The Days of Eternity

"Humans… Can become anything." – "Monster" anime (2004)

Author's Note:
I have no idea how "Shive" is spelt… if someone knows, please let me know. It was mentioned in the movie and consists of some kind of tablet with pics or words. My spelling is taken from the Middle English word meaning a fragment or sliver.

I am uncertain how people would respond to this particular version of Balem. I mean, if I were Seraphi, and I were looking for someone to pass over my company to as an heir, I would certainly have the geneticists engineer my kid to be….
1. Smart/genius (IQ level 140 and above surely….)
2. Have strong sense of taking initiative.
3. Leadership qualities.
This would mean a certain amount of self-will and rebelliousness… I never thought an obedient, unquestioning child would make any sort of decent leader…. In fact most leader types should have a strong internal locus of control…. Er this mean… not letting fate or "luck" get the better of them in life…

I don't know if Seraphi was actually prepared to deal with the type of personality. I mean, many people say without thinking too hard that they would like certain types of qualities in their children, but in the end, if they do have kids with those qualities, are often not prepared for the consequences.

Glossary:
1. Spork/foon – combination fork-spoon utensil. Go wikipedia for a pic of this thing, it's a real, current item and I kind of came across it because a food seller where I live introduced this utensil to reduce plastic waste.

After his return to Calidan from the Quarere research facility, Seraphi had him moved to an austere residence owned by his family on Nixus 35, a cold world that was located a little too far from its planetary sun. While not perpetually frozen, it was a cold place that saw very little sunlight. A regular day on Nixus was cloudy with a constant drizzle of feathery raindrops. There were no blue skies or sunlight, except for one or two days in a single planetary year and the Abrasax residence on Nixus was literally hermetically sealed and heated, with special dehumidifiers to keep out the dampness.

He clearly remembered his first day viewing the Nixus residence. It was framed by craggy hills. The residence was built partially inside the hill itself. Amina said that it was once an old mine which the Abrasaxes bought and then refurbished into a grand palace with smooth, grey granite walls and strong steel doors. It was at least a few millennia old and had special main doors that enabled the entire palace, or complex to be hermetically sealed from the weather outside.

He was assigned a room without any windows. However, it was rather large and had drapings of brocade. The bed however was an ordinary one with silk or satin sheets and large pillows. There was no anti-grav function because the Abrasaxes seldom came to Nixus 35 and thus never had the anti-grav installed. Besides, anti-grav beds were only found in the houses of mid or high tier nobles on Orous and worlds that were located nearby. His room and most of the rooms in the living area were lit by silver, crystal chandeliers with yellow or white-yellow lighting. It was like being in a world of perpetual twilight. When he was deep inside the residence, he did not know if it was day or night.

Despite the grandeur of his home, Balem thought it looked like a tomb. He felt like the unwanted child that was sent here to be locked away, hidden from everyone, because of how he looked. He personally liked Calidan a lot better. He loved the blue water of the nearby lake and sunny skies. He tried to find a room with some kind of window, and when he did find one eventually, he looked out onto a grey, cold landscape that was awash with rainwater. There was virtually nothing to see on Nixus. The landscape consisted mostly of rolling hills and damp marshlands.

That was where he stayed, with only a staff of servants and his deer-splice nanny, Amina. Of course his mother did not stay with him, she had a vast interstellar empire to run. He also never saw his "sire" or father because Seraphi broke off all ties with him since the day she found out that he was genetically incompatible with her. Seraphi wanted perfect progeny, no matter her feelings towards Balem's tall and magnificent sire, he would not do. She sent him away and took out an injunction against him in the courts preventing him from ever seeing Balem. She cried for almost a week after she sent him away. She said that he was the love of her life.

However, a love who could not sire a perfect son was not a desirable match. The geneticists said that he was weak and that his bloodline was prone to physical weakness and maybe even madness. There was even a moment in her past when Seraphi considered taking Balem's sire as her husband. He was magnificent to behold, so tall and graceful, with striking red hair. She had hoped their children would be magnificent as well.

Since it was generally cold on Nixus, Balem almost never went outside. Most of his days were spent in monotonous similarity. He would wake up early, eat a specially prepared breakfast and then commence studying with a private tutor in the family employ. Amina made sure that they had a cook who knew how to prepare the meals that he needed. The food was always much the same. It was fairly tasteless because Amina made sure that they got the best produce and it was always cooked carefully to optimally preserve all the food's nutrient value. This meant a lot of steaming and boiling at controlled temperatures. In Balem's point of view, everything tasted like chopped liver. There was never anything sweet or creamy or even fried. Amina had banned all manner of sweets from his table. He coughed a lot and she was worried that anything with too much sugar might aggravate his bad throat.

