“Hence, the tumor,” echoed Otis.
“So you agreed to implant these brain cells, that developed into a tumor, willingly?” I asked Otis.
“I did. I had nothing to lose. I had the gene. And let’s face it, to study the First Contact like no one else, from the inside, is an opportunity of a lifetime for any space historian.”
“Even if it would kill you?”
“So you think I am dead?”
“No, Otis, that’s not what I meant.”
“Well, dead or alive, I guess in my case, it’s an issue of semantics. Bookworms like myself love to indulge in such wicked questions. It was too tempting to receive virtual immortality and the ability to see the future of this story. I have to admit, I wanted to know how the story ends. It’s a good one.”
“Yeah, it’s one hell of a story, indeed,” I agreed.
“Speaking frankly, I had a few more arguments that made me jump at this opportunity. First, the government was all over me. I was not allowed to speak publicly about what I knew. The university was encouraged to drop my tenure. I was headed towards the bright future of a bum who cries ‘doomsday’ on the street corner. On the other hand, I could live and study an alien race for centuries. Not much of a choice, if you ask me.”
“Don’t take it wrong, Otis, but weren’t you worried about your soul?”
“Soul-Shmoul! Are you serious? Do you know much about the Solarins’ legacy in history? We are the descendants of the great Tai Solarin. Have you heard of him?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.” I shrugged.
“That’s the problem with your generation. Three hundred years ago, our extended family remembered Tai Solarin and were proud to be related to this great man. You should look him up someday. We don’t have time for African history now, but he was one of the great secular thinkers and educators in Nigeria. That’s when everyone around believed that the world was created in six days.”
Ebony cut our chatter short. “Hey, nice family reunion, but I may not have much time left. Mazula, you have this ability, and you will take it. And you will make the best of it to keep the two races from annihilating each other. And if, in the end, you decide you don’t want to become a hologram, fine. It’s your life.”
***
The trial resumed shortly after She had fed us some pastry-smelling goop. The panel returned to their seats, and the prosecutor announced that the remaining two Enkri were ready to vote.
Yellow [not guilty].
Yellow [not guilty].
Good news as it was, the vote resulted in a draw.
Ebony burst in tears. Katu’s vote was going to decide her fate.
Katu rose from his seat and made some tentacle motions, which She interpreted as a request for a speech. He shook his body as if trying to shake away deep drowsiness and fatigue, and spoke in Unkari, which She translated for me. “I did not expect my vote to be deciding in your case, human Designation River. I also did not expect to learn your history. Apparently, looking the enemy in the face makes it more difficult to hate him. In your case, I realize that perhaps we have something in common: a heavy burden of responsibility placed on us at birth by virtue of merely belonging to a certain class. You were born to carry responsibility that you did not ask for and had no way of abandoning other than becoming an ally and an accomplice in an organization inherently distrustful of our species. Thus is my vote.”
Katu raised a tentacle and voted.
Yellow.
Ebony looked at him in disbelief and with a huge gratitude.
She rose and spoke. “Enticrl shumt rashti.”
Katu nodded and took his seat.
This was such a phenomenal development. I secretly began hoping that I might also get lucky. Meanwhile, the prosecutor announced the vote on my case.
First vote was orange.
Orange.
Orange.
Orange…
I stopped counting. Everyone, including Katu found me guilty.
She grabbed my hand and squeezed it hard. At that moment I wasn’t sure what shocked me more, my sentence or her sympathy.
“Mazula, focus!” NVC’d Ebony. “We have a plan, remember? This is not the end!”
“If you say so,” I fired back.
The final part of the trial was about deciding restitution for the crime.
Since Ebony was found not guilty, her troubles were over. I, however, was expected to give another speech with a proposal of restitution. The prosecutor accessed his database again and announced: “Human Designation Mazula Desiree Lieutenant, you are found guilty by a unanimous vote of Enkri panel and Katu representative. Prior to the trial, you were informed that if found guilty, your crimes amounted to a death sentence. However, you have a debt before the Unkari race. How are you going to repay it?”
I rose from the bench and looked at my palms. They were shaking. I clenched them behind my back and spoke. “Honorable Enkri and Katu… I… I acknowledge my guilt before the Unkari people… and accept… my death sentence.” Pause. I looked over the panel, they were motionless. No emotions were sprayed in the air. Katu at that moment looked unusually attentive and sat upright with his tentacles folded above his head. “As for restitution, I believe that my death will not provide adequate compensation for my crimes.”
“Good job, Desiree, you can do it!” I heard Ebony encouraging me in my head.
“I request my liaison to step in and share our plan for adequate restitution.”
The room filled with various pigments. The Unkari were debating. Finally, they decided to allow Otis to share what he had in mind.
