WORLD: Trytahe, TIME: 5376, CHARACTER: Rejo

I don't remember my childhood. I don't remember anything of my past life, how I came here, where from and why. Along the past years of my memory I have been wandering through the deserted lands of Trytahe, exploring the darkness of the moors, mysteries of the woods, heights and depths of hills and valleys and the always-silent deserted villages. Through the years of my journey I have only sparsely seen people or animals and they have all the time been speechless, silent like the ever-breathing landscape.

What I have been searching for all along, I can't tell for sure. A distinct feeling has always been present in my mind of a world different but the same, of another time and another place yet connected to the presence. In my dreams the calm and peaceful wastelands turn into tall cities of skyscrapers, towers reaching to the light-green heavens and two suns shining upon the gliding pathways built hundreds of miles above the ground where crowds of colorful floating cars filled the busy streets.

In that pleasant dream I live and breathe, and every breath is joy and happiness, every word spoken into the fresh air with the sweet scent of flowers, every step carefully chosen upon the highest bridges, in between the tallest glassy buildings. This distant unnamed world returns to me, its vivid colors and cheerful laughter speak to me with urgency, and I can often feel like I am fatally bound to something, return to this city, protect these people, save this world. Save this world..., but from what or how I can't guess.

I walk on. Endlessly I walk on through the desert, crossing the red dunes of hot sands that almost burn my bare feet. Far and wide up to the horizon the plains of sand are lifeless, not even a venomous scorpion speeds across my path as used to be their habit in my long-lost memories. No skeletons or remains of the dead who died in the heat are to be glimpsed, uncovered by the quick afternoon winds. They may have disappeared under the dunes of time long ago, buried in this ever-flowing wind-swept grave, never to be touched by the careful foot of the wanderer. They might have never been there.

The omnipresent loneliness creeps over me again, sending shivers down my spine. Are we alone, the few of us who have survived what seems to me like a catastrophe has descended upon this world, and do we hide from the truth in utter silence, to conceal from the tragedy's impact on our minds? Alone, lost in the world of silence. No one to call my name, to see my cries. No one to witness my fall, only the empty cloudless skies above watch over me as I sink deeper and deeper into the quicksand.

Beyond this place, beneath the timeless earth I descend slowly, like I was stopped in time myself for a moment which seems to last forever. Opening my eyes finally I find myself lying on the ground, cold and frozen just like the view of white sparkling ice all around me. I examine the spectacle of a large underground cave with columns of ice carved out of the snowy walls to separate several tunnel-ways disappearing far beyond this marvelous room. Out of solid ice a hand of man has created chairs and tables, alcoves for lanterns and various objects softly illuminated by their blue light.

I realize...I remember...This strange shadow of reality, this place unseen by common people. I have been here before.

The long maze of tunnels and corridors enlightened in a ghostly way lead me into the deepest vaults of Trytahe with the flights of frozen stairs going down and below, letting my feet slip and slide upon the cold gleaming ice steps. Finally a large circle hall opens in front of me, displaying a number of computers and other equipment, which to my surprise is well maintained and working under a thin layer of dust. The surrounding of blinking screens and buttons give out a low humming noise comfortable to my ears.

In a sudden I hear fast footsteps and before I turn around I realize a tall figure is standing beyond the sparkling arch of the tunnel entrance. The man is tall and thin, with long white hair and skin so translucent I can pretty well see through him, except for the dusted remains of his clothes.

"I would have never thought that you'd come back, ever."

The man is just gazing at me without a trace of movement or a hint of emotion. "Well, welcome...The TryCore hasn't changed one bit, as you can see."

And what I see when I look around with my newly gained sense of knowledge is that I remember what I hadn't even dreamed to find and the pieces are coming together. More than four thousand years ago the overcrowded population of Trytahe, concentrated in splendid cities that I have seen in my visions, searched for more space than the planet surface could provide, building towers that reached the clouds and the streets built upon thin air thanks to the knowledge of antigravity laws.

They began digging the ground to build not only large cave systems of halls and corridors but whole new cities within the hollow shell of the surface. While digging out the entire core of the planet was a potential disaster they were willing to risk, in the meantime a totally unexpected disaster came from the sky. It was the last day for most of the population when one of the two suns turned a violent change with its ultraviolet rays that grew stronger than ever and killed right from the sunrise. Until that day's evening millions of people vanished and the ones lucky enough to survive were burned to ashes and swept away by a massive explosion of the once life-giving star. The few hundreds that remained fled underground into the tunnels they have just started building, and have been surviving until present day.

"So, you have remembered. I can see it in your eyes." I hear the strange voice again, as it makes circles upon the sea of my visions.

"What else have you learned? What of your own fate?"

I get a hint that stirs my memories again, like a push from behind that's helping me find the secret goal. I struggle to reach it so hard that in the end the full knowledge descends on me like a black veil made of lead. That through the centuries and the millennia the TryCore society was being kept clean and untouched by all sorts of crime and acts which could possibly threaten the firm laws and way of life of its members. For all the long years of my forgotten past I used to stand in their lines proud and tall, in beliefs and obedience.

The condemned were banished from the safety of the core, banished out to the surface to face the wilderness, to deal with the certainty of death that comes sooner or later. Stripped of their past and their life-long rightful knowledge, with their minds erased. Left wandering.

I remember. I am...

"Exile."

For a fraction of a second I see a bright flash of the scythe as it swishes through the chilling air. I fall to the ground.