Ch.4: I See You
For a moment, I thought I saw an angel over me. On second thought, I did see once,
albeit it was dressed in pale blue and did not have a halo. Still, it was an angel with big
white wings, and, to my knowledge, that meant that I was well and truly dead.
Why, then was I lying on a white hospital bed if I was dead? Shouldn't I be lying
on a replica of my own room or something?
"You're not in Heaven yet, Gareas Elidd", the angel by my bed said. Before I could
even open my mouth to ask her name she answered, "You can call me anything you like, as long
as it's not derogatory to me or a Victim in anyway."
A Victim? Suddenly, I had a very bad feeling. This was not G.O.A. It didn't FEEL
like G.O.A., somehow - the feeling around me made me rub my arms, as if it were very cold.
It wasn't, in actuality, it was just a very, very strange feeling that someone was WATCHING
me every single moment, every single second, so they wouldn't miss anything. It felt weird.
It felt exposed.
"Then where am I?", I asked, suddenly. "This kinda looks like what Heaven should be
like, all white or pure or something like that, there's an angel by my bed. Is there
anything I'm missing?"
And even as I asked that, I could feel the jolt of my amnesia fading. Snatches of
battle...getting distracted, my best (deceased) friend's face hovering over me...a sudden
jolt and everything was gone. I thought about what I had been thinking about for the last
moments before I passed out, and a bright neon sign pointed to "Reneighd Klein". That would
mean Erts/Ernest would have heard, or seen me get knocked out. Since it wasn't very
plausible that I would get hit over the head by one of my fellow Goddesses, I could only
assume it was a Victim.
"Correct", the angel-who-looked-like-a-miss-know-it-all said. What was she, some
kind of mindreader telepath like Ernest?
"Correct again", which only served to make me grumble. Just who was she anyway?
And suddenly, unexplainably, I knew that girl was a Victim. Angel she may look with
her pure wings, but that didn't rule out the possibility of she being a Victim. Which, of
course, meant she was an enemy, and the fact she was probably a telepath didn't help ease my
guard. , I wondered, where was she was. That was currently my only means of
escape.
As if to answer my question, the I-can-call-you-anything angel went over the window
behind me and clicked the blinds open with a nice (perfected) flick. I gasped, and then
drew my mind back before they could read it too thoroughly. Eeva Leena was there, right
outside several meters of solid glass, looking none worse for the wear. As I watched, a
figure took off from the shoulder of the Goddess and gracefully swooped to hover near the
cockpit to join several others. I gave a smirk - apparently they did not know how to open
the cockpit yet.
"Don't underestimate us", the woman/angel said. "We have the superior technology
and the upper hand of our little war. We haven't sent the most of our fleet yet. In fact,
you may be forced to make another Goddess." I blanched - material to make the Goddess was
extremely expensive and only could be developed in space. To be asked to make another
Goddess would drain several colonies down to nothing, and leave several million people
homeless.
To put the question nice and blunt and out in the open, I said as dangerously as I
could, "Why did you keep me alive?" To my intense dislike, she gave a nice smirk, as if
asking me to continue. "You seem to know everything about the five of us, the Goddesses,
G.O.A. So why the hell am I still alive?"
"You have been kept alive to tell us about Zion." At my little startled gasp, she
gave a nice impression of the stereotype villain and gave a nice, evil smirk. Hey, at least
she didn't laugh like Dracula in those Old Planet movies or something. "We do not happen
to have any way of reading anything except the very top surfaces of your minds. We have no
ability to dive down deeper and read memories. Therefore, we will try and interrogate you
the best we can."
I stood up quickly, and saw with some satisfaction that I had startled her. "And
what makes you think that you can get ANY information out of me?"
And silence followed. Then came that infuriating smirk across her face again and I
felt myself growing a little more afraid and a lot more angry. I didn't care - they could
torture me, they could drive me to the brink of insanity and I wouldn't tell them anything.
So as I followed the angel-woman-Victim-person down the hall to what was supposed to
"convince me otherwise", I could not think of possibly, what, just what, could make me spill
everything. There was nothing, wasn't there? They had Eeva Leena - they couldn't take
that away. I couldn't be sure how many million lightyears I was away from G.O.A., so they
couldn't threaten me anything with that. What possibly could -
- and there he was, the monitor machine beside his bed beeping, the soft, steady
inhale/exhale motion of his chest, the color in his face, everything pointed to the thought
that he was alive, that Ernest, my best friend, was now alive.
I sank down to my knees on the floor and just wondered for a moment how I would get
out of this one. This, this was what they had been planning to bait me with. They had
retrieved Ernest's coffin and somehow brought him back to life. And as suddenly as the
small, glimmering hope that I might be able to keep both intact, Ernest and Zion, everything
came crashing down. Strange thoughts chased themselves around my head: that it was better
if Ernest had stayed dead, and that even if Ernest did awaken, he would be a zombie. On the
last thought, I caught myself before I could go over there and pull the plug on the outlet
in the wall to end the life-support systems. But I couldn't, couldn't move, couldn't get
up. , I thought. Almost as if he had heard me, he gave a
soft mumble and turned over.
