"What did you see?" Elsword asks, eyes wide as he sits next to his colleague.
Ain continues to stare off into space. "I don't know, Elsword."
He sighs. "I really don't know."
STARAWAY
By MargaritaDaemonelix
The woman they called Ishmael lived by one principle, and it was kindness. She'd faced too much hatred, in her youth, and kindness was the only sense of solace she had. She was kind to her friends, to strangers she met, to what few people she could call family, to the man who ruined her, and of course to her son, Ainchase.
Ain knows he's not the perfect son that his mother wanted him to be, but he makes regular visits and donations to the convent where she gave her kindness to all, and it makes him feel a little better about his job. It makes him feel like his mother could be proud of him, and that's all he could ever want.
"Welcome back, Brother Ainchase," Mother Artea always says when he returns to the convent. She's like a sister to him, because she was a sister when his mother was their mother. "How has your work been?"
Ain always smiles and says something along the lines of "I'm fine", or "Mostly good, how about you?", because he usually is. He has a good job, kind coworkers (except that one guy from engineering) and a happy life that he is very grateful for.
Mother Artea (always Sister Artea in his heart, though) always takes him through the familiar steps of the convent, smuggles him down to the crypt so they can pray together for their mother. She lets him shower the children with hugs and gifts, watches and laughs as Sister Ignia launches herself at him and sobs in his arms. She cooks something simple but good for dinner with Sister Sasha, and lets Ain say the blessing.
"Will you not stay a little longer?" Artea always asks, when the children are fast asleep. "Stay a while and talk. We've all missed you."
And even though he should be getting back to work, back to the city, Ain always stays behind a while, just so he can talk with his sisters. Anduran took her holy vows recently, and Gloria and Darkmoon will be soon to follow.
They are his sisters, after all, if not by blood then by spirit.
But some time past midnight, he peels himself away from Ignia's bear hug, presses a kiss to the sleeping Sasha's forehead, and forces himself to drive back to the city, two and a half hours away. Ain thinks it's unfair that he can only spend such little time at the convent, but it makes him happy, even if it's just one short visit a month.
Moonlight wanders into his car, dispersing through the El gem he hangs on the mirror and scattering. He has many shards of El kept in places where he can pause to pray, after all. Now, as he drives along the rarely-travelled road, he says a quick prayer for his mother.
"Don't be scared, Ainchase," she'd said the day she died. "Be happy, for now wherever you are, on Earth or beyond, I will always be with you."
Ain had always thought she was talking nonsense in regards to the "beyond", but now, with the looming promise of soaring to space aboard the ATLAS sometime soon, it doesn't seem like such an impossible thing. Maybe his mother understood all along, when she sold everything to send him to university, that he would go to outer space.
He think it's funny that someone as religiously connected as himself can be an astrophysicist, that science and faith can come together in his field of work. He can recite passages from the Bible just as easily as he can interpret a Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. And now, with traces of El being found from an infrared scan of a destroyed planet, maybe things will truly add up.
The El is central to his faith, after all. It is due to the existence of the El that all living things are able to live at all. Scientists have been studying the El for long enough to know that its composition is unlike anything else found on Earth, that it was the catalyst for life, and that it came from outer space. So yes, in a way, his faith has become his science.
This is how things will go down in a few months:
Rena from HR will call him down to the boss' office, and he'll drop all his papers and his mug of tea to run there. He knows he'll sit down with Ariel and probably whoever else is going on the journey, and she'll tell them that the ATLAS I is ready for flight. She'll shake each of their hands as she congratulates them on being selected from the pool of existing candidates to go to CRIRI NO4 - the exoplanet with traces of El that they've been studying.
(Ain knows there's a slight chance that he won't make the final cut, but with his PhD in astrophysics and 8 years of internship-turned-permanent-position at COBO Interstellar, he figures his chances are good enough.)
After Ariel confirms their group, they'll go through rigorous training, physical and technical. He'll learn about the theorized climate on CRIRI, where the largest deposits of El are - even though he already knows all of this from his own investigating. He'll suffer through months of physical torture and come out of it stronger than ever. He'll be there when COBO Interstellar officially unveils their plan to send the scientists to CRIRI, and he'll savour every moment of knowing the world is watching him shine.
Mother will be proud of him.
At least, Ain hopes she will be.
The day he's actually called down, the entire COBO headquarters building is brimming with excitement. Ain feels a sense of pride as he walks down the hallway towards Ariel's office, smiling smugly as he passes by the other people walking through. Out of all the people in the hallway, he is the only one going towards the office.
He passes by Rena from HR on his way there. She's at her usual cubicle, her fingers flying over her keyboard rapidly. "Hullo, Ain," she greets, smiling warmly in that radiant Rena way of hers. "Glad to see you. Miss Ariel has some important news for you."
