Permafrost

Dr. Lathis Ergon and Dr. Cristalla Ktisis were sentenced to freedom in the far north. Their research into alternative fuel sources bore fruit in the sense that methane clathrate and its theoretical discovery could solve the current crisis.

Extinction on the line, they were afforded no special care.

In those days, the longest of shots were rewarded but never properly funded.

Unwanted Gesture
“The Bargain”

“There’s no more trees.” I looked at her and she looked at me. We wandered far with humanity’s last hope and final wish.

“Do you think they’ll remember?” Our coats were thick. The layers of fabric hid the features of her face. Even against the endless white and whipping wind, I knew she was smiling. Somehow.

Otherwise, our task was simple. We were meant to scout the frontier in search of that fabled hot ice. A new source of fuel that could shield the flame of civilization from harshest nature for another night.

We had burned through everything else and the risks were finally deemed worth the reward.

An understandable position given the alternative of annihilation.

“Remember what?” My voice was still strong. I believed in our mission. There was never any doubt of the greater good we served. The crimes of our grandfathers were more than paid in full. “Methane clathrate is all that matters now.”

“No, you goofy goober!” I could make out her laughter as a muffled giggle ripping past her fur-lined hood. She found it funny when I used the scientific name for our legendary quest.

And like always, that moment passed quickly before all sound was raptured by another howl. The cold, the white, the dark, and the desperation. I grew used to all of it, but I was never prepared for the loudness of the wind.

Sometimes I thought about it too much. How this invisible force pushed us to and fro. The hand of god shuffling clouds and weather, mixing the ice and snow with drafts and doubt.

We needed to huddle together when we were in the field during a storm. Official protocol was to never leave a shelter under blizzard conditions.

We made a mutinous executive decision once it was clear how limited our options were becoming.

“Well, there’s not much more worth remembering.” I tried to lighten the mood under the cold and heavy air. We grew closer like that. Letting go of an intense embrace to continue the trek into the tundra.

“I mean you and me!” She reached for my hand again just as I moved away from her body. I let her grab it. It felt nice to know where we were. That’s a bit of overstatement though.

I mean it quite poetically.

We lost our sense of direction that far north. Compasses were no longer very useful and most electronic equipment ate up too much of our precious fuel.

A simple touch let us know we weren’t alone. In an infinite plane, we could always find our relative positions.

Another gust of wind and snow was flying all around us. Up and down and side to side.

“And you thought taking the ship through that frozen ocean required strong sea legs.” I tried to keep the mood with another easy joke. I felt responsible for lightening the mood in that way. I don’t know why. “I tell you what, Cristalla. I think this place would make any sailor nauseous after less than an hour of walking through the white!”

Cristalla always kept spirits high enough for the two of us, but it wasn’t fair for her to bear that burden alone. I was never one to be a cheer leader, but maybe she was just rubbing off on me.

“Well, those sailors better show up!” Cristalla could joke right back despite the pain in every step. And perhaps pain is the wrong word. Our feet were numb and that was more than half the danger. If the cold bites too deep then it would really be over.

Humanity’s last gambit lost in a bad bargain.

“Show up to save us?” I asked, looking around again trying to find any bearings. We would need to figure out how to get back soon. We still hadn’t found any of the hot ice, or methane clathrate if you prefer, and we couldn’t die before we ever found any at all. That would make the whole journey pointless.

So, I will not die.

And I won’t let her die.

Not before me.

“They’ll throw parades!” Cristalla raised my hand up. She captured me in her imagined world. A life where we could stand in front of a public of adoring fans. Some important politician introducing us to the world. I could hear them cheer and shout as the city lights turned on.

No rationing anymore.

I shook my head and soon returned to the brutal world in front of us, watching for rays of sunlight. I desperately wanted to witness the slightest hint from any god who may have heard our prayers. But all hope struggled to pierce the white.

And another gust blew cold dust in my eyes.

I fell to the ground with a thud. I couldn’t help but smile.

We were never going home. This was the end.

