The Shattered Genesis (Eternity)

by Rudacille, T.

  “Do not touch me! Just...” I closed my eyes and put my hand on my head, the dull throbbing I had felt since I awoke morphing suddenly into a full-fledged, knee-buckling pain and world-twirling dizziness.

  “Okay...” He put both hands on my arms now and turned me so that we could keep walking in the direction I had been going. “There's a diner up the street here. We'll go in there. I'll buy. See? I am a nice guy.”

  “Please just go away...” I muttered to him and for the first time, I felt the threat of impending tears. He must have heard the crackling in my voice as well because as he steered me along, he rubbed my arm comfortingly.

  “I promise, I'll explain everything as soon as we're sitting down.”

  It was against my better judgment but I followed him into the diner and sat down across from him at a small booth in the corner, away from the prying eyes and ceaselessly listening ears of the other patrons. I kept my face in my hands and muttered, “If I believed in God, I'd be praying right now...”

  “Look at me.”

  It wasn't an order. It was merely a gentle suggestion. I raised my eyes to look at him and he spoke again.

  “I know that this is asking a lot. Believe me, I do. But I need you to trust me, Brynna.”

  “I don't know you.” I implored him, feeling desperation more strongly than I was comfortable with. “I have no idea why I woke up in your bedroom this morning. Well, I do have an idea, but I wish I didn't. You have to know that I come from money and my family will pay you whatever you want. This is a strange way to go about assaulting someone, but whatever, I don't want to think about that, either. I won't over-analyze you for fear of losing my mind.”

  “Alright. My turn to talk.” He told me lightly as he slid my pack of cigarettes across the table to me. “That's my peace offering. Is it working?”

  “You,” I tapped my head against my open palms, “are...” I did it again, “so...” And again, “weird!”

  “I need you to understand and accept this as being true: I did not hurt you in any way last night.”

  “You slammed my head up against a wall. That hurt me severely.”

  “I didn't mean to do that as hard as I did. But what you need to know is that I had no choice. Those things were coming and I had to get you to stop making noise.”

  “Those things weren't real! Why are you telling me that they were?”

  The waitress came over and he ordered a coffee with no cream or sugar. The woman gnashed her teeth into a huge wad of gum as she asked me what I wanted. My head jerking from side to side was the only answer I offered to her question.

  “She has a bit of a migraine. A coffee will help, I think.” The man ordered for me. My fingers were pressed to my temples. I scowled up at him.

  “Caffeine.” The waitress nodded in agreement. “Best thing for them, sweetie.”

  I jerked my head up and down, still trying to wrap my head around what was happening.

  “Ask Dr. Oz what the best thing for a pesky, delusional assailant is when she comes back with the coffee.” I muttered to him but then I shook my head slightly and closed my eyes. “That was rude. She's just trying to help.”

  “It was rude. It was also quickly thought of, which must mean that you're returning to normal.”

  “Why are you acting like you know me? You don't know anything about me!”

  “Besides the fact that your name is Brynna Olivier and your mother is a senator and your father runs a popular news organization. I know that you currently reside in a one bedroom apartment, alone, because you have never quite mastered real human contact. You joke frequently about being a 'non-human.' You call yourself a genius who doesn't worry herself with petty human attachment in public but in private, you wonder if perhaps there's something seriously wrong with you. You think you might be a robot, a cyborg, that sort of thing.” He lit up a cigarette and inhaled deeply.

  “Are you here to tell me I'm a cyborg?” He handed me another cigarette that he had just lit up. I took it gratefully.

  “No.” He shook his head. “I'm here to tell you that you're special.”

  “Special...” I muttered doubtfully as the coffee arrived at our table. “I think this really will help. Thank you so much.” I smiled up at the waitress who seemed genuinely shocked by my gratitude. I hoped that my sudden change of tone towards her would greatly improve her day.

  I scowled once I had looked back at the man across from me.

  “Do I have super powers, too?” I asked quite sardonically.

  He chose to ignore my snide remark and continue talking.

  “I also know that you are genuinely distrustful of men. You don't care for them. You don't enjoy their company, especially if they are your own age.” He eyed me cautiously for a moment before plowing ahead. “But really, at any age, you don't want them anywhere near you. All of that is a direct result of the fact...”

  I slammed my hand on the table, shocking him, myself and the rest of the people in the restaurant with my outburst.

  After a long moment of silence between us, he responded to my explosion of rage airily:

  “You apparently have a temper, too. I didn't know that, actually.”

  “I get it. You know a lot about me. All of those things could be learned with a Google search or fanciful speculation. What? Do you want to know about my parents? Are you a reporter? Do you want an inside scoop on my mother? She's up for re-election. Are you trying to skewer her?”

  “I know that you'd be more than willing to skewer her, but no.”

  “I want to know, right now, what exactly it is that you want. If you don't tell me, I am going to walk out of here. Then, I'm going to go straight to the police and tell them that there is a crazy, debonair man in a designer suit who lives on the street over from the...” I looked at the menu that was stuck jauntily behind the napkin container, “Gary's Diner who plays ridiculous mind games on unsuspecting young girls!”