"It's about ATLAS, isn't it?" He replies, rather playfully. It's an odd thing for him to do, talking to Rena in this way, but she has the same smile as his mother and the same open eyes as Artea.
"I don't know, but you'll see," she says, picking up the phone receiver. "Hold on a second, Ain, I'm gonna page the others real quick."
She dials a number into the phone at lightning speed and puts it on speaker. "Hello?" She says, switching to her soft customer service voice. "This is Rena from HR."
"Hey Rena, what can I do for you?"
"Could you please send a Miss Aisha Landar down to Miss Ariel's office?"
From what seems to be the other side of the room, a voice suddenly cackles. "Ooh, Aisha's in trouble!"
Rena smirks. "And a Mr. Elsword Sieghart?"
Light laughter fills the speaker, and Ain can't help but smile a bit himself. The year Ain finished his bachelor's degree, Elsword was only just a first-year student. They go back a long, long way, and it's pleasing to Ain that the kid with an aggressive streak that he had to tutor years ago is now going to space with him.
"We'll be right down, Miss Rena," says the polite voice that can only belong to Aisha Landar. The folks from the other divisions call her a human database, because she stores information like Ain stores El shards.
It only takes a few minutes for Aisha and Elsword to arrive, bickering as they often do. They walk into Ariel's office together, having some mundane argument about peas, of all things, and Ain has to stifle a chuckle.
Ariel frowns at the front of her table. "We've only got three," she says. "I'm sure I called for five-"
And then the door bursts open, and it's that asshole from engineering, and Ain is suddenly questioning Ariel's choice of astronauts. "Welcome, Add," Ariel says, smiling. "Everything alright?"
"Yeah, sure," he says, dropping into the final vacant chair (next to Ain). "What's up?"
Ain doesn't remember how he bumped into Add, but he knows that a) the man suffers from anxiety and b) it does nothing to curb his arrogant nature. He shifts a little bit away from Add, and the other guy snorts.
"Add Grenore," Ariel says, beginning one of the formal speeches that she's so well known for. Everyone sits up straight instantly. "Aisha Landar. Elsword Sieghart."
She looks straight at Ain, and smiles. "Ainchase Ishmael.
"The four of you have been brought here today so that I can give you your next assignment," she says. "You have been selected to be the astronauts travelling to CRIRI NO4 aboard the ATLAS I. It is of the utmost importance that this news does not leave this room until your training begins."
She goes on for a while with technicalities and whatnot, just like an everyday assignment briefing. Yes, they are permitted to share this news with their families and significant others and best friends, but it must be kept under wraps publicly until the public announcement is made. No, they cannot tell anyone else in their departments for now (not that it matters. Everyone already knows). Ain spots a plate of fruit on the table and resists the urge to pluck one of the green grapes off and pop it in his mouth. Knowing how it's there every time he comes, it's probably silicone. He turns his gaze away from the grapes and sits still.
"Ain, since you have the most experience on this job, I'm going to be assigning the role of de facto captain to you," Ariel says. "However, you must understand that this is only for communications purposes. There is to be no actual captain, since none of you have military experience, but for the sake of transmissions to Earth, Ain will open the messages and end them."
Ain dips his head, a little in awe but also a little disappointed… And filled with respect for Ariel. She does trust all five of them equally, after all. It only makes sense that she divides the attention among them.
"Questions, anyone?"
Elsword's hand immediately shoots up. "Is astronaut food really as bad as everyone keeps saying it is?"
Ariel laughs. "It's worse," she offers. "Anything else?"
Ain tries to wet his lips so he can speak again. "Shouldn't Eve be coming on this trip?"
This question is accompanied by a pointed look at Add, who glares right back. Eve is his boss, after all, since she's the head of the engineering department at COBO. Ain has seen her take apart atomic bombs without breaking a sweat.
Then again, it might have something to do with the fact that she's the heiress to the Nasod Motors company. She's probably been wiring rockets since she was born.
"Eve is taking a leave for personal reasons," Ariel says, her eyes clouding over a little bit. "One of her cousins passed on recently, I'm sure you've heard. Her mental health is… Not in a good state for going to outer space. She'll be your ground support after launch."
"Wait, wait, wait," Add says, shaking his head. "You said five people earlier when you made Ain the captain. Is that because we need two engineers to fill Eve's part?"
"Yes, because most of you are grossly unproductive," Ariel gripes. "Luckily, Eve has put forth the candidacy another engineer who has been very promising thus far, and this claim has been backed up by Elsword. She contributed greatly to the design of the boosters for the ATLAS, and Eve has agreed to transfer her from Nasod Motors to COBO for this purpose."
She leans across the table to press a button on her intercom. "Rena, could you please call Miss Testarossa and ask her to visit my office?"
