Millennium Zero G

by Jack Vantage

  He wished he could have spoken with her one more time. One more I love you. He wanted to scream.

  Humanity had survived. They had succeeded in beating the genocide that was cast upon them. Earth was again their future, their hope, their freedom.

  Dylan looked up at the hall. It was plain and white. People were confused. A hundred faces were crying with loss. All they had left were memories of loved ones, people who’d played roles in their destiny. A million tear drops were falling in the ocean of mankind.

  Women, children, and men all sobbed with emotional pain. He would never be able to forget or subdue the hurt that humanity had suffered, or his own. The remaining survivors all lay on make shift beds, stood in tatters, and cried with more emotion than any human could contain.

  “Dylan,” David said quietly.

  He looked up.

  David and his wife stood there, hand in hand. “Please meet my wife. This is Jasmine.”

  Dylan smiled thinly and nodded behind his tears. He lifted himself up and took her hand.

  “Pleased to meet you,” he said. “Your man here saved us, ma’am.”

  She said, “From what I’ve heard, you brought my husband safely back to me.”

  “Well,” he said, and let it drop.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she said as tears began to flow.

  Dylan pressed his lips together as she hugged him close. He wished for death. The torment of life without Lecodia was unbearable.

  “Don’t worry,” Jasmine said. “She’s safe now.”

  But that was too much. Too trite. “It’s not fair! Why couldn’t she make it?”

  Dylan cried in her arms for what seemed hours. Then a voice broke news that couldn’t be true.

  Helena Reeves approached the group. “David?”

  “Yes?”

  “Some of your group made it to Noah,” Helena continued.

  The group looked like they’d just received news of a Quazar lottery win. It took several seconds before anyone could reply.

  “What?”

  “They’re on the communicator to the ship’s bridge. Come on, I’ll take you.”

  Dylan’s eyes grew wide. “Lecodia? Is the person’s name Lecodia?”

  Helena looked a little taken aback. “I—I don’t know. Sorry, just come on. Michael is there, and he asked if he could speak to you, David, before we make light speed.”

  “Let’s go.”

  The journey to the bridge was only a few hundred metres of corridors and turns, but it felt like an eternity of distance to Dylan. The taste of hope lingered in his stomach. What if the universe wanted to play one last trick on him? Give him false hope and taunt him, then drop him again?

  He didn’t want to think. He just wanted to make it there and find out. If she was alive, he’d explode with relief, die of joy, declare himself reborn.

  David, Jasmine and he followed closely behind Helena. Their walk was a trot, and many sorrowful people looked at their happy smiles in passing. They were a single drop of joyous hope in a sea of sadness.

  Finally, they arrived at the heavily guarded bridge. The guards allowed them in.

  Dylan began sensing Lecodia; he could feel her spirit alive and well, like he was connected via telekinesis. He could feel the distress that held her, the longing for him. He could imagine her in the same emotional state.

  The bridge was spacious. The technicality of the design was blinking rounded components all inbuilt with the external grey walls. At the far end of the room, a wide, curved lookout peered into space. It was fifty metres wide and twenty high. Between them and it were crescent-shaped desks that curved ten metres and staggered forward. All the ship’s functions operated from touch screens that served as the tops of the desks. At least a dozen officers tapped away.

  “Jesus, this is bigger than I imagined,” David said.

  Helena approached and began talking to one of the officers.

  Dylan could barely contain his nerves. What if she was dead? What if this glimpse of hope was false?

  Helena waved the group over and walked them to a component that held a one-hundred-inch screen.

  “They’re about to patch us through,” Michael said from behind. He grabbed David and Dylan and hugged them tight. They were all ecstatic that they made it. Michael patted David. “Thank you, my friend.”

  The screen switched on, but it was blank.

  Damn, Dylan thought. It felt like he was on trial, awaiting news of his impending execution or freedom.

  Then suddenly the screen filled with Leon and Hammed sitting in mid-shot. They were covered by a blanket, and their eyes were filled with happiness at the sight of everyone.

  “Thank God you all made it. Let’s not do that again,” Leon said. His exuberance beamed through his smile.

