(posted on 09-15-2000)
Chapter 8-A Dream Come True
I hit the wall of the jail cell very hard. Still beaten and bruised, I barely managed to get up. Blood trickled down my chin, and my ankle felt as though it were sprained. The cell was very dark. It smelt like Saalian brandy for some reason and I wondered why. There was one light in the room, that was really dim and yellow, instead of a bright white.
From a dark corner of the cell I heard a voice. At first, but only at first, I didn't recognize it. I felt shocked at what voice it had been.
"Now, Doc. We are all on a team."
"You're, you're, you can't be..."
"Jade? Yeah."
I got up with a start and walked aggressivly to the dark corner. I looked down. At first the focus of my eyes was blurred, then the image became clear. It became whole. It was Jade Reib. The one and only. But this was not the end of what I had seen from this image of his face, he sat there, looking at me with a shocked face almost as much as mine.
"I can't believe-"
"Not entirely Jade, however. His 3rd clone. I'm here to help him, because the real one of me is off running somewhere and is currently heading torward the Ji Nebula and will eventually end up in DSN-8789."
"What happens there?"
"Once he gets there?"
"Yes."
"Well, then he destroys project Hellfire once and for all."
"What? How? There is no Igadzra settlement--"
"Exactly. There is a ship in that system. It's a science vessel from the same kind of ships you saw."
"What were those things?"
"Karticel fighters."
"What?!?!" I screamed. The Karticel was such a peaceful race, they were bent on destroying the bad, not the good.
"The Karticel race has traitors, just like every species does. Sure the common UE representatives, or any other ambassadors of the others Strands are quite innocent. However, just like the Renegades have been completely gulped up from the UE, Kraits continue to raid attacks just like Alien Renegades continue do as well. Bottom line is: these aliens you're dealing with are the traitors of the Karticel race and are using next generation technology that's not even supposed to be made for about 120 years."
"120 years?! How? That long? What exactly is this kind of technology capable of."
"Well, let me put it this way. . .your Defender A.K. is an ant when it comes to comparing that ship's power with these 10 kilometer long beasts. The two ships you saw are common destroyers of theirs."
I finally sat down and leaned against the wall. A drop of sweat went scrolling down my forehead. I took a deep breath, and knew that no matter what I encountered from here on, my life had been changed forever once again just like when the Battle of Voinia occurred. Or when Jade had appeared to die. It was strange. An ache filled up my head, and I groaned. So much in so little time. I couldn't handle it all.
"Anyway, look, we're going to get out of here."
"How did you get in here in the first place?"
"Well, the way I came in."
I gave him a confused look. He simply ignored it, got up and took off a torch from his utility belt. He stood up on the sink that was in the cell. Taking the torch he hit a small red button and it made concentrated beam into a dark, unlighted spot on the ceiling. I saw a lined board, my stomach jumped. A vent fell to the cold, damp floor.
"Whoa," I said in amazement.
"Shall we?" The clone asked as he stuck out his right arm to me.
I got up and got onto the sink. He pulled me up, then gave me a boost. I was lifted into the vent, and then I squeezed through the small tunnel until I could turn around. Not but 10 ft did it take. I looked back down the spot where I came in, and the clone of Jade had one of his hands reaching out to me, and the other on the edge of the opening.
"Pull me up."
I reached down and with quiet a bit of effort, I held my breath, and pulled him up. He pulled himself up on the other side of the opening. I looked down in the opening once more, making sure that the door in the cell was not about to open.
"This way," he said to me as he turned around from facing me.
I carefully crawled across the opening and followed him. For seven long minutes we crawled through the cold tunnel. Goose bumps lifted off my skin. I shivered and my nerves jumped every time I touched the cold tunnel with my hand. So cold it hurt, I was numb in a matter of seconds. We both finally came to a small opening, hot warmth came from it that brought comfort to my pale, white, cold face. I put my face over it. Shoulder to shoulder, the clone and I pulled off the vent, and jumped down, trying to stay as quiet as we could, but as we landed on a metal catwalk, we heard people talking in the distance as they heard the large heavy thump of our feet.
"Crap."
"Your personality is nothing like the real Jade," I said, amused at his attitude.
"Yeah, shut up right now. We need to get out of this room right--" THWELLLP! The buzzing sound of photon blasters went ringing past our ears hitting the railing of the catwalk. I see Jade's clone stumble and fall over onto the floor, seven feet down. He gets up, holding his shoulder in pain, but still on the move. He looks up to me as he runs around the catwalk, and pulls a gun out of his pocket.
"Here, catch."
The gripped handle slid into my hand. As I held it, I felt reassurance. Jade's clone ran off into steam. More photon fire zips past me as I stay low. The main point here was simple. I just had to find an exit and meet up with this clone one way or another. I had no idea what the room was for, but as I ran and saw the tip of a Arada below me, I knew it had to be a ship factory where the ships were flown to the shipyard for sale. In the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of blue and hit the floor immediately. I fire at the Zachit soldier in the uniform. The Karticel blast of my gun rips into the soldier's shoulder; drops of blood fly as the blast hits him. He falls back onto the ground, crying in pain.