“Lathis!” Cristalla called out my name and kneeled down beside me. Her knees must have been so cold. You never get used to the feeling. The frozen earth that grows deeper and deeper. All roots are stunted before they can even think to dream of sprouting.

“Cristalla…”

“Lathis!” My eyes were still closed, but I could tell Cristalla had on that serious face of hers. She’d push her eyebrows together as she emphasized my name. I thought it looked cute, but I could never tell her. She grabbed my hand again and held it to her heart. “Promise you’ll go to the parade with me! We’ll be welcomed as heroes! And you know they won’t let me stand up in front of everyone alone! Imagine how embarrassing that’d be? What a shame for everyone in the world!”

“Cristalla…” I said her name again. “How did we end up in this mess?”

Everyone from our generation knew the story. Resources were always limited, but nobody ever listened. The front line was pushed until the last drop was spent.

It wasn’t an immediate shock. More like slow ripples that never stopped.

The food supply falling short was when soldiers finally deserted en masse. Some say the fools hoped for an immediate apocalypse, but we were blessed with hope.

The reality of the world shrunk all worries and woes. The common enemy was given the name of survival, and we worked toward that shared goal, endlessly.

By the time Cristalla and I were born, it was all anyone had ever known. Lost leadership and crumbling infrastructure against a rising tide of forgotten innovation.

“You know how the story goes.” Cristalla dragged me up by my arm and helped me sit up straight. “But let’s not get into a history lesson! You’ll freeze if you lay on the ground!”

She was right. It would be a quick and easy death. But I had already promised not to die.

Not before her.

“How much farther is it to the next site now?” I asked, knowing all too well neither of us had a satisfying answer.

“It shouldn’t be too long.” Cristalla looked around. We didn’t have the time or the supplies to check another deposit. We needed to go home to our shelter if we wanted to save any hope at all.

There were no trees. No landmarks. Just white in every direction.

“Let’s put a flag down and continue along this route tomorrow.” I started fishing through my supplies. It was hard to find the right tools with such thick gloves.

“Okay… But only because you promised me, Lathis!” Cristalla helped me set up the flagpole. It would be gone by morning, but it made us feel better to go through the motions. “We’re both making it back for the parade, alright?”

“Yeah.” We planted the flag as deep in the frozen ground as it would go. “I promise, Cristalla.”

We were the best of what was left.

The ins and outs of a bargain that got us that far are a convoluted mess of bylaws and bylines.

None of that mattered as long as we promised to still be there together.

Burning Ice
“The offering”

I dreamed we died again.

I felt the warmth of my own blood spilling into the frozen Earth. It was as hot as any fire.

When I saw Cristalla’s eyes, I would realize I was dreaming though. For some reason, my mind never got hers right. They were blue, not green.

So I’d laugh. Although it’s better to say the laughter started. It didn’t sound like it came from my body. Then she would cry. Cristalla singing as the siren while the nightmare ate itself alive.

The seconds dragged on for what seemed like hours. Looking up at the endless expanse, the black consumed my soul. All I could do was smile and wait to wake up.

The joke was in how we could only ever imagine what the sky looked like at night. As bad as it was during the day in the white, the black was worse.

Outside the air-tight doors and high above the clouds, I had a vision of the stars spread out in a familiar pattern. But only in my dreams.

Each light shone bright as corners in a crystal net. The cosmic structure holding us in as pressurized prisoners.

We will never pierce those walls.

And that was all we wanted.

That was all we could want.

Not just the desire Cristalla and I shared. The pragmatic goal of our expedition was to find a big enough deposit.

Methane clathrate would solve the fuel shortages. The last of the ships sank more than 50 years ago. Brothers fighting each other until the last drop was drunk.

Fortunately for the rest of us, no one cared about the wastelands in the north. The reward was never deemed to be worth the effort.

Worse than diminishing returns, the initial cost was calculated to eat up any benefit at all.

“Let’s try to pick up the trail again!” Cristalla was always in high spirits. It hid the scars well. A thick line going down our spines. They would only send those with the right credentials on a suicide mission like ours.

