The Shattered Genesis (Eternity) (5 page)

             
I shook my head and looked up at him.

“No. I've...” I trailed off and unconsciously reached for my cigarettes. “I've always known it.” My eyes rose to meet his. “Can I ask you something?”

             
“Anything.”

             
“What's your name?”

             
I know that he must have tried to fight it, but he did crack a smile a
t the simplicity of the question before he answered it.

“James. James Maxwell.”

             
“Well, James Maxwell...” I exhaled smoke from my newly lit cigarette, drunk on the serenity brought to the surface by the gentle stream of nicotine that was coursing through m
y veins. “What are we supposed to do?”

             
“We, Brynna Olivier, are going to gather as many people as we can and leave here.”

             
“Leave the earth?” I asked softly in utter disbelief. It was impossible. Even if we successfully exited the atmosphere before our pl
anet was consumed in a fiery blast, we would have nowhere to go. We would drift through the darkness of space, survivors of a dead race left to meet their end at a later date than the rest of our kind.

             
“Indeed. It's too much to explain now. But I'm sure y
ou've heard about the other planet they've discovered. I'm sure that you've seen it on the news.”

             
The night before in the bar, I had seen that display on the television. I read the headline only
halfway before losing interest. It had read, “Super-Earth re
ady for...” The rest would remain a mystery and I would not have cared.

             
“Yes.” I nodded. “What does that have to do with this?”

             
“That's our destination. They've known about it for years. They've known about all of this for years.”

             
“Who is 'they'?”

             
“
The
y
are the people that we common folk so rarely get to see wearing their true faces.”

             
I nodded again.

“Got it. I need a moment to process this.”

             
How strange to be sitting in a diner in the middle of the bustling city, sipping coffee and contemplating the
impending end of the world. But after learning such a harrowing new reality, how could one possibly do anything else?

             
“Is it processed?” He asked me after a long, thoughtful silence.

             
“Not really. How do we choose who to take? What else do we take with us
? How do you even know about this?”

             
“I discovered that this was coming. Then, a whole mess of strange things started to happen to me. That's a story for another time. Are you particularly hungry?”

             
“Not now. My God, how could I possibly be thinking about
food?”

             
“Then, come with me. I want to show you something.”

XXX

             
By then, my curiosity far exceeded my common sense. The reason my level of intelligence was so high above that of others around me was because of my never fully quenched thirst for knowledge
and my curiosity that had always bordered on recklessness. I read every piece of writing available regarding things that interested me and even on some things that didn't for as long as I could remember. So, when James offered to show me his proof that th
e world was ending, I couldn't refuse, despite not trusting him. I just had to know the whole truth.

             
When we arrived back at his apartment, though, I did exercise a little common sense by staying close to the door. As you have learned by now, I am not a f
ool.

             
“I'm trying to figure out if I'm stupidly gullible or if I can actually trust you.”
             
“I don't expect you to trust me right away, Brynna.” He replied absentmindedly as he pulled a small shoebox from the bottom drawer of the desk in the corner of his l
iving room. He brought it over to where I was sitting and allowed me to open it. I explored the contents: web pages that were printed out, whole phrases and single words highlighted; transcripts of phone conversations, email correspondences and pictures of
people I didn't recognize.

             
“I have to start off my explanation by telling you that all of this began with a dream. I saw everything that I just showed you at the diner in that dream.”

             
I was listening, but not looking at him. I was still too busy studyin
g the papers in the box. A highlighted phrase on one of the pages read: “Pangea is ready to be colonized.” What the hell?

             
“Now, I know that you are familiar with night terrors. I was, also. But this...” He shook his head slightly and I looked at him, seei
ng that genuine fear come over his eyes once again. It flashed by for just one fleeting second that almost convinced me that I had imagined it. “It was like nothing I had ever experienced. I can't explain it. All people say after a bad dream that it was so
real and that's why it was so terrifying. But with this, I could feel the blast and I could feel my skin burning when the fire reached me.”

             
“What is it? What is going to explode?”

             
“I don't know.” He replied, shaking his head and avoiding my eyes. “It
must be a bomb. A nuclear weapon, I suppose.”

             
“So there's going to be a nuclear war?” I asked and my heart started to pound quickly again.

             
“I think there is. Others are sure. That's the next part of the story. I tried to push the dream out of my mind. I
tried to go about my life as usual. Do you know how when you have a nightmare, for those few minutes right after you wake up, you still feel the same fear that you felt while you were dreaming?”

             
I nodded.