  “I told you, the police won't help you.”

  “What? Are you funding them? Do you have money to buy them off so that you can play said ridiculous mind games on unsuspecting young girls?”

  “No. But I do appreciate the fact that you think I'm debonair. My suit is designer, also, and I thank you for noticing that, as well.”

  “You're so weird.” I muttered again as I shook my head slightly. “You defy all specific designations of mental illness. You are truly in a class of your own. You can take that as a compliment, I suppose.”

  “I watched you last night in the bar because those two morons in the corner drinking themselves into a stupor were not what you think. They weren't, how did you describe them? Two horny, drunken college frat boys.”

  “Then what were they?” I asked, exasperated.

  “They were the same two things that came walking down the alley looking for you. They appeared to you as something that would make you comfortable at first. Well, they thought it would make you comfortable. Little did they know, you're a strange duck when it comes to interacting with people your own age.”

  I actually began to laugh, quietly at first but as I attempted to suppress it, I only grew more hysterical. Once, I actually snorted and had to cover my mouth and hurriedly apologize for the obnoxious sound through my giggles.

  “What is this?” I asked, a renegade laugh escaping me again. “They were those two things that I saw? The two drunken college boys were actually monstrous beasts? What is that, a metaphor? Oh, I think it is! It's a really bad one, too.”

  “Brynna, this world is going to end.”

  I stopped laughing, realizing suddenly that I was poking fun at someone who clearly had mental deficiencies or a severe drug problem.

  “There's a rehabilitation center close to my house.” I told him, actually squeezing his hand in mine for a quick second. “Since you know where I live, it won't be hard for you to find. Just walk up the street a piece from my house, turn left on Monroe, walk for about five minutes or eight, depending on your pace. Look on
your left. You can't miss it.”

  I stood up to go but he reached out and grabbed my upper arm firmly in his hand.

  “Let go of me or I will start screaming.” I warned him dangerously.

  But just then, a torrent of images whizzed vividly through my mind; a harsh flash of light, people falling to the ground, screaming in agony and covering their ears; a strange, deep silence and then, a deafening explosion that radiated to the farthest reaches of what we knew laid far beyond our earth. I pulled my hand away, my heart pounding again, a cold sweat starting to seep from every pore in my body. It had always been my worst fear. I had always pictured the day the world I knew ceased to exist. I had always known, somehow, that it would occur in my lifetime. I had seen it in my darkest dreams too many times to count.

  I slid back into my chair and put my face on the table before reaching up and grasping the cup of coffee. Turning my head so my chin was rested on my arm, I brought the cup to my lips and took one shaky sip, hoping that the sudden heat would snap me out of that terrifyingly real dream.

  “I know it's shocking.” His eyes took on a quiet fear I had not yet seen in him. “I know it's horrifying. Believe me, I reacted a lot worse than you when I realized it. Those things you saw are Reapers. They're hunting people. We don't know why they're here or where they're from, originally. I know it sounds crazy. Believe me, I do...”

  I shook my head and looked up at him.

  “No. I've...” I trailed off and unconsciously reached for my cigarettes. “I've always known it.” My eyes rose to meet his. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Anything.”

  “What's your name?”

  I know that he must have tried to fight it, but he did crack a smile at the simplicity of the question before he answered it.

  “James. James Maxwell.”

  “Well, James Maxwell...” I exhaled smoke from my newly lit cigarette, drunk on the serenity brought to the surface by the gentle stream of nicotine that was coursing through my veins. “What are we supposed to do?”

  “We, Brynna Olivier, are going to gather as many people as we can and leave here.”

  “Leave the earth?” I asked softly in utter disbelief. It was impossible. Even if we successfully exited the atmosphere before our planet was consumed in a fiery blast, we would have nowhere to go. We would drift through the darkness of space, survivors of a dead race left to meet their end at a later date than the rest of our kind.

  “Indeed. It's too much to explain now. But I'm sure you've heard about the other planet they've discovered. I'm sure that you've seen it on the news.”

  The night before in the bar, I had seen that display on the television. I read the headline only halfway before losing interest. It had read, “Super-Earth ready for...” The rest would remain a mystery and I would not have cared.

  “Yes.” I nodded. “What does that have to do with this?”

  “That's our destination. They've known about it for years. They've known about all of this for years.”

  “Who is 'they'?”

  “They are the people that we common folk so rarely get to see wearing their true faces.”

  I nodded again.

  “Got it. I need a moment to process this.”

  How strange to be sitting in a diner in the middle of the bustling city, sipping coffee and contemplating the impending end of the world. But after learning such a harrowing new reality, how could one possibly do anything else?

  “Is it processed?” He asked me after a long, thoughtful silence.

  “Not really. How do we choose who to take? What else do we take with us? How do you even know about this?”

  “I discovered that this was coming. Then, a whole mess of strange things started to happen to me. That's a story for another time. Are you particularly hungry?”

  “Not now. My God, how could I possibly be thinking about food?”

  “Then, come with me. I want to show you something.”

