《Truest Angel》


 Truest Angel

    I used to wonder if the world vanished when I closed my eyes. I had no proof that what my eyes showed me was any more real than my own dreams and imaginings. Still, I am grateful to be able to see. Even the void is full of light.


    Even if what I am shown is fiction or reality, what proof will there be that we ourselves ever existed? The stars we live under will eventually extinguish but even before that, it is not as if they keep record or testify on our behalf. They merely quietly rage in the darkness.


    Songs do not call me, fire does not warm me, honey does not sooth me, and the scent of flowers never reach me. I have yet to find a place I belong but I am also not unwelcome so long as there is light to see, air to breathe, and food to eat. I feel not the sting of anything nor does the stink of sewage and death trouble me.


    Of course, not even my own voice reaches my ears. Feel free to tell me if I am too quiet or too loud. I have not talked in a long time. I would not know for myself if I have gone hoarse. I am surprised my voice is still with me. Let me adjust it for a moment. There, is this better? Good.


    How can I speak your language? That is a bit complicated. It is through the same means that I seem to respond to you before you have time to speak. Strange, as this may seem from how I am acting, I can not hear you.


    Do you find me to be verbose for one who can not hear? I can not hear but I can certainly read and the scientific journals I once read for entertainment spared no detail. At this moment, I am reading your lips¡­ and thoughts as well. I apologize for the latter. I perhaps should have warned you.


    I can not hear myself so I can not be sure at times if I properly expressed emotion in my tone so I used words to ensure my meaning and gauged reactions such as yours to see if they were conveyed. Even now, my voice sounds a little odd, I am mispronouncing a few words, I will try to fix that.


    Where should I start? I could tell you much about my world, Hedelm. How it is juggled by three stars, Los, the star of industry, Ahania, the star of knowledge, Vala, the star of love, and after several long years it would for a time enter the orbit of its fourth sun, Enion, the star of fertility, before being returned to the chain around the other three. A normal year for Hedelm is about as long as four old years and a special year is close to the same as two old years. Once every three normal years, it begins a special year. A full cycle would be about fourteen old years.


    I was born in the middle of a third normal year. I do not need you to remember the exact numbers but it might give you an idea of how I understand time. To me, a year is a very long measure.


    To me, my world seemed normal as was its gravity and the scale of it all. However, if the historians speak true, it is smaller than the place humans originally came from so the designs of rudimentary flying crafts my people¡¯s forebearers abandoned found purchase within its weaker gravity.


    Hedelm had more land than water. Our cities were built around great lakes. We most often farmed moss for food.


    The limited water, while it did not lead to droughts anywhere near the lakes, limited expansion. Beasts needed water to carry supplies and perform other tasks though most organisms had been adapted to be very efficient, requiring very little food, deriving a lot of their energy from Hedelm''s multiple suns.


    Where there was no water, the scenery was that of empty rock and gray soil like the sight of our old world''s barren moon with patches of color where groundwater might have been hidden.


    To maximize efficiency, any stable nation had plants or something else to filter through their waste products to recycle the water and nutrients. The reach of what I guess you would call nations slowly grew with each year as new means of efficiency were discovered, the environment of the nations creeping across the globe like paint slowly being added stroke by stroke to a mural.


    Without metal to forge, our ancestors took what knowledge they had and sculpted flesh. Humanity had been born of the previous world but humans had created this world. Every creature had a purpose, whether it be for farming or war. It seemed only natural that they chose to make a canvas of themselves as they did their world.


    Our structures were constructed from a substance regurgitated by laborbeasts. Algae and luminescent plants provided light where the rays of the three suns did not reach.


    We still had night when the sun we were closest to for that season was hidden from us but for every season there could be night, there was a season we were between the three so there was nigh endless day.


    I would rather take this time to talk about myself rather than geography. I happen to be here. Maybe give me enough time and I could provide a globe or map. Otherwise I am talking about places without terms of scale or direction.


    Still I will give you a further glimpse at our advancements so you know the society that created me.


    Our idea of bows and arrows and firearms were of course living solutions. Organisms that would usually latch onto someone''s arm or shoulder. The organisms would react if chemicals released via a latch, a certain pressure point was pressed, or an appendage was pulled.


    Such examples would be a large legless grub that needed to held in two hands that vomited a stream of acid, warhawks that rested on their handler''s arm or shoulder, plant pods that when thrown either outright exploded or unleashed ravaging spores, a hive of deadly gnats that was carried on someone''s back so that when the directing organism was launched from the shoulder the gnats would be released to follow the pheromone trail and eat away at anything they encountered at their final destination, and many more. Poison in some shape or form was common practice as powerful enough toxins could fell soldier or warbeasts alike but acquired resistances and different biologies made those poisons often seem akin to acid.


    A battle between such groups would have seemed like two ecosystems colliding.


    As for the actual warbeasts, both sides used variants of similar ideas. Enormous hulking creatures that served as living shields and weapon platform all at once or more vulnerable large flying creatures. An example would be what I can describe as hornless oxen several times larger than the ones from the old world covered in a thick layer of bone on the outside. They may not have had horns but they had indentions on their backs to install riders or other creatures such as a variant of an acidspitting grub I might have mentioned that would instinctively engage any target they were trained to treat as hostile or spikelaunchers for aerial targets. They would be released by the Technocracy in stampeding herds to create a moving defensive wall and trample down potential obstacles.


    If you need an idea of what we had in the air, think a massive bloated hippo with fins like a whale but inside its mouth would either be troops or smaller flying beasts to let loose on those below.


    Now, I shall begin my own story. My story began very early. The moment I opened my eyes was the moment I was aware. A pair of giants loomed over me.


    One compared me to the legends of a homunculus in a flask. She returned my gaze and placed a finger on the glass that separated us. She placed a label at the foot of my tiny home. Scrawled on it was my number, CIX.


    I felt the giants¡¯ exchange rather than heard it. Or perhaps hearing is the correct word, the thoughts of others echo in my mind as if they were my own, I originally thought they were my own. He called me One Hundred and Nine but my name formed on her lips for the first time, Cix.


    He admonished her for giving me a name. He feared I might become like the others.


    As they spoke, I learned their names in turn, Levianas and Geisler. The woman, Dr. Levianas radiated the closest thing I would ever know to warmth while, the man, Dr. Geisler dwelled in a realm of cold facts.


    They both could have been called elderly, the woman was slightly older than the man but he appeared almost half her age, only having grey hair as evidence he passed his prime. His body had been rejuvenated with simple chemical treatments and along with viral treatments that would have been considered illegal in his home country while the woman chose to age gracefully.


    I became quite acquainted with the two in the weeks I stayed contained in my flask. Indeed, I say weeks, not months. I am aware of the concept of a month but my world knew no moon, itself smaller than most moons. The units we used to divide the year are called ¡°sols¡± in reference to which sun we happened to be orbiting around at the time. A rather petty detail I admit and for those of you who know what it means to have a moon grace the sky, I will say months for your sake.


    In Hedelm, it only takes six and a half weeks for a child to be born, not by any fluke of biology but the sluggish pace that our home happens to revolve. A day for us would be six on the world all we humans once came from. I can explain the exact layout of our calendar later, I do not plan trouble you with exacting precision especially when I am still not entirely accustomed to your own ideas of time. For those of us that still carry the history of the old world, I will speak in terms of those hours and minutes but I can not so easily comprehend short days.


    They visited me every few hours. Words came from Dr. Levianas¡¯ mouth, and though I could not hear them, I felt their intent. I understood my existence more from her observations than I could have with my own eyes. She noted that I possessed normal body structure like she did, four limbs, a torso, a head, but with the addition of a pair of wings on my back, a trait they implanted during gestation.


    Dr. Geisler barely spoke even to his partner, writing Levianas¡¯ observations onto parchment along with his own. He remained distant, any sign of progress he found, he followed with a comparison to my hundred and eight predecessors.


    It is odd to describe their dynamic. They were about as close to equal as two people could hope to be. It was Dr. Geisler''s idea to continue, he lacking anything else and Dr. Levianas had nothing left. Dr. Geisler recorded Dr. Levianas''s observations and reached his conclusions which were in turn reassessed by Dr. Levianas.


    They would not tell me themselves until I was older but they unknowingly conveyed my creation through their thoughts. As you might have noticed from my wings, my physiology is not untouched nor was I conceived through conventional means. Rather I was grown within that glass womb and altered overtime as I became more developed. By the time my eyes first opened, they were done.


    Having my wings grafted on were one of those alterations and I had to be made durable enough to survive the implantation but the capabilities I later describe came as a surprise to all involved so I was a strange one from the start or their experiments had an unexpected side effect. Among the donors whose flesh I owe my existence one had been described as being ¡°abnormally adaptive¡± among other things.


    I had several donors but the ones they hoped that secure my survivual was one described as adaptable and a sample of a soldier with the highest record of compatibility for implants.


    I am not like most others. I do not have two parents but rather I was pieced together with the essence of the finest samples of humanity along with a few other things with the hope that adaptation and compatibility would serve as the foundation. I was designed to have enhanced strength and agility or rather the potential for it. I would say I was and still am stronger and faster than any ordinary human should be considering my lifestyle but my wings and other abilities spoiled me. I had the power but little need for it and thus not the experience to fully apply it. I do not have confidence my physical prowess would match anyone''s who life was spent in gravity more powerful than my own, for now. Even now, I do not see myself juggling weights with my hands when I could do the same with my will.


    It is not as easy as you might think to piece something entirely new together like a quilt. My people tended to have templates laid out with every aspect and connection charted to maximize the potential of success. Each part of one¡¯s essence was connected to at least one trait, to replace that part with another might result in the loss of something important and there is a certain harmony required for an added trait to manifest. If you put the essence for a squid¡¯s arms into someone, they will likely not sprout twelve arms. That was why surgeries were still popular and my essence was derived primarily from the stock of exceptional humans rather than be a more dramatic hybrid. At least some prior attempts to create those like me involved lengthening the essence, adding more links to the chain as you might say but my count happens to be the same as a human¡¯s.


    Even then, there were many traits from my donors that I never manifested. Inheriting flesh did not mean I acquired their spirit and some of their traits likely worked against each other as you notice from my lack of senses. I could quote the profiles of my donors but it is not all that important to me.


    Technically, Dr. Geisler completed me but he used the templates from the previous experiments to aid him. He had been indirectly involved in the early stages. Once the others left, he simply took previous designs and built around them. He likely would not have given me wings if my design was entirely his imagination.


    Dr. Levanias, with her superior medical experience, was the one that performed the surgeries on me. I fixate on my wings, but many of those surgeries were for my benefit, something like me would not normally survive in a glass womb.


