by Tew, J. D.
I finally caught up, and we loitered outside for a moment before entering the conference room, which was well-guarded by ornate, golden double doors. We were reminiscing about life back home on Earth.
‘What I miss most is my video games. I was on the second-to-last level of Call of Duty,’ I said.
‘You’re thinking about a video game?’ Mariah rolled her eyes. ‘How about chocolate-chip pancakes in the morning for breakfast, or the bumper cars at Fun Haven. That’s what I miss. I also miss my mom and church,’ Mariah said, as she looked down at her feet. ‘I just want them to put in a church service here.’
Liam piped up. ‘Preserving Sephera is a damn good cause worth fighting for, in my opinion.’
Before Dan could jump in the conversation, the double doors suddenly burst open. It was Migalt. ‘You may enter now. The debriefing will begin shortly.’
We sat down. With Theodore gone, the room was filled with a queasy phobia of the unknown. We had lost our leader, the one who had brought us all here, and the one who knew all the secrets of Zane and his empire. Now we were now lost ourselves.
Migalt and another fellow Bromel sat near the rear of the room opposite to the entrance. They were perched atop two massive traditionally carved wooden thrones, sitting like kings. Remember, the Bromels were twelve feet tall, so the thrones were correspondingly huge. We felt like miniatures in a room for giants, cowering before the might displayed before us. Migalt, his legs splayed out, announced, ‘Projection recorded of the traitor, Theodore Daniel Crane, at 23:12:39 yesterday. Permission granted to view.’
As we gazed on in fascination, desperate for answers, the hologram played right in the middle of the spacious conference room, looking nearly as convincing as the real thing. The present image was a playback of the video surveillance the day of Theodore’s attempted assassination. I knew from watching it that Theodore wasn’t—Theodore. Not the Theodore we knew.
His eyes were distant—determined. There was no soul in his actions, only blank anger. That was all I needed to know. In a strange way, I felt reassured. I glanced at my teammates. I could tell they were thinking the same thing.
Migalt’s voice boomed as he stared daggers at us, ‘This meeting begins now, as you are aware, your former team leader—and let’s be perfectly clear, infiltrated a wing of this ship that was forbidden. His actions took the digital life of one Sepheran and destroyed two Ophanims that were each over two thousand years old. All three of these soldiers were decorated in battle and have served Zane in the highest tradition of honor, loyalty, and valor. Theodore is now a rogue.’
His eyes, brimming with outrage, locked into each of our own as he scanned the room, daring us to defend Theodore. ‘He was last seen entering the Valeon Galaxy. Upon his own initiative, his IPU was reformatted, and he is now separated from our communication and surveillance, leaving him just as dangerous as Travis. Your ultimate duty is to obey your true leader, Zane. The role of Messiah has been stripped away from Theodore. Remember, there is no Sephera without Zane, and Sephera must be defended at all costs. Does anyone have any information that can help us in delivering Theodore to justice?’ Migalt asked.
We all sat and looked at each other, but I knew what was going on there. Sometimes adults think they are superior to kids and in most ways, they are. But not this time.
Seeing our stunned reactions, Migalt leaned over to his fellow Bromel and whispered to him, ‘This is a lost cause.’
Migalt badly misunderstood the concept of loyalty and friendship. Perhaps beyond Earth, friendship was an archaic concept, an old relic to be tossed away.
No. We belonged to Theodore. To discredit him was an assault on what we stood for at the beginning. Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno. All for one, and one for all.
This maxim was at the root of our dissension, carefully concealed from Zane and his followers. We didn’t follow Zane to the ends of Earth, let alone throughout the continuity of space. We exalted Ted. He was leading us to the destruction of Travis and the Odion, and that is what I was for—until the moment Migalt spoke harshly of Ted.
‘Why is it that you are not standing by Theodore now? He brought us here to fight with you, side by side!’ Liam roared.
Migalt slammed his enormous hand on the armrest and shouted, ‘You don’t understand! Theodore is no longer Theodore. He has been compromised. His mind has been accessed by evil, and he is now a perpetrator of treason. That makes him a threat to the Urilian resistance and an obvious threat to Zane.’
