by T M Caruana
T.M. CARUANA
Symmetry
First published by T.M. CARUANA 2014
Copyright © 2014 by T.M. CARUANA
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
T.M. CARUANA asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
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Contents
SYMMETRY
BEGINNING OF THE END
ESCAPE WITH HIS LIFE
LUST FOR ADVENTURE
THE SUMMONING
UNEXPLAINED RESCUE
SILENT AGREEMENT
ON YOUR OWN
REUNITED AS ONE STRENGTH
TWO STARS AND A PORTAL
KNOWLEDGE SHALL BE INCREASED
PROPHECIES
GATEKEEPER
FIRE-ROSE
THE ORACLE’S VERDICT
RUMOURS OF WAR
ATLANTIS GUARDIAN
THE CHIEF’S DAUGHTER
RIGHT OR WRONG
DEFEND LIFE’S EXISTENCE
LOVE CONQUERS ALL
EVERYTHING TURNS OUT AS IT SHOULD IN THE END
CHROMOSOMICA
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
REFERENCES
SYMMETRY
There will come a time believers call apocalypse,
Scientists call extinction,
And we all call the world’s end.
I believe the time has already come.
Symmetry is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by T.M. Caruana. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR T.M. CARUANA
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GOODREADS
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BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
Science Series:
Symmetry (Volume 1, in the Science Series)
Chromosomica (Volume 2, in the Science Series)
Incipient Cipher (Volume 3, in the Science Series)
Evolution Contract (Volume 4, in the Science Series)
Nexus of Kingdoms (Volume 5, in the Science Series)
Prophesied Sorcerer Series:
The Necromancer from the North (Volume 1, in the Prophesied Sorcerer Series)
The Enchantress from the East (Volume 2, in the Prophesied Sorcerer Series)
The Wyswoman from the West (Volume 3, in the Prophesied Sorcerer Series)
The Sorcerer from the South (Volume 4, in the Prophesied Sorcerer Series)
A Wolf Fae Saga:
The Last Wolf Fae
Other books:
Arakzeon City
Penelope - A Gibraltar girl with a twirl
Penelope - What shall I bake for daddy’s birthday cake?
1
BEGINNING OF THE END
When I think back on what my life had been like, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. An isolated life had no honour, and wasn’t a life at all. The knot in my stomach and the pain in my eyes made me feel increasingly hopeless with every day that passed. The noises in my ears and the throbbing in my bones and joints distracted me from everything enjoyable in life, such as reading books or watching TV in the evenings. Even memories of being with my family had become blurry; I could hardly remember them at all. Worst of all was that sometimes I couldn’t even recognise my visitors’ faces. The feelings that washed over me when I failed to remember were unbearable. I didn’t recognise them and couldn’t remember their names. Their tilted heads and sad faces demonstrated a pity that I couldn’t return, because I wasn’t able to understand or remember why they were sorry for me. I saw that this hurt those who visited me, especially the nurses in the ward who had followed me through my time here and had always been by my side.
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I lay in my bed and looked out through my window that couldn’t be opened to invite the fresh air in. I didn’t know when it had last been cleaned. It was most comfortable to lie on my right side rather than on my back, as lying directly on my spine felt like resting on a row of marbles. Just outside my window sat a robin on a narrow branch, in the only tree in the courtyard. It was a beautiful bird and it was clearly very proud. That was something I always wanted to feel about myself. Recurring thoughts about the disappointment of my life echoed in my head and made it difficult to hide reality in my attempt to escape into daydreams. This had become my self-defence mechanism. Through my daydreams, I could disappear into distant lands with their adventures. Freeing me from having to endure the torture of my pains, every minute of every day.
I tried to remind myself that everything turns out as it should in the end.
A deep sigh rattled out of my lungs whilst a single tear ran down from my cold cheek. I had spent a lifetime at this private hospital in Switzerland, in a ward that belonged to the research department where my father worked on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Despite the clinic’s outstanding technology and many leading scientists, no one had found a cure for my agony, not even a diagnosis had been established. There had been countless tests, but no answers had been found.
