by David Beers
Briten might understand her dilemma intellectually, but he could never grasp it emotionally. His world…his species…they didn’t necessarily thrive on violence, but they didn’t hide from it. They had long ago moved off their home planet, long ago reached other parts of the universe. For him, this was a necessary step and nothing else. The Council was right about that, but wrong about there being another option.
Morena floated above the floor, knowing what she had to do and yet not wanting to do it. Would this be her legacy to her people? The Var to take them from their home and turn them into invaders? Or would her legacy be the Var that saved them from certain death?
Morena sat up and then stood, her feet planting again on the floor beneath her. She couldn’t go to The Council; it wouldn’t matter what she had discovered today, her words would be suspect—clouded with love for her husband, clouded with thoughts that might not be accurate. Briten was right; Morena was alone in this decision.
* * *
The tower stood thousands of feet into the air, stretching up and up until the viewer thought that it might continue forever.
How would they take this tower, if they left this planet? How would everything inside this tower be transferred to another planet, how would the information be disseminated to a decentralized species, when now everything was kept here, where the information in this tower could make its way to Morena’s people so easily?
There were so many questions that she couldn’t answer, so many paths to this plan that had no clear end. There was a problem and there was a solution, but other than that, everything else was in a murky pool where Morena couldn’t make out the shapes beneath the waterline.
If nothing else though, the tower showed why they had to get off this planet. The tower would be lost if they didn’t, it and everything it contained.
Morena stood at the base, staring up at it. When it was her time to pass from this universe, when her aura faded finally to black and she went to find The Makers, she would be added to this tower. What she did now, everything she had already done and everything she would do—all of it placed in this tower so that the next Var could come and gain wisdom if needed. That’s why Morena was here now, the only Bynum allowed in this sacred place. Her daughter would be allowed, but all in all, less than two hundred people had ever set foot in the room. Two hundred people that were all Morena’s family.
She stepped forward putting her palms out in front of her. One came to the tower with caution and only when absolutely needed. This wasn’t like the data she had just sifted through; this was a power perhaps greater than anything else Bynimian had ever created. It was the cumulation of the best, those that had ruled—if not their soul, then their knowledge—and trying to take that information in could be disastrous if the right mentality wasn’t used. You didn’t stir the insides of this tower without a grave reason, and if not for one’s own sake, then out of respect for those that came before.
Morena closed her eyes and pushed her hands forward, touching the metal surface and realizing immediately how warm it felt, how alive, as if she were touching someone’s flesh rather than material dug up from the ground.
No one had warned her what to expect, no one prepared her. Who could? Her mother having passed from this life, Morena was the only individual with the power to come here. She felt the tower reaching out to her, checking to make sure she belonged despite all the security settings surrounding it. If Morena didn’t belong, she would die with her palms touching this thing. She felt the tower making the connection, accepting her and linking her to the past that lived inside it. The connection was live, but Morena didn’t push forward, didn’t try to run inside the memories now in front of her. It would have been horrid, she felt that immediately. She would get lost inside and might not find her way back, forever sifting through the lives of those who came before her. She had to move slowly, with purpose here. She had known not to come to this place lightly, but the connection showed her exactly how carefully she must tread.
This was built for her but it would swallow her whole if she allowed it. The power to contain a Var must be vast, and so it was.
Morena came for her mother, to gain wisdom about what she should do.
Morena flowed forward, her aura moving from her hands and into the tower before her, slowly, inch by inch.
And then she was in front of It. Had her mother ever come to this room, ever placed her hands on this tower like Morena now did? And if so, why didn’t she tell Morena what to expect? Why didn’t she tell her what she would find here?
She musn’t have come, because there simply wasn’t any way her mother would not have prepared Morena for what she now saw.
A force larger than anything Morena had ever experienced, a force that dwarfed the tower which contained it. A force so powerful that Morena thought even The Makers would need to bow before it. It was faceless, but wrapped around her with such speed and ferocity that Morena thought it might crush her. And yet, it was gentle, caressing her like a lover.
“Morena Var,” It said. “Why have you come, child?”
Morena didn’t know what to say, didn’t know what she had expected to find in here. A bunch of Vars? Trying to sort through them to find her mother? Maybe, close if not exact, but not to find a monolithic creature inside. Morena lost her own power in here, forgot who she was and why she had been born, forgot everything that had defined her life up until this very point. Morena forgot she was a Var, that she was made to lead an entire species. Morena, perhaps for the first time since birth, was nothing.
“I need my mother,” she said, realizing how silly she sounded as she spoke. Realizing that she had basically reverted to a child, to the very word that the monolith called her.
“She is here,” It said. “All of us are here, but you haven’t answered our question. Why is it you are here?”
So that was it—this thing that filled up every bit of space around her, that appeared alive despite everything making it up being long dead, consisted of every Var to ever live. It was their embodiment. The force inside this tower held the force of hundreds of rulers, hundreds of Vars, hundreds of the most powerful creatures to ever live. And now they were all asking, all through a single voice, what she wanted—why she had disturbed them?
