The Shattered Genesis (Eternity)

by Rudacille, T.

  It makes no sense today. But in the moment, nothing could have been worse than knowing Alice’s blood was that of a killer’s and mine, in all honesty, was that of a coward’s. When I look at it in its most basic element today, that is the only conclusion to be drawn.

  As I meandered about behind them, stuck in a frenzy of thought, I only saw the issue as Alice being a murderer and me being a moral person who would not take a life. Cowardice played no part in my beliefs. But the truth is, she was braver than me and always had been. It had been her idea to rescue Brynna. Before that, it had been her who had shot the creature that had broken into her house. I hated myself for it, but I felt emasculated by her drive to put an end to a threat whereas I could only hinder its violent efforts.

  I didn’t realize that, being so young at the time. I just believed that I was right and she was wrong. I was a good person and she was a sadistic killer. Black and white thinking never helped anyone and my own was making it impossible for me to see her in the same light that I had always seen her in.

  I was stuck with her, though. We had come to Pangea together and even though my feelings were irreversibly changed, I still couldn’t leave her. She was the only constant in my life. Pangea was a dangerous place and not only because of the bloodthirsty natives. It was a one-eighty change from everything I had ever known and Alice was the calm, stable center of it all. For her, I held the same role. Our relationship might have been effectively terminated before it had even truly begun, but I couldn’t imagine living my life without seeing her every day.

  Those thoughts were too much for me, in my young days. I thought I was so mature. After fleeing the earth, I assumed that I had to become a man by force of fate. I was nothing more than a little boy still, even after everything that we had survived. But, in perhaps undeserved fairness to me, I have to say that I couldn’t be blamed for still possessing such immaturity.

  I looked at Brynna as she walked beside James. She was barely four years older than me and yet the distance between our dead Earth and Pangea was shorter than the distance between our maturity levels. There she was, searching for her brother and sisters, whom I knew, from hearing Elijah talk, she had raised. Her body was that of a young adult but her mind was on par with the man she was currently walking beside. I understood their attraction to each other more than I could understand anything else, including what I was feeling myself.

  “I am glad you understand me. That was, strangely enough, my one goal in life.” She replied dreamily over her shoulder as her fingers linked with James’s.

  “Stop it!” I exclaimed after covering my ears. She looked back at me and grinned in triumph and also, in curiosity.

  “What is it about covering your ears? I am starting to believe that it means something. Maybe it is your instinct telling you that it will keep me out if you just try hard enough. Trust me, Quinn; I do not like hearing your thoughts as much as you do not like me hearing them.”

  “Then stop!” I yelled again.

  “Don’t worry about him, Brynna. He has always thrown tantrums like a spoiled baby.”

  Brynna turned back to Alice, brows furrowed. For a moment, she just stared at her. Then, she spoke while shaking her head slightly in arrogant disbelief:

  “We really need to work on your use of similes, darling.”

  With that, she continued walking ahead. Alice watched her go, her face betraying how confused she was by what Brynna had said.

  “What?” She called, but Brynna didn’t reply. She was bent back over the ground again, studying the footprints.

  “Natives.” She replied carelessly before standing up and walking normally again.

  “How do you even know?” I snapped irritably. I was starting to get very annoyed by her all-knowing presence. Was nothing sacred anymore? It wasn’t right that she allowed herself to travel so casually into my private thoughts.

  “Don’t you just know things?”

  “I do,” Alice answered, “Sometimes I do, I should say. You seem to be grasping whatever this is more than we are.”

  “Some of us are more apt to embrace such gifts, especially when we were already predisposed to them. I am a genius, first and foremost, which makes the slight adjustment to my newly enhanced instincts and intelligence much easier.”

  “Just because you can form long sentences doesn’t mean you’re a genius.” I told her icily.

  “Trust me, man, she is.” James replied surely.

  “Of course you’re going to say that.”

  “Do not pass your animosity off onto us.” Brynna responded as she ran her hand over James’s back. Though she was speaking to me, her eyes were locked on his. “I have known you scarcely more than twelve hours. I will not bear the brunt of your emotional burden. I do not carry anyone’s baggage but my own.”

  James kissed her quickly and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Alice’s head cock to the side and her face contort in surprise. She hadn’t been aware that they were together.

  James hung back to talk me down when I went to argue with his girlfriend further. Alice walked quickly ahead to accompany her through the thick brush up ahead. Clearly, my girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend now) was going to be asking Brynna some very personal questions about her and James. I knew that she was suddenly very curious about their relationship.

  “Just to let you in on the big secret, I’ll tell you that she does that to push people away. She’d hate me for telling you that, but that is why.”

  “Well, it works,” I huffed back, “I’d be willing to bet she had no friends on earth.”

  “You would lose that bet.”

  “Were you her friend?”

  “No. I met her right before we left. I saw her in this dream I had. Do you remember me, from the meeting?”

