Origins of Hope

by Anastasia Drapievsky

  “Why? If something bad happens, then shouldn’t they say something?”

  “No.” Xenith shook his head. “Sometimes if you stop something bad, something worse could happen. If not then, then later. Also, the future changes a lot, so sometimes stopping bad things doesn’t work. Whatever they do say is unclear enough for people to get a hint and is ‘safe’ enough to tell.” He shrugged. “But still, I might be freaking out over nothing. Thanks for telling me,” he smiled, his face slowly changing from worried to grateful, and Zander shrugged this time.

  “Sure,” Zander replied, spearing his food and munching on it.

  They talked as they finished up dinner, depositing their trays and plates in a little window in the wall towards the lifts, and headed for one of the holo rooms several decks above.

  This holo room had screen walls encircling a heated floor. People watched lectures or movies here, played video games, or meditated on a scene of a specific place in the galaxy.

  “Hm, great, no one is using this,” Xenith strode into the room. Zander followed him, wondering why they went here instead of the playroom. Xenith liked to watch music concerts, so maybe he wanted to share a show with Zander?

  Xenith waved a hand to the walls, his Tristat lighting up a blue arch around his eyes. The screen flickered the same color, slowly changing into a scene of snow mountains. The band of the milky way stretched across the black sky, reflecting in a mountain lake. Zander felt a cool breeze against his skin and smelled crisp air.

  “Cool, isn’t it?” Xenith asked, gesturing to the around. “I set it so we can feel and smell like we’re actually there.”

  Zander didn’t know why these mountains were special, but he said, “Uhm, I guess.”

  Xenith chuckled, patting his shoulder. “You don’t have to lie, since I can hear things even if I don’t want to.” He paused, and Zander felt a subtle pull on his consciousness. >>Mind if I erect a barrier around us?<<

  “Uh—” At Xenith’s sharp gaze, Zander nodded quickly and switched to telepathy. >>Sure, but why?<<

  He felt a mental wall close around them; while it didn’t block out their abilities, it would block out eavesdroppers. >>I’d rather no one hear what we’re talking about, since we could get into a lot of trouble,<< Xenith said as he sat down, his eyes unfocused for a few moments. >>All right, I don’t feel anyone trying to pry or even be interested in us, so that’s good. Now,<< he swept a hand to the milky way in the sky, >>you mentioned your sister liked to look at space.<<

  Zander felt nervous, and he tried to hide it so Xenith couldn’t read it. >>Uhm, yeah. She does.<<

  >>How’s she doing?<<

  >>Good—I guess,<< he added quickly. >>I don’t think she is doing bad or anything, or I hope she isn’t. That would suck, right? That would suck bad. But I don’t know. Nope. Don’t know anything.<<

  Xenith stared at Zander with a deadpanned expression, but said nothing. The silence between them stretched for several long seconds, before Zander swallowed. >>You know, don’t you?<<

  >>Unfortunately, I do.<< Xenith sighed vocally. >>I really didn’t want to know—I don’t want to know anyone’s business—but I literally can’t stop it. So yeah, I know what you’ve been doing.<<

  Zander gulped and visibly paled. Oh man, he was in so much trouble. Xenith would go tell on him and Zander would be thrown in jail—did Aorírdal have a jail? —and he would live the rest of his life in a small room with no toys and no friends—

  >>No need to be dramatic, especially since I’m not telling anyone,<< Xenith quirked a half smile. >>I don’t have to read your mind to know you’re scared; your eyes are really wide and your mouth is open.<<

  Zander hastily closed his mouth, though felt relieved that Xenith wouldn’t tattle on him. >>You promise?<<

  >>Promise,<< Xenith said without hesitation. >>It’s actually kinda impressive—and useful. If anyone found out—not that I would say anything—I don’t think they would punish you badly since you’re still a kid. They may even praise you, since to be honest, we haven’t had an Akaiedal like you in… at least two or three centuries.<<

  Zander puffed up, smiling himself. >>Wow, then I am special!<<

  >>Always were, kid,<< Xenith said, ruffling his hair while Zander scowled at him. Zander remembered how Efrik snapped at Quath, so Zander didn’t throw off Xenith’s hand. >>But, and look at me straight for this,<< Xenith made Zander turn to him, >>I think you should tell Mato. I won’t force you, and I still won’t tell him, but it might be a good idea to let him know.<<

