The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (24 page)

             
I shook my head slightly, deciding not to attempt an analysis of their ups and downs. Instead, I  laid my head against Ma
ura's shoulder. That time, when I fell asleep, it was peaceful.

XXX

             
Before I was even fully awake, I was running. As my mind resurfaced from sleep, I took note of Brynna and James running in front of me. James was carrying Penny and three or four bags. E
lijah was hauling the rest. Maura was grasping my hand and pulling me along with her. Sleepily, I looked around as my legs carried me speedily forward; I noted rows upon rows of cars parked on the desert ground. They would be parked there until they burned
with the rest of the world...

             
It was a strange thought that was as fleeting as a shadow in the corner of one's eye. But it chilled me to the darkest part of my soul.

             
All drowsiness evaporated at the sight of the humongous ship that rose like a behemoth
in front of us. It was a miracle of construction. It was a black and gray metal giant that boasted power, enough  to send us hurtling out of the atmosphere and through space. I couldn't wait to see what it looked like on the inside. In one of her better mo
ods, Brynna had described it as looking like a cruise ship. She reminded me of the cruise our parents had sent us on with Maura a couple of summers earlier. The memories of that vacation were enough to ease me through my most intense panic attacks.

             
I reme
mbered that we had to be put under for take-off and I felt the familiar pounding and painful tightness in my chest again. Before I could think about it, we were standing in front of a man who clearly knew James. He checked our names off of a list written i
n a spiral notebook and handed each of us a cup with one small pill in the bottom.

             
“One person has to stay awake in each party.”

             
“Why?” Brynna asked as we walked onto the ship. The door began to slowly close and all of us, even the man who had checked us
in, stopped talking and moving in order to see the last glimpse of the world we knew disappear. For a moment, after the door had closed and we were plunged into semi-darkness, we were silent.

             
“Why does one person have to stay awake?” James's voice snappe
d us all back to reality.

             
“Can we speak privately for a minute?” The man replied and James and Brynna followed him promptly.

             
The man spoke to them quietly. As the conversation continued, I watched their facial expressions shift from slightly heightened c
uriosity to absolute alarm and in Brynna's case, a little rage in the mix.

             
“Are you kidding me?!” She asked in a loud, furious whisper. “James, none of us are taking that.”

             
“What are they talking about, Maura?” Penny asked as she rubbed her eyes.

             
“Nothi
ng, darling. They're just talking.” Maura replied calmly. She was an ace at hiding any problem, big or small, from us. But I listened even more closely, needing to know what had James and Brynna in such a stir.

             
“How can you be giving people this?” James d
emanded furiously.

             
“It's either take this with risks and all or stay awake during a high intensity lift-off. The latter could have the same effects as the pill. Most people want to just take their chances and knock themselves out.”

             
“You are insane if you
think I am giving this to them.” Brynna snapped at both of them. “Why would I? So one or all of us can have heart failure? What is the point? Well, dying in our sleep or dying in a fiery explosion, I suppose. But I'd rather just not die! I'd rather no one
die!”

             
“Look, this is why we have one person staying awake. They'll monitor the others and if there is a problem, we have forty-two doctors on board who are also awake. As soon as we're level, they'll come right to you. The positives far outweigh the nega
tives, Ms. Olivier. I
promise
you.”

             
“Yes, let me trust the word of a man I have only just met.” Brynna replied sarcastically with her signature eye-roll. “They don't call me a genius to flatter me. I make more intelligent calls than that, thank you so muc
h!”

             
“Brynna...” James grasped her arm and pulled her away from the man. As he talked to her quietly, he moved his hand down to grasp hers.

             
“No, because you said if they made you stay awake, you were going to have a fit!” Brynna spoke over him as he conti
nued trying to reassure her. “I will stay awake and stare at all of you until my eyes bleed to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
             
“No,” James told her, “You won't be able to handle it, Brynna. You said so yourself.”

             
“I'll deal with it. I've dealt with worse.
I'll force myself to deal with it.”

             
“I'm not going to make you do that for my sake.”

             
Her eyes met mine and she lowered her voice back down to a whisper. I saw her hands shaking and I knew exactly what she was saying to him.

             
“I can't take anything that
puts me under, James. I can't do it.” I saw genuine fear in her eyes for the first time. She had always been a bit odd when it came to sedation and I had never understood why. I was prone to sleepless nights where my anxious mind battled on until the sun r
ose. I was thankful for the existence of pills that ensured one mercifully quiet night of sleep.

             
“I'll stay awake.” James told her calmly as he moved his hands up to rest comfortingly on her arms. “If anything happens to anyone, I'll make all five of the
doctors come down. I promise.”

             
“I have to stay awake. I can't...” She trailed off, looking both thoughtful and terribly worried. When she resumed speaking her voice was of its usual firm, unyielding tone and her face had tightened up into its expression o
f nonchalance and arrogance. “We'll both stay awake.”

             
“Are you sure?”

             
“Yes. For my sake and theirs, I am staying awake.”

             
“But you said...”

             
“I know what I said. But I'll deal with it.”

             
Elijah shook his head slightly beside me and muttered, “She won't b
e able to handle it.”

