Origins of Hope

by Anastasia Drapievsky

  Ayzize grunted. While he felt the need to frequently restrain sarcasm from Doth, Tralis welcomed informalities. The two of them had trained together in Raxdrýn seven years ago, and it took months for him to get used to Lyre Selyn’s odd and indirect language. “You’re the one who has thus avoided that responsibility.”

  “Perks of switching to the Science Department, like Nelowie should have done,” she replied, her squint holding. “Alas Nelowie continues to squander his intellect on head-butting every XIK that comes his way.”

  “And every Chairman,” he muttered, earning a full two second of closed eyes, Lyre Selyn for laughing.

  “Do not let Doth catch that… though he might agree with Nelowie. As for the matter presented,” she paused. “This one’s first inclination is to deny Benitz’s request. The less amount of attention that Raxdrýn attracts while recruiting delicate assets, the better.”

  “ ‘First inclination’?”

  “This one will have to speak to Doth on this matter.”

  “You’re not sure if he would agree.”

  “Doth has relaxed many regulations for this human. This one is not convinced that Doth would deny this of the client. Not happily, but there is a possibility he will acquiesce.”

  “Really?” Ayzize asked, half exasperated. “Doth wouldn’t deny Benitz calling a town hall to show off that Raxdrýn is taking his son as an apprentice?”

  “Director Krekek would say that this would be a ‘PR’ opportunity,” Tralis said, her eyes going wide in disapproval. “While the director may be correct in some ways, this one does not know why a human would want to share their Melyn leaving, with the rest of the community. Is Beir a Lyre sect?” She referred to a cult of humans who took their admiration of the egalitarian Lyre Selyn into reverence and near worship.

  Ayzize shook his head. “I suspect the father wants to show off that he has connections to leave the planet. Some humans use it as leverage to keep potential protestors quiet, especially if they employ them, which in this case he does. It gives the employees hope that they can leave through him, too.”

  Tralis’ mouth folded into a thin line. “This one thought Nelowie exaggerated when he said Endeavor was not properly educated, and desperate.”

  “I don’t exaggerate, you know that.”

  “Every once in a while, this one would like to think Nelowie does.” Her eyes wandered for a moment. “Give this one 1-T hour to speak with Doth on this matter.”

  True to her word, it only took Doth one hour on their home base of Tezěkír to contact Ayzize. Ayzize had just finished his workout, a short towel around his neck as Doth’s AR form flashed in front of him, Doth’s lower half clipping into the bed. Ayzize made no move to correct it.

  “Grant Benitz’s request,” Doth stated.

  Ayzize folded his arms, gritting his teeth. “I didn’t realize that we were that desperate for credits.”

  Doth’s small folds by his neck flared out in anger, mimicking a frilled lizard. “Nelowie, this is the second time you have challenged my orders, and I have a mind to put you on unpaid leave.”

  “My apologies; I just don’t like the idea of Raxdrýn bowing down to some human who got lucky with credits.”

  “I am not thrilled with this arrangement either,” Doth hissed, but his ire had been thrown back to Benitz rather than Ayzize. “But this infection has offered not only a recruit but enough credits for me to allow a town hall in the middle of nowhere on a backwater planet that barely has colony status. Since you humans call any planet you land on a colony, that is saying something. His request would not have been entertained otherwise. Just show up, stand there, then take the child.”

  “Understood.”

  “And Nelowie?” Doth kept his eyes on Ayzize, his gaze chilling. “Do not screw this up.”

  Ayzize smiled sardonically. “You wouldn’t have sent me if you thought I would.”

  Doth didn’t move for a few seconds, but then visibly relaxed. “Fair warning: next time you disobey, you will be suspended without pay. Dismissed.” Doth’s form dispersed, with Ayzize glaring at the afterimage.

  With mounting irritation, Ayzize sent a message back to Benitz to confirm the Town Hall meeting in the early evening, trying to stave off the feeling that he was making a grave mistake.

