An Explanation as to
Why I am Here
2003 short story by Jonathan
Hicks Thirty-seven
years after Episode IV – A New Hope Do you think me a fool? Do you think that I am a fool to continue in this way?
Not to live but to simply exist? To
allow breath to flood my lungs and my blood to stream like liquid fire
through my veins. To know that I will never know the peace of dreaming, that
I will never escape the realities of this twisted galaxy for those fleeting
moments as my eyes close and my mind drifts to the other side... Such things are not to be considered by me. Such things
are left to those whose minds are geared towards such fancies; philosophers,
poets, lovers. They can sit for hours and postulate on what it means to
believe oneself an immortal. Living day after day whilst loved ones and life
grow old and die, with only the option of suicide or euthanasia to ease the
apparent 'pain' a person who lives forever would experience. I have
contemplated these things, these reasons for my continuation in this life,
but I have never found a reasonable answer. Perhaps I have given up
rationalising my existence and have elected to simply be. Even mortals give
up on or accept problems within their short lives. Immortals have the luxury
of having the time to solve them. I have had to make sacrifices to continue my existence.
First my sanity, which I never truly regained, then my heart, which only
serves me by pumping blood and has no emotional content. Then my soul, which
cannot exist without the heart. Of course, these are metaphorical considerations.
Physically, I am fit and strong, and my mind is sharp and focused. The years
have been kind to me. I am not going to lay out reasons at this time. All you
need to know right now is that I do have some kind of purpose. I am not here
to guide any races of the galaxy, or act as a living history of the place. I
am not here to represent those forces that exist just beyond the corners of
the eyes of you, you who sleep and dream. At this time I am trying to make up
for my greatest mistake. The mistake that made me what I am. The mistake that
has infected your fears and made your nightmares what they are. I am the creator of the experiments that birthed the
Coryarthanax. Proof of existence is not a requirement, or even the
purpose of this transcript; even if I laid the body of such a creature before
you, before your scientists, before your leaders, there will no doubt be a
small voice at the back of your head screaming explanation. Trying to allay
your fears of the meaning of such a thing's existence. There are those that believe, that try to prove the
reality of those netherworlds you try to shun or ignore, but what are they to
you? Idiots, crackpots, losers. There are many words from many generations to
describe such people. There was a time when these things were believed and
people died to once again allay the fears of the masses. Burnings have now
been replaced by ignorance. Within that ignorance the darkness has gathered strength.
Built its forces, breathed deeply of the free air, knowing they are not under
threat from you or the galaxy as it is today. Believers are easily
dispatched; they are shunned by civilisation only to be consumed by the
darkness. Today, the average Coryarthanax has it easy. They fight each other far too much to be a threat, so you
have never had to worry about huge organised armies of these things marching
into your cities, burning your houses and consuming your flesh. Vidshows show you these things and you smile as the hero
cuts down the evil forces with a glint of the teeth and the cheering of the
crowds. Such things have happened, but the aftermath leaves little to smile
about. There are no cheers for these heroes of the shadows, their only reward
being blood on their hands and the knowledge that they have been given a
little longer to live. So, why do I hunt Coryarthanax in particular? If you allowed into existence a child who grew to be a
murderer, a thief, a heartless being that considered the existence of others
to be for their callous designs, would you not wish to correct that problem?
Wouldn't you try, even if in some strange way it caused you grief, to stop
them? Killers in the 'real' world are placed into cells or
executed. Their families hope to their Gods that they change or there is
another reason for their actions, usually blaming society or the victim so
that they don't have to think of the possibility that their children or
siblings are twisted in some way and that they were responsible for their
being. Coryarthanax cannot be caged. They cannot be changed.
They can only be killed. Believe the stories of moonlight and life-stealing bites.
Forget the movies you have seen, the datapads you have read, the tales you
have been told. Coryarthanax are not simple creatures, ravenous beasts simply
surviving. There are some, the ones I hunt, who are sentient, aware of their
existence. These are the ones who have survived the years of the unwanted
infection of their souls and have come to accept their existence and use it
for their own ends. These, in turn, give birth to Coryarthanax who grow as
total thinking beasts. I call them the Enlightened. Now to begin. This story is not easy for me to tell, as
you must understand I am one who has walked my way in shadows and do not
enjoy this illumination of my life. I do not intend to tell you the story of
my existence - that would require far too many volumes to tell. I simply
intend to inform you how close you came to being forced to accept the reality
of these creatures that I speak of, how close you came to having your eyes
opened and your vision widened. Although it will take a lot of imagination to
accept the words that follow it would have taken huge resources of faith to
accept what may have happened so be thankful that all you have to deal with
is words. It began with a meeting. A private meeting between me and
a scientist I know and have worked with for years called Professor Jenner
`Doc’ Harrys. He is a man of a fine Chancai university who has access to a
myriad of data books and tomes that detail the darker history of his work.
