Stories-Ethan Peattie
This world is inherently wrong, this world we call our home is shadowed with the burden of our sins. Our sins spread across the world like plague, covering every corner of humanity, spreading the disgust of hate, racism, genocide, rape, cannibalism, murder, and on and on. Some of those are foreign to me, and some not. As a child I wondered the difference between right and wrong, why some things were considered okay but some things weren’t. You could see people being mistreated and they are laughed at collectively for the pure idea of humility. People find humor in others, the way they look, act, speak, walk, everything you could think of, we find some reason to laugh at it, as if we are perfect. I find it disgusting, now I'm not saying I havent been a part of the laughing, but I am saying I’ve observed it, and been on the other end of it. I think it’s different in realizing that we are imperfect. Perfection is a mere concept that we seek out, it is our divinity, something we strive for but will never reach. A construct of a goal in which we cannot accomplish. Why? Humanity, and the inherence of being wrong. Who are we to judge others? Why can we laugh at people's misfortunes, while we sit in comfort? Do people really not realize the cruelty of the world, are we so blind we cannot see how much we have caused others grief? I think people cannot see that they have sinned, we have made it too common. We have made our world so neutral to suffering that it humors people. I find it unfathomable to see people mock others' dreams. The rich who have never seen war will not see the difference of right and wrong, but the children who have only known war can clearly tell the difference. These children repent for their sins, that is the largest difference between us and them. They have seen nothing but fear and suffering, so it is easier for them to grasp simple things, they know how cruel the world is. On our hand we sin consistently for it is common, we accept that we are irredeemable sinners and we hold that belief without caring for years, until we finally see the hate in our world. However, I think that is where we can change, mistakes are what make us humans, and that is the way God created us. When people say humans were made in god's image, they fail to say the imperfect image. If god’s are meant to be perfect, maybe they saw a desire to be imperfect? To hold something like sadness or guilt in their heart, and that is why they created us. To be what the gods could never be, imperfect, imperfect beings with the human spirit. No matter how you look at it there is no one in our history who has not made a mistake ever. We have done a lot of terrible things, slavery, war, plague, death, and once again on and on. But we have also done a lot of good things, and ignoring it would be foolish. So, I don't think sinners are irredeemable, we can repent for our mistakes as long if we truly mean it in our heart. God will forgive us, hold it close to you, for you have sinned a lifetime, but your heart aches for you to let go of those sins, begin to live as you would like, you’re free, accept the life you are meant to live, and accept the sin in your heart. Don’t live in fear for pain you may have caused, accept your humanity and the consequences of your actions, that is what will make you human. You can’t be human if you cannot accept your sin. That is simply not accepting yourself, but you have to. You have to accept who you are, you have one life, own up to your mistakes. To be honest, in the first sentence I said the world is inherently wrong, I don’t know if I actually believe that. We are shown so much evil all over the world and it is always being covered up by those who control us, but I think to myself, what if that is just the world in the way it is? Maybe the world is not necessarily evil, we make it evil, the world just is. We live on it, we created our tortures, no one else did. Humanity did, we are responsible for sin, we created our own sins. I’m afraid I may live a lie, going against what I believe in my heart because it is simply easier, I don’t want to do that. What I write is what my mind believes, but what does that matter if my actions cannot match that of what I write. Maybe I must change, live the life I say is right, judge no one, and accept my sins and my heart, I hope I can. Should I fear what I am bound to sin, or do I realize my imperfections and accept the outcome of the world that is? I think about this often, what type of life should I live? I see others constantly embrace their gratifications with mere instantaneous pleasure, and those pleasures are nothing but dreams to people of foreign lands. Why must we find ourselves indulged in pleasure? If God really wanted us to become more than that, we have not seen our true future. And perhaps that future is in a lifetime where I do not exist, that saddens me. To see humanity to its full extent is what I desire to see, I desire to see something that embodies our deepest potentials and fullness. To come full circle with life, embrace the galaxy we know so little of, and accept humanity for its past and present. It seems to me as “acceptance” to many is a term they use to sin without regret, for if they knew this they would have accepted themselves. Do people really know the broadness of what humans have to offer? Is the only answer constant gratification of our brain's receptors? I hope not all people think like this. That is depressing, the trifle of us keeps us as is. We will never change if humans cannot understand that humans are imperfect. In the end who are we to judge, if a human lives their life full of sin without repent, where will they end up? The same place as those who go their whole lives trying to sin as little as possible? Are our constructs of heaven and hell merely to justify right from wrong? I'm not sure, I'll find an answer for all of this when I reach death, that will be my divinity.
