Act 1
"And this is how I will die: sitting in front of a keyboard."
—Frank Arthur
Mars' boots crunched on gravel, planted firmly as she stood in the empty field. She looked to the horizon, the hot Johto sun pounding her forehead, cooking her hair and forcing her to squint through to see the incredibly blue sky. Covering her eyes with a hand, Mars stared at the dark outline of a building, overshadowed by a wall of tall trees, the front of a forest that stretched expansively behind.
Behind her, the truck fired up, engine growling to life, wheels crackling with gravel beneath the thick tires as it pushed off, rolling down a thin country road that snaked away towards a field. It left Mars alone at the foot of a long, rocky and grassy expanse, rows of small shacks and houses behind her on the other side of the gravel road.
As Mars pushed off on her own, taking the first few steps towards the old shack ahead, she stopped dead in her tracks, the voice of someone hollering coming from behind.
"Hey! Rocket! Get out of our town, you swine!"
A can bounced inches from Mars' heel. After gazing down at the beaten, metallic can, she looked up, staring down the two people who were standing and watching from their decks, leaning over the wooden bannister with Pokeballs clutched in their hands, unmarked cans full of drinks resting beside them. On the porch steps, just in front of it, a Houndoom stalked the grounds in front of it, lanky body crossing beneath the leaning arms of the locals.
Mars turned, biting the inside of her cheek as she thought, furrowing her brow with concern. She continued to walk, despite further taunts from over her shoulder. She instead followed the sun and it's bright midday intensity, feeling it wash over her skin and cook it.
"We'll come after ya! There's prices on your head! You best stay out of our town, clear?"
Shaking her head, Mars looked to the dark outline of the shack ahead. "Well, at least I know I'm in the right place..." she said to herself.
The entrance to the shack had collapsed, taped off with 'Caution' tape in bright yellow. With the jagged boards that stuck up from what was once the floor, there was little to enter into anyway. Mars strayed, instead following the length of the dilapidated deck, following to where the shack backed up the forest. Something gleamed, catching her eye. The wide maw of a bear trap, teeth worn deep brown with thick rust and jagged edge from disuse, chained by the center strut to the place it was guarding, a wooden cellar door, complete with handles.
On Mars' wrist, she unstrapped the black felt fabric that covered her COMM, reaching beneath the wrist-bound device where the center metal lock fastened it to her. Small breaks in the plastic surface, seams where a thin strip of plastic lay were apparent as Mars ran her fingers over the glossy white surface. She pressed in on the strip, feeling a small resistance as a spring pushed it up, releasing several tabs from the inside and resting the plastic strip atop its former housing, a separate part. Grasping the strip between her fingers, Mars waved the small piece like a wand with the white cubic tip resting outward. A light flared inside the plastic, glowing red as several thin strands of red laser light emitted from the tip, scanning over the door in front of her. The outline of the mechanism below appeared in three-dimensional laser light, as well as the bright red center of a square insert—a button—built into the side of the cellar door.
Stepping around the bear trap, Mars leaned down, her fingers sliding along the rough, splintery surface as she strove to found a button, eventually finding a small cut piece of wood over where the button was. She pressed in, hearing a soft click.
The front of the cellar door flipped forward over the front, contrary to the dual door design of the facade, landing on the soft earth in front of it with a rickety thud. Instead, it served as a ramp over the bear trap, leading to a steel platform.
Mars stepped around the newly lifted platform, continuing to hold out the wand as she had to view the three-dimensional raster of laser light she had created by projection. Down below the platform of what she could see, she saw the faint shimmering outlines of a column that stretched, reaching down into the earth beyond where the projected images could show. She stepped to the lifted, raised trap door, walking over the gently warping wooden platform until she reached the very sturdy steel platform, feeling the studs make her flat boot sole rest unevenly.
The plastic wand in-between her fingers buzzed softly. Looking down, she saw the tip light and turn blue, removing the red laser raster projections from below her. Mars reached her COMM, sliding the plastic wand into the slot it had came from, pressing down to lock it in. The light on it faded out to regular plastic. Turning her arm to see the COMM, the screen had lit up, displaying an older interface.