             
“Why not? She's Brynna. If she can't handle it, she handles it, Elijah.” I was slightly irritated at his show of distrust in Brynna's resolve. She had never given him a reason to doubt her before. But I knew, even if I wouldn't admit
it, that he was right. What we were about to experience was going to be traumatic and despite her love for sudden bursts of adrenaline, she would surely have a fit mere seconds after taking off. Even the boldest of our kind would.

             
“She can barely handle
planes, Vi. Don't you think this is just a little bit more intense?”

             
“It is, but she'll be fine. She wants to make sure nothing happens to us.”

             
“She won't do us much good if she's having a panic attack.”

             
“She won't be hurting us, either.”

             
“I'm going to
talk to her.” Elijah said, but Brynna and James had already walked back over to us. When she glared at us both, our facial expressions dropped and we were silent, knowing a lecture was coming.

             
“If you had continued to eavesdrop which, coincidentally, was
quite rude to begin with, you would have heard that James has convinced me to allow myself to be sedated.” She turned a little bit whiter just at the word. “However, I will stress that if I walk away and am muttering quietly to someone, odds are I do not
wish to be overheard. I will thank you to remember that in the future.”

             
Elijah and I looked at each other, all signs of our earlier disagreement evaporated as we smiled slightly. We were used to Brynna's intricate reprimands and after years of hearing
them, they still never failed to entertain. We followed behind her and James, who were leading us further into the ship. We walked up a set of metal stairs, our footsteps echoing eerily through the hollowed-out chamber that was the ship's basement.

             
When w
e reached the room where the first batch of people were going under sedation, I felt yet another wave of anxiety overtake me. To steady myself, I grasped Elijah's arm and allowed him to steer me over to one of the cots at the end of the room.

             
The bed was
simplistic, with just a blanket, pillow and sheet of wax paper covering the part that I would be laying on. It reminded me of the backroom of the nurse's office at school, where Miranda and I would go when we wanted a good nap during our most boring class
es. Sometimes we slept and sometimes we whispered quietly, only to be scolded by the nurse who had little tolerance for such nonsense.

             
With Miranda in my mind, I downed the pill, knowing that in a few moments, the sudden spike in my anxiety level would be
gin to decrease. Miranda's face would fade from my mind and I would drift gently into an untroubled sleep. When I awoke, we would have arrived safely on Pangea.

             
Pangea.
I thought that it would be the end of all our worries.

             
There was one colossal differe
nce between the cot on the ship and those that I had laid on so many times in the nurse's office; five straps were being put across my body and tightened to a point that I almost couldn't breathe.
             

             
“Oh, hell no!” I heard Brynna exclaim and my heart manage
d to start beating rapidly despite the swift attack of the sedative. Before I could process the fluttering in my chest, I had plunged headfirst into the deep grip of a drugged sleep.

Brynna

             
“No, no, no!” I exclaimed again as Elijah and James both tried
to reason with me.

             
“Brynna, on planes, you can barely stay in your seat.” Elijah implored somewhat desperately. “Think about it this way: Once you start having a panic attack, it's going to go on for as long as it takes for them to level the ship. That co
uld be an entire day. Longer, even!”

             
“Elijah, take your pill.” I snapped at him as my irritation began to give way to anger. The men in charge of the ship had wheeled in two chairs large enough to be called thrones. On them, there were many straps meant t
o keep us in place throughout lift-off. On the legs, giant suction cups would hold the chair to the floor.

             
I was mildly aggravated at the suggestion that I couldn't handle myself through a situation that, though it was quite fearsome, was just another hur
tle in an already very frightening journey.

             
“Fine,” Elijah resigned in irritation of his own. “You're on your own, man.”

             
To show the “bravery” that I lacked, Elijah made a grand gesture of tipping the cup back like he was taking a shot of liquor; in the
process, he expertly ingested both the pill and the water. I continued stroking Penny's hair, pretending that I hadn't noticed. I was losing my desire to fight with those people.

             
“We're running out of time. Make your decision.” Robert, the man who had che
cked us in, told
me hurriedly.

             
“It's made, good sir.” I stood up with my eyes still fixed on Penny. Her cherub face was relaxed and she was breathing softly. I covered my mouth as a tiny giggle escaped me despite the situation; she still snored ever so sl
ightly the same way she had when she was a baby.

             
“Alright, you have to sit down, then.” I heard Robert's voice say and my small smile disappeared in a blink. I stood up to find both he and James were staring at me. “We take off in two minutes.”
             
Two minut
es and the world that I had believed for all of my life was the
only
one would be gone forever. I would never escape into the crowds of natives and tourists in New York City again or lie on a sunny Florida beach. I would never see another film in a crowded
movie theater or tune in to a mindless sitcom on television. Humans had lived on that spinning planet for thousands upon thousands of years and
everything
, all of that history, was going to be gone in less than twenty four hours. Every accomplishment of m
an, every war fought, every seemingly insignificant turn of events in our species' long, turmoil-filled history was
gone
. Every great book ever written, every wonderful film ever made, every newly invented convenience we had grown to rely on would soon be
erased. All of those things would only exist in our memories. If we were able to, we would provide our children with the stories of those old times. Every person would pass our mutual history to the generations that would come later. But what if vital aspe
cts of it were lost to age and the failings of memory?