    My method of birth while not unheard of, was still quite rare. They needed to be able to observe my growth. If you saw our manufactorums, where the warbeasts were born, you might be disgusted. How should I even describe those mounds of flesh?


    When the man spoke, he was quick and factual, stating only what he knew to be true. I would later appreciate that about him. I wonder now if he was even capable of lying to anyone other than himself. The rare times he bothered to weave words in a web of rhetoric was when he was explaining one of his own theories and wanting input from someone else.


    His mind was constantly disassembling reality to its smallest components. As swift and short to the point as he was with his words, his thoughts were even more rapid. Even as an adult, he was one of the only people I ever encountered that I needed to read his lips to fully understand because I could not keep pace with his inner workings.


    If he lacked anything, he lacked creative ambition. He certainly had imagination as I hope to mention some of his solutions later that proved quite interesting. He could see the problems in other people¡¯s work and correct them yet if he was left alone, nothing would come of him.


    When I was finally large enough, they drained the fluid from my flask. My vision darkened as my lungs filled with air for the first time. The glass shattered on its own. The astonishment could be seen even on their faces as I hovered in place.


    I hope you do not mind me merely glossing over my earliest years. Milestones such as my first steps were not so noteworthy when the first thing I ever accomplished was floating.


    I prefer to call this ability my will. See, I can lift stones and other things without touching them. It is how I can fly without needing to flap my wings. It lost its novelty to me as I always had it. I used it plenty throughout my life so forgive me if I neglect to mention employing it. It would be similar to specifying walking with my own two feet but I will try to remember whether I used my hands or will if it seems important.


    Do I have any other abilities that I should mention? None that I am aware of. My sense and will are the only invisible traits that I have. Reason would dictate I now have quite a durable body to have survived the long journey here.


    It was noted that I was not very violent growing up. Youngsters might pull the wings off insects or other cruel things out of curiosity. I actually do such things at least once. I squashed a bug between my fingers when I was a child.


    However, its disappearance made my already silent world a bit quieter I suppose I should say. I did not dislike the presence of other creatures, they proved the world was real and gave depth to my surroundings a sterile room lacked.


    It got less bad when I got older but I might have mentioned that the thoughts of others seemed like my own thoughts. If I did not, I apologize. I felt the distress of other animals in pain. The doctors fed me preprocessed meat when I did eat meat. I felt no such sympathy with plants and treated them like furniture.


    They fed me until they thought I was old enough to feed myself. The first time I forgot to eat, my vision went hazy. It was finally when I nearly starved myself, they realized I was not sick as much as I lacked hunger or at least the sensation of it. One of many things that made my worldly experience unique. I still had to eat of course but I could not enjoy texture or flavor. I kept track of when I finished my last meal and ate accordingly.


    It surprised my caretakers to discover that I could not hear. They ran a number of tests and found my vision to be the only sense I possessed. I also lacked what they called a sense of smell or touch and as I already mentioned, taste.


    As soon as my condition was discovered, the two began a joint effort to ¡°correct¡± my lack of senses. That was the exact exact word they used as curing would have been an improper term. Dr. Levianas herself had treated blindness and deafness and performed what some less advanced societies might consider miracles of medicine.


    That should have been nothing new to her. If it had been caused by damage during development or later, she could perform surgery. If it was inherent, she could prescribe me viral treatments like the ones Dr. Geisler took.


    I mentioned viral treatments before but I failed to explain them. They are a step beyond surgery. Imagine a contagion that made you better, relying on the body to restore itself.


    Such things were heavily regulated where the two were from, even the ones that were considered necessary. The treatments had to be short lived and noncontagious as they, in practice, changed the essence of who you were as even after the contagions left, the changes remained.


    For such a treatment to be considered ethical, the problem needed to be isolated and a strand of essence as close to identical to one¡¯s own but without the flaw would be introduced.


    Unfortunately, my problem was never isolated nor was any damage to my neural pathways located. Eventually, they reached a very simple option.


    You see, in the previous wars, soldiers received augmentations, many surgical or viral. Increased strength, speed, or even aggression, things a civilian did not need. There was a viral treatment that returned such souls to a state of standard humanity.


    This cleanser had been developed by the military for all the various mutations one might have undergone. It could even potentially be used as a weapon. In whatever case, it could most certainly make me the same as an ordinary human at the cost of at least my inhuman abilities.


    They discussed the ethics of this option with Dr. Geisler being strongly opposed and even Levianas was a bit hesitant as my chimeric nature could result in complications. In the end, they settled for testing it and offering me the choice if trials proved it would work.


    It turned out I was incompatible with such a method. Or rather I would have been compatible at first but blood samples of mine showed that my body quickly grew to recognize the treatment as an illness and attacked it and anything infected by it.


    So, the offer was never made. Those trials were performed while I was a child and I had no sense of what normalcy was so I would have found the idea trivial. As I grew older, I would have happily accepted the treatment, not to become ordinary but to simply be able to hear, smell, and touch.


    Dr. Geisler justified my condition that it was of greatest priority that one with wings have exceptional vision, hearing and smell meant little if I remained so far above. My sense compensated for most and learning to read lips allowed me to follow the conversations of others.


    They taught me to read and write. They even taught me how to speak after I learned how to read their lips. I adjusted my voice based on their impression of my words, though my sense told me they often found my verbalization less than perfect, they were slow to tell me themselves.


    While they were well aware of my will since the day of my birth, they remained ignorant of my extraordinary sense until my lack of regular senses came to light. They performed a number of noninvasive tests such as blindfolding me and moving things around me.


    They found I did not notice the displacement of an object no matter how simple or complex yet I was aware of the presence of other living creatures though I remained oblivious to unaugmented plants. They had to, at the time, conclude that I perhaps had some means of detecting the natural currents of other creatures but it seemed strange to them that size did not matter as much as complexity. I could notice a mouse yet not find a tree.


    When I learned to speak and write, I finally was able to explain my sense to them. I remember the brief awkwardness that drifted above the two as they realized every secret they ever kept and every detail of their lives that came to their minds while around me was something I knew.


    As I figured out from their experiments, my sense is based around thoughts. The more complex or at least akin to me, the easier it is for me to understand. I understand human thoughts as if they are my own but something like a beast of labor might only be able to convey to me simple ideas like if it was scared or angry. I could not even gleam that much from something insectoid but I am at least aware there is something there.


    I learned the words that formed on people¡¯s lips were what they meant to say while the words I felt were what they truly wanted to say.


    Dr. Levianas asked me how it felt to be deprived of the senses others had. I asked how it felt to lack the sense that I possessed. Neither of us could answer.


    As I grew older the thought that I might cease to exist or the world around me might disappear when I closed my eyes plagued me.


    Fortunately, my sense confirmed I was not alone. Unlike my eyes, which I can simply shut, I can not rid myself utterly of my sense. If I concentrate, I can reduce its range to my immediate area but I found it extends as far as it can when I am relaxed or distracted. Its reach grew further as I aged. I believe it was the end of my second normal year that it stretched far enough for me sense the two doctors'' thoughts on the ground even when I was among the clouds.


    I said they taught me but it was primarily Dr. Levianas that taught my lessons while Geisler graphed my development and secured or even crafted the supplies for my education. You can probably guess he was not the type of person a child would enjoy being around, especially a child that was privy to his thoughts. I kept my distance from him and he soon enough realized that and was untroubled at first.


    How can I even describe how humorless that man was. I knew him my entire life and never once did I hear him laugh. If he happened to hear a joke, he would deconstruct it in his head until all amusement to be had was sapped away.


    Fortunately, it was Dr. Levianas that also performed my frequent medical exams. Even she, at times, had doubts about my physical condition, besides my lack of senses, I was the picture of good health. I only got sick twice in my life, once when I was young and a second time when I began to roam and became exposed to an illness. Both times I recovered faster than should have been explained by the workings of the medicine prescribed to me.


    What I tell you now is something I pieced together over the years. The facility was an old underground fortress sustained by the local groundwater situated between two rival nations. However, it belonged to neither though it used to belong to Dr. Levanias and Geisler¡¯s homeland before it was abandoned.


    The nation the doctors came from was a technocracy and I will refer to it as such if I have to speak of it. The other one was a republic. Or at least that was what they were by the time I was born. The doctors¡¯ homeland became one where power was given to those specialized in their roles and their opposition chose the path of popularity. I found it strange the system that valued merit deplored human modification.


    Where we lived had been a battlefield, though it most certainly did not look to have been one. Both sides fought with beasts rather than machines and concocted plagues to combat both soldier and animal. The conflict perpetuated a cycle of new diseases being born only for immunity to be developed so that something even more deadly was necessitated.


    This ultimately led to both sides creating strains so virulent that if improperly used, not only would all parties involved be caught in the spread but the whole world could be stripped of life. This resulted in them having to negotiate peace or risk losing everything.


    There was still conflict though, the occasional scouts spying on the other or even battles over disputes of border but they could no longer safely engage in open war. Instead as Dr. Levianas put it, they learned that they had to fight with words.


    The older inhabitants of this world had an idea to spread colonists across the globe like spores and the growing settlements would assimilate each other once their borders met rather than slowly creep across like (single colony of mold.) However, feuds started to form as to who was to assimilate who. It was always meant to be settled diplomatically but complications emerged as colonies fought to maintain identity, absorbing each other in a race for¡­ I think dominance would be too strong a word.


    They thought of this as a battle for the survival of their cultures even as they integrated new designs from those conquered. There was a popular theory that the societies would evolve to be incompatible with each other, that the organisms used by one would not be able to thrive within the ecosystem of another. The expansion for the Republic and the Technocracy had slowed due to their pact. They geographically shielded each other from other threats and if spies caught wind of one absorbing another neighbor, that might be grounds for open hostility to begin again. The doctors predicted such an outcome to be inevitable, even if both sides somehow came to a complete halt, the borders of some other nation would eventually cross into one of the two¡¯s territories. The hope was that such a situation could be defused peacefully as originally intended.


    Depending on how you wish to count, approximately two generations that no longer knew open war had been born into this world. Long enough for those that fought to grow old yet see the world around them transform.


    There was still a war but it was fought with philosophy and ideals. It became a case of infiltrating the other and spreading ideologies which led to each one growing more extreme to differentiate itself from its opponent. If the population of one came to resemble the other too much, they feared they might be drawn into the other as just part of a larger whole.


    Dr. Levianas and Geisler were from a land that still valued the human form, a curiosity to me as they made me into something that was not human. Dr. Geisler explained it best, telling me how the other side wanted to replace humanity as it was with a higher form, I was not supposed to be humanity¡¯s replacement.