  Zander frowned. >>Would he make me stop?<<

  >>I don’t know, but he might.<<

  Zander shook his head, keeping his deep frown. >>No way. I want to see how my sister is doing, even if I can’t talk to her. No one will stop me from doing that.<<

  >>Well, they can,<< Xenith grimaced, >>and if I were you, I would make sure to not have that attitude. We have powerful people here and saying that makes you sound big-headed—which I know you’re not.<<

  >>I mean… I don’t want people to stop me from doing that.<< Zander looked down, embarrassed. >>Sorry.<<

  >>No need to be, and if I were you… I would do the same.<< Xenith looked at the mountains with faraway eyes before turning back to him. >>So, you won’t go to Mato and I will respect that—on certain conditions.<<

  >>You said you wouldn’t tell—<<

  >>I know, but this could get bad.<< Xenith folded his arms, frowning himself. >>I’m not blackmailing you; I’m not saying ‘You have to fold my laundry for the next ten years and carry my stuff, blah blah blah’. I’m not a jerk. And it’s only one condition.<<

  >>What?<< Zander scowled. Still sounded like blackmail to him.

  >>That you do not spend all of your time doing this,<< Xenith said firmly, staring at him. >>If this becomes an unhealthy obsession—meaning that you don’t hang out with your friends anymore, don’t play with toys, go to classes, and just stay in your room scrying your sister and that is literally all you do—I will go to Mato.<<

  Zander narrowed his eyes in confusion. >>I mean, I like seeing Celes, but I can’t scry for long. And… I kinda like food and playing with toys, so I don’t think I’ll be staying in my room just scrying Celes. Spending all day doing that is kinda creepy.<<

  Xenith chuckled, though he looked a little relieved. >>OK, that’s good. It’s kinda creepy now, but you miss your sister, I get it. Just checking on her to see if she is OK. But that is my condition. Deal?<<

  It didn’t seem too hard to follow, so Zander nodded. >>Deal.<<

  Xenith exhaled slowly, looking relieved. >>And if you change your mind about Mato, you can talk to me about it and I can go with you.<<

  Zander scratched his head. >>Won’t you get into trouble?<<

  Xenith shrugged. >>Maybe, but I don’t mind. It wouldn’t be fair for me to know and you get into trouble by yourself.<<

  >>What if they kick you off the station?<<

  Xenith burst out laughing, his voice reverberating around the room. Zander stared at him uneasily; it didn’t sound like a happy laugh. >>Heh, sorry. They don’t kick anyone off this station. Worst we’re looking at is our privileges taken away for several months to a year. Probably probation too, but they aren’t kicking us off the station, starving us, throwing us in psychic jail, or anything like that. We didn’t murder or hurt anyone, so we’re fine.<<

  >>Oh, OK,<< Zander replied, a little taken aback at how hysterically Xenith had laughed. The teachers in the first scrying lecture he had watched made it sound like violators would be put to death. >>I still don’t want you to get into trouble.<<

  >>My choice, and hey, we can still hang out and stuff.<< Xenith shrugged. >>I have to say, I’m a little jealous—and no, don’t even try to scry my family,<< he warned sternly when Zander perked up at the thought of scrying Xenith’s family for him. >>I’m already enabling this enough, and I’m just saying I won’t tell on you, OK?<<

  >>OK…<< Zander said. He wasn’t sure if this was good or b
ad idea, but he felt a little better about Xenith knowing and protecting him.