“I doubt the flag will still be there.” I was known for a certain dry wit. It had led to more than one of my demotions. The last of which got me trapped in this cage.

Our shelter was built with efficiency in mind, like a carbon compound. We could put it together in less than three hours, connecting the little hexagons until we were safe inside the dome.

Even then, the floor was so cold. We had to spend our time inside on raised platforms to put more distance between our bodies and the permafrost.

“Lathis.” She called out my name and that helped me relax. She was beautiful. Before we suited up and were under the thick layers of coats, I could admire her. “Lathis! You’re bleeding!”

“Damn.” I reached for my back and felt the old wound. The cold dry air made it easy for skin and scars to stiffen to the point of pain. “Well, let’s patch it up. No time to waste waiting for it to stop.”

Maybe it was an excuse to have her touch me.

Maybe she let it happen so we could touch each other.

Either way, we both knew we couldn’t afford to waste time. We spent the last of our reserves on lingering eyes. Our shared desire for something more resting just past our lips.

Then we would be ready to leave and wander through the white.

But we were late that morning.

The moment those doors opened, any attempt to extend the dream was shattered. The hinge wanted to break, it was ready to fly away. The design didn’t account for such wild winds.

The atmosphere had shifted since the last geographical survey. It had been over five generations since a human soul had stepped into the tundra.

It hurt and we lacked the strength and the will to make that first step.

Every day we fought against the inevitable end.

There was nothing out there.

No trees.

No burning ice.

No future.

No hope.

But our mission continued on that path. There was no home to go to unless we found something, anything.

We walked and walked and then walked some more. Every day was the same dream. Hours and hours in the white as we stumbled around, aimlessly.

The rumors of the bounty were never to be trusted.

Desperation makes for a potent motivation.

We were pulled up from a cell. Anyone with the aptitude was meant to focus on those studies. Our forefathers imagined a world that mankind conquered.

We lived in one where nature prevailed.

The discovery wasn’t new. Any scientist worth their expense in rations learned to read the archives. Those who came before already found what we needed. It was all lost under the rubble and dust.

I first met Cristalla at the sentencing. She wasn’t smiling then. We were pulled by the chains digging into our spines.

Convergent evolution was the word used to describe important rediscoveries like ours. We both read about the various hydrocarbons and in the details of some papers were whispers of a miracle in methane clathrate.

A paradox of burning ice with fires of shifting colors. The gas trapped inside was an order of magnitude greater than first theorized.

They cut the chords and set us loose.

“They’ll welcome us as heroes.” I laughed to myself as I thought about the potential for our journey home.

“I know!” Cristalla turned to face me. It was hard to make out most of her face with the fur-lined coat, but I always appreciated seeing her blue eyes. I smiled back. I didn’t think she would hear me with the wind catching our breath in every step. “And finally we can live!”

“You and me?” I kept smiling and she smiled back.

“Always and forever.”

A sudden gust pushed her into me and I put my arms around her. She held me tight and we found warmth in our close bodies. We could survive as long as we were together.

“You’re still bleeding?” She spoke into my coat with stifled tears. She must have felt the warm liquid running down my back.

“It’s nothing.” I tried to reassure her, but I couldn’t let go of her embrace. We couldn’t let go of each other. “Don’t worry about it, Cristalla.”

“Lathis!” She sobbed as she said my name into my ear. We were so close. We were all there was. Just two irregular points in that infinite plane of white.

I saw the map. It was incomplete. The same shapes in the stars and in our shelter. The compounds that made up the clathrate. A hard shell hiding divine providence from mortal sight.

“I don’t feel alive.” Cristalla spoke in prophecies on that fateful afternoon.

“We planted the flag around here.” I pulled her tight, but her arms fell to her side. “We’ll find it soon!”

“I’m sorry… I don’t feel alive anymore.” She looked up at me with those clear blue eyes. I thought I saw them turn green, but I was sure we weren’t in a dream. “That’s what I meant to say.”

