CHAPTER 26 - ECHO’S VACATION

Dreamess (who is Echo after defeating Visioness and securing the Dust-Throne) and Sam drop down to the interstellar space below the plane of the SOTA to be alone together. Dreamess, turns to her husband Sam, who is known as Dazin and is realm-king of the echo realm beside her. "There are aspects of our phenomenon which have become detached from their logic. Whether their logic has been lost or absorbed or stolen, I do not know. It is a mystery if the ascension itself is responsible'' she says. Sam reaches out to his wife to hold her hand and asks, "What do you mean? What aspect do you speak of?". Dreamess sighs and replies, "I speak of the fabric of which the realm is woven. There is the chain of ascension, which links all of those from bards to mortals. That quilt appears to be whole for now. I mean to speak of the avatar chain, those two threads that form the foundation of the quilt and whose ends dangle from the body of the quilt. We should all simply be personalities of Dreamer and Dream, such that would collapse as the personalities of the echo seal bloodline generation did, but we have grown to be separate individuals. The avatar chain is now only a Link which connects us all. In this way, the logic of the avatar chain has become lost, stolen, or perhaps absorbed by the ascension itself. That is the mysterious truth that we should be all mere creations of the scilysts". Sam thinks on the matter and returns with his conclusion, "Perhaps this is the legacy of the unraveling of black rainbow, who you re-absorbed. Do you sense the presence of such a leftover contagion?". "I do not" she admits, "However, let us depart from this talk of work during our time alone together". The two embrace and Sam, who is the map unravels and the folds of the cosmic map wrap around Dreamess. After some time drifting through the void Sam notices a far-off aberration. "What is that entity? '' he wonders and the couple travel closer to investigate. "It appears as a derelict Earth vessel, let us reduce our size and walk through its corridors, and see what answers it holds" Dreamess says. The two patrons reduce and conceal themselves and pass through the steel barrier as if it were tissue paper. "Let us step lightly" Sam says, "this tomb is fragile". As they walk through the corridors the skeletons of fallen sailors drift by. The face of one of the skulls points toward the wall, where there is emblazoned "Men-At-Arms" , the name of the vessel. The hatch of the command chamber opens and ushers them within, where there is a large monitor. "Allow me" Sam says and waves his hand over the controls. A relic footage plays upon the screen. The hazy figure of an old man in a white robe appears, covered in cracks that cover his shoulders and face that crackle with green light and give off emissions of green mist. "This is Commissioner Thonis of Alpha-E calling out to Men-At-Arms. Captain Frankus … son … Can you hear me? Four months and five days. We have been waiting for your arrival and the salvation of the cure. In the wake of the epidemic the colony has almost completely collapsed. Now, only a few remain. Even the aid of Earth may be a little too late. Son, if you are hearing this, if you can see this, the disease has taken me as well. Your mother and I have always loved you. When she passed, I thought the world had ended. Now those few that remain call out to the stars, please, do not abandon them". A wave of horror and realization pass over Dreamess and Sam as they take in the message. "What a fate for the first colony of mother Earth" Dreamess replied, "Let us go there and see if it remains intact". Sam absorbed the coordinates from the computer and the image of Alpha-E appeared on his body directly below the SOTA and its plane. Before the patrons stepped back into the darkness Dreamess hesitated and said, "Wait". Her power washed through the ship until she felt something. "Come this way" she said and the two entered an area that had previously been a laboratory. She reached into the structure of the lab table and pulled out a plastic case. "What is that?" Sam asked. "This disk drive is encoded" she replied in echoes, "We will be unable to decipher it until we arrive at the colony". Sam nods and the two trans-manifest through the hull back into the void. It is a fleeting moment before the swift patrons arrive upon the lively grassy plains of Alpha-E, and alight in the midst of the ruin of a great city. "We are too late my love" Sam laments. In the crowded center of the city there rests a tall building surrounded by a citadel. "Let us walk" she urges, and they do, walking through the grave that once was a city. "Each blade of grass here rotates and twists around slowly as if it were a screw. The effect is wonderful and mesmerizing" Sam observes. The patroness points to the crumbled shells all around them, overrun as they were with lush green vegetation like the cracks that covered Thonis, "I perceive the heritage of the culture