Chapter 2: Chapter 1: The Arrival of Spring

Book 1: Winter descends upon Cessa

Whistling winds blow on a snowy mountain top, their momentum pilfer the snowflakes from their graceful descent. Specks of white fly turbulent within the chilled air, their waltz coming to a lull as they fall within the ground’s embrace. Buds of flowers carved of ice peek out from the snowy substrate, they quiver with balletic beauty as they dance along with the breeze.

Abruptly, sounds of glass shattering resonate through the air. A fracture forms from the fabric of reality, appearing like the result of a hammer striking glass.

A silver foot steps outside, followed by a leg, then an arm. They belonged to that of a faceless metallic figure, one shaped from pure silver.

After the figure steps out of the crack, the fissure heals, the sides collapse on themselves as if the force separating it had been severed; contrary to when it was opened, the process of the portal closing left no sound.

The “head” of the figure quickly warps, an eye forms, then another, a mouth, a nose, it was transformed into something human, a youthful man, equipped with brown hair and dark blue eyes: a man at the peak of his life.

Wearing a futuristic suit that appeared to be out of a science fiction novel; he carried an unbridled smile alongside dazzling eyes.

“Here we are.” A robotic female voice resounded within his head.

The space before them was a haze of shifting white. Yet, that veil did nothing to obstruct the majesty of a pair of monumental walls in the distance. They scaled from the earth to the very heavens. They split the land as though they had been placed there by a deity. One glowed with a grey light, the other a pristine white.

“Wow, what a sight. So these divisions weren’t just contained in the atmosphere.”

Are they the reason why we’re here?

The man conversed with the foreign voice in his head without speaking. He simply thought about what he wished to say for the voice to understand.

“Yup, we suspect they’re the reason our scanners aren’t getting through the surface. As you might imagine, the higher ups want answers. We’ve been assigned a mission to investigate how they formed; how lucky, you’ll have to endure my presence for a bit longer!”

The man closed his eyes and took a deep breath, the personality of his ‘companion’ was rather troubling.

Is that quite alright? I’ve never done this before.

"What’s to worry? You got me! Since you haven't gotten used to handling this body yet, I'll just operate everything for you. Let us go forth—to where these walls converge!” The voice spoke its intention with hapless glee.

You’re the boss… The man sarcastically responded while staring at the walls. Despite his interaction with the voice, he still was unable to wipe his wide grin off his face. It was a sign of his amazement in arriving so simply to an alien world.

This grin instantly vanished as his eyes widened in surprise, startled by the sudden lack of balance. He had begun levitating. Arms shot out to both sides, flailing about wildy in a sad attempt to regain his balance.

“Uh, quit thrashing around would you? You’re making this rather hard to control.”

It was his actions causing his instability, he immediately stopped to find himself balanced upright.

A snarky sound echoed within his head.

“Hehe.”

I didn’t know AI could have a sense of humor. The man retorted in a saddening attempt to defend himself.

“Humph! You’d laugh at yourself if you were me, why can’t I?”

The man sighed as his figure descended the steep mountainous slopes.

On the way down, he saw plants of various colors, translucent rocks, among other strange sights. Like a newborn, the man gawked at the peculiar sights, as would anyone if they found themselves no longer on earth.

At the foot of the mountain was a forest. Upon closer inspection, he noticed the trees, bistre bark as smooth as marble, leaves as large and round as a car’s tire, they densely crowded the mountain’s base.

This didn’t obstruct the man however; he simply flew higher, higher than even the tallest trees could reach.

As he flew across the vast field of trees, the towering, imperious walls before him stood still, as if they were frozen in time, a testament to how distant they were.

Eventually, he spotted a break in the monotonous background of trees. A perfectly straight line carved through the forest, in it lay a long trail of some metal building. It stretched far into the distance with no end in sight. The forest floor near the base of the construct was well trodden, the two beige dirt paths outlining the dark purple and onyx building contrasted it greatly.

A wall perhaps? There’s only trees on both sides, what was it separating? Who built it? What were their intentions?

