An Explanation as to Why I am Here2003 short story by Jonathan Hicks Thirty-seven
years after Episode IV – A New Hope Do you think me a fool? Do you think that I am a fool to continue in this way? Not to live but to simply exist? To allow breath to flood my lungs and my blood to stream like liquid fire through my veins. To know that I will never know the peace of dreaming, that I will never escape the realities of this twisted galaxy for those fleeting moments as my eyes close and my mind drifts to the other side... Such things are not to be considered by me. Such things are left to those whose minds are geared towards such fancies; philosophers, poets, lovers. They can sit for hours and postulate on what it means to believe oneself an immortal. Living day after day whilst loved ones and life grow old and die, with only the option of suicide or euthanasia to ease the apparent 'pain' a person who lives forever would experience. I have contemplated these things, these reasons for my continuation in this life, but I have never found a reasonable answer. Perhaps I have given up rationalising my existence and have elected to simply be. Even mortals give up on or accept problems within their short lives. Immortals have the luxury of having the time to solve them. I have had to make sacrifices to continue my existence. First my sanity, which I never truly regained, then my heart, which only serves me by pumping blood and has no emotional content. Then my soul, which cannot exist without the heart. Of course, these are metaphorical considerations. Physically, I am fit and strong, and my mind is sharp and focused. The years have been kind to me. I am not going to lay out reasons at this time. All you need to know right now is that I do have some kind of purpose. I am not here to guide any races of the galaxy, or act as a living history of the place. I am not here to represent those forces that exist just beyond the corners of the eyes of you, you who sleep and dream. At this time I am trying to make up for my greatest mistake. The mistake that made me what I am. The mistake that has infected your fears and made your nightmares what they are. I am the creator of the experiments that birthed the Coryarthanax. Proof of existence is not a requirement, or even the purpose of this transcript; even if I laid the body of such a creature before you, before your scientists, before your leaders, there will no doubt be a small voice at the back of your head screaming explanation. Trying to allay your fears of the meaning of such a thing's existence. There are those that believe, that try to prove the reality of those netherworlds you try to shun or ignore, but what are they to you? Idiots, crackpots, losers. There are many words from many generations to describe such people. There was a time when these things were believed and people died to once again allay the fears of the masses. Burnings have now been replaced by ignorance. Within that ignorance the darkness has gathered strength. Built its forces, breathed deeply of the free air, knowing they are not under threat from you or the galaxy as it is today. Believers are easily dispatched; they are shunned by civilisation only to be consumed by the darkness. Today, the average Coryarthanax has it easy. They fight each other far too much to be a threat, so you have never had to worry about huge organised armies of these things marching into your cities, burning your houses and consuming your flesh. Vidshows show you these things and you smile as the hero cuts down the evil forces with a glint of the teeth and the cheering of the crowds. Such things have happened, but the aftermath leaves little to smile about. There are no cheers for these heroes of the shadows, their only reward being blood on their hands and the knowledge that they have been given a little longer to live. So, why do I hunt Coryarthanax in particular? If you allowed into existence a child who grew to be a murderer, a thief, a heartless being that considered the existence of others to be for their callous designs, would you not wish to correct that problem? Wouldn't you try, even if in some strange way it caused you grief, to stop them? Killers in the 'real' world are placed into cells or executed. Their families hope to their Gods that they change or there is another reason for their actions, usually blaming society or the victim so that they don't have to think of the possibility that their children or siblings are twisted in some way and that they were responsible for their being. Coryarthanax cannot be caged. They cannot be changed. They can only be killed. Believe the stories of moonlight and life-stealing bites. Forget the movies you have seen, the datapads you have read, the tales you have been told. Coryarthanax are not simple creatures, ravenous beasts simply surviving. There are some, the ones I hunt, who are sentient, aware of their existence. These are the ones who have survived the years of the unwanted infection of their souls and have come to accept their existence and use it for their own ends. These, in turn, give birth to Coryarthanax who grow as total thinking beasts. I call them the Enlightened. Now to begin. This story is not easy for me to tell, as you must understand I am one who has walked my way in shadows and do not enjoy this illumination of my life. I do not intend to tell you the story of my existence - that would require far too many volumes to tell. I simply intend to inform you how close you came to being forced to accept the reality of these creatures that I speak of, how close you came to having your eyes opened and your vision widened. Although it will take a lot of imagination to accept the words that follow it would have taken huge resources of faith to accept what may have happened so be thankful that all you have to deal with is words. It began with a meeting. A private meeting between me and a scientist I know and have worked with for years called Professor Jenner `Doc’ Harrys. He is a man of a fine Chancai