The rain fell against the window in giant drops and he gazed out patiently. The trees outside shivered and beat in the wind. Seagulls caught in the storm were rushing around confusedly in the air as the ocean heaved back and forth against the beach’s sand. The house in which he and his parents lived groaned in the heaving gusts.”Xak come downstairs and watch this.” His mother’s melodic voice filtered through his door from down the hallway and stairs.

“In a moment.” Xak touched the widow and pushed away, standing up. His room, almost all gray, looked dead in the gloomy rain shrouded light of the window.

Xak Bushnell stood exactly at six feet and weighed almost exclusively a hundred and seventy pounds. His dark black hair fell over his emotional blue eyes. He opened his door and followed the maroon and brown-carpeted floor to the stairs and he descended into the first floor hallway.

It was easy to find your way around houses since almost all were the same shape, style, and size. The living room sat openly to the left of the front door with a closet to its side. The kitchen and dinning rooms were together on the right side of the hall. His parent’s room was near the end of the stairs across the hall from the first floor restroom. Xak’s room was up the stairs at the end of the hall. To the left of his door another closet stood closed directly across from the door to the recreation room. Xak’s room led to his personal second story bathroom.

The virtual projection setup sat plainly along the far wall in his living room with both his parents sitting inside it’s boarders. Outside the v- setup Xak could only see faint smoke looking movements from the holographic projector. He could hear the light hum of the setup battling with the rain’s gentle rush. He was glad that it was raining today. The rain hurt, and hurt meant he was alive.

He entered the v-setup and sat down. His parents only called upon him like this when something important was happening on the news.

The war for earth had begun not long ago, and when it had peace became only another word, another dream, another myth. 2886 sat on the horizon with promises of and end to the fifth world war.

“Today the plan to establish the United World Government or U.W.G. went into effect. Several protestors in Berlin were killed when a riot broke loose across the streets. It is estimated that at least forty-seven were killed and recorded.” The reporter’s facial expression never seemed to change from the same board lifeless one and he unraveled the story.

Both of Xak’s parents were looking around the crowed that had settled over them. People began to walk through him and his parents. The hologram was a recording of the day’s event sent from the news station to their home. Xak hated these, you never had the choice of where to go, it was all on one track. These days few movies came unequipped with full area access and even less without interaction selection.

Suddenly the crowd began pushing and shoving. The hologram began to bounce up and down as it rushed across the street. People were being trampled and crushed under confused feet. Xak heard gunshots over the yelling and the crowd grew fiercer. He could occasionally see his parents through the people when a small occasional gap would form. His mother’s jaw was slack. Apparently someone had been shot in front of her. His father sat back with his legs crossed and his arms over the back of the chair.

The hologram lifted and the reporter’s face returned to the wall. His mother immediately composed herself. “A disastrous event yes. But thankfully crowd control was able to stop the fighting and save many more from being killed.”

“Interesting.” Xak stood up to leave and return to his room.

“Wait Xak, that’s not what I called you for. Watch.” His mother turned back to the reporter.

“It was made public after this incident that the forming U.W.G. will be resorting to a new means of protection by robotic equipment piloted by soldiers. The robotic suits will be known as Guardians.” Xak’s jaw dropped when the schematics provided by the government came up. “Several companies are working together to assemble a prototype for testing.”

“See?” His father’s face was bright.

“I don’t believe it.” Xak stared at his father, General Marvin Bushnell of the American-British Army.

“I told you the plans were far beyond.”

“I.” Xak sat upright and placed his hands in his lap.

“I didn’t even find out until earlier.” His father’s expression was truly one of proud ness. This was something Xak could seldom provide.

“Is that it?” Xak was uncomfortable.

“Well I had to sign for you because you’re only sixteen and all, but if the prototype is a success, which it should be, the government will give you full credit and compensation.” His father stood up.

“But the plans are incomplete.” Xak’s voice wavered.

“Don’t worry about that, they’ve got scientists working on that.” He began to walk out.

“No one has been able to create a successful two legged robot of that measure.”

“That is why they have scientists son.”

