Solar Story
Matthew Ryan
Fischer
The southern sky had always
featured two very prominent stars – a tiny dot of red and a tiny dot of blue. The two tiny dots of light made up the very
crucial element within the Mask of Perfidious constellation – they were
Perfidious’ eyes.
Perfidious had been the god of
tricks and truth. He was the symbol of
duality, of the light and dark that makes up the universe and the very soul of
man. Legends and myths gave him credit
for light in the day and darkness at night.
He was the balance between order and chaos, life and death, existence
and nothing, and the different between men and women. The colors of the eyes were an important part
of his story. Red was immortal and full
of all the hate and destruction that was possible in the world. Blue brought peace and beauty and instituted
order. The tales had been told for eons. It was one of the most storied constellations.
Then, just like that, one night,
the blue eye vanished.
It had always been there in the
night sky. But not that day. And not the next or the next or the next
after that. It didn’t seem to ever be
coming back.
How could this have
happened? What was to be made of this
strange development?
It seemed as if chaos had
won. The omen was clear. The fear of death and destruction followed.
The scholars and mystics tried
to interpret the meanings and began to write new stories. The Mask of Perfidious became the Eye of
Perfidious. It was believed that his
single eye represented a harsh and demanding justice. Perfidious saw all and Perfidious judged unforgivingly.
Years of paranoia, fear and near
madness followed. Citizens were suspected,
friends turned on friends, the courts were punitive, and the churches spied on
their members, testing those that challenged doctrine, and kept a tight grip on
ethics, morality and the faith.
The years were hard to live
through, but in the end nothing happened.
Life simply moved on. It would
seem that Perfidious had other plans in mind besides the destruction of the
world.
A generation later the Red Eye
of Perfidious went dark as well.
Life had been bad, but life was
about to get a whole lot worse for the people.
A new age of pain and suffering at the hands of superstitions was about
to begin. The people were an ignorant
and under educated lot. They were irrational
and hardly knew anything of the scientific method. They certainly knew nothing of light-years away
and light-years ago.
Light-years away and light-years
ago on another planet unlike their own, another race was much more advanced and
knew nothing of myth or the reliance of stories based on constellations to construct
a society. They did have a firm
knowledge of and confidence in scientific discovery. The also possessed hubris and like most civilizations,
they did not possess enough foresight.
The Machine had been turned on.
What the Machine was for or why
it was turned on at all has long since been lost, but one could safely assume
that their must have been some logically explanation to its creation. If one were to wager a guess, it would likely
have been an attempt to master energy or a way to make a weapon. It seems those are two safe bets when it
comes to why machines are invented.
Two sister stars in two sister
systems had been the people’s home.
The Machine brought the end of
all that.
Some under the red sun called it
the Extinguisher or the Black Hole Maker.
Others didn’t live long enough to create names for it. Those under the blue sun might have been the
lucky ones. They were burst out of
existence instantly, the blue light extinguished. The others had nothing to do but wait a
generation as they were slowly to be consumed as well.
Perhaps Perfidious was the god
of death and destruction. It was just that
the wrong planet was worshiping him.
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