The Esoteric Design: Disbanding Hope

by A. R. Crebs

  “I thought you said…you were on…” Dovian hesitated, pursing his lips as he grasped for the appropriate words, “a birth control of some kind!”

  “I am! Wait…don’t tell me. You have magic...junk?!” She gestured to his pelvis to which he promptly looked down at himself.

  Speechless, Dovian ran his fingers across his forehead. “I…my…I have…what? Magic what? What does that even mean?”

  The chaos was getting out of control. Bullets and Brute blasts were colliding around the couple, fire flying past their heads. The explosive noises were becoming unbearable. Dovian ran his hands through his hair and over his face, groaning in irritation. Reaching for Aria, he snatched her wrist.

  “No. Nope.” He shook his head defiantly. “Timeout. We’re taking a timeout. Enough of this.”

  Twisting the pendant on his scarlet coat, the two instantly disappeared from the battlefield. Aria barely had time to respond to Dovian’s touch before he tore her away from reality. With a sizzle, the world melted from the center of her vision outward, the browns of the dusty earth dissipating into blackness with specks of navy and white, pinks and yellows blurring around her. Aria turned to the side, her breath catching in her lungs as she felt her whole body cover in goosebumps. Far off in the distance was a burning mass of orange, different orbs of various shapes and sizes and colors churning slowly around it. As far as her enhanced vision could carry, she saw a multitude of glittering sparks. Nebulas of foggy hues intermingled with specks of white and pale blue. A flickering tail would shoot by as a rumbling rock or two would quake around them. The woman’s eyes sparkled in the light as it was the most beautiful sight she had ever seen.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered, breathless. “This is…” she paused, choking on her words. Lifting her head to Dovian, she awaited an explanation.

  Looking past her at the spinning orbs, he gave her a sad smile if ever so slight. “This is the edge of time.” His voice was barely audible. Looking at the woman, he placed his thumb on her chin, guiding her to look downward.

  “Holy crap!” Aria gasped, her hand covering her mouth.

  Beneath them was a familiar sight. She had seen it before, but nothing quite like this. Below, with spiraling clouds of white and massive blotches of brown and blue, was the Earth. From where she stood, she could not see the battlefield.

  “Sometimes I would come here…only to sit and meditate. It was a quiet place. I could be here for days, and no one would know any different as to them, I was gone mere seconds,” he whispered.

  “I thought you said humans were incapable of traveling through the use of your frequency tuners,” she said.

  “Yes. And right now, you are not human.”

  Aria looked down at herself, her hands covering her stomach. How could she have missed it? How could the hospital have not noticed? Aria grimaced, pulling up her DNAIS. Sure enough, she had a multitude of missed calls from the clinic. She didn’t have time to mess with them. Perhaps that was what the strange anomaly was on her lab results, not her nanomites. She felt like bashing her forehead against a wall for being so careless.

  “This is…insane.” She lowered her head, suddenly not feeling well.

  “Imagine how I feel,” Dovian chuckled. Aria tore her gaze to the Sorcēarian. “I nearly killed the mother of my own child.”

  Aria moaned, slowly sitting upon the invisible floor. “Don’t say that. That’s so weird to hear,” she grumbled. “I’m pregnant?” Aria stared at Dovian’s boots, her mouth wide open as the revelation finally set.

  “I can’t let you go back out there,” Dovian firmly stated. “If Sapphire finds out....”

  “What does she want, Dovian?” Aria asked. “What is the purpose of all this chaos?”

  Heaving a tired sigh, Dovian waved his hand through the empty air. From his fingertips, an image appeared, replaying the events of the war that they were supposed to be fighting. Everything seemed to freeze in place, nobody moving, no creature snarling, no bullets piercing. Time had stopped. The image spun, zipping upwards to Sapphire’s tower, revealing the little girl with black eyes.

  “Sapphire wants to wipe the world a clean slate. She desires to re-inhabit it with human-Sorcēarian hybrids. Her plan is to use Ivory to house and birth the children.” He looked at Aria, knowing her question. “Yes, she has a Sorcēarian gene and apparently can have children despite her bionic state.”