  The group cheered and clapped at the sight, everyone but Dylan. He eyed the screen, looking for Lecodia.

  “We owe you for this David and Michael,” Hammed said from the screen. “None of us would be here if it wasn’t for you guys.”

  “You saved as many as I did, and yourselves. Well done. Nobody else could have pulled it off,” David replied.

  “Did Lecodia make it? Is she okay? Dylan said. His distress was real.

  Leon smiled. “I’ll let her tell you that.”

  Dylan couldn’t believe his ears. Did he hear correctly? For a split-second disbelief overtook him. His breath quickened, and his heart raced.

  Then there she was, warm and safe, under a similar blue blanket. She bent down next to Leon. “Dylan? Dylan are you okay?” she said, with tears running.

  “Thank god you’re alive,” he said, a grin spreading over his face. “I thought you— Oh god, I was so scared.”

  “Me too. I thought it too.”

  He said, “It’s a year to my parents hotel, do you think we can make it with a radio relationship.”

  “Of course I can,” she replied, and giggled a little.

  Behind Dylan, Jasmine cried like she watched an epic drama on television. She couldn’t contain the overload of emotion.

  All the while, Dylan looked at Lecodia, his lovely Lecodia.

  “Dylan, I love you. I will be waiting,” she said.

  “I love you too,” Dylan replied. He once heard that absence made the heart grow fonder. Nonsense, it made the heart ache like it bled. He didn’t want to spend a moment away from her. He wanted to be with her like his life depended on it. He had to deal with it, had to wait with longing patience.

  Michael said, “I’m sorry, but we need to be quick. I can hear the countdown for light speed. We’ll lose the connection as soon as we go.”

  Dylan said, “Lecodia, just remember, we share eternity together. I’ll see you soon. I love you.”

  “Dylan, I will think of you every night of my life. See you when you get there, my love.” She touched the screen.

  Everyone cried.

  Dylan got one last look at the person he wanted to share existence with. He knew he would never stop loving her, never break the connection. Even at distance he protected her with his love. It would be hard, but love would prevail like a man who made it through a sweltering desert on nothing but the will to live.

  Life would be strange without his dear Lecodia. Dylan felt the hugs of everyone consoling him, but he felt alone.

  Then gasps of awe sounded through the room. Everyone turned and watched the solar system from the lookout. It was alien. It was like a dimming torch cast a faint and feeble beam over the planets and moons of Quazar’s solar system. The sun was all but gone, only the dancing hue of its spiritual light remained in the vortex and secretion disc of the black hole. Quazar glinted with unflinching freeze. The large ball was an ice cube of lifeless activity, like a brain that had stopped chemically reacting, a cold desolate rock. A billion souls had perished in time, and the system would reshape and erase over the next millennia of seconds. The swirling methane, of the Quazar moon, had stilled and stopped its fight against gravity. Nothing could escape
the reaper hands of the universe, nothing but the human. The inner planets, so active with fierce fire in the memory of time, were now inactive pieces of pebbles that would succumb to the clutches of the hole like insects on the food chain. The wrath of nature had overcome life with psychotic dictatorship. There was no bargaining, no reasoning, just the fear and flee of humanity. The solar system was stilled and restrained by the cold void, and slowly would reel into the grinding machine of space that had swallowed the sun without mercy.

  Dylan watched the beast feasting, watched it dominate space, warp its fabric, take the sun into the unknown. Its vortex hypnotised him with absolute mystery, its internal workings beyond the human mind.

  “What do we do now?” Dylan asked David who stood equally mesmerized and awed by the sight.

  “We regroup, we restart, we go again.” he replied. “She’ll be there waiting, you know that don’t you.”

  “I know, I have hope, I have faith.”

  “It’s time to go home Dylan. It’s time to go home.” David said holding his wife with loving adoration.

  The universe had let humanity survive, Dylan didn’t know why. Maybe it had a soul and conscience. Dylan had learned all about leadership and government as he grew at intake, but nothing or no one came close to the ruthless govern of time and space itself. It was the end of time for humanity here.

  The End