Threads of Fate

Year m113, x117

A new day begins as Lumara's rays fill every corner of the planet. Albedo wakes up in his humble abode, yawning, and heads to the restroom before preparing for breakfast. His room is situated on the second floor, in the corner of the dorm-house where he resides with three others. Exiting his room, Albedo finds Gorge patiently waiting for him outside. (Gorge is Albedo’s neighbor who stays in the next room)

Albedo, yawning, says, "Let's go downstairs. I am hungry." They both head downstairs and enter the dining hall, only to find Sakura not making breakfast. Instead, she is sitting on a couch in the living room, wrapped in a blanket, watching the news.

(The passage describes a rectangular dining hall divided into a kitchen and a furnished area. A door connects it to a square living room with three couches, a coffee table, and a TV. The living room has a large sliding door opening to the garden outside.)

Gorge, a bit surprised, asks, "What's up, Sakura? Today is your turn, I hope you haven't forgotten."

Sakura replies, "I know, but see, I'm not feeling well. So, please prepare it for today."

Albedo sighs, "Okay, Gorge, it's up to you."

Gorge exclaims, "What's up to me! Oh, forget it. I'll cook something; just wait a while."

Sakura adds, "Albedo, you slacker, better learn some cooking."

Albedo responds, "What? The last time I cooked, you said never get in the kitchen. But hey, I'm willing to make something if you want."

Sakura declines, "No, don't. Last time you made some disgusting dish and declared it as highly nutritious."

Albedo defends, "I mean, it was nutritious. It had all the elements of a balanced diet. Anyway, let me check your temperature."

Albedo takes out a thermometer from a desk in the dining hall and measures Sakura's temperature. The thermometer beeps, showing 37.9°C.

Albedo expresses concern, "It seems you're down with a cold. Should I stay with you?"

Sakura declines, "No. Gorge, I think you have to stay behind."

Gorge questions, "Why?"

Albedo explains, "She has a fever. And I believe she doesn't want my special healthy foods. smirks"

Gorge agrees, "Fine. Albedo, tell Shilona to give her notes to me, and the class notes are in my locker. Take my locker key and give it to her. Also, there is a book that belongs to Dustin, a friend in my class. Kindly take that to him and tell him that the presentation is okay and I've corrected the mistakes."

Gorge cooks mac and cheese and brings it to the dining table, but Sakura couldn't join

them, so they eat in the living room.

Gorge, "I forgot when will Aria come back?"

Sakura responds, "She said today. I hope she does."

After finishing breakfast, Albedo heads to school.

In the school

Albedo reaches school, opens Gorge’s locker, and takes the notebook. He goes to his class, finds Dustin sitting by the window, and approaches him.

Albedo, "Are you Dustin?"

Dustin, "Yes. Why?"

Albedo, "I am Albedo. Gorge asked me to give this to you."

Dustin, "Thanks. But where is he?"

Albedo, "Sakura is sick, so he had to take duty of looking after her."

Dustin, "Please tell him not to miss tomorrow. We have a match with class 2C."

Albedo nods and leaves to find Shilona at the back of the class, organizing some files.

Albedo (to himself), Huh, here we go again. I hope the demon won’t strangle me.

Albedo, "Shilona, Gorge won’t come to school today. He said to lend him your notes."

Shilona, "Fine. I will give them to you after school."

Albedo, "Okay."

Albedo heads to his class. Elena, Alithini, and Illios were chatting. Albedo joins in.

Alithini, "What took you so long? Whatever, I can’t find my phone anywhere."

Albedo, "Maybe you lost it at the facility. Come to think of it, why do we call that place 'facility'? It has a name, right?"

Illios, "What was its name again? Uhhh…"

Elena, "Stellar Solace?"

Illios, "Right, right."

Chitchat among the group goes on for a short while until Miss Charlotte, the class teacher, arrives.

Charlotte, "Kindly take your seats; we are starting homeroom."

After school in the club room

Elena, "Looks like everyone has arrived. So what should we do? Should we visit Mr. Hristos?"

Alithini, "Oh, I’m going."

Shilona, "We have no other choice. Besides, what’s the harm in learning what they are onto…"

Illios, "Count me in."

Albedo, “Fine, we will go. But listen, this time I will do the talking."