Within minutes, a familiar face enters the room. Ain watches as Elsword happily embraces the newcomer. "This is Anna Testarossa," Ariel says, even though it's clear the only person who's never met her before is probably Add. "She is an artificial intelligence developer, but she has also done incredible work in the field of mechanical engineering."
"Call me Rose," she says. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
After briefing Rose on most of the things she explained earlier, Ariel dismisses the five of them. With none of them really knowing each other (especially Add), though, Ain suggests that they go grab lunch together at a local cafe.
As they dig into bowls of butternut squash soup and plates of ham sandwiches, they talk about themselves, their families, their lives. Ain finds out that the woman set as Add's phone wallpaper is his wife. She is a high school philosophy teacher, and they have twins - a boy and a girl, as different as the Sun and the Moon but close like peas in a pod. Rose is, as he remembered, married to Elsword's sister, and they have one daughter who is in preschool. Elsword makes EDM music in his free time; his YouTube channel is pretty popular now. Aisha writes columns for a local newspaper, but her greatest wish is to write a novel of her own.
"What about you, Ain?" Aisha asks, reaching for her iced coffee. "Do you have any siblings?"
He shakes his head. "I'm an only child," he says, "but I guess the children I grew up with in the convent were my siblings, in a sense. My mother was a nun, and my father-" He cuts himself off there. "So yeah, I grew up in the convent."
Rose nods. "Interesting. I have a lot of siblings, too."
Ain finds out that Rose is the youngest of four sisters, and that Aisha and Add are both only children, just like him. Elsword has one pretty well-known sister - Elesis. Everyone seems to know her from somewhere - Aisha was in Model United Nations with Elesis when they were in university, Add once got beat up by her after he invoked her wrath, Rose literally got married to her three years ago, and Ain has hung around with Elsword enough to have bumped into Elesis a few times.
Elsword and Rose take turns recalling stupid stories of what the normally stoic Elesis has done, and Ain can't help but take note that Rose seems much closer to Elsword than he is. He's not mad; she has every right to know her brother-in-law, after all. Aisha seems a lot less comfortable with their friendship, though.
The cafe drains out after lunch hour, and the five of them pay their bills and head back to the big COBO building, chattering about family and life and their plans for when they do go to space. Elsword wants to do a reveal on his YouTube channel about his career, and hopefully stream some "sick space beats", while Aisha wants to write a story based loosely on their adventures in space.
Ain has to think for a moment. "I'm going to pray. For my mother, who gave everything so I could be here."
It's a respectable goal, the others tell him, and Ain agrees. Without his mother's support, he would never have come this far in life, nor would he be living so happily.
"I'll probably spend most of my time trying to contact Ara and the twins," Add says. "Oh god, I'm going to have to tell Ara that I'm going to space. She's going to kill me."
(Ain decides that Add is probably less of an asshole and more of a socially-inept workaholic.)
Rose bites her lip and puts a hand on Elsword's shoulder. "This means I'm leaving your sister alone to take care of Honore for what, two weeks?"
Elsword winces. "She's going to kill the both of us."
"Hey, murders aside, we're going to have to go through backbreaking physical training," Aisha pipes up. "You can't kill what's already dead."
They all cheer to that, and for the first time since he last visited the convent, Ain feels like he's found a family again.
The day they blast off to outer space, there are many new faces at COBO.
Over in the engineering department, the people there have all crowded around Add, who is blinking back tears, and his wife, who is openly sobbing. She has dark hair and golden, dewy eyes that weep honey gold as she collapses in his arms. Beside them, Eve and her cousin Herbaon are each holding one of the twins. Eve's going to move in with Ara while Add is off in outer space, so she can balance her workload as a teacher and raising the two children.
On the other side of the engineering department, Rose sits against a wall, her eyes closed as she cradles Elesis in her arms. Elesis, who broke her arm breaking someone's fall from a fourth-floor balcony and didn't cry, has her face buried in Rose's shoulder.
"Don't go," Ain hears her whisper to Rose. "What if you don't come back?"
Rose lifts her head and looks straight at Ain through the glass pane. There are tears welling up in her eyes as well, full of pain and regret. "I'll be back, I promise," she says, dropping her gaze back to her wife and stroking her hair gently. "Take good care of yourself and Honore while I'm gone, okay? I'll call back as often as I can."
Ain can feel his resolve breaking when he pushes open the door to the engineering department. "Hey," he says quietly, and the room goes silent. "It's time to go."
Ara wails and holds on tighter to Add, sobbing out something incoherent. Eve hands the kid in her arms to someone nearby and softly pulls Ara away. "Go," she says, mostly to Add, even though she's staring right at Ain.
Ain snaps out of his daze to approach, grabbing Add's arm and tugging him out of the room. "Rose," he calls.
The blonde engineer looks up. "C'mon, Ellie," she says softly, "we have to go find your brother."
Elesis nods, taking her hand gently as the two of them push themselves to their feet.