    I mentioned earlier how my home did not appear as one would expect a battlefield or fortress to be. It was called dead man¡¯s land and indeed I fear the sheer concentration of death nurtured the ground. While short of armies and warbeasts, the wild found no reason to not reclaim it. The place was more garden than cemetery, vibrant with plant life. Vines and shrubs covered the stonework, turning the structure into a verdant hedge.


    The dead man¡¯s land was longer than it was wide and varied in width where boundaries of nations receded or swelled with the Technocracy on the west and the Republic in the east. Mind if I use the term "league" as in the distance a human could cover in an hour of walking? That is a distance I can easily grasp. I would say where the laboratory was, it was about twelve leagues across from one nation''s recognized domain to another with us being closer to the Technocracy. I could fly from one end to another in half an old world''s hour.


    The nations were relatively of similar size. The Republic was geographically larger by maybe a third but the Technocracy had a denser population. I once raced myself in my attempts to sneak away and sneak back and found I could fly across the Technocracy in less than five old world hours. The capital of Technocracy was situated on the east of the great lake that sustained it so I could arrive there in about two hours, maybe more, from the laboratory.


    The project that birthed me was not the working of some grand conspiracy. The founder had apparently been a medic in the war and made a name for himself outside of it. The funding, location, and equipment came from his machinations. The difficult part had been winning over the minds of individuals such as Dr. Levanias and Geisler.


    What was the goal of the project? ¡°To create an ideal being.¡± Rather broad do you not agree? Too broad. My hundred predecessors were quite varied.


    But honestly, at some point their goal simplified into making someone with multiple gifts with no drawbacks. What are gifts? Strange abilities that some humans just seem to have even before being augmented. They used to be the subject of legends in the old world, people with unique talents.


    Unfortunately, there was usually a price for something beyond the norm. Just because one aspect of a person mutated did not mean the rest of the body adapted in turn. If somebody could breath fire did not mean their own skin was immune to flame. Genius often came with madness or other defects.


    If the project could generate a being with multiple gifts without compromising that being¡¯s integrity, they could use that to build further. You might say their intent was to develop a keystone that would open the way to creating gods.


    Dr. Geisler and Levanias held no such lofty ambitions. Dr. Geisler simply refused to leave what he contributed so much to incomplete.


    Dr. Levanias joined the project as medical staff meant to treat those like me. Those two were the only ones left, though there apparently never were that many to begin with. The project valued secrecy and quality, employing those in the upper echelons of their fields rather than an army of researchers. Dr. Geisler had been discovered by that group and had no social circles to return to and Dr. Levanias felt obliged to stay in case Dr. Geisler¡¯s continued researched concocted some creature more unfortunate than me that would need her expertise to survive.


    Dr. Levianas lost her husband in the war while the other never had anything. Dr. Geisler might as well have been a hermit. His social history seemed to have been limited to his family in his early childhood and his professors from his time studying. He, being someone without aspirations, developed working knowledge with nearly every field of science. If we had to designate what he had the greatest affinity for, he was, by your words, a genetic engineer. Our name for the field would translate to something akin to "essence weaver".


    It was a career that would allow him to situate himself anywhere. He could help manufacture warbeasts, tools, or even become involved in agriculture.


    As for the founder, he visited the facility once in my time there. He was a little overweight, his face wrinkled and hair practically gone except a half circle of gray from age.


    I was still young and learning. I did not sift through his thoughts for any reason more than the novelty of encountering a mind different from the two doctors I knew so well.


    He was informed of my will and known capabilities. I did not speak yet so my sense was still a mystery. He feigned interest, trying to assess how my sense functioned but inside he was solemn, a similar sensation to me as Dr. Geisler but there was more to it. While Dr. Geisler''s distant mind came with an unrelenting intensity,Dr. Aquinas''s mind processed everything slowly and at the end of it all he settled for something like "At least she is alive," with a satisfaction that pushed back some cornerstone of disappointment and resignation at the news of my flaws.


    Dr. Aquinas promised the two as much funding as they needed to keep me "Happy and healthy."


    Both requirements proved less daunting than either doctor expected. Other than nutrition, I seemed to have a way of keeping myself healthy. I was most certainly not a picky eater, just a¡­ maybe I should say reluctant one. Eating was boring. If they had fed me intravenously, I imagine I would have been just as satisfied.


    If they wanted me happy, they themselves only needed to be happy themselves and let me fly free.


    My first flight outside was an uneventful one. The two doctors watched me the entire time, telling me mentally and through gestures whether I had gone too far or not, making sure I was always in their line of sight.


    For me, it was about growing accustomed to no ceiling or walls, no physical barriers to restrict my movement, just social pressure from my caretakers.


    It is a wonder that my legs never atrophied. You might find security in the sensation of your feet against the ground but I find no such comfort or discomfort. I spent more time in the air than at rest. Floating even a little spared me the trouble of me unknowingly bumping against something or scraping my toes while giving me the freedom to move in any way I pleased. I still find amusement today in levitating and looking at the world upside down.


    Swiftly after the initial flight, I reached the point where I could roam freely. Or rather as freely as I could hope. After I underwent exercises to ensure I knew what to do if I encountered souls from either nations, of course.


    To allow me to go beyond their sight sight, they presented me with a worm. After being placed in my hand, it burrowed into my palm. The insect, it was not really an insect as Dr. Geisler would be quick to inform you but let us call it an insect, would serve as a means to track me. The nest the it came from secreted a pheromone, once outside the range of the pheromones, the insect would shriek at an inaudible frequency which could be followed by others from its nest. Once I returned to the nest, the worm left my hand voluntarily and rejoined its kin.


    The second time I flew freely, the insect was not so fortunate. As Dr. Geisler put it, my body attacked it. I from then on needed to wear a little necklace with the worm inside and enough food to keep it alive for a day.


    I will be honest with you. To me, the thick clouds looked to me like floating white cotton. I thought I might be caught in them like in a net or brambles. I was young, please do not laugh. Softness was not an easy concept to me, just my vision made me learn the difference from solids and liquids like crystals compared to water from when I suddenly was brought to halt.


    Once I realized there truly was no obstacle to stop me, I went beyond the clouds and witnessed the beauty beyond the sky. Below me was an ocean of white.


    I flew higher and higher, my vision slowly darkening as I began to notice frost forming upon my skin.


    My world went black and when it returned, I was greeted by the swiftly approaching ground. In those first precious moments of returning consciousness, I did not realize what was happening and when I finally did, I panicked. Fortunately, falling is not an instant process. You would think that from watching rainfall but under less stressful conditions, I could dive from the clouds and do as I pleased for maybe a minute before worrying about how I was going to land.


    I had far less than a minute, I had already fell beyond the clouds before reawakening. I could not bring myself to a halt nor could I slow myself enough to make a difference before crashing. I tried to turn the nosedive into a level flight, redirecting the momentum that was carrying me rather than trying to resist it.


    I brought myself to a diagonal fall rather than a sheer vertical drop and, in that tense situation felt, agonizingly slowly changed my angle of descent. I can not tell you how close I was to hitting the ground as I pulled out, I was too relieved that I avoided such a fate to bother to take measure.


    Also, almost immediately afterwards I struck or maybe was caught by the local flora. I was still moving dangerously fast and shielded my eyes with my arms as I braced for the unavoidable.


    I tried to brush myself clean and found my left hand wiping away blood while my right arm refused to move. At first I thought I might have been mistaken but the more I concentrated, the more I realized my own body refused to obey me. I screamed at my own traitorous limb until I noticed the bone jutting from it. Even I could tell it was broken.


    I thrashed about on the ground, trying to stand but unable to. I raged at the unknown even as a certain dullness settled upon me. My world was splitting apart, I could see multiples of everything as it turned grey. I must have been breathing so fast. I did not faint though I wish I had.


    Maybe it was my screaming that caught her attention or the landing had been intense enough to be noticed but Dr. Levianas who had been inside at the time came outside. Her mind raced with alarm as she called my name.


    Dr. Levianas rushed to my side and instructed me not to move, applying pressure to my more dire injuries. A glance at her immediate observations told me that I had at least one case of a branch piercing through me. I might have been concust and my wings were damaged as well along with my spine. I was so fixated on my arm that I did not ponder that my legs were unresponsive as well.


    Dr. Levianas shouted for Geisler and he arrived just at the edge of my vision. Dr. Levianas told him to bring her her tools. His composure collapsed as his mind spiked with implications as he complied. When he returned, it was in a rush, his normally calculated movements were too fast. I could not hear it to be sure but the way the things jangled slightly made me think he slammed the medical kit. By then, my fingers were beginning to twitch.


    She began operating on me immediately. Even if I could feel no pain, I felt her terror and concern. It was draped over like a cloak but she kept calm as she meticulously tracked everything with a list of objectives in her mind. She spoke to herself, marking the objective as completed or no longer necessary as my wounds were either not as they initially appeared or my body was already healing. She thought I at one point had a cracked skull but found no sign. What was important was for her to remove the object impaling me without triggering any more bloodloss and setting my bones back into place.


    That was the most harrowing experience I ever had. Not because I could have died but because of the sheer unrelenting terror my injuries brought to those around me.


    After the accident, conventional needles no longer pierced my skin. They had to become creative if they wanted to draw my blood.


    It has to my attention that you oddly use metal for your needles. We used what you would see as resembling the beak of an enlarged mosquito¡¯s beak. A majority of a surgeon¡¯s tools would be attributed to insect mandibles and other teeth with the more complicated instruments being still very much alive such as the creature that would be used to saw into my bones.


    What you might have made from iron, we crafted from treated bones, wood, and chitin. We had glass. We used glass to decorate our more significant structures or contained specimens and chemicals.


    Dr. Levanias proposed to Geisler the next day that they find a method to restore my sense of pain. Dr. Geisler upon inspecting my wound and how quickly it healed, was reluctant to do so. I read his thoughts, he had already tried but now that I was older, he was afraid that even if he found a way, I was too old and unaccustomed to the sensation and I might become overwhelmed. If he could miraculously give me my senses back, the first one he would have chose was hearing or smell so I would have a wider experience of the world.


    In the end I was the one that convinced him to continue his pursuit of at least simulating pain for me. I actually begged him to do it. It would help me avoid further injury.


    My request lit a fire in him and within a week, he reached a solution, a parasite. That was the first time I felt a warmness similar to Dr. Levanias radiate from him and it bled through into his actions. His mind was focused on constructing rather than dismantling.


    By his reasoning, I still had a full emotional range, I just needed something that could manipulate those emotions. His parasite secreted an agent that triggered fear within me while monitoring my health.