“If the equilibrium isn’t right and they build the Guardian to my specifications it will crush itself coming off the dock. It’s not made for this gravity, not in it’s current phase.”

“They will figure it out.” With that his father stepped out of the v- setup’s barrier.

“Mom…” Xak felt extremely nervous.

“Don’t worry you’ve done your part. Now you’ll be able to become a military robotics technician.” Sharon Bushnell switched through the channels to a very tasteless show and Xak left immediately.

“…no he didn’t understand.” Xak was facing his private video phone.

“Well how’s the black-core theory coming?” Kava Pierson was about Xak’s height and weighed maybe twenty pounds more. He had light red hair and dark green eyes.

“I don’t know. I’ve been thinking mirrors, but if I were to do it myself the cursed thing might supernova. And that’s from an experimental project the size of a marble. It would be like lighting a small nuclear bomb off in my house.” Xak leaned back.

“So that’s out of the question.” Kava had been Xak’s best friend since before the military academy in Watt, New York.

Xak was the top student in his class at Watt Military Academy. He was one more year from graduating, beside the fact that he was a year ahead in school. This often made his older classmates jealous. He slightly resented his comprehension of science and mathematics.

“Xak?” Kava seemed concerned.

“What?” Xak looked around.

“Lost you for a minute.”

“Sorry, I’ve gotta go. I’ll see you tomorrow alright.”

“Alright.” Kava disconnected the communication.

Most of his life Xak had wanted to be a robotics scientist and this seemed to be the perfect opportunity. But if he couldn’t come up with the equilibrium soon enough he feared that he might be ruined.

Xak hadn’t noticed when night grasped the world. However the rain had not left with the sun. It was still as wet as ever. He undressed down to his boxers and climbed under his blankets.

His day had mostly consisted of reading and searching the internet for useless information. None the less he was tired. He fell asleep within minutes and slept deeply in his warm bed.

Xak enjoyed listening to music from the New Millennium. These days most of the music sounded the same or consisted of remade and remixed songs which had been remade and remixed ten times before, there was very little originality in the world. He was an avid fan of hard rock and metal. There was a small group at the academy who worshiped the old gothic ways and practiced it to the school’s formality requirements. Seldom would he talk to them, but on occasion when he would they’d be surprised that a general’s son and top student would be so learned in the area. Whenever asked about what he was listening too he’d reply with nonsense or misspelled names of the groups long passed.

Today the previous news was replaced with the scientific experiment known as the Genesis Program. At the moment few breakthroughs had occurred but it was expected that within fifty years the study would be complete and the project would take over.

The Genesis Program was to be used to create everyone almost literally equal with certain growth factors to make them physically and mentally advanced. All in the process would look almost identical thus the name of the Genesis Program. They were too look like the beginners, Adam and Eve. Xak was waiting for the inevitable riots and wars ever the one subject. Within a month or so the Genesis Program would poke it’s head into the news every few months during the next fifty set years until it becomes the major topic again. That is if the human race survived long enough.

“Alright students, today we will address the cryogenics subject.” Mr. Nail, Xak’s first period teacher gazed over the class. “Now who can tell me when the first successful cryogen was frozen?”

Xak raised his hand since no others did, this was a rare occurrence for Xak but he loved the cryogenics issue.

“Yes mister Bushnell.” The teacher crossed his arms.

“Well,” Xak stood up. “In the year two thousand and five the first successful cryogen, a cat by the name Mel, for reasons you wouldn’t understand, was frozen in Princeton, New Jersey. He was then reanimated for what many believed to have been the end of the world, on December twenty- third two thousand twelve.”

“Very good student.” Mr. Nail grinned. “But why did people think that the world as to end then?”

“The Mayan calendar stopped on that date. And they also believe it started somewhere about three thousand one hundred thirteen b.c.”

“Excellent. And do you think the world will end on January first three thousand one hundred thirteen?”

“I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure I won’t be around then.” Xak sat down.