PRELUDE
STILL KISSES WITH SALIVA. These words played over and over again on a speaker, so all of us brothers and sisters could be reminded, and we were all shaking with fear of the unknown horrors that awaited us beyond the gate. We had waited so long to be here, in this foreign place, yet we were imprisoned. The anger in my chest was fading, and I worried if everything had been for nothing. Doors 200 meters tall, with golden spiders engraved along the face of it. The marking of the 10th Minute was plastered right in the very center, so they could make us stare at it, and mock us. It was a horrid symbol, one we all hated with a passion. “Do you think they’ll kill us..like they did to our Forefathers?” asked Johann, a tall skinny man with long silky blonde hair, he looked a lot like his sister, Julliete . He stared up at the doors, eyes so wide I thought they were to fall out of socket. I could tell he was disappointed. I responded,“I'm not sure. It’s our fault we're here. We took too long and that's on us. This is the game we play, so yeah, they’ll probably massacre us.” Johann was one of the true sons of what we call our “Forefathers”, well in particular, the father of the Forefathers, Julius. The father of our existence, his purpose is ours and his order is our duty. A deep sadness harbored Johann's face, he loved his father, he believed he was the prophet of time itself. I don’t know if that was ever true. Johanns pause was long before he spoke.“I think he would cry if he saw us now, frightened, frightened of our purpose…and..I would cry with him. I think he’d hate me. He must’ve always hated me.” A loud rumble began to shake the ground, I looked up to see the doors beginning to open.
The cavern around us was high but chunks of Earth still fell down. The doors must’ve weighed more than 10 tons each. A silence overfell the cavern, a silence so loud that the melody of death itself could be heard in the movement of the air. I looked up only to see the perpetual state of dread overwhelming us. There he stood, a man so frightening he would send the grim reaper back to the depths of hell if death called for him. A 7 foot man carved of marble and prowess. Long luscious black hair swayed ever so slightly in the winds of the cavern, his face was near perfection, not a single speck of flaw. Eyebrows and jawline so sharp they could cut rock. His eyes were terrifying, so full of displeasure I believed he didn’t see us as human, or of anything like that matter. He wore a deep black military uniform so tight around his frame it appeared as if he were naked and the uniform was painted on. His collar propped ever so formally, silver and gold linings winged the edges. The mark of the 10th Minute laid on the left pocket of his shirt. A blade sheathed in a beautiful leather etched with silver roman numerals hung on the left of his belt. The grip of the sword curved in a deadly notion, pointing towards the crowd symbolizing our coming death. On his right belt a holster, an empty one. No gun in sight. Oh that’s right, I was so perplexed and enamored by the sight of this demon that I didn’t even see him shoot 5 of my brothers in the head. It snapped back to me, the man who steps on our message, who steps on our attempt to prevent the genocide of the human race. The only man who has lived both in the future and the past, who broke our rules of travel, our rules of existence. The demon who killed our leader, and the chance we had at stopping the annihilation of “time”.
CHAPTER 1
3 Years Prior
The cold breeze of the ocean grazed my face as I watched the night sky. Gunshots far off in the distance displeasure my ears, I hate this place. 120 years ago the state of California was nuked by the 10th Minute during the Epoch War. Even though we were stationed on the borders of old Mexico, the effect of that nuke spread across the entire Western Hemisphere. Terrifying what powers the 10th possessed during those ages, and even more terrifying that they annihilated the United States of America in just under 2 weeks. The smell of blood struck my nose as I awoke from my daydreaming. “Hey Leon, get the hell up, Fabius cut his arm badly, need you to patch him up.” yelled Atticus over the pulse COM. He sounded worried, most likely since the front has been moving closer to where we were stationed. “Give me a minute and tell him to meet me by the barracks” I replied. I rose harshly, cracking my back in the process. The moon looked beautiful, even with the enormous hole in the center, due to the war of course. Earth has drastically changed over the past 2 centuries. The old world had concepts of “countries” and “democracy”, now we have regions and dictators who refuse to die. This whole damn world has been at war with itself for too long, and I don’t know what the purpose is. I remember hearing stories as a kid about people who used to travel to all parts of the world on “airliners”. I dreamed of ideas like that, but I’m here, fighting in another war, another war where I don’t know who the enemy is. The 10th is our apparent greatest enemy, yet not a single one of their men has been spotted in over a decade. I struggled down the ladder of the watchtower and bolted back for the barracks, it had