"He's not in a coma anymore", the angel-lady said softly. "We woke him up to check
if he was exactly as memories described him. Every test we performed, he passed all of them
just as he passed them at your training in G.O.A. We have taken memories, or rather just
data, from the Eeva Leena and yourself as you slept, along with some of the surveillance
around G.O.A. His little brother, Erts, seems to think about him a lot. It is very
interesting to watch this brother-brother interaction."
As she went on to explain how they managed to somehow insert these memories into
Ernest's mind and revive him with some kind of jumpstart back to life, I could only stare at
something that I had never recalled Ernest having before.
There were wings on his back. The white kind, just like the lady. Ernest wasn't a
human anymore - he was a Victim.
"However, he may not be able to remember you. We programmed him to be the Ernest
personality, not to remember everything that has passed in his life so far." She gave me a
critical look, and I gave a jolt as I remembered she could very clearly read my distress.
"Do you accept?"
Curse my weakness! I could say no, I told myself. I could say no and do the right
thing and then Zion will be safe. Like hell Gareas Elidd is going to spill secrets! But
even as I tried to assure myself that I would never say anything, I could feel the other
side of the coin creeping up on me, flipping the tables slowly so I couldn't suspect, so I
couldn't see anything. And slowly, desperately, I could feel my protests growing weaker,
and the "save Ernest" side of me start to surface. Curse the fact Ernest had grown so much
on me! We were inseparable, closer than anything on Zion or the Old Planet or the Universe
itself and all its complexities. And even before my last objections died out, I could feel
that resignition that I would live to regret every minute I lived in this guilt. I had
betrayed Zion, betrayed G.O.A., even before I had said anything. All I could see was the
figure on the bed, turning my way as if he heard my pain and was trying to ease it in his
little "Mother Hen" way, the older brother, the one who understood everything you went
through because he had gone through worse. Ernest, Ernest was the most important thing
right now. And even though Zion nagged in the back of my mind, I could almost hear the
Victims swarming in to kill us all before the day was over, the last bloody stand I wouldn't
be there to watch.
"Wake him up", was all I said.
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \
Author's notes:
*sighs* Another chapter. Well, there you have it. Stupid Gareas...but a body
can't really blame him, eh? He's just compassionate, and that's exactly what Ernest would
have done if they had switched places. Ah, feelings...*gives an evil laugh* Don't you just
love playing around with them? But seriously, I think Ernest deserved more time before he
died. Hey, I mean, he lived just a little over half the TV series. That's not fair! He
should have gotten more screen time. Saa, the next chapter will jump back to Erts now.
Andrea Weiling
For a moment, I thought I saw an angel over me. On second thought, I did see once,
albeit it was dressed in pale blue and did not have a halo. Still, it was an angel with big
white wings, and, to my knowledge, that meant that I was well and truly dead.
Why, then was I lying on a white hospital bed if I was dead? Shouldn't I be lying
on a replica of my own room or something?
"You're not in Heaven yet, Gareas Elidd", the angel by my bed said. Before I could
even open my mouth to ask her name she answered, "You can call me anything you like, as long
as it's not derogatory to me or a Victim in anyway."
A Victim? Suddenly, I had a very bad feeling. This was not G.O.A. It didn't FEEL
like G.O.A., somehow - the feeling around me made me rub my arms, as if it were very cold.
It wasn't, in actuality, it was just a very, very strange feeling that someone was WATCHING
me every single moment, every single second, so they wouldn't miss anything. It felt weird.
It felt exposed.
"Then where am I?", I asked, suddenly. "This kinda looks like what Heaven should be
like, all white or pure or something like that, there's an angel by my bed. Is there
anything I'm missing?"
And even as I asked that, I could feel the jolt of my amnesia fading. Snatches of
battle...getting distracted, my best (deceased) friend's face hovering over me...a sudden
jolt and everything was gone. I thought about what I had been thinking about for the last
moments before I passed out, and a bright neon sign pointed to "Reneighd Klein". That would
mean Erts/Ernest would have heard, or seen me get knocked out. Since it wasn't very
plausible that I would get hit over the head by one of my fellow Goddesses, I could only
assume it was a Victim.
"Correct", the angel-who-looked-like-a-miss-know-it-all said. What was she, some
kind of mindreader telepath like Ernest?
"Correct again", which only served to make me grumble. Just who was she anyway?
And suddenly, unexplainably, I knew that girl was a Victim. Angel she may look with
her pure wings, but that didn't rule out the possibility of she being a Victim. Which, of
course, meant she was an enemy, and the fact she was probably a telepath didn't help ease my
guard. , I wondered, where was she was. That was currently my only means of
escape.
As if to answer my question, the I-can-call-you-anything angel went over the window
behind me and clicked the blinds open with a nice (perfected) flick. I gasped, and then
drew my mind back before they could read it too thoroughly. Eeva Leena was there, right
outside several meters of solid glass, looking none worse for the wear. As I watched, a
figure took off from the shoulder of the Goddess and gracefully swooped to hover near the
cockpit to join several others. I gave a smirk - apparently they did not know how to open
the cockpit yet.