university who has access to a myriad of data books and tomes that detail the darker history of his work. When I first met him he was a young, energetic man with a beautiful wife and daughter. His wife has since passed on and he has taken her death hard; I think she was his keystone, as he found the reality of the dark side of the galaxy hard to deal with at first. He found solace in her embrace. Now he was old and haggard, with sagging jowls and bloodshot eyes. I know he had had a heart attack recently but he has a strong will, fading now without his wife to stroke his hair and tell him that there were no such things as monsters. His daughter, who also knows of my true history, helps him in his library but she did not accompany him. She has a family of her own, now, and Harrys tries to keep her as far away from the shadows as possible. We met under a speeder bridge just outside Chancai, by the lake. I found him watching the skiffs bob in the water as the wind picked up; a storm was threatening and the air smelled of the fresh rain that was still falling. It was dark and smelled of rot under the bridge, the evening air chill. I was concerned for his health. He hacked out a cough as I approached and wiped his mouth with a white cloth. When he moved it away from his mouth I could see it flecked with blood but I did not draw attention to it. Harrys and I had set up a contact system, using the private message page of the Chancai Express. I always made sure Harrys knew I was on Zelon whenever I passed through, so he placed the message, I had seen it and called him immediately. Harrys is well read on Coryarthanax, being one of the co-creators of the original experiments, and is one of my sources. He is more than willing to help me, as he is a believer who considers positive action is the way to keep the shadows at bay. His life had been turned upside-down during the battle that deposed Glann Cipple on Amagad many years ago; he escaped the secret laboratory where the Coryarthanax were bred and he has been paying for it ever since. "Hello, friend," Harrys said. His voice gurgled and he cleared it noisily. The damp air wasn't agreeing with him and I vocally wondered as to why he wished to meet me here. "Too many ears and eyes in that damned city, and what I've got here is too sensitive. I can't stay long." I agreed. Harrys appeared nervous and as he spoke he looked about him, turning his head this way and that. I inquired to his disposition. "I've been working on some of the indecipherable text in that last partial copy of the Coryarthanax Datapads you got for me from Bacco's burnt house on Trefnare." Whilst I had been hunting an Enlightened group on Trefnare I had located the burnt-out home of one of the scientists who had worked on the Galletti Combine Project. After despatching looters I had found the tome and returned it here. Although the first half of the book was in a language Harrys could decipher, the latter half was of a swirling text I thought I had seen before. "It's not writing," Harrys said, which surprised me somewhat. I had never imagined it could be anything else. "When you hold the flimsies together and hold it up to light, the lines join together to make a picture. I came across it quite by accident; actually, as I was doing copies that I could write my notes over. The original pages are quite thick and browned with age so I never really saw it before." Intriguing. So, the question was, what was the picture? Harrys pulled a plastic wallet from his inside coat pocket and handed it to me. Inside the plastic sheet was a normal sheet of flimsy with what appeared to be a black and white rendition of what he had discovered in the book. A circle of four humanoid figures appeared to be lying down, drawn in a style I had often seen in scriptures from long ago, holding onto the next figures feet and in turn having their feet held by the creature behind them. Their heads were not well detailed and had been increased in size by the artist so that their nature could be ascertained. They all had the naked bodies of human men. It was the head in the very centre that caught my attention. If the drawing was to scale, which I very much doubted, then the beast was huge, standing at least three times the height of the beings surrounding it. It was definitely a Coryarthanax but it had eyes, wide and dark but that detail I attributed to the starkness of the image. Even so, its presence on the picture was foreboding. "Please don't tell me you don't know what it means," Harrys said, ending his question with another cough. But I honestly did not. I wondered if this had been done in any of the other tomes I had given to Harrys but he answered my unspoken question. "The other books have no drawings like this in them. My daughter checked before..." His pause made me look up at his face and I saw that they were red-rimmed and slightly moist. I did not question his sudden show of emotion and waited patiently. "They knew. They knew I had the books. They came to the library, and they killed her." But did they get the books? "Yes, they did. This is the only copy I have left and it is the most important part, I think." They took the books. I cursed loudly and slammed my hand into the moss-covered wall of the bridge. The tomes were my only link to the Coryarthanax, my only source of information about the comings and goings of the demons and devils that haunted the galaxy. I had never considered making copies of them, mainly due to the fact that the more copies there were the more chance there was that the knowledge contained would fall into the wrong reading room. Not only did the books contain history and information, they also contained notes on their comings and goings, rituals and mutations. Harrys was obviously angry with me at this moment. He had told me of his wife’s murder and I had been concerned with only the books. What could I do for his wife’s corpse? Still, he was mortal and his heart was still vulnerable, so I allowed him his grief. How did the Enlightened