When I first met him he was a young, energetic man with a beautiful wife and
daughter. His wife has since passed on and he has taken her death hard; I
think she was his keystone, as he found the reality of the dark side of the
galaxy hard to deal with at first. He found solace in her embrace. Now he was old and haggard, with sagging jowls and
bloodshot eyes. I know he had had a heart attack recently but he has a strong
will, fading now without his wife to stroke his hair and tell him that there
were no such things as monsters. His daughter, who also knows of my true history, helps
him in his library but she did not accompany him. She has a family of her
own, now, and Harrys tries to keep her as far away from the shadows as
possible. We met under a speeder bridge just outside Chancai, by
the lake. I found him watching the skiffs bob in the water as the wind picked
up; a storm was threatening and the air smelled of the fresh rain that was
still falling. It was dark and smelled of rot under the bridge, the evening
air chill. I was concerned for his health. He hacked out a cough as
I approached and wiped his mouth with a white cloth. When he moved it away
from his mouth I could see it flecked with blood but I did not draw attention
to it. Harrys and I had set up a contact system, using the
private message page of the Chancai
Express. I always made sure Harrys knew I was on Zelon whenever I passed
through, so he placed the message, I had seen it and called him immediately.
Harrys is well read on Coryarthanax, being one of the co-creators of the
original experiments, and is one of my sources. He is more than willing to
help me, as he is a believer who considers positive action is the way to keep
the shadows at bay. His life had been turned upside-down during the battle
that deposed Glann Cipple on Amagad many years ago; he escaped the secret
laboratory where the Coryarthanax were bred and he has been paying for it
ever since. "Hello,
friend," Harrys said. His voice gurgled and he cleared it noisily. The
damp air wasn't agreeing with him and I vocally wondered as to why he wished
to meet me here. "Too many
ears and eyes in that damned city, and what I've got here is too sensitive. I
can't stay long." I agreed. Harrys appeared nervous and as he spoke he
looked about him, turning his head this way and that. I inquired to his
disposition. "I've been
working on some of the indecipherable text in that last partial copy of the
Coryarthanax Datapads you got for me from Bacco's
burnt house on Trefnare." Whilst I had been hunting an Enlightened group on
Trefnare I had located the burnt-out home of one of the scientists who had
worked on the Galletti Combine Project. After despatching looters I had found
the tome and returned it here. Although the first half of the book was in a
language Harrys could decipher, the latter half was of a swirling text I
thought I had seen before. "It's not
writing," Harrys said, which surprised me
somewhat. I had never imagined it could be anything else. "When you
hold the flimsies together and hold it up to light, the lines join together
to make a picture. I came across it quite by accident; actually, as I was
doing copies that I could write my notes over. The original pages are quite
thick and browned with age so I never really saw it before." Intriguing. So, the question was,
what was the picture? Harrys pulled a plastic wallet from his inside coat
pocket and handed it to me. Inside the plastic sheet was a normal sheet of
flimsy with what appeared to be a black and white rendition of what he had
discovered in the book. A circle of four humanoid figures appeared to be lying
down, drawn in a style I had often seen in scriptures from long ago, holding
onto the next figures feet and in turn having their feet held by the creature
behind them. Their heads were not well detailed and had been increased in
size by the artist so that their nature could be ascertained. They all had
the naked bodies of human men. It was the head in the very centre that caught my
attention. If the drawing was to scale, which I very much doubted, then the
beast was huge, standing at least three times the height of the beings
surrounding it. It was definitely a Coryarthanax but it had eyes, wide and
dark but that detail I attributed to the starkness of the image. Even so, its
presence on the picture was foreboding. "Please
don't tell me you don't know what it means," Harrys said, ending his
question with another cough. But I honestly did not. I wondered if this had been done
in any of the other tomes I had given to Harrys but he answered my unspoken
question. "The other
books have no drawings like this in them. My daughter checked before..." His pause made me look up at his face and I saw that they
were red-rimmed and slightly moist. I did not question his sudden show of
emotion and waited patiently. "They knew.
They knew I had the books. They came to the library, and they killed
her." But did they get the books? "Yes, they
did. This is the only copy I have left and it is the most important part, I
think." They took the books. I cursed loudly and slammed my
hand into the moss-covered wall of the bridge. The tomes were my only link to
the Coryarthanax, my only source of information about the comings and goings
of the demons and devils that haunted the galaxy. I had never considered
making copies of them, mainly due to the fact that
the more copies there were the more chance there was that the knowledge
contained would fall into the wrong reading room. Not only did the books
contain history and information, they also contained notes on their comings
and goings, rituals and mutations. Harrys was obviously angry with me at this moment. He had
told me of his wife’s murder and I had been concerned with only the books.