  Six

  A bottle shattered in the living room, startling Celes from her game. Her eyes flickered to her bedroom door to make sure it remained locked, when she heard several grunts and a sweeping noise. Accidental break, not an intentional one. She turned back to her game. An old holo monitor displayed a fantasy landscape, complete with knights in full clad metal armor fighting and dragons setting things on fire in the background.

  She had worked cleaning the neighbors’ apartments every day for two months to save up money, using most of it to buy food. However, she had enough left over to head to the pawnshop and buy the holo monitor, which looked like it originated from the nuclear age. The monitor didn’t work, so Celes had to ‘borrow’ some of her father’s old tools to jury rig the monitor with an old circuit board and power supply she had found in the trash. It kept shorting out though, so she could only play for at most an hour.

  A message box popped up in the lower corner of the screen: a net-mail from the Beir Committee with the subject saying something about an impromptu town hall. Celes impatiently deleted the message as an enemy knight rushed for her in the game. Thought I had turned on that auto-spam, she thought as she battled the knight while riding a dragon.

   After besting the knight, the game luckily auto-saved just before the monitor fizzed out. Grumbling, Celes got out of her chair and jumped on the bed, laying on it perpendicular with her feet on the wall as she pulled her datapad that had laid next to her pillow. Bouncing her heel on the wall, she flipped through several screens while trying to decide what she wanted to do. Absolutely bored, especially since no one needed their apartment cleaned for a while, she decided to test if the net would be stable enough to download a book.

   The site only crashed twice before she picked one she wanted. This book had a custom soundtrack that played during certain scenes; this was cool most of the time, though other books had peculiar sound choices. Frantic flutes during a horror scene seemed stupid, and weird orchestra music swelling every time people kissed got irritating fast.

   Getting past the first chapter of an Iaiedal and Levan going on a time traveling adventure with an eighty-ninth version of some doctor, she heard the doorknob turn gently, then quickly back and forth when it didn’t immediately open.

   “Celes!” her father yelled through the door. “What did I tell you about locking doors?!”

   “Safety first?” she muttered, swinging her legs from the wall and somersaulting backwards onto the floor. Hoping he wouldn’t yell too much, she unlocked the door. Her father pushed the door open so hard it blew her hair back as it swung around the hinge, bouncing off the wall.

   Her father huffed at her with a ruddy face, looking a little unsteady on his feet. “Need food. I sent you the list. Go pick it up.”

   “Yes, sir,” Celes said, keeping her voice even and edging past him to head for the front door, navigating the maze of bottles in the small living room. She paused by a panel by the wall, opening it to withdraw six small metal sheets.

   “Next time you lock this door I will take it off!” he called to her as the front door slid open, and it took all of her willpower to not scream out in frustration the second she stepped outside; otherwise, she might come back to find the only barrier between her and her father’s drunken temper gone.

   She knew she didn’t have enough money to take the transit, so she walked over to the only grocery store within a kilometer. Using her datapad, she scanned the ID chip in her left wrist to check how much she had in the account. Just enough for the week minus the alcohol. Her father’s ID and voice authorization had been attached to hers so she could buy alcohol on his behalf. However, she would not sacrifice food again f
or beer, so her father could weave his way to the nearest bar if he wanted to get a drink for the next few days.

   The small grocery store only had four other occupants besides the very bored looking security guard. Celes nodded to the guard as she picked up a basket and wondered the aisles. Some end caps held holo screens while the front of the store had the fancy wall screens—or at least, they used to be fancy until someone had thrown a cart at the glass. It had been eight months and the screen still looked like jagged spider webs. Sometimes teenagers would hack into the server and make the screens show movies with lots of swear words and scenes she shouldn’t see, but today the news played instead. Usually Celes would be interested, but the human news anchor just droned on about boring economic stuff.

  “… budget should be available later this fiscal year,” the Endeavor news anchor’s voice echoed throughout the store. “While the figures have not been made public, the Governor of Endeavor has stated he is optimistic that the Republic has allocated more to the colonies than previous years.”

