by Will Crudge
Both he and Val had decided that he was having a hard enough time adjusting to such a dramatic transition, adding the potentially traumatic account of his own origins would be unhealthy. When all of humanity is depending on a savior, then personal curiosity had to take a back seat to sanity.
“Your story…” Val started. “I suppose it’s time isn’t it?”
Darius didn’t even take his eye off of the majestic view in front of him. He just nodded intently, and waited for Val to speak.
“Your mother was Val’s sister. Here name was Kyra. She was an Alba. Your father’s family name was Stencil. Both of them were War Masters, of course.”
Darius turned and looked at Val intently. “Were.”
“Yes. Were.” Val said.
“I have to ask.” Darius’ face said it all. He was uncomfortable that he had to ask this one question. He didn’t want to know the answer, but he decided he had to. He decided that making peace with himself would be one less distraction from saving humanity.
“Go on, then.” Val empathetically. Darius suspected Val knew what it would be.
“Did my parents abandon me?” The words seemed more painful to speak then he had anticipated.
“No.” Val shook his head. “Not in the least bit! They wanted nothing more than to raise you up to be a War Master.”
“But obviously that didn’t happen.”
“I didn’t. Your parents died in combat.” Val tried to say it as delicately as possible, but it still hit Darius very hard. There is no good way to hear something like that.
“But how could that be?” Darius asked. “When I became a ward of the state, I was a newborn! My mother was fighting right after she gave birth to me?”
“This is the part that might hit you the hardest.” Val frowned. “When was the last time you looked at your med-nano logs?”
“Uh, I don’t know…” he scratched his head. “It’s been years, I guess.”
“I bet the last time you looked at them, you were barely in your sixties or seventies?” Val asked.
“Maybe even fifties, I guess. It’s been so long. But my effective physical age is in the early to mid-thirties. I doubt it’s much more than that now.”
“Look again.” Val said. Darius just froze for a moment, then blinked.
“Um… Ok.” Darius said as he pulled up his internal HUD. He directed his neural interface to access his med logs, and he pulled up his basic metrics.
Twenty Four? Darius’ eyes broadened.
“You’ve aged in reverse haven’t you?” Val asked rhetorically.
“How’s that even possible?” Darius asked.
“That’s your DNA becoming fully formed…. Look at your genetic data next. Tell me how many helixes you have?”
“Duh! I have two… so does every other life-form with Earth ancestry.” Darius shot Val a scrutinizing look.
“Just humor me.” Val said straight-faced. Darius could feel the intensions in the monks mind, and decided it was worth checking.
Twelve. TWELVE!
“You have twelve helixes.” Val didn’t even have to guess. He just knew. “I have twelve as well. It’s one of the main reasons I’m not dead, or even age.”
Darius just shook his head, and then made his way to the closest chair. His face was completely stricken with shock, and he almost stumbled before he could sit down. Several wordless moment went by before Val said another word.
“Most War Masters have six to eight helix’s… Occasionally one may have four, or even ten… But there’s very little difference between the skills and abilities of any of them. You and I are the only ones that have ever had a complete set of twelve strands.” Val explained, and then calmly sat in a nearby chair.
“Having four, six, eight, ten strands is what allows a trained War Master to tap into energies that other humans cannot. But having the full twelve makes our genes a tunnel… a conduit of time and space.” Val continued, but then pause to let Darius think things through.
“So, your longevity isn’t by choice?” Darius asked.
“No.” Val shrugged his shoulders. “When Midas saw that I had the unique genetic makeup to accept more than just a double helix, he expounded on it. He spent nearly a thousand years trying to unlock the next hurdle… pushing the boundaries of my genetics. It didn’t take him long to realize, that with twelve strands of DNA, I was pretty much immune from the aging process. I just can’t age… or die a natural death.”
“So, you’re immortal?” Darius asked.
“I don’t like that term, but if it helps you to understand, then I’ll say yes.” Val shrugged his shoulders and smiled slightly. “Once you spend time in the quantum realm, then you’ll see that death is an illusion…. But that’s a conversation for another day.”
“Where’s that leave me?” Darius asked.
“That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?” Val shook his head.
“What’s a doll-hair?”
“Never mind… Basically, as far as I can tell, you’re the new and improved Val!” Val chuckled.
“Somehow, I fail to find that funny.” Darius raised an eyebrow.
“I suppose not.” Val nodded. “But… You have naturally occurring genetics with twelve strands… mine required an AI to manipulate over the course of a millennia. Plus, you can accept neural and nano-tech. That’s never happened before.”
“You have grey streaks.” Darius noted. “If you’ve aged in reverse, and have twelve strands, then why do you have grey in your hair?”
Darius laughed. “Because I had them before I ever found myself in stasis. Plus, Midas didn’t see the point in correcting it. The color of my hair had no effect on our mutual survival, after all!”
“I suppose.” Darius nodded. “But couldn’t Midas do that for anybody else?”