“Honorable Enkri, honorable ambassador Katu. Allow me to express my gratitude for your kindness in reinstating my rights as a Lenauri citizen of second class. Our history goes way back to the early morning of the present Enkri day, when your representatives came ashore on the Monrovia coast. I was the witness of your kind intent and spoke about it as much as I was allowed by my government. Further, I joined the negotiations in Reykjavik and did all in my power to facilitate diplomatic relations between your and my people. I welcomed your people in my world and spent years learning your culture and trying to understand you, because I firmly believed that only through understanding one another may we build bridges.
“My loyalty to your people was repeatedly tested. When the truth of the Katu day was opened to me, I did not hold it against Enkri. For centuries, Katu abducted my people and carried out research to understand how the ancient ancestors of the human species could consciously oscillate between quantum superposition of their choices, the ability that seems to reside in the depths of human consciousness and that is completely lacking in the Unkari species. All the wrongs that Katu dynasty did to my people aside, they did isolate the genetic marker for this ability. As you remember, I volunteered to be tested and you discovered that I belong to a rare genetic group that carries this marker. I am one of the 0.18% of humans that carry the marker.
“Further, you know that I volunteered to become your research subject, despite the fact that Enkri were willing to abandon it for ethical reasons. I dedicated my life to this cause, agreeing to implant a neuro-synaptic body in my brain that would eventually spread and disintegrate my brain. I believed that this research would move humanity forward in understanding our own origin, although the truth about it is currently unknown to them. It was Katu decision, many Unkari years ago, to seed Earth with biological material from those ancient and advanced human species to obtain a large laboratory sample and isolate this ability in the human consciousness. It was becoming apparent that only at a certain stage of evolutionary development would humans gain this ability. Previously, humans with the genetic marker could only receive an implant like I did, and like hundreds of human research subjects of the past Katu days.
“Honorable Enkri, ambassador Katu, you and I both know that humans are on the
verge of their evolutionary development to be able to form naturally occurring telepathic networks, as soon as enough of them are born with a new region in the brain that is responsible for this fascinating ability. During the next Katu day, humans will make that evolutionary leap and will become a formidable threat to the Unkari. I understand the Katu dynasty is trying to prevent their research experiment from spiralling out of control. I really do. But I appeal to the Enkri sense of moral responsibility for literally growing our race in a giant test tube and playing god with us.
“I know Enkri well enough to know that your dynasty is deeply ashamed of what your brothers from the other side of the planet have done with your discovery of an advanced peaceful species who once saved your ancestors from death at your most vulnerable moment, during your sleep cycle. Katu could not allow this fascinating ability to slip away from their hands, and whenever they took their turn in running Unkari affairs, they did everything they could to possess this power.
“It is Katu who destroyed the entire race of human ancestors. Katu are responsible for genocide. Katu are responsible for seeding the Earth. Finally, Katu are responsible for plagues and atrocities in human history, and all in order to correct the research sample. We all know that civil war between your tribes is imminent. We know that it will probably happen during the narrow dawn, the few Unkari hours when both dynasties are awake and sit at the High Joint Senate to handle the transfer of authority. We know that the next session of the Senate, for the first time in Unkari history, will probably result in the bloodshed.”
Otis paused, but not to catch his breath. As a hologram, he did not breathe. He paused for dramatic effect. And his intent worked. Both Enkri and Katu sat in the room very quiet, emitting faint splashes of turquoise, that She interpreted for me as sadness. Otis continued. “There is a narrow window of opportunity to prevent any of this from happening. And it will slip away if you execute Lieutenant Mazula. As you know from the interrogation phase, Lieutenant Mazula has the genetic marker, like I do. However, he benefitted from 300 years of evolution, and he is almost able to oscillate without the implant. He proved it countless times, when he was captured by the Unkari soldiers, first on Erinozhan, then on the Gliese 581e research facility. Unlike me, Lieutenant Mazula can oscillate in a field that re-aligns his synaptic connections. This is the next evolutionary step. Although to be able to operate outside the field, he still requires the implant, but this is the best chance we have.
“I speak on behalf of Human Designation Mazula Desiree Lieutenant. In order to pay restitution for his crimes, Lieutenant Mazula accepts his death sentence, however, he requests to delay it. If we implant the tumor in his brain now, he will have the rest of Enkri day to work with the Earth Nations and the military, to expose them to the people, and to bring the human government to the negotiation table. We can still resolve this without extermination on a global scale. Maybe by a narrow margin, but we still can avoid the Enkri-Katu civil war and the extermination of humanity. All sides must step in and accept a sacrifice in their agendas. “Desiree Mazula volunteers her life to become a liaison between Unkari and humans. Honorable Enkri, Honorable ambassador Katu, as you can see, you have nothing to lose and all to gain.”
The silence was deafening.
At that moment, I realized that She had been holding my hand all this time. Nothing to lose. Well put. With one small exception: one way or another, my life is over.
I was a time bomb, and now it was up to the panel to decide when it would go off.
Slowly the words and reasoning of Otis were sinking in, and I realized that avoiding a war between two galaxies at the cost of one life was not such a bad bargain. I turned to Ebony. She would not look at me, hiding two streams of tears flowing down her cheeks.