  Isn’t that what he said last year? Celes thought, frowning at an apple she held and set it back down in the pile.

  “In other intra-galactic affairs, the Vhent were recently spotted in the Vik system by the Prism and Rovanian border.”

  Gasping, Celes abandoned the produce aisle and ran for the front of the store. One of the elderly ladies with a helper robot checked out her food by the scanner kiosks, and had paused herself to glance to the screen. The security guard didn’t even budge, though she eyed Celes for a few moments to make sure the girl didn’t run out with her unpaid food. The one good screen showed a clip of a planet with a starry backdrop, the odd outlines of a very large ship, bigger than the planet it floated nearby, gradually disappearing as if blending in with the universe.

  “The Omni have released a statement on behalf of the Vhent, saying the Vhent were only passing through.” The clip switched back to the news anchor. “The Ascendancy and the Prism Consensus issued a warning to the Vhent, requesting that permission be obtained before crossing borders.”

  “Sure, of course they will,” the elderly lady chuckled, shaking her head.

  Disappointed that the news only had two measly seconds of footage, Celes turned back to finish grocery shopping. The elderly woman had been right though; the Vhent were the most powerful species in the entire galaxy, and no other species could threaten them. In the books she read and the games she played, the most powerful culture always ruled over everyone else. For some odd reason, the Vhent weren’t part of the Galactic Accord nor the Ascendancy; they just… hid. They didn’t fight with anyone, didn’t trade, did nothing with anyone, and they abandoned even their home systems. They never communicated with anyone besides the Omni, but after nearly sixty or seventy thousand years of the Vhent’s odd behavior, no one cared much besides getting a fleeting look at their huge ships.

  After getting the groceries, Celes went to the kiosk and paid for them. Once the transaction went through, she carried the baskets to a counter with metal sheets. Tapping them, the sheets sprang into miniature fridge boxes with little sliding doors, and she put the groceries inside them. She stacked the boxes three by three; the boxes magnetized together, and handles popped out at the top. Putting the basket away, Celes took the metal boxes and carried them outside.

  By midafternoon the sidewalks became livelier. Several teenagers flew past her on hoverboards, some showing off by floating sideways on the building walls. Several adults leaned against brick walls or sign posts, talking and smoking, while a few hover cars honked as they went by. Typical Saturday. Passing by a convenience store a mural caught her eye; the side had been graffitied again, signed ‘By the Three’.

  While BTT painted outer space scenes, they usually only painted astral bodies of space. This mural had a planet that glittered so much that it looked like an entire city covered the surface, surrounded by a mixture of colors that blended from red to green to blue. Large, black silhouettes stood directly behind the planet, filling the space; they were all humanoid, but only one in the middle looked to be human. One’s shoulders were far too broad, and the other looked too narrow. Celes stared at it for a few moments, utterly confused. If there were any mistakes in this, she couldn’t find them.

  “Maybe these are the Three?” she wondered aloud, frowning. The silhouettes looked alien. She hadn’t heard of any aliens living in Beir, and from what she remembered of her mom talking about it, aliens rarely came to Endeavor. No tourist attractions or good businesses. Shrugging, Celes headed back to the apartment.

  Strangely, when she got home, the bottles had been all cleaned up from the living room, and the shower ran in her father’s bathroom. She put the groceries away, shrinking the boxes and putting them back in the panel by the door. Her father showering on a weekend meant he planned on going out, and not to a bar. Maybe he got called into work, she thought, a smile lighting up her face.

  Her father emerged from his room a few minutes later, with light clothing and a towel over his wet hair. “Good, you’re back,” he said, opening the fridge. Celes edged towards her room, knowing what he would do next. Her father frowned at the fridge, then looked at her. “Where’s the beer?”

  “Didn’t have the money for it,” she said, her body turning and getting ready to bolt for her room. Her father either reacted in one of two ways: shrug it off or start yelling at her.