    He did not make it from nothing. He probably could have but similar parasite¡¯s were used to control prisoners. The creature would induce pain in the host if certain situations were to occur. He simply bred a strain that induced terror rather than wracked my nerves.


    As for how the parasite might avoid the fate of the tracking worm, that turned out to be the difficult part. Dr. Geisler spliced a bit of me in the parasite so my body identified my new partner as a part of me. Dr. Geisler had to make sure the creature was not as aggressive as my own immune system or else risk me experiencing a rather gruesome fate. In a way, one could say the parasite was my relative, a cousin or something like that.


    I wanted to call him CX but unfortunately that was a designation given to one of my younger siblings that failed to be born. I wound up naming him Wisdom.


    I do not think I need to clarify this but I prefer to refer to Wisdom as he. He, being akin to a tapeworm, had the traits of both a male and female but had been rendered sterile to stop the parasite from laying eggs inside me. If we needed another one, we just had to cut a segment off and a new Wisdom would be born from the detached part.


    I had to ingest Wisdom while he was still in his larval stage and hope my stomach was not able to eliminate the newborn creature. If the parasite thrived too well, we would remove him through chemical treatment.


    My sense could detect Wisdom as he grew within me. At first, all I could sense was his presence spread throughout my body, technically every part of Wisdom was part of its brain. However, overtime I started to sense emotions from the base of my neck.


    Wisdom was normally content. Not really happy but satisfied but grew fearful when I forgot to eat.


    He was an imperfect solution but as we learned from years of further study, it was among my only options for a substitute.


    I imagine everyone finds fear to be an unpleasant sensation. If pain is anything like it, I am glad I am unknown to pain. I think the fear felt worst when I could not tell what caused it. Did I hurt my back, did I step on something sharp? I did not easily know.


    One of the things I appreciated most was that Wisdom told me when I was hungry. I did not have to meticulously keep track of every meal I ate anymore.


    Dr. Geisler became more prominent in my life after the parasite integrated into me. After each of my medical exams, he would need to examine Wisdom for any defects or mutations. We would talk while all that transpired.


    As I grew older, my education grew more advanced. Basic math gave way to physics and Dr. Geisler became my tutor for such matters and competed with Levianas for the opportunity to teach biology. They settled for a shared schedule for the latter and Dr. Levianas remained the one that covered literature with me.


    It is complicated to describe Dr. Geisler. For the first few years of my life, he was certain I would die. He thought I was not long for the world so rather than be protective, he was prepared to test my limits while I was still alive.


    Fortunately, Dr. Aquinas kept him from going too far. Maybe I indeed might have died if I was pushed to such extremes but I have trouble imagining that. He wanted to test me, I sensed as much, but I wonder if he even would have gone through with it if I was in his sole care.


    I say this because eventually he finally realized I was not about to suddenly perish in front of him. His callousness turned to pride, my every accomplishment, no matter how simple colored him with pride. His desire to test my limits remained but it became focused on letting me be the one to decide what I could or not do. He allowed me to roam freely and did not grow worried when I left his sight.


    If I had any complaint, it was that he wanted me to report to him any changes or developments I might have undergone. This did not trouble me when I had a story to tell but it would be a nuisance when every now and then he would ask me questions, reviewing how fast I could fly, see if the range of my sense extended, etc. You can likely imagine.


    In my later years, their roles remained the same but how they affected me reversed. Dr. Levianas was the one I needed as a child, Dr. Geisler was the one I needed as a young adult. One saw to it that I survived, the other made me thrive. Dr. Levianas¡¯ protectiveness threatened to stifle me so it was Dr. Geisler who advocated for my freedom.


    I remember how Dr. Geisler pulled me aside and pointed to his lips after I started to near the edges of the deadman''s lands. He mouthed to me a number of instructions or rather suggestions. In his mind was his observation that I was young and his assessment of how youngsters tended to wander.


    He told me if I had to go beyond the boundaries of safety, he recommended that I went eastward towards the Republic or ¡°the land of the changers¡± as he called it as they would likely think I was one of their own citizens. If I happened to drift towards his own homeland, I should stay as high as I could in the air to hopefully remain out of the sight and range of their defenses.


    No matter where I went, I needed to keep mind of the suns'' positions. I would be visible if I had a sun directly behind me.


    What I knew of the Republic at the time came from Dr. Levianas. While she disliked their current approach to matters, she could not find it in herself anymore to hate its people, the same people that took her husband from her.


    When the war was still fought primarily with projectiles and melee, every so often the battles would halt, usually on a rare night, for combatants to collect their injured and dead. There was a mutual trust in such occasions, almost bordering on kinship she described, to rely on the enemy to not attack when might might doubt one''s own brothers and sisters.


    At the height of the viral outbreaks, both sides unofficially came to collaborate when the strains affected everyone. The doctors and nurses pooled their researches together to discover treatments for the horrors that ravaged their camps, even going so far at times to treat captured enemies in exchange for the enemy to do the same.


    Dr. Levianas came to know quite a few people from the enemy nation, even called several her friends and hoped that they fared well.


    It was not long at all after that I followed his suggestion. The people of the Republic did indeed not register me as a trespasser but I was still an oddity to them. Flight was uncommon and also there was dissent within the population. The ability to alter oneself brought the definition of humanity into question. Two major factions embodied extremes within that debate were those that melded themselves with animals so completely that the line of human and beast was blurred and those that retained their human appearance made subtle changes such as enhanced strength and intelligence or granting themselves preternatural capabilities. The former found their opponents too sentimental and unimaginative while the latter would call the other degenerates that imitated primitives creatures. I with my wings yet still seemingly ordinary body would have left both parties unsatisfied.


    Observing the populace, I found that I had less in common with them than I did with the two doctors. I lacked fangs, claws, advanced hearing or smell and all the other things they had. There were a few with wings but their alterations were more dramatic than my own.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    It was strange watching all these vastly different people interacting with each other. I imagined myself slipping in among them and maybe I would have fit in. I am confident I could have but the world I knew was not theirs, they had senses I could not even fathom. I would be with them but not having the same experience, I would still be an outsider, an accepted aberration but still truly not able to feel what they felt. That thought made me miss the doctors¡¯ company and I was quick to return to the laboratory.


    Just now, I think I realized something else. They chose to be what they were, there was a pride in their own creativity, to know they were of their own design and creation. I envied that, I resented that.


    I eventually ceased visiting the Republic. It grew difficult to fly there and back without drawing the doctors'' suspicion. The way I could go untracked was simply to leave my necklace behind but they would notice that "I" was staying still.


    The Technocracy was closer. I could fly to it and back without raising as much concern and without the added temptation to join the people.


    The Technocracy had not always been as its name implied. A generation before, it had been more similar to the Republic the way the not yet Republic resembled the not yet Technocracy. However, the war led to popular belief that too much creativity and inventiveness bred destruction. Something Dr. Levianas herself agreed with.


    They became far more conservative in their applications of the sciences. I would think it was a Theocracy from how they so directly enforced the sanctity of the human form. It was generally orderly and patriotic but more restricted than the Republic.


    I think you can understand how a republic functions. The system was changing even within my lifetime of how the Technocracy functioned. The general idea was that there were these specialized departments dedicated an aspect of life like agriculture, industry, and military stocked with the greatest of their fields to dictate policy.


    The people of the Technocracy were similar to those of Republic, in spirit. They had the same troubles, desires, and worries. The like those of the Republic worked to feed their family and themselves, performing monotonous tasks they would never think to settle for. However, I think they were a bit more dower as a culture, they had a greater tendency to be collectivistic but rather than be part of a faction, they more often saw themselves as part of the nation, the limbs of a mighty beast. However, each had aspirations, they could find themselves at the top if they had the opportunity. The issue was that they were one of many, competing with each other similarly to their neighbors but under a different form of measurement.


    I would say the city''s mood depended on the time and location. Factories at their busiest times were generally filled with resignation with the occasional workers that still hummed and whistled and brought a smile to my face. The entertainment districts were¡­ lively.


    I had gotten quite accustomed to the typical joy and sadness that permeated everywhere and went to a new location when the rhythm of one area was making me too depressed or giddy.


    I remember how I was resting at a park. It tended to be a calm place with a hint of excitement regularly coming to the forefront among the civility when one might exercise, people encountered familiar faces, and couples courted each other. I then sensed distress, a spontaneous, immature kind of distress, as if the world was ending and one would never be happy again.


    My eyes opened wide and I scanned the area for danger but at the epicenter of the cacophony was a mother and child. The child lost her doll and could not find it. They were in a rush to go home so they needed to leave it behind.


    I took to the air and examined the land from above. I soon enough found and retrieved it. I then dropped down from sky in front of the family as they continued to walk away to pass the doll to the girl.


    The child¡¯s mother was terrified but even as I flew away, the child remained blissfully ignorant of what I was. I felt the simple joy of being united with something that might have been lost forever as if I had been the one that experienced it. It was euphoric.


    The next day, my appearance was news. I had not been thinking before but as the realization that the two doctors would hear of it dawn on me, inhaled with dread. Fortunately, Dr. Geisler tended to be the one that read about ongoing events first.


    I was there when Dr. Geisler glanced through the report then looked at me, having no doubt that I matched the description. He smiled quietly and simply put the page about me in the very back before passing it to Dr. Levanias. That gave me some time to think before the inevitable discussion.


    And that conversation was quick to come though without the fluster I expected. Dr. Levianas called to me softly and I joined her in the nursing room along with Geisler. She asked me if there was anything I needed to tell them and I conveyed the whole truth to them.


    I expected Dr. Geisler to be a silent observer and he himself wanted to do exactly that but very soon after I told them everything, he asked me to confirm that I knew that the city I visited was hostile to one such as me. When I confirmed that I did, he seemed satisfied, confusing Dr. Levianas.


    When Dr. Levianas asked him why that was all that mattered to him, he explained that I did everything I did aware of the risks involved before turning to the subject that he needed to make sure the countertracking beasts were performing their best.


    That led to the subject of whether or not I was followed. Something I had come to consider many times, I could sense any nearby tracking beasts but I would not notice if I got marked by any pheromones, hence why Dr. Geisler was more concerned of potential pheromone trails than my little adventure itself.


    Dr. Levianas and I argued. She was the more rational one between the two of us but I stand by with what I meant even if I would now retract some of my words. She said that I needed to stay safe and the only way I could be safe was if I remained in the boundaries she had set, boundaries she was aware I had been leaving with regularity. I said something akin to wanting to move about. I am glad I was not dramatic enough to demand my freedom but I said that if I was not able to leave, even if there were no bars, the laboratory might as well be a cage.


    She demanded that I listen to her, that next time I might not be so fortunate. I responded by asking how she intended to stop me, with a leash like some pet?