“That’s the ironic part…” Val huffed out a sarcastic laugh. “The damage I did to my own genetic material by being a drug addict was what allowed Midas to do his thing. I had a naturally occurring ability to accept additional helixes, mind you. That part was what makes my genetic gift so unique… But the damage from the drug abuse was what helped Midas crack the code, per say. It made my genes more prone to manipulation than what would normally be possible.”
“Huh!” Darius nodded. “And the neural-nano stuff?”
“Yes, that.” Val straightened up, and let out a long sigh. “The additional strands of DNA are pathways for quantum energies to pass through.”
“Yep.” Darius nodded. “You covered that part.”
“Yes, but not in relation to tech, I haven’t.” Val winked. “This is a rough analogy, but it should help to explain it… Imagine humans as a simple electric circuit….”
“Ok.” Darius nodded.
“Well, the normal person offers resistance to current flow, tracking?”
“UAHC Academy covers electronic theory in grate length, yes. Ohms law… Current time’s resistance, you get voltage… and all that.”
Val smiled and shook his head. “At least they still teach the basics five thousand years after electronics first appeared… But in any case, a human can accept a neural interface because they have natural resistance to the amounts of quantum energy that our DNA allows for. So, if you equate nano-tech and a neural interface to a wire, or connecter with nearly no resistance, it won’t have any effect on normal people…”
“Because they have little or no flow of quantum energy piping through them anyway?” Darius asked, but he was starting to see Val’s thoughts forming in his own mind before the words came out. He didn’t like the idea of reading his friend’s mind, out of respect, but his patience was waning.
“Yes. But in our kind… We have no resistance to quantum energy. Well, you and I have almost none. The War Masters and the Zodiacs have a little more than we, but… you get the picture.” Val waved his own words off before continuing. “For us, it’s like replacing all of the resistors in a circuit with a straight piece of wire.”
“In other words… Overload. Dead, and stuff?” Darius asked.
“Yep.” Val put his hands in the air and shrugged.
“Well, that was a terrible analogy… But I guess there’s no better way to dumb it down, is there?” Darius asked
“It took me a long time to understand it myself.”
“But the nano?” Darius asked. “Nano isn’t a permanent fixture in our systems… Why would they be a threat?”
“They’re not so much a threat, as they’re basically useless to us. They tend to die out quickly in our high-energy bodies, and we naturally heal faster than they can heal others. Our immune systems are tougher than any nano, in any case.” Val explained.
“So, we’ve explained our genetics… to a degree. We’ve covered neural interface is bad. So, where do I fit into all this?” Darius asked finally.
“They day you were born, we did all the usual tests that we normally do.” Val asserted.
“Ok.”
“But you had two strands of DNA… Only two.”
“I take it that’s not what you’d expect from two War Masters’ baby?”
“Not at all.” Val shook his head. “My genetic lineage doesn’t dilute with successive generations. Granted, not of my offspring have ever inherited my full complement of genetic material, but there’s never been one that didn’t inherit any of it, at least.”
“Huh, ok.”
“We double, and triple checked our tests. Same result. But when I asked Midas take a look, he saw something we couldn’t. He saw some kind of mathematical mumbo-jumbo thingy.”
“Sounds highly technical.” Darius said with a flat voice. It was a failed attempt at dry humor.
“Perhaps Midas can explain it better than I can.” Val said. “But, he did predict that you were unique. Something caught his attention… Something fascinated him.”
“I take it Midas doesn’t get fascinated by much, does he?”
“No. Almost never.” Val asserted. “He came to the conclusion that you had the potential to accept a neural interface. He also predicted that you were born with two strands of DNA, but that when the conditions were right, you would develop additional strands on your own.”
“Let me guess…” Darius lifted a single eyebrow. “As long as I received the neural interface mod prior to my DNA waking up, then I would also develop the ability to tolerate it?”
“Bingo!” Val winked at him. “Remember not long after we first met, I asked you if you’d been having headaches, or ringing in your ears?”
“Yeah. And I still get the ringing, but it’s leveled off to a more tolerable tone. The headaches are gone though.” Darius said with a deep soothing breath.
“That’s your nervous system reacting to higher frequencies. You’re adjusting to the higher energies of the quantum field. It’s common with all of our kind, but I imagine yours was more intense, since you were also having to adapt to twelve full strands, and a neural interface!”
“How come I can still use nano?” Darius asked.
“You can?” Val asked. “That’s amazing! That wasn’t in any of our predictive models.”
“About my age…” Darius interjected.
“I got carried away again didn’t I?”
“We both did.”
Val’s face straightened. “You were born right before the last war.”
Darius’ jaw dropped and his shoulders slumped forward. “That was more than…”
“Two hundred years ago, yes.”
“How?” Darius asked with an incredulous tone. “I was a baby almost one hundred thirty years after the last war. It makes no sense. My bio scans would have picked up on any evidence of prolonged stasis!”
“Yes. But they didn’t.” Val shook his head. “Scanning for signs of stasis is easy to do on an adult, but an infant’s body changes and adapts so rapidly, that if the scan is done immediately…”
“They didn’t bother scanning, did they?” Darius surmised. “If I was found in a stasis pod, then they’d have no reason to.”