'Team Galactic Johto Hideout: Access Granted'
The platform shook softly, pistons beneath it firing to life and testing their capacity as the locks released. Slowly, steadily, the platform lowered, taking Mars deep into the earth in a steel chute.
After moments of darkness, punctuated by the presence of small, miner-like lights that lined the platform-sized chute, a whoosh of air came from the edges of the chute as the platform entered the large expanse of the base. The platform moved slowly, drifting down towards the floor as it moved through a new chute with thick slabs of plexiglass surrounding on all sides.
Mars watched down by her legs as the new expansive room that she entered into was filled with light. Her boots lit like the morning sunrise, a shaft of light that covered them being raised as she passed down into the new chamber, rising up to the wide brim of her skirt and over her body. Her arms felt a tingling sensation of warmth as she passed through. She squinted, overwhelmed by the glowing light as it passed over face. With her arm outstretched in defense as she realized the surging power of the light, her eyes slowly opened, realizing that when passing through the roof of the new room she had passed extremely close to the massive mounted lights in the room.
The space below her was largely devoid and empty. As she scanned her surroundings, watching behind her as the metal belt of her lift platform reeled inside a metal track, bringing her closer to the ground, she could see nothing in the new space. It looked largely abandoned. The closer she got, the more her eyes focused on two solitary shadows approaching in the distance, in front of the opening to lift.
A new opening appeared in Mars' immediate vision: a break in the plexiglass wall ahead of her, cut with the curved upper opening of a doorway. Hesitantly, she stepped out, looking down at her new footstep while she still had one foot on the platform. She had stepped onto concrete, a distant echo resounded from her footstep as sound traveled in the gigantically empty space. She finished stepping off the lift, walking a few feet ahead of her, listening to her footsteps echo in the cavernous expanse, approaching the two solitary shadows ahead of her. There were no other landmarks, aside from the reflective glass platform chute behind her and the deep grooves in the concrete floor that formed a grid. From the north to the south, east to the west, Mars could see no walls. Even the ceiling, a bright cluster of white lights, had been reserved to a small square of light, leaving the entirety of the ceiling and remaining room in darkness.
Mars had paused in her tracks, only a dozen feet away from the platform, when she turned sharply, reaching for her utility belt. Her hand found its comfortable spot on the plastic surface of her Pokeball in its holster. As her eyes squinted, lips pursed in thought, Mars detached the Pokeball and held it in her hand, balancing the weight in her grasp. She clicked the release, feeling it rumble in her hand, moments before she tossed up towards the light, watching the sailing arc before it sailed back towards the ground by the glass chute and the platform. It bounced one, then exploded into light, the empty husk of the Pokeball closing together and rolling languidly towards Mars.
Mars, watching Purugly take shape and take in her surroundings, felt a subtle tap on her foot, then realized she had been staring past Purugly, letting time go on as she thought. She gazed down at the lonesome Pokeball that had arrived by the tip of her boot.
The Pokeball felt comfortable back in Mars' hand, though it had lost its weight and felt cold and empty. She carried it with her, Purugly walking just behind her with the soft clacking of her claws on concrete carrying through the air, thin breaths wheezing through her short, stubby nose. Mars carried a tired determination in her eyes, staring out and piercing the darkness as she walked ahead with nothing to see but the growing shadows.
A tall barricade of plastic monitors mounted on multiple iron posts stood on either side of Mars and Purugly—the dark shadows she had seen in the distance. Walking between them, Mars could see that the many linked monitors were not on, though the gentle whirring and tiny blinking lights of systems indicated something was still powered on. As Mars passed around the curved barricade of screens, she froze, seeing that inside the barricade of desks and systems was a chair with a person in it. On the oppposite side was an identical chair with a person in it. The first one she had seen, the one on the left, Mars walked to, closely inspecting the figure resting in the chair.
