Departure

By Fallton Havenstonne

Phil grabbed his dark roast coffee from the kitchen counter and was on his way out the door when the shadow of a man appeared on the wall behind him. The wall was opposite the window, which was directly above the sink. He thought that his neighbor Ron had come to ask him for help—taking the liberty to cross the front yard (did he need another jump start?).

But when Phil saw a man standing outside the window, he flinched, spilling his coffee on the tile floor. The man had on a black suit, and he gazed at Phil with glowing green eyes. He had broad shoulders, stood at six feet tall, and had on a bowler hat.

Phil couldn’t quite see his face clearly because of the backlight of the morning sun. “What do you want?”

The man curled his finger at Phil to come to the window.

Phil stood his ground. “I said what do you want?”

The man narrowed his eyes, then walked out of sight, heading toward the street. Outside in the cold winter air, it was dawn on this Monday morning. Phil thought that the man would try the front door, but he never did. Phil ran outside the house, feeling a sudden gust of cold wind. He searched both ends of the street, but couldn’t find the man anywhere.

He went back inside the house and checked the security camera footage on his computer. He watched as the man gazed at him from the front lawn. His face was blurry—even on high def—and at the pace he was walking at, there was no way he could’ve turned the street corner by the time Phil ran outside. It was like he had disappeared into thin air.

Phil had a hunch that the man might’ve been scoping out his place, waiting to burglarizing it as soon as he left for work. Fortunately, Phil had a home security system. If the man tried to break in, he’d get an alert, and the authorities would be on their way . . .

After setting the security alarm, Phil drove to Glebe University, where he worked as a software engineer. Since it wasn’t far from his townhouse in Arlington, Virginia, he arrived at the administrative building fifteen minutes early (it would’ve been thirty minutes if it weren’t for the man that showed up). Being the first one there, he wanted to get a head start on his work so that he could leave early and not be stuck in rush-hour traffic.

As he drank his morning coffee, he started typing lines of code on his laptop. Suddenly, he heard a door slam close, followed by footsteps. Could it have been his boss?

He shouldn’t be here for a few more minutes, Phil thought. He usually picks up breakfast before he comes in. And everyone else shouldn’t be in until 9 . . .

The footsteps came to a halt. Phil stood up from his cubicle and saw the man with the bowler hat standing by the window. He was looking out into the city, clutching something in the pocket of his sport coat. He drew it out, and Phil shuddered when he saw that it was a syringe.

Phil felt like his heart had jump into his throat. He had defended himself before when two men tried to mug him in an alley during one of his late-night walks in the city. But why was the man here in this office? And how did he get in without an ID badge?

“Why have you been following me?” Phil asked.

The man didn’t respond.

He began marching toward Phil as if he was going to detain him, or worse, inject him.

Phil suddenly fell back in his chair as if he had lost control of his body. His arms and legs went limp, and he couldn’t stand up even if he tried. His hands started to shake, and the closer the man drew near him, the less he was able to move.

As soon as the man stepped into his cubicle, Phil realized that the man’s glowing green eyes had somehow paralyzed him. It was like some otherworldly form of hypnosis, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of the pulsating glow. The man tapped the tip of the syringe needle, which glinted under the fluorescent light. He had eyes like that of a reptile, and his mouth and nose were meshed together as if they had been surgically sealed.

Phil stammered, “W-Who a-are you?”

In a flash, the man jabbed Phil in the arm with the needle. Phil writhed helplessly while the man injected a yellow-colored substance into his bloodstream.

After the man withdrew the needle, Phil began to have arresting visions of a dreamlike world. He saw cities floating in the clouds, and of a civilization teeming with spacecrafts and weaponry far more advanced than anything on Earth.

After a moment, Phil started to feel like himself as the sensations returned to his body. The man’s green eyes stopped glowing, and Phil no longer saw him as a threat. He remembered that the man’s name was Zinth, and that he was an ally—a fellow soldier of the Naclenx Empire. Once Phil could move again, Zinth handed him an envelope. He uttered something in an alien language, and then vanished into a cloud of dust.

With his memory returning to him, Phil made out Zinth’s words to mean “see you soon.” He opened the letter, which depicted pictures and symbols in a series of rows—similar to hieroglyphics. Phil was able to decode them thanks to the chemical that he had been injected with. He remembered his mission now. His life on Earth was but a temporary one. In a few hours, his human disguise would disintegrate. If he didn’t leave Earth tonight, then everyone would see his true form, and he’d be hunted down by the government and his purplish face would be shown by all the news stations.

After Phil read the letter, he drew in a deep breath, and then put it in his pocket. The spaceship would arrive shortly, and he would have to leave everything behind, including his job, townhouse, and friends. He had developed a fondness for Earth—the place he had called home for the past year. When he first arrived, he had taken on the identity of a man (the real Phil), whom was put into cryosleep aboard the spaceship.

The Phil on Earth, whose name was Rith, had been to many planets in the galaxy, and even though many were far more advanced than Earth, none had as much personality and charm as Earth did. He wished that his superiors had warned him about his departure so that he could have time to say goodbye to his friends. He would especially miss his neighbor, Ron, whom had lent him countless books of fiction.

In Rith’s home planet, works of fiction were virtually nonexistent, since the empire regarded imaginative works as useless and impractical. They only valued knowledge that had utility, such as scientific and technological knowledge. He could spend days searching for fiction in the galactic library, and he wouldn’t even find one.