Illios, “Not like any of us can win against that man…”

Shilona, “Okay then, let’s go.”

In the facility

Certainly, here's the corrected version without changing the commas to colons:

Calloway, “are they even coming? I don’t think they're trustworthy."

"Hristos, speak of the devil. They’re here. Told you they'd abide by."

Hristos brings them into the conference room along with Calloway.

"Hristos, I welcome you all here. Hope you had a good night's sleep."

Illios to himself, "(Yeah, like we could.)"

Hristos, "What is it, young man?"

Illios, "Nothing."

Albedo, “Why don’t we skip the formalities and jump straight to the point?"

Hristos, “Patience, boy. Though you are right. It will be far easier to show you kids what we research here. But first things first. This young man here is my best friend Calloway. He is a chemist as well as a physicist."

Calloway, “Nice to meet you all."

Albedo, "I will start by reintroducing ourselves. I am Albedo Lawrenze. This is Alithini Korolev, Illios Kherys, Elena Parthenos, and Shilona Alcyone."

Hristos, "Nice to meet you all. Now let’s go, we will start with the storage room where you invaded."

All of them go to the storage area of the facility.

Hristos, "This is our storage room. Though we don’t keep anything worth mentioning. Still, I will ask, did you touch anything?"

Albedo, "No, nothing here. But we did in the other room."

Calloway, "Oh. Please show us."

Everyone goes to the other room.

Hristos, "This is our testing area. We usually test on the subjects here with some machines and bots for safety."

Illios takes everyone to the spherical-shaped device that was found by them previously.

Illios, "We found this the last time we came here. I want to know what it is and why does it glow out of the blue?"

Calloway, "Umm. Kid, don’t touch it. It’s dangerous."

Calloway and Hristos observe it to make sure it wasn’t damaged.

Hristos, "Do you kids know what a Dyson sphere is?"

Elena, Alithini, and Shilona reply in the negative by nodding their heads.

Calloway, "Allow me to explain. Basically, it’s a megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output."

Hristos, "It is done because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet. Building structures encircling a star enables a civilization to harvest far more energy."

Alithini, "I thought stars are supposed to be massive and shine brightly until they die."

Hristos, "It is an artificial star created here 17 years ago. Though it is not exactly a star, it behaves like one. It is very unstable compared to a natural star, and it doesn’t have a long lifespan."

Albedo, "Is it a neutron star?"

Calloway, "Precisely. You see, this star is already dead. At this point, it’s a neutron star. And the glow you saw? It was the pulsar ray emitted by it. Even though it’s dead, we are still able to extract some amount of energy from it with the 2nd gen Dyson sphere."

Albedo, "2nd gen? I thought we were still on 1st gen."

Hristos, "You see, what we build here doesn’t go outside easily. Only after successful testing do we go public. This is still a prototype."

Calloway, "Any more questions?"

Elena, "How do you even observe the subjects in here? There isn’t even a single window or camera."

Calloway, "We don’t need those. We have some special machines that are in the other room. If you don’t have any more questions, let’s go there and check them out."

Alithini, "Wait. How do you even turn the solar energy into something usable as electricity?"

Hristos, "Come to the Machina Vault. You will find your answer there."

In the Machina Vault

Hristos, "These machines are used to test various things on those subjects while retraining them. This requires a huge amount of power which we cannot get from typical sources. So, we use the energy we get from stars."

Calloway, "Currently, we have 2 mini active stars."

Illios, "Wait, what? You mean not dead like the one we saw?"

Calloway, "Yes. Unlike that, these are still new and more stable. Come here. Look down underneath your feet. Wait, let me open the shutters."

Calloway opens an automatic shutter under the glass lid. The whole room lights up very brightly.

Shilona, "What in the world is this! You built a giant Dyson sphere underneath this lab without anyone noticing!"

Illios, "Won’t this glass break if a certain amount of load is put on it?"

Hristos, "No. It isn’t glass, it's diamond. We created it by heating up graphite under high pressure. Also known as diamond synthesis."

Calloway, "Fascinating, isn’t it?"

Albedo, "So, how do you create these artificial stars?"

Calloway, "It’s a complicated process. We will tell you later, sometime in the future."

Alithini looks around tensely, trying to find something.