The first thing that drew Mars' eye was the shock of long, tangled green hair that came from the figure in the chair, dyed a bright neon green, but the more she took in the detail of the figure, she froze, eyes lighting with something more haunting. His eyes were covered by a plastic device, flat and oblong, a pair of rubbers seals holding it to the mans face. His lips were closed but peaceful, as if he had fallen asleep with the mask on. He lay in the leather chair, tilted back, his legs and feet resting on a footrest that resembled a plastic tray. Over on the desks that seemed to wall him in like an open-air cubicle were countless systems and interfaces Mars couldn't understand, and her eyes wandered back to the man in the chair, inspecting his clothing. He wore an identical uniform to Commander Saturn, dressed in long mesh pants and a reflective white fabric vest over the mesh shirt, a Team Galactic 'G' stitched over his collarbone.
As Mars inspected the man with furrowed brow, mentally trying to piece together what had or was happening here, Purugly nosed around the body in the chair, opposite the one Mars was tending to. Purugly sniffed, finding her uniform unappealing, but moving her head to the effeminante hand that rested on the edge of the armrest, her fat tongue lifting softly at the fingers before moving on to the desk. She bumped the table with a loud thud, sharply moving backwards and turning away from the figure and towards Mars, but not before her paw snagged on a cord. Around the wide metal base of the resting chair snaked several dozen black cords over the concrete floor. Purugly's paw lifted with the black cord tangled over it, sharply pulling the cable end from the socket.
The sound of something powering down came from the computerized systems. Sharply, the tiny fans whirred to life in the core systems and monitors lit up with dull blue light. A hydraulic wheezing came from the chair as it lifted forward, the chair legs folding down to the base. A craining arm of aluminum lowered from overhead, finding a plastic disk in the center of the device that covered the figure's eyes. Slowly, the figure began to reanimate, coming back to life.
Mars continued to inspect her figure, the other man in the chair. She had leaned over his chest, listening to his slowed breathing patterns to ensure he was still alive. She heard Purugly scrambling behind her, thumping against the racks of monitors as she left the area. She didn't look up, too lost in thought to consider it.
Then, Mars heard a few footsteps behind her, a figure entering in. Lifting herself upright slowly, she looked, aghast at the awakened figure.
"Commander Mars, you're a welcome sight."
Standing tall, draped in a long white lab coat that draped over her like a ghost, the woman stood staggeringly. Her skin was a deep dark shade, rich with color and texture, her features soft and determined. Her deep hazel eyes shimmered through the haze of exhaustion, looking kindly at Mars. She gave a wide smile, youth glowing through her. Atop her head she had a wavy, curling and combed mess of shortly trimmed brunette hair, completely trimmed from the sides of her head and behind her head in a pompadour like effect. Through the lab coat she had draped over her moments earlier covered the majority of her body, a white plate of armor over her chest gleamed in the dim lighting, the same glossy white shade as her armored boots, as well as the traditional black uniform of a Galactic officer.
Mars stepped forward hesitantly, offering her hand to shake, meeting the woman's smile with one of her own. "Awhile, Sedna?" said Mars, keeping her voice at a hushed tone.
Commander Sedna laughed, smiling ear to ear, her plum-colored lipstick visible. "It only feels like a million years, you're getting sentimental, soft," she chuckled. Her eyes peered over Mars' shoulder, gazing at the hulking beast that had noisily crawled through the desk spaces, claws skittering on the floor. "And who might this cutie be?" she asked.
Over her own shoulder, Mars briefly glanced at Purugly. She then folded her arms, looking back to Sedna. She looked at her boots, shuffling silently as the sound of Purugly noisily licking the man's fingers filled her ears.
"Purugly? Oh, y'know... She's standard issue I guess, with a couple of hidden tricks up her sleeve," said Mars.
"So that's what a 'Purugly' looks like. I figured you might've let a shiny Persian let its eating habits take its course. She really is a beautiful creature... We don't see too many Pokemon these days, beyond our own anyway."
Mars had payed little attention to what Sedna was saying. Her focus was over her shoulder, staring down Purugly as the beastly Pokemon hungrily licked the young man's fingers. At first she snapped her fingers, but then she clapped her hands, whistling in chirps to attract Purugly's attention, making little progress. Finally, Mars started walking her way, watching Purugly lurch and start to race around the tilted back chair that the man rested on, her back slinking around as she licked her lips noisily and defiantly. Mars continued to follow closely, kicking the scrambling paws of Purugly as she nudged her out and away from the resting chair.
