Renegade

[Savage Dragon]

Renegade. What a fun little word. It means rebel, revolutionary, radical. I remember pretending to be a renegade in all the little games I used to play with the other boys when I was kid. Just thinking about those boys makes me wonder…. “Renegade” was the kinda thing you’d name a dog. Heck, I had three dogs named Renegade. Okay, actually their names were “Fluffy”, “Spot”, and “Rover,” according to the rest of my family, but I always liked the name Renegade and that’s what I called them. The family had one dog or another since I was born, but they always ended up leaving the house to live on “happy farms.” In fact the last moment I remember about my house, my family, and my life before it was screwed up, is when we were trying to figure a name for the newest puppy. As usual Renegade wasn’t a popular choice, but in the end it was the only choice. No one else had a chance to give input before…

 

Okay when the world gets woken to the harsh reality of other beings in the universe, and they choose to announce their existence by gassing the entire planet with a new alien pathogen that kills off all but 10,000 of its inhabitants, everyone has a sob story. Noxious fumes have a tendency to ruin special family moments, like naming the dog. In the end, only the dog and me survived. One week was all it took for me to watch everyone I knew, literally everyone I knew, die horrible deaths. It was a difficult time, to say the least; all in one week, and then to wait for five more terrible weeks, wondering why I had been “spared.” 5 weeks for relief to come and when it came it was just as scary as the attack.

 

Renegade barked up a storm when another set of “flying saucers” showed up in the sky. I did a lot of yelling myself, shouting every profanity I knew to those lumbering ships. The air still smelled of death and I was sure that these they had come to add my own stench to it. Somewhere in my head there is an emergency switch that must have been thrown at that moment, my brain deciding the only way to avoid total failure was shutdown. That’s where the Angelics found me, lying next to the ashes that had been my house, burnt down by my own hand, the easiest funeral I could offer my family, with my dog, Renegade, licking my hand.

 

Open Role-Play

[Venefyxatu]

My head was hurting every morning back then, but it didn't really matter. I usually had a bottle next to my bed, and as soon as I started drinking the headache would go away. I was drinking almost constantly, and I'm sure most of my flock knew it, even though I still managed to give my sermons. Not that it mattered much, though - as the weeks went by I had less and less people showing up every time, until eventually I was the only one there. I didn't even care - all that meant to me was that I didn't have to pretend I was sober anymore so I started drinking even more.

 

Maybe the alcohol helped my body build up a resistance against the gas they used. Maybe they skipped me because they wanted me to continue being miserable. I didn't know. I didn't care. I had my bottles.

 

At first I went back home with a new supply of bottles every time, but after a few days I moved to the liquor store. I'd always enjoyed the smell of that place, and the fact that the stench of death was hardly perceptible there only added to that. I didn't want to be reminded of the others in the town, didn't want to imagine how they died.

 

When they came back, I was so drunk I didn't even notice. Somewhere far off a dog was barking, but it hardly registered. When the door to the store was opened, I took a last swig and passed out.

 

Merciful blackness.

[Quincunx]

Less than one-thousandth of a percent remain--swift, ethical, and well within the alloted margin of error.

 

Are you certain, Seraphim? The second voice chimed in higher registers, with higher considerations.

 

All of the statistics are certain, and the decree on Population Control chose disease as the most ethical cure. The first voice paused. They had been overturning our own preventative measures, Dominion. Money was failing; they had reverted to bearing children for storing wealth--

 

I am woeful that we chose genocide, Seraphim.

 

--Dominion! Its chimes changed key, sounded like hot iron being hammered. You must see what they had done to their planet, and to themselves! See that the disease was preventative of much more woe!

 

The second flying object forced crystal outcroppings to grow on the edges of its disc. Air dragged around the new ailerons and pushed its orbit closer to earth. It tilted to inspect a burnt ruin in the middle of many similar structures, then shuddered at the bolt of rage from a survivor and its animal. Peace, it sang, and the boy collapsed without his rage to sustain him.