“Cristalla!” I shouted her name as her body went limp. “We have to make it to the parade! They’ll welcome us as heroes! Cristalla! Cristalla stay with me!”

She was so heavy. Our coats were so thick. I couldn’t keep my grip on her and she fell to the frozen ground with a soft thud.

“Cristalla!” I reached down to touch her, but my back was already bleeding. The movement stretched my skin and drops of red seeped down my arm, dripping onto her beautiful, still face.

Drop, drop, drop.

One, two, three.

They splashed on her skin and her eye must have twitched. The green told me I was still asleep.

I would never accept she was gone.

My body stopped moving and the wind threw dust on my thoughts. The white was all there was. Nothing in this wretched world but an empty fog.

Even my screams were carried away faster than I could hear them.

And so, it was all the more surprising when I heard a sound at all.

The Earth beneath our feet igniting in hellfire. That same green color burning into the atmosphere.

I grabbed Cristalla’s dead weight and tried to wake her up again.

“We found it!” I raised her hand up like she had helped me do so many times before. “We really did it. This is the hot ice! We’re walking on a huge deposit of methane clathrate!”

I watched as the familiar lattice filled my vision. The crystallized structure and its caged bounty. The pattern repeated everywhere. Across the maps, in the stars, the walls of our shelter, and the horrors penetrating our minds.

She would have smiled at the idea of her colorful soul being the key.

Khlumnus Hodoratus
“The Threshold”

The inferno arrived. That was the gift of our bounty. I watched her body burn.

Cristalla engulfed by the fires of Pandora’s Box.

And then I fled.

I am a coward.

I marched. The hellfire consumed everything. My mind broke. I couldn’t let myself cry. The tears would freeze on my face and I would surely find a most painful death in the white.

In the blue and green.

In her eyes.

I thought that was what I wanted, but in the moment I lacked the courage.

I was afraid.

We had found what we sought. The largest deposit of methane clathrate on Earth. The sky itself lamented our discovery, hiding the wind behind those fiery gates.

“Be not afraid.” Those words echoed in my head. He taught me his name: Khlumnus Hodoratus. He beckoned me to leave my prison cell.

I pledged my soul to never listen.

I became lazy and sloppy.

“Fuck off! Fucking asshole!” Pounding fists against those hexagonal walls until they bled, my ritual repeated five times every day. A red mural painted in uneven lines.

And her voice rang in my ears as a call to prayer.

“Always and forever.”

I lost any sense of time, pairing well with the lack of direction. The conditions outside worsened. I never checked the readings anymore, but I heard the various machines beep out their complaints at irregular intervals.

I knew the electronic melody they sang was one of redemption.

“I promised her!”

How many pounds of flesh?

I smacked my forehead against the wall to feel the cold. They were made out of a unique blend of materials meant for insulation. Carbon fiber and other hydrates.

“And we can trust their word?” The final doubts were discussed as the judge held his gavel just above his podium. I reached for Cristalla’s hand as the chain tugged tight on our spines.

“Dr. Lathis Ergon and Dr. Cristalla Ktisis are at the forefront of humankind’s limits in knowledge. The two esteemed scholars, whose valor bore witness to their convergent evolution in epistemic theories, have concluded that this methane clathrate is indeed found in the barren wastelands of our abandoned north. Apocalyptic revelations are our only salvation!”

The devil’s advocate played his role well. He knew our history, but with a single glance between our clasped hands, I knew Cristalla shared my humor. The sophist’s passionate argument was held together by faithless logic. He simply saw us as another victim for whom he was paid to defend.

“By order of Adamastic decree, Dr. Lathis Ergon and Dr. Cristalla Ktisis are hereby sentenced to embody the messianic desires of what is left of our collective consciousness.” The judge let the gavel fall and all was decided.

They spared every expense. Even with those shortsighted plans, we wouldn’t die outright. That translated into supplies that sufficed and a well designed barrier to keep the wind away.

Our shelter wasn’t made for anything more than that. The cold of the frost below seeped through in shameful waves.