of Earth, but with hope and the breath of new life. This is the loss of Earth's only child". Eventually the two make their way to the central tower. The entire building had been converted to a hive of labs, each of which ran into the next. The charred green coal-like remains of men and women rested on each lab table. The patroness approached a pile of research papers and blew until her breath had removed all but one, which she took into her hand. "Do you not see it husband, look closely at this dust". As he does she reveals the image on the page, a blue woman with strange ornamental ribbons from her shoulders, a cuticle from her forehead and a title at the top of the page – 'Rikiral Female – Specimen 8891'. The Map takes the paper and holds it in his hand, "The explorers arrived on Alpha-E to find the Rikiral. They married and interbred, but by that time it was too late. First contact had become the last as the contagion, an inter-species sexually transmitted disease wiped them out and turned them into green ash". They trans-manifest and appear before a theater sized monitor in the heart of the control room. After ordering the computer to repair itself with a brief look, Dreamess placed the disk inside and the computer there decoded the message, sending up static that metamorphosed into an image upon the screen. A security tape of the Men-At-Arms is shown and Frankus is in the command chamber surrounded by half of his lieutenants, the other half facing them. A group of crewmembers confront the captain and his lieutenants. They say Alpha-E is lost and want to return to Earth. To prove the worth of the mission, the captain is forced to make a speech. He fails, and the next scene is within the barricaded laboratory, where Frankus speaks to the camera. "Home Base, if you can hear me, then you will know the truth. They … have gotten the better of us. I have only just awoken from an attack. My lieutenants saved me, but they are too few now. The Men-At-Arms will not be the salvation of Alpha. My home and family are lost forever. There is only one choice now. If we cannot take her back in a final engagement, then it is over. Farewell". "According to Earth time, that was one hundred years ago" the patroness states. She extended out her arms and called out to every scrap of data hidden in the citadel to return to the epicenter, the monitor before them. Veiled in static, the image of two figures appears. The father and mother of Frankus, Thonis and his Rikiral mother when they were still young, sitting on the twisting grass of Alpha-E during a picnic. In the sky, the clouds of Alpha-E, which are like fat balloons lazily bump into one another and are sent in opposite directions. A warm smile appears on the face of the mother as she turns toward Thonis. She is wearing orange jewelry that hangs from her extensions and that appear through the distortion of the monitor as the color of sunset. Thonis wears a white uniform of an officer and his beard is still black, with only a hint of gray. Their knees rested on a checkered blanket, and there sat a woven picnic basket between them. Static lingered around them, intertwining their images and then separating them once again. As the two laughed and spoke of some reminiscence the colors of the picture seemed to levitate and then settle again, and the two could neither discern the words between them. Thonis took the Rikiral woman's hand into his and kissed it, and the two looked away from the patrons out toward the distance. "My love" Dreamess said, "Will you join me in a picnic?". "Yes," Sam nodded. Dreamess and Sam transform into light and enter the monitor, travel through time and possess the couple. They could sense that all was braided together, the past, the future, and the world of the video. Dreamess looked through the eyes of the Rikiral mother, and turned her head left to witness her husband Sam who had inhabited the handsome body of Thonis. The woman opened the picnic basket, and somewhere in the far reaches of space and time a drifting escape pod opened, and the frozen, long dead body of the son emerged, rising into the starry landscape. The skull of the son is cloaked by the light of stars and scatters into dust. "Now you are free," the woman says. The couple dig into the picnic basket and take from it all manner of foods and treats, which they eat together. When they finished the meal, they joined their shoulders together, and relaxed as the wind blew across the grassy plain, which had melted into an endless viridescent horizontal plane. "This is a truly remarkable echelon, but now let us return," she said. The static enshrouded them and spun into a vortex. The two within the echelon materialized at the location of the picnic in the present day. The static dissipates, leaving only small traces on the surrounding environment. The two mortals part and the static bodies of the father and mother dissipate to reveal the spirits beneath. Their picnic finished, Dreamess and Sam return to the SOTA.