 

We must disguise ourselves if we are to investigate further. Seraphim, you have studied this race. How do they visually signify individuals with our abilities?

 

There is great variation, Dominion. They use light, or animal features, or multiple features of their own. . .

 

The first flying object coasted through the air while giving all its energy to rearranging its crystals. Sunlight refracted through the new formations and flashed onto the ground in spots of color. The beams intersected and built up a hologram of a naked, sexless human with a third eye, four huge feathery wings, and light shining out from its breast. The first flying object altered the density of a few crystals, moving the hologram's wings, and mimicking hovering.

 

Can this interact with them, Seraphim?

 

I do not know. We must experiment.

[Savage Dragon]

When I awoke and found the two Angels standing over me, i wept. I thought i was dead and so i cried, i blubbered, and i sobbed. It was true that i missed my family, hated my new life, and didn't know why i wanted to live anymore, but the simple fact remained that i DID want to live. I wanted there to be a reason i had to watch the world i know fall apart, not to just die myself a few weeks later. I wanted there to be a future for myself and the human race. I wanted there to be a place in the world for me. so when the figures in robes stood before me, i wept for i had died and it had all been for nothing.

 

i knew the reason as well, for I had turned my back to God. The worst hour of the human race and i turned away from the one person that had always been my strength. When my family died, i ture off my cross and burned my bible and cursed the word God, and he in turn had turned his back on me. I hadn't done things his way and so i payed, and now here i stood before his angels to suffer the consequences.

 

If i had stopped for a moment to think though, i might have seen things differently. I might have remembered that God turned his back on no one and that he wouldn't punish me for my shortcomings. If i had hought i wouldve realized that heaven was supposed to be a place of no tears, and that i couldnt possibly weep. I would've realized that God's angels were sent to aide mankind, not destroy. But i had lost faith, and i did not think.

 

If i had stopped to think, i might have also noticed that the two "angels" looked just as confused as i felt.

[Katzaniel]

I was in the hospital when it happened. Fever and nausea and crazy delusions had put me there, and I was burning up and clinging to my pillow when the nurse came in. She gently rolled me over, put her hand on my forehead. I blinked and she was a man, a male nurse, holding a needle the size of a paper-towel roll. I think I screamed, squeezed my eyes shut and screamed for all I was worth. When I opened them, the man no longer had a nurse's outfit; his head was closely shaved, and he was wearing a leather jacket and holding a knife and grinning at me. That's when the building shook, and who can blame me that I thought this was part of the vision, too? The buiding shook and the man ran off, so I wiped my forehead and rolled over and went back to sleep.

 

I must have lain there for some time, getting sicker because I wasn't getting any food, or medicine, or care. Finally I realized that I hadn't imagined it: everyone was gone. Part of my brain still said, "You're hallucinating. Of course nothing has happened. You'll get out of bed, and a nurse will drag you back in, admonishing your silliness." Even when I stood, my brain told me that I was imagining the fact I was even standing. "You're sick. You can't trust your senses. You think you're standing up, you think you've been alone for days and days. But you'll wake up and you'll still be in bed and it will only have been a few hours."

 

I didn't like not being able to trust my senses, but I knew I had to keep a corner of my mind sane. Sure, I was still asleep. It was the only explanation that made sense. But it didn't make sense to keep lying there, either, in my fever-dream. If I was dreaming, I couldn't get hurt by standing up and moving around. And if I wasn't, I would either be discovered and moved back to my bed by the nurses, or I would not... and if I was not, it meant that I really was all alone, and had to get food. Of course I was really asleep, still fine, probably in the process of getting over whatever I had. But at the same time I had to assume that I was not, that everyone was dead, and that I needed food.

 

I made my way down the corridors, leaning on walls to catch my breath. Six times I saw a dark shape dart from one doorway to another, or from one shadow to another. Four times a doctor came up to me, tried to lead me back to my room, and abruptly disappeared. And once, the bald, knife-wielding lunatic chased me down the hallway, before I landed on my face, rolled over, and found no one there at all.

