by G. L. Argain
Andrew bared his teeth and began to breathe heavily. His fists were clenched and his veins showed themselves through his skin. At last, he charged after Voriaku in a fit of rage for his fallen friend. Screaming, he threw his fist directly onto Voriaku’s head, which did not budge. In an instant, fear sprouted up within Andrew again. Voriaku threw one punch that slammed the human straight onto the ground, cracking his head open. Pain spiked within his skull. It would heal in time by regeneration, but Andrew would have most of his energy spent from it, and he was quickly losing consciousness at the moment. Blood was streaming out, the pain was fading away, and Andrew lost awareness of the world around him. Voriaku dragged him by the feet out of the room.
The human woke up lying on his back, still feeling the pain from his fractured skull. He was in the middle of a hall—there was no telling where this hall was or where it led to—and Voriaku was staring down at him. The alien was satisfied to see the human regain consciousness.
“Your time is near,” the Selentor said. “Can you understand me?”
The human looked up with tired eyes, hardly open, responding with a single word: “Huh?” His delirium did not help anybody out at this moment.
Voriaku shook his head, then he took out a bottle of orange liquid, opened the bottle, and emptied the liquid down Andrew’s throat. Andrew coughed as some of the liquid entered his windpipe. The human slowly became more and more aware, and after several seconds he tried to sit up. However, his body did not cooperate.
“Why can’t I move?”
“Lack of ions in your nerves, most likely. Doesn’t matter—we have important matters to get to before time is up.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was only supposed to toy with you for so long until I finally had to kill you. If I don’t kill you by the time Commander Fall shows up, then I will die by his hand.”
Andrew remained silent. This didn’t seem very surprising to him, considering how disobedience would be frowned upon in a totalitarian system such as the Selentors’.
“Now then, I want you to ask me three questions. They can be whatever questions you want them to be, and I will answer them regardless. However, the questions that you ask will determine whether you’ve come anywhere near to being an intel-being. They will be the last things you will ever say, remember, and do. So be precise.”
Andrew did not have the urge to run away, even if he could move, and he did not seem scared at the thought of dying soon. He was already dead, in a way. The first question that popped up in his mind was, Why did you kill Bill so quickly? He answered his own question with a thought relating back to intel-beings and change. Bill died because Voriaku saw no chance of “changing” him quickly enough. That, and perhaps because Voriaku was just annoyed.
So the human laying on his back stated his first question.
“Is the universe infinite?”
“It is and it is not at the same time. While the boundaries are always growing to infinity, it is technically finite at this moment. All of the stars, galaxies, and black holes that the universe contains change and develop as well, eventually dying out into nothing. Just like everything else. Birth, life, then death. Next question.”
“Are there other universes?”
“Of course. Infinitely many. However, it is impossible to cross over into one, due to the differing laws of physics. Each universe has its own laws of physics that it governs by, and for something from one universe to cross over to another can be destructive. You would think that the physical laws that we live by are self-evident, that there could be nothing different. But as we Selentors have scientifically proven, this is not the case. Rather, when the laws change, everything else must follow suit. There’s also another thing that I should mention—there are no parallel universes. One simple change in the law of physics calls for an entire reconstruction of a universe, making it very different from the universe it once was. Next question. Actually, never mind. I could go on a roll—wait, that’s a bad idea as well. Just ask your third question.”
Andrew gathered his thoughts for a good thirty seconds before he could answer.
“I literally can’t waste my time right now, you know.”
“Okay. So my question is….can science prove everything? Even something as complex as the universe or the brain?”
“Yes, we believe so. Although the wonders of the universe are infinite, it doesn’t mean that we have limits as to what we can know. The only problem is that we need to impose limits on our own knowledge, otherwise we end up destroying ourselves. We could create a demonic creature the size of a mountain if we wanted to—simply because we have the knowledge and tools to do so. But is it smart or even useful? Hardly. And if by brain, you mean your human brain, then we definitely have that covered. We’ve had enough subjects to determine the anatomy and psychology of the human brain.
“One thing that we’ve noticed, however, is the prevalent concept of ‘free will.’ It exists in virtually all of the humans we’ve studied so far, even though us intel-beings have refuted it long ago. Free will requires the idea that the mind is infinite and impossibly complex. However, we know how the brain works in all sorts of situations, and we can make accurate predictions as to what the being will do. It is true that I let you win in that first fight, knowing that you and that other human would not be able to get off the ship this time. So basically, free will states that such actions are not controlled or predictable, but free will does not exist since these actions are controllable and predictable.”
An enduring silence filled the corridor—no one knew how long it lasted.
Andrew stared up at the ceiling, with Voriaku off to the side of his vision. There was nothing to say, and nothing for Andrew to do. Yet Voriaku could have finished his mission whenever he wanted to. It was perplexing for Andrew, who didn’t know when he would die or not. He answered the questions, didn’t he? Maybe he wasn’t going to die. However, he wanted to. All he could feel right now, physically and mentally, was emptiness. There was no point to his life right now, and there was nothing he could do to give for it. He thought about asking Voriaku another question before he had been interrupted.
