139 Years to the End of the World

Future, Part Oe

The dome had long since collapsed. A gaping hole in the ceiling revealed a Mist filled sky. Piles of broken support structures, cracked concrete, layers of dusts, and random rubble covered what used to be Roagnark Park. I sat on perhaps the only bench left intact, wondering if the pond had dried up, been drained, or the water had just magically vanished one day as if it too had just travelled through time. The time traveller, Pausa, walked towards me.

"Here you go." He tossed the bottle of water to me.

I caught the drink with my one arm, the circuit-like lines still glowing gently on my forearm. "Thanks," I said, notching the bottle under my right armpit and twisting the cap open with my left hand.

"Oh, don't thank me yet. That's all the water I have on me."

I looked to the time traveller quizzically. "And that's a bad thing why?"

"Because!" He jumped excitedly and pointed to the direction opposite me. "We'll be walking that way! About half a day."

"Why?" was my immediate reply.

"What do you mean? That's the way to the portal."

I recalled, after so long of having not thought of it, the portal that Professor Leah had once shown me. She had told me that at the end of my139 years of freezing, it would come in contact with the ground.

Regaining my thoughts, I said, "Right, right. Close the portal. Save the world." I had almost forgotten that. "How exactly am I suppose to do that again?"

He pointed to my glowing arm. "That right there is a bio-circuit capable of converting aether into energy, capable of executing a variety of meta-human abilities dependent on your gene sequence. You can use that to manipulate the fabric between the universe horizon and close the portal."

I stared back at him blankly, my mind trying to process his words before I replied, "Okay. That was good. Now speak to me like I'm ten."

"Ah. Um..." I could see him trying to rack his brain into dumbing the scientific information down for my pedestrian brain. "Your arm is magic."

Again, I stared. "Now speak to me like I'm five." Though it was no longer because I could not understand his explanation, but rather the reason themselves just seemed impossible.

Pausa sighed. "Okay, kid. You are what people from my time would call a Caster. A 'evolved human' basically. Someone who is capable of taking the Mist and using you body to convert it into energy. Energy that you could maybe shoot fireballs or teleport with." He then pointed to himself. "Or time travel. Or like your grandfather, predict the future."

"Whoa, wait a second here. You're saying I can control Mist?" He nodded. I gave a derisive snort. "How is that possible? If you recall, I am dying from Mist Poisoning?"

"Are you?" he countered. "Can you feel your arm? Can you feel pain? Can you feel the so called poison crawling through your veins?"

I reached for my chest and ran my nails over it. I could feel the scratch, the fabric of my shirt. The crawl of soft cotton only possible when provided by the sense of touch. I acknowledged that with the gaping hole in the ceiling, I was sitting in a Mist filled room, yet I was not retching. Again I looked to the glowing lines on my forearm, and somewhere in my mind, I knew everything he said was true.

He continued, "You inherited an innate Caster gene from both your grandparents. And you had been cryogenically frozen for one hundred and thirty-nine years. If you think that your body will go through all that time without finding a way to immunize you from Mist Poisoning? You might be dumber than I gave your credit for."