  XXX

  By then, my curiosity far exceeded my common sense. The reason my level of intelligence was so high above that of others around me was because of my never fully quenched thirst for knowledge and my curiosity that had always bordered on recklessness. I read every piece of writing available regarding things that interested me and even on some things that didn't for as long as I could remember. So, when James offered to show me his proof that the world was ending, I couldn't refuse, despite not trusting him. I just had to know the whole truth.

  When we arrived back at his apartment, though, I did exercise a little common sense by staying close to the door. As you have learned by now, I am not a fool.

  “I'm trying to figure out if I'm stupidly gullible or if I can actually trust you.”

  “I don't expect you to trust me right away, Brynna.” He replied absentmindedly as he pulled a small shoebox from the bottom drawer of the desk in the corner of his living room. He brought it over to where I was sitting and allowed me to open it. I explored the contents: web pages that were printed out, whole phrases and single words highlighted; transcripts of phone conversations, email correspondences and pictures of people I didn't recognize.

  “I have to start off my explanation by telling you that all of this began with a dream. I saw everything that I just showed you at the diner in that dream.”

  I was listening, but not looking at him. I was still too busy studying the papers in the box. A highlighted phrase on one of the pages read: “Pangea is ready to be colonized.” What the hell?

  “Now, I know that you are familiar with night terrors. I was, also. But this...” He shook his head slightly and I looked at him, seeing that genuine fear come over his eyes once again. It flashed by for just one fleeting second that almost convinced me that I had imagined it. “It was like nothing I had ever experienced. I can't explain it. All people say after a bad dream that it was so real and that's why it was so terrifying. But with this, I could feel the blast and I could feel my skin burning when the fire reached me.”

  “What is it? What is going to explode?”

  “I don't know.” He replied, shaking his head and avoiding my eyes. “It must be a bomb. A nuclear weapon, I suppose.”

  “So there's going to be a nuclear war?” I asked and my heart started to pound quickly again.

  “I think there is. Others are sure. That's the next part of the story. I tried to push the dream out of my mind. I tried to go about my life as usual. Do you know how when you have a nightmare, for those few minutes right after you wake up, you still feel the same fear that you felt while you were dreaming?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I felt that and assumed that my mind was just going back to the dream as the day went on. But I couldn't shake it. I couldn't shake the feeling I had. Not that day, or the next, or the next. So, finally, I went online and searched for everything I could think of to explain away what I had felt. Here's where it gets very, very weird.” He rustled around in the papers until he found the one he was looking for. It was a print out of a discussion on a message board. “You know about Google Trends, I'm sure.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, 'lucid dreaming' was the number one search for days. I don't know if you noticed that.”

  “I didn't.” I replied. “And even if I had, I wouldn't have thought anything of it.”

  “No one would have unless they had experienced what I did. So when I searched, the first link that came up was this message board. It was created two days after I had the dream. Read it.”

  My eyes scanned the page. All of the posters were recanting the same dream, the same apocalyptic vision that James had shown me. The details of the dream were minute, except for the place in which the worst of it occurred. One poster was from California and had seen Hollywood Boulevard going up in flames. One poster was from London and had seen Big Ben fall to the ground in a mass explosion. Quite disturbingly, one poster said he was from Australia and had seen the blast coming towards him across a long, endless plain.
>
  “Landmarks,” I muttered, “Most of them, anyway. That's odd.”

  “I thought so, too. I think it's symbolism.”

  “That's what I was thinking.” I agreed. “James, these details,” I scanned the page for one, “‘exactly one minute and fifteen seconds after the blast', 'remember noticing the sun being blocked out by a light even brighter than it is...'”

  “Exactly.” He nodded. “So, we met. About seven or eight of us who lived here in the US decided to meet in Boston. If you saw these people, Brynna,” He trailed off again, “You couldn't know. The fear was so strong. We were all terrified. We knew beyond any doubt that we had seen the end of the world. During that meeting, we matched up the details of our dream again and said we'd keep in touch. Of course, at that point, we didn't know how much time we had left.”

  “Do you know now?”

  “I'm getting there. That night, we all had another dream. This time, we saw faces of people we didn't recognize and names. We knew that they could be found in the areas around where we lived. We also saw the Reapers and other things that I won't burden you with.”

  “No, please, burden me. I want to know.”

  There was that reckless curiosity again. Luckily, James had my best interests at heart and didn't unload those particular details on me then. I would have curled up on the ground and awaited my fate, petrified of having to face the other things.

  “Later. Now is not the time. I don't know why the Reapers are after you, Brynna, but I have seen what they do to most people once they get them.”

  I bit my tongue to keep from asking for the gory details.

  “So I saw you and knew everything about you inexplicably. I knew I had to find you and convince you to come with me.”

  “Come with you where?” I asked, feeling a surge of desperation for finite answers suddenly. “Is that what this is?” I showed him the paper with the diagram of the planet they were calling “Pangea.”

  “Yes. Several of us worked for the government: NASA, the CIA, the military. The ones from NASA were the ones that told us they have made huge leaps in space travel over the years that they've never told anyone about.”