Their little group is waved off with much sobbing and hugs all around. Ain feels vaguely uncomfortable with all these unfamiliar faces wishing him good luck, so he tugs away from the group, bringing Add, Rose and Elesis with him.
They head to the statistics department, where Aisha and Elsword usually are. Elsword is in space weather, and Aisha's in extraterrestrial civilizations, if Ain recalls correctly. Why they ended up in the stats room, he'll never know.
Sure enough, there's another hug party waiting there. Unlike in engineering, where everyone was just sobbing, stats has pulled out all the stops. A cake shaped like ATLAS sits on a nearby table, ready to be cut and eaten. Elesis leaves Rose's arms for just long enough to pull her brother and their parents into the mix as well, and then Aisha and her grandfather, just for good measure. They stay like that for a while, as Ain finds himself pelted by questions and hugs.
But then they're leaving the stats department behind as well, and Elesis is left tearfully waving in the window with her uneaten slice of cake. Ain glances over at Rose once. She's staring blankly at her own feet, trying not to cry but unable to do anything to stop.
Ain reaches over and puts a hand on her shoulder. "As soon as we enter free flight, you'll be able to contact them," he reminds her.
"How long will it take?" She mumbles.
"Until we reach free flight?" Ain ponders for a moment. "About six hours, at which point we'll have left the solar system. Well - six hours for them, anyways. Then it'll take another six for the message to reach them. So about half a day total."
COBO's joint ownership of the ATLAS with Nasod Motors has created some interesting improvements to space travel. For one, Nasod Motors offered its most powerful engine - known widely as the Core- to boost ATLAS at near light speed. COBO then put years into testing said engine and its effects on human bodies, resulting in the creation of the Nitropod, designed to put its inhabitants through cryogenic sleep while the shuttle is undergoing the highest speeds.
Rose nods softly. "Then I'll just have to wake up to their faces," she says.
They don their suits and put their final mementos into their pockets and say their last prayers. Ain clasps his El gem for a moment before tucking it into his jacket, zipping it and the rest of his suit up.
Already in her Nitropod, Aisha yawns. "Nap time, guys."
Rose gags. "I have heard enough of that word for a lifetime," she says, climbing into her pod. "Anyways, good night."
"Good night," Ain echoes. The Nitropod is colder than he'd remembered, but with his warm suit around him and the pillows surrounding him, he feels like he could sleep for a century, a millennium. Maybe he could nap a little longer while the others get up to man the helm-
A soft beeping sound fills the sleep chamber, and Ain's eyes fly open. He doesn't feel as dizzy as he probably should, considering he's just woken up from six hours of light travel. Even so, there's a sort of weight pressing down at the back of his head, like when they were doing simulators back on Earth.
Yawning, Ain hits the button on the side of his Nitropod, allowing the door at his side to roll open. He gingerly sticks a hand out, expecting to feel the cold of space, and instead finds another hand dangling out.
"Ain, is that you?" This voice seems to belong to Add. He sounds just as disoriented as Ain feels, which is a small relief. "Ah shit."
There's a thumping noise, and then Add tumbles out of the pod overhead and starts to float. "Wow," he says, waving his arm around. "We're in space."
Ain rolls over the side of his pod and into the cabin. It's a bit of a surprise considering how strange the whole situation is, but he manages. His return to Earth will be much harder to adjust to. "Alright, I'm up. Elsword?"
The final pod in the stack opens up with a hiss, and Elsword, red hair and suit and all, tumbles out. "Present!" He helps, turning around in midair to untangle his arms from the suit. "Yo, we're floating!"
And indeed they are. Ain experimentally pushes back, like he's swimming through nothingness, and finds himself being propelled forwards. "Interesting," he says, even though they've experienced this a million times during training. The real deal seems to be much cooler, especially since Ain can feel his El gem trying to escape his suit.
… On second thought, maybe weightlessness isn't the coolest.
The partition slides open to reveal the two open pods on the other side, with Rose and Aisha hovering near the ceiling. "Uh." Aisha laughs sheepishly. "Help?"
Ain rolls his eyes as he reaches a hand to each of them, pulling them down without bringing himself up with them. "Be careful," he warns. "We don't need any incidents on day one. We've got two months out here, and since we're basically isolated, things need to go smoothly. Even comms are limited, so let's do our best to go incident-free."
Rose clears her throat. "Speaking of comms, shouldn't we send a message back to home base?"
They end up crowding the control room, each waiting for their turn to speak. Ain begins the message, like he'd been prepared to do. "This is a message from the captain of the ATLAS I, Ainchase Ishmael," he says, throat dry. "We have successfully awoken. We have passed the Kuiper Belt and we are now exiting the Solar System. On-board systems seem to all be in order. We are travelling at roughly Mach 27 at the time of speaking."