 

Naturally, when I saw the angels, I thought that they, too, were simply my imagination.

[Venefyxatu]

I'd had hangovers before, plenty of them, but this one seemed to be the Lord of them all, my apologies for the pun. Maybe it was because I couldn't drink it away immediately - without bothering to open my aching eyes I felt around for a bottle but, to my surprise, found none. Passing out in the liquor store hadn't been an alcohol-induced hallucination, had it?

 

When finally I managed to tear my eyes open the world was a blur, and for a few moments I couldn't concentrate on anything but the feeling that my eyeballs would leave their sockets any moment now. When that failed to happen and the throbbing got a little less I could finally concentrate on the blur around me.

Something wasn't right - this room was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. In fact, "room" doesn't quite describe it ... void might be more appropriate. There didn't seem to be anything around me but vague, blurry specks of light in the distance, infinitely far away, not even a floor. Yet I had no sensation of falling.

 

And just as I got used to it, I noticed them. They were ... were they? They couldn't be! Years of preaching for a declining audience and alcohol-use had made me believe that this earth was all there was - one life and that's it, time up, done. Real angels! Right here before me, looking at me!

 

"Am I dead?"

 

"No, you are one of those who survived."

 

"But why? Why me?"

 

An answer didn't come immediately. Maybe it came after a little while, but my mind decided it had enough to think about.

 

Merciful blackness.

[Savage Dragon]

Eventually it was the dog that woke me up, licking at my hand. I tensed when i realized i had overslept. I had been given a clock, but it didn't have an alarm. Luckily i had only overslept by about an hour, besides the timing wasn't all that critical, it just felt like something that had to be done at night. I stretched as I climbed out of bed and walked past the window that only a week ago had nearly caused me to wet myself. It's one thing to see pictures of the earth from outerspace, its another to see it through a pane of glass.

 

This week had been... unsettling. First he had thought he had died, then he had learned that he was being held by space aliens. The same aliens who had killed almost everyone on his planet. They had decided that the human species had become too irrational and so they decimated it. And they hadn't been alone in this decision, the whole universe had been watching them and the decision had been made by a council of races. Earth had been duped, for the whole of human existence, they had been monitored and judged by the rest of the universe. And they had been found lacking, they were found to be unworthy and so they were all killed, save a few thousand who would be "rehabilitated" and given a new home.

 

and i was one of the 10,000 that had been spared. and i was feeling a little... irrational. The time was right, i had seen the door, the door that had been labeled "Emergency Vessel" (well actually it said something in so wierd alien language but i had had a translating machine with me at the time). The only thing I took with me was Renegade, i had nothing else. Then i went out into the hall. The door had been on one of the lower levels...

[Savage Dragon]

It had been a nagging feeling that had been growing as I made my way to the ship. If I had survived, then others may have, and if they had, they would have surely been brought to this ship as well. I had a chance to escape, was it fair to leave them out of it? And whether my plan succeeded or not, the ones who had brought them here were sure to increase their security after my escape attempt, meaning I may be ruining their best chance at escape as well. But what could I do? If there was anyone, I don't know where they are and I certainly don't have the spare time to go searching for them.

 

I pushed the thought to the back of my mind as I continued to search for the door to the "Emergency Vessel", it wasn't as easy to find in the dark as I had hoped. Wasn't there supposed to be an opening.... there. The yellow paint on the door stood out easily in the darkness, well except that it wasn't really paint, it wasn't in english, and it wasn't like any other door I had ever known. No knob, no handle, no visible way of opening the door. It might as well have been a wall with any alien form of art displayed on it. If this was Star Trek it would have already opened by now. I spent a few moments pressing against different parts o the door, looking for a button. I said a few words hoping an audio command might provoke some response, but it probably wasn't wired for english.