“Not before her! I was meant to die first!” But that wasn’t what kept me from stepping past the threshold. I could feel his presence as I slammed my skull between the cracks.

I only stopped when I passed out, concussed.

Dragged deep into the permafrost, my body withering away. The cold crept up and into my veins.

I will never understand why my heart still fought back.

When I wasn’t overcome with rage, I hoped the shelter would finally give up and give in. Collapse and release the energy inside.

That would be a good life.

A good end.

“I don’t feel alive anymore.”

Cristalla’s words haunted me. How long we had striven to find reason in the randomness. My mind’s refusal to accept the reality before my eyes was useless.

My body brought my soul back home.

A fear so strong I was left paralyzed in purgatory.

“Thou needst not suffer.” Khlumnus Hodoratus learned how to speak to me through the barrier. His voice on the wind never penetrated the walls, but he wrote words using my blood as it dripped down the sides. “Infantile child of man.”

His inferno was growing. He wanted to welcome me past the gates of hell.

I was so afraid.

I wanted the cold to take me.

The temperature outside was rising.

“They’ll throw parades for us!” Cristalla grabbed my hand and raised my arm up from the floor. She was so beautiful. I could admire her body when we didn’t need to wear the layers of coats and furs. But her eyes were green. “Remember what I said! We’re both making it back, alright? We deserve a celebration!”

Her smile was so genuine. Her soul was bleached white.

“Cristalla…” I whispered her name between gasps in the night. She would disappear when I awoke and found myself on the cold floor. “…I’m still alive?”

The pressure of that prison was different from the one I had known since birth. All scholars were gifted with chains and chords set into our spines. An eternal source of nutrients and sustenance to allow for full focus on our work.

No rest for the weary as everyone understood the stakes.

Sacrifices were necessary if we were to survive as a species.

“Lathis!” Khlumnus Hodoratus mocked me with her voice. He had learned my deepest desires and greatest regrets. At any moment, I believed he could have chosen to burn my bones to ash, but he let me live instead.

“Fuck off!” Another fit of rage and I tore the last of our equipment apart. Silicon fragments flying every which way as I cut myself on the edge of what was once something very important.

I no longer cared.

“Lathis.” He knocked against every wall of the shelter. A unifying rhythm that was impossible to ignore. I could feel his flames beckoning me to come. To join him in his glory just outside the door. “Thou needst not suffer.”

I would never yield.

I promised if anything happened it would be me and not her.

He was a demon.

I told her I would die before her.

Khlumnus Hodoratus waiting for me.

“Always and forever.”

“Lathis!” Cristalla noticed after three months of no results. We were still impassioned by the idea of bringing the theory to life, but the cracks in our understanding were beginning to show themselves. “Take a look at these readings.”

She showed me some raw data. Our maps were useless, but we tried to remain productive. Analyzing samples and seeing if there were any missed details.

“I don’t see anything out of the ordinary.” I looked over the numbers and the graphs. “It’s all within our expected calculations. I suppose that proves the theory has some merit at least.”

“Exactly!” Cristalla looked up at me with those clear blue eyes. She was beautiful. I couldn’t hide my attraction. “We’re on the right path. It’s just a matter of time. Think of the fanfare that’ll be waiting for us!”

She reached for my hand and I reached for hers. We held each other and saw the only salvation there ever was. Together, we made our own warmth from the worldly desires of a shared dream.

“Cristalla…” I held her in my arms whenever we let the morning run late, caressing her face and no longer worrying about the failures of our theories. “I love you.”

“I’m sorry…”

She looked the same as when I held her.

And then she was gone and I was alone.

Except I wasn’t alone.

He was always there.

Khlumnus Hodoratus as I claimed to call him. His inferno released once we ignited the burning ice. Well beyond any rational explanation, that demon invited me to join him on the other side.

A will not my own.

No longer frozen by the permafrost, my legs moved without my volition. One step into another until I was at the entrance. Cristalla then helped me raise my arm to touch the air-tight door.