He passes the microphone to Elsword, the youngest on board. It's an unspoken rule, after all, that the younger ones get to speak first. Ain pushes off from the control panel, propelling himself a short distance away so Elsword can sit in the view of the camera.
"Hey, Mom, Dad," he says, "I'm in outer space. Take good care of yourselves, okay? I'd hate to come back and find all of us shrivelled up. It's really cool out here, even if I have no clue where I am or where I'm going at this point. Elsa, stop panicking, we're alright out here. Rose doesn't really have control of the whole floating thing yet."
Rose smacks him playfully on the shoulder. "She just whacked me for saying that," he continues, laughing. "Aight, take care and stay safe. Tell Honore that her favourite uncle says hi. I'll be home before you know it!"
Aisha takes the microphone next. "Grandpa, I've made it!" She says happily. "You're probably at home, watching TV right now, waiting for my broadcast. Don't worry about me, I'm going to bring home alien rocks and we can put them in the backyard with Mother's rock garden! When I get home, I'll tell you all about it. Love you, Grandpa!"
She hands it to Add, who looks stressed. "I-ah, shoot," he mumbles, before straightening his back and trying again. "Hey, Ara," he says softly, his eyes full of light. "I hope you're doing okay. Space is a lot more boring than you'd expect it to be. I'm kind of hungry, but I know the food is going to be crap, so I'm going to wait.
"It's been six hours and I already miss you and the twins," he admits. "Also, if you can't find their tiny hats from when we brought them home from the hospital, it's because I took them. I also took your favourite hairclip. I'm sorry I'm only just telling you this now, but I really miss you. Take good care of yourselves. I-"
His voice shuts off and he quietly cedes the microphone to Rose.
"Elesis." That's the only word she says in a long time. "I love you. Stay safe and remind Honore to not eat all her Halloween candy overnight. Honore, I love you. Maman, Edna, Kyra, Vera, je vous aime. Je retournerais tôt."
She pauses for a moment. "I love you all."
Ain can tell she's quite shaken when she hands the mic to him. He nods firmly at her, allowing himself a small smile, and takes her place in front of the camera. "Sisters of the convent of Mother Ishmael, I hope you're doing well," he says softly. "God bless you all, and to all God bless."
He runs through the system statistics one last time, then drops a little bit down for the others to appear in the shot for a final wave before he turns off the recording system. "And done," he says, pressing the button that sends their message back to Earth. "Good work, team."
Ain turns around to find Rose and Add near tears, Aisha softly crying, and Elsword's eyes red. It's no surprise to him; Aisha and Elsword both have family and friends to be returning to, Rose has a wife and a kid, and Add has a wife and two kids.
Maybe it's because he grew up in the convent, or because his mother is gone, but Ain can't find the tears to weep with them. He pushes down the webcam with a sigh, and reaches forwards and gathers them all together. "We'll be home in two months, guys," he reminds them. "Right now, we're alone out here. Let's make this count."
But he knows they really need this. They're over nine billion miles away from home, isolated from everything else, and even a simple message would take 6 hours to reach their loved ones.
They really are on their own now, for the first time.
Ain likes solitude.
He takes walks alone on CRIRI's surface while Rose reads Elesis's letters, again and again and again. Add spends a good deal of time sleeping and recording messages to Ara and the twins, almost on an hourly basis. Aisha coops herself up in the control panel, using the dictation function on her computer to write her novel.
Elsword doesn't really focus on his music as much as he'd like to. He makes one track the first day named CRIRI, and then proceeds to upload it to his YouTube channel and pretends nothing happened, despite the overwhelming support.
Maybe it's this support that causes him to join Ain on his walks across CRIRI's rocky surface. There's a large dent in the planet, like some large force once collided with it and left its imprint permanently. Ain thinks it was a meteor. Elsword thinks it was a solar flare.
"There must have once been huge deposits of El here," he murmurs, kneeling down on the rocky sand. Ain has collected nearly three kilograms of this stuff already just by dusting it off the space suits. "Look at the crystalline hole in this rock."
"Take a reading on the age," Ain instructs. The source El arrived on Earth some three and a half billion years ago, with no life attached to it that any scientist knows of. Its impact with Earth alone caused an outburst of primordial life, which lead to the events of the current day.
Ain knows fully well that this planet could be a host for extraterrestrial life. There are signs of broken artifacts on CRIRI, the remains of machinery never seen before on Earth. The big question is, why hasn't he bumped into aliens yet?
"This is nearly four billion years old," Elsword reports, getting up from beside the rock. "Well. My chronometer is going haywire, so I'm going to assume it's about four billion."
"So this precedes the appearance of El on Earth," Ain murmurs. "Did Earth's El come from this planet?"
He tries to visualize the El on Earth, the size of a mountain, and gives up halfway through his calculations. "Aisha," he says, turning on his comms, "you there?"
