Distant Leaps To Circinus - Chapter 2 1 Mundane Colors

A Test?. Is this what a test is?

“Who knows.”

We didn’t do anything yet

“Exactly.”

Unable to speak, it was immobilized yet shaking in fear. It could only bare its thoughts and respond to the strange being before it. Falling into an endless void, a poor soul, somewhere, has lost its life to the unknown.

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The place the new humanity calls home is very daunting. Only 112 years and the people who inhabit the earth are still just the same, despite their mutations and changed ecosystems. Living their lives and trying to survive, society has rebuilt itself quite easily due to the mass amounts of equipment and technology still available, but this is only true for the deeper layer of the planet. The laws of physics that had existed before world were swept away and were now different. Space and time around the planet no longer worked as they once knew.

Many years and a century after the planet was changed there was a sole man. The man who had persevered through thirty years of solitude, Grand, was the forthcoming hope of humanity.

Grand had worked on the station for a little over 2 years before the Earth was changed into an unimaginable world of layers. On July 4th of 2041, the station assigned to research the False light had luck on its side. In the right place at the right time, the researchers aboard the station were the first and only participants in seeing Earth’s destruction from afar. Witnessing this, Grand and the crew aboard were at a loss for what to do. Hopeless due to lack of communication from the homeland and surrounding stations. After two months of silence, the majority of the crew decided to try and take the escape pods down to the decimated Earth.

No word came back from them, others decided there was nothing else to gain from sitting in the station or even on Earth. With their family possibly gone and no real reason to continue surviving, they took their own lives. Self-ejection into space, starvation, asphyxiation, all methods to end a meaningless existence. Except for Grand, the only one to witness the faint traces of light coming from the planet.

Just before he was to end his life, these faint lights gave him hope, that maybe just waiting a bit longer could turn things around for him. This gave rise to him watching the new planet form, morph and become what is known as Circinus today. All he could do was continue research and witness the birth of a new world. Along with some of his research, he put a drawn out map of what the world looked like from the station, inside of a blast resistant capsule, and sent it hurtling toward the earth, hoping it proved useful to whoever may stumble across it. The planet, in just a short time of 34 years, had changed drastically.

Taking on the shape of a sphere that’s been cut in the middle multiple times by a ring, shaped almost like a gyroscope.

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Zeais. Born into a changed world with Achromatic vision, he lived life with only slight knowledge as to what colors there are. He could only see color for very specific situations, thanks to the false light hidden far above the planet. Because of his also, horrid eyesight, the adults had a hard time taking care of him as he grew up. Along with having difficulty judging perception, he sometimes stumbled, but it wasn’t as if he couldn’t function normally.

Taking advantage of his other senses and bringing the most out of himself, he does not suffer from his impairments.

At the moment, all he feels is the hard crevasses of cold, damp stone. It’s much darker than normal in the late afternoon and his tired body feels heavy. Wishing that he had prepared a bit more before leaving his hometown, he sighs.

Dawn is approaching for the youth and to make matters worse he’s in what looks to be a hole with bricks lining the wall. He thinks that maybe he is inside of a well or some kind of drainage or unfinished well. He loses interest, too fatigued to keep his eyes open. Sleep is all he wants. Only 9 years old, Zeais, succumbs to the plight of exhaustion. Moments like this would cause an uproar in the old age of civilization, but such is the world that humans and animals have become accustomed to, survival and revival are what they seek.

The sound of thunder cracks through the air and sends vibrations to all the land underneath. The large overgrown trees groan and shake against high wind. Dust and dirt mix with the air, blinding anyone who would go against its path. The paved road is empty for miles. No people, no animals, no vehicles. Just a long sole strip of land, being accosted by a singularity storm.

Large pellets of rain hitting his face, Zeais had been unconscious for quite a while. Laying on his back and head turned to the side as if used to such an uncomfortable rock bed, while the storm relentlessly assaults the plains around him. He doesn’t wake up, not even as the water begins to build up inside the hollowed-out hole. His small body, underwater from the chin down, laid still. His gray cotton shirt and worn shorts weigh heavy on him. His brown skin is now cold enough that anyone touching him would think he’s passed on.

Murky water touches his lips and begins to fill his mouth and, soon, entered his throat. Suddenly, as if waking from a nightmare, choking, he sits up and coughs out the brown muddied water. “….”. Looking around him, he puts together where he is in his mind, he then puts his hand into the foggy substance to confirm that he’s just in water.

Looking up, his sharp dark gray eyes shaped like almonds, sees only a blob of gray and dust. With the roar of thunder and heavy rain above he ponders waiting out the storm somewhere safe. Coughing into his hand, he stands. The water from wet clothing is blown a bit by the wind tunneling through the hole, it sends chills down his body. He doesn’t make a movement from the sensation, instead, he says,

[Zeais: I’ve been through worse. I need to keep moving.]

As he steps toward the wall in front him to reach out, he feels a sharp pain shoot through his side. He puts his hand on his hip and feels his skin. Even though he’s wet, he can feel the warmth of fresh blood oozing out.

[Zeais: I need to get back to the shelter.]

Reaching out to start climbing, he grabs hold of rock with just enough surface to fit his fingers. Feet wet and chilled he steps onto a loose rock on the ground and pulls himself up the small hole. Being only four feet tall, scaling a six-foot hole was no big deal. He was used to climbing for all types of foods and vegetation throughout the deeper forests and mountains.

For a year and a half, the child had ventured out into the various biomes in search of food for the others. Not uncommon around this age in the upper rings of the planet, as children have to fend for themselves at times due to the lack of adults but high numbers of children.

Now facing into the rain and high winds, Zeais tries to look for the road he was traveling. Thankfully it’s not that far from the hole he just awoke from, only a couple yards.

[Zeais: “I must have been pretty tired to not notice a hole like that near the road.” ]

He proceeds to walk toward the road when a large gust of wind pushes him over. The storm picks up more intensity and shakes the trees and grass throughout the plains wildly. On his knees, he clicks his tongue,

[Zeais: I’d rather be in stupid weather than drown in some hole.]

Picking himself back up, he sees the flickering of orange light. All too well did he know what seeing color for him meant.

[Zeais: There’s someone here… I doubt it’s one of the adults – one of the children? ]

Wary of the colors approaching him, he prepares to guard against whoever would walk around in a storm like this.