Dawn of Hope- Exodus

by Dobrin Kostadinov

  ‘What if you don’t know whether you’ll be alive tomorrow? How can you be so purposeful?’ I asked him.

  ‘I agree with you, yet It takes strength to withstand inevitable failures, it takes strength to get back up when you’ve been brought down. That’s the only way to save yourself and the entire population.’ Wise words he spoke. I did not understand why he said what he said, but he was right like hell.

  ‘Did that help you?’ I asked him just like that, out of curiosity.

  ‘To be honest, it does help. If you don’t build a strong character, life will crush you because more often than not one is left alone against the hurdles of life. Friends and family are a nice thing to have, but they will not always stand by your side and they could even sometimes be the first ones to stand in your way. So don’t let anyone stop you on your way to making your dreams come true!’

  ‘What about emotional support? What if there’s no one to speak up for you, how would you make up your mind to do something at all?’ I kept asking questions, still missing the point of what he said.

  ‘Emotional support is necessity that arises from our consciousness to help it overcome the difficulties of our daily lives.’

  ‘How about love, life doesn’t seem to make sense without it? What do we live for if not for it?’ I continued to press and he just looked me in the eyes.

  ‘As for love, you do have a point here, it is probably the best thing that could happen to a person. But beware, just as it can give meaning to your life, it can take it away from you, fiercely, without any mercy. So what matters while you’re still young is to become aware of all that, set your priorities straight, take a deep breath and march ahead with no excuses whatsoever. Don’t stop even if you fall down into the mud, even if you don’t know whether or not you’ll live, if life walks over you, ask for more because should you succeed in rising after that, you will come completely cleansed out of it and then nothing will be able to stop you.’

  ‘I can agree with that to an extent. But right now everything is a matter of life and death. How do I set myself any goals? How?’ I asked, a little desperate.

  ‘It’s true that things don’t look good, but these are just excuses. Even if right now you were on the Earth and everything was running in the same old way there and you were lying peacefully in your bed, you would still have no guarantee that you would live to see the next day come so you could proceed to fulfilling our dreams,’ the Colonel said and at that moment the conversation took on a personal note.

  ‘Would you mind if a drop the formalities?’ I asked the high-ranking Officer.

  ‘You’re allowed.’ Thomas approved my request. He leaned back and in that cool, rainy Menoetian murk we launched into a long conversation with an unpredictable ending.

  ‘OK, so what’s your dream and have you achieved it?’ I asked a delicate question that he did not seem to take well.’

  ‘What does it matter, of what importance is that to you?’ he retorted, as though he did not want to share with anyone the slivers of memory that made up is life.

  ´I was just wondering, there’s no particular reason; you were talking to me about priorities, motivation, even bravery and the situation right now, I keep insisting, is not so easy to handle. There are too many variables in the equation,’ I said, explaining my purely human point of view. I did not mean to reproach or judge him, I merely wanted to find out more about who he was. The Colonel seemed to understand that I wished him no harm and that my question was provoked by curiosity. He gave me a thin smile and leaned back. Perhaps that had been heavy on his heart for some time now and he felt the need to share it with someone, just like any other normal person would. And then he decided to open up to me.

  ‘All right, now I will tell you the story of a little boy raised by his mother, a boy whose father dies without leaving any memory behind in the child’s life, only stories of a great man. At first I was an ordinary child who played and laughed for no reason, but things changed quickly. When I began to mature as a person, I started pondering over what to specialize in and what I was going to do for a living at all. I finished high school and out of the blue I just decided to apply for an officer in the military academy. Over time they were going to train me for a commander in the Spetsnaz team provided I was good enough. Little by little I began setting goals for myself, call them dreams if you like, because I really wished to become someone at that place. At first I had simple objectives. I wanted to graduate at the top of my class, then I wanted to become the best trainee in the entire Academy and in the end my desire was to turn into the youngest Colonel in the Russian Army.´ He started narrating fragments from his life, ones that were from long before he had even heard of the spaceships and the missions he became part of later on.

  ´Was it hard?’ I interrupted him prompted by my genuine interest in his story. He heaved a sigh and thought for a moment before responding.

  ‘Sometimes those things seemed impossible to achieve. Look, becoming someone really important, not just a famous face in the crowd, but someone of value to society, is probably the most difficult thing to attain. You need a very strong motive in order to succeed, stronger than the one that spurs you into becoming a destructive force. You need to be highly skilled, to have a good heart, to be honest with yourself and with everyone else. Because, you see, to be a good person is much harder than to be a bad and cruel one, it can only forge a solid core inside of you. Yes, it was difficult, especially when I realized there was no turning back. Regardless of whether I was injured or scared, I crawled or ran, I knew that I had to go on one way or another. Take this from me–many will hamper you, few will help you, but you should never lose who you are. Look, my friend, people have no hunger for success and they will do everything they can to change your appetite for that thing. They don’t have hopes, they’re not motivated, nor are they inspired. They just have no dreams. That’s why I want to remind you to dream for yourself, for everyone else who will lean on you later on even though they will have tried to cut you short on your way to success.’ The Colonel enlightened me with his personality. Those were not empty words, not when they were coming from a man like him. At that moment he plunged into details about what had happened to him once he had finished his military education. Probably I had managed to predispose him somehow: he had settled very comfortably and betrayed no sign that the conversation was going to stretch for much longer than I expected. Probably he felt like pouring out everything that had been lying heavy on his heart and as perhaps he had seen in me that stranger who was going to listen to his story from the beginning until the end without judging him for a single thing.