She smiled at me with that heart full of pure intentions and pointed at the locking mechanism.

I was so afraid. Fear clutched my heart. The sound of my own blood drowned out his voice. I finally found the courage when I noticed the color of her eyes.

The howling winds were already ablaze in a dance of blues and greens. I must have lasted less than a tenth of a second. The shelter was wiped clean in one fell swoop. All that trapped energy released, adding to the flames of burning ice.

“Thou chosest well.” Khlumnus Hodoratus took shape between unspoken hues. His eyes and his smile were tipped in oranges and his pale skin a hot white. “Welcome, savior.”

He showed me visions of a world born anew. The flood as his flames to wash away our sins.

He promised to save us.

I finally saw her again.

Cristalla was waiting for me.

Her eyes were green.

Purifying Fire
“Buried Alive”

The fires burned brighter than expected.

But it still took weeks to notice.

Half the continent set ablaze before the bureaucrats began filing out the forms for an official overview. They thought to avert their eyes at first. An anomaly in the dataset signifying nothing more than noise.

Everything changed overnight.

“Methane clathrate only burns green if impurities are so intense it causes interference!”

An important minister stood before the judge. His name never mattered. He was the devil’s advocate at the original sentencing. Indeed, it was with his testimony that the fates of Dr. Cristalla Ktisis and Dr. Lathis Ergon were sealed.

“Was the thesis not cleared, peer reviewed, notarized, and apostilled under your signature, minister?”

The prosecutor wore a white suit and stern expression. Her red hair twisted into curls and seemed to swirl above her head.

“The data weren’t enough to suggest a flood of fire! What happened was an unknowable unknown the likes of which are only seen on the face of God!”

The mission was deemed a failure and the minister was on trial.

“Objection!” The prosecutor raised her finger and made eye contact with the judge. “Our disgraced minister dares make an appeal to heresy!”

“No! That’s not what I meant!” The frustration of the situation writ plain on his face, the minister shook his head. His job was now to explain the paranormal phenomenon brewing in the wildfires in the northern wastelands. There shouldn’t have been enough fuel to sustain those gates of hell.

“May your actions be remembered!” The prosecutor made grand gestures with her arms. “Let your legacy speak for itself!”

“Methane clathrate should never burn like this! It doesn’t make sense! Yes, they were meant to die! We left them stranded out there!”

The world’s problems went far beyond the courtroom. Rumors spread far and wide. People were offering their daily bread as retribution. If nothing were done, humanity’s final hope would end in vainglorious mass starvation.

“We care not for the sophist’s dream.” The judge wore a white wig and rarely spoke. He was meant to utter little more than the final verdict. “Teach us of the harvest or suffer under eternal damnation.”

Such an ultimatum hit with predictable pain. The ones who could rightly answer were no longer alive. Negligence that would reveal itself if procedure were raised to the level of discovery.

“Your honor!”

“It is imperative that your insubordination be noted by the official recordkeepers.” The judge slammed his gavel in a rare sign of anger.

The prosecutor curled her lips into a smirk, her red hair dancing down her back, adding accents to her pure white suit. The minister’s shoulders shrunk. He was the one charged to defend the heroes of humanity. And for that prestigious role, he drew his last breath in that courtroom then and there. All assets seized, it took more than a year to decipher the documents.

What followed were the death throes of civilization. Generations of brave soldiers fighting the encroaching flames. Humanity’s survival or our demise. It was all the same for those who suffered.

Stories from veterans were odd and superstitious. They would speak of a beautiful woman with blue and green eyes hidden as a mirage on the horizon. Others would shiver as they mentioned a voice penetrating dreams and nightmares.

Worse — and by far the most common — were reports of a mangled corpse charred to bone and ash. The soldiers assumed it was Lathis, but none could explain how or why.

“He begged for mercy!”

Some veterans were no longer communicative. Those wounded hearts mumbled verses if they said anything at all.

Among the more common ones was the following:

And with the arms of a flood shall they be overflown from before him,
and shall be broken.