    With that, I saw a finger tapping my shoulder before Dr. Geisler pointed to his mouth and ordered me to go to my room.


    I was shocked by this. I felt betrayed. It was Dr. Geisler that should have understood me. I felt the anger build up inside me as I prepared to say something venomous but I felt gratitude seeping from Levianas.


    I was curious why and focused on Dr. Geisler¡¯s thoughts enough to try to understand. He agreed with me but he did not appreciate my choice of words. He wanted me to be angry at him rather than Dr. Levianas and she even without my sense understood that.


    They both cared for me. I knew that. From the bottom of my heart I knew that. There was no denying it for I was blessed enough with my sense to know without doubt.


    I still felt angry but I pushed it down and let it seep poisonously within. I did as I was told but did it in an immature and disrespectful way. I practically ran there and literally slammed the door behind me, breaking the knob as I closed it. That only frustrated me further.


    I fumed there alone for some time before deciding to use my sense to eavesdrop on them.


    They discussed what they intended to do. Dr. Geisler told Dr. Levianas that he had been encouraging my behavior. I believe Dr. Levianas remained calm but while she was not angry at me, she was so with Dr. Geisler and they argued for a while.


    I do wonder how loud they actually were. Their mental assessments of each other''s viewpoint were that of troubled acceptance. That they knew they could not the win other but they debated for the sake of understanding.


    In the end, they did not agree but at least admitted the other was not entirely wrong. Instead they focused on what they both knew to be true.


    When they came to my room, I opened the door for them.


    They confessed there were few ways for them to stop me if I wanted to and them trying would only make matters worse. If they had to, they could force Wisdom to make me experience unrelenting terror. They were not entirely powerless against me but they did not want to threaten me with the extreme methods that would be required to discipline me but they knew that I knew they could. I respected that. They asked that I tried to abstain from returning to that city but if I did, to at least be careful.


    I chose the latter if anything at all. I feel a bit guilty now that I think about how quickly I ignored their request.


    I began to fly through the city and others, including even the capital later helping anyone in trouble that I could. I at least took different routes, refrained from immediately returning to the laboratory, and used my will to brush off any spores to avoid being followed. It was difficult to trail someone who never needed to touch the ground. No matter how ideal the place, if you have thousands of people or more, there is always someone in need. I flew injured people to the infirmary, made basic repairs with my will, rescued people from fires, and brought food to the starving among other things. At first, I had to flee when proper authorities arrived but overtime rumors circulated about me and law enforcers¡¯ typical reaction to me turned from hostility to caution. Even those authorities that hated the sight of me were hesitant to draw a weapon on me due to the popularity I had with everyday people. They did not want to risk being remembered as the one that harmed the angel. There were exceptions, those ready to attack me but I departed as soon as I noticed their harmful intent.


    Overtime, my title of angel was not merely the occasional thought of those that saw me but something that even those that never met me recognized me as.


    They called me an angel so often that I had to study what that meant. I found no entries on any books on biology.


    I spent at least a full day rooting through the library. I floated in midair while I used my will to hold and sift through the pages of as many as five books at once as I searched for any mention of the word.


    It was not until I reached a section belonging to former members of the project that made me. I found a book on ancient mythology among documents of a halfremembred history from the old world.


    The name ingrained into the back of the cover was Dr. Aquinas. According to that book of legends, an angel was a messenger from above. They came in many appearances but most were horrific, beasts with the heads of different animals, a wheel covered in eyes, something with legs of fire.


    I found that I lacked the qualities described in the texts.


    My pronunciations of words are sometimes imperfect and maybe I sometimes speak too loud but surly I did not have a voice like rolling thunder nor a body of lightning. Nor have I ever conversed with a higher power. I was flesh and blood, the same as everyone else.


    Do you have a concept of ¡°angel?¡± The idea of a messenger of a deity had degraded within the minds of the populace but the vestiges survived as a mental image that matched my appearance.


    It grew safe enough for me, an outsider, to report matters beyond my powers to resolve and have my word taken as truth. I fear I might have gotten too prolific, not just reacting to current crimes but bringing light to those that remained hidden and I happened to sense. Unfortunately, there were many evils that went unnoticed, it is not as if all murderers think of is murder. People have complex lives.


    That is one of my regrets yet it is not. It is complicated. If I did not want to be called an angel, it was bad enough I played savior but I also was ready to pass judgement. Considering my own limits, it is possible, however improbable that I made a false accusation. I tried to make sure but I am limited to surface thoughts and there are people that might be delusional or confused.


    When was it that I began to help people? It was some time after, by my terms, after the first quarter of my third year, before my birthday. By old world terms, I think I would have been recorded as thirteen years old.


    I managed to do this for about half of my years or rather old world two years.


    I must admit now that my motivation may have been selfish. I went about hoping to come across others in need. Heroes in legends simply happened to be when others needed them. In a way, I was wishing ill upon others.


    Still, I would like to think I did less harm than good. I remember perching with someone who was ready to jump off a ledge and use my sense to remind that person everything they actually enjoyed and flew them over to people that my sense told me truly cared about their well being.


    Dr. Levianas once discussed it with me when my rescues reached their conclusions and elshe said that there was nothing wrong with what I was doing but her mind was concerned. She noted that I could not feel pleasure through ordinary means so I was using people the way others might use drugs. However, she herself was like that. There was a joy in helping others find their joy, to save the life of someone who desperately wanted to live.


    She was a spiritual person. She believed that pleasure was not in itself wrong that such joy was how a greater force directed us to do what was right. There were people out there that found pleasure in hurting and controlling people like certain doctors that chose their careers for the sake of having the right to decide who lived and died. It gave her some relief that even if I lacked physical sensation, I could still "feel" right from wrong.


    In regards to me becoming an adolescent, it was Dr. Levanias that explained reproduction to me. Dr. Geisler was prepared to grant me a lecture but it was a sensitive matter his abrupt manner would likely only complicate. Also, we were both ladies, Dr. Geisler would never need to trouble himself with the burden of childbirth.


    The conversation we ladies had was more focused on the emotional experience as whether they meant to or not, the act itself was well explained in many of their texts. Our beasts of labor were bred as well as concocted so I had knowledge.


    What was interesting to me was my children, if I ever had any would not have wings. My wings were implanted onto me, it would be the same as expecting a child to inherit stitches if the sire had had a surgery. My sense might have been hereditary, we could not be sure if it was a mutation or a reaction to the operations I underwent. It remains a mystery whether any children born of me might be blessed with ordinary senses, be of the same disposition as myself, or miraculously have both. The worst case scenario would be that my lack of senses were to be passed on but my sense was left with only me. I did not and still do not want to risk such a possibility.


    Indeed, I was unique. I would come and go as this thing like no other before with no one to follow after. That thought made me lonely. I knew I had no living siblings or parents to share my life''s experience with, but I would have no one to relate to even in the future brought my thoughts to a dark place.


    I made myself all the more active as "the angel" after learning that.


    Those activities were challenged as a conflict regarding the layout of the borders between the two nations grew and skirmishes reignited. They were petty things compared to the battles of old but lives were being lost all the same.


    The doctors and I had to abandon the laboratory as fights grew ever closer to us. We tunneled our way around and the two doctors both bribed and negotiated their way back into territory that was indisputably that of their homeland while I literally flew over such obstacles.


    No longer being on neutral soil meant I lacked the freedom I used to. I had to be careful not to be seen or noticed while Dr. Levianas and Geisler pretended to retire into quiet lives.


    I stayed with Dr. Levianas in the countryside while Dr. Geisler moved into the capital to reconnect with the founder, Dr. Aquinas. They wished for their roles to be reversed, for Dr. Geisler to be the one away from people while Dr. Levianas dealt with the complexities of human interaction but they had me to consider. It might have been simpler if they had appealed for the Republic to accept them.


    Both nations had the resources to keep their people in leisure. The Republic let the people decide how to spend those resources while the Technocracy was methodical in their deployment. I passed over a few of the leaders, I have a grasp of their politics but discussing it would exhaust me the way those thoughts bored me then. What mattered to me were the people, not the systems.


    Dr. Geisler and Levanias did not return to their homeland due to political leanings but due to the fact it was their birthplace. Dr. Levanias agreed with at least still agreed with the moral character of her homeland and Geisler could thrive in either. His field would be less limited in foreign soil but he could situate himself among the elite of his home if he applied himself.


    For the cases of maybe someone noticing my silhouette or noted how Dr. Levianas had more fresh food than she alone could eat, I was stated to be her granddaughter. That was in case of emergencies though, there was little that could be said or done to hide my wings short of wearing a cloak.


    The deep irony was that I was closer to the capital but no longer able to visit there. Dr. Levianas has been lenient at the laboratory but we were now situated in land hostile to my existence. I struggled against my own nature and habits as I tried to live quietly hidden away.


    It did not stay that way for long as the local news noted my disappearance, and rumors that I had been indeed some spy that returned home now that the nations were at each other¡¯s throats again moved me to act.


    I snuck out to resume my former activities but the reactions I found were more mixed than when I was last there. Even those I was in the midst of rescuing regarded me with caution and suspicion until I began to fly away and they felt the certainty that it had been no trick. The authorities arrived armed and I even crossed paths with them but to their credit, they hesitated to regard me as hostile while I was busy saving a life.


    People were afraid of me, more so than when I first started, thinking I was some enemy scout and expecting some invasion to follow. I did not feel safe nor did they, so I returned home from what I claimed to be my final such outing much to Dr. Levianas¡¯ relief. I promised sincerely at the time that I would never return to the cities.


    I lost the joy of simply aiding those of the cities so rather than visit those places, I decided to revisit my old home. I thought memories of better days would make me feel better.


    Thankfully, I found the empty lab to be unoccupied by either military and I stayed there for some time.


    On my way back, I witnessed the signs of battle and made my way towards the maelstrom of violent thoughts.


    The two sides could easily be told apart aside from their joint lack of larger warbeasts. They had transportation creatures and a few warbeasts slightly larger than a human but no giants filled the land or air. If either side brought something as terrible as the beasts I told you about before in an act of unapologetic aggression, escalation would have been inevitable. This was a skirmish as the doctors would have insisted to distinguish it from the battles of the previous war. To me, it was a battle.


    The soldiers of the Technocracy were all recognizably human, uniform and organized, using similar armaments to each other. The warriors of the Republic were diverse in shape and size and some did not even carry weapons. Some were their own weapons.


    The soldiers of Technocracy were outnumbered but used the terrain to their advantage, using groundwork for cover. From what I could discern, they were a patrol that either purposefully intercepted or had the misfortune of encountering a raiding party.