A nurse came into the room on occasion, often humming a light-hearted melody. With her, she always carried a tray with a glass of rosehip soup and two biscuits. When I was younger this was the only combination of food that I could stomach during my blood tests, but after twenty-nine years, the mere sight of the orangey brown mess triggered my gag reflex. It was a symbol to start preparing for the needles that the nurse would use to extract blood from my veins. During the blood tests I was treated differently. I felt like a lab rat and it was the only time that both a male and a female nurse were present. The female nurse told me the reason was to ensure I would cooperate. She would smile a brief smile and then turn to the male nurse and start talking about her daughters. It was like I wasn’t even there, like I had already died and was a corpse during an autopsy. I had never refused the tests in the past. I had never even expressed my views on needles during all the years of torture. Why would I start protesting all of a sudden? And if I didn’t want to continue my treatment, what would they do then - force me? Would the day come when I could
n’t take it anymore and would just give up?
I winced in pain when the nurse put the needle in my throat. I didn’t even get a ‘now there will be a sharp scratch’ warning. The woman noticed, but continued to witter on about her teenage daughter’s drunken party exploits. The man nodded in agreement, but looked just as uninterested as me. The whole situation - the energetic woman, the extraction of blood and the sight of rosehip soup, month in, month out, just made me feel closer to death, instead of giving me hope of a possible better life.
After the female nurse had filled the tubes with my blood, they both left the room without even a ‘goodbye’. I didn’t even know if they were finished. I was left sitting on the bed with my shirt pulled down over my shoulders baring my throat. I wondered, as I sat there, if there was anyone who cared about me? Was there anyone who cared that I was a lonely girl in a bed all day, every day? Well, there was someone!
In the seventeenth century mirror next to the window I saw Vic’s figure reflected, as he stood in the doorway. My dear cousin had always been there for me; he felt more like a big brother or a best friend than a cousin. He stopped by regularly to encourage that better times would come. The better times never came, nor did my aches become less severe. Vic never brought the answers that I longed to hear. Instead, he sat for long hours at the bedside and told me the wildest stories I had ever heard. Sometimes he would continue telling the stories until I had fallen asleep. It was his way of comforting and distracting me from my self-destructive thoughts. It helped; during those nights that he spent with me, my sleep was less troubled.
“You’re in deep thought,” Vic said dramatically.
“You always read me like an open book,” I replied cheerfully, trying not to admit what I really thought.
If he knew how hopeless I felt, maybe he wouldn’t want to continue visiting me. Life would be miserable without him. Given my poor short-term memory, I was grateful that his face was always familiar. Nevertheless, I had hoped that his face wouldn’t always be sad when he looked at me through the dark blonde fringe of his. It always made me laugh to see it take on a life of its own and tear itself away from the otherwise perfectly gelled hair.
Vic’s strained smile showed compassion, but coupled with a certain admiration. That I was important to him was evident in his amber eyes.
“Are you far away in a distant land where the sun always shines on the widest golden beaches?” he asked his gestures helping me create the image.
Vic knew me too well and I knew that he wouldn’t drop the subject or get straight to the point. He was too gentle. For some strange reason I felt uncomfortable with him this time and had to look away from Vic to avoid a crying attack that would be embarrassing in front of him. How would I be able to concentrate on his visit when the sounds in my ears howled like wolves’ cries?
I quickly decided to focus my eyes on the floral wallpaper that had once been a summery yellow, but over the years had faded to an ugly shade of its former glory. It reminded me of how many years I had spent in the same room, in the same bed and in the same situation. The room was plain, no bigger than a bunker with only a tiny en-suite shower. Next to its door and opposite the end of the bed, there was a dresser with two old copper candleholders supporting candles that had never been lit. There was a white armchair to the right of the dresser in the corner. The cleaners always pushed it around and left it standing in different places when they cleaned the room. I slept most of the time when they were there and didn’t formally inform them about my displeasure over the chair’s constantly changing position. I wasn’t exactly someone who would care about little things and adjusted quickly to changing circumstances. The curtains had been washed and re-hung several times, but never replaced.
Vic’s long legs enabled him to cross the room in two short strides and sank onto my bed with his grandpa sandals firmly on the floor. The silence lingered, allowing me to gather my emotions and give him a smile as a signal that we could continue the conversation. I looked at him and the warmth spread through my body, as it always did when he was in my presence. I don’t know how to explain it, but I could certainly feel that his feelings were mutual.
“How’s the research? Have you managed to smash some particles together and create more worlds yet?” I asked with a playful sarcasm in my voice.
“Well, actually, a little ‘Big Bang’ has been created in one of the cylinders, but we have to investigate more to know that it didn’t happen by accident. Once we have mastered the art I will create a world for you.”