know that he had the books, I wondered. "They seemed to home in on them," Harrys snapped. "As if it was giving off a signal they could track." If the book was a key tome then it was possible that, upon opening it, Harrys may have inadvertently sent out a hidden signal that would make locating it easy for those who knew how to search for it. But how did Harrys know they had 'homed' in on the tomes? "I was in the library with her," he said, his speech cracking with the emotion. "I was in the data room when they burst in" He stopped and held the cloth to his mouth and let a sob burst forth. I watched and waited for him to finish his explanation. "They demanded to know where the books were but she remained silent. So they killed her. As I hid. As I watched." Another sob cut through his words. He just stood there and watched? "What could I do?" he wailed. "Look at me? How could I fight off three?" It was true. He was hardly fit enough to fight the beasts and I regretted my question. It was a stupid notion to think he may have been capable of defeating one. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry they took the tomes. I should have been more careful and tested the book for traps but I'm getting a little slow minded in my old age. It was straight after she was killed I left a message for you." It was right of him to contact me. Now that they had the tomes they could complete their collection of books and, more importantly, probably decipher the meaning of the hidden picture. That is, if they knew what to look for. "She told them nothing. But if they considered the tome important enough to come out of hiding for then they will no doubt attempt to find out the secrets of the book." Then I would have to find the book and retrieve it. "How? They are Enlightened, they could be on the other side of the Setnin Sector by now." True, but I would have to try, at the very least. If there were a hidden meaning to the picture then I would have to discover it before they did. Anything that aided the Enlightened was not acceptable. But what was this drawing? And why did this Coryarthanax appear to have eyes? It is peculiar, but I had forgotten how to hate. I had already lost compassion, love, jealousy and paranoia. Each one and more had slipped away from me over the years. I did not fully understand why although I do suspect it is because, as a near immortal, I have the luxury of having the time to solve these problems that mortals must deal with in their short existence. They understand they have a limited time on this earth and so seek all those things they think they will need to complete their lives. Security, love, a sense of worth. Unfortunately, these feelings are combated by the opposite emotions when something threatens to spoil or remove what they have worked hard to attain. Myself, I simply wait for the offending opposite to fade, or die. In the most extreme cases I remove the opposite myself. And, since my own emotions are no longer threatened by these things mortals fear, they have fallen into disuse. What use do I have for love? There are no others like me and I will only watch my prospective partner wither and die before my eyes. Compassion? What use is that to me? I have seen what mortals do to one another and their actions only beget another generation who will follow their example. Jealousy? What greater gift could anyone possess than immortality? I had no need for these encumbering feelings for centuries. I existed, I did not live. The body that lay at my feet was covered in blood, some mine but mostly its own. I had tried to keep the combat quick and clean but it had been fast; the vibro shiv it had produced was short and sharp, and it wielded it professionally. I had not had time to discover it's age, or to inquire as to what it was doing here, on Zelon. Not that I did not already know the answers to these questions. It had obviously come looking for me. My enemies were being pro-active in trying to get to me before I got to them and this concerned me. This meant either two things; they had, by chance, tracked me here or they knew my ally was here, also, and had waited for my inevitable return to see him. As I had entered a small town just outside Chancai I had heard the screaming. The locals most probably assumed it was a lost or escaped pet (indeed, what else could they think it was?) and ignored it. But I had heard form in that howl. Unspoken words that I understood. It was a signal, calling others to the area, telling others that I was here. I tracked the constant howling to the bridge, wishing to go on the offensive instead of waiting for them to organise themselves and strike. I came upon the Coryarthanax and made the mistake of approaching upwind as there was no other path to get under the bridge. It had attacked me with no challenge, conversation or explanation. Enlightened do not throw away their lives so casually. What was it hiding? Was The picture of the Coryarthanax with the eyes a new evolutionary threat? Baz, his huge Coryarthanax body shape squeezed tightly into the cockpit of the One Truth, looked over at his friend Baz in the next seat with his huge, almost crystalline eyes. “Squiz, do you sometimes think you’re meant for something greater in this galaxy? That you’re more important than you know?” Squiz smiled. “Don’t get delusions of grandeur, lanky.” An Explanation as to Why I am Here2003 short story by Jonathan Hicks Thirty-seven
years after Episode IV – A New Hope Histories – A story detailing the
evolutionary surges taken by the genetically created Coryarthanax,
and the possibility of a war between the original clans and the newer,
sentient and intelligent ones. Giving
a large slice of history about their creation, this Jonathan Hicks tale is key in the development of the Baz character, a Coryarthanax capable of speech,
thought and so much more. And also
lays threads about the involvement of Coryarthanax DNA in the creation of the
Goah Galletti clone.
Cast of
Characters Professor
Jenner `Doc’ Harrys Squiz Baz |