    Both sides were filled with the fresh hate that came with loss. Both parties had suffered casualties and were determined to avenge their comrades.


    The defenders, the soldiers of the Technocracy had a dogged determination to them. The attackers were only thinking about breaking their enemy but the defenders had the occasional thought that if they failed to hold the position, their homeland would be in danger. They spared a thought about their families, their friends.


    I dropped from above and flew past the technoarchs, them thinking I was just another raider making a flanking attack. I do not remember exactly what I said. I think it might have been as simple as a demand to stop as with a wave of my hand, I brushed a raider¡¯s armcannon to the side just as it ejected its payload, making the shot go harmlessly to the side.


    I lingered there for a moment. However, the one I interrupted must have been important as the warbeasts¡¯ attention turned to me out of either protective instinct or recognizing me as a threat. A warbeast launched a barrage of spines at me. I raised my hands to cover my face out of reflex.


    I looked down and saw the deadly projectiles laid on the ground. The warbeast attacked again and I saw for myself how they stopped as if deflected by an invisible wall.


    Not as if. They most certainly were encountering a wall. It placed my hands forward and pushed. I willed the wall to grow wider and press on.


    The ground in front of me swelled as if being pushed by a trough, leaving a path gouged into the soil where my will passed through.


    The beasts opened their mouths and used other stranger parts to you to let out their individual cries of panic and rage as they encountered an unknown threat. The actual warriors were just as surprised but had the discipline to retreat.


    Suddenly, fear raced through my body. I scanned my surroundings and found a large projectile embedded in my left forearm. I imagine that if I could hear or feel, I would have noticed my heart racing.


    A combatant had not been caught in my push and flanked me from the side. The combatant was only recognizably human to me for his human thoughts. His body seemed a mix of reptile and ape, wide of shoulders and hips with thick arms that touched the ground for stability and a broad tail for balance. Mounted to his shoulders was a hive. Imagine all the holes of the comb were pointed in one direction and that would give you an idea of the weapon. If you have a concept of wasps, it would be like a wasp nest.


    He had been confused at the sight of something like me that should have been on his side using an unknown power but he overcame his trepidations with anger.


    The sight of me surviving the strike terrified him.


    The projectile itself appeared to be a solid streamlined beak with a sphere at the end. The sphere sprung to life, uncurling into a wriggling mass of tentacles with sharp "teeth" I guess I should say running along the edges. The mass detached itself from the beak revealing a large suckerlike mouth at the base with teeth rotating like a drill.


    It leapt onto my face. I do not know where exactly, my vision became nothing but darkness and biting tendrils. Wisdom''s fear or maybe even my own terror told me I was injured even before blood started to fill my vision.


    I grabbed onto it with both my hands and tried to crush it as fear turned to anger. If I threw it away, it might just come back to bite at me or others.


    That I could still see it moving behind the veil of blood told me it lived. My sense told me that it did not seem disturbed by my resistance, its every impulse dedicated to aggression and hunger.


    I would like to remind you that I have stronger muscles than any unchanged human but the creature did not mind. I myself sometimes forget that. I would like to think the thing was too nebulous for my hands to get around without it slipping through or maybe I had not even grabbed it, .


    I applied my will, pushing with it as if it was my hands. I formed two invisible walls directly in front of me and brought them together. The thing splattered as it popped like a squeezed berry. Its impulses went silent. I preferred that silence over the aggression and hunger.


    My visage was bloodied. From the descriptions I received from those around me, my entire face down to a little below my neck was covered in red and some of my skin may have been torn off to reveal muscle and bone.


    In the back of my mind, I could feel Wisdom''s anger nearby. A part of him had been hit as well when the beak went through.


    I wiped away at my eyes to clear away the ichor from my vision. Even with it gone, I still saw red. Wisdom''s primal rage urged me on but what I did next was entirely my choice, my will.


    I clinched my first and punched at him. A crater formed in his chest and he coughed blood. Maybe I did not intend to hit him so hard but it was no accident.


    I never hated someone so much before. He was a creature of his own making. His battles was what drove me back into hiding.


    His anger receded as his thoughts went cold. His world was darkening. He was asking why. He asked why he was dying. What hit him? He asked what I was. Was I some otherworldly monster?


    My world regained its color.


    He died dwelling in that moment, unable to process it all. Silence was a relief. A sliver of something cold ran up my back and maybe settled in my hands because my hands were shaking.


    The people I saved did not thank me. I expected, no, I wanted gratitude at that time but found none. What they felt was similar to the combatant I just killed, terror and confusion. To them, I seemed to be some berserk beast that could kill with a gesture.


    I grabbed my head as their thoughts reached me. I pulled to my sense to myself but there was something still crushing me. I flew away.


    As I left, I noticed Wisdom was still angry. I massaged the base of my neck and that seemed to sooth him.


    The fact the fear Wisdom fed me was starting to dissipate meant my wounds were already closing with little trouble.


    I wondered why those I supported, despised me. I dwelled on the fact that I was an enemy to everyone. I knew what they thought of me but they were ignorant of my intentions towards them. What I would trade for them to have my sense.


    I did not return to Dr. Levianas. My wound may have healed and I at least cleaned my face but my clothes were still bloodied and torn. The sight would worry her so I took a risk.


    I flew to the capital and sought out Dr. Geisler, using information from his letters to Dr. Levianas and using my own sense to confirm his presence.


    He was pleasantly surprised to see me before I stepped into the light, not giving much concern of whether I dodged the attention of security creatures. For a moment, shock ran through him but as soon as he assessed my wounds were closed, his mind returned to normal, his composure not even breaking. He trusted me enough that his first question was why I chose to visit rather than if I had been followed or why I was covered in blood. We greeted each other and I showed him my damaged garments.


    He said the closest thing to a snide remark I ever received from him, matter of factly reminding me that he weaved essence, not silk.


    He measured possible scenarios. From the damage tomy garments, he assumed, except for the inhumanly colored spatters, that the blood belonged to me.


    He got me a fresh set of clothes and sent my old ones to one of the capital''s many seam-creatures to be repaired after washing out my blood with chemicals.


    He estimated with the time for the delivery drones to reach the seam-creature, the seam-creature already having a workload, and the delivery back that I would need to wait a few hours. He chose a rather expensive manufacturer in hope there would be a smaller line as he guessed correctly I had already been away from Dr. Levianas for at least half of what you would consider a day.


    He asked what caused it such damage.


    I described the beak and rotating teeth to him. He recognized the design and asked for confirmation on certain details.


    He explained then that I had been struck with a creature meant to pierce through hardened bone and chitin. It would then eat the beast from within. From that, he was able to guess I had been on a battlefield.


    Such an organism should have went right through me. Instead, it stopped in my arm. He asked me if I used my will to slow its velocity, something I knew I did not. He concluded then that my body was evolving further.


    It would be best I phrased it exactly as it was spoken from his lips. He said, "It appears you never needed pain. Pain exists for an organism to learn from an experience. Your body adapts to any damage it has undergone so it becomes resistant overtime. Pain would be counterproductive to such a constitution. It is unfortunate though that the cost was you also not feeling anything.¡±


    My vision changed as my eyes widened at that revelation. He continued speaking.


    ¡°I imagine you might actually become resistant to aging,¡± he observed before he saw how I was frowning. ¡°Did I say something wrong?¡±


    He did not know. Angels did not age and were impervious to harm. To me, he was describing me as what so many used to think I was.


    I asked him to talk about anything else. He began to speak about his own ventures, his mind mentioned that he met with the founder of the project.


    I latched onto that detail and asked him where the founder was. He did not tell me but his mind let it slip.


    He changed the subject to me. He wanted to know how I was faring. I told him how I revisited the laboratory and involved myself in a skirmish. I did not tell him that I killed anyone. I said I tried to stop it but failed.


    His mind rushed with a torrent of questions that went by too fast for me to answer. He did not ask a single one.


    After I received my repaired clothes. Claiming I was returning to Dr. Levanias, I went out to locate the founder and easily found his mansion.


    I snuck in through his window. He noticed my entry and went to his drawer to retrieve his weapon without a thought with the force of habit only someone who had been on a battlefield would have.


    He called out for me, an intruder to identify myself. I sensed him calculating my location, aiming his weapon toward the entryway I would enter from.


    I called back to him. I told him my name and reminded him that we had met in my earliest years. He lowered his weapon but did not put it away as he turned the corner to confirm.


    I watched as his expression went from stern suspicion to a beaming smile at the sight of me.


    He had more weight than I remembered with more wrinkles and no gray hairs left on his scalp.


    He recognized me and invited me into the living room, nonchalantly putting his weapon back in his drawer.


    He said quite a number of greetings. He stated how nice it was to see me, asked how I was, he told me I looked beautiful, etc before finally asking why I came.


    I was not entirely sure myself. Why? Why was I there?


    He used the silence as an opportunity to sit in a chair and I sat across from him.


    "I want to know what I was made to be," I finally said.


    To that he answered, ¡°The world we live in lacks myth. Our ancient ancestors had tales of gods that shaped the mountains and filled the seas. We lack such mystery, we came here enlightened, our new home mundane. Our people needed a mythology all its own.¡±


    I said that did not explain anything. Before he elaborated, he asked me what I thought adulthood was. I gave him the commonly accepted definition that to be an adult meant one reached reproductive maturity.


    He respectfully shook his head to that and offered his own opinion. He believed adulthood was when the child reached the point when it could survive without its parents. Many reached the point where they could beget children but if their own sires perished, they would die too. He held to the idea that one could not reliably nurture the next generation if still tied to the same fate as the previous one.


    I personally agreed with that outlook but still reminded him there were organisms that were born orphans. To that he alluded that perhaps both of us were wrong and maybe adulthood was when both conditions were met.


    I let myself be distracted by that subject more than I intended to but eventually I remembered my original purpose and asked him what that had to do with my creation.


    He took a long pause as he sorted his thoughts, trying to decide where to begin. I knew everything he was to say before he said it, I actually knew more than what he said as he omitted many smaller details so that he was no longer dallying, realizing he delayed me enough.


    He explained that he believed species had childhood stages, an adult species would have freedom from the world that spawned it. Humanity in its final days reached maturity but at least we that reached Hedelm regressed back into an infantile state, our new parent being Hedelm.


    The first pioneers of this planet were like superhumans able to make massive leaps and bounds and lift boulders with their bare hands under their new world¡¯s lighter gravity but within the first generation, that changed. The new humans became more mundane born and raised within this low gravity as if it was their home so they became more fragile, similar enough in disposition humans of old but within the scale of Hedelm as did the livestock.


    So, he acknowledged that we were in a learning stage, and children learned lessons through tales. Our culture needed a mythos of its own, unbound to the single sun and moon and even the stars of the world before.