 

If i hadn't lost my faith in God at the arrivial of my "hosts", I would have said this was God toying with me. I was already tense and now i was frustrated. Maybe it was my imagination, but i was pretty sure I heard something coming towards me. With no where else to go, I ran opposite the noise and opposite of the way I had come. I didn't get very far, i've never been in the best of shape and I hadn't eaten much in the past few days, and i stopped to catch my breath after only a few minutes of nervous running, well jogging. When I put my hand on the wall next to me for support, it lit up. I said a prayer of thanks out of habit when I realized I had found a control panel of some sort. The technology was astounding, it somehow recognized that I needed English and then recognized that I wanted the door to the "Emergency Vessel" opened, which it then did for me. I headed back feeling pretty smug.

 

When I returned I found the door open to a small room design to be lived in with a section in front where the floor dropped that looked more like a cockpit. The living room was actually pretty full, it looked like stuff that had been gathered from earth, some of the most random things, a speedboat, a microwave, and what looked like a dug-up sprinkler system among other things. I shrugged and moved to the cockpit area, some of it might be useful.

 

Again the technology did all the work for me, realizing what i wanted and walking me through the procedure of taking off. A countdown began, and I was feeling pretty safe that my plan was going to work. That's when I remembered the possibility of other survivors. If only there was some way of finding any others and helping them....

 

The computer blipped. It told that there were 24 other humans aboard and would I like to open their doors?

 

Heck, why not? I pushed the buttn that said "yes".

[srsizzy]

Tommy woke up to a hissing sound at the door to his room. He'd been stuck in the room for days, maybe weeks. Was someone finally letting him go home to his parents? He didn't know, but he knew that he had to take the chance to get out before the door hissed shut again, maybe to never open again. Tommy half ran, half tripped over his shoelaces out the door. When he came to a flailing halt, he was in a corridor. The air smelled like metal and plastic, which was what everything seemed to be composed of. The small heart in his chest was racing. Without thinking, he ran down the right hand corridor, and kept running.

 

He had been in school when it hit, all the children ran outside to point at the flashing lights and sonic booms overhead. The time had finally come when someone else came to Earth. It didn't really register to Tommy's childish mind that more than 6 billion people had died, and he was one of ten thousand that got to live. All of his friends were gone, and his family, that's all that really mattered.

[Savage Dragon]

"So would some one like to tell me what the ******* is going on in that ship?"

 

The angry face of the Admiral of the Fleet was spouting out the regulation profanity from the display in front of Vaughan. The Captian of the Ship rubbed his forehead and tried his best to keep the look of utter despair that was creeping up on him off his face. Luckily for him, despair doesn't show up easily on the face of an angel.

 

"Well Sir, you know as well as anyone that we're still learning how to operate the ancient Theodora technology that allows us to travel betwen star systems in these ships. you know that there is still a lot to be learned about these crafts that we have haphazardly entrusted our very lives to. you know that we've made some startling discoveries that have allowed us to perfect our society and reach out and teach other planets and cultures what we've learned and form the great Alliance."

 

"Captain, so far you've told me what i already know, I DON'T WANT TO KNOW WHAT I ALREADY KNOW, I WANT TO KNOW WHY EVERY ********* ALIEN SUDDENLY HAS TOTAL CONTROL OF YOUR SHIP!"

 

Vaughan's angelic face flushed.

 

"We... don't know."

 

The Admiral's face momentarily disappeared, only to quickly return as a subordinate righted the panel he had kicked over.

 

"Sir," Vaughan tried again, "We think that the humans have the ability to telepathically connect with the ship's systems, systems that we have never fully understood. It's possible that the humans are physically, or genetically similair to the ships' original creators, the Theodoras, and the ships have begun to follow their every orders."

 

"Vaughan, what is your current situation?"

 

"Currently?" Vaughan began to read from his lower display, "All of the humans have left their cells. About half of the humans have teleported back the the planet with the command 'i just want to go home'. One human has left with an escape pod that contained all of our samples of the human culture and we have very content six year old boy in the galley eating all the ice cream he could ever dream of."

Edited October 17, 2006 by Savage Dragon