Eden's Gate

Chapter 15: The Key

The four had spent the weekend contemplating their next move