Hristos, "Is something the matter, Alithini?"

Alithini, "No, nothing important. It’s just I can’t seem to find my phone since yesterday."

Hristos, "I see. You must’ve lost it somewhere else. If you did lose it here, we would’ve found it by now."

Calloway, "You all must be tired from taking all of this in. Let’s take a break."

Calloway closes the shutters, and everyone goes to the control room. On their way to the control room, Shilona stops in front of a big door and looks at the engraving on the door.

In the Control Room

Hristos, "You can sit on the couch. Calloway will bring you something to eat. I have a little work to take care of."

Shilona, "Wait!"

Hristos, "What? Do you need something?"

Shilona, "On our way here, I saw this big door that had an engraving. Whose is it?"

Hristos, "Why don’t you come with me and check it out."

Elena, "Let me accompany you."

Shilona, "No need. You guys wait here."

Shilona and Hristos go in front of that door.

Shilona, "Why is there 'Alcyone' engraved on this door?"

Hristos sighs, "It belonged to your mother. Why don’t we get in and talk? I am sure you don’t want your friends to know about your mother’s past."

Hristos and Shilona enter. Hristos lights up the room.

Hristos sighs, "Shilona, I am sorry about your mother. You see…"

Shilona angrily interrupts, "Shut up! What did she do to you? You killed her. Murderer!"

Hristos, "No. Listen..."

Shilona shouts, "What is there to listen?"

Hristos, "Your mother and I are siblings. She is my twin sister."

Shilona, "What! Then why did you kill her?"

Hristos, "It’s my fault she died, but I didn’t kill her."

Shilona, "I saw her dead in your arms. Your hands were soaked in blood. Those weren’t even hands. You are a monster."

Hristos, on the brink of tears, "It wasn’t me. I tried to save her but I failed. If only I was a little stronger."

Shilona, "What strength? I saw you massacring those disgusting creatures with your own hands!"

Hristos takes a deep breath, and Shilona wipes her eyes.

Hristos, calmly, "Calm down. Sit here. Let me explain."

Shilona, angrily, "Like there is something to be explained."

Hristos, "On that day, Seraphima was attacked on her way here. She called me and said someone from Earth was here and hung up. I traced her location and rushed to that spot as fast as I could, but I was late. By then, one of those wretched beings had already stabbed her with its hands. I was overwhelmed by rage; my hands crystallized, and I hit the one that was holding Seraphima. I killed it, but it had already done something to Seraphima. Seraphima was capable of healing her body like me, but that time she couldn’t heal herself. Those monsters banded together to attack again, so I killed them all. I even spared one for confrontation. But it didn’t say anything about fixing Seraphima’s wound. She was bleeding badly. In her dying moments, she whispered to me, 'please keep my family safe. Don’t let jellybean know that I am dying.' But I failed. You saw everything."

Shilona, "You're lying. And how do you know she called me jellybean?"

Hristos, "I am not lying. It’s the truth. Why would I lie? I don’t have anything to hide."

Shilona, "Then why were your hands like those monsters?"

Hristos, "They are a lesser version of me. More like copycats. I am sorry for one more thing."

Shilona, "What is it?"

Hristos, "I was the one asked your father to keep a low profile and I am the one who made sure you didn’t stand out."

Shilona, "How so?"

Hristos, "I personally hired a teacher in your school to make your grades lower."

Shilona, surprisingly calm, "So you are the reason I never got what I deserve no matter how hard I tried. What else are you hiding?"

Hristos, "Nothing else. So do you trust me now?"

Shilona, "Only a little. You should’ve shared everything before when you came to my house last year. I am pretty sure I would’ve understood."

Hristos, "I was a little scared, you see, of how you might act afterwards. But it seems my worries were unfounded."

Shilona, "If you had told me sooner, maybe I and father could’ve stayed in one place instead of changing homes 8 times! Now we can’t even go back to the house mom built with father."

Hristos, "Don’t worry about that. I already bought that house and preserved it as it was before."

Shilona, "And you're saying I should trust you…"

Hristos, "Well, whatever, dear niece. Just know that I will always be there for you and your father."

Things between Shilona and Hristos calm down. Shilona seems to trust Hristos after all that. Chitchat between them goes on; perhaps it is time for them to heal the past wounds.

To be continued