  “And…I’m assuming that means you are expected to help in the repopulation process,” Aria spoke slowly, an edge of bitterness coating her words.

  He nodded slowly, not matching her stare.

  “Really? Is that why you stayed in Ives?” she scoffed. “You’re somethin’ else.”

  “I did not remain on Ives merely to…impregnate Ivory!” he roared. Immediately, he looked away, staring at the faraway sun. Actually, that kind of was why he was there. He was tempted by the idea of living a life with I’Lanthe once again. Though, he never truly wanted it. He knew better than that. His purpose was of greater meaning. “It’s come to the time I should probably tell you everything.”

  Aria pushed to her feet, glaring daggers at the man. “You probably should have told me the truth from the very beginning!”

  He held up his hands dismissively. “Even I didn’t know the whole truth. Not until recently.”

  “How can I even trust a single word you’ve said? Betrayal. That’s all you’ve shown me.” Her expression was both angry and hurt.

  “It’s not how I wanted things to be, believe me.” Dovian’s frown curved further.

  She scoffed. “Just tell me what the hell is going on.”

  He cleared his throat, waving his hand over the image he had projected. “Since the beginning of my life, God had preordained a plan for me. No one knew of this plan, except for Gaius. Even today, I have no means of telling exactly what will happen, exactly what my end will be. But as I near the final point, the point I was tasked to do, the timelines, though always a never-ending spiral of possibilities, condense further and further, telling me the way to go. At first, when I had met you, I had only known what was about to happen, not how it would end.”

  As Dovian spoke, flickers of his life flashed across the projection. Aria intently watched, finally grasping the beauty of Ives and its people. As time sped by, it came to the point where Dovian first met Aria and Troy. Dovian halted the replay by holding up his palm.

  “If you can stop time, control it like you do, why can’t you go around and kill all of Sapphire’s army?” Aria asked, amazed.

  “There are specific rules a Sorcēarian must follow. Time disallows certain things. There are paradoxes, the possibility of creating wormholes. It’s a delicate process. Euclid was a master of these things. It’s how he was capable of doing all that he had done. He had found loopholes in the system, ways to create chaos without much repercussion involved. But, perhaps his repercussion was me. He got away with much, but in the end, his chaos always came to an abrupt end. At too great a cost, I realize.”

  Dovian grasped outward, pulling invisible strings that expanded a particular series of scenes. From the frames, Aria could see Gavin’s death, replayed a many times over, slight differences each time. Sometimes he and Troy died. Sometimes she died along his side. Others, the whole team burned inside the helicopter. The scenes unfolded across their entire journey together. No matter what, Gavin always died.

  “There are times where my mind reveals things to me, like a form of premonition. I have a fleeting moment to react, to choose the right path. So far, I had done all that I could to keep as many alive. Everything I’ve done was to ensure the best possible outcome–agreeing to come with you in the first place, sending Hector out to find King Petey, buying chocolates in Saray, to giving the sermon in the Underbelly. It goes as far as a swing of my staff, to one wrong step or word uttered from my mouth. I’ve told you; the things that work inside a Sorcēarian’s mind are beyond what humans can comprehend. There’s always a miniature universe of knowl
edge at work.” He frowned at one scene in which he had narrowly missed saving Aria, the woman dying in his arms. “And it is indeed very tiresome.”

  “You see all this?” she asked, appalled.

  “Every second of every day,” he grumbled.

  “How…do you filter through it all? How do you even know what’s real?”

  “There are plenty of ways of telling. Believe me when I say that it is as natural as breathing to us.”

  “Why am I not experiencing this?” she questioned.

  Dovian hummed a laugh. “Because you are still a human. You may experience heightened senses and quicker reactions, but your mind isn’t capable of something like this. If may just blow that pretty, little head of yours to bits.”

  Aria rolled her eyes.

  His amused look faded as quickly as it came, however, as he saw the entire world break into pieces.