“Exactly.” Val nodded. “You were placed in stasis within a few weeks of birth. The War broke out, and your parents heeded the call…” Val stopped to raise his hand when he saw Darius was about to open his mouth. “I know what you’re going to say, the then answer is no. I didn’t send either of your parents to war. The Guild was teeming with War Masters and Zodiacs during that period, so I allowed anyone with young families to remain on standby. Your parents volunteered to go, but they didn’t want you to be raised by someone else… Even though Sasha offered to help…”
“Sasha?” Darius tilted his head. “The cheetah?”
Val nodded with a smile. “There’s no other being, human or non-human, that has sharper maternal instincts than our dear Sasha. She has helped to raise thousands of Zodiac cubs, and even several hundred human children as well… But her story is its own long tale, indeed.”
Darius thought what it would be like to have been raised by such a motherly figure. Sasha was kind and attentive. He had always felt a natural sense of profound love within the mighty cheetah. But he also suspected she had a much darker past as well. But he had to stay in the now, and learn about his own past.
Darius decided he was resolute in embracing his own mysterious past, no matter how traumatic it may be. He calmed his thoughts, and let out a deep soothing breath. If he was to face the horrors of the future, he would have to first come to grips with his past.
“So, I was put into stasis…” Darius said as he opened his eyes. He was blocking out all the mental noise that had been buzzing around his skull. He was now prepared for whatever insights to come his way.
“Yes.” Val nodded. “But your parent’s training temple was too close to Crimson controlled space. Midas and I decided to evacuate it after your parents had already gone on to war. The plan was to move all the families, trainees, or any Zodiac and War Masters that stayed behind. Their convoy was attacked by a squadron of Crimson ships before they ever made it to Unum space.”
“I take it, I was taken by the Crimson?” Darius asked.
“No, thankfully enough! Your stasis pod was onboard an Unum cutter, and the captain managed to make a blind jump before the enemy could finish you off. This is the part of the story that gets a little hazy… We don’t know where the cutter went, or what specifically happened to it. By the time it was found floating adrift in the outer reaches of UAHC controlled space, the reactors had long since gone cold. The hull of the ship was twisted and buckled. It was assumed that the shields failed, or were overloaded when the jump occurred. The transition to slip-space had likely wrenched the hull, and killed the crew.”
“But the pod was still functioning?” Darius asked.
“Yes, of course!” Val chuckled. “Remember, I was stuck adrift in one for over a thousand years! I made sure that all of our pods had their own back up energy sources. You could have still been out there as we speak… A tiny baby, safe and sound!”
“So, why wasn’t I claimed by Unum, or by the Guild?” Darius asked.
“You would have been, if we’d known at the time.” Val asserted. “We never stopped searching for you. But we knew you were out there. The universe would have not allowed something so amazing to come into being, just allow it to be lost forever… But the UAHC Fleet forces found you first. Under salvage laws, the vessel and all contents were legal property of the UAHC government. When they found your pod, you were immediately handed over to the state as a ward.”
“When did you find out about all this?”
“You were already a school-aged boy, by then. You even had your first-stage neural interface procedure as well. By law, we had no leg to stand on. All we could do was watch from afar, and wait. Midas recommended that you be allowed to forge your own path. It was obvious to us that you would be a top-tiered candidate to apply for the Fleet Forces. Your keen intellect, and advanced genetics made that more of a foregone conclusion than anything else.”
“So, I was pre-desti
ned to be a Soldier?” Darius scowled.
“No. Not at all.” Val shook his head. “In order for you to become what you were meant to be, we decided it was best for you to forge your own path. The only intervention we ever made… intentionally, in any case… was to ship your father’s LRF-90 to you.”
“Doom-Raptor was my father’s?” Darius asked.
“Mother’s, technically.” Val answered. “But your father ended up in the cockpit more often than she did. That’s why Shadow feels so at home on board.”
“Whoa!” Darius stopped him right there. The man’s eyes shot at Val like daggers. “Shadow’s been on my ship before we met?!”
“Shadow was paired with your mother. His line has served your family for generations.”
“Shadow is the grandson of the Mighty Kaylen’s Mount, Sundown.” Darius said as a matter of fact.
Val nodded. “Yes. Kaylen is an Alba.”
“That makes Kaylen, my what?”
“Great uncle.” Val said. “Your grandfather was Kayne… Kaylen’s older twin brother.”
“And Shadow’s father?” Darius asked.
“Paired with Kayne… but Kayne became drunk with power, and killed him.”
“Does Shadow know this?”
“Shadow watched it happen.” Val nodded.
Darius felt for his friend. He’d never picked up any vibes of emotional trauma from the big cat. But then, he supposed, panthers would likely process things a little differently… Even panthers that had traces of human DNA.
“Cyrus?” Darius asked.
“Yes, Cyrus.” Val acknowledged. “That is your given name.”
“And how was I named Darius?”
“I can’t be positive, of course.” Val said. “That was likely an administrative oversight. The stasis pod must have been sealed with your father’s name.”
“So he was Darius?”
“Darius Stencil.” Val nodded. “Somehow, the UAHC associated you with that name, and here we are.”