"Ah... Siever…" I called slightly desperate. "I can't... I do not see where I have to go."
Siever had opened the door and was waiting for me to come down, he had probably forgotten this "little detail" that I could not see.
"Don't call me Siever... we must be friends from now on, whether you want it or not" he said still smiling, but helping me to get out of the ship. "Just Henry is enough…" taking me to a couch in the first room at the place we were.
"Wait a moment... I hadn't come here in years... I must verify if the supplies I requested before we arrived here were delivered, and if anything is missing that I need to provide."
"Why did you spend so much time without coming to your own home?" I asked wanting to hear his voice so I did not feel lost.
"I spent a lot of time without going anywhere." He said distractedly from somewhere further on "Marco took charge of keeping the Relic of Creation in the palace until he found a suitable new guardian, and I ended up staying there so as not to separate the two."
"I do not understand what Marco has to do with all this…" I commented "I thought they had decided a long time ago to leave governments out of this…" Henry approached me and sat down in front of me before he spoke again.
"You ask too many questions…" but he sighed and replied anyway "Marco is a jerk... but he is not a bad politician. I think you know the function of the emperor of the galaxy is basically to serve as a mediator between interplanetary decisions, right?"
"Yeah... but I still don't understand how someone could do it alone... and it seems he intimidates people too much to be a diplomat, doesn't he?"
"You see, to become the emperor one must tend to a peculiar power whose dominion is very rare to attain: the Principle of Omniscience. The emperor must be the one who can feel the real intention of all people and should never, under any circumstances, lie, in order to maintain his power. In this way, he can fairly mediate all agreements, avoid or solve wars, and in case of discord or threats, he may use an imperial decree to institute whatever he thinks best or pertinent and to subjugate those deemed wrong."
"It seems to me a very authoritarian…" I let it escape, "Thinking this way, everyone should probably give up their personal opinions to please the emperor."
"Somehow" Henry went on to explain, now engaged in a series of little things that I could not identify with this bad vision of mine, "but the planets participate in the Empire only if they wish. It is an honor, and actually it is very advantageous. When the Emperor decrees something, everyone complies, for trusting that he really knows that this is the best for everyone, imperfectly."
"I thought you did not like him…" I said feeling a little confused by his defense of the Empire.
"I do not like him. He, as a person, has already proved to me that he is not someone I can trust. But he takes his responsibilities seriously, and he correctly fulfills the obligations of the Empire. It is only normal to recognize this. But any personal involvement he has is corrosive. He is spoiled and uses the powers he has to play with the feelings of others.
I could feel Henry's anger emanating again, as if it were a palpable wave. I could even feel the aura of heat rising. I wonder what was so bad Marco could have done to him.
"I do not understand how you can think this way…"
Henry sat up propping his elbows on his legs and spoke calmly:
"Brards are not exactly aware of how things happen in the universe. They do not live long enough to form their own solid opinions about how their own worlds work, and can not even see the bigger picture. Your ways to view the world change from generation to generation" I felt slightly offended, but did not interrupt. "Jomons, on the other hand, live long enough to understand things that can not be understood in mere hundred or two hundred years of life. Although things always change and improve, stories always repeat themselves, and people need to stop thinking only about what is best for them or their own, and consider what is best for everyone. In the end, personal opinions do not really matter at all... especially about things that pertain to society issues.
I absorbed what he said. I understood his point, but I could not help thinking that Jomons lived as if they were ants, working for a greater good without free will. Were they living or just surviving?
"Anyway... you want to know what will happen to you from now on, or do you prefer the surprise?"
I was startled by the question. It was obvious that I wanted to know what he intended to do to me. I was not even sure if I could trust my life in his hands, after all, he was just a stranger. But what else could I do?
"Explain it!" I said.
"Alesia, what is happening to you now is that your body is fragile and doesn't support independently long periods of time without using me as a crutch to maintain thermal balance. The Relic is not losing heat. It's absorbing. Even your body heat will be taken. And your body has no ability to maintain a functional metabolism that creates heat faster than it loses. Then I will have to change the way your body produces and stores the heat itself, so that the Relic absorbs the heat from outside instead of your inside", Henry quickly explained, "Another thing that should be taken into account is that you will soon, willingly or not, if Relic is not used, it will expel the excess energy to prevent it from collapsing. Especially at this moment when it has been unguarded for a long time and is delicately unstable. So when that time comes, you must have a nervous system capable of supporting and driving out the electric shock this will cause, or your internal organs are sure to be damaged."
"So in the end you have to make me become a conduit of electricity that can isolate heat efficiently…" I said after reflecting on what he said.
"Excellent summary!" Henry happily exclaimed.
"And how do you intend to do that?"
"That's the hard part. I will insulate each part of your body from the others with synthetic fibers filled with a carbon allotropic that will contain the heat of each part separately and help to conduct electricity when it comes." Doesn't that seem to be very ... invasive?" I wondered if he would probably have to open up my whole body to do this isolation.
"Something like that."
I could feel his tone of voice was confident, but anxious. Probably he also seemed aware that it would not be an easy task.
"It's gonna hurt?" I asked, feeling the fear growing malicious and mingling with my shivering cold.
"It is likely that in some moments, so yes…" he said, sincere, "But I'll do my best to minimize it." Then he changed the subject and spoke in a lively voice, "Are you hungry? If you want to eat before we start…"
"I think I lost my hunger…" I said nervously, "Are we going to start now?"
Henry took me by the arm and led me to a ladder that descended for several yards. I could not tell if it was dark or clear, I hardly saw the shades and shapes of things around me, as if trying to force the vision into a place without any illumination. He led me through a large room into a closed chamber.
"What is this?" I asked anxiously.
"We may have lost your eyes already, so let's start fast to avoid losing other organs." He spun me around and guided my hand until we touched everything while describing them so I could locate myself. "You need to be sanitized first. This is an antiseptic chamber. When you remove the clothes, throw them here, press this button... here, it will start the chemical bath automatically, then put these other clothes that are in this compartment... then just go through this other door. Can you do this alone?
"Sure!" I answered quickly. I did not want to have to change in front of him.
Henry left and let me do what he had instructed. As soon as I took off the clothes and pressed the first button, several jets of liquid with a strong smell of medicine were horizontally sprayed from all sides of the walls. Before a full second end, I was already completely soaked. A few seconds later the jet stopped and was replaced by a gas that did not smell much better. It seemed to burn my nose and throat and burned against the skin, while it was like ember in my lungs.
I was already thinking there was something very wrong and would suffocate when the gas also stopped coming and was completely drained from the chamber, being again replaced by another liquid coming from the walls. This time it seemed to be just water, or serum. When the water also stopped, it was completely replaced by a breath of hot air that dried me in a few seconds.
When the bath ended, I coughed still feeling the spicy taste of the gas on my tongue, looking for the drawer with my new clothes and put them on. In fact they looked like a set of pants and T-shirt of a very soft and smooth fabric.
When I left, Siever was already waiting for me on the other side. He also smelled of the strong drug odor of the chemical bath, and I imagined that he had also passed by another such antiseptic chamber."
"Alesia, now you're in my personal laboratory. Here even the air is filtered and can only be accessed after this procedure. This is where you'll live for a while until you're ready." Henry said gently, and he led me to a bed. Soon after, without even realizing when, I "slept".