  “So many possibilities, so many chances, so little time.” His eyes rapidly darted back and forth as the images flooded at an impossible speed, the man tracking each one. “Here, so close, but everyone dies at the last second. Here, Euclid lives, but everything ends fifty years from now. Here, you all die before you even get to Ives. Here, I refuse to come with you. Here…it must have been a very bad day. I kill all of you and send the world to ashes, living amongst the burnt debris for a lonely eternity.” He shuddered.

  “But you said it narrows,” Aria spoke again.

  “It does. We’re getting closer to where I need to be, closer to my purpose. I see everything now in nearly a straight line. The gates are closing in around me, and there are few choices left, few possibilities.” The projection slowed down, reflecting on the night Aria had shared with Dovian. She awkwardly looked away, feeling the heat rise to her face. “Of all the possibilities….” He waited a moment. “When Sapphire ordered me to destroy you, I was at a loss. Every path led to me doing what I had done. There was no way around it, no way without destroying the entire world in the process. Yet, here you are. Of course, I had to shoot you. I had to kill you and Troy. There was no other way. But never once had it ever occurred to me that you were pregnant.”

  The scene unfolded of the time when Dovian firmly held Aria in her place, pressing the gun beneath her ribcage. He solemnly closed his eyes, inwardly cringing at the display. Watching the replay, Aria noticed this time a hint of sadness in Dovian’s eyes; she saw the quiver in his lip as he tried to appear merciless. It soothed her somewhat. And Dovian had noticed once again the pain and traumatic mental distress he had placed upon her.

  “That child being inside you was essential in not only your survival, but it was necessary for the whole of the earth. You would not be here; these militaries would not be here,” he said, pointing to the vast abyss.

  “But I still don’t understand why you can’t simply do it all yourself,” Aria added.

  “Because…for what purpose does humanity deserve to survive if they do not fight for themselves? The free path had already been given in the past, yet you all still forsake what was given. For what reason would I desire to save you all if you had not offered to die trying? It’s much more complicated than it seems. And without you and Troy…there would be no survival. In any revelation where you two were not alive, I had failed. The darkness would come quickly without you two.” Slowly turning to her, he further explained. “It is because of you, Aria, that humanity has lasted this long. You maintain hope when others do not.”

  “Hope?” Aria’s brow wrinkled. “I understand the cliché of maintaining hope, but what does hope have to do with anything?” She looked at the projection, the images flickering once again to the war outside their time. It appeared futile. “Look at us, Dovian. We’re dying out there. Despite all my hope, it’s done nothing but lead us to failure. Me having hope has not helped us. In fact, it has led Sapphire to our doorstep and has allowed her to attack the other unprotected city-states. I have failed everyone. We are doomed.”

  “Aria….” Dovian’s lips parted as he looked at the woman in wonder. “Hope is a thing that, despite all that moves against us, defies the physics of pain. It may hurt now. Yes, things may seem utterly doomed to failure. Life may seem like a dark hole caving in around us, but hope digs us out. Hope floods a light upon the darkness that is failure. Hope is the bandage to our pain. It holds us together, inspires us to keep moving when our feet feel stuck, motivates us in a way that doesn’t make us dreadfully ask ‘why me’ but leads us to passionately question ‘what can I do.’ Failing is not what dooms us. Losing hope is.”

  He approached her and gently placed his hands on her shoulders. “And you’ve maintained hope this entire time. You’ve united the world with that stubbornness of yours. You’ve done more in the past few weeks than any leader I’ve ever known. You are the key to all of this because there is something inside of you that won’t stop. You simply won’t quit. You not only maintain hope, but you instill it in others. You’ve joined the nations, moved armies, and ignited a passion within the innocent that makes them cheer for you. So, despite feeling like you’ve failed, you’ve got to realize how much the hope of one person can spread across the world. There’s a power within you Aria that you’ve always had. Don’t ever forget that.” There was something in his eyes that told Aria there was more to it. He forced a smile that was obviously not natural.

  “What else aren’t you telling me?”

  “I need to keep you safe, Aria,” he said, avoiding her question.

  “Why am I so important? Just because I have hope? I don’t believe that,” she said, folding her arms. “I’m just some military grunt.”

  “You are with child; I must keep you out of harm’s way.”

  “I’ll be fine!” she argued.