    Thus, he wanted to make something great, an ideal made flesh to inspire the culture to come.


    I informed him there were plenty of tall tales. As I flew over cities, every street was ripe with its own rumors. To that, he argued that he wanted a legend, something remembered and passed down. The cities might remember the slumlords and local heroes for a while but Hedelm would always remember the winged being that flew across its skies.


    So, I asked if that was what I was supposed to be, a legend. He replied that might have been true if he was the one that made me.


    But that original purpose had been abandoned. He gave up on his dream after a hundred failures. He noted how strange it was that he only needed to stay for nine more.


    It was Dr. Geisler and Dr. Levianas that brought me to life. I should have known what purpose they had in mind for me. His words perfectly matched with his intent.


    I felt a burden lift from me. Not immediately but I felt better. I knew Dr. Levianas and Geisler. Maybe there had been something more behind my creation but they raised me to be me. I had been born to be born.


    I returned to Dr. Levianas. The first thing I said to her was ¡°Thank you for letting me be born.¡±


    We did not converse as much as we should have. She noticed I was tired and made me go to bed.


    When I awoke, she had a meal ready for me. She reminded me what I told her earlier and asked what brought me to express such gratitude.


    Should I have started with how I killed a human? That I was rejected by everyone? That I might be an immortal monstrosity? Yet they still cared about me.


    I did tell her all that and more but later. I told her I met Dr. Aquinas and he explained how I was free from any role. I existed because I existed.


    For far too short of a time, I stayed with her as if I forgot how to fly. Dr. Levianas''s reaction to learning I killed someone was shock but not horror. She had seen war. It appalled her that I, someone she found to be so¡­ I do not know what the word would be. It appalled her that someone like me bloodied my hands.


    She did not even need me to explain. She did not even ask me to explain. She knew I was no manic killer, she knew there had to be a reason. However, she also knew I would have told her sooner if it had been an accident. I told her everything for my own sake.


    With her in that small house was the only place I belonged. Or maybe it was the only place I wanted to belong in anymore.


    I blame no one, not anymore. Both sides of the feud had their reasons justified or unjustified to hate me. If I wanted to, I could have flown to the other side of the world and see what other nations there were to choose from. Not many, I discovered later. My world really was small. Nations I could fly across in a matter of hours in old world time were the world''s two greatest superpowers.


    Ironically, the skirmishes began to happen less frequently as the special year approached. Both sides preferred to dedicate the time spent orbiting Enion to production.


    Or that was what we were told at the time. News of my interference in that skirmish never seemed to officially reach the public of the Technocracy or the Republic. According to Dr. Geisler, later, who heard from Dr. Aquinas skirmishes became less frequent as both sides communed with the other to discuss who it was that I served. The Technocracy had no records of me as their citizen but had to acknowledge the fact I had been involved with them before while the Republic could not reject the possibility I was one of its citizens gone rogue. Neither could fully explain my "invisible attacks." Unable to fully condemn the other, they started to suspect, oddly correctly, that a third party was involved.


    They needed to turn their attention away from each other so they could assess other possible threats. The beginning of the special year was sufficient excuse without alerting whatever imaginary nation I truly served.


    We could have returned to the laboratory then. We should have but¡­


    Dr. Levianas grew ill. I personally treated her, following her instructions and the results were not favorable. Her heart was failing and quickly. I think she had two attacks where her heart stopped beating before Dr. Geisler arrived. The third one happened in front of everyone.


    She needed a new heart. With Dr. Geisler''s and Levianas''s skills combined, they had several options. Securing a donor or replacing it with something superior were among the choices. The former would be simple enough. The surgery would need to be performed by an expert if either was the case. We did not have the time to grow an entirely new heart or let viral treatment take effect. However, that would require travelling to a surgeon or having the surgeon come to them. Dr. Levianas knew her own body. The next time would be her last and the time spent would work against her.


    She by far had saved more people than failed to save but she knew what it meant to die on a surgeon''s table. To have the height of hope shattered and last moments be spent asleep surrounded by strangers.


    She chose to stay at home. I read her thoughts and found them to be quite clear. She did not want to leave me alone but she accepted her time had come. She had spent her later years operating on me and my departed kin, she did not think she deserved to have her life extended by the same methods she transformed me.


    I confronted her about this as she sat in bed and she smiled. I asked why she was so against augmentations and implants to extend her own life when she did the same for others.


    Her answer was this, "I have no right to say this as one so involved with such a project but I prefer the way of the previous world. If a person wanted to fly like a bird, they would not sprout out wings. They would not change themselves but how they approached the matter. That is how we made flying crafts long ago, to have ideas transformed by people rather than people that shaped themselves to an idea."


    I stated that I liked my wings. That they represented freedom. That they allowed me to go anywhere I wanted. She smiled wider as she thought about all the places I could go.


    Dr. Levanas took my hand, held it as tightly as she could as if I might somehow feel her touch. Wisdom secreted some chemical fear into me to confirm how strong that final grasp was. When I dream, I think I felt it, a dull pressure around my palm.


    "I think this world is too small for you," she mused as her heart stopped.


    I let my hand slip out of hers and found I could not stand. I felt heavy. There was this weight in my chest that I should not have felt. I sat as Dr. Geisler rose.


    We did not resuscitate her. Geisler slowly pulled the cloth over her face then sat beside me. There we both wordless stayed, hollow together. His mind was utterly empty for once.


    I wanted to feel sorry for myself but right beside me was a man who lost his friend, his only friend, from his own quiet reasoning.


    We only had each other.


    I think in that moment he must have read my mind. He hugged me. At first I did not notice but I sensed the closeness of his mind and the scant comfort he felt in my presence, desperately holding onto the only person he had left. I am not sure which of us cried first.


    We held our own silent wake there. I had time to read Dr. Levianas''s thoughts and Dr. Geisler already knew so I said nothing as he called for and directed the undertaker. She wanted to be buried with her husband.


    Dr. Geisler attended the official funeral. I did not. Dr. Geisler passed invitations to the surviving members of the project and they held a reunion at my birthplace.


    I encountered Dr. Aquinus and many people I only ever heard of. Many were awed by word of my capabilities but I was not in the mood to perform any demonstrations.


    There, Dr. Geisler gave his true eulogy. I do not remember it well. After the beginning, I began to cry. It had an awkward start as Dr. Geisler reminded everyone of their joint venture before he¡­ I think he admitted he envied Dr. Levianas. He said she was someone who naturally cared. At some point among her long list of achievements, he stated her greatest accomplishment was raising me. Everyone there was content to create but she was the only one suited to nurture as was required for raising another.


    The others left but Dr. Geisler and I stayed. We moved back in. We left it half filled but it felt empty.


    A few days after we settled back in, I brought up what Dr. Levianas said to me at the end. She had forseen where I would be able to journey. If I truly would come to stop aging, I would soon enough be able to see all of Hedelm.


    It was difficult to explain to him my idea, in many ways. How was I supposed to tell him I was thinking about flying to another world without sounding like a fool or I was trying to abandon him?


    Of course I did not want to abandon him. Maybe I felt a kinship with him. If his blood was to be tested, he would at least be arrested in his own home soil and he was still too ordinary to fit among the people of the Republic. He was the only person left in the world I knew I could hope to understand me. However his isolation had always been a matter of his own choosing.


    I never once called him by father and never once did he attribute my existence to his design. I was born from the project, he just happened to have been the one that finally brought the experiments to fruition.


    I lied just now. Did I not? This exile of mine that brought me here was of my own choosing. Maybe I really was his offspring.


    He asked me for what purpose I wanted to leave. If I was leaving Hedelm because there was something I hated about it, I could change it. In half of one of our years, I had become a popular figure in a land that should have hated me. They feared me thanks to the revived hostilities but if I waited long enough, I could retake that place in their hearts. He even suggested that I could defect to the Republic. I had no true ties of citizenship or obligation to bind me.


    I am selfish. I know that. I am not the ideal being the project wanted but some part of me wanted to do this for Hedeldo anyone else out there.


    As far as Hedelm knew, they could have been the only survivors. They might have been alone or just beyond the stars, there could be countless others. I knew what it felt like to be surrounded yet feel alone so¡­ I decided to travel to another world so I could tell them that they were not alone.


    Do you want to know how our conversation went? Rather than forthrightly reject the idea, he assessed it step by step then asked questions.


    He inquired how I was supposed to survive the cold emptiness of the void if I could somehow leave the atmosphere.


    I had no answer. That was why I needed to consult him. He skipped ahead to the hypothetical that we discovered I could go without air, food, and warmth. I still be adrift in the emptiness. My wings would have no air to fly upon.


    That I already considered. I could steer and propel myself with my will. He was surprised by my ready answer and assumed I already thought about how I was supposed to locate a place to steer myself towards.


    Indeed, I did. I could use my sense to notice other life.


    Dr. Geisler acknowledged already put some thought into it. He assessed I only needed him for the task of ensuring I could survive.


    He was very clear that he would not assist me in committing suicide. So, he promised to help me in every way he could. But he needed me to promise something.


    I already detected the request nestled in his head. I still asked what it was he needed me to promise.


    His request was simple. If our venture was deemed impossible, I had to give up. I then asked if he meant for it to be deemed impossible by him or by me.


    He confirmed that he meant me. It had to be me. I would decide but he would not allow me to risk my life for what I know to be nothing.


    What I hated most besides leaving Dr. Geisler was that before the tests could even begin, I had to have Wisdom removed. Wisdom had quite literally become a part of me. Even if he had been forcefully removed, he could regenerate from any piece that remained.


    No, Wisdom had to be lured out in his entirety in a very long process. That was if we wanted Wisdom to live, which I insisted. The exit point was the nape of my neck as the parasite detached from my nervous system and crawled into a storage tank filled with fluids. The open air caused him pain and I felt his distress in place of the agony the procedure would have forced any other soul to endure.


    It disturbed me that Wisdom''s initial reaction to essentially being moved into an aquarium was fear then discontent. I had been so used to him being at least satisfied that his unhappiness felt alien to me.


    Wisdom was quite large after having time to mature. The parasite looked like a scale outline of myself or maybe a winged stick figure covered in branching filaments. Outside of me, Wisdom rolled into a fibrous worm-shape when in motion while coiling into a condensed ball when at rest.


    Wisdom''s mood bettered once Dr. Geisler mixed nutrients directly into the solution he swam in. He actually became happy after being able to eat freely and move about at one''s own power.


    Losing Wisdom''s presence troubled me. I do not know if this would be the same but I know people who can hear and listen to their own heartbeats. I imagine it would be the same as no longer being able to hear or smell an everpresent part of my life, like no longer being able to hear your own heartbeat or breathing.