The new malady was given a dishonest name: Pure Fire Exposure. Or PFE for short.

Any “sightings” were then misattributed as PFE symptoms. And so countless deaths were sooner forgiven.

Stranger still, no one mentioned the name Khulmnus Hodoratus, but the monster was common knowledge. Soldiers would say they saw a beast with a white face and orange eyes. A deformation of the bountiful methane clathrate. They referred to the colorful, impure flames as the demon.

“I hear it in my sleep…” One way or another, PFE ate away at its victims’ sanity. Without warning, those afflicted would suddenly gently walk into the inferno. Anyone close to the lost would say it felt like their loved one was finally at peace.

The word “war” was avoided, but that’s what it was. A war against nature. No bullets could pierce the front and no poison could stop the spread of entropy.

But there was nothing else to do.

So they fought the good fight and then they fought some more.

After nearly a century of holding the line, a solution was near. Slow progress and incremental innovations in mining technology, the problem solved itself. Siphoned of fuel, the hellfire died. Humanity gained a new source of sustenance in equal measure.

Celebrations were thus arranged. A big parade for all who could attend. Bronze statues commissioned and decorations placed on every corner. Proper honors for the mythic duo of Dr. Lathis Ergon and Dr. Cristalla Ktisis.

The details of their life were lost to time, but children learned of the expedition to the north. The foundation to the dim light left in the tatters of scattered civilizations.

And so attention swayed to putting on a grand show, welcoming in a new era. Fears of burning through the last candles replaced by hope for pushing past the limits of knowledge.

Any austere wish could be answered by the generational understanding that came from surviving an apocalypse.

“I’m actually related to that Cristalla!” You’d hear boasts in bars with some fool making an impossible claim. “You know how they did things back then, but that doesn’t stop people from being people. Otherwise I’d not be here, am I right?”

A round of laughter and similar stories were shared between raucous tables. The tales only grew taller as the days grew easier. PFE and the death of Lathis and Cristalla left as a footnote in the greater history that defined the species.

And on the fateful day, the great-grandson of that callous judge played the role of master of ceremonies. He wore the same white wig and saw his heritage as the deciding factor in humanity’s victory.

“Citizens, commonfolk, strangers, and heathens!” He inherited a stately bombast more suited to the courtroom. “We celebrate today not as the final point in our story, but as the beginning of what has yet to come!”

His words were met with thunderous applause. Populations were projected to quadruple in his great-grandson’s lifetime. The heir was left with uttering the final verdict. A decision to honor the tattered remains of our heroes’ legacy.

“Dr. Lathis Ergon and Dr. Cristalla Ktisis were the best of us!” He raised his hand and looked down the broad avenue. In that brief moment, he could feel the history of the words. How long the people suffered under a cruel omen. A world where all hope was lost finally forging new dreams. “Their contributions led to the discovery of our new sustainable future! With their lasting legacy now in our hands, let us share that glory in their image!”

He made a swift movement to the side and a cloth covering the statues was pulled away. The bronze figures were revealed and for many it was the first time they ever saw the likeness of their saviors.

“She’s so beautiful!”

“He looks just like my son!”

“They were so brave!”

That reverence came together in an echoed prayer. The first true, unified thought in generations. The old judge’s great-grandson then moved his arm to his other side and signaled the start of the celebrations. Lights along every major and minor street. Every house and home. All the little paths. Every conceivable habitat was lit ablaze in artificial light.

Humanity’s mastery put on full display, meeting more fanfare as the captive audience cheered.

A miracle in the making, music filled the air and dance swept people off their feet. A dream realized in life lived rather than another day left to survive.

Everyone made merry well into the night, the stars never daring to shine brighter than the drunken songs of hope and victory.

When the sun finally rose, a little girl in a white dress with curly red hair wandered past a few passed out patrons to drink in the bronze statues. She looked at the faces and pointed her finger at the two heroes’ heads, asking a question no one knew how to answer.

“Why are her eyes blue and his eyes green?”