What could I do for his wife’s corpse? Still, he was mortal and his heart was
still vulnerable, so I allowed him his grief. How did the Enlightened know
that he had the books, I wondered. "They
seemed to home in on them," Harrys snapped. "As if it was giving
off a signal they could track." If the book was a key tome then it was possible that,
upon opening it, Harrys may have inadvertently sent out a hidden signal that
would make locating it easy for those who knew how to search for it. But how
did Harrys know they had 'homed' in on the tomes? "I was in
the library with her," he said, his speech cracking with the emotion.
"I was in the data room when they burst in" He stopped and held the
cloth to his mouth and let a sob burst forth. I watched and waited for him to
finish his explanation. "They
demanded to know where the books were but she remained silent. So they killed
her. As I hid. As I watched." Another sob cut through his words. He just stood there and watched? "What could
I do?" he wailed. "Look at me? How could I fight off three?" It was true. He was hardly fit enough to fight the beasts
and I regretted my question. It was a stupid notion to think he may have been
capable of defeating one. "I'm sorry.
I'm sorry they took the tomes. I should have been more careful and tested the
book for traps but I'm getting a little slow minded in my old age. It was
straight after she was killed I left a message for you." It was right of him to contact me. Now that they had the
tomes they could complete their collection of books and, more importantly,
probably decipher the meaning of the hidden picture. That is, if they knew what to look for. "She told
them nothing. But if they considered the tome important enough to come out of
hiding for then they will no doubt attempt to find out the secrets of the
book." Then I would have to find the book and retrieve it. "How? They
are Enlightened, they could be on the other side of the Setnin Sector by
now." True, but I would have to try, at the very least. If
there were a hidden meaning to the picture then I would have to discover it
before they did. Anything that aided the Enlightened was not acceptable. But what was this drawing? And why did this Coryarthanax
appear to have eyes? It is peculiar, but I had forgotten how to hate. I had already lost compassion, love, jealousy and
paranoia. Each one and more had slipped away from me over the years. I did
not fully understand why although I do suspect it is because, as a near
immortal, I have the luxury of having the time to solve these problems that
mortals must deal with in their short existence. They understand they have a
limited time on this earth and so seek all those things they think they will
need to complete their lives. Security, love, a sense of worth.
Unfortunately, these feelings are combated by the opposite emotions when
something threatens to spoil or remove what they have worked hard to attain. Myself, I simply wait for the offending opposite to fade,
or die. In the most extreme cases I remove the opposite myself. And, since my
own emotions are no longer threatened by these things mortals fear, they have
fallen into disuse. What use do I have for love? There are no others like me
and I will only watch my prospective partner wither and die before my eyes.
Compassion? What use is that to me? I have seen what mortals do to one
another and their actions only beget another generation who will follow their
example. Jealousy? What greater gift could anyone possess than immortality? I had no need for these encumbering feelings for
centuries. I existed, I did not live. The body that lay at my feet was covered in blood, some
mine but mostly its own. I had tried to keep the combat quick and clean but
it had been fast; the vibro shiv
it had produced was short and sharp, and it wielded it professionally. I had
not had time to discover it's age, or to inquire as
to what it was doing here, on Zelon. Not that I did not already know the
answers to these questions. It had obviously come looking for me. My enemies
were being pro-active in trying to get to me before I got to them and this
concerned me. This meant either two things; they had, by chance,
tracked me here or they knew my ally was here, also, and had waited for my
inevitable return to see him. As I had entered a small town just outside Chancai I had
heard the screaming. The locals most probably assumed it was a lost or
escaped pet (indeed, what else could they think it was?) and ignored it. But I had heard form in that howl. Unspoken words that I
understood. It was a signal, calling others to the area, telling others that
I was here. I tracked the constant howling to the bridge, wishing to go on
the offensive instead of waiting for them to organise themselves and strike. I came upon the Coryarthanax and made the mistake of
approaching upwind as there was no other path to get under the bridge. It had
attacked me with no challenge, conversation or explanation. Enlightened do not throw away their lives so casually.
What was it hiding? Was The picture of the Coryarthanax with the eyes a new
evolutionary threat? Baz, his huge Coryarthanax body shape squeezed tightly
into the cockpit of the One Truth, looked over at his friend Baz in
the next seat with his huge, almost crystalline eyes. “Squiz, do you
sometimes think you’re meant for something greater in this galaxy? That
you’re more important than you know?” Squiz smiled. “Don’t get
delusions of grandeur, lanky.” An Explanation as to
Why I am Here
2003 short story by Jonathan
Hicks Thirty-seven
years after Episode IV – A New Hope Histories – A story detailing the evolutionary surges taken by the genetically
created Coryarthanax, and the
possibility of a war between the original clans and the newer, sentient and
intelligent ones. Giving a large slice
of history about their creation, this Jonathan
Hicks tale is key in the development of the Baz character,
a Coryarthanax capable of speech, thought and so much more. And also lays threads about the involvement
of Coryarthanax DNA in the creation of the Goah Galletti clone.
Cast
of Characters Professor
Jenner `Doc’ Harrys Squiz Baz |