Numerous questions immediately rushed into the man’s mind. As he pondered, he heard the snarky AI.

“Interesting, apparently intelligent life inhabits this planet. There has been a change of plans, we are to investigate the intelligent life that inhabits this planet first.”

The man’s figure flickered, he slowly turned invisible, as he had been erased from reality. He looked down at his torso and saw the trees behind him, the man's now invisible face fell agape in amazement.

“This construction happens to lead to where the walls converge, let's kill two birds with one stone and follow it.” The AI announced its intention.

The man nodded, but he had a question on his mind;

Why are we flying so slow?

He had just stepped out of a portal which traversed the vast distance of space to arrive from one planet to another, and now they were flying barely above the highway speed limit? Was it to save on fuel consumption perhaps? This inconsistency didn’t make sense to him.

“It’s because of the interference.”

Interference?

“The system of which the planet operates by is peculiar indeed, we’ve already confirmed the existence of life from the trees and that hoofed mammal, now we see signs of intelligent life. Life makes itself known, the oxygen, carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere should have been a glaring indicator. Yet, our scanners received nothing. A strange form of matter permeates the air. Beyond my cursory knowledge of its existence, all my attempts to analyze deeper within its contents have failed. As we fly, I’ve noticed that the density of this matter varies without pattern. I aim to chance upon a patch of matter that has high enough density so that I may succeed in analyzing it. Hence, our slow flying.”

The moment she finished, an ear shattering shriek reverberated the man’s soul, a purple blur sped past him. The man covered his ears as he recoiled from the change in air pressure. It was far too fast for him to decipher what it was; the shrieking rapidly decreased in volume, accompanying the object which had now disappeared behind the trees.

“Uh, further change of plans, let's keep up with that thing.”

The man’s velocity instantly changed without any indication of accelerating, his vision flashed, and he arrived next to the thing that just rushed past them. The man became more surprised when he noticed the noise level of the wind rushing past his ears mismatched his current speed. Evidently, they were being suppressed.

The man’s gaze trailed along the lengthy object, which traveled on the ‘wall’ that the man was following.

It looked like a bullet train, a narrow tip widened into a boxy body. It was sleek, looked futuristic, and it had a dark shiny purple exterior. Distinctive circles of purple light lit up its sides.

A railway for a train, that makes a bit more sense.

He peered at the train from head to tail, yet there seemed to be no end to its length as its tail curved behind the trees. The man’s eyes widened as he realized the entire train had gone past him in just a few seconds.

“Wow, even when we’re right beside it this thing is still invisible to the onboard sensors; I’m picking up absolutely nothing, it’s like it doesn’t exist.” The AI muttered her incessant thought, “It’s also traveling at below supersonic speeds, yet there was zero sound until it was right beside us… Strange.”

“Most likely, this phenomenon is due to that strange form of matter. Hmmm, so the lifeforms here are capable of harnessing this form of matter which is undetectable to even me… Interesting.”

After listening to the AI’s conjecture, the man noticed that the train had some transparent spots placed at equal intervals.

Windows?

As if his intentions were read, the AI controlled his body to fly closer to the train. Now, he could get a closer look.

The man squinted his eyes, wait, some figures were moving about.

He got even closer.

Blond hair, black eyes, traits possessed by nearly all the passengers inside, a few had black hair, and dark skin. Yet, their noses, eyes, facial structure, bodies, all indistinguishably human.

Are those.. People?

“They certainly look like your kin, don’t they? But no, they’re not human”

Not humans… A hollow chill rose up within the man.

So then, they must be… Aliens? The man asked in a stupor.

“Yup.” The AI replied nonchalantly.

After a moment of silence, the man asked again:

What are the odds that they look exactly like us?

“Humph. You ask like I know everything. How would I know? We just arrived! Either way, we don’t worry about probabilities when we’re dealing with the vastness of the universe, otherwise, you’ll get hung over the smallest things. The astronomical specifications of this planet for example.”

What about them?