  >>Also, if I were you? I wouldn’t tell anyone else this.<<

  >>Not even Efrik and Quath?<<

  >>No, especially not Efrik,<< Xenith scowled, folding his arms. >>You can hang out with whomever you want, and you may get mad at me for saying this, but I don’t like him. He is mean to you and Quath, and he thinks he is better than both of you and everyone else. I hope he grows out of it—since to be honest I used to be like him a bit when I first got here, I’m sorry to say—but… just be careful around that kid.<<

  Zander glanced to the floor, worry worming into his gut that Xenith confirmed what Zander felt. >>I will. And I won’t tell anyone.<<

  Xenith nodded grimly. >>That is for the best. And if you need to talk, or anyone else gives you trouble for anything, you come to me, OK?<<

  >>Will you beat them up?<<

  Xenith chuckled. >>Ah, no. Be a little unfair if an adult beat up a little kid.<< The stray thought of I might scare the little bastard a bit if he hurts Zander, floated fleetingly in Xenith’s head before he hastily closed it off. >>Teachers will handle it, and you can come to them too.<<

  >>All right,<< Zander replied, nodding. He hoped that it wouldn’t come to that point, since Efrik was the best psychic in the class. Zander already got on the bullies’ bad side on Endeavor, and Celes wasn’t here to punch people in the face for him. >>I will let you know if I go to the teachers, but I don’t know if he would be that mean…<<

  Xenith said nothing at first. >>Be careful around that kid,<< he said, leaning back and looking back out to the mountains. >>I really didn’t like the feel of him.<<

  Zander looked out at the mountains with Xenith, not answering him. While Efrik was mean occasionally, that didn’t mean he was a bad kid. Even if Efrik did remind Zander of his dad sometimes, Efrik at least didn’t throw things around or yelled like him. Xenith was just being super worried, that was all.

  Yet even Zander didn’t quite believe it and didn’t know how he would react if Efrik turned on him. It would be easier to ignore it and not deal with it rather than have a mortal enemy while they were all stuck here… right?

  Eleven

  A sharp ‘crack’ woke Celes, her head banging the mag-train window as she lurched to the side in her passenger seat. “I’m awake!” she shrieked.

  Across from her, Ayzize, arms crossed and head down, looked up at her with alert eyes. “Good to know you can get up at a moment’s notice,” he muttered, glancing to the window, dark and tall buildings flying past.

  Rubbing her tired and itchy eyes, Celes looked out the window. After another round of quarantine and vaccinations for twelve hours, she had been bouncing around since landing planet-side. Between the multitude of new species and technology, she didn’t know what to stare at more. The Rovanians outnumbered the other species since Tezěkír was one of their colonies. They looked similar to humans and even had hair, but their sclera glowed, and their skin looked scaly and rubbery. They had thinner lips, their eyes bigger than a human’s. Still, even with their wide range of skin tones (grey to a pale shade of green), she had mistaken them as human from a distance.

  The technology on the orbital stations and Tezěkír was mind-blowing. Instead of relying on robots, virtually everything depended on AR-tech. She couldn’t see most of the signs and consoles since she didn’t have a Tristat to see Augmented Reality, so Ayzize had to handle everything for her.

  At the station, attendants had scanned them for ‘biological contaminants’ in customs. The nice Rovanian attendant—with Ayzize translating—had showed Celes what she scanned: an x-ray scan of Celes’ body, with several images surrounding it, one of which Celes recognized as a double helix. Celes wanted to stay longer and watch the Rovanian scan more people, but Ayzize had dragged her away.

  The shuttle hub planet-side connected to a mag-train station packed full of more people than she had ever seen in her life. She could easily dart through the crowd but remembered Ayzize’s earlier warning about making sure he could see her, so she hadn’t strayed further than a meter away from him. She didn’t want to make him mad; who knew if he would take her back to Endeavor and toss her to her father?

  Once she got on the mag-train with Ayzize, the novelty of watching the large hub disappear behind them, replaced with skyscraper upon skyscraper in the backdrop of a dark and rainy night sky gradually wore off and she fell asleep in her seat, only to be woken up three hours later by thunder and lightning.

  “We almost there?” Celes asked, stretching her aching back from sleeping in an awkward position.

  Ayzize looked up to the window post, the glow of his Tristat slipping across his eyes. Once again, Celes pouted about not having a Tristat. “We’re about thirty minutes away,” Ayzize said, the blue glow of the Tristat fading. “We traveled a third of the continent already, so we’re going at a normal pace.”

  “What? Already?” The continent, named ‘Karakov’, looked huge from the observatory, larger than her home continent on Endeavor. “I guess it’s smaller than I thought...”