Every meal seemed somewhat the same and there were always three meals daily. On his plate, there was always a few similar mounds of the same kind of food; a mound of some kind of meat, which was sometimes minced, especially when he was sick and did not feel like eating anything. Or cooked in strips. The most common meat that he saw usually came from a marine creature. Nixus was a planet that had a huge abundance of water bodies and fish, eels, and some kind of tentacled marine creature were common. He actually welcomed the sight of a pink, broiled slice of tentacle, because it had a different texture and taste than the usual meat that was served up. Then there was a mound of some kind of starch, depending on the world they were on. Grains were rather rare on Nixus, so his starch mound looked like a grey-yellow mess of something. It was likely some kind of tuber or starchy fruit that grew in the rainy climate of the planet. Sometimes when he was lucky the cook was able to obtain some form of extra starchy carbohydrate, and this was made into tiny dumplings which looked like partially flattened spheres and were slightly chewy. It was a change from the usual messes of pureed, mashed or ground thing. The vegetables always looked like vegetables. They were readily available on every world. On Nixus, they mostly resembled fibrous vines, which Amina said were very good for him, although they were very bitter and he thoroughly disliked it. The only thing that made his food bearable was the fact that everyone around him ate the same thing.

Although he hated the taste of everything his staff made for him, the food must have been nutritious because he always felt tremendous amounts of energy and his staff were comparatively healthy and seldom sick. However, he remained a very small and short child. Amina was concerned that he would not grow into an impressive size, that is to say, a tall person, and frequently measured him with a tape measure she carried around with her.

Balem felt like some kind of animal that his family was breeding. He was measured, weighed, tested, and Amina fussed over how much he grew or did not. He had seen holographic films of farmers on other planets breeding some kind of bovine or porcine creature and they did somewhat the same thing with the beasts.

"Food is not for enjoyment," she often said to him. "We eat to live and to live healthily. You must take in all that is needed for your optimal health and nothing more. Life is discipline and you must discipline yourself. Fate was unkind to you and made you weak, you must grow strong through discipline… You must fight your destiny."

She repeated the same phrase to him constantly, so much so that it became his reality. She made sure that he did not run around too much in the lonely hallways, for fear of aggravating his respiratory "condition".

She always sat with him when he was studying and made sure he was at his books at every opportunity he had. She always stressed the need for him to do his best and to achieve as much as he could, so that his mother would see what a success he was. Fortunately, his nanny did not limit the kind of information he could read or view. He would often steal her shive of the "Interstellar Enquirer", a tabloid publication that sometimes had pictures of his mother when she attended events. He learnt all types of things from the tabloids, his interest in it was focused on his mother and his family. He really wanted to know where she was and what she did. He would play holographic recordings of her at events so that he could see her. He noticed that his sire was never ever shown beside her at any public event, neither did he appear in previous articles. He also did not see Seraphi mention the fact that she had a child. He sometimes worried that he would disappear from the universe without anyone ever knowing he ever existed.

In spite of the miserable and solitary condition in which he lived, Amina tried to cheer him up by promising that if he was good, and did well in whatever task he was set, he could go back to Calidan to be with his mother. Also, when the sun went down every evening, she would schedule a "play time" for him. Amina brought him to a massive hall in his home with some servants. They played a few games with a ball and some rope. This was the only time where he played with anyone. He had no friends and met no one of his age. He enjoyed the games immensely and often hoped to be able to play often. Sometimes, he would sneak off in the middle of the day and use a piece of chalk to make drawings on the smooth, dark granite walls. It was always landscapes of Calidan with a huge lake and crude stick figures of himself playing in the sun with other small children.

AT TWELEVE YEARS OF AGE:

When he was 12, he took the interstellar examinations that was a common mark of academic achievement in the commonwealth of planets. When the results were known, he was so proud of his achievement. He was ranked no. 2 throughout the known universe.

Amina on the other hand was devastated when she heard the news. She broke down crying before him when she read the shive with the results.

"You cannot be second place," she stressed through her tears. "You should always strive to be no. 1. Please, you do not want her majesty to think that you are not the best of all. There are still some years before your Recognition as her heir. You MUST be the first primary of her empire. Please do not end up as a Redo."

Balem spent his young life in fear of the word "Redo". He did not want to be a tube of genetic goo in his mother's hands. He got down beside Amina and hugged her sobbing body tightly. Amina reminded him constantly that he could not, must not fail, he had to be the best, no matter what it was. After awhile, he was crying too, he had no idea why, since he had not done a single wrong thing. Life just seemed so unfair. He lived like a prisoner and felt like a beast or splice that his family was breeding. He hated his life and wanted to go away, far away to a world that was warm and sunny with big blue lakes and green forests that weren't always awash with rain.

