“Take them alive… if you can” A voice was heard from the shadows as the Slates Rushed in all together at the Sentinels. Krawn Uses Heavy EMP to force them back. Then he turned to his standing crewmates and kicked them hard. “Live... MY FRIENDS”.
Kridious was dragging himself towards the Di-Dux to help his comrades. He saw that all of them but Krawn had fallen. He had barely reached the hilt of his sword when he saw his Xanethius push back the slates using his White Impulse. Krawn had gone all out and even killed a couple of Slates. As Kridious’ vision became more translucent, he saw Krawn approach Nahcas lying beside him to say something to him. Krawn then turned to Kridious himself. All he could hear were slow heavy and isolated breaths. He couldn’t even lip-read Krawn’s words. He saw the old Xanethius fully activate his White Core and charge towards the remaining enemies. But, he was halted by the sound of another phasor bullet which hit Nahcas in his abdomen. Krawn limped towards the Explorer. Kridious then saw Krawn getting infuriated and charging towards some shadowed enemy, as another phasor bullet sound was heard. Krawn had paused, holding his sword above him. His sword’s white-aura soon disappeared, and he fell down. As he was falling, Kridious saw through his faded vision, a man walk in from the shadows holding a mega-phasor-rifle. He came to the light to reveal his identity as none other than Castino Gorvez. Immediately after, Dragomir Lunarte joined him as they both gazed at the deceased Xanethius and apparently celebrated the victory. Kridious’ vision came to a dark halt as he heard the last words from them as ‘Etiamnum Triumphos Finem Mutatio’.
Diaries of Flex:
Episode 20-
The End is the Change.
A
fter 5 years of stabilisation and finalisation, the Eutopium had finally authorised the construction of the Krikos. In 406 E.E. The Eutopium publicly passed the Refuge Bill. Krikos was officially legal. It brought a new hope amongst the poor, although some part of them already knew that the Krikos was not meant for them. Not because they were poor, but because they'd not personally live to see it. But they were still happy because the demeaning and snobbish rich would also not be able to outlive its construction. Everyone raised a toast to not only the Krikos but also the great mind behind it- Dr Flexkon Harper Damien Dustener or in a more simple but legendary word, Flex.
The construction of the Krikos was in its preliminary stages. Flex had given answers to almost everything. But not completely everything, since there were yet many unanswered scripts which were being ignored. After deep thinking, I found that they were better left ignored both for the world's and for Flex's sake. I was on Mars helping out with the drainage of the planetary cores. It was being done with every celestial body to help out with the Krikos. Who would have thought that planets today would be raw materials tomorrow? It had been more than 20 years since the death of Flex. Yet his memories had been supporting a full life like virtual figure beside me. And also, there was his diary. I should rather call it his journals (for he used to become really angry if I said diary). 'The book of sustainability' as called by the Eutopium. I had already completed most of the book and one of the few things left was a part of the Galacta Cantos. I had planned that such a beautiful and articulate piece of writings shall not diminish with time and shall be preserved. Thus, after reading the last pages, I'd pass it on to an old friend of mine- Muta Hoko. No, he was not such a great friend of mine but turned out that he was an honoured member of the Hexagon and had good political sources to provide him with protection. Plus, the Hoko family was famous for not being so gregarious. Hence, it would have been safe with him. As such, I didn't ever get time to get involved in marital stuff so I couldn’t ever have the children whom I could have bestowed that book upon. Although, I had a full-fledged ‘family’ with a wife and a kid and all. But that doesn’t compulsorily make me a family guy. So, the only person whom I could trust with the book was Hoko alone. But this is not what I am supposed to tell you here. I am here to dictate the strangest of the Cantos. The last Cantos was the one Flex wrote before telling about the Krikos in detail. So, the negativity is ignorable. But this Cantos... see for yourself.
GALACTA CANTOS VOLUME V: Salvation.
Creation provokes nature,
Nature promises much more,
The powers are held in nurture,
Defiled yet to the core.
Life offers, Work to attain it.
The soul suffers, pray to retain it.
