Fifth circle of the Empire
Earth
I remembered it very well.
One day when I got home on the remains of my feet, my mother was in such a frenzy that she didn't even stop to start talking about how dangerous the universe was because of the disease and those who hated her for seeking the cure; and how much I should hide there with her.
The room was a mess, littered with scattered papers, bottles filled with liquids I didn't know, and the hum of machines processing substances. I was used to finding signs of research, but this time, the environment smelled of discovery.
"Good news?" I asked, throwing my shoes away.
I expected her to send me a grimace like she always did, but my mom was smiling. Her fingers trembled with euphoria around a vial, shaking a liquid that, if not for her excitement, I would have sworn was water. Maybe it was... And she was just really thirsty...
"I found... I found the cure!" She whispered so the walls wouldn't hear her and then pointed with her eyes to that tiny dose in the bottle.
"And is that enough to cure at least one person?"
"It's enough to cure all Itopis, Doxy." And, in her words, I felt the power of the woman I wanted to be, calling me by that name... Half Donecea, half Gaxy, because a part of me was her; and the other was something she wanted to be even better. "If it's in the blood of the right person."
Which wouldn't be me, if it were her choice.
I plopped down on the couch and glared at her out of the corner of my eye, putting the dose into a needle and preparing her arm to receive it.
"This is a recipe for the body to produce a new cell... The first one capable of destroying this disease." I took one of her studies scattered around the room and looked at the sketches I couldn't understand. "I'm not sure what this will do, but a single drop of blood with these cells can heal countless beings..."
"Are you going to inject yourself without knowing it?" I got up. "Aren't you going to do any tests first?"
"I don't have time anymore, Doxy..." She growled, bringing the tip of the needle closer to her skin. "If I don't do this now, we'll be dead before I can try again."
I was about to leave her when a glare in the window caught our attention and she suddenly stopped, panic burning in her eyes.
"RUN!"
And I didn't even look back.
I went as fast as I could down the stairs to the underground shelter and closed the door behind my back after my mother came in, carrying a briefcase. When she had that shelter built I said she worried too much; and she told me that too much worry was never enough. Now that we were hiding underground in fear of the skies and everything beyond, I understood her... Even though I didn't know what was happening.
I curled up on the floor between the shelves and waited for what could only be the end of the world.
She opened the briefcase and then grabbed my arm.
"What is happening?!"
"They found me..." She picked up the needle. "And they won't rest until I'm dead." When her eyes landed on me, I knew she was already dead. "It has to be you."
What?!
For an instant, I swore the atmosphere had lost all air. My eyes fell to the silvery glow of the needle tip and I squirmed away from as it was about to cross the border of my skin.
"I wouldn't know what to do..." I gasped as tears started to stream down my face.
"I'll guide you."
"No..." I wasn't brave enough, smart enough, determined enough... How could I carry what should have been on the strength of her shoulders? How could I not be crushed under the weight of the world she could support? How would I save the Empire? "It can't be me..."
She grabbed my arms.
"There's no one else, Doxy... I know you're not part of some bigger plan; that you're not the missing piece in the puzzle of this Empire; and that you're not destined for greatness..." I blinked, trying to drive away the tears that clouded my vision. "But you can conquer it. The bigger plan can be yours; the puzzle can be your mind; and the greatness can be you... All that remains is to become it." I choked on words I never said, struggling not to ask how she could believe that when I was so far from the woman she was. "They don't know about you. Go to the intergalactic hospital as far from the core as possible and hide the name Gaxy for a while." She brought the needle closer to my arm that I no longer had the strength to withdraw. "Do not look back. Trust no one. Don't give up... And never forget who you are, Doxy. Never forget that you are a Gaxy."
And then her fingers squeezed the ampoule, injecting the cure into my veins.
The burning that exploded in my arm felt like I'd plunged it into the depths of the sun. I screamed until I felt the veins in my neck trying to escape it and I struggled in my mother's embrace, holding me as the universe collapsed inside. I felt the responsibility migrate beneath my skin like molasses, tearing me apart and rebuilding me so that I was big enough to carry it. I could feel it in my arms, invading my neck, making me into its extension, until I was nothing without it...
And when the light I had seen in the sky reached our house and blew it out, a sound like the roar of beasts filled my ears... But I didn't know if it came from the cries of the cracking walls, from my own throat, or from something far beyond, warning me of an end almost worse than the one I felt inside me.
At some point in eternity the wave of the cure exploded in my head and my eyes were filled with darkness, pain and fear. I saw colossal beasts march over the precipices of the universe, advancing from rips that shouldn't be there... I saw a lady of bones laughing at me before pores of blood...