WHEN HE DECIDED TO RUN AWAY…

That night, Balem packed a small bag with some clothes and put on a thick tunic with a hood made of water-resistant materials before escaping from the residence by climbing out one of the windows to the outside. Once out in the chilly atmosphere of Nixus he shivered from the damp cold. He made his way as fast as he could from the grey fortress that was his home. Once he felt he was far enough away so that he could not be spotted by the security team in his residence, he walked along the main road and hoped to find a transport that would take him into the city and the space port.

He walked along the road for hours and did not see any kind of transport. This was unsurprising as the Abrasax residence was located far away from most other residences and farms. Finally, after walking for hours in the darkness of the rainy, Nixan night, his way lit only by a glow-stick that he had brought along with him, Balem eventually reached a small farm that appeared to be growing some kind of gourd on massive vines. He went to the shed where the farmer kept his transport and climbed into the storage compartment of the vehicle that was filled with gourds ready for transport to the city market in the morning. Although the gourds were generally uncomfortable to lie down on, at least the vehicle was dry.

As he had anticipated, the farmer got into the vehicle a few hours later in the early hours of dawn and drove the vehicle along the long road to the city. The drive took well over an hour as the transport was quite slow. Eventually the vehicle stopped in a crowded square filled with other similar vehicles. Sensing that he had to leave quickly before someone spotted him, Balem jumped out of the vegetable storage container from behind and quietly made his way to the side of the square and down a narrow alley.

He did not know where he was, but looking at the city skyline, he spotted the tall launch towers of the spaceport and headed in that general direction. He navigated his way through dark streets and narrow alleys, always keeping the tall launch towers in his sight, until he arrived at the space port. He was quite lucky to have gotten this far without meeting any real danger, perhaps his own shabby attire diverted the attention of would be thieves and other low-life. However, he did see how some other beings in this universe lived. He spotted dirty, bearded men sleeping in cardboard shelters in the dark alleys and saw a family of splices huddled around a small fire cooking their meal out of cans. He realised after a short while that that was not the kind of life he would like to live.

However, there was no going back. Amina would likely have alerted his mother to his disappearance and then she'd send him to be Redone. No matter his fate, he did not want to be dead before he could grow his first real wrinkle. He knew that Seraphi had gotten rid of his sire - his father, from eavesdropping on conversations Amina had with his mother via FTL hologram. He had no idea who his father was and remembered a lesson where the tutor informed him that Orous was the capitol of the interstellar commonwealth. He looked at his family seal on the underside of his right forearm. The symbol glowed softly in the darkness of the street on which he stood. He realized that with his seal, the bureaucrats of Orous could help him find out the identity of his sire.

However, Orous was terribly far away and he only had enough resources, saved up from countless months of the allowance that he hardly ever used, to buy a ticket on an interstellar transport vessel to Calidan. He entered the spaceport and checked the screens to see if there was any ship at all going to Orous. He was terribly unlucky, there were no ships going out of the Nixan system at all. After scanning numerous screens and hiding from the port security whenever they passed by for about half an hour, he noticed that a particular ship, the Alekto, was enroute to Orous. Realizing that he would never be able to get a ticket on an interstellar ship, because of the sheer cost of interstellar travel, he walked around despondently wondering how he could come up with the additional resource needed for a ticket. He walked around for quite awhile, occasionally picking up loose change he found on the floor. Then he saw cases being loaded onto a hovercraft and noticed that the hovercraft were being driven to individual ships where dockworkers loaded the cargo onto the different ships.

He searched around and saw a hovercraft with "The Alekto" projected on a small plasma screen around the base of the craft. He quickly climbed into this craft and because he was of small size, managed to hide in the gaps between the stacked cases. Very miraculously, the cases did not fall on him, neither was he spotted by the workers who seemed to be in a hurry. He noticed that the hovercraft was travelling towards what looked like a legionnaire frigate, which he recognised from its mounted guns and missile ports. As the craft rounded the side of the ship, he realised that the Alekto was a military ship of some sort.

In the midst of the bustle, he slipped out of the craft and found himself a hiding corner in the cargo hold of the frigate. He did not have to wait too long before the ship took off. Although the cargo hold had no windows, he knew he was in space because of the change in gravity. He did not float around, but found that the artificial gravity to be comparatively weaker than on ships he had been on. With a single leap, he was able to propel himself upwards of a single storey and set foot on a landing that led to a door.

Jiggling on the handle, he was quite glad that the door was unlocked and he silently made his way through long, metal hallways till he came to a lighted corridor. As he walked, he made small chalk markings on the metal wall with a piece of chalk he had taken from his home, in case he needed to find his way back. From here, the smell of something cooking, led his way to a door with a window where he found a kitchen. He peeked through the window and waited till the cooks were done before quietly moving in. The truth was, he was terribly hungry and the little food he had packed in his bag was damp because of his long trek in the rainy night. He had not packed them in watertight containers, having never really packed anything in his life.

