Genesis: The Beginning

((September 26th, 2149))

Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. The numbers kept growing and the graph kept rising. To many, the screen of his plex would have seemed just confusing. To him, it looked exquisite. Just exquisite.

After all, he understood what those symbols and lines meant. That was what he did for a living. Well, not in the traditional sense—nobody was paying him at the time, but it was the thought of finishing the job he had been hired to do that was keeping him alive. That thought was the reason he was willing to go through the hardships that came with surviving as a homeless man, all alone, in a jungle full of dinosaurs. He knew the risks such life bore; he had scars (and not only behind his right ear) to prove it. Plus, if the amount of times he had heard the Sixers call him 'crazy' was anything to go by, then he had a proof of the toll isolation could take on one's mind. It was difficult, going on like that, and if he had not believed his life would eventually take a turn for the better, he would have thrown in the towel a long time ago.

Life would take a turn for the better, he was sure of that. In fact, he was sure it would happen soon, within a few months at the most. He would not still be stuck in the same spot the next year. The next year would be different. The next year, he would be in 2150, on that overpopulated planet Earth where no one was ever alone, where a lot of the wildlife was extinct and dinosaurs never ate humans, where his father would no longer bother him. Because his father would be dead, hahaha! Oh, he would show the man what he was made of, and once the man understood how wrong he had been to antagonize his son—to hurt his son—, then his employers would help him end the man's life once and for all. He would no longer have to bear the feeling of being hated, of being blamed, of being regarded as incompetent and worthless and not deserving of the life his mother had given him. No, those feelings would leave as soon as his father was unable to have them—which would only happen as soon as his father was dead.

And he knew it would happen soon. He could feel it in his heart. And in his brain. After all, he had gotten very close to solving the equation. That was why he had almost decided not to go to the terminus that morning: while more data to check and work with was helpful, it was not necessary anymore. He would be able to finish his work with what he had collected thus far, he was convinced so.

In the end, though, the desire for making his job easier won over his immediate tiredness. Mostly because he had missed the ninth pilgrimage a year earlier. That one he had missed by accident, not because he had been tired or lazy. He had not checked the calendar often enough and discovered he had missed the date a couple of days later. And while, even then, collecting more data had not been crucial, he knew missing it had slowed him down. So, wanting to make up for that lost time, he set off in the morning. He took a canteen of water and some grubs for snacking, and he headed for the portal terminus.

He knew the pilgrimage was scheduled for the afternoon, but he also knew the Terra Novan army was guarding the place. The closer to the tenth pilgrimage's arrival it was, the more soldiers would be there. He had to find a good hiding spot before the area completely swarmed with his father's sheep.

He walked until he heard voices. Human voices. He registered their sound, but he was too far to understand what they were saying. Slow steps forward… Quiet steps… After all, he wanted to hear, not be heard.

"If I had to," a feminine voice said, "I'd kill off Kyle." He stopped in his tracks and listened. "But honestly, they're both so fun to watch, I don't want either of them to die." He had no idea what the woman was babbling about, but that did not matter. All that mattered was that it a voice, a human voice, speaking the same language as he did. "I hope it turns out it was Christian." He had not spoken to the Sixers in… How long had it been, again? A month or so? Almost two months, probably. It was, of course, by choice, but when he heard the woman talk, he realized he missed it. "I mean, I know he was standing more to the side, but I don't think he was too far from those two." No screeching, no croaking. Pure human speech. Oh, was that music to his ears! "He could've been hit by the bullet." …For all of ten seconds. Then it became old news and started to bore (and borderline annoy) him. "I mean, honestly, Christian's, like, the most annoying character from any show—" Aaand he tuned the voice out. He had a hideout to look for (and a little bit of sanity to preserve).