And I saw the end.
An end I needed to face.
As I writhed on the cold floor, I watched my mother walk through the shelter door into the rubble of what was once my home.
And I never saw her again.
• • • ֍ • • •
Rumors that the humans were planning an escape from the Oasis eventually reached the attention of those who weren't supposed to know. Some of the humans began to be called by supervisors to private meetings that nothing was said about afterwards. I had no idea what happened inside, I only saw the paleness on the faces of the other humans when they left the room... Until it was my turn.
I closed the door behind me and the tremulon said before I could even turn around:
"Gaxy is alive."
And, easy as that, I was already as pale as those who left that room.
I slowly turned back to the tremulon, expressionless as jelly, and felt my mind burn with questions I didn't dare ask. I hadn't even heard her name in so long... A sound that now seemed to be able to summon ghosts buried in my past.
"Someday she wasn't?"
"I heard rumors. But they were wrong, apparently."
"How do you know?"
And why was he talking to me when I was just Clover?
The supervisor threw on the table papers I had never seen and I approached them as if they were bombs. The letters embedded in the paper leapt at my eyes until they became words, the curves of ink hissing like snakes I knew from ancient bites...
Her handwriting.
"Gaxy has sent them to you." He said, making me exhale dread.
"You read it?" I stammered.
"I would not waste my time with primitive languages." I was almost relieved, when he continued: "But the other humans told me what is written." What could he have discovered? "I didn't know you were the daughter of an Aulica, Clover..." He didn't discover my name, at least.
I took the letters with my trembling fingers and ran my eyes over the words, the messages deciphering into footprints where I should put my feet... And to think that, for all that time, she had been sending me directions that never arrived... Until now.
"Why didn't she give it to me before?"
"Because it wouldn't matter."
"And now does?"
"She wants to see you."
I staggered.
Something was wrong... It was like I didn't deserve that the universe could choose not to torture me for a moment... What could it want from me in return? And why now?
Maybe now she was in so much danger that she needed my help...
Or maybe I was.
"When?"
"At the end of your term." The tremulon answer, making my fists clench hidden. "Only then you will receive all the cards."
I sighed. Apparently, I wasn't going anywhere for a long, long time...
• • • ֍ • • •
After all the humans were gone from the Oasis and I'd almost forgotten what it was like to hear someone else's voice, I got tired of rereading the letters I already had. I needed new words, new crumbs, I needed to know more about the fate my mother had once wished for me... And for that I needed to read her last letters.
At some point I worked up the courage to start thinking about looking for them; and, after spending countless noxdiems analyzing my supervisor's routine, I barged into his office when I knew he wouldn't be around and searched the room. It didn't take me long to come across a lonely letter from my mother, just lying in a drawer, because my supervisor never thought I'd dare try to find it. I was to human to succeed, after all.
I read the letter before he was right.
Sorry, my dear, but I think this is my last letter.
The words rang in my head, in that voice I hadn't been able to forget.
There's nothing else I know to teach you; and there is nothing else I believe I have time to find out. I have kept these letters in a safe programmed to send them to you after my death, so, if you are reading these words, know that they are my last. But do not be sad. I've already given you all the guidance a mother can provide.
It wasn't another guidance I needed at that time... It wasn't her teachings I was crying about.
Now your success lies in what you will do with it all. You can be anything you want, my dear, if the universe gives you the way. And if it doesn't, you must take it as if it had always been yours.
As she had done.
Get where only a Gaxy could... And reach for the horizon I once dreamed of for you.
And those were her last words.
I would never see her again, as I had been promised.
So there was no longer any reason to stay.
And all I needed was another human...
• • • ֍ • • •
"She was killed by the contaminated." I muttered to the metriona, not having the courage to face him.
"No, Donecea..." The creature replied with a softness that caressed my ears... But the silence that grew in the hall smothered me, until, as if pulling a rope from my neck, he continued: "The Aulics killed her."
Just as they had tried to kill me when the Metrionas rescued us...
No.
It didn't make sense.
I couldn't be.
Or else I would be wrong.
My eyes rose to the leader of the metrionas, at the heights of his majesty. And in him I saw nothing but a sincerity as surreal as the possibility that it was all true.
I stood up slamming my hands on the table.
"Return Kadi's ship. We are leaving."
And then I walked out of the hall, as if the other side of it was the only place on that planet where oxygen still existed, but then metriona's words made me stop, accepting, albeit for a brief moment, to let me suffocate:
"I saw her death."
I turned to him. Slowly. And, with the sentence written, I fell into the grave that had been dug for me a long time ago:
"Then show me."