"Yeah, what's up?"
"Can you calculate for me," Ain says, trying to wet his lips, "how long it would take Earth's El - or a chunk of El in that size - to reach Earth from here?"
"... Like, just floating through space?"
"Yeah. Cut some corners here and there, we just need an estimate."
"Uh, I'd give it about half a million years."
"That's perfect, Aisha." He pauses. "Thank you."
He turns off his comms and drops down to the ground. "Let's head back to ATLAS."
They bound across CRIRI's dark plains, the gravity fluctuations underfoot giving them short springs and long cresting jumps. The dent has left a dead ocean, void of life or liquid.
Ain scans his surroundings slowly. There's a large rock outcropping near the place they parked ATLAS, which looms in the distance. A few rocks they broke open on the first day remain motionless in what little wind CRIRI still has.
Then there's a screech, and Elsword drops to the ground beside him. "Elsword, are you alright?" He yells, turning back to look at his companion.
Elsword is sprawled across the entrance of a hole that hadn't been there a second ago. "Woah," he manages. "Mama Mia, that's a spicy meatball."
Ain rolls his eyes. He's known Elsword long enough to know that he'll cite memes in every situation, evening managing to slip them into formal reports. "Here," he says, pulling Elsword back up to his feet. "Put up a marker. Let's go back and tell the others first. Then we'll come back and figure things out."
In the end, Ain stays behind on the ship because as the captain, he has to log everything that's happening. "This is a message from the captain of the ATLAS I, Ainchase Ishmael," he says, voice trembling, as he watches the feed from Elsword's helmet. "All conditions on board are stable at the time of speaking. Our suits are still able to block out 97.28% of the infrared radiation. What is really alarming is that we have located what seems to be evidence of a civilization that once lived on this planet."
The video feed crackles for a moment, mostly because Ain is simultaneously streaming it to his own screen and to the recording. "How's it going, Elsword?"
"We've gotten about two metres down the shaft," he reports. "There's finally a hallway to a - oh. It comes to a dead end."
"Not if I can help it," says Rose. Ain can literally hear her grin. "Move aside, kids."
Ain switches to the feed from her helmet. She runs her hands over the wall, around the edges, over the walls on the sides, even the ceiling and the floor. "There's definitely a mechanism, but I can't tell what it is," she admits, knocking on a wall panel. It sounds rather hollow. "I mean, we could always just bust in with brute force, but that doesn't feel quite as satisfying as working all the parts."
Her vision frame shifts slightly, like she's turning backwards. "Grenore. Give me a hand here."
They're able to pry a metallic panel open with a pair of pliers, kitchen tongs, and a wrench. Inside is a bunch of loose wires and what seems to be a switch. "There's no electric connection," Add notes. "We can rewire it entirely or one of us could just stick a battery inside."
"Usually that's not safe," Aisha chides. "Do you need some light?"
She and Elsword hold lights up for Rose and Add as they pick and unravel the mess of wires inside. Add pulls a battery out of his pocket (now where'd he pick that up?) and puts it in, putting the two loose ends of the wires to its terminals.
A shower of sparks engulfs Ain's screen instantly. "Rose! Add!" He yells, pushing his headset closer to his mouth. "Is everything alright?"
"You really should spend more time in the engineering department," Add retorts from the other side, the sparks finally clearing. "We get stuff like this all the time."
The large wall shudders, and begins to shift. Ain lifts his headphones off, wincing as he prepares himself for unholy screeching, but finds no sounds. "Huh," he says, putting them back on. "What's going on, guys? Keep me updated."
"The walls are made from some sort of metal," Rose says, peering into the chamber that has now been opened up. "But some event caused them to warp heavily."
"Warp?"
"Warping occurs when you heat a metal a lot, but you don't cool it down properly," Add explains. "Which means Elsword's theory of the solar flare might not have been all that far off. Something must have superheated this room to the point where the material superheated and warped."
There's a gasp, and then the light on their helmets activates. Ain sees a large pedestal in the middle of the chamber, which isn't all that impressive.
No, not quite a pedestal. It's more of a large box, left there for the ages. Intricate carved designs and etching covers its surface. "Can you open it?" Ain asks, leaning forwards against the control desk.
"I think it would be better to bring it on board," Rose says. "I'm gonna assume there aren't any explosives in here, since the superheating event would have ignited them and this chamber would not exist. Once we get it onboard, we'll need to quarantine it. Add and I will open it, and then Aisha, it's all yours."
"How can you be so sure it'll be hers to investigate?" Elsword asks, intrigued.
Rose's vision lowers as she points at the side of the box. In the dim white light, Ain can just make out two humanoid figures dancing among the etched foliage, not unlike that of Earth.
"This box may be the only remnant of the culture that was once on this planet," she says, "and Aisha is the only person available who has the knowledge to decode that."