    I asked Dr. Geisler what he intended to do with Wisdom. He answered truthfully that he would keep the worm as for lack of a better word, a pet. The parasite would be incompatible with anyone other than me and supposedly had limited intelligence. A comparison was made to him being somewhere near a domesticated fish in learning capacity. Of course, that was based on the original organism that served as Wisdom''s template.


    Wisdom would have interfered with the trials. I endured environments that should have killed or driven mad any other. The one that suffered the most was Dr. Geisler who watched the entire time, ready to cut the experience short if it appeared I would die.


    The trials were simple, I would be exposed to a stimulus each, I would not say our days but, your idea of a day and that stimulus would grow more extreme each time. I was slowly deprived of oxygen, starved, for lack of a better word beaten, incinerated, and frozen until nothing seemed to be able to hurt me at all. It was difficult to find a means to acclimate me to heavier gravity. As I am now, I can survive off the rays of distant stars.


    While I underwent the trials, Dr. Geisler calculated the means for me to make my escape from the bounds of gravity. It took him longer than normal to arrive at a conclusion but his answer was quite simple. I would need to leave in the middle of a special year, when Hedelm was furthest from the triplet stars.


    As for how I would break through the atmosphere, my will gave little regard to gravity. I would direct myself towards (fourth star) and make an orbit around it to gain momentum before breaking free at a pace exceeding that of Hedelm''s own journey across the stars.


    It was already the early stages of the special year when he finished his calculation. I would be physically ready by then but I suggested staying through another cycle for his sake. I thought maybe I might stay until the day he joined Dr. Levianas.


    If he was correct that I might one day cease to age, we had many years left together until his viral treatments no longer proved adequate or he encountered an accident.


    Dr. Geisler rejected that idea. If I intended to stay, it could not be for him. If I wanted what was best for him, he wanted to be alive to see me leave, to know I safely began my journey.


    I did not want to leave him alone. His comparison to me leaving as asuicidae attempt was a symptom of the emptiness he himself wrestled with. He had no plans, it was not as though he was plotting his demise for after I left but I could not guess what direction my absence would lead him.


    Near the end, he was drafting schematics for mechanisms capable of leaving the planet. With our technology the way it was, he could not think of a creature capable of producing enough combustion to leave the atmosphere by its own power, so he recommended the construction of towers reaching into space. After that, the space voyagers would need to be able to survive in a sealed ecosystem. The passengers would either need to live there and maintain a population for generations or be put into hibernation. The difficult part would be designing a creature capable of protecting its charges from the impact of reaching a new world.


    This was a strange subject to interest him. He only seemed to care about such principles when it came to me making my escape.


    I discovered his reasons through my usual means but I still respected him enough to ask why he was making such designs. His answer was simple, he wanted people to be able to follow me so he would not have to worry about me being alone.


    I think that reassured me. Even if I failed to find another colonized world, I could hope to land somewhere and have someone from my own world one day discover me.


    Oh do not worry, I traveled here faster than other feasible means from my world. You do not need to fear an invasion from my home within your lifetime. Even if by some cruel working of fate, they appeared here tomorrow with war in mind, I think I already revealed at least some of their weaknesses and you currently are in many ways more advanced than the world I remember. Our greatest strength had always been flesh and stone.


    Even now, I have faith in my own people. They may have fought each other but even the warmongers among them would realize that with such slow travel, any world they come across would have had years to advance themselves while they drifted through the emptiness. I imagine they really would come in peace. If they chose otherwise, those that chose to retain their human form would not fare well in simple combat once they touched the ground after spending so long unchained by gravity.


    I do imagine them doing as their ancestors did. Once Hedelm was entirely covered with life, they would send vessels to worlds beyond. By then they would hopefully be adults as Dr. Aquinas put it. If they do come here in the distant future and I am for some reason gone, please try to be welcoming, it is lonely in the dark. Now that I think about it, a friendly face would be appreciated after such travel.


    As much as I speak of my people resorting to violence, there is more to Hedelm¡¯s history than violence. Alliances at least once existed. I hopefully just happened to be born in an era of retired warriors. I saw my people¡¯s soul, I would like to think the ceasefire was the beginning of a new norm.


    As the day of my departure drew near, we both left from the laboratory. Me, to see the world one last time and Dr. Geisler to secure favors so he would have an observatory in the capital reserved. We would meet at the observatory in the dark that only a night of a special year afforded us.


    We promised to both go back. Me to feed Wisdom while he was busy and him to do the same when all was done. Leaving him responsible for Wisdom seemed to leave me feeling more secure that he had something he knew he needed to do once I was gone.


    I no longer needed to sleep by the time I made my final flight. I can still sleep, I just do not need to anymore. If I could not, I imagine I would have gone mad. But it is also good that I no longer need to. It would not surprise me if I can detect every human on this planet. It is difficult to dream for myself when I have so many minds in contact with my own.


    I am out of practice with limiting my sense¡¯s range and I never did fully master controlling it while I slept. I simply learned to ignore the way I imagine you learned to stop listening rather than cut off your own ears if there was too much noise nearby. My sense¡¯s further range is also giving me a bit of difficulty being certain that I am receiving only your thoughts when I talk so I thank you for speaking when you do choose to speak.


    It only would have required me half of one of my days or three days by the count of the old world to fly around the world. However, I required two as I tried to appreciate the many minds I passed over, gauged their reactions to me, captured glimpses of their hopes and dreams, and assessed their everyday life.


    I took to the skies and many below called out to me as an angel. I had to tell the less advanced groups hidden in the distant corners of the world that I came across not to worship me but that only convinced them all the more that I was an angel.


    How frustrating it was to punctuate my final interaction with the world with a misunderstanding. One of the things the people noticed was how my cheeks went flush with what they did not seem to know was irritation.


    After I returned to the laboratory, I said my farewells to Wisdom. Wisdom grew larger without my flesh to contain the parasite.


    I pressed my hand to the side of the tank.


    "Goodbye," I said.


    Wisdom unfurled and mimicked my position like an enlarged mirror image, our "hands" meeting.


    Goodbye, I felt Wisdom say to me.


    Of course, I was surprised by this. I probably let my mouth go slack before adjusting it into a smile. I already said what I needed to, if I lingered I might have missed my appointment.


    I found Dr. Geisler asleep on a leather seat. In the seat beside him sat Dr. Levianas''s medical supplies, the same kit used to treat me from when I so ungracefully fell from the sky.


    His sleeping mind was slow. Relishing memories for every detail.


    I went through the supplies. Something somewhat familiar to me yet did not belong there caught my attention, a second syringe. The design was different from the ones Dr. Levianas used. It was much larger, meant for measuring and adjusting chemical input. There was no blood to be seen, then again there would not be.


    Thinking the worst, I shook him awake, by the shoulder. His opening eyes caught a glimpse of the object in my hand and I understood what he did as his waking mind slowly began to regain its usual pace.


    Dr. Geisler did it before I arrived because he knew he could not hide it from me. He knew if I had an idea what he had planned, I might try to stop him or refuse to fly, knowing he would do it the moment I was beyond his sight.


    He took a syringe, loaded it with the cleanser that I might have mentioned was once meant for me and injected it in his neck.


    It would not kill him, nor did it necessarily harm him. He had been keeping himself young through viral treatments. The injection set his time back in motion. It did not immediately revert him, he did not magically age but he was ordinary again.


    He scolded me when I accused him of planning to kill himself. Saying that if his goal was to end his life, he would not need to become ordinary.


    His reasoning was confusing, especially with how he so quickly disassembled everything, leaving his own mortality as hardly a footnote. He had plenty of things he wanted to do but he needed them done swiftly. An ordinary life gave him a time limit, a sense of urgency to drive him to make something of his own choice and design.


    Of course, he only disclosed to me that he did not have any plans of suicide. His thoughts confirmed his words. By his logic, he could always start his viral treatments anew.


    I remember frowning as I nodded in acknowledgement then forced myself to smile as we said our goodbyes.


    He tried to spare me lectures. I was the one that could fly, I understood certain matters based on unique experience. Still, he worried about me, reminding me that I needed to slow myself before reentry the way one would remind a child to slow one¡¯s steed when nearing the edge of a cliff.


    Even if I can seemingly defy gravity with my will, I am not a god. I could not bring myself to halt at such velocities by will alone even if I wanted to. If I somehow could bring myself to a complete stop, it would be no better than letting myself crash into a wall. The best I could hope for was slowing my descent. If I was to encounter a potential world, I would need to revolve around it as a new satellite until I reached a manageable pace.


    My personal objective was to fly towards the ground at an angle like a bird rather than plummet like a stone. I find it less difficult to glide down when I land, I do not need to use my will at all for such maneuvers, under normal circumstances but as you might have noticed reentering from the void of space is far from normal for me.


    We hugged and I found myself struggling to move as I let him go yet he did not do the same for me. I returned the gesture as if i never tried to part, struggling against my own strength not to break him as I tried to hold him tightly as I could. It was not until his mind told me that my embrace hurt that I loosened my grip.


    I pray he had a long and happy life. It is difficult to imagine a future that might have satisfied him.


    We finally let each other go. He remained standing as motioned for me to fly free.


    I spread my wings and went straight up. I felt Dr. Geasler and other souls in the city that happened to catch sight of me watching in awe.


    I went beyond the clouds and reached out with my sense further than I ever had before and focused on that lone man (in the observatory) shouting his goodbyes to me as if his words could reach me.


    I felt his familiar certainty and confidence but this time it was warm, light as if lifting me up, encouraging me, telling me over and over that I was almost there. I feared such an outburst might have been too much to his all too often calm heart.


    Frost formed on the edge of my vision as I approached the endless black sky. My body went stiff, I had to guide myself through will alone as I forced my eyes to stay open a little longer. As I made it beyond, I saw the sun to my side even as the world beneath me was still in shadow.


    As I went further, I saw in the distance behind me the three lights of Los, Ahania, and Vala. There was so much light yet everything was so dark. It was like a pure black sheet with holes where colors could be spied through.


    I have mentioned before how Hedelm was small. If only you had the chance to see how tiny everything is when looking in from the great emptiness. It really should not be called something so bleak as emptiness or the void. All around you, you can see the tiny pinpricks of light from distant galaxies like a boundless night sky.


    I relied so much on my sight and sense. Everything was set out before me to be seen yet¡­ There was something missing. It was only my thoughts that were with me, no Dr. Geisler, not even Wisdom. It was thent that I realized I was utterly alone.


    I closed my eyes. I felt cold, then I felt no more. The stars remained silent, at least for me.