“Back on task.” Mr. Nail pushed a few keys on his deck and a hologram appeared on the screen. “Now you all know about the trip to the cryogenics laboratory on Friday I understand, so be ready for that. We’ve even got a special arrival for that date. See the laboratory is its early days lost a few records and a stasis tube from, I think it was, two thousand seventeen. Anyways it was recently recovered. This applies to the subject at hand. Umm. What are a few reason’s people were frozen?”

“Degenerative disease, sexually transmitted disease, tumors, research, personal choices, that’s just a few.” The class glowered at Xak.

“Right again. Anyway this subject, a female your age, was frozen with a deadly tumor incased in her brain, which now is easily treatable, but back then “modern” medicine was still very primitive.” Again Mr. Nail pushed more keys.

A cryogenics tube hologram shifted open and a false, sexless person stepped out. Xak sat in his seat ignoring the rest of his class. He knew more than his teacher. Time seemed to stand still and speed up at the same time. Before Xak knew it the class was over.

“Are you excited?” Ashton Bernard walked up to Xak as he was walking down the hallway.

“About?” Xak didn’t take his eyes from the ground.

“The frozen chick.”

“Oh. I guess.”

“What do you think will happen to her after she’s healed and updated?”

“I’m not sure.” Xak didn’t care at the moment. “I guess they’ll have to find her a home.”

“Isn’t she one of the oldest?”

“Yah. Look Ash, I’ve got the worst headache in the world and talking makes it hurt more.”

“Okay.” Xak rubbed his temples as if it helped at all.

Xak almost got to his second class and he felt his legs swim beneath him and he fell to the floor. His head was spinning and aching. The people flocked around him. His body was so cold and numb, he couldn’t move. Then there was only black.

“Well Xak seems to have formed a telepathic sympathy for someone. We don’t know who yet, but…” The doctor was cut off.

“But will he be fine?” Xak’s father arched his fingers impatiently.

“Of course. We aren’t sure how it happened, but it seems that it’s coming from a cryogenic patient.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. He told us that just before the episode he had been leaving a class in which they were discussing cryogenics. Apparently his teacher, a Mr. Nail, said that the annual cryogenics visit was to be held on Friday and the patient was his age. Psychic links like that are common, but she is about eight hundred and seventy years old. Very few people back then had developed such abilities. Maybe she’s part of the minority.”

“Could it be her condition?”

“That is a possibility.”

“We’d like to see Xak now.”

“Alright, follow me.” The doctor stood up and led them out of his office and down the hall.

Xak sat on the edge of and examination bed patiently.

It was raining again and Xak stared out into the storm as he usually did. He had never been in love so he wasn’t sure what it felt like. He was confused about the sympathetic feelings he had been feeling. He often wondered why people did what they did. If there was but one mathematical certainty in the world about humans, it was that when something came to settle and the people looked in retrospect the reason everything had happened was because of love, it had been love also which had brought along the resolution. It wasn’t always clear but it was there glinting like a spark in view of the sun subliminally and it was there.

He bit into his fist trying not to cry. It had been two days since Monday and every so often he could hear a weak signal from the someone and he would try to calm and sooth the confused pleas.

He shivered in the warmth of the house, sympathetic again. He had missed the passed days of school, but he’d go back tomorrow. Would they look at him oddly, perhaps more so than ever? Xak didn’t care any longer. The world would end soon enough if no one intervened and he could care less. Why solve it?

A square on the wall, to the right of the window, winked gloomily in the lightless room. He managed to pull himself to the panel and press the bed’s summoning key. The bed rolled out of the wall and stopped two feet above the floor. Sleep was his only solution.

Xak’s vision seemed to be covered with some red screen as he felt his anger take control of someone, not himself. He felt an immense weight in his left hand and brought it up to his eyes. The sword cut through the red, it was light blue and he felt himself turn around.

“Come on Soldier Armageddon.” he couldn’t see her face, and he knew why, right now she had no face.

“I wont.” Soldier Armageddon held his sword in a defensive posture.

“Don’t you understand Soldier? It’s the earth’s time.” She wasn’t speaking aloud, it was in his head.