Ability is not a triumph.
It is a hoax that belittles righteousness.
The truth is need.
It’s the alibi for creation,
A memento of lie,
An eternal retribution.
Reticence is not a conscious offence.
We tend to like surprises.
But the grief is in the nonchalance,
And the lie with many ‘guises.
So, what is the lie?
What is it so harsh and rude?
Is it that of the hope, that of love.
Or one that’s never been reviewed?
Today, a man’s destination is his destiny.
What an ideal life that would be!
To seek the stars and here they fall,
To seek eternity and get to see all.
Times come by, people ‘want’ salvation.
Some to its name and some to its fame,
Together form an eternal motion.
Never to see what they desire,
Never to see the peak.
For it is a price very meek,
It is one that none can ever seek.
Into The Dimension:
Episode 20-
The end…. The Beginning...
B
lack. Dull shadow. Too bright. Bars. Glass. Shadow. Pain. Thoughtlessness. Light. Aching Light. Harshly Bright. Hero or villain. Too painful and remorseful a scenario. Two sat. One fit and one destroyed. The Hypothetical Observer… and Kridious. Why were they there? Why was ‘he’ there? Not the observer. He was hypothetical. He could have been anywhere. He was omnipresent though not omniscient or omnipotent. But Kridious? There, as not in the doom prison inside the City of Ariel. But there. On the apparently material world. Why was he there to breed such sorrow? Was this his mere PURPOSE? What had happened to all his mates? Those who had promised of greatness yet had fallen in darkness. Those who had stood by him yet couldn’t be seen? Why was it that he was still here though he had lost? What game was fate playing? All these questions ran inside the mind of the Observer. Yet he was incapable of helping the first man he had ever had pity on. He was hypothetical. A mere creation of the good and bad of the world like a precipitate of natural organic and inorganic reactions. Although he was not omnipotent… he knew sympathy. Sympathy… was perhaps the only difference between him and Galacta.
“It is time” Kridious heard a harsh voice as the door to his cell slid opened and lights were automatically turned on.
It was time indeed… for the execution of the hero. Execution through Vacuum-exile. Where the prisoner was given a space suit with limited supply and thrown off to drift into clear dark space to die either of lost hope or lost oxygen/water/food/etc. The Observer recalled the great Frinxus Massacre whence billions were sent off to space like that. Perhaps all black-flaggers were sent like that. The Eutopium had also carried on the Epilonian culture of the Frinxus and killed so many politicians in that manner. The very irony that now the black-flaggers along with the Eutopium were punishing a warrior who had fought for the Eutopium for his entire life. Kridious, bandaged across most of his body, made his presumed last walk inside the world. He came out to the loud brightness to feel the Krikos for the last time. He knew that it was the end. He had known it all along. Why? Because the anthropocentrism hidden within the thick hypocritical walls of the human mind had surfaced up. It was the end indeed. “How cool would it have been if we had just followed what we were handed down?” Kridious thought “So…. That’s the change they said… Ind
eed… even I’d have been convinced if I had more life. Sad…. So sad… even they have forgotten.”
“Oh… look. Our dear infamous VIN-die Kridious. We are still going to engrave it on your obituary… Oh … apologies. I forgot… You won’t have a grave” Senator Shu’ri said.
Kridious smiled. He was then not worried about any of his losses. He had LOST.
“All who die get a grave… The Galaxy… the universe… all are my grave. And also yours… not immortal, were we?” Kridious said.
“Hahaha… still the mocker huh? Well, you’d be surprised… for the Universe… has changed. You shall not even get your own galaxy as your grave. We are …far… FAR AWAY, from anything you can call home,” Senator continued.
“I think I was born on the Krikos… though I regret it… yet I AM ON my home,” Kridious said as the senator angrily turned around and escaped his insult.
Kridious walked further as he found that he was nearing the enormous noise of the crowd slowly. He came up the stairwell to find Billions of people in front of him in the Spartus Ground of Ariel, curving upwards infinitely along the Vertical Horizon of Krikos. In front of the crowd, stood half of the Eutopium council (the other half being killed due to resentment against the Happenings) along with the Slates behind them. In the centre stood none other than Castino Gorvez.