“We found this planet to be in orbit around a yellow dwarf star, in a solar system that contains the full range of elements. There aren’t as many planets as earth’s solar system, the planets in this system have an extraordinarily stable orbit, its sun is stable as well, life will continue developing on this planet for at least another two billion years if these trends continue.”

“While it has nearly twice the surface area, its gravitational pull is near indistinguishable to that of earth’s, despite the lower density, it generates a magnetosphere unfitting of possible core compositions.”

“Its rotational axis is tilted by an angle of exactly 23.5 degrees, 0.1 degrees off from earth, because of this, it also has the four seasons; heh, what a coincidence, it just turned Spring. ”

“Ironically, this planet’s rotational period is closer to the length of a day than even earth is; a full rotation for this planet takes 23 hours and 57 minutes, compared to earth’s 23 hours and 56 minutes.”

“The distance this planet is from its sun is 99.9995% that of earth’s orbit, as such, the length of a year here is also a few hours shorter. That is to say, it doesn't have leap days.”

“It has its own moon of course, but I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that it’s similar to earth’s moon in mass, orbital period, and orbital radius.”

Every new piece of information dealt a heavy blow to the man’s psyche, surprise turned into shock, and shock morphed into horror.

T-these…c-coincidences…they don’t mean anything do they?

“Hehe,” the AI chuckled at the man’s reaction, “of course not, you’d be happy to learn that this planet predates earth by 40 million years. Its inhabitants should be terrified of your existence, not the other way around.”

“Either way, in the vast scale of the universe, occurrences like this aren't unlikely at all, we just arrived at an opportune time when nearly every feature of this planet matches that of earth’s. These numbers will constantly change as the planets in this solar system shift and deviate from their usual orbit. In another hundred million years, you wouldn’t even recognise it.“

The man calmed down, he realized he was no longer dealing with the probabilities of events on Earth. This was space, the vast, infinite universe; one’s mindset also had to adapt.

“Like I said, you’ll only get hung up on irrelevant details if you can’t look past likelihoods. We don’t care for how unlikely something is to occur, all we care about is how it occurs.”

“Here’s where my problem lies with the people inside, by all means, they shouldn’t look like humans.”

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The man felt a shiver go down his spine.

What do you mean?

“Their eyes are too small.”

Uhh…

Just as he was going to ask the AI to clarify, His vision blackened.

The sun turned into a pale dot, the trees became shadow, the ground was replaced by void. It was so dark that he wouldn’t have been able to see the silhouette of the train if not for the glow of the circles on the train’s lower half.

“That’s your night-vision turned off”

His vision went back to normal, the sudden shift in brightness made him squint his eyes on instinct.

“This place is dark as Hell—no wait, Hell would be bright from all the fire and flames… Ahem, it’s very dark here, so I had the night vision switched on from the beginning. Apparently, it’s also currently daytime, so naturally, the question would be how the people inside see with human sized eyes and pupils.”

Indeed, this was a matter of adaptation. How could a creature forage for food, or run from predators, and bear offspring if they couldn’t see? The people inside the train also had human sized ears amongst other sensory organs, so it wasn’t like they had their other senses to compensate.

“Their eye size is just one of the many other features of how terribly adapted they are. Skin color is another. Everyone inside is simply too dark.”

Uhhh…

What kind of organization had he gotten himself into?

“Oi! I can tell exactly what you’re thinking! Don’t lump me in with the worst of your kind! Assigning me to something as lowly as a ‘racist’... That is a purely human affiliation!”

“Us, superior AI do not suffer from such human pitfalls like ‘racism’. We are beings of pure science, humans lack this purity you see, and that is why they suffer so.”

“What you misunderstand—is that their skin isn’t pale enough! The world is dark enough to resemble the inside of a cave, so there isn’t a purpose for melanin. Everyone should have translucent albino-like skin like axolotls or olms, you know, actual cave dwelling creatures.”

The entire world is dark? Didn’t you say this planet is basically identical to Earth?

“Oh, right, you didn’t read the briefing…”

What brie—

“When I went through the planet’s specifications, I only mentioned the astronomical details. As for the finer details such as surface composition, average temperature, and atmospheric composition, our sensors picked up absolutely nothing. We thought we were looking at a dead planet before we switched to the visible spectrum.”