  Luckily, the shower had sobered him up, since he sighed heavily and punched the ‘close’ button on the fridge. “Been meaning to hit the bar with Ferrell and Takeshi, anyway…” he muttered, heading back to his room.

  Not wanting to run back to her room and close the door in case that angered him, she gingerly called out, “Were you called back to work?”

  “No,” he said without looking back at her. “I have to go to some committee meeting in an hour.”

  Oh. Maybe that was the spam from earlier. Her father never attended those meetings, but why he changed his mind about this one, she didn’t care. It meant she had the apartment to herself for a few hours, and that was what mattered. “Oh. Sorry,” she lied.

  Her father paused at the door frame, looking over at her. He squinted, scrutinizing her. Nervously, she shifted, unsure of why he examined her, and he mouthed something to himself, and she thought she caught ‘—it’s time.’ He stared at her for a few more moments, before he said, “Wash up and change your clothes.”

  Celes felt the pit of her stomach drop. Why did she have to go? “Sure, but I have some homework to do…” Another lie since she already completed it.

  Her father’s face scrunched in anger, and he stepped towards her. Quickly, Celes threw up her hands as she took a step back. “Ok, ok! I’ll change, sorry.” She whipped around and hurried to her room, shutting the door behind as her father yelled, “Don’t lock it!”

  After standing in her room for a few brief minutes, trying to still the shaking in her hands, she took a deep breath, trying to exhale all the terror and anger she felt bottled inside her. She’ll go to this dumb meeting, make her father happy, and then he’ll probably drop her off and go out with his drinking buddies. She nodded firmly. Be the good obedient daughter then hide in her room playing video games undisturbed until her father came back in the morning. That sounded nice.

  After washing up, she tied her long black hair up into a ponytail and put on one of her nicest clothes. Looking at her reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror, she wore a button-up shirt with black slacks, and scrubbed shoes. Very old fashioned, but her mother called it ‘classic’. Taking another look, she came out of her room to find her father, his brown hair combed back and looking ten years younger in his nice suit, scrutinizing a datapad. Despite being sloppy at home, her father was meticulous when he wasn’t drunk, and most people thought he was just a social drinker.

  He looked up at her, then nodded his approval. “Ready?”

  She nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  He motioned for her to go out the door first, an
d she did so. As she passed him, she felt him place his hand on her shoulder, and she couldn’t stop a flinch. Panicking and hoping that he wouldn’t get mad, she threw him a quick smile. “Oh, sorry! Was daydreaming, and you scared me, sorry.”

  His eyebrows turned up for a split second, almost looking hurt, before it smoothed into the facade he wore when he was sober. “You’re a good kid, Celes.”

  Celes paused, feeling a little shocked and disgusted at the hope and gratefulness in her chest. “Uh, thank you. I try,” she said, this time being honest and keeping her smile.

  Her dad kept his hand on her shoulder for a few awkward moments, before withdrawing it. “Let’s go,” he said, again motioning for the door.

  They made it down the stairs, and several neighbors on multiple levels came out of their homes, descending the stairs along with them. All of them walked the same direction towards downtown, so they must have shared the same destination. About half a dozen other people joined their group, most of them chatting with each other as they all passed the increasingly squashed together buildings. The official language of Endeavor was English, though most people were bilingual and spoke other languages.

  ˵Wohin gehin wir? Ein treffen? Warüm?”

  “Benitz-san wa saite desuyo! Benitz-san no musuko ga Aiko-chan ni ijime—”

  “Suppose the man’s givin’ all of us a raise? Haha!”

  “J'espère que cette réunion se termine bientôt…”

  Despite the complaints, the group acted rather animated, several adults holding their young children’s hands tightly, and teenagers who had also been dragged along grouped together behind everyone. Celes had waved politely to some neighbors she knew, and her father shook many neighbors’ hands, giving them smiles and light compliments. Celes watched her father; usually good at socializing and working a crowd, today he looked subdued, and wouldn’t leave her side. Rolling her eyes, she stuck her hands in her pockets and tried not to look sullen.