I hop up and take cover behind a crate. More shots whiz past my head and hit the crate. Pipes leak steam as they are hit. Making me practically blind, I look at the gun, then the barrel. It was a miniature model of a Karticel cannon. This means they can't see me either. I peek my head up over the crate. A man slids accross the floor, and I pull the trigger. Two shots into his back. Then I notice his face. His eyes glassy, his body limp.
"What the--?"
"Silent alarms are hell aren't they?" An Igadzra says to me, his voice, echoing through the steaming fog. I panicked. An Igadzra kills one of his own men.
"You killed my brother you freak!"
My heart raced. My eyes were wide open, and my teeth were clenched. Adrenaline rushed through my raging veins. I took my gun and set it to the max power setting. Then I fired, recklessly into the steam everywhere I could. The blast of white and purple went pulsing into the steam. Then as the blasts stopped, I heard a terrifying voice, none but the gun's voice.
"Weapon depleted," the gun said in a deep computerized voice. I looked to the shot display.
OO REPLACE POWER CELL
"Oh crap," I whispered.
"I'm also involved in Hellfire."
I looked up from my gun and then turned and looked past a corner from the crate.
"Are you saying that--"
Machine gun fire cut off my words and blew holes in the crate, the shots going straight past my head. I rolled back onto the catwalk, and looked into the distance and saw many dead Zachit bodies.
"No evidence, no witnesses, my brother always said."
Frozen in fear, my body went stiff. I couldn't move, I couldn't breath. I looked below and saw the clone nowhere to be found. I then felt my heart race faster and faster. I clenched my teeth and summoned up all the anger I could, trying to overcome my fear, but nothing worked.
"JADE! JADE! HELP!"
"Jade? Jade Reib? He's here?"
"JADE!!"
The yellow and red foot thumped down from out of the steam. His body although appearing murky, became clear as the misting steam streamed past his broad shoulders. His huge machine gun held by his huge arms pointed to me. From out of nowhere a shot from the catwalk above ripped into his shoulder. He screamed and shot into the above catwalk. Then he jumped up to it.
"DIE!!!!" I heard the clone scream.
Seven shots fired and the above-shadowed catwalk flashed from the gun fire. I heard the Igadzra growl and moan, then with a yell of rage I heard a BIFF! The clone fell down onto my catwalk, and then tossed his gun away. The Igadzra jumped back down and the catwalk rumbled violently.
"Jesus!" I yelled as I saw the blood pouring off of the Igadzra. Blood gulped from him. The clone started backing off. The Igadzra with what seemed like all that was left of his strength lifted up the machine gun and pointed it at the clone.
At least 30 clicks of emtpiness filled the air as they echoed down the catwalk. He threw it into the steam to his right and then looked back to the clone. I got up finally and started to walk back as the clone was doing. The Igadzra burst right at Jade, and with his humongous fist, delivered a pounding blow to the clone's stomach. Then a light kick, to his face and he fell down to the ground. The Igadzra looked back to me and down to him.
A machine that the clone had fallen on burst open with sparks, and smoke filled the thick, tense air that I tried so hard to breathe. He then flipped over the rail down into the smoke.
"No!" I yelled in horror.
Behind me I heard a shaky voice and I looked down the other side of the rail. I saw nothing but smoke, but I knew that it was the clone's voice.
"Doc! Doc! Doc! Help me!! Doc can you hear me? I'm down here!"
"I hear you. Where are you?"
"Down here! Follow my voice!"
"Alright I'm. . . .AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!"
As the dream flashed in my head, I could only stand there in horror, as I felt my legs shake and tremble. They I heard a nasty sound of flesh being torn like noodles, and the sound filled my ears and brain with nothing but a screaching feeling that scraped my stomach. Out of the hell-like smoke, blood rose up from the holes of the catwalk, and the clones upper body flew into the air, over the catwalk into the other side of the smoke.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"
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Chapter 9-Frozen Thought
Most people expect their life to be simple. They want it to be simple. Those who choose their lives to have a large amount of pain and still have a large amount of happiness are those with a confused soul. Horror, where would we be without it? We would be nowhere, because horror is what teaches us a lesson. Whenever you see the blood, and raw, gushing flesh, full of blood from another, God is telling you, when you go to hell, this is what Satan shows you.
"This is what you shall burn in," the Lord will say.
Peace, although a word that seems to ring in the back of our minds never seems to stop pounding and throbbing in the most stressful points of our lives. Everyone says that we are okay, everyone says that everything is fine. Everyone says what they think, and not what they know. In this galaxy that I live in, aliens are raised in corruption. A lone boy that was raised on Earth witnessing the purification that Earth had compared to the outside world. When you look at the face of a Voinian, what do you see? You see hidious, ugly, alien terror. However, what do they see? What do we see?
Children, for ages, ever since the times of the middle ages, have been raised in corruption. We, the adults take it upon ourselves to do what? Shield them? What good does that do? Showing them the truth too early would certainly make them far more than corrupt, but maybe even psychotic. The truth, the truth has evil, the truth has depression.