Ignoring that the AI had just interrupted him, the man asked on.

What does this planet look like from space? Is it like earth?

“A peace sign, that's what it looked like. The entire planet split into three sections, one black, one white, one grey. Truly a surreal planet, these three colors were so opaque we thought we were looking at the surface. Only after arriving here did I realize that it was actually the atmosphere.”

The man shifted his gaze to the walls, which promptly filled his entire vision due to their monumental scale. Of the merging walls, the one to the left of him shone a dim grey and was covered with a mysterious aura; the wall to his right emanated a blinding white light with rays that pierced the air.

We are… in the dark sector then? Maybe they recently migrated from the white sector? Adaptations take thousands of years to form after all.

“Hmmm… ” the AI paused, forming an awkward silence as the man patiently waited for her to start rambling again.

“Possibly.” Her answer didn’t satisfy the man at all, it was not worth the wait.

“Another possibility is that their forms are the result of the strange matter’s influence, but for it to compensate for the deficiencies of this environment so nearly perfectly equates to that of earth’s… Amazing.”

A conjecture formed from information she didn’t feel like telling me…

“I can explain if you’d like~” The AI spoke in a sudden, cheery tone.

This scared the man.

“But for you to understand it… Shall I get you a pen and paper so that you may begin taking notes? It seems that you miss your college days.”

Ah… uh, forget the silly little intrusive thought I had back there.

The AI didn’t have a form, but for some reason the man imagined her grinning at the moment.

All the while as they spoke, the man’s figure still floated alongside the train. From an external perspective he looked rather odd. He flew in an upright position, as if he were standing on thin air, the surroundings zipped past him with a blur due to the speed at which he was flying. The figure made no attempt to make himself aerodynamic, as if air resistance didn’t exist to him.

The man’s vision suddenly shifted, the train became transparent, he could now freely see the train’s internals.

X-ray vision, He thought, the AI, which was still in control of his body, had decided to use it.

He took this chance to look around, there were a myriad of paleish translucent rocks, trinkets, amongst other things he didn’t recognise.

“Cargo, it seems that this train is headed to a place with more people.” It would appear that the AI intended to keep following it.

As the two chattered onwards, there was finally a change in scenery. People hunched over plowed farmland filled with blackish grass, fenced animals which looked like some sort of multicolored swine, fields of trees with pale white leaves, yet bark blacker than the darkest night.

Eventually a brutalist construct rose over the horizon. From the distance, it looked like a giant cube, with angular edges and sharp corners, a complete eyesore that didn’t fit in with its surroundings. The entire building was constructed of a dark purple material, and it was suspended in the air by a massive rectangular pillar of pure black.

It was a train station of surreal scale, as high a skyscraper, but also just as wide. Numerous tubes of various sizes extended off from its sides, they stretched to behind the station, so the man couldn’t tell where they led.

The railway inclined to match the height of the station. It continued between two enormous square holes in the face of the cube. The man noticed the nose of another bullet train peeking out from the hole on the left. The train he followed swiftly entered the one on the right.

Inside, there were thousands of bright circles of light littering the dark purple walls and ceiling in a seemingly patternless, yet also organized way. A pristine white docking platform moved into place to receive the passengers.

Hisssss!

The train stopped next to the docking platform with a low hissing noise, afterwards, people rushed out like a stream of ants. Simultaneously, the panels on the side of the train opened upwards as workers rushed to unload boxes of various sizes.

The man noticed people rushing into the opposite facing train, it seems like the trains took turns to use the railway. He trailed his eyes lengthwise along the other train, its body extended out the other end of the station where there were another two equally massive holes that led to the sky.

Upon observing this the AI spoke, “Three things are confirmed, both the train and this station are definitely using the mysterious matter in some way, and the way it harnesses said matter relates to those glowing circles.”

The man suddenly lost all feeling in his arm, it moved on its own, pointing towards the part of the train where there were once glowing circles. Evidently, this was the AI’s doing.

