Chapter Ten
Back cover description:
A people that hear without listening, that talk without speaking, too stubborn and blind to be saved from their own dying planet. The ESS Sao Paulo has been sent to rescue the inhabitants of Eulysia, but what they find when they arrive is a darkness, one that seems to swallow their warnings in pools of silence.
A people that hear without listening, that talk without speaking, too stubborn and blind to be saved from their own dying planet. The ESS Sao Paulo has been sent to rescue the inhabitants of Eulysia, but what they find when they arrive is a darkness, one that seems to swallow their warnings in pools of silence.
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SOUND OF SILENCE - CHAPTER TEN Vessel: ESS Sao Paulo Records of: Ayeila Kelani Rank (if app.): N/A UCC: 14060.54:15.36.04 It's been a week since we left orbit. I feel free for the first time in my life. And yet, I feel so empty. It's a hard feeling to explain. My entire life, I wanted nothing more than to join the world of my people, ever since I was old enough to actually understand who I was, and who my people said I was. And then, I finally got my chance, only to recognize the network for the poison that it is. I feel betrayed. I was robbed of eight eoras [UNRECOGNIZED] of my life, stuck longing for nothing more than a lie. And yet, I still mourn my people, despite what they've done to me. I mourn their pending extinction, even though their entire existence was a virtual one, a silent one. There was life in the world of their making. There was purpose and fulfillment. There was sound in their silence. And that unknowable vibrance will leave a hole in the universe that no one but a very select few will ever know about. All of the artists, all the dances, the songs that Eulysian voices will never sing. A whole species, my species, self-condemned to destruction because no one once dared to disturb the status quo. No one dared to break the silence imposed by the Prophets. For decades, like a cancer, that silence only grew, suffocating their free will, stifling any desire to reason for themselves until it was too late, until they were snared by their own complacency with inattention. Until they no longer had the ability to learn or to listen, even when arms of mercy reached out into their own digital realm to save them. Like rain falling in a far-off land, silently lost in a sea unknown, the words of their saviors landed on deaf ears, doomed to echo in silence until swallowed by the end of time. And now, I am the last of my species, in all reality. The Alliance plans to send ships in the future and negotiate the release of the other anfyitts, but that could be years from now. Still, I'm encouraged by the thought of an entirely independent Eulysian people, forged as our ancestors were, biologically incapable of tying ourselves to the shackles of some network. Perhaps this is how fate intended it after all. Perhaps we are meant to be the ones who carry on the Eulysian legacy. The unintended product of our own species' hubris, now charged with preserving and propagating the memory of our people. Charged to be the ears of those who wouldn't hear, the eyes of those who wouldn't see. Charged to be the sound of silence. [END OF ENTRY] |