             
“Well, I felt that and assumed that my mind was j
ust going back to the dream as the day went on. But I couldn't shake it. I couldn't shake the feeling I had. Not that day, or the next, or the next. So, finally, I went online and searched for everything I could think of to explain away what I had felt. He
re's where it gets very, very weird.” He rustled around in the papers until he found the one he was looking for. It was a print out of a discussion on a message board. “You know about Google Trends, I'm sure.”

             
“Yes.”

             
“Well, 'lucid dreaming' was the numbe
r one search for days. I don't know if you noticed that.”
             
“I didn't.” I replied. “And even if I had, I wouldn't have thought anything of it.”
             
“No one would have unless they had experienced what I did. So when I searched, the first link that came up was t
his message board. It was created two days after I had the dream. Read it.”

             
My eyes scanned the page. All of the posters were recanting the same dream, the same apocalyptic vision that James had shown me. The details of the dream were minute, except for t
he place in which the worst of it occurred. One poster was from California and had seen Hollywood Boulevard going up in flames. One poster was from London and had seen Big Ben fall to the ground in a mass explosion. Quite disturbingly, one poster said he w
as from Australia and had seen the blast coming towards him across a long, endless plain.

             
“Landmarks,” I muttered, “Most of them, anyway. That's odd.”

             
“I thought so, too. I think it's symbolism.”

             
“That's what I was thinking.” I agreed. “James, these det
ails,” I scanned the page for one, “‘exactly one minute and fifteen seconds after the blast', 'remember noticing the sun being blocked out by a light even brighter than it is...'”

             
“Exactly.” He nodded. “So, we met. About seven or eight of us who lived her
e in the US decided to meet in Boston. If you saw these people, Brynna,” He trailed off again, “You couldn't know. The fear was so strong. We were all terrified. We knew beyond any doubt that we had seen the end of the world. During that meeting, we matche
d up the details of our dream again and said we'd keep in touch. Of course, at that point, we didn't know how much time we had left.”

             
“Do you know now?”

             
“I'm getting there. That night, we all had another dream. This time, we saw faces of people we didn't
recognize and names. We knew that they could be found in the areas around where we lived. We also saw the Reapers and other things that I won't burden you with.”

             
“No, please, burden me. I want to know.”

             
There was that reckless curiosity again. Luckily,
James had my best interests at heart and didn't unload those particular details on me then. I would have curled up on the ground and awaited my fate, petrified of having to face the
other
things
.

             
“Later. Now is not the time. I don't know why the Reapers a
re after you, Brynna, but I have seen what they do to most people once they get them.”

             
I bit my tongue to keep from asking for the gory details.

             
“So I saw you and knew everything about you inexplicably. I knew I had to find you and convince you to come
with me.”

             
“Come with you where?” I asked, feeling a surge of desperation for finite answers suddenly. “Is that what this is?” I showed him the paper with the diagram of the planet they were calling “Pangea.”

             
“Yes. Several of us worked for the government:
NASA, the CIA, the military. The ones from NASA were the ones that told us they have made huge leaps in space travel over the years that they've never told anyone about.”
             
“Why didn't they tell anyone?”

             
“Because of this. They said they didn't know why, b
ut they had been told to keep this a secret. So, they did, out of fear of losing their jobs. That's good for us, though. A spacecraft has been built. It's large enough to hold five thousand.”
             

             
“How did they build something like that without anyone snoopin
g around?”

             
“That's the next part of the story. You are well aware, I'm sure, that things go on behind closed doors in our government that we never know about. I mentioned that to you earlier.”

             
“Yes.”
             

             
“They have known about this, Brynna. They have known
that the end is coming and the spacecraft was built to take them away from here before it hits.”

             
“But they're responsible for this!” I exclaimed as fury overtook what fragile hold I had on my self-control. “If it's nuclear, if it's an act of war, then th
ey started it!”

             
“They did. But since when does anyone's personal responsibility override their need to survive? They were planning to leave us all here to die.”
             
“For
their
mistakes!”

             
“Yes. But that is not our main concern. It will please you to know tha
t we have other ideas. Our job right now is to gather as many people as we can and leave here before this thing happens.”

             
“How many people had the dream? How many people are out there trying to gather up others?”

             
“In the US, about ten, I've been told.”

             
“Ten?!” I actually put my face down on my knees, needing a moment to process the grave impossibility ahead.

             
“Ten.” James said calmly. “In other countries, put together, about one hundred.”

             
“One hundred and ten people are responsible for gathering up five
thousand...” I took a deep breath that was meant to soothe me but only gave my heart the jolt it needed to beat faster. “We'll never get enough, James.”

             
“We will. More and more people are having the dream, Brynna. More and more people are starting to rea
lize what they have to do.”