He raised his hands in frustration, and muttered to himself, ‘I can’t believe I am reasoning with a bunch of teenagers.’
‘We are no longer teenagers because of your brain-washing! We have become what you wanted from us!’ Mariah stood up and asserted herself. She was trembling. I looked at her in awe, mentally cheering her on.
Migalt snarled at us. ‘You are failing to connect because of your inability to process.’
We were shocked at his abject dismissal of our worth.
‘In my eyes, you are insignificant.’ Perhaps attempting to bite his scurrilous tongue, he softened his tone. ‘There are only two ways that this can end. We destroy you now, or you go to Karshiz for training. There, you will be under the guidance of King Trazuline. We will issue weaponry that suit your abilities and you will train. Is it a deal?’
We glanced at each other. We were pinned down by his ultimatum. If we decided to oppose him, then we may have been deleted here and now. Theodore had told me about how easy it was for Zane’s forces to make someone disappear.
I weighed my options carefully. There was one reasonable thing to do, and it was to relieve the pressure on our group by swearing our allegiance to Zane’s agenda.
I knew my group was smart enough to decipher my upcoming façade. I stood up and spoke as dispassionately as I could, ‘We are here, and our desire is to preserve Sephera. I don’t have anything to say about Theodore. He was always private with his thoughts, and I knew him better than most. So I apologize if he made things difficult for us. We, too, are devastated by his actions. Would anyone else like to say anything?’
My friends stayed silent. As expected, they knew exactly what I was doing. We were going to keep our support for Theodore a secret.
We were dismissed, and as I was leaving, I was interrupted by a transmission from a male voice on my nanocom, ‘Acknowledged. Order to deploy Humans to Karshiz granted. King Trazuline’s request confirmed.’
King Trazuline’s request? Something was going on, and we hadn’t even been given a choice yet. Somehow, I had the feeling that the covert transmission was mistakenly broadcast to my nanocom; perhaps others as well. We were now too dangerous, even for Zane, to remain aboard his ship. Our team was in purgatory. We chose to avoid confrontation. Zane was the chess master. Trazuline was a designated king who had chosen to make a move on Zane’s chessboard, for whatever reason. As for the rest of us, well—we were pawns.
We all retired to our rooms. Mariah was having doubts and cried against my shoulder before I reluctantly cut her loose to rest. We were failing, and it was because the diligence, which had defined us and bound us together, had disappeared when Theodore left.
We were meant to be his understudies, but it was more than that. He had made us believers. Theodore gave us desire, and he was everything that we needed. Mariah’s crying affirmed this thought.
Before Zane had appeared in a puff of smoke and beseeched me to seek out Theodore, back on Earth, I was just a boy whose dad who had only one life goal—to mold a young gifted kid into a dentist. I realized there was no going back. By bringing me to a strange new destiny, far beyond the stars, Theodore had liberated me from the shackles of a one-track destiny.
Liam was torn by his father’s adultery. Mariah was dealing with her own issues at home, and until now, had not left anything to chance. Dan did just the opposite; he gave into chance, and scorned the boredom of his life with risk. That was then. Now, as a nascent team, we were already given purpose.
We just had to capitalize on it.
No one loses a diamond in the rough and walks away.
We admired Zane for his resolve to protect Sephera, but Theodore was in our hearts. He was still the Earth’s Messiah, despite Zane’s verdict that he be stripped of this title. Wherever Ted was, whatever he was doing now, I knew it was in our best interests.
In that video, they showed us of Ted destroying the Ophanims and romping through the Garden of Odion. Zane had intended for that portrayal to have us recoil from the memory of Ted. In fact, it was the opposite. The only thing that I saw in that likeness was how powerful one boy could be. He was a kid who defied the savage world of abuse at the hands of his father. Ted was formed in the belly of cowardice; in his primary school years he was thrashed by the weathered hands of hatred. He once had told me that his father and mother meant nothing to him, because he meant nothing to them.