He opened up the cabinets and saw foil packets of some kind of food. He searched around and found some grey foil packets with dates and labels on them. He realised that it was likely some form of food used by the military because he recognised certain Nixan food items listed on the bag. He also guessed that the food probably mostly consisted of some form of either dry biscuits or hard bread, as those food items had a longer shelf life. He crossed his fingers and hoped that he would not find a bag consisting of dried Nixan vines, which he hated.

He took as many of these packets as he could, occasionally inspecting packets for dates of expiration. He also found a large, grey canteen which he filled up with water from the tap on the sink.

A noise from the other door to this kitchen informed him that he had to leave. Balem hurried back to the cargo hold to inspect the items that he had pilfered.

He took one of the grey packets and tore it open, wondering how long he could survive on dry bread before he choked on it. He really had not expected to be making an interstellar journey this way, so had not packed too much food in his little bag.

Amazingly the grey foil packed emptied out into many smaller foil packets. There was an obvious transparent bag that was large and contained a single hard, whitish disk of something that looked inedible. In the other bags, he found biscuits, bread, mini packets of some kind of dried meat, a foon and a squishy large bag that was labelled with food items, one of which was the tentacled marine creature he was familiar with.

In spite of his apprehension with things foreign to his daily life, he tore open the squishy packet and found a lot of soft, starchy cube-like things in a reddish brown sauce which contained bits of the tentacles. Sniffing it suspiciously, he found that it smelt rather delicious. As he scooped up a cube, he wondered if the food was raw, remembering that the Legion heavily relied on lycantant splices. Nibbling carefully, he found that they reminded him of the dumplings made by his own cook.

Although it was generally salty, he actually felt that it, whatever it was, was the best meal he had in his life, because it tasted like something other than the bland, "chopped liver" he always had. Over time, he discovered that the foil packets contained different types of meals and that the transparent bag was really a flameless heater, where a bit of water from his canteen combined with the white, inedible chemical disk caused an exothermic reaction that resulted in boiling water.

Despite burning his fingers the first few times he tried the heating system, he soon figured out a way to warm up his meals by propping the bag against one of the boxes.

Personally Balem was starting to feel that legionaires had a much better life than he had. They travelled around to many planets and did not eat tasteless, bland meals. He even tried the dried, heavily spiced meat, which turned out to be terribly addictive. He saved many packets of this food item for when the ship landed on Orous and he had to flee in a hurry.

After what seemed like a few days of travel, he had explored enough of the ship to figure out how he could make his trip more comfortable by locating the bathrooms and places where he could quickly wash up during the "night cycle" when most of the crew was asleep.

Balem was actually rather amazed that he was able to get this far without his staff. That he could live without the assistance of anyone. His own little mind began to hatch a plan, one where he would be able to find freedom from his family and from being Redone and turned into a tube of genetic goo.

The only thing that would have made this trip better would have been a warm blanket and a pillow. He spent most "nights" either lying on the floor or leaning against boxes in the cargo hold. Sometimes, he cried softly for Amina, and because he was lonely, afraid and lost. At times like that, he felt like going up to a member of the crew to say that he wanted to go home. However, he reasoned that his mother would be tremendously angry with him and that would be it, he would be put to sleep and turned into goo. Fear for his own life prevented him from giving himself up.

After about a week, he started to explore other levels in the ship. He really wanted to find a pillow and a warm blanket. It would make sleeping a lot easier.

His exploration of the upper levels of the ship uncovered a series of spartan bunks. However, he did not take any of the pillows or blankets because he thought they had a rather distinctive "doggy" odour. Finally, after a lot of searching and hiding from crewmembers walking around, that he finally chanced on a rather fancy room that smelled clean and had, to his utter amazement, an anti-grav bed!

He went over the switched on the anti-grav and proceeded to bounce around in the zero-gravity field. He laughed for a bit, in an attempt to forget his own misery.

He forgot to shut the door, which was a lesson he would remember for the rest of his life, because the doorway was suddenly filled with a lot of shocked and angry people. Balem froze in mid bounce and quickly jumped off the bed. Soon, people filled up the room, and Balem made a mad, zig-zag dash around them to get out, but a strong hand from one of the guards grabbed at the collar of his shirt.

"Let go!" he screamed loudly. Several of the onlookers put their hands to their ears. Balem knew that many of the servants jumped to attention when he screamed. He would scream loudly whenever he threw a tantrum, just to make them do what he wanted. There was something about the pitch or maybe the timbre of his voice that caused people to cower before him.

There was a moment of chaos and a lot of shouting before everyone quieted down and Balem shut up because he felt hoarse from screaming.

"My lord," the guard thrust Balem towards someone who had just entered the room. "We have a stowaway."

Balem saw a man in the clothing of a medicina. He looked upwards defiantly at this new person and then cried out in relief.

"Papa!"