He chose a tree he had sat in during the eighth pilgrimage's arrival as well. He recognized it thanks to a tiny smiley face he had carved in its bark (tiny enough it was not likely to be noticed by anyone who was not actively looking for it). He discovered upon climbing up that the tree's crown was denser than he remembered it; it was almost impossible to see the terminus from there. Oh, well! He did not need to see the scene, and at least he himself would be better hidden from sight. That, he figured, was a good thing. He made himself comfortable in the branches, and then he waited.

And waited.

Finally, after what felt like and must have been hours, he heard cars. He heard them drive closer, and then he heard them stop. The pilgrimage was impending. He put away his plex for a moment and just listened to all the new voices. Was his father one of them? He listened carefully and nearly strained his neck while trying to look at the arrivals. Washington… Guzman… Not his father. Not anymore. The last pilgrimage his father had come to receive was the fourth one; he had never showed up after that, supposedly waiting at the colony to welcome the pilgrims there.

He was not sure why his father had stopped coming. Perhaps it was because the portal terminus had been built at a secure location, making the newcomers safer. Or perhaps the old man had simply grown lazy. Either way, it bugged him. He was not sure why, but it did. A part of him wondered if he should have been taking it personally—if, somehow, his father knew he came to watch each pilgrimage arrive (apart from the ninth…) and if that was the reason his father never came anymore. Because his father wanted to stay as far away from him as possible. Because the thought of being at the same spot as him made his father sick. He figured he was just being paranoid (after all, if his father had known his location, he would not have lived to see the tenth pilgrimage), but the thought gnawed at him nevertheless.

He returned his attention to his plex once again. As soon as the portal opened, he would log into Hope Plaza through his employers and start gathering data for his work. He figured it would not take long anymore. He adjusted his position, then listened on.

Whoooooosh…

The sound of the portal, while quiet, was unmistakable to his ears. To hell with human voices, this was the real music! (Now, there was a sentence he would not have said before the Sixers' arrival… Much as they annoyed him, they had really spoiled him, too.) He launched the program he needed on his plex. He typed in the username. Filled in the password. Tapped on the screen a few times. Pressed 'start.' And then he leaned back against the tree's trunk and watched with a smile as a myriad of numbers appeared in a column on the left and the rest of the page was filled by a growing graph.

And it was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

The higher the numbers were, the louder was the noise coming from the site of the terminus. The noise was not made by the portal, however, but by the pilgrims who kept coming through it one by one. There was a plethora of shocked gasps, of voices expressing their awe and wonder, even of people complaining they could not breathe right. He knew exactly what everyone was saying—in spite of the fact he could not actually hear their respective words. He knew it because he had heard the same things every single time he had been close enough to the portal to listen to the newcomers. 'Whoa!' 'Wow!' 'Look at all the green!' 'Look how blue the sky is!' 'Holy expletive!' 'My chest stings!' And so forth. They were very unoriginal in that regard.

Everything was going as always. The numbers were nearly identical to his expectations. The pilgrims' chatter grew steadily. The wildlife made distant noises. The sun was shining.

Then the chatter silenced and gave way to yelling. "GUN!"

Okay, that one was new. Gun? What gun? Why was someone yelling out 'gun'? The only reason he could think of was that someone who should not have had any firearms did, in fact, have one. Had one of the nurses brought it to the portal? Had one of the pilgrims smuggled it through Hope Plaza? A terrorist? A mental case? To hell with who it was—what were they doing with it? That was the real question. That was the danger. Did they mean to take the gun to the colony? Or were they planning to shoot right then and there (whether it be at a person or at the terminus)? Oh, god, he hoped not! If someone were to fire a sonic so close to the fracture… He could not even think about what would happen. The very idea terrified him more than anything at that moment.

He leaned forward as much as he could, nearly strained and twisted his neck again to see what was happening—but to no avail. The branches in front of him were too dense. He caught a glimpse here and there of bodies moving, but their faces were blocked by greenery.

"NO! No!" Whoever was yelling out those words was voicing his own thoughts. Oh, god, please, don't shoot the portal. Please don't shoot the portal!