  I studied his face closely. It came back to me all of a sudden; Alice and I had spoken to him directly while we were at the meeting of people who had seen the end. He had been the man who had told us where to go. During that meeting, he also gave an impassioned defense of Brynna. The other people had said that she was too closely linked to those responsible for the impending catastrophe. He said that she couldn’t be blamed for her parents’ mistakes. In the end, he had won his fight for her. I wondered if she knew all he had done to ensure her survival.

  “I do remember you!” I pointed at him, “James Maxwell, right?”

  “The very same.”

  “You were thinner then. You’ve gotten…” I couldn’t quite figure out how the describe his new appearance. “I don’t know. You’re bulkier.”

  “I know. Don’t ask me where it came from because I haven’t lifted weights or done a sit-up since high school Gym. As you can see by my age, that was a long time ago.”

  “Yeah.” I replied, noting that up close, I could see the slight wrinkles by his eyes and the laugh lines around his mouth. He was definitely pushing into his mid-forties. I looked at Brynna and like a typical guy, noticed her tight, toned physique. Though James definitely didn’t look, at least in terms of his body, like any forty year old I’d ever met, their faces distinguished their age. Brynna’s was undeniably youthful, unblemished by any age lines. James’s age was beginning to show on his. There was no denying that she would find him good-looking because he certainly was, for an old guy, but I imagined that some would find their relationship downright disturbing, despite any level of physical attractiveness in him.

  “Before you tell me your story, can I ask you something?”

  “By all means.”

  “You and Brynna, you’re…”

  He laughed softly for a moment and nodded.

  “Yeah. It shocks me just as much as it shocks you. Look at her. Look at me.”

  “It’s not that. Do people give you two a hard time?”

  “Well, our relationship was platonic for those few days on Earth and for a couple of days on the ship. It was progressing, though. Her family was suspicious and disapproved. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t even know,
really. It’s just Alice and I used to get looks in our town. Look at her. Look at me.”

  He actually did look at her for a minute and then turn his gaze to me.

  “You’re not like, forty years old, are you?” He asked, genuinely confused as to what I was alluding to.

  “No!” I couldn’t help but laugh. He had a laid back, cool-guy demeanor that came naturally to him. Because of his age, I decided that he was like an awesome teacher I'd want to chill with outside of school. “I’m black. She’s white.”

  “People still get themselves out of sorts over interracial relationships?” His expression contorted into one of surprise and disdain for such old school narrow-mindedness. “That was barely going on when I was young. Are you serious?”

  “Yeah. Our parents hated the idea. They used to tell us we were pretty much going to get stoned to death if we went to the wrong places. I didn’t believe it at first but now, being here, I see it. Some people at the campsite looked at us strangely. I’m amazed, honestly, that it really does still exist. So, maybe this is for the best, that we’re not together anymore.”

  “I didn’t realize you two weren’t together anymore. Is she aware of that?”

  “She is. I think I made it pretty clear.”

  “Can I be honest with you?”

  “I guess.”

  “I think you’re being ridiculous. Now, don’t get all defensive.” He held his hand up to stop me when I went to burst out with an angry retort, “I warned you that I was going to be honest. You can’t tell me that if those things had been on her and there was no other way, that you wouldn’t kill them.”

  “I don’t know if I would!” I exclaimed, “I don’t think I’d be able to.”

  “Is that your problem? You think she can do something that you’re not strong enough to do?”

  “It’s not strength, James. It’s whether I’m a good person or not! I guess I should apologize for not wanting to kill people. I didn’t realize that just because we’re here we get to forget everything we know about being good people! And what really burns me up about it is that she was always the one between the two of us who was religious! She was always telling me we had to live by whatever it is they talk about in the Bible.”

  “So, you think she’s a hypocrite?”

  “Yeah! Now that you put it like that, I do! I just…” I trailed off, rubbing my eyes for a minute as I tried to find exactly what it was that I wanted to say. “I just want to hold onto a little of what we had on Earth. That’s the bottom line, I think. The most basic law of living we had was ‘don’t kill.’ It was the worst offense we had, right? So yeah, while we’re here, I’d like to keep that in mind. If there’s another way, I’ll take it.”

  “What if she’s right, though, and there was no other way?” James pressed me calmly. “What if you had come through there and seen them ripping into her stomach? What then?”

  Touché. But of course, I wasn’t going to admit outwardly that he had trumped me with his reasoning.

  “So what, you’re telling me if they killed Brynna, you’d make it right by killing them? What would that prove?”

  “It wouldn’t prove anything. On Earth, we all possessed a degree of human emotion. Rage was one of the worst. Have you noticed that here, it’s amplified? It’s become more potent. Our emotions here are part of our instincts. They drive us. They enable our survival.”

  “If you say so. But you still haven’t answered…”

  “If one of those things hurt Brynna, I would kill them in the worst ways. They would feel every last second of it. It wouldn’t prove anything nor would it bring her back. But that’s the drive of our kind, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “I guess.”