We valued Theodore. Even though our mystical fantasies of outer space were brutally demolished, we had replaced these idle thoughts of teenagers with deep connectivity and esprit.
Although I was not destined to be a spiritual leader, my love of logic and my incredible powers of observation could save us. I was the missing Linc. From that day on, I studied every move the resistance made. I looked for holes, gaps, flaws, and cracks. I was destined to find all the weaknesses of our adversaries, not for maliciousness, but to inaugurate our crew’s rise as the acolytes of Theodore Crane.
“In the morning Dan, Mariah, and I, would leave the Uriel on a one-way trip to the planet Karshiz. There, the Bromels in charge of us would leave our entire crew stranded with King Trazuline. What he wanted from us I was yet to discover.”
15 theodore: hell
I am no longer Theodore Crane. I am prisoner eight-six-seven-five, reduced to a number within a database, and a nobody in a prison cell.
My first war was on the planet of Tritillia. It is hard to believe I can tell of this war so quickly. I think of my time on this planet, and it seems like it was an eternity, given that it was such a captivating civilization.
Make no mistake. Tritillia, the jewel of the cosmos. There is no other planet in the multiverse as breath-taking, yet treacherous. If heaven is real, it consists of a dream-like life on Tritillia, tinged with the anxiety derived from its menacing creatures.
Let me explain what Ed had briefed me on during our one hour of orbiting the emerald planet. This planet is navigated by its three massive rivers; the Latilliam, the Demonxillia, and the Dartilliac. Those rivers stitch the Tritillian landscape. Their plentiful tributaries nourish new life and give strength to bountiful layers of flora and fauna that exist all over the planet.
I lift my tablet closer to my face. I glance at my reflection on the shiny surface and perceive that the shadows upon my face are subsiding. I look healthier. Yes, I feel more energy. Finally, after weeks of foreboding, after weeks of drifting in and out of bare consciousness, excitement is in the air.
Must be these injections from that shapely nurse. Yes. That’s it!
If my hosts are trying to revive me, there must be a plot thickening outside these walls. I wonder if anyone else from my space adventures is here, captured like me.
“Alright, here we go. So let’s see. The Valeon sun’s red aura against the moons—varying in shade and tone—lavished the ground with a monochromatic display of light.”
The same dwarf star that birthed the neighboring planet Karshiz, home of King Trazuline, generously bestowed sunlight upon the plant Kingdom of Tritillia: a world ruled by plants and populated by millions of insects.
Both Tritillian phyla of life were deadly, yet alluring in their own ways. Beautiful roses seeped venomous sap from their barbed thorns. Razor-sharp leaves from the KeKua tree, if detached by turbulent winds, could amputate a limb.
Sentient plant beings, known as Elons, were native to the massive plant world that inspired fear into any wayward visitors that had the misfortune to crash-land upon the beguiling planet. The Elons were sly, graceful, volatile, and dangerous, all at the same time. They were not to be trusted. The Elons were just incapable of recognizing outsiders as friendly.
The Elons believed that creation of their world was divinely inspired; chaotic, genuine, and organic. They were right. They too denounced Zane for the methodological assembly-line mass production of his followers. To them, Zane was building a powerful empire out of nothing—just the inorganic materials of lost souls. He was suspected of luring unsuspecting beings to Sephera, where they would die. Even so, he would not let them rest in peace.
Yes, Zane’s creations were all clones—a label that detractors also derisively affixed upon the Dietons.
Looking back, I did admire these Elons. I thought they had a healthy and passionate yearning for freedom. To keep a symbiotic relationship with your planet is paramount in the scheme of love.
The emergent level of the forest stretched four thousand feet into the air, just before it finally touched the grace of the sky. As for the jungle beneath, it was so rampageous that not even the Elons could find complete solace there.