As Purugly scrambled ahead, lumbering along a few short feet ahead, she walked slowly with slinking, cautious steps, her luminous yellow eyes staring up to Mars every so often in defiance as she walked into the empty depths of the room. Her gray-striped body eventually disappeared into the dark depths of the room, leaving her to linger outside the realm of visibility for Sedna and Mars.
Mars stopped at the entrance to the enclosure of desks, staring off at Purugly as she walked off into the darkness, mulling over several questions silently as her red eyes raced. She heard a chuckling from the corner, and then watched as Sedna walked in front of her, passing ahead and walking into the space of the desks. Momentarily, Mars stared ahead, seeing that Purugly had disappeared out into the darkness, listening as Sedna paced behind her.
"You know it's a rare occasion to be getting a Galactic Commander," said Sedna, raising her brows high and poised as she formed her phrasing.
"Don't you live with one?" asked Mars.
Sedna chuckled, shaking her head. "No, it's not like that. Your last visit here was nine months ago. I half-expected never to see you again, at least around my neck of the woods."
"I'd hope I'd have kept my job."
"It's not like that either. I just know that the Johto project isn't on the top list of Cyrus' priorities. I know, we all know."
Mars turned, looking up to Sedna.
"You're here to fire me, aren't you?"
I'm not an alcoholic, but I've written drunk before. Here's another example.
I'm sad that I'm drinking alone, but I am enjoying the hell out of myself as I do so. Commander Sedna can recommend a mean drink. I've never been a fan of the more bitter alcohols—alcoholic—beverages. The reality is that I'm a huge softie when it comes to this stuff. That said—knowing I'm a lightweight—it was a bad decision to drink a third of the gift brandy. I'm still drinking.
It is rather unfortunate that she can't be here to share this with me. Maybe that's why I'm writing this now.
"I guess I expected this," said Sedna.
Mars paced around the reclined chair, her arms crossed, one arm resting upright as her thumbnail picked and prodded at her lip. She shut her eyes, resting against the desk's edge where the majority of the computer systems were. When she opened her eyes, she was staring at the floor, her eyes lost in the deeply tangled mess of black cables that ran along the floor.
Sedna stepped forward, stooping and trying to catch Mars' line of sight. "Hey?" she asked. "Do you have some kind of prepared statement for me? For us?"
"Us?" asked Mars blankly, her rear teeth grinding as she thought.
"If you have something to say, I want him awake to hear it," said Sedna, defiance appearing in her tone for the first time.
It's really friggin' cold in November. Plus, my new place has a draft, a crazy one they could've mentioned when I was purchasing the damn thing. I did get a screaming deal, though the guy I know who got me that deal, the landlord, is no longer around. In fact, I'd rather not speak with him at all these days. I don't think I have too many new words for that thought, considering I dumped about thirty pages per journal over the course of two journals. Now that is unfortunate, more unfortunate than this draft.
Still, it's given me an excuse to finally buy some wooly, thick socks. It's given me an excuse to bring a blanket onto the couch to watch movies late at night. Heck, it's given me an excuse to buy a couch. Saturn's couch, six years later, two Galactic apartments, a homicidal roommate and this space accounted for, has finally met it's bitter end. It needed to happen, leather is too cold for a drafty apartment. Failed career opportunity #3's discount has finally kicked in, and six to eight weeks later my new apartment has a couch. It's motivating in an ass-backwards sort of way. Maybe I could have a fireplace by Valentine's Day. It's given me an excuse to be warm, to enjoy myself and not try to return to my hobby of disarming Galactic bombs for International Police cash. To rent some good movies and fall asleep on the couch with the space heater next to me. I haven't read or written a journal entry in three weeks, and it feels good to be away, but even better to return to what was good about these.