“Leave me before I slice you across and bleed you to the ground.” Soldier Armageddon didn’t believe that the he would hesitate, Xak however pounded on the walls of Soldier Armageddon’s mind, his mind, trying to take control.

“You wouldn’t hurt me would you Soldier boy?” Her face began to fore where the blurred one once rested.

“Who are you?” It was Xak’s voice now.

“I am Genesis’s sister. The bringer of you, Revelations.” She smiled with the only thing that had appeared, her lips.

“So the Genesis Program must end, or we’ll all die?” Xak’s voice was weak. “But why is this even relevant? It doesn’t concern me, I’ll probably be dead by the time it’s ready anyway.”

“Hush child.” She wasn’t smiling anymore. “You will die when I come to birth, and that is soon.”

“Get out of my head, both of you.” Xak tried to scream but couldn’t. Then he was falling. Xak woke up on the ground in his room with the blankets hanging half on half off his bed.

Sleep began to drain from him and he got ready for school.

The day was as usual, nothing special. Kava had been anxious to find out what had happened, but Xak said it was noting and dismissed him with a wave of his hand. The lights in the school seemed to be too bright and he ended up squinting almost the entire time.

He was eager to get home and escape back into sleep. He hardly remembered the dream. The rain had stopped for most of the day, but when he got off the transit and into the street it had started up again. Xak began to run home. It was one thing to watch it, but being half a mile from home standing out in it didn’t exactly tap his fancy.

“Xak, this is representative Chamberlain.” Marvin Bushnell nodded towards a large bald man sitting in one of the dinning room chairs.

Chamberlain stood up and reached his gigantic hand out to Xak. “Hello Xak.”

“Mister Chamberlain.” Xak shook his hand.

Chamberlain sat back dawn and his father stood up. “Mister Chamberlain is here about your Guardian project.”

Xak was lost to the world. So much was going on. He bit his lip and pulled his wet coat off. “What about it?”

“Well we were wondering if you had any ideas about the missing sections in the schematics. We see that the fluid system’s you designed provided a great deal of satiability but there’s still the major energy concern and equilibrium.” Chamberlain had researched the topic apparently.

“Have you heard of a black hole? Follow me.” Xak led him and his parents up the stairs to the recreation room where a bunch of papers were scattered around a large table. “A black hole’s gravity is so intense that not even light can escape. My theory is that if someone could make a very small contained black hole, so to speak, the Guardian would become almost completely self-sufficient. It would provide a stable balance system and with it’s own gravity it would be able to reduce its earth settled weight greatly. The energy source would be perpetual.”

“Interesting. But how would me go about making a reduced scale black hole?”

“It’s easy. You need to have a pure sphere mirror and inject a bolt of laser light. If it’s successful then you’ll have a star. Add a catalyst and when it turns into a black hole find a way to harness it, but this is dangerous stuff were talking about. If your not careful a lot of people could die. And if the star explodes it will level at least seventy five square miles of land.”

“Is that all?” Chamberlain seemed as eager to leave, as Xak was to sleep.

“For now. Here take this.” Xak handed him a disk chip.

“Thank you for your time.” Chamberlain shook his hand again.

“No problem.” Xak feigned a grin.

Xak’s father was still in his jolly proud mood when he led Chamberlain out the door.

It had completely slipped Xak’s mind that the cryogenics trip was that day. He followed his class down the front steps of Watt Academy and into the school’s transit station. The lab was about fifty miles outside of the city. They’d be there within ten minutes.

The lab was sterile and dull as the students walked in. Someone may have believed it to be a funeral procession as everyone seemed to have absorbed the outside’s gloomy mood. Xak didn’t necessarily believe in ora’s but this was a sure case of the darkness.

All the students were escorted to a large room with endless metal panels along the walls. In the center of the room a gigantic red test tube sat erect about a mess of machinery. Several scientists were working at various stations. One was pushing a large cylindrical object. Another brought in a hospital style bed and left it to the side of the red tube.

“Ah, Mr. Nail, students. Please come this way.” The head scientist, Alexander Schafer, looked through his thin glasses. “Thank you so much for coming. This is a rare occasion and maybe an awkward one.”