“I need…” She paused, trying to gather her thoughts, trying to remember who she was.
“Calm down, child. One day you will join us here. One day you will make up this tower the same as we do. Everyone who has come to this place looking for guidance, every single one, felt the same as you do now. There is no need to be fearful; you belong here. You are a Var. You will join us one day. So speak and see if we may help.”
Morena listened to the voice, feeling its words wash over her aura like warm, cleansing water.
“Our planet is dying,” she said. “The core is dying, and the energy it provides is dyingwith it. I have looked at every possible angle to save our species, and there is only one that appears viable. We must leave and we must try to colonize other planets, those that have cores like our own. It means war. It means death. But there’s isn’t any other way that we live.”
She paused but the monolith said nothing. It hadn’t left, Makers no—its presence still in front of her like the greatest mountain ever formed. It was waiting, knowing that she wasn’t finished, knowing perhaps as much about Morena as she knew about herself.
“The Council, they refuse to hear this as a solution because my husband brought it to them. They say that they will work to find another way, but there isn’t any, and I fear that by the time they realize such, it will be too late. They’ve said that we cannot move forward with colonization, not until they have finished their attempts.” Morena paused again, readying herself for the crux of why she had come. Readying herself to ask something that no other Var had ever requested. “Do I go against their wishes? Do I upset our balance to do this?”
And there it was, something that could label her insane simply for thinking it. Morena te
rmed what she wanted to do in the most diplomatic fashion possible, upsetting the balance. Upsetting the balance meant death, murder, right here on Bynimian. They wouldn’t need to go elsewhere to find a war; it would happen here, and either her or The Council would live through it.
She had asked the cumulative history of her species whether or not she should destroy their culture so that Bynimian might live.
* * *
Morena felt weak, like she might fall at any moment. She didn’t call for anyone, didn’t even let Briten know what she had done. No one need know she went to the tower; it was a place built for her and those of her lineage that would come after. No one else.
She walked outside of the building, standing beneath the panels of light that stretched across the entire planet from high above. The light felt warm, but also revealed how much the tower had taken out of her. She could nearly see straight through her aura, such was the strain that it put on her. It was amazing that she hadn’t died, standing there touching the tower, her aura not turning transparent, but black.
She needed time to recover.
Morena looked at the world around her, trying to see it in a way that she hadn’t for as long as she could remember. Trying to be amazed at their world, trying to truly grasp the vastness of what her kind had created. Her life was spent planning, strategizing, trying to make sure Bynimian made it on long past her, no matter what time brought with it. She spent her days and years contemplating the future, while missing the present right before her.
And it was amazing, truly so. She walked to the edge of her terrace, the small fence looking down over the capital city. She saw the auras of a hundred thousand Bynums, all of them moving through their day with no idea that the Var watched them from so high. It was her job to protect them, and more, to make sure that their offspring were protected. The world below was one that she would never know, not truly, but it was all she cared about.
She looked up to the panels that wrapped around their world. They beamed back down the energy that the interior of this world gave off, lighting up the planet in a way that a star never would. No heat came from them, though—no, Bynimian had evolved to utilize heat from below instead of above. The light came from the heavens and the energy from the dirt. Morena switched her focus to her feet, wanting to feel that which she took for granted—it was there, slight but constant. She wondered how many Bynums had noticed it today, how many had actually focused on the ground and the life it continually renewed from below. That which sustained their auras, which gave them such long lives. Morena felt her feet taking in the energy, sucking it up as constantly as the world gave it off.
If the core stopped burning, everyone on this planet would die in a few days—their auras turning from whatever shade possessed them to the cold, black death of the surrounding universe.
There was no escaping it. The Makers had doomed this planet from the moment they created it, and mark it up to bad luck that Morena was the Var forced to face the problem.
The Bynums below. That’s who needed her. They could rebuild this planet; they could rebuild the tower; they could replace that which they would lose. If she acted.
* * *
“I went to the tower,” she said.
Briten didn’t turn around, but stared out from the balcony on nearly the same scene that Morena had looked at earlier. She knew that he had seen she accessed his data, watched how long she had rolled in it, fully understanding everything he had created.
Now he knew that she went to her ancestors, the only one to know. Morena didn’t need to say what it meant that she went—he understood that she had never been before, and understood the reasons for that decision. What he needed to understand was what she learned, and what it meant for both of them.
“You already know our choices,” she said, staring at his back, watching the beautiful red surrounding his person. It moved slowly across his body, not excited, not nervous, but trusting in the person behind him, confident in what she would tell him though he couldn’t know what that would be, not for sure. “We either start colonizing or everyone on this planet perishes.”
“And The Council?”
“If they won’t come along, then they’re an enemy to Bynimian the same as a foreign invader would be. They must be dealt with as such.”