I mean, we could start with the basics: my job at the adult video store gives me menial income and a fantastic employee discount I might never use, things did go to shit with my last roommate, but I haven't heard from him in a good month, so there's that. I've also got a kick-ass thing of brandy and a good excuse to start drinking it.
It's been incredibly tempting to crack open the bottle. Unbelievably, excitingly, teasingly tempting, considering that things go cold on the Eastside in about mid-October, then goes to freeze-your-tits-off about November 1st. I'm not even a drinker, but I know that alcohol makes you feel warm when you're not. I've lugged around Sedna's gift bottle for the past four years, but only now have I truly felt the need to enjoy it.
Today, this anniversary date to which I drink so proudly to, a year of living in Unova.
Sedna hovered over the computer terminal, her fingers resting on the home keys of an old plastic keyboard bolted down to the desk by thick plastic straps. Inches from her shoulder, Mars stood, still leaning against the desk's edge and not moving. She hesitated to fire up the computer, but looked the desk, feeling her boots rest awkwardly between trails of cables. The gentle whirring of a cooling fan reached her ear as she waited momentarily, the squatted down, crawling beneath the desk.
"Who are we waking up?" asked Mars.
Halfway between grunting, groaning at the difficult reach her arm was making to secure a few cables to a mounted computer tower, Sedna let out a chuckle. Her fingers curled over the edge of the desk, her body quickly swinging out from beneath the desk and landing on her heels as her legs straightened. She took a breath, reaching for the mouse of the computer and waving it over the bolted, mothridden and tattered mousepad.
"You don't know? Mars, c'mon. Who's the other Johtoan Commander?" Sedna smiled light and playfully despite the circumstances.
A whirring fired up inside the many linked computers. All around them, monitors fired up one by one, turning a glowing shade of black before displaying an infinitude of lines of information, details on the running, carefully controlled experiment. A window pulled up, a diagram of a person outlined in an inset, vitals being tracked with incredible precision and detail.
"It's Vesta," said Sedna. "Commander Vesta, Commander Sedna."
I feel as though I could look at her right now and say, 'Oh, you'll be dead soon'. That's what I did to her, might as well continue that same thread of bizarre illogic that happened that day. It seems so soon too, like it might've been yesterday, today, or even unfolding right now. Commander Sedna is dead.
I used to lament on how hard it was to live on one's own. Everyday, when I sat down on that cold basement floor and folded my legs together beneath me, resting the pen and notebook in my lap or eventually the portable keyboard, transcribing digital logs to add to the wealth of ideas and memories I had created during my Galactic days and ever since, I always slipped in a line about how hard it was to leave, and how hard it was to continue on where I was now. It's a strange thing to consider that when you continually move on—continue—you have to leave that continuation behind—to continue. The newest is already getting older, you're always a step behind by moving forward. That's how I approach all of this now, knowing that it's the truth but never conquering that truth. That's how I approach the hard things, like death, suffering and meaninglessness. True ennui, as it were.
Some things don't change, though. A lot of things don't change. I write the same as I did six, seven, ten years ago. I get into little ruts, little habits and reoccurances, but those finish and everything loops back to what things were before.
I was incredibly excited to get a new apartment. Away from all this—nonsense, living with a landlord, going on inane adventures with his son and an incredibly disgruntled International Police officer—all the things that seemed so horrendous about living on my own in Unova that continually plagued me, the only things that were, not just the bad things in a mix of good things. It was all bad so far, and things were going to get better. Still, it was bizarre to me that I couldn't seemingly get 'over' myself. I seemed to scare myself at night.
I liked living by myself, I knew that from the beginning, but I also know now that I had a totally different version set in my mind as this. For one, I had Purugly living with me. This is no longer the case, and if I hadn't lost her like I did this may have been much easier. Now it's incredibly hard.
At nights I hear the growl of something... Awful. I know it's the kind of awful that only forty year old heating systems can provide, but it's incredibly hard to tell the difference when it's completely dark. This sounds like something... Else.
Never has a room been darker than my bedroom at night. It's like staring into the yawning chasm of nothingness that all this was born out of. It reminds me that, like we once were nothing, we soon shall be that nothingness.