The Elons’ only native enemies were the insects. The insects had no remorse over nibbling away at the fiber of the Elons, should they remain too still. The other plants were not sentient, mobile creatures like the Elons and hence were more at the mercy of these ravenous critters. The insects of Tritillia were massive, domineering, nasty brutes. Most rivaled the size of the birds we knew on Earth. A Pegolatian moth was the size of our great eagle. In the unfortunate scenario that someone was foolish enough to take a shot at this gargantuan moth with a phaser gun, it usually would shed its scales, a toxic event that could destroy an entire village of Elons. Thankfully, such moths were difficult to find within the forest’s dense canopy.
Size, however, wasn’t a measure of viciousness. A Drigorian Mosquito was smaller than a dust particle. It could release hemotoxic venom that destroyed red blood cells—ultimately killing the flesh of any blood driven beast. The toxins had no effect on Elons, since only chlorophyll ran through their veins. The dermonecrotic lesions that the insect could inflict were similar to the brown recluse spider that is native to America.
The Elons were made up entirely of plant cells. They didn’t have brains like us. They functioned upon instinct, preserved by memory. Their reflexive experience was so advanced that they knew how to act and react upon their environment precisely with each previously learned situation.
Elons were bound to their environment. They communicated through the incredible concept of Kora, meaning love by transference. It was like telepathy, but far more simple and devastatingly effective. Instinct, rather than complex thought, was transmitted from plant to plant through a domino effect.
The King of Tritillia could set the whole forest in motion with one tap of a leaf or a tug at a blade of grass. That same power made Tritillia uninhabitable by any outside species, because the forest could collapse on an enemy like a fifty-pound drum of sand on a beetle.
Our ship was rapidly descending toward the planet. Our hull, set ablaze by atmospheric friction, approached dangerous levels of stress, nearing total collapse. Gritting my teeth, I pressed on, destined to make an impact with the ground below.
We were about thirty thousand feet from the surface of the greenest planet I had ever seen. Our descent was shaken by the ferocious gusts of wind in the stratosphere. Luckily for me, Ed was an accomplished aviator and a maverick of the air.
That wasn’t one of the best flights possible. Fear gripped my throat. I did not want to head out so far away from Zane, only to die on my own watch.
‘Ed, what the hell is happening?’ I screamed. I banged against the walls. I was defenseless within our steel coffin. My body slammed into the buttons and levers situated in the wall, because my harness wasn’t attached correctly.
‘I told you to buckle and then pull the strap, and did you do so? No, you didn’t. You are not smart,’ Ed stated with outright honesty, giving no regard to my feelings. It was typ
ical robot behavior. I finally plopped down on my seat long enough to sit. I shredded the leather of my chair with my fingernails. I was that anxious.
The temperature of our ship’s cabin increased to one hundred and thirty degrees Fahrenheit. I could not even bring up my hand to my face to wipe away the sweat, because I strapped it tightly to the chair. My perspiration mercilessly stabbed at my eyes, despite my intense squinting. Through my slits, I gasped as a panel from the bow on the outside peeled off like the lid of a sardine can, then disappeared.
‘If we don’t make it, I just want you to know I think you are a damn good robot,’ I said as if I was saying my last words.
‘Is this the beginning of a verbal will, because I am not currently recording audio? My processor’s focal point is landing this ship,’ Ed said while he was computing all of his flight variables.
We were a ticking bomb, set to explode against the planet beneath us. Ed launched anti-gravity propulsion thrusters from the stern of the ship, and these slowed us down considerably. I was having trouble breathing, and as the space between the looming jungle and our ship narrowed, so did my breath.
Ten… nine… eight…
Impact was imminent. I was about to die.
CRASH! My body reverberated with the impact and my clenched teeth nearly fractured. When we hit, Ed went off-line, and I was knocked unconscious.
Several moments passed by. Slowly, groggily, I rose out of my concussion-induced slumber. Any further velocity and my rolesk could have been embedded into my scalp for good. Ed was still off-line, and I heard thrashing and slithering noises outside. Something was coming after us!
I could not see beyond the windows, so thick and dense was the vegetation surrounding us. I felt positively claustrophobic. Was it my imagination, or was the jungle closing in on us?