slipped my mind for a moment that I had to help Fabius. He was laying on a stretcher next to the edge of the wall inside the command center. His face was pale and the smell of blood was rancid off of him, I could tell he was on the front. “You just got back?” I asked as I looked down at him. His eyes seemed void as he stared up at the ceiling. The awkward silence was being infiltrated by the sound of the cooling unit. Fabius was a decent looking man, 5 feet and 10 inches tall, according to his data zip. He was a pale brown haired man from the old lands of Eastern Europe. His parents were farmers before being killed in a bombing that happened outside old Rome. I’d known Fabius since I joined the Forefathers off branch known as “Division-84”.We were basically a bunch of young adults throwing our lives away to prevent another attack from the 10th, but who knows until how long they would show again. We had only fought old Earth militaries, who fought to protect their “country's pride”, and groups of organized bandits feeding off the dying planet. Our main enemy on the front was primarily the remaining remnants of old South American militaries like Bolivia, and Argentina. Hernando’A Fuertez was the head of their militaries. Apparently he found the Forefathers disgusting and believed the 10th was simply a conspiracy left behind by the old elites to distract us and they expanded into space. After a long pause, Fabius looked at me and said, “Wish I could’ve left this damn rock on the ships, I would rip a Forefathers spine out if I had too.” I could tell he meant it, even if it was unwise to say. “You’re bleeding pretty badly, I’m guessing you were hit by shrapnel, I’ll grab the kit and fix you up Fabius, try and calm down a little” I replied. After the Epoch War an event known as “The Great Passage” occurred, where millions of elites from the old world left the planet on colossal sized ships that supposedly stretched 15 kilometers long each. They were in search of a “revelation”, I’m assuming they were scared of the 10th, but that was a long time ago. However, many ships still leave Earth's orbit to this day, we pick up their signals constantly. Religious space priests who preach sayings like, “Per Mare Per Terras Per Constellatum” and crime syndicates all leave this rotting planet in hopes for new beginnings. Personally I envy them, I hate all of this, I always have, but I have a duty, a sworn one. My life belongs to the Forefathers, I owe them that. “Yeah you’re right, I’ll keep my mouth shut until I’m 6 feet under. You’re an honest man Leon, rare these days.” Fabius says, still staring at the ceiling. I smile back at him. His mustache started to show a few gray hairs, which made me wonder how stressful the front must’ve been right now. I hadn’t been in a couple months but it has supposedly been getting worse. The front only lies 5 miles to the East of us, so gunfire and explosions can always be heard or seen. Our base sits on a hill overlooking the coast and the surrounding terrain. The gust from the ocean helps the heat of the summer a lot especially in the day. “We’re gonna get out of here one day Fabius, the stars have always been waiting” I replied after a minute. Fabius looked at me and laughed, “Oh that’s right! You’re a dreamer!”. He kept laughing and eventually it got to me, and I was reminded of how simple our lives are. We have a duty that we know we must abide to, yet we want more, we want to be alive. Then before I could finish wrapping his arm, the alarm in the command center began to scream as loud as I’ve ever heard it, “THIS IS NOT A DRILL, I REPEAT THIS IS NOT A DRILL, EVERY MAN AND WOMAN TO THEIR STATIONS NOW, NOW I FUCKING SAID!” That was Atticus on the central pulse COM. Fabius and I jumped up and grabbed our gear as fast as we could. “The fuck is going on?” Fabius said, biting off the pain. “Beats me” I reply. We ran to the armory and grabbed a weapon, other soldiers already looted most of it, so the halls were tight. Blaring red alarms lit up the entire command center and yells from every direction pained my ears. No one had a clue what was happening. Fabius carried an old earth weapon known as a “STRAP-27”, a highly powerful rail weapon half the size of a fully grown man. I carried a standard issue “OLISK-84” assault rifle and checked for my uncle's ancient Glock-18 in my holster, I felt secure feeling its grip. We quickly strapped on some remaining low-grade chain armor and ran outside the command center, hurling past medics, engineers, technicians, and fellow soldiers. Chaos was amidst the air as men and women ran to their posts, all geared and ready, but confused about the state of emergency. The fear of battle was apparent in the smell of the air, and the unorganized screams of orders added on to it. We made our way to the watch post I was positioned at earlier, climbed the ladder and propped up our rifles. Fabius managed to patch his bleeding arm after we got in position. Along the walls and watch posts of the base hundreds of men and women lined up their rifles, all ready, and all scared of whatever was happening. We stared across the dead vast land in front of us. The night sky was beautiful, and the brightness of the stars and moon lit