A part of him wanted to jump off the tree and run to terminus and strangle whoever it was that had brought the gun. He did not do so, as he realized he would not have been of any more help than the soldiers his father had sent there. If a small army could not stop the person, how could he? Oh, god, please let the small army handle it! (Wow, that must have been the first time he rooted for the Terra Novan army since he had been banished. Before that event, he had rooted for them a couple of times—whenever there had been danger present and they had been the ones protecting him.)

Much to his relief, the yelling soon stopped. Voices no louder than normal returned, and he heard no shots being fired. No shots fired meant no portal blown apart. No portal blown apart meant no life's work destroyed. No loss of his raison d'être. The portal continued to whoosh happily, and the numbers on his plex grew and grew.

'Give me a heart attack, why don't you?' he thought grumpily, leaning back and letting out a sigh.

The rest of the pilgrimage went on smoothly. There was no more yelling, no more troubles as far as he could tell. He was just sitting there, watching the screen of his plex, silent.

Once the numbers' increase slowed down significantly, he realized the portal was about to be shut down. It was time to quit. He held up his plex. 'Stop' was written at the same place that had previously said 'start.' He tapped on that part of the screen, and the numbers and graph came to an immediate halt. They did not go away, but they were frozen as they were. A few more taps on the screen: 'save as,' keysmash, 'to: desktop,' 'save,' 'log out.' And then he turned the plex off and put it in his bag. Right as he was doing so, the whooshing of the portal disappeared.

He waited up in the tree, listening to the newcomers' indistinct chatter. It did not take long before the cars drove off, followed by other pilgrims, soldiers and nurses walking away on foot. The chatter became more and more distant, until, finally, he could no longer hear a word. Wildlife continued to screech and croak, but there were no sounds of human beings within his earshot. Nodding to himself, he grabbed his bag and climbed down the tree.

He went to the terminus. He made sure to look around carefully before entering the site, just to be sure; as expected, no people were present. He walked closer and stopped behind the center of the terminus. He looked at the metal ring, and a smile found its way to his lips. "Hello, friend," he said out loud, even though he was well aware of the fact the terminus could not hear him. His throat felt a bit raspy, and so he cleared it before continuing. "It's good to see you again. The last time I saw you in use was…" He glanced down at the ground, shifting his weight on his feet. It had been two years ago. Two years… It was hard to believe so much time had passed.

So much time had passed, yet so little had changed. He was two years older. He had moved to another shelter. He was closer to solving the equation. Apart from that? Nothing else seemed different in his life than when the eighth pilgrimage had arrived. The jungle was the same, the dinosaurs, the Sixers, the loneliness… Everything. He was sick of it. Sick! He could not wait to leave the rut he had fallen into. He could not wait to go to the future and finally move on.

But, of course, in order to do that, he had to finish his job first. "I should go," he said to the terminus. "I need to look over the data. I hope you understand. Much as I'd love to stay and have another make-believe conversation, I want to get some work done before bed."

He looked aside for a second, then returned his gaze to the terminus. "Say hi to the portal for me." After those words, Lucas walked away from the site.

The pilgrimage had ended, he had collected the data he wanted—it was time to go back to his ordinary days.

Author's note

Hello, fellow Lucas fan! (I'm assuming you are a fellow Lucas fan because why else would you be here?) Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of another Lucas‑centric story of mine. I've already posted two other ones to this website, Nightmare and The Second It Began, which both take place in the same universe as this story. So if you haven't yet and if you'd like, you can go and read those while I work on the next chapter of this one.

BTW, I included the line with Lucas mentioning he'd like to have a make-believe conversation with the terminus because, in the first draft of this story, I actually wrote a short make-believe conversation (in the sense that Lucas was talking and then pausing to pretend the terminus was responding to him). In the end, though, I decided to change that part.

Okay, I think that's all for now. See you!