They put the box in the quarantine chamber, isolating it from everything else. Rose and Add spend hours scanning it, realizing that it's a very, very complex matryoshka doll, in a sense of the word. There are layers inside like a combination lock, and some with puzzles, and some with nothing at all. It takes them a solid week to decipher the box's locks and puzzles.
As they unlock layer after layer, however, Aisha takes the skins they've shed from the box, cleaning them up in another chamber and writing out the story of a people lost to time.
The first few layers, the outermost ones, are made from what Add figures is some sort of tungsten alloy, causing it to have a ridiculously high melting point. "That's how it survived the warping," he explains. "The entire room is probably made of this stuff. It's like a crucible."
Aisha takes photos from every direction, sketching them out herself afterwards like a comic book. "They're telling a story," she says. "All I know right now is that they were mostly like humans."
"Mostly?" Ain echoes.
Aisha nods. "Mostly. Our planet supports carbon-based life," she says. "Theirs supported silicon-based life."
Elsword takes the outermost layers after Aisha's done with them, mostly to examine them for lingering radiation as so to figure out what happened to CRIRI. No one is left without a job.
Except Ain. He wakes up in his pod to the sound of Rose clinking her pincers together, gets up to pour himself a coffee (he keeps thinking the spigot is upside down) as Aisha stumbles in for some tea, struggles to comb down his cyan hair as Elsword ties his hair back, and walks into the control room only to find Add asleep, watching a video message of Ara and the sleeping twins on loop.
"We only have so much electricity," he always says when he nudges Add awake.
"There's the radiation," Add mumbles. "We get electricity from our solar panels."
And yet it's another worrying thing to think about. Elsword says the infrared radiation isn't too worrying, since their suits block out about 97% of it and ATLAS blocks out most of the rest, but even so, Ain worries for his crew. They spend most of their time working indoors on the box, and they don't think about the strange source of heat that's unnaturally washing over CRIRI.
Infrared by itself is perfectly safe, but too much of it can be damaging to health.
So Ain busies himself with reminding his teammates to drink water, because the heat from that mysterious radiation source is going to try them out. He makes them food, and turns the lights off in the ship when they don't respond to his telling them to "hurry up and come eat". He reminds them to exercise, because they'll be noodles when they return to Earth if they don't.
He makes little "vlogs", as Elsword calls them, to send back to Earth on his newly-minted YouTube channel. He calls the channel AngelOfSpace and shows footage from CRIRI's surface directly from his helmet camera. Once he even manages to capture a bit of Add taking a nap half in his pod and half outside, and hurries to show it to Elsword briefly before uploading it.
(Ariel informs him in one of her video messages that there is outstanding support for his vlogging, and that she is very pleased with said support. There are kids out there watching his videos, listening to him explain space in a professional manner, and telling their parents that they want to be astronauts too.)
(Ain has never felt prouder.)
There's a startling amount of things that they find buried between the layers of the box, including a collection of beautifully-cut gems that might have once belonged on the boxes themselves. Aisha matches a few back to their original places and continues to photograph her results. A bracket or two that have fallen from the lids lie forgotten at the bottom of their boxes. Ain feels a strange sense of nostalgia, like he can sympathize.
When he's not busy reminding the others to eat and drink and take care of themselves and sleep, or vlogging, Ain prays. It's second nature to him, after all. It wouldn't be him if he wasn't praying. He asks the Lord to bless his friends, his sisters on Earth, all of COBO, and of course his mother, who is resting. He prays before he goes to sleep, and sometimes during his vlogs as well.
Above all, he prays that their adventures in space will go smoothly, and they'll return home soon with the knowledge they need.
One morning, Ain wakes up to cheering. As he groggily emerges from his pod, Elsword swims through the chamber to meet him. "They've opened the last casket," he says excitedly, "and there's a book inside, like a picture book but without words. It's so beautiful. I think you'd like to read it."
There's a sort of lost light in Elsword's eyes, though, that makes him think otherwise.
Ain propels himself through the cabin, towards the quarantine chamber where the others are gathered. "Aisha, how much of this story is legible?" He asks.
"All of it," Aisha says, eyes wide. "Ain, you gotta read it. I think... I'm sorry. I think you might get upset."
Ain smiles. "We'll see."
He takes her place at the front of the quarantine chamber, and starts to read.
Within minutes, though, there are tear drops floating all around him.
They were a peaceful people.
The inhabitants of what was then known as Elrianode lived without greed or wrath. They were lead by the wise council of El Masters, six sages who understood the needs of the people, and the Lady of El, a woman whose understanding of the cosmos triumphed above all evils.
So when the astronomers of Elrianode saw that their sun was dying, it was up to their leaders to figure out what to do.
