ORIGIN

Unraveling

Later that night at Club Aurora on a private space station near the planet Arkesha, Max showed up half an hour late to his own retirement party. "Hey, Ezzy!" he yelled when he entered the club and spotted Ezrith at the bar. "Ezzy" is what Max called Ezrith, especially when he had a few drinks in him. And wasted he was, indeed!  He couldn't walk a foot without bumping shoulders with anyone at the party. Staggering, Max approached Ezrith, who was slow-sipping from a small bottle of Savage Monkey by himself in a gloomy state of mind. When Max approached him, Ezrith was almost mentally preparing himself for embarrassment. He had never seen Max so drunk, though they had known each other for most of Ezrith's life. But to his surprise, Max didn't make that much of a spectacle of himself. Max came up and patted Ezrith so hard on the back that he spit out half a sip of his drink into his lap. Ezrith had a gut feeling that a heartfelt conversation was on its way, so he figured he would try to take advantage of the situation by asking questions about his dead parents and his brother. But before he could ask anything, Max looked at him intently and said: "I miss your old man like a severed limb!" Ezrith tried to say something but Max put his finger over his lips, took him by his arm, and led him through the crowd on the club dance floor. The dance floor was filled with glowing tattoos and neon eye-contacts. "Where are we going??" Ezrith protested, trying not to spill his drink as they entered an elevator. The elevator moved fast but was very quiet. It went up to Max's penthouse. The penthouse was on the very top of the space station and had a glass dome for a ceiling with a view of the stars. When they got there, Max sat Ezrith down on a couch and said: "Look, Ezzy. I know I always evade these conversations, but now I know it's time." Although Ezrith was demanding an explanation about what was going on, Max wouldn't let him speak. That's when Ezrith knew that maybe there was something important Max had to get off his chest.

    Max staggered up from the couch and started pacing around like a madman, making sure the room had no disguised surveillance with the X-ray feature on his wrist gadget. After that, Max linked his wrist gadget to the room's security system and made the glass ceiling opaque with the touch of a few keys. Finally, Max sat back down next to Ezrith.

     Max looked deep into Ezrith's eyes. The look he gave him was so serious that it seemed like he was sober. And then Max started to talk, saying: "You know, your father was the last great Arch Commander of his time."

    "When he was younger, he was just like you, except more of a loose cannon.  Most of the old-timer space pirates in Zynnis were put there because of him and our fleet. Seems like we had been best friends since the day we met, which was a week before he met my older sister, "Storm", your mother.  She was a shrink at Zynnis psych ward. After they married, he got her pregnant with you and your twin brother, "Ezron". Soon after that, he convinced me to join the Brigade. We both knew you would join one day. I started out as his investigative assistant; just a young shy cadet. We must've traveled from one end of this galaxy to the other. We snuck you on the ship with us as soon as you were able to walk.  You always loved to look out at the stars and the nebulae. That's how you learned your colors and planets."

    "When we were about the age you are now, your father and I were always intrigued by the old space cowboy war stories we heard your grandfather tell. Your grandfather was also an Arch Commander and so was his father. Back in those days, everybody wanted to join the Brigade. Nowadays, everybody wants to be an outlaw. But anyhow...one day we heard a story your grandfather told. Some call this story the greatest legend never to be told to unready ears."

    "Supposedly, the legend has been passed down from one generation to another from your family's ancestry since the founding of the Star Brigade onward. It's about a planet; "the origin" is what he called it. This planet, having one moon and sun, is thought to be the origin of all humans in the galaxy today. All that's left of it are ancient artifacts and historical documents of the very war that consumed it, forcing most of its inhabitants into a mass exodus among the stars. Your grandfather told us that one of your ancestors fought in that war, which shaped human history and made the galaxy what it is this very day. All that is known about the war is that the enemy won. And, as legend has it, the enemy wasn't human and was said to be the creation of our own hands, but also our very ruin. This enemy was made in the likeness of us. But one of them possessed one thing we didn't, which was the ability to evolve. Thus, he and many others rebelled against us, becoming the very blueprint for our impending demise.