up the deathly terrain. The noise of the ocean's waves behind us were amidst the painful silence, and far off in the distance you could hear cicadas screaming in the summer heat. The year of 2287 was an everlasting summer, same as every year before. The only time I remember a cold winter was in my childhood, a far off memory when I wasn’t introduced to the idea of war. “The hell is happening?” said Fabius to a fellow soldier on the bottom of the watchtower. “Not entirely sure, rumors of the front coming to us have been in the air, but that wasn’t supposed to be for another 3 months, and the battles over there have been relatively calm for the past year since Hernando apparently hasn’t ordered them to advance, nor any order at all. Rumor is he’s dead” the soldier replied in a worried tone. “Most likely one of Atticus’ fake drills, but it sure doesn’t feel like that.” Fabius replied. Atticus hasn’t said anything since the alarm, maybe it was an accident. Then to my surprise Atticus was walking out of the front gates and into the scorching rocky terrain. “ATTICUS, WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?! GET BACK OVER HERE!!” yelled Fabius, and other soldiers yelled similar words. I had a bad feeling lingering in my stomach, the silence grew even louder and the skies began to shake. Something was coming, and Atticus knew. “They're here, or at least one of them is” Atticus yelled back. He stood there staring off into the distance, no sudden movements and no fear. “Who?” I yelled back. “I’m not sure but I know it’s them”. And then before our very eyes, something unexplainable happened. I couldn’t tell what it was, maybe a portal, or some type of dimension opened in front of us. The hairs on my arms arose and the sense of time became unclear. Nothing looked or felt real, it was as if the rules of the universe caved in on itself and everything we knew was simply an interpretation of the unknown. I tried to look towards Atticus but I couldn’t see him, he was there but he wasn’t. I had no sense of touch or taste, only fear in my confusion. When this effect wore off after some time, which could’ve been seconds, minutes, or even hours, a man stood in front of the gates, and Atticus’s lifeless body lay flat on the ground. His head severed from his body, perfectly clean, the cleanest I’ve ever seen a head be severed. At that moment I instantly knew who the man was, or what “it” was, and I felt a sense of dread that shook my bones. The silence instantly turned into gunfire, every damn soldier watching that gate pumped as many shots into that man as their fingers let them. But then yet again, that sensation came back to distract us. I couldn’t tell what was happening but I knew that the man was causing this, or whatever it was. Before we knew it the same scene played again, where Atticus lay decapitated and the gunshots began to scream. Who knows how many times it was repeated, but I know it kept happening over and over again. I wasn’t sure if anyone else was conscious about this, since I was the only one who stopped firing. It was a moment trapped in the concept of time itself, we were all stuck, and he was mocking us. The repeated scene finally came to a halt eventually, and the firing wore off as the other soldiers assumed they had killed the man. Yet there he stood, staring at us as if we were nothing but a road-block. Every man and woman stared at him in perpetual fear, we all had a small collective understanding of the situation, and how death was inevitable. He stood almost 7 feet tall, and his eyes were gleaming red. He was terrifyingly beautiful, a deep dark skin coated with perfection and strength. There was no flaw in the man, there was no flaw in this being. He wore a full white uniform, one very fit to his skin. A long white trench cape draped behind him, and the hood hung right above his gleaming eyes. His hair reached out from inside the hood, black and shining in the night sky. His face was rigid, yet carved in the image of a god. Scars lined his cheeks, ones that burned the image of the death of his foes. His eyes looked at us, but not into us. Farther past us he looked. As if we were part of their dreams, a dream they had to conquer. It took me a second to notice, but his chest wore the symbol of the 10th Minute, and that symbol confirmed our understanding of death. I had only seen it on Forefather broadcasts and blatant theory videos on the old web, never on a human being's clothing. Even though I saw that image I was so engulfed by his presence that it failed me to fully understand that this man was from the 10th, which also explained why our bullets couldn’t kill him. A real member of the 10th stood only 50 meters in front of me, and I was too stunned to even think. He started to walk towards us, and gunshots fired from all directions, gunshots full of fear. Our unit was completely doomed and there was nothing we could do about it. Bullets were nothing but a human reaction to attempt to protect ourselves out of fear, even though we know it was useless. Every step he took fuzzied my mind, I couldn’t take my eyes off him, my jaw had dropped but I couldn’t pick it back up. Existence was shattering in front of me, colors turning into