  Thomas Ivanov began right from the beginning of his very first mission which brought his psyche to its knees. I learnt of the first human who got struck dead by his hand–a memory which dogged him in his dreams from time to time. He told me of all the labor he had put just so he could audition for the research mission and of the difficult tests that had drained him and had almost successfully thrown him out of balance. I also got to know how their team had been put together; about the training sessions and the exercises they made with those unique metal suits of whose limitless power I came to know through his account for the first time. He also shared with me what his relationships with the other team members were and also disclosed some of their altercations, he told me about the close bonds within the team, but something else stood out. After a two-hour tale of all the key moments he had been through over the previous few months, I felt that he spoke in a slightly odd way, as if he had a lump in his throat, specifically when it came to one of his colleagues. When he started highlighting her virtues, saying how she was engaged to Stephen, an MD from Berlin, I caught an undertone of sadness in his voice. Maybe our Russian Officer felt something deeper than mere appreciation for our blond female commander. Unfortunately he made no other mention of their relations except for a few short dialogues they had had.

  ‘How did you manage to get out of the river?’ I could no
t help myself but interrupt him, I was burning with desire to ask him a mountain of questions, so that I could know in detail about the peculiar heroism and toughness he had shown.

  ‘The rapids dragged me into the ocean. Before I was immersed into the infinite watery vastness, I managed to grab hold of one of the hanging roots of the trees that lined the river bed. I was injured and my communications were down. I felt completely alone and scared. Now I can feel I was frightened, but back then the exoskeleton had suppressed my feelings. I managed to pull myself and get to solid land and when I looked ahead, I saw the ocean´s shore which looked absolutely dreadful and death itself seemed to be wafting from the gigantic blue waves. I felt it was time to go for the woods which would definitely be a much safer place, but, out of the blue, a bright light shone in the sky above me and illuminated the trees with the power of thousand suns,’ he recounted ardently everything as though it was happening right before his eyes anew. ‘I didn’t know what to do at first, so I hid under the crown of an enormous tree that still offered a view on the unending beach. I stood there for a while, waiting, and shortly after that German Ascend 2 landed with a rumble on the shore. I wondered what its pilots were thinking. Maybe that the beach would be a good, safe place to land. But that proved to be a grave mistake . . . I headed in that direction and even though I was running at a very fast pace towards the ship which was about six miles away, something appalling happened right before my eyes,’ he began summing up the petrifying scene. Probably it was now that he truly realized what he had witnessed. ‘The ocean started brewing and the numberless Menoetian hordes emerged from it. I was close, so close that I saw how the Vacari were tearing apart the resistance. The grayish-white soaked up the scarlet blood of the volunteers and the gigantic machine was conquered in a matter of minutes before I could even get to it.’ He described the horrific incident with a tinge of sadness and I did not know what to say. ‘No one survived, not a single person. They didn’t even get as far as sending a distress signal. It was a total massacre. I was left with no other option but to remain cloaked by the trees in disgrace, I had to stay alive and yet I wanted to help so direly . . . I spent almost two hours roaming around the thick forest and in the evenings, when it rained, I took refuge wherever I could. In the end I returned, yet I had one more thing that weighs heavily on my conscience. Well, I really think we’re in luck for not being close to the ocean as that is their territory. Somehow the colossuses manage to guide their army on dry land. I don’t want to even think about how many of them are hiding in the depths of the ocean.’ The Colonel came to the close of his narrative. The last words he spoke, though, startled me. In his opinion, the creatures were so many that we could not even imagine. They were like an ant colony whose real number remmained hidden underground and were to see only part of it.

  ‘You did what you could; if you had run to their rescue, you might not have been here with us now, but among the remnants of that ship.’ Somehow I found some words that aimed to imply that he had done the right thing under the circumstances and that he should not blame himself for his decision as that was exactly what he was doing.

  ‘I can’t, my conscience is pricking me, resenting my actions,’ his voice resounded through the darkness of the evening as powerful bolts of lightning cut through the skies from time to time. It looked like the Menoetian wrath that we were about to suffer, gradually mounting somewhere out there far away in the thickness of the forest and in the infinity of the ocean where even the bravest of us would be frightened out of their wits.

  ´Maybe that´s how it had to be. You’re a great man and whatever happens from now on, whatever decisions you make, no one can reprove your choices. You have a huge heart, the heart of a fighter, I know you wouldn’t betray us.’ I tried to inspire him as much as I could.