"Don't underestimate us", the woman/angel said. "We have the superior technology
and the upper hand of our little war. We haven't sent the most of our fleet yet. In fact,
you may be forced to make another Goddess." I blanched - material to make the Goddess was
extremely expensive and only could be developed in space. To be asked to make another
Goddess would drain several colonies down to nothing, and leave several million people
homeless.
To put the question nice and blunt and out in the open, I said as dangerously as I
could, "Why did you keep me alive?" To my intense dislike, she gave a nice smirk, as if
asking me to continue. "You seem to know everything about the five of us, the Goddesses,
G.O.A. So why the hell am I still alive?"
"You have been kept alive to tell us about Zion." At my little startled gasp, she
gave a nice impression of the stereotype villain and gave a nice, evil smirk. Hey, at least
she didn't laugh like Dracula in those Old Planet movies or something. "We do not happen
to have any way of reading anything except the very top surfaces of your minds. We have no
ability to dive down deeper and read memories. Therefore, we will try and interrogate you
the best we can."
I stood up quickly, and saw with some satisfaction that I had startled her. "And
what makes you think that you can get ANY information out of me?"
And silence followed. Then came that infuriating smirk across her face again and I
felt myself growing a little more afraid and a lot more angry. I didn't care - they could
torture me, they could drive me to the brink of insanity and I wouldn't tell them anything.
So as I followed the angel-woman-Victim-person down the hall to what was supposed to
"convince me otherwise", I could not think of possibly, what, just what, could make me spill
everything. There was nothing, wasn't there? They had Eeva Leena - they couldn't take
that away. I couldn't be sure how many million lightyears I was away from G.O.A., so they
couldn't threaten me anything with that. What possibly could -
- and there he was, the monitor machine beside his bed beeping, the soft, steady
inhale/exhale motion of his chest, the color in his face, everything pointed to the thought
that he was alive, that Ernest, my best friend, was now alive.
I sank down to my knees on the floor and just wondered for a moment how I would get
out of this one. This, this was what they had been planning to bait me with. They had
retrieved Ernest's coffin and somehow brought him back to life. And as suddenly as the
small, glimmering hope that I might be able to keep both intact, Ernest and Zion, everything
came crashing down. Strange thoughts chased themselves around my head: that it was better
if Ernest had stayed dead, and that even if Ernest did awaken, he would be a zombie. On the
last thought, I caught myself before I could go over there and pull the plug on the outlet
in the wall to end the life-support systems. But I couldn't, couldn't move, couldn't get
up. , I thought. Almost as if he had heard me, he gave a
soft mumble and turned over.
"He's not in a coma anymore", the angel-lady said softly. "We woke him up to check
if he was exactly as memories described him. Every test we performed, he passed all of them
just as he passed them at your training in G.O.A. We have taken memories, or rather just
data, from the Eeva Leena and yourself as you slept, along with some of the surveillance
around G.O.A. His little brother, Erts, seems to think about him a lot. It is very
interesting to watch this brother-brother interaction."
As she went on to explain how they managed to somehow insert these memories into
Ernest's mind and revive him with some kind of jumpstart back to life, I could only stare at
something that I had never recalled Ernest having before.
There were wings on his back. The white kind, just like the lady. Ernest wasn't a
human anymore - he was a Victim.
"However, he may not be able to remember you. We programmed him to be the Ernest
personality, not to remember everything that has passed in his life so far." She gave me a
critical look, and I gave a jolt as I remembered she could very clearly read my distress.
"Do you accept?"
Curse my weakness! I could say no, I told myself. I could say no and do the right
thing and then Zion will be safe. Like hell Gareas Elidd is going to spill secrets! But
even as I tried to assure myself that I would never say anything, I could feel the other
side of the coin creeping up on me, flipping the tables slowly so I couldn't suspect, so I
couldn't see anything. And slowly, desperately, I could feel my protests growing weaker,
and the "save Ernest" side of me start to surface. Curse the fact Ernest had grown so much
on me! We were inseparable, closer than anything on Zion or the Old Planet or the Universe
itself and all its complexities. And even before my last objections died out, I could feel
that resignition that I would live to regret every minute I lived in this guilt. I had
betrayed Zion, betrayed G.O.A., even before I had said anything. All I could see was the
figure on the bed, turning my way as if he heard my pain and was trying to ease it in his
little "Mother Hen" way, the older brother, the one who understood everything you went
through because he had gone through worse. Ernest, Ernest was the most important thing
right now. And even though Zion nagged in the back of my mind, I could almost hear the
Victims swarming in to kill us all before the day was over, the last bloody stand I wouldn't
be there to watch.
"Wake him up", was all I said.
/ \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \ / \
Author's notes:
*sighs* Another chapter. Well, there you have it. Stupid Gareas...but a body
can't really blame him, eh? He's just compassionate, and that's exactly what Ernest would
have done if they had switched places. Ah, feelings...*gives an evil laugh* Don't you just
love playing around with them? But seriously, I think Ernest deserved more time before he
died. Hey, I mean, he lived just a little over half the TV series. That's not fair! He
should have gotten more screen time. Saa, the next chapter will jump back to Erts now.
Andrea Weiling