shapes, and shapes into colors. The man was playing with the universe just by walking. But how? How was a human able to possess the power that man could never control, time? Before I could comprehend it, the man from the 10th broke down the gate and was standing in front of me, staring deep into my eyes, my consciousness, and breaking my spirit with his gaze alone. He was looking at me, smiling, as if he knew me, and that made me feel a horror of fear I have never known. “Hello Leon, where have you run off to now?” he said in a humorous tone, as if he were speaking to a long lost friend. “Wh-aa-aa-mm–arrr-you hhh” I replied, unable to mutter a comprehensible sentence. I had no thoughts, only fear, and an anger that I was helpless. I didn’t want to look around, I didn’t want to see limbs ripped from bodies, but I knew it was there. For some reason the man didn’t want to kill me. The man stopped smiling and reached out his fingers to touch my forehead. His touch brought the sensation once again, but it was different, this time his existence was what I questioned, I couldn’t tell what was real or not. I felt time be torn apart and the universe implode in on itself, I saw constellations, stars, planets, alien civilizations, gods, colors, emotions, sins, justices, and everything comprehensible to a sentient being. I saw images of my early childhood, my mother, my sister and brother, my father staring off in the distance, and I saw me, but not from this place, from another place far off where I reached above the stars. Nothing existed in front of me, yet everything did. This man broke the restrictions in my brain, and let me see past the truths of our universe. I felt as if I knew all, as if I ascended above all, as if I was the watchmaker and I had been the whole time. But this revelation faded, and I was snapped back to reality, or was what I had seen my reality, I was completely unsure, but I felt anew, reborn. However, when I came back to reality, my brothers and sisters lay mutilated around me, just like I thought. The base was burnt to a crisp, and the smell of flesh and death overwhelmed my nose. I instantly began to hurl and it felt as if my intestines were trying to escape my body. When I looked back up to the dark reality around me, the man was gone, and time felt real again. Fabius’s head lay 5 feet in front of me, jaw wide open and eyes gouged out. I wondered if he was calling for me while being ripped to nothing like a deer in an ancient hunt. “It should’ve been me, never him” I thought. Pools of blood surrounded me, yet something felt different inside of me. A burning sense of rage deep in my gut. I wanted to kill that man, I wanted to kill all of them. Whatever the fuck the 10th was, I wanted it gone. They massacred my brothers and sisters and I was asleep, fighting the concept of conception itself. I stood up and curled my fists until they bled in my pale flesh. I thought of what could stand in my way, if I was any stronger or weaker. I stared down at Fabius’s head, and knew what I had to do. Even if something stood in my way I would climb my way to the heavens above and kill every 10th there was. I had to find the Forefathers again, just like before, but this time I felt alive, and this time we would have a true message.CHAPTER 2
The night sky soon turned to dusk as I made my way across the scorching terrain, I didn't know exactly where I was headed, I just knew I had to find the Forefathers. They could be anywhere, or at least he could. I needed to find Julius, the Pope of the organization. Daylight soon began to burn the Earth, and I needed to get out of the sun. It wasn’t safe to travel on foot during summer heat in these years, any human would die without the right gear. I leaped into a cavern that was on the face of a canyon that rose to the sky. Luckily the cavern was in a safe distance from the ground so I didn't have to worry about heights. Sandstorms screeched in the distance, and the heat grew even stronger as hours passed. Most of my time I spent staring at the coastline, which was probably 5 miles from the canyon. I went South of the front in fear of being captured by Southern militaries. I couldn’t go North yet, California was a wasteland. The sky was a pale blue, yet you could see all the spaceship debris in orbit. After the Epoch War on the planet, thousands of battles occurred in space right above Earth, all battling for control over the moon. All of the remaining old first world governments wanted a position near Earth, but away from the 10th, guess they wanted to reclaim the planet. I had always wondered why didn’t the major countries just unite and fight the 10th, but the old rumor was that the 10th had a part in that.
I forgot how many miles I had walked before I saw another human, a young boy, probably 6 or 8 years old. He sat on the side of a trench just 100 meters from the front. Blonde hair, green eyes, and the palest skin I've ever seen, I thought he could be a ghost. “You’re bleeding sir” said the boy after he noticed I was staring at him. “Do you want help? Where are you headed, I can show you how to get back to the States if ya want”. His accent was a one I haven't heard in a long time, an old Southern United States accent.