They really didn't have much time left, after all. The explosion would destroy their planet, and kill all its people along with it regardless of how quickly they tried to escape. The only thing that could have a chance of survival was the El that was so crucial to their survival, the catalyst of life.
Finally, the Lady of El came up with the only possible answer: they would have to entrust the El to other hands. The citizens of Elrianode packed up what El they had, and using techniques thought lost to time, they brought their El to a rocket, one they thought would be fast enough to avoid the incoming destruction. The bullet of El was their final shot into the darkness, as they had run out of options.
Two copies of a grand book detailing the story of their people and their final days were crafted; one was buried deep underground, in a vault plated with material thought to be indestructible, and the other was placed on the rocket, in case someone discovered it someday.
With the clouds of destruction on the horizon, the Lady of El ordered for the rocket to be fired, with its incomplete version of the book, while the other version remained deep under Elrianode's surface.
It is their hope that someday, these two siblings-in-craft can be reunited.
"You can talk to me about it, right?" Elsword prompts, poking Ain in the arm. "C'mon, Ain. You haven't been this quiet since your first year of post-grad."
Ain closes his eyes and exhales. "It's just… Why did they have to die?"
The El brings life, his scriptures say.
But it brought death for them.
Elsword sighs. "Maybe they survived," he offers, even though Ain knows fully well that the evidence for such a claim is weak. "But even if they didn't, we have to be strong. They died so we could live and carry on their legacy, Ain."
He gets off the ledge on the ceiling where Ain is sitting. "I'm going to go make some coffee," he says. "Do you want some?"
Ain shakes his head. "Give some to Aisha," he suggests. "She could really use it."
As Elsword swims away towards the kitchenette, Ain sighs and closes his eyes, letting his body relax and drop down. "Legacy," he mumbles, drowning in the sea of weightlessness. "What even is a legacy?"
Elrianode's legacy was that they sent the El off, because their lives were collectively over. With that information, they decided to give life to others. Now, they've passed the torch to Earth, to humanity, to continue living.
What about others? Elesis's legacy at their university is that she saved a student during their suicide attempt, but broke her arm in the process. Ariel's legacy is that she is the seventh CEO of COBO Interstellar, and the first to form a business bond with the equally ambitious Nasod Motors.
… His mother's legacy is her kindness. Even those who didn't know her personally knew that she loved everyone she met and treated them like they were her life and blood. Mother had seen too much as a girl, after all, and her kindness to others had been the only way she could find salvation. The Lord told her to be kind to all, and so she was.
What will your legacy be, Ain?
He opens his eyes. The cabin smells like coffee, which means Elsword tipped either the coffee machine or the beans. Somehow he's not surprised.
"Ain! Can you help us with the coffee machine?"
He smiles.
Maybe it's about time he started to fill his legacy with kindness, too.
They return to Earth with open hearts and open minds.
When Ain hears the soft beeping of the alarm again, it doesn't occur to him that it's time to wake up. He stretches his arms over his head, yawning, and presses the button that lifts the cover-
And immediately, he is greeted with the screaming of what must be a million people. "Welcome home, Captain Ishmael," says Ariel, at the head of the group. "You must be exhausted."
He is, but that doesn't stop him from accepting hugs from Ignia and Sasha (when did they get here?) and about a million more people he's never met.
The pods slowly open. Add is literally tackled by Ara the moment he emerges from his. A little girl, barely stable on her feet, jumps into Rose's pod, shrieking with delight, as Elesis leans down to kiss her wife. Elsword and Aisha climb out to hugs from Rena and Eve and literally everyone from stats.
Ain stands up straight and takes a deep breath. The world is going to need to know about the sacrifice that the people of Elrianode made for them someday, and Ain will be the bridge between the religious and scientific worlds.
Then, in the distant future, when he finds his peace in heaven, Ain hopes Mother will hold him like she used to, and tell him how proud she is of him.
A/N: this was supposed to be like 5k where did i go wrong
nanowrimo starts tomorrow so i really wanted to get this done today, so happy halloween! i guess this isn't really halloweeny but oh welp
to clarify some technical stuff:
- this was inspired by Arthur C. Clarke's short story The Star. in the story, however, the sort of religious herald is a star going supernova and creating the Star of Bethlehem. it's definitely worth a read, so please check it out sometime!
- i used a planet name generator to get CRIRI NO4. plz do not take this planet name seriously.
- basically elrianode's star went supernova, which basically annihilates everything within a huge radius. this usually results in the creation of nebulae, or on occasion a black hole, but i'd like to think that their supernova blew up everything but resulted in a failed supernova, which left behind the remaining infrared radiation.
- Elrianode/CRIRI was once larger, but the supernova kinda levelled(?) it, which is why the vault in the story is deep underground, but when the astronauts find it, it's only like 2 metres under.
- this is my entry for the EFB prompt outer space
i think that's about all! hally happoween, and to all free candy!
~Marg