Eventually, we learn to enjoy slight corruption, we even laugh at it at times. The carnage of war, and fighting shows people the true corruption that the world has been given. As we think ourselves, we want to simply pay no attention to this infection, this corruption. When we do this, we fight, and ignore reality. Evil is there to make us learn.
Although I, Doc, am not really saying that we should simply live on the fact that infection is what made society and people the way they are today. What I'm saying is that both joy, and pain, both of which should be treasured. As I see even this clone be ripped apart, I know that innocence as a human being is gone. I'm a witness, a witness to the way death should not be. But it is there.
Yet, then when you go to joy, you think about going to a recreation deck, or if you live on Earth, go to the top of a mountain and view the only wildlife left. Perhaps you would think of love? Love makes us all forget about all things demonic. As love can either make or break us, we must always take caution. As I will most likely later learn again and again, my life is never going to be the same.
When we say this, our lives will never be the same, we're saying that someone, or something has made a difference. But then when you think of something or someone this way, deep down you know that no difference is really there. All that's there is something that you did not expect. I didn't expect Jade to come, and I didn't expect any of this to happen.
In the beginning, I was looking for excitement. Excitement is such a word to me now that it makes me feel as though I am fooling myself. Why do people look for excitement? I'll tell you why. It's because people are so stressed out with something that has completely worn them out. What is it that has worn them out? Excitement is that answer. I didn't realize this before, but now I know, that excitement is but a horrifying word to me. Something that makes my mind shake, and my body tremble. What I want now is peace. Peace is something that I cannot have.
I am in the same state that I was before. Pitiful, sad, depressed, but most of all, desperate. For what? Not excitement, not peace, not relaxation? What was I looking for? What was that something that would change me forever? What was it? I must find it, I must complete what is true to me. I must know what is out there that I must find. For right now, I know that it's not excitement. No longer is that what I crave. The thing that I truly crave now is an escape. An escape both literally and metaphorically.
Dreams, just what in the name of God, were dreams? Dreams are creations of our mind that tell us things. These images sometimes bring us great inspiration. Or other times they bring us wonderful sensations, or perhaps horrify us with the most screwed up, demonic fears you could ever imagine.
Everything is normal, then the next moment, you're in a bunch of blazing flames watching your newly tanned skin rise off your arm with seeping blood, and bubbles that pop and crack your ears. Dreams can be heaven or hell, but one thing remains the same: they're not real. Therefore, sometimes you wish they were. The phrase "a dream come true," is something that is either we look forward to or we fear.
Fear, we look into the bright green eyes of a Miranu, and see the two tentacles. What do they see? They see a four legged creature always standing upright, that uses two of it's legs as holders of posts that have very, very, small tentacles. This might be what a Miranu child would think. However, we, the panicky human race see such an alien creature for the first time, and because it looks horrifying, we fear it. We scream, we yell, we run. But why are we so afraid of our own visions? It's because emmotions, and the imagination warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. The warp is only natrual, and to take it away to make a perfect being was simply wrong, but it could make that being better in a way.
Jade was artificially created. A lab experiment. The thing I wonder about Jade is, if he's a lab experiment, will something go wrong with him? Or maybe he has some special ability that no other being has because he's something that people made out of the not knowing. Not knowing is a scary thing for humans. Yet do they fear making something with a little reason of not knowing. No, they go on and make it, taking not enough caution to hold onto some lives, and save a few.
Humans underestimate many things, this is why we imagine just about all aliens to be better than us. However, are we sure that this could be true? Some say yes, it will be true, or its always been true. But the truth here is that we don't know. So we maybe over-estimate what they can do because we want to take caution. However, even if they are, what reason do they have to destroy us?
The thing here is, we take a look at the violent, horrid, dreaded Voinians. What reason did they have to destroy us? It's because for them they are like an old Native American tribe. One such similar as the Celts. They are greedy, they wish to rule the universe because they know what they could have. They know that the treasures of the many worlds lies within are valuable. But then, once they've conquered everything like they've always dreamed, then what? War has no point.
I say this, but then you look at a soldier firing a gun into the innocent chest of a little boy, and you know that there is a point. It's that the learning and the infection in it must get to people's heads. However, this has been done enough times that we cry in pain for it to stop. We mourn the deaths of our relatives in war, and we justify their cause.
But dying in vain, what does that mean? How can a person die in vain if there didn't have to be a reason for them to die? Will we, the people of our race ever discover this? The Miranu have always had a good sense on when to stop something, or when to start something. They are not as easily angered as humans. We get angry over the most stupid things. Why, oh why, is this always, always, always true throughout eternity? Someday Jesus will come and save us, some day these aliens that we call them will more properly be known as people. People just like us.
We will understand eventually. But until that time, it's up to us to maintain the thing that is most critical. That is that of stability...indeed, God help us all.
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MESSAGE FROM JAKE101:
Smiles. Come on. . . .who's your favorite author in the chronicles? ^_^ PEACE!
(This message has been edited by moderator (edited 09-14-2000).)