“The Limits of the Universe have been broken. By none other than us humans. Exploration is a small word for what we have achieved. We have crossed the barriers of fiction to a world which the gods won’t even believe exists. Technology is an old thing now. What we have here is magic. Made not by a scientist but by a wizard. Dr Flexkon Damien Harper Dustener. Not a regular fellow indeed. Not the regular ‘engineer’ or ‘scientist’. His mind showed signs of immense capability that humans had yet to explore. I beg your pardon… HAVE yet to explore. We limited our own minds by thinking more on what we already had than what we didn’t have. Even the most advanced ‘TECHNOLOGY’ couldn’t create another mind like Flex. We made an explorer. (Another set of guards came in Dragging the injured Nahcas using plasma floatation devices. Kridious, surprisingly, didn’t react). But he chose to walk against the path of Flex. Against the path of Galacta. It is true that Flex was a ‘Black Flagger’ as in classical Eutopian terms. But being a Stillite is more than just a race which forges war. It is more than just doing what we are supposed to do. It is far and above the known concept of CHANGE. Change is good. The old beliefs of the Stillites have changed now. Flex changed them. And I have given myself up to this faith called Stillite. I have given myself up to the principles of Flex rather than Narma Surja. I just ask you one thing. You know greatness. But are you ready to perceive it? Are you ready to give yourself in? Are you ready to follow Galacta? Are you ready to grasp this greatness? Cause I am ready… You tell me… Are you?”. Castino spoke up in the Visi Mic. The crowd was aroused to a loud and hap cheer. Then Kridious was pushed in front of the crowd on the highest podium. Castino said- “The one who opposed… here he is my dear fellow humans. He chose them before us. Your dear Xanethius has already been neutralized. His pale and cold figure floats in the old space. And here we have two who sympathized with him. Two, whom we had ourselves given gifts to aid our cause. Kridious, the superhuman we had created… See how he stands… Torn and cut like a classical butcher’s pet. And why so? Because he disrupted our cause. He supported everyone who stood against us. Those who attacked us! Those who tried to destroy us! He showed them sympathy. He is a great sinner. So have been many before. Known not by mere sin but by example. And here forth we shall make two more. Our Honourable First Speaker shall announce their sentences.”
“Level 3, Death by drain,” Dragomir spoke up, followed by the huge monotonous cheer of the crowd.
First Nahcas was taken to the exit terminal and geared up and instantly thrown, as Kridious saw the crowd celebrate the forecasted even. Then, Kridious was taken to the exit pad and was readied for exile. He was given 10 days of survival resources and was immediately thrown out through the launch ducts, specifically integrated for that purpose. The then blissful Kridious… he knew his regrets; he knew his remorse… yet he had accepted his demise, for the universe was not left worth living. He exited the Krikos at a rapid velocity. His centre of gravity was stable. But the Krikos was getting smaller by the second. Life… well, it seemed rather purposeless. Physical pain was far below what Kridious was experiencing. To have lost all his friends and family. First Hoko and Mira, then all the Sentinels… Nachas, and lastly his dearest friend and teacher Krawn. To be well acquainted with just half the reality and to be incapable of doing anything about this half. To have lost the will to fight. To have lost hope. He suddenly hit an astray asteroid and started rotating at rapid speeds. Now he couldn’t even get a stable vision of the Hellish Creation. His biology prevented him from passing out. He couldn’t find Nahcas anywhere. Maybe he was looking to pass a small gesture or something before they died, just for old time sakes at the Hexagon. And he slowly tried to observe and accept the darkness around him.