Sedna's fingers clacked loudly on the keyboard, tapping like a machine gun as she flew through menus. When she had all but given up, she keyed up a command prompt, the ominous black window hanging on the screen as she typed in a long string of indiscernable text in the form of key commands and modifiers.
When she had punched in the correct codes she had memorized, a large, off-color blue window appeared in the dead center of every monitor, overlapping every single window on the screen, a window unlike any other on screen. A bright red border surrounded the box, text of the same shade of red sitting in the center of the screen.
'Confirm Subject Disengagement'.
Sedna keyed in her passcode.
It reminds me of the first nights after my mother had left.
An iron whine filled the room, echoing off infathomably distant walls. Old iron plating scraped and squealed against one another as the chair lifted, moving parts that hadn't been used in months, locked in a position. The chair lifted, straightening into a normal chair, taking the limp subject up with it.
This was the first time Mars had noticed how gaunt the figure was. Commander Vesta was incredibly thin, looking malnourished, underfed and have had experienced little activity for a long period of time. The chair as it lifted moved him with little resistance, and as Mars stared in curiosity, confused though she hadn't seen Sedna reawaken, she realized that she had no idea what she was in for. Responsively, she stepped away from the edge of the chair as it lowered, the tray carrying his resting legs and feet lowering and snapping down below his seat in a normal position.
Sedna too had watched, a mixed bag of emotions appearing to stir deep inside her. On screen behind her, a new message appeared, a loading bar moving at an incredibly slow crawl. As Sedna turned to watch the screen, hunched over the desk with her palms resting flat on the table as she stared deep into the screen, the bluish light awash over her skin, a new menu appeared. This one too had a loading bar, and in response, a small motor gave a high-pitched squeal as it roared to life.
When my mother first left, taken by the International Police, I truly didn't understand a thing about what was happening. It seemed to me that, while my mother was a criminal and the police were just cracking down on the sins of Team Rocket in a fairly logical sense, my mother was still a morally upstanding person. She just hid behind the face—the facade—of a criminal.
That's when I saw behind the mask. I saw what it truly meant to have a shell, a husk of a former life, because I was now living in it. I lived in a house that was completely empty, devoid of life with the markings, remnants of a life that had formerly existed inside of it. That life, my life too, they were no more, they were taken.
I didn't understand because I was young, and there was so much more to it. I was 17, and there are a lot of things one can't understand at that age.
I wasn't an adult, but the house was mine. The old, abandoned house that I didn't want was mine. It was my empty shell to live in, the inheritance of my mother. I suppose I should count myself lucky, that I really should've been shipped off to an orphanage for a single year that would determine the course of my life. I had no aunts and uncles, no grandparents to note. My mother would never have given me to my father even if it was an option. I don't know why she had requested a DNA test too, especially when we knew Giovanni was my father.
Sedna, lingering over the pages that printed out on the old, beaten office printer that rested at the capstone of the desk, her eyes wandered over the pages as she inspected the thin strands of text. Her head turned as she heard the whooshing, firing of hydraulic arms as they lowered.
Above the top of Commander Vesta's head, a white-painted metal arm descended from the ceiling on an armature base, built to and mounted on a crown of many other arms for different functions. The metal claws on the end of the arm moved forward with precision, finding the round interface port panel on the center of the visor attached to Vesta's eyes and sliding into the inserts. After a few clicks and releases, the rubber seal around the visor released with a hiss. The visor backed away from Vesta's face rising skyward with the remaining base. Hidden beneath where Mars had seen, several restraints holding his wrists and torso in place slid back and released him, leaving him to limply sit in the chair.
So here's to a year. Here's to another year, in fact. Here's to the rest of them.
Sedna had come to Vesta's side, leaning on the armrest of the chair. Her fingers laced through the long, deep green hair on his head, softly jostling his hair awake. Deep beneath his eyelids, Vesta's eyes raced, twitching on the surface where Sedna could see. Her head tilted onto her shoulder as she watched him stir.