  “The trains here are much faster than Endeavor’s,” Ayzize said, his arms still crossed. “As you probably figured out, Endeavor has been stuck in the past, several centuries back. Tezěkír, for the most part, is actually considered slightly less advanced than average.”

  Her eyes grew wide, looking around at the clean and sleek train car they rode in, multiple other species speckled here and there in the seats. “What? How?”

  Ayzize pinched the space between his eyes. “All right, quick history lesson since you will have to cram... probably in a few days regarding your lacking education—which isn’t your fault,” he added when she looked down with shame. “You probably would find it boring, but human politicians don’t give Endeavor as much money as they do with Earth, Yuri, and the other colonies.”

  “The Governor said that he would get more to help the planet... though he said that last year,” she muttered.

  Ayzize raised his eyebrows at her in surprise. “I keep forgetting that you watch the news whenever you can—could.”

  “Economics and politics are boring, but there’s nothing better to do,” she said, glancing back to the window. She got the most glimpses at aliens and other planets watching the news more so than anything, since a lot of fictional media didn’t make its way to Endeavor.

  “There are much better things to do here... so much so that you will have to stay out of trouble,” he warned. “However, point is, you will have to study a lot. You at least learned the difference between advanced developed, developed, and underdeveloped planets, right?” At her nod, he sighed in relief. “Endeavor is considered underdeveloped. Tezěkír is developed; they would be advanced, but they fell behind during the Verakas Virus. All the homeworlds of the species—minus the Guanghial, but their second homeworld is included—are advanced or cutting edge. Unity and Ascendant are the most advanced station and planet, since they are the accumulation of the GA’s and Ascendancy’s technology. Only the Vhent are more advanced, and whatever they have is on a scale much higher than what we can measure.”

  Celes nodded along with Ayzize’s words, closely following, though she frowned when he said Endeavor was underdeveloped. “Teachers said that Endeavor was a developed planet.”

  Ayzize laughed, hastily turning it into a cough to contain himself. A nearby family of Levan looked nervously at him, scooting away. “We might need more remedial education if your teachers spread that kind of misinformation,” he chuckled darkly.

  She looked to the floor, this time feeling nervous on reaching Raxdrýn. “The other kids won’t make fun of me for not knowing this stuff, right?”

  He shrugged. “No offense, Celes, but kids are little bastards, so I don’t know.” He looked pained before he continued, “That came out wrong. There are bullies across the galaxy, no matter the species or age. But you will make friends.”

  “How? I didn’t have friends back on End
eavor,” she scowled.

  Ayzize looked uncomfortable with the conversation, shifting in his seat uneasily. “Endeavor is more close-minded than those you will meet here. Try to start with your team.”

  Her team. Ayzize had mentioned it while they were in quarantine on the Endeavor orbital station. While Raxdrýn would pair her with Ayzize during certain missions and he would oversee her progress, she would be grouped with two other new arrivals for training, and Ayzize didn’t know who they would be. That worried her the most. “OK, when you first got here, how did you make friends?”

  “Er...” Ayzize glanced away with his jaw set, and he looked like he really did not want to have this conversation. “To be honest, Celes, I can’t recall.”

  Come to think of it, Ayzize never had mentioned how he had joined. He seemed to read her mind though, since when she opened her mouth he shook his head, a hard glare in his eyes. “Don’t ask, since I will say nothing.”

  Well, that isn’t fair. He practically knew everything about her and she knew little about him. She had half a mind to argue back, but remembered he got her out of Endeavor, and she would be with him for at least eight years as his apprentice. She was bound to wrangle it out of him by then. She settled for mimicking his posture, sitting back against the seat with her arms crossed and a glare on her face as she watched the buildings fly by.

  Upon reaching the city of Vaksina, Ayzize motioned for her to get up while reaching into the overhead compartment to grab their bags. Most other passengers stayed on the train, though some stared at Ayzize with wary eyes while others scooted away as Ayzize and Celes walked down the aisle to the train exit.

  “Why were they doing that?” she asked as they hopped off the train onto the sleek platform, rain hammering on the roof above them. Ever since they arrived planet side, people had openly stared at him or moved hastily away as if afraid of him.

  Ayzize gave her a sardonic smile as he shouldered their bags. “They know what I am and who I’m with.”