“Thank you for having us.” Mr. Nail and the class continued forward.

“We will be beginning the reanimation process in a few moments as soon as the manual tests are finished.” Doctor Schafer explained.

“Finished doctor.” One of the lab-tech’s punched a few buttons and stood up.

“Fine then.” The doctor nodded and everyone began to work his or her own station.

They pushed the stasis tube up to the side of the machine. With a dull hiss the tube moved forward and inch or so. The class could hear a small motor revving to life. The stasis patient was being moved from the cryogenic capsule into the machine somewhere.

Within a minute something began to rise in the thick red jelly of the test tube. It was the girl. Her face was obscured by hair, and a tangle of tubes and wires that stuck out of her mouth and the thick red liquid around her. She had been clothed in two small ancient pieces of white clothing.

Xak could hear a few of his classmates, mostly guys, snickering. Kava stood wide-eyed next to Xak.

“You can get closer if you’d like.” Doctor Schafer motioned for them to move forward.

Xak stepped quickly to the front of the class leaving Kava somewhere in the middle. “How long does this take?”

“Not long,” Schafer responded. “Once the tube’s liquid temperature rises several magnetic bars will come out of the ceiling and begin spinning quickly. It’s kind of like a microwave oven except these wires and tube sticking out of her mouth will begin circulating her bodily fluids, which are being heated, throughout her body. The process does hurt an awful lot at first but after a few minutes she’ll be fine.”

“What is she try’s to pull the tubes and stuff out?” Xak didn’t hide his curiosity.

“Well she can’t.”

“Why not?”

“When you’re frozen, and especially as long as she’s been, you become weak. You’ll retain muscle mass but rehabilitation is needed. So don’t worry about her she’ll be fine.” Doctor Schafer had a habit of repeating things.

The stasis tube was removed and the top of the machine pulled up. They pushed the hospital bed inside it’s special grooves and replaced the top.

Humming started flowing over the machine’s rumbles. Seven metal bars protruded from the ceiling and lowered to the bottom of the red tube. They began to shine and turn. Each turning by its self and at the same time with the others.

The back wall lit up and the girl’s status was displayed. Her name was listed as Echo Laurel Philbin, subject number 051501. That number was astronomically small compared to how many cryogen’s were frozen now.

“We’ll be administering adrenaline and an electric shock to start her heart. Watch.” Doctor Schafer pressed some keys on the main consul.

The metal bars stopped and retreated into the ceiling. Orange shot through the red liquid and Echo began to jerk violently. Xak moved up against the consul. Doctor Schafer put his hand on Xak’s shoulder.

“It’s alright. Perfectly normal.” He smiled reassuringly.

Xak’s head began to fill with frantic cries of pain and confusion. His hands went to his head and he fell to his knees.

“Are you alright son?” Doctor Schafer leaned down over Xak.

“Sorry, migraines I guess.” Xak shrugged. The screams faded a little.

“Sure. You know some humans from that time did have major telepathy. You may be picking something up. Just step back some.” Schafer fixed his eyes on Echo.

Xak moved slowly around the machine until his hip hit against the end of the stasis bay. The liquid began to turn pink.

“Ah, success.” Schafer pressed more keys and Echo disappeared again. “Ready?”

The scientists nodded. Xak could hear the whirring sound. He could feel heat rising from the bay and stepped back a bit.

“Be prepared students. Every once in a while we get a bad one and they loose it, so if you’ve got a weak stomach, well it’s too late. Get her out of there Edward.”

The scientist Edward pulled the lip open again and Xak looked down at the girl. She was his age. Her ancient beauty held his gaze. He peered forward.

She lay still while the scientists congratulated each other. She seemed to be asleep. Xak was still looking at her when she sat up. Echo reached out quickly and grabbed him by the arms and pulled him close. Her brown eyes opened and looked into his.

Her voice was weak but she managed a whisper. “Soldier Armageddon.”

Copyright © 2008-2016 Ryan James Dailey