257 Days Until Sedation and The Uncertain End
Zeydar sat in the library as fully alert as he could be after coming off a Sweet Dreams binge far exceeding the time and dosage he typically took. It had been amazing, allowing him to see the sunsets of Arcadia in such vivid detail. He had felt the wind on his skin. He had tasted the world as he had back then. Of course, all the senses were heightened instead of dulled as they were for Zeydar normally.
Sweet Dreams were the only way for him to feel. Otherwise his senses were locked up, with the chains and keys of the Superiors.
Zeydar flipped through the book before him. Magic history wasn’t particularly interesting to him. However it was a cover for the book on the Yasloughve Project that he had taken. He was reading about how the project had initially divided the population: Star, Circle, X. Stars with magic, Circles with limited abilities, Xs with none. It was as if to say, yes, no, and great power: Magicians.
Anti-LOVE, the X’s variant of MAY, had fought the project as a discriminatory practice stating that the project made it so that the people were separated into castes and that the project was not trying to save everyone. MAY simply wanted it to disappear, as it was outdated. Or it was said to be outdated. The project had predicted The Catastrophe and event called “The Uncertain End” with no other information. MAY shut them down, saying they had ten years to finalize all information on The Catastrophe, but that was to be it. Maverin Igialistal had reported the coming of the Night of Oblivion and the X’s Night of Destruction. No one had believed him or perhaps they hadn’t cared, and then he had disappeared leaving one cryptic message.
The Catastrophe could have been avoided, anti MAY groups said, if the project had been running. As the world tried to heal from the damage, the real battle had begun, and not more than three months later The Night of Oblivion and a few days later The Night of Destruction came.
Why had the Aralax started with the CloudCities? Many said it was because the creatures had attacked what they could see and the UnderCities were underground, hidden.
Regardless, the project had predicted it and left them with a single phrase. What Dr. Igialistal left them before both he and his son disappeared was “The Uncertain End is coming.” The Uncertain End. The End that the Project had been preparing Humanity for. The end that it had created the Space Program for. The end that Magicians and Superiors believed they could stop: once upon a time.
At the time of the dinner three days prior, Zeydar hadn’t thought much of it. After Sweet Dreams, he had. He had understood during those dreams that the Space Program that MAY had stopped, that the project was using to save humanity, that project? The Superiors had started it up again in secret and they were going to be extracting specific people to save like arcs of ancient myth.
They’d leave anyone behind who did not fit their mold and Zeydar did not know how to feel about it.
Zeydar looked through the project’s instructions on the separation of people. All people were to be tested, and their children tested. From there one could determine who was an X, a Circle, or a Star. Stars were to be trained in magic. Circles in primary magic, and X’s, who had none, protected. Regardless of birth everyone was to be tested, for blood did not determine status.
When had that changed?
For Stars it did not matter, as they had a ranking and the ranking did not hide who had strong magic or not, however, something felt wrong about it. Was the Yasloughve Project used as a medium to discriminate? Was it used a precedent of oppression when its initial creation was built to fight the Aralax and protect the species. Magicians were meant to fight the Aralax.
Something felt wrong about it.
“What are you doing?” Majorie asked having come from somewhere int he library.
Zeydar looked up to her as nonchalantly as he could. His heart was racing with fear for being caught. I’m a Superior, he tried to convince himself. But he wasn’t, yet, and so his Class 1 Magician status would not amount to much if she said he was doing something wrong, “Reading.”
“On the Yasloughve Project?” She cocked an eyebrow.
“Is it forbidden reading?” It wasn’t. Why was he testing her?
“Should it be?”
“I had a dream about it.” It was the truth, at least.
“On Sweet Dreams.” Zeydar fought to keep his body relaxed as she spoke to him. She caught his tension and held it with a smile, caressing him with her words as if he could trust her. “We as Superiors know all about your addiction Zeydar. It is what they got you addicted to in the Tower.”
The Tower? Those Xs had taken him as a hostage but not given him anything. Instead it was the Stars that had him addicted. So addicted to the point that when his body no longer had it… The world had gone up in flames. The screams, the blood, the bones, the…
“Zeydar.” Majorie snapped him from his thoughts. “We know.”
“Why don’t you stop me then?”
“It is up to you to stop and ask for help. I can not do anything for you until you realize there is a problem yourself and ask for help.”
“So you will just let me buy more?”
“Do not leave your staff anywhere.”
Of course she’d let him. They wanted him sedated. He wanted himself sedated. Closing the book on the Yasloughve Project, he handed it to her. “I’m going back to my studies now.”
“I suppose you will.” She took the book and walked away. The ever present and ever looming figure that would control him until his death.
Marlena Marie 
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