From the books that Ron had lent him, Rith learned a great many things from the works of Kurt Vonnegut, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, and many others. In their works, he learned about the longings and fallibility of humankind. Humans did not obey the causality of time (a cardinal principle in the empire), but followed their intellect and passions in the pursuit of ideals. This was unheard of in the empire, since the causality of time had determined that the fate of all organisms was the same: they’d inevitably return to the cosmic dust. Thus, a life of idealism and passion were futile in the grand scheme of things.

Having fully remembered his past now, Rith decided to work a full day at the office instead of taking time off (besides, where would he go?). He submitted his resignation letter to his boss (out of courtesy, really, since she always let him leave early to beat the traffic), and told his colleagues that he would be moving out of town. Everyone at the office was surprised by his announcement, and since Rith had given so much of his time and knowledge (which was far ahead of their time) in helping others, they put together a farewell party for him, which included cake and ice cream (Rith’s favorite food).

After work, he took a stroll through Washington D.C., taking in everything around him: the monuments, the architecture, the lights, the roads, the birds, the people, etc. It was unlike his home planet, where the surface world was covered in water, and where there was only sea life and hardly any creatures on land (not to mention, no birds at all).

When Rith arrived to his townhouse that evening, he wasn’t surprised to see Zinth waiting for him at the front door. They need my report right away, Rith thought. The Naclenx army must be on standby, or else they were already at war.

He had one last drink of coffee (his favorite drink) before he was beamed up into the spaceship. Afterward, Zinth beamed down the real Phil back into his townhouse, and then started the star engine of the spaceship. In a flash, they zipped through the far reaches of space, making their way back to the command ship.

Zinth told Rith that it was only a matter of time before the galactic war would make its way to Earth. Thus, Earth’s fate rested in Rith’s hands, who would soon brief his superiors if Earth’s core should be harnessed for war. If Rith gave the green-light, then the empire would use Earth’s molten core to power their laser beam—one that could take out the clusters of asteroids that their enemy would hail at them. By using the energy of Earth’s core, it would produce a seismic tremor that would ripple across the tectonic plates, shattering landmasses into oblivion. Cities would fall, and the oceans would rise, submerging continents underneath.

Before Rith embarked on his mission, he had studied the history of humankind, gaining as much knowledge as he could from the galactic library. With his memories of the Naclenx Empire suppressed upon entering Earth (in case he was captured), Rith lived and breathed as Phil in Arlington, Virginia, where he worked as a software engineer at Glebe University.

He wasn’t prepared for the wide range of beliefs and attitudes that shaped the social landscape. He experienced interactions that ranged from hostility to kindness, which made his a priori knowledge pale in comparison to his encounters. His presumptions about humankind were mostly negative, and because of them, he wasn’t expecting to form any friendships on Earth (how wrong he was, indeed).

His mission was to make a risk assessment of the human species—to determine if they would pose a threat to the galaxy at large. Not anytime soon, Rith thought. But in the past, species that seemed harmless at first had evolved to become formidable threats, obliterating other planets on a whim. This phenomenon was one that had repeated itself throughout the ages. Would the humans do the same in a thousand years’ time once they mastered space travel and could produce weapons powerful enough to destroy planets—even stars?

It didn’t take Rith long to decide on what to brief his superiors. His conclusion was that humankind had an innate desire for rebellion. They rebelled against anything that stood in their way: the jungle, the rivers, the mountains, the insects, the creatures of the sea, land, and air . . . even their own kind. The governments that they created to contain rebellion failed miserably each time. As a result, war became a never-ending paradigm since the dawn of their existence. Even though they had periods of peace, the humans would become restless, and they rebelled against that too. In the end, rebellion always stirred within them, and whatever they created, they were bound to shatter into ruins.

As the star engine propelled the spaceship across the galaxy, a feeling of rebellion stirred within Rith. He wondered if Earth had corrupted him, or if it had taught him to evolve. He no longer accepted the maxim that he must obey the causality of time—which his kind did. Instead, he got a taste of what it was like to enjoy the finer things in life—the things that appealed to his senses like coffee and ice cream, as well as to his imagination, like works of fiction.

As far back as he could remember, he was taught to never acquire more than his neighbors, and to live by the dictates of time (or what the humans would call fate). Although these principles kept peace in the Naclenx Empire for a thousand years, there was a yearning for more that Rith could never put his finger on, a yearning that life on Earth had enlightened him on. He now believed that the aim of life was not fate, but freedom, and that freedom meant embracing the inexhaustible wellspring of the imagination. And without imagination, life was nothing more than a cage of encumbered beliefs, a series of dull activities that withered the body back into the cosmic dust.

Rith knew that the humans could pose a threat to the galaxy one day, but that was a big “what if.” What if the humans decided to be champions of peace instead? What if they joined the Naclenx Empire as allies in protecting the galaxy? Given these two alternatives, the pendulum of destiny could swing either way.

From what Rith understood of humanity, every war and conflict arose from a need for rebellion, or what the humans called the age-old battle between good and evil. It was never clear what the outcome would be, but in the final analysis, the victor was always time—and time always sought balance—which was good. On that note, Rith believed that Earth was worth sparing from the galactic war, and he hoped he was right.

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