Though Mars had been watching from where she was, she turned her focus to other things, walking along the front of the chair and passing close to the desk. Closely, her eyes wafted over the minute details of the desk, the system interfaces with the computer, scattered notes and sheets of information in neatly stacked piles, outlined in grids on the computer. The printed text on the pages were cryptic, scattered across wide spaces of white on the sheet with no intelligible wording on them. Some were tightly packed into rectangles or other abstract shapes, some lines of text going in circles or crossing between one another. A few had lots of notes scribbled in red pen, circling strands of text and other unrecognizeable characters and linking them to different ones. One sheet of paper had been taped to the bottom of a monitor, a sentence reading 'went to the first' had been circled and linked to another word, 'away'. The date had been written on it, a date several years ago.
Beside where Mars stood, the tall cubic printer spat out sheet after sheet, amassing a thick stack of white pages, dense black text scrawled across the page in tightly packed lines—sentences and paragraphs. Page after page scrolled out of the printer, the motors whirring deep inside the thick plastic casing. Leaning over, Mars read the crystal blue LCD, reading '189 of 343', with the number rapidly climbing up. A page tacked to a cabinet beneath the printer caught Mars' eye, one labeled 'Completed'.
Up, down, left and right; north, south, east and west, time only flows one direction. No decision can change that. None. It will always flow. The flow of time is always cruel.
Those are things that are easy to say now. It's harder to say when time is honestly cruel, easier to say when it seems like its cruelty is a myth. Because, no matter how soon we feel a moment is at it's pinnacle, that the story of something has ended and we stand in a moment disjointed from that narrative, it's not true. It can't be true. There is no such thing as a moment without narrative. There is no such thing as a life without adventure. I know that, though I seem to be at rest, free of the burdens of previous adventures, I know that there is another adventure coming. I am still a part of a moment in time that can just as easily be weaved into another narrative, with it's own harrowing outcomes. I know for certain that there are no happy endings to a reality like this.
We are all just precursors to some greater fate. We are part of an adventure that began long ago and still continues deep within us. Someone has come before us, and we will come before someone else.
"S-Sedna..."
Mars' head turned up, looking to where Sedna and Vesta sat in the center of the space, a radiant spotlight shining down on the two of them from the armature above.
Vesta sat up as much as he could in the chair, blinking profusely as he woke from sleep, looking blankly up into the darkness above. His arms fidgited on the chair's armrest, lifting himself to sit more upright, pausing when Sedna reached and interveined, helping him upright im the chair but keeping him steady. Sleepily, half-consciously, Vesta became acclimated to Sedna's help and watched her, almost amazed to see her.
Squinting, watching Vesta stare blankly at Sedna, almost past her, Mars observed carefully. It was then that she realized that Vesta was temporarily blind, his eyes going cross-eyed as he tried looking at the sound of Sedna's whispered voice.
Mars walked carefully, stepping into the golden halo of light that both Sedna and Vesta bathed in. Her arms crossed, her face placid as she stared down at Vesta, watching his head tip back as he rested in the chair.
"How long before he regains his sight?" asked Mars.
Vesta's arm jolted in the armrest, his hands grasping for the ends of the rest as he had become startled very easily.
Though her eyes lingered over Vesta's, watching him stare blankly up in a vain attempt to see the source of Mars' voice, Sedna eventually turned her head over her shoulder, staring grimly, solemnly at Mars. She stared for moments, letting her hands run over Vesta's shoulder and chest, comforting him softly. As she turned back to look at Vesta, she cleared her throat softly.
"Soon. Give him about an hour," she replied.
Mars, looking one last time up at Vesta, nodded softly. Stepping away, Mars lingered back towards the desk, letting Sedna and Vesta share their moment together. The printer still drew her attention, and she passed beside it, closely. The whirring of the motors deep inside the printer casing had ended, leaving a fresh, warm stack of papers atop the printer tray. Though Mars looked to the two commanders, watching them stir in silence, speaking only in hushed tones to one another and comforting one another with soft touches, Mars looked down at the printer, admiring the stack of pages. She folded them into her hands, straightening them with her palms and holding the stack in front of her, reading the first page.
'2/23/10 — Expedition and Observation of The Time Beast'