He kept drifting for eight days straight. Another part of the space, far from Krikos. He was almost dead. Just when even the last small kindle of hope had become evanescent, a blinding light woke up Kridious to his senses. He couldn’t hear anything of course. But, he observed carefully to find that it was a ship moving beside him at his drifting speed. It seemed as if he had caught the ship’s attention or maybe he was its objective all along. An extraction cord oozed out of the ship and attached itself to Kridious, stopping his rotation slowly. It slowly retracted back to the ship. Kridious found himself inside a strange hangar, with even stranger faces around him. Some Human, some seemingly Annaeaxian, and some even stranger. His ears were echoing in a constant tinnitus, as he felt heavy jerks on his chest and body. They had removed his helmet and suit and were all trying to wake him up. He finally got a slight hold of his auditory nerves when he faintly heard them say things like “Are you fine my friend?”, “What did they do to your arm?”, “Don’t die on us now the two of you…”, “So you are the famed Accountant of Death, Kridious?”. The last question caught his attention and he gained his complete senses. He replied “Yes… Yes, I am….”
The people standing in the room, all closed their eyes and bowed down their heads and said together-
“Etiamnum Triumphos Finem Mutatio.”
Diaries of Flex:
Episode 21-
Into The Dimension.
4
06 E.E... I had come to Ganymede in the Jupiter System under the ‘Krikos Rehabilitation Initiative’. Jupiter was one of our main targets since the planetary core was very powerful. And I was reading the journals like anything with a devastating urge to finish it. And I never could understand when it happened. I turned to a particular page probably within the ending quarter of the book and found it blank. I turned back and forth and found all acquainted topics. I became restless. It aroused too much anxiety. Although I wanted to finish it… I had hoped for the book to be eternal. But it finished. And that too into blank pages. Just when I almost had a panic attack… I heard a whistle… and somehow, I could correlate it with Flex’s scare-whistle. The door opened with the unusual suspense and it came out to be my assistant. And I found that her whistle was quite very different than Flex’s.
“Oh, there you are Sir… We need you on the field. Those nefarious opportunists from the T.W. are like leeches who’d suck off our work and forge it into their success… That’s all they have been taught right…” she said.
I immediately snapped out of it “Oh yes yes… I’d be there in a moment”.
“You better be Sir…” She said as she left.
I gulped down the coffee beside me and started arranging the books and other things in that office room. I could never know why… but I was thinking too much about what the girl had said.
Just the aura which drooled out of the girl and her words like ‘Those nefarious Opportunists’ and ‘forge it into their
success’ was impeccable. I mean there was a contrast right there between her and Flex. She said these things… these sarcasms and everything just as they were supposed to be said best. Very much unlike Flex. Just when I held the door notch… The words ‘Success’ and ‘Nefarious’ resonated in my mind. I stopped for a second and got startled. I recalled one of the Flexian sayings that ‘Life is a nefarious hoax cloaking sanity with the delinquent want and the reticent need. The reality is evanescent in the holographic light of success.’ I immediately ran towards the desk and opened the journals, and turned to the first blank page. This time, I observed carefully and turned to the next page. I found something weird written at the bottom of one of the pages. Something so ecstatic that it made me run to the lookout terminal, and for a few minutes just stand and look towards the Humungous Planet. The ongoing construction… Although not visible… but could be very well felt with the numerous Salvator-exchanges of the planet. And seeing the planet and remembering those words, brought the smile of the utmost bliss and the purest serenity on my face. The one fine truth of endlessness was given quite simply and clearly by Flex… You can never know the causation for a beginning or for an end… Or maybe the end shall always form a new beginning… Or it was never the end all along… Anyway… I take your leave for now. Always remember… My name… is Rif’g Daniels. And this is the part of the story of my life which changed yours… and just as Flex wrote down there … It is ‘To be continued.’
Into The Dimension:
Episode 21-
Diaries of Flex
“T
he fabled superhuman of Sayofringium… and the legendary Explorer,” said an Annaeaxian woman, in a weird accent, to Kridious and Nahcas, who sat silently beside each other on a huge bench. There were many check-ups that they were going through. The two were actually considering the possibility of them being psychotic, as a result of the experiments they had been through in their life. The happenings as such suggested of them being delusional. They couldn’t understand what was happening there.
Krikos: The Vertical Horizon Page 23