  “If one of those things was attacking Brynna and it came down between her and them, I would kill them because of that, too. It’s the call of the wild, Quinn.”

  “We’re not part of the wild, though! We’re human beings!”

  He studied me for a long time before replying, “Are we?”

  “I am! I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m still human! I thought this weird mutation stuff was cool at first but now I’m seeing that it’s replacing our… our… humanity!”

  “That’s not true. If we possessed no humanity, I wouldn’t care what happened to Brynna. I would only care about myself. Brynna certainly doesn’t need me to protect her. Alice proved that she doesn’t need you to protect her. They can take care of themselves. They always could, without our help, long before we came here. But if it comes down between me, Brynna and the life of one of those things, I’m going to kill for our survival.”

  I didn’t respond because I knew he was right. I had run out of retorts and exceptions to the new code we were living by on Pangea. I wanted so desperately to hang onto the code of Earth, perhaps only for the sake of recognition. But I knew that my need for civility was bred from a fear of allowing my animal instincts to take over completely. What if they erased everything else?

  “Just sleep on it. Let things ride for a few days. You’ll come to see that I’m right. I know that sounds cocky, but it’s true. What I’m saying to you is the truth. Think it over.”

  No pondering was necessary. I knew he was right. As further proof of my immaturity, I refused to accept it.

  Alice and I were finished.

  Violet

  Elijah had found us in no time. After he saw that we were safe, he quickly hurried off to find Brynna. He was operating on a grid in his mind; he walked in straight lines, using where Penny and I were resting as a starting point. In a blur, he would take off running until he felt he had gone too far. Then, he would return, move to the left by two feet, and run straight again.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw that he was sitting beside me, huffing and puffing. I thought that he was catching his breath but in fact, he was crying. I had never seen my brother cry before and I sat up quickly to wrap my arms around him. The moment I touched him, though, he jumped and furiously wiped at his eyes.

  “It’s okay,” I told him gently, “Just let it out. You’ll feel better.”

  “No. I need to stop it. It’s not helping us.”

  “Just because you’re a boy doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to cry.”

  “Yeah, it does,” He replied, “I’m just frustrated. It doesn’t matter how far I run. There’s no end to these woods and I can’t find her anywhere. I have no idea where the hell she could be. She’s out there alone.” He paused, unsure of whether he should say what he said next. “I don’t even know if she’s alive, Vi.”

  Admittedly, when I heard those words, my heart plummeted. Even after all the terrible things I had said to Brynna, I could not bear the thought of losing her. I had been furious, most definitely, but I had not meant those things. Though I still found it hard to admit, I needed her desperately.

  “She is alive.” I told Elijah urgently. “Wherever she is, she's safe. There's a deeper meaning to all of this, Eli. There's some significance that we don't understand. Maybe we'll never understand it. But I don't believe that I would have that dream only for one of us to die. There's no way Brynna would have saved us all only to be paid back by being killed. I just don't believe the universe is that cruel.”

  He looked at me, smiling slightly and trying to suppress a bitter laugh. But when he spoke, I heard a condescension in his voice that reminded me of our lost sister.

  “So, this 'deeper meaning' that would save Brynna is the same 'deeper meaning' that was responsible for an entire planet full of people being blown away by some huge explosion?”

  “I know you're thinking that I'm naïve right now. I know you’re being rude because you don’t believe in that stuff. But I didn't just say that to make you feel better. I do believe it, Elijah.”

  “You would. You're still so young.”

  “Me being seventeen has nothing to do with this!” I shot back angrily. “It's the truth! The natives are nothing. Whatever happens from here on out, I'm not
going to be afraid. I refuse to believe that we would escape the earth only to die here.”

  “Twenty people have died since we got here. They died brutally. The natives killed them because we're not welcome here. Not to mention, the countless people that died after taking that sedative. Where is all of that in the plan?”

  I thought long and hard for a retort that would put the argument to bed. Coming up short, I just stood and started to gently shake Penny awake.

  “You can sit here and cry, if that's what you need to do. But I'm not giving up on her.” I grasped Penny's hand as she rubbed her eyes sleepily. “Let's go, Penny.”

  “Have you found Brynn yet?”

  “No. Not yet, honey.”

  Elijah followed after us, kicking rocks and stewing over his thoughts quietly. When we sat down to eat, he took his bottle of water and his bag of indistinguishable edible contents and hid behind a tree several feet from us.

  “Why is Eli so mad?” Penny asked as she winked in the sunlight to look at me.

  “He's just mad.” I shrugged the question off easily, knowing that she would not be dissuaded from getting her answer so easily.

  I was not skilled at hiding the emotional turmoil that was ever-present in our daily lives the way Brynna was. Under her watch, Penny had never known a detail of any familial conflict. That was quite a feat, considering that our family had more than its fair share of catastrophes, ranging from the mundane to the explosively devastating.

  “Is he mad at me?” Penny asked, “I broke his cellphone.”