  “No. Sapphire cannot find out. If she does….” He looked to the timeline, pulling out a foggy vision. It revealed a multitude of horrors. Aria could be kept alive to birth a child, the process killing her. If by some incredibly rare chance she could handle birthing a Sorcēarian half-breed, the rest of Aria’s days would be spent in a terrible and painful existence. Then, there was also the possibility that Sapphire would simply kill her outright, Aria’s child being the only creation that could stand up against her future army of demon-inhabited hybrids. In a fleeting moment, Aria saw all of the possibilities. She saw herself dying. She saw herself birth a beautiful little boy with white hair and watched him grow to become a formidable opponent against Sapphire’s future species. Alternately, she saw him used as a tool to benefit Sapphire. He sat upon a throne of bones, a matching crown atop his head made of human teeth. He could possibly be humanity’s savior, or he could be their ultimate demise. Nowhere did she see Dovian. Would he be needed at that point?

  Aria watched in horror, tears stinging her eyes. Dovian quickly closed the visions altogether.

  “I know that look in your eyes, and believe me when I tell you that you do not want to take the chance,” Dovian turned to her. “That child will most likely kill you. In fact, you are in danger every second it is in your womb.”

  “But there is a possibility,” she whispered.

  “There is a possibility, in the event that we fail today, that he could someday rise against her, but that all relies on your safety. That is why I cannot let you back out on that battlefield. You need to hide. If anything happens, you can try all that you can to give birth to him. I would only pray you live through it to raise him right. If Sapphire ever got her hands on him, she would have the perfect tool to destroy.”

  “She will have it either way…because of Ivory,” she argued.

  Dovian covered his face, swaying as he thought.

  “Why don’t I just sit here for nine months? I can just hang out here…and have a baby. I’ll have you to heal me. We can wait until he grows up and then unleash him on the war out there,” Aria offered if not a bit sarcastically.

  He removed his hands from his face, giving her a curious look. “We would have no food.”

  “You can gather it
for me. I’ll just wait here,” she looked at the planets.

  “This will not solve anything. By the time that all happened, the war could be over. Time doesn’t completely stop while we are outside the timeline,” he explained.

  “Why not go back in time?” she asked.

  “Aria! Things do not work that way! Are you trying to drive me mad? You would create the worst kind of paradox, and your entire world would fold in on itself. Your soul would bend in two, and your very being would create the demise of the whole universe. Is that reason enough?” He looked flabbergasted by her questions.

  “Good reason not to go back…” she quickly sputtered.

  “You think I wouldn’t try it? To save my people?” he questioned.

  Growling in frustration, she threw her arms into the air. “So what do we do?!”

  Turning, Dovian grabbed her hands. “I am going back out there to fight before Sapphire detects that the both of us are missing and she comes here and finds out everything. You are going someplace safe to hide. As much as I hate the idea, if something does happen, and we fail today, we need to have the chance that you will healthily have that boy and give humanity one last chance.”

  “I’m not hiding! I can’t do that! Troy’s out there! My team is out there!” she quarreled.

  Dovian rolled his eyes. “Curse the genes that make you as stubborn as you are!”

  “If it weren’t for my genes, I wouldn’t be here!” she sassed.

  “We haven’t the time for this, Aria.” Dovian wrapped his arms around her suddenly. “You listen to me, woman. Listen to me well. All the things I am about to do are for you, our child, and for the human race. Any move you make can jeopardize the entire thing. Do as I say, and all will go as I plan.” His mouth was near her ear. “Just remember that when you wake up.”

  “Wake up?” Aria’s face wrinkled with confusion.

  She was answered by a sharp pain as Dovian whipped the side edge of his palm against her neck. A quick yelp sounded, and the woman collapsed into the Sorcēarian’s arms. He held her tightly, staring at the brilliant sun. Deciding not to waste anymore time, he spun the dial on his tuner, abruptly reappearing inside Aria’s bedroom in her apartment. Carefully, he placed the woman on her bed. He watched her for a moment and then softly put his palm on her stomach, feeling the gentle tingle of life energy contained inside her. With sad eyes, he smiled and then swallowed hard.