Vic tried to impress as he threw the last sentence at me with an equally playful sarcasm. The flaw in his comment was that he didn’t believe in chance or the supernatural for that matter, however this was his way of showing humility. He stuck to Charles Darwin’s theory that the strongest survives and lives on, or a more modern translation: ‘the majority’s opinion leads to the world’s future development’.
Vic continued to talk about other things, his voice becoming a background murmur, as my thoughts focused on how extraordinary the man in front of me was. He knew I wasn’t really interested in the topic because my knowledge of science was minimal. But his humility shone through every time he spoke. If I thought about it, I had probably never heard him say a single selfish or negative word.
My admiration for Vic was both emotional and professional. He was exceptionally intelligent and had begun to help his father, who was my uncle Benjamin, or Ben as we called him, with his science research from a very young age. Vic soon proved himself to be a master of his field. Although he had the looks of a twenty year-old, he had the wisdom of someone in their forties. The way age weathered people can really prove unfair and although the disease was often playing tricks with my memory, I always seemed to return to the terrible realisation of my thirtieth birthday next year. Where had the time gone? Not that the time really mattered to me here. It was Vic I was worried about. He had dedicated his life to research and to my knowledge, had never met a woman to share his life with.
Just the thought of it developed a fear that this was probably because of me. It always gnawed at my mind. Given Vic’s appearance, he shouldn’t have had any problems at all attracting women. He had a heady combination of seriousness, sincerity and a personality, that inspired both admiration and a sense of security. He was simply admirable. He was a man I couldn’t imagine any woman rejecting.
Maybe it would have been better for him if I refused his visit. It would give him more time for his real life, with real friends who did real activities rather than just sitting with me in my prison. But Vic was my everything and he was all I had. I couldn’t imagine life without him. Did that make me a horrible and selfish person? A sudden awareness of these destructive thoughts reminded me that I had sat quietly for an embarrassingly long time. Self-pity didn’t make my face attractive. I could feel my eyes narrow with concern and my teeth bit hard together. I quickly tried to steer my thoughts to something more fun and improvised to entertain Vic with a story in which I was a vampire victim.
“You know I thirst for your blood,” I grimaced and threw myself towards Vic.
I could see Vic’s eyes harden and his ears became red as he blushed.
“Oh, oh…” he murmured quietly with uncertainty and awe at what I meant by my bizarre words.
“Look!”
I pulled down the collar of the shirt and pointed to two pinpricks on the lower part of my neck where the nurse had taken the blood samples.
Having had looked in my bathroom mirror earlier I knew that the needles had penetrated my neck three centimetres apart and the skin had developed a bluish bruise around the wounds, which made them look like a vampire’s bite. Vic laughed.
“You can take over the storytelling in the future. The apprentice has become the master.”
Vic looked down at his hands and it seemed like he wanted to say something more, but something stopped him.
“You will soon get well, you see. We are all working hard to find a cure,”
he whispered gently.
I took a deep breath and swallowed in an attempt to keep away the tears whilst I nodded helplessly. His sad words had made the moment tense. Vic would leave soon; he had that look in his eyes that showed he didn’t have time to stay any longer.
“Read your poem,” I pressed as a quick request, but with a much harsher tone than I had intended.
I lay back meekly, my head on the pillow. I was referring to the poem, which he often used to read to comfort me to sleep. If I asked him to read it, he always stayed a moment longer than planned.
Vic moved to sit higher up on the bed and caressed my cheek gently with the back of his hand and stroked away a strand of my long, blonde hair from my eyes. It didn’t feel right, something was wrong. Vic wasn’t himself and just as I could sense his feelings, I was sure he could feel the fear that came over me, like needles pricking my skin from head to toe. I was quiet again and waited for the unwelcome words I knew would come from Vic’s mouth.
Vic took a deep breath and held it in for what seemed like several seconds. He looked at the two pink flowers that always appeared on the night before my blood tests and were probably the only things that were beautiful in the room, except for Vic.
His gaze wandered awkwardly toward the ceiling and then down to his hands. Vic’s mouth was closed, but I could detect little cautious movements as if he was trying to start a sentence but couldn’t quite find the right words. I knew him well; he would have practiced what to say repeatedly in the office in an attempt to find words that best reflected his feelings. His conflicting emotions were clear, even if the words weren’t spoken yet.
Vic opened his right hand and in his palm there was a piece of jewellery. Was it a farewell gift? It was a key on a chain with a handle in the shape of a pentagram. In the lower left triangle of the star was a yellow stone. Without saying a word, he bent over me and hung the pendant around my neck.