  ‘Extinguishing that which burns inside of me is no easy task. You may be right about the last bit, but I’m not at all a great man, not the least bit. I’m just a soldier, an ordinary soldier.’ He showed a humble self-esteem. His self-confidence was neither high, nor low, but rather somewhere in the middle. It was high enough as to command all of us without giving us the chance to a say a word against him and low enough for him to stay shoulder to shoulder with us, ordinary people and talk to us. The perfect commander-in-chief and in tandem with the other main player, Dimitar Milev, the two men were unyielding in their decisions and undefeatable in their actions.

  ‘You don’t seem to be afraid of death, but is there anything that terrifies you?’ I asked him once more immersed in deep curiosity.

  ‘Yes, there is. It gives me goosebumps that at this point I can depart from this world alone, without having anyone, anyone who I love or who loves me. In following my desire to succeed I seem to have missed searching for love and this is a profound loss in every possible way.’ His words had a tinge of sentimentality and once he said them, I no longer knew what to say. I got lost in thought and felt a grain of hope that was going to probably germinate very soon under that much rain falling. . .

  ‘Whatever you’re doing, if you’ve got no one to share it with, it’s really a waste of time,’ I confirmed.

  ´Indeed. Hence, do find someone whom you can turn into the reason behind your motivation and desire for success. Then you’ll be truly happy, without any underlying fears.’ He bequeathed me his final point of wisdom as though he was attempting to protect me. Now both of us were peering into the dark, leaning back against the bench’s back, as if we were trying to count the tiny splashes reflected onto the railing. But did I actually hear right what he said? The biggest fear that could crush such a brave person as Thomas was the risk of not finding a mate in life? Neither the Vacari, nor the planet or even death itself could scare him. But loneliness seemed to be more powerful than all of that and it could eat the human soul from the inside like nothing else.

  I thought about myself and I found that I was headed down a road similar to his–one speckled with opportunities and success, but lacking in social contacts and, above all in family. Was that, though, what I actually wanted? Perhaps the Colonel was right; I needed to first have someone to inspire me who will be both the reason for me to live and the reason for my success. But finding love in that particular moment when none of us knew whether we would live to see the next day come was an onerous and even impossible task. But suddenly, about a few dozen feet away, I saw a shadow appear. The dim lights made it difficult to see clearly the image of the person, but when they came closer, we figured out who it was. It was Lieutenant Nikolavna. We jumped to our feet, shocked, I did it out of respect, for Thomas, though, the reason was different; it was him that the blond beauty approached with a salute.

  ‘Hello, Colonel. How are you?’ she said a bit awkwardly, completely oblivious of my presence.

  ‘I’m taking some downtime with the colleague out in the fresh air.’ He pronounced the words as if he felt embarrassed for some reason. I could sense where things were headed so I decided not to stand in their way. The attention and tender feelings they showed for each other could hardly remain invisible.

  ‘It was a pleasure! Colonel, Lieutenant, if you’ll excuse me,’ I said politely with a smile and left them alone. I hoped it was not in vain, I hoped both of them could feel the meaning of the life in which I was beginning to believe more and more.

  I got back to my room, tired after the strenuous day, full of all sorts of mind-blowing events which I both witnessed and participated in. Nevertheless, the things I came to know about Milev and Thomas took center stage in my mind and their confessions are something I would not forget for as long as I live because the information they communicated to me broke me and amazed me at the same time. I did not want to imagine what was going on in their heads, I just did not want to as I was very likely to end up insane. As I was drifting into sleep I could still not fathom why and how they actually decided to share with me episodes and things from their private lives. Things that some kill for without a sliver of mercy just to keep them a secret
. For that reason I made up my mind to keep silent about them, too. But my reporter self was so overwhelmed by those facts and wanted them to see the light of day so that the ordinary people could know that they were being guarded by real heroes and so they could know who the real defenders of the human race truly were. But now was not the time for that, now we had to first stay alive, as or the rest, there would always be time for that . . .

  I had fallen into deep sleep and different dreams played on the screen of my consciusness one after the other. But what dreams they were! A nightmare after nightmare and the fear of death and destruction made me shake as cold sweat broke over my entire body. Unexpectedly, I sensed the salvation from the horrific pictures that flooded my mind. I heard a loud sound that seemed to be that of an alarm; it was not my alarm clock, though, but the ship’s alarm system. That was no salvation at all–from one nightmare I had plunge into another. Only the one here was real and a thousand times more dreadful than anything I had dreamt of until then. The ship’s sirens would not stop wailing, at first they sounded monotonous, but after a while they were modified into something so sinister and stressing that it sent me into panic. It rightfully did so as that was the sound which announced a red code situation, in other words a situation where we were under the threat of attack. I could hardly believe it. It was an early morning and the first sunbeams of the red giant were shining down on the topmost parts of the ship. I woke up the worst possible way. But as the saying goes, evil never sleeps and that was true of the grayish-white as well since the last raindrops had fallen minutes ago and the murky clouds were drifting away from the plateau. Maybe they were finally going to have the chance to exterminate us.