“You’re talking about war, Morena,” Briten said, still not turning around. She was amazed at him, even now—especially now. His kind, his species, they were adapted to war. Indeed, they were forced long ago to move through the galaxy or face extinction, the same choice Bynimian now faced. Yet, here he was, someone once supposed to rule a people, talking to her about war, cautioning against it.
“We don’t have any other choice,” she said.
He nodded. “We don’t.”
“I’ll visit The Council tomorrow and see if they have made their decision. If it isn’t favorable, then I will have them contained and Judgment passed on them. They won’t have time to mass a counterattack.”
“No,” Briten said, not turning around, not even taking his hands off the balcony’s ledge. “I’ll do it. If things go wrong, you won’t have any culpability.”
27
Present Day
Neither of the two humans Morena possessed had any knowledge of the Ether, and Morena herself knew very little. There wasn’t a lot of time; she felt certain this government Bryan spoke of would return and with reinforcements. The Ether was a last resort, always. It wasn’t somewhere anyone wanted to go; it definitely wasn’t used as a child’s playground on Bynimian. The Ether was dangerous.
Briten was there now, though finding him was impossible. Morena’s only hope was to bring him back from her side of the Ether, not find him in it.
Plus, Morena had to protect herself in this place; she couldn’t worry about Briten, not right now, as selfish as that sounded to her. If she died in this place, Briten would never make it out.
The Ether always lay just beyond the view of reality, or rather, right next to reality—a black curtain separating the two. There were theories about the place, things that scientists on Bynimian tried to speculate on. Of course, some tried to venture over throughout the millennia, but none made it back. Those that crossed over to the place Morena found herself in now, they stayed there. That’s all anyone knew and, eventually, study of the Ether ceased.
That had been millions of years ago, when Morena was still young.
And now she looked into the world that no one dared venture to. It was a mirror image of the world she had just left, the negative of it.
She stood still, taking in the place where her husband now lived. Morena stood in two houses, Bryan’s and Thera’s, and she saw from both his and her eyes. Both of their bodies crossed over at different points—each in their own home just as they had been in reality—but now both places looked eerily similar. The houses were exactly the same as they had been in reality, except now gray shades replaced vibrant colors. The temperature on the other side had been regulated by machines inside the house, but on this side, frigid air caused Morena’s breath to show when it exited her mouth. Silence draped heavy across everything. There were no noises, no movement, just two black and white houses.
The silence cracked wide open at nearly the same time in both houses. In Thera’s, the two people standing next to Thera’s body, and in Bryan’s house, the single person that Morena had brought over. Morena had marched through both houses, and in Thera’s, grabbed both of Thera’s parents. In Bryan’s, she had only been able to get to the mother—the father had been working late. Morena wasn’t going to leave anyone on the other side, in reality. She wouldn’t leave anyone that could say anything about the two kids or the way they had acted during the past few weeks.
Bringing the parents over might have been a mistake, though.
Morena turned to the three people, using both bodies at her disposal, and looked on. She found it odd, how similar their reactions were, though separated by miles. Both women held theirs hands to their
mouths, their torsos slightly leaning forward as they pushed air from their lungs. The man in Thera’s house, her father, had wrapped his arms around the woman, but stood with his mouth open, staring with wide eyes. Silent though, thank The Makers.
Morena acted quickly, a hand on each body striking out at the two women, silencing them quickly as they collapsed to the floor unconscious. She reached out again with Thera, pummeling the bridge of her father’s nose, knocking him out so that only Morena was left in the house.
“No!” The two people whose mind she occupied shouted in near unison.
She felt their horror, Bryan and Thera’s, growing, threatening to overtake them both. They were babbling, screaming at her, creating a tumultuous sea of words that mixed together incoherently. She had no time for it; she knew the rumors of this place, knew what the theories all said. Morena could die here, or at least never return to the other side.
She turned from the collapsed bodies, already dismissing them as dead. Not by her hand, but something would show up to claim them, she felt sure of that. She had to protect herself here, if not both the bodies she controlled, then one at least.
Something had changed though; she could feel it. The cold around her seemed to thicken, weighing on her flesh like a layer of ice. Goosebumps rose across her arms and she felt her body start shivering from the cool air. The screams. That’s what had done this, whatever this actually was.
She walked to a window in both houses, the screams inside her head relegated to a deep hole in her shared consciousness. She could still hear them, but they were muffled, like someone trying to scream through a pile of pillows. The outside world looked just like the inside of the houses, similar to reality, but everything slightly off. Everything a black and white mixture. The street lamps that had burned on the other side didn’t burn here. Morena watched as a car moved down Thera’s street, slowly, seeing that no one was inside. The car turned left at a stop sign, pulled onto another road and disappeared from Morena’s vision. No one had been in it, no one driving around like Morena had done and seen in Bryan’s world.