***
Enkri voted unanimously in favor of our plan, while Katu voted against. We fully anticipated it, but the most important thing was that the plan worked.
***
The tumor will kill me any time from six to eighteen months.
I am ashamed to realize I wasn’t ready, even if my sacrifice would save the entire human race. Or the entire universe, for that matter. I am standing on the shore of the methane ocean, on the deserted beach, watching the fog slowly roll in and out, waiting for the surgery, when I hear quiet footsteps behind me. I turn and see ambassador Katu quickly approaching.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he says in nearly perfect English.
“Ambassador, I did not know you spoke such good English.”
“I have studied your species for a very long time.”
“I see.”
“I cannot allow it to happen,” he says. “I am sorry.”
He draws a weapon from the folds of his robes and fires at me, right in the chest.
Dear Reader!
Thank you for reading 329 Years Awake! I am beyond excited to have shared with you a universe that I’ve created. It is hard to believe how long it took me thinking about all these characters, their connections, and how to make the story both interesting and believable. Did it work? I really want to know your opinion! Please feel free to send me a message on any of my social media accounts, especially on @329YearsAwake on Facebook and Twitter! These accounts are created for you.
But you know what would make my heart melt? A review on Goodreads and especially on Amazon! Unfortunately without these reviews the book has no chance to succeed. Please take a minute of your time and write a quick review.
Thank you again for your time and money spent on the book. I will work hard to make my future books even better!
Sincerely yours,
Ellie
LOCAL GALACTIC GROUP:
MILKY WAY, SAGITTARIUS DWARF AND ANDROMEDA GALAXIES
TIMELINE
2589-2918 - Katu Day
2325 - Ny meets with Anika and receives information about Otis
2284 - Otis arrives on Lenauri
2260-2589 - Enkri Day (Ennuturat is on Earth) Katu Ambassador Rogan is in the Enkri government
2275 - the First Contact
2274 - Anika Borgess proposes translation of Voynichese and leaves the Fourth Orbital colony, joins the Royal Moroccan Fleet
1998 - Riddif Ron allows Arkhipov to pass away
1986 - incident on Air Japan 1628 flight
1969 - the missing minutes, incident on the Moon
1962 - B-59, Cuban Missile crisis
1961 - JFK’s first day in office; K-19 was launched.
1952 - DC UFO incident
1942 - attack on LA, JFK in ONI, Charleston
1931-2260 - Katu Day (Argon is on Earth) Enkri Ambassador Marrlek is in the Katu government
1931 - Ennuturat departs to Lenauri, Argon arrives.
1930 - Voynich dies without ever deciphering the manuscript
1917 - JFK born, the incident in Portugal with Mother Mary apparition
1912 - Wilfrid Voynich discovers the Voynich Manuscript
1882 - incident in Lebanon, Connecticut. Observance of the ‘pizza slices’ over the moon
1600 - 1868 - Tokugawa Shōgunate Japan
1602 - 1931 - Enkri Day (Ennuturat is on Earth )
1461 - 1463 Jeroen and Leo; Jeroen is abducted
1273 - 1602 - Katu Day
944 - 1273 - Enkri Day
615 - 944 - Katu Day
286 - 615 - Enkri Day
In her previous life, Ellie was a lawyer specializing in human rights.
Now she writes fiction, consumes massive amounts of late night comedy and politics, collects typewriters, and lives all over the world with her spouse and a 5-yo Newfoundland dog.
She lived, worked, and studied in such countries as Kosovo, Ukraine, Liberia, Albania, and the United States.
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What to Read Next:
Ellie’s Picks
Check out Ellie’s magazine on MagCloud! Ellie collected her exclusive fiction and professional photography in this luxury 60-page full-color magazine.
Issue #2 is coming soon! It is dedicated to 329 Years Awake, where Ellie tells about the history behind the book and opens up about exclusive subjects. She also cosplays scenes from 329 YA and photoshoots them with professional photographers.
“Lab 99”, SCI-Fl/COMICS
By Rujanee Mahakanjana and Christian Stanfield
Lab 99 the comic book series follows the story of an interstellar lab that watches over our species and solar system. In the first issue, Alien (Eddie) has just returned to unexpected news after a mission on Earth. The comic book also introduces you to the backstories of the main characters in the feature film screenplay, Lab 99.
Order your issue on Patreon!
The Three Hares & Other Memories: Poems
The Three Hares was inspired by the great Ukrainian poets, past and present, who protest against corruption, oppression, and injustice. The rest of the poems are primarily drawn from a decade of working in post-conflict countries such as Afghanistan, Kosovo and Liberia and the sense of displacement that accompanies the expat life.
Now on Amazon! Audio book is coming to Audible.com as well.
Scaffolding Magazine
Literary and art magazine featuring independent and traditionally published authors. Short fiction, artwork, fascinating editorials from around the world! Look for the issues on:
329 Years Awake Page 32