved wife…
Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee,
Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave!
Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee,
Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave?
~
And even yet I dare not let it languish,
Dare not indulge in Memory's rapturous pain;
Once drinking deep of that divinest anguish,
How could I seek the empty world again?
Emily Jane Brontë
1818-1848
Epilogue
The moment that Candor took his last breath, the building that held his body began to quake. While deep underground, the Ekoss Caspularuss darkened, and alarm claxons rang out through the halls. From a pale green glow to a black pulsing sphere it changed, and immediately the humans went into action. Guards with automatic rifles stepped forward, as sensors attempted to make sense of the data that was streaming across a myriad of computer screens. Yet for all their technological achievements, the humans were unable to identify what was happening.
A tiny pinprick of light appeared, floating in the air. Slowly the light began to grow, expanding and sizzling with electricity that was not of this world, but from the spaces in-between universes. The portal opened, and two alien figures emerged. Yet these were no ordinary aliens, but Penticorian’s who understood the capabilities of humans. One of them shouldered a long staff, while the other donned some form of protective suit. The unsuited alien held the staff in front of it, like a shield, its large eyes examining the room as it frowned in anger.
One of the soldiers shouted. “Hold it right there!” Immediately, all of them removed the safeties from their weapons.
“I am Jinx,” said the alien holding the staff, who surprised them all by uttering perfect English. “I am the Seneschal for the house of Shuveen, and Regent for the city of Tulacoss, on the planet, Penticore Prime. Who among you will take council with me?”
“Get down on the ground, and put your hands behind your head!”
Jinx was unmoved.
“Do you come in peace?” Shouted the soldier, but Jinx did not answer.
“Get ready to fire, on my command!”
“I do not think so, human.” Jinx tapped the heel of his staff onto the concrete floor, which was followed by an ear-piercing sonic shriek that punctured the eardrums of every soldier in the room. They fell instantly, screaming in agony as they dropped their weapons to cover their ears.
The second alien stepped forward, and as it raised its hand, the weapons floated off the ground and into the air. With a turn of the alien’s wrist they shattered, evaporating like dust caught in a windstorm.
“Go,” said the alien to Jinx. “Go and get my father!”
“Immediately, Seiss Thador,” replied Jinx.
Sensing Candor’s location, he ascended three flights of stairs. On the ground level of the complex, soldiers appeared, and once more he used his staff to sweep them aside.
Candor was correct, he thought, as he ran towards the building at the south end of the complex. Humans are a violent and brutal race.
Entering the building, he was confronted by countless males dressed in white coats, along with females wearing similar clothing. Some of them screamed as he approached, while others ducked into rooms or behind tables as they attempted to evade him. Jinx was undeterred, that is, until he met a human that did not move from his path.
“My name is Theodore, and I’m a friend of Candor’s. Can you understand me?”
Jinx nodded, yet said nothing in return.
“Have you come to get him?”
Another nod followed.
“You’re too late, he’s dead. He died about twenty minutes ago.”
“Your concepts are faulty, human Theodore. Take me to him.”
Theo nodded, and led the way to the shattered room on the top floor.
Jinx was amazed at the condition of the room, and immediately recognized it for what it was. “He retained the mind-gift, fascinating,” he said in Penticorian.
Candor’s lifeless body lay on the bed. Theo had closed his eyes, and then covered him with a bed sheet. Jinx pulled back the shroud, and looked at the human face of Candor Shuveen. Without a sound, he reached dow
n and took him into his arms.
“I have you, Seiss Candor. You need not fear the darkness, for I am here to protect you. You were successful, and the continuum is spared.”
“Can he hear you?”
“I do not know, human Theodore.”
Jinx began to leave, and Theo stepped aside. At the end of the hallway he stopped and said. “I come to claim the body of Candor Shuveen, and to deliver a warning, human Theodore.”
Theo nodded, in awe of the alien’s stature and power. In his arms, Candor’s body was no bigger than that of a child, and he cradled him with no effort whatsoever.
“I am from the planet Penticore Prime. You know of this place, for in your tongue it is called Earth. We are both of this world, only at different times. You humans are destroying your world, and by proxy, ours as well. We will not allow this to continue, and we are going to stop you.”
“Are you going to exterminate us?”
Jinx shook his head. “We are not murderers. The Goddess has allowed your race to evolve, and we must respect that. However, we will not allow your race to extinguish ours. I believe that Seiss Candor would say that we were here first.”
“What are you going to do?”
Jinx looked down at the human and said. “We will stop you from destroying our shared home. The very nature of your species is warlike, and cruel. We will preserve the lifecycle of the planet, and stop humanity from releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That is all that you need to know, human Theodore. You shall understand soon, and you must relay this message to your race. You must tell them to respect our world, and each other. You must tell them to abandon war, and seek the good of all your race. Only then, will we release you.”
With nothing more to say, Jinx turned away from him. A moment later he was gone, leaving Theo to contemplate the terrible mess that humanity was in.
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