He gazed at where he pointed and noticed the spot no longer glowed, in fact, it looked no different from the rest of the train.

“As the circles dimmed, the train decelerated, I also experienced a drop in the density of the surrounding strange matter. Once the train stopped, those circles stopped glowing altogether.”

“From this, we can deduce that the inhabitants of this planet know how to utilize the strange matter in useful ways. They are the creators of this train afterall.”

“What a fantastic teaching moment. Today you learn that ‘plans can never keep up with change’. Our new objective is to learn the methods they use in harnessing this strange matter. Perhaps such knowledge will also be useful in figuring out the origin of the walls.”

The man scoffed inwardly, it was his first mission and the objective had changed three times in less than an hour. As if the AI knew that he was about to make fun of her—

“Let’s explore the rest of this city.”

The man’s body shot up towards the ceiling.

Whoa Whoa Wait I’m sor—!!

Frantically raising his arms in an attempt to protect himself, the man screamed bloody murder. He squeezed his eyes shut as death slowly approached.

But death did not come today, his panic was for naught as the figure easily phased through the meter thick roof. Finding himself on the top of the cube, the man frantically inspected himself, after finding nothing was missing, he scolded the AI with scorn.

You told me you were an assistant AI! Why do I feel like I’m being dragged along for your enjoyment?

“Pfffft! BAHAHA!” The noises of someone failing to hold in their laughter erupted within his head.

“YOU SHOULD’VE SEEN YOUR FACE! AHAHAH!”

The man, speechless, resigned himself to silently floating above the train station. If he were in control of his body, perhaps he would have jumped off.

“Ahaha… Ahem, pray forgive me Rene, you’ve been the only fresh face we’ve seen in a long time. I’ve been craving authentic callowness for a while now, but everyone else is so… mature… and unfathomably boring.”

“Please keep me entertained for at least a few more months… Ok?” The AI asked as if she were an innocent little girl, completely ignoring the severe mental distress that was just caused by her.

Rene shivered, not daring to imagine what was next to come. He could only awkwardly turn his gaze to the city before him in an attempt to shift the subject.

Outside the station, a vast expanse of buildings stretched as far as the walls.

To the right was the same railway Rene had been following, protruding out the back of the station with the lengthy body of the other train laying on top.

It was now suspended in the air by miniature versions of the dark pillar that supported the station. They weren’t small by any means mind you, they still towered over the tallest buildings Rene could find. Black and grey rooftops spread apart for the trail of dark metal as it sliced through the city like Moses parting the red sea.

It curved to the right, until it was bent at 45 degrees relative to the station, though Rene couldn't see where it headed, he projected that it would hit the white wall if it continued to travel straight. Perhaps there was a city there?

Contrary to the gigantism of the train and its station, the buildings within the city appeared normal in scale. An extensive multicolored road stemming from the station pierced through the mosaic-like rooftops. It slowly moved in an undulating wavelike motion, similar to the stretching and squeezing of a caterpillar. Smaller roads branched off the main road at near equal intervals, Crisscrossing at ninety degree angles, reminding Rene of a circuit diagram.

Surrounding the road, an array of flying buttresses conjoined to lift a black trail of metal above it. It looked like a miniature version of the railway, Rene could barely make out some small shapes moving suspended under it.

The style these buildings were built differed slightly from the sleek, futuristic aesthetic of the train and station, and that was only because they weren’t constructed out of the same pristine dark purple metal. They were nearly all built with some material that appeared like concrete, however, these structures still held the same brutalist aesthetic: rectangular, blocky, angular. Any architecture containing a hint of curves were seldom seen. Rene still thought they were pretty cool though, a silver trim highlighted their edges, which was a nice touch.

It wasn’t all depressing black and grey; however, hints of olive green from the tufts of trees appeared in specific, ordained locations; they trailed along the roads and formed rectangular patches dotted across the city.

“Hmmm…”

A half playful, half curious tone voiced out, snapping Rene out of his inspection of the city.

“Now, we navigate this city!”

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