“I’m not sure why the Commander hasn’t shown up yet,” said Voriaku.
Andrew got to hear a few words from an intel-being officer that trillions of other life forms would go their whole lives without hearing: “I’m not sure.”
The human decided to state one last question.
“What is life?”
Voriaku looked down upon him with interest, as though no one had ever asked that question before. “What’s the point of it?” Andrew added.
“Well,” said Voriaku, “perhaps there is none. Or perhaps it’s different for everyone. The best way to answer that question would be: what is the opposite of life?”
“Death.”
“Which can also be called the absence of life.”
“So what are you saying?”
“What can you do in death? Without life?”
“….Nothing.”
“So what can you do in life?”
“….Everything?”
“I suppose that was a poor way to answer that question. Better yet, you could say that in life you can do ‘something.’”
“If I want to.”
“Yes, you can do either something or nothing in life.”
“But would doing nothing in life make it meaningless?”
“Exactly.”
“What about life after death? What if our souls carry on to some impossible realm, or something?”
Voriaku paused for a moment before responding. “Whether there’s an afterlife or not, it doesn’t matter. What matters, what we know for certain is that we have this life. That’s undisputable. And by our actions we can make it a living heaven or a living hell. Not just for ourselves, but for others as well.”
There was so much to think about in relation to Voriaku’s words. First off, how did he know what heaven and hell were? Are
n’t the Selentors atheists? Perhaps they knew from studying human beliefs. Furthermore, there was the idea that Voriaku actually sounded like he had a heart. On the other hand, he still made Andrew’s life a living hell. He thought about life on Earth, about all the lives of the people that Andrew and Voriaku did not know, how each and every one of them could have such an amazing story were it not for the negative interference of others. But Andrew suddenly lost track of his thoughts, and he didn’t know what he was thinking about anymore. All he did was stare at the ceiling some more. He really was dead, in a way. Because he did nothing. Because he could feel nothing.
He could see Voriaku raise the blade. Now was time.
But like everything else that happened on this ship, perhaps as anything could in life, things changed in an instant. Commander Fall walked into the corridor with Juvir by his side, and both of them were wearing armor with pouches and belts for tools and weapons. Neither one of them bound the other—each of them walked on their own accord.
Fear shot up through Voriaku’s being. In hasty response, he used the blade right away and cut off Andrew’s head.
Chapter 23
Blood splattered towards the left side of the hall from where Voriaku was facing. Because Andrew still had blood left in his head, however, he still retained a few seconds of consciousness before he truly died. He was able to hear Juvir remark, “Too late for that.” Andrew’s last thoughts, resonating with betrayal and disappointment, soon faded to black.
Voriaku kicked the head to the side, put back his blade, and raised his hands in front of his body. “Look, see? He’s dead! Just like you wanted—”
“You killed him too late,” Fall remarked.
“But only by a second!”
“That doesn’t matter. I specifically ordered you to kill him before I could see that horrid wretch alive again. Even more so, I didn’t say that you could toy with him for so long that you would end up getting philosophical. I wanted to see his pain, and that was that!”
“I wanted to change him!”
“I DID NOT WANT HIM TO BE AN INTEL-BEING!!! EVER! He was a savage that was meant to die a savage!”
Fall began to see the hatred and insubordination written upon Voriaku’s face. The Commander relaxed, inhaled deeply, then exhaled. He said, “You failed me. You must face the consequences.”
Voriaku lunged forward with his plasma blade, facing the consequences. Quickly, Fall brought out a futuristic shotgun from behind his back and aimed. It was a heavy duty vaporizing blaster, which the Commander fired with incredible accuracy. Voriaku was torn by his skin, then his muscles, and finally his bones, until there was nothing left of him except for a shadow of particles on the floor. But Andrew’s severed head was left intact, for it was just out of range.
The Selentor officer put the blaster behind his back, having nothing to regret. Juvir commented, “It’s a shame when the unexpected happens, doesn’t it?”
“Just stop where you’re at, Juvir, and don’t move until I can see you.”
Fall turned around to face Juvir, who had a strange blade in his hand.
“Predictable.”
“How could I not be?”
“Just fight me, already.”
“You asked for it.”
When Juvir swung the blade, a hot gas shot out from the tip—as well as from several tiny holes in the blade—which burst into flames, increasing the temperature of the surrounding area. Fall backed away quickly in order to escape the fire and bring out his vaporizing blaster. Considering the heat of the room, he was decently protected by his suit—except for his head. Before he could bring out a helmet-capsule from his pocket, Juvir lunged forward and attacked with the blade again. It failed to touch Fall again, but it struck Andrew’s severed head.
This blade was not the same one Andrew found in the Selentors’ armory. Rather, it was an up-to-date version that was far more efficient and versatile.
Both Juvir and Fall noticed the severed, burning head beside them. Fall aimed the blaster at it, but Juvir knocked the blaster out of the way towards the wall. When the Selentor Commander fired, the vaporizing energy coming out of the weapon had been absorbed by the wall. Juvir kicked Fall out of the hall with substantial force, then he picked up the head and pressed a button on a device attached to his arm. A flashing light enveloped Andrew’s head while it was on Juvir’s hand, disappearing after two seconds.
“You….” uttered Fall menacingly, “why won’t you leave that savage be???”
“I should ask you the same question.”
“That bastard was a disgrace to me, my authority, and this entire ship!”
“Exactly why I find him useful.”
“….I’m not letting you use him as an excuse for breaking the treaty.”
“Me? You broke the treaty long ago. Your robotic clone from earlier even said so.”
“What clone?”
“The one that tried to blow me up.”
Fall stood silently.
“Come on. It’s your turn.”
In response, the Commander fired his blaster, directly hitting Juvir. However, the blast did nothing, and Juvir was left unscathed; he smiled. Fall kept his composure and reduced the size of the blaster so it turned into a capsule.
“Being cocky with that special armor of yours—it’s just annoying.” He pulled out a different capsule that expanded into a blade—one that would not only nullify the armor, but also withstand Juvir’s fire-sword.
Juvir and Fall struck swords at the same time, causing a spark to fly up from the impact. They moved their swords back and struck again. And again, and again until Fall got a hit in. He sliced right through Juvir’s left arm and part way into his torso. Juvir winced and groaned a little, but he did nothing else. He still had his fire-sword in the remaining hand, but he did not strike. Instead, he ran backwards quickly while Fall charged forward. Juvir only got six feet back before Fall swung his sword again. The AOIB officer defended himself using the blade as he stepped back some more. Within seven seconds, however, his hand grew back and the tear in his torso regenerated to leave only a scar. Along with the rapid regeneration gene, he had plenty of nutrients and energy in his system, making it unnecessary for him to take any strange pills or liquids for now.
Despite being unhappy about receiving a wound, Juvir put away his sword. As the miweri reached into a pouch onto his belt, Fall reacted by taking a step back. He knew Juvir wasn’t going to pull out another sword—no, it had to be a vaporizer, or perhaps a short-range weapon. So Fall brought out his vaporizing blaster from before, waiting for Juvir’s move. However, to his surprise, the AOIB vice-president did not bring out something that resembled a weapon. It was just a sphere—at least, it appeared to be—and the Selentor could not recognize the device in Juvir’s hand right away. Once he saw the array of visually-confusing lights coming out from it, however, he instantly knew. He grew nauseous and ended up vomiting onto the floor after a few seconds. He fell onto one knee, with the other foot still firmly placed onto the ground, and clutched his abdomen, dropping the blaster. A vaporizing system from within the floor cleared up the vomit, just like it did at the AOIB headquarters.
When Fall looked up, he noticed Juvir had the blade back in his hand, only the blade was right up to the Selentor’s neck. From deep underneath the mask of power and authority he held, Fall couldn’t help expressing fear in his eyes. Juvir looked down upon him and stated, “Go ahead. Say what you want.”
“Alright, then. ‘Code Red.’”
The very moment he said “Code Red,” several doors opened in the halls, with a stampede of footsteps to follow. Selentor soldiers were running towards them in order to defend Fall and eliminate Juvir. However, moments later, a series of loud noises and shouting occurred from the halls.
“What the….wait—you didn’t!”
Juvir grinned.
Within both of the officers’ sights, there were a few soldiers fighting each other, two of them clad in red armor and the
other three in white armor. All of the soldiers with white armor were Selentors, whereas the other guys were AOIB soldiers. One of the white-armored soldiers ran towards Juvir with a vaporizer pistol, but before he could reach him, Juvir quickly cut off the Commander’s head. The soldier stopped in his tracks, unveiling an expression of shock. However, he quickly retaliated against his grief and sprang towards Juvir in a fit of rage. He shot repeatedly, but Juvir either dodged the shots or let them bounce off his invisible armor. It was a special armor made to stand up against vaporizing rays, like how the walls in the ship were immune. Juvir stepped over the dead Commander and punched the Selentor soldier right in the belly. The soldier was sent flying backwards at least twenty feet.
When the soldier landed onto the ground, another soldier, this time in red armor, stepped into the hallway and said, “Sir! We’ve cleared out a passage for you! We’ll handle it from here!”
“Good work—I’ll return to the ship immediately. But about the human, Andrew Lockeford….did his head make it back safely?”
“It’s regenerating in one of the rehabilitation tanks as we speak, sir.”
Chapter 24
Both the Selentors’ ship and the AOIB ship were the size of mountains, and yet they had such precision in flying that either one can attach to the other flawlessly. This enabled Juvir to go onto the Selentor ship without having to hack into their teleporting system. Andrew never really had the opportunity to see these ships. One, because the Selentor ship he saw on Earth simply transported him to the mothership while he was unconscious; two, because when he escaped the first time, he blacked out before he got to see the full size of the ship he had gotten away from. The AOIB mothership was hidden underground, and it was not the same one Andrew saw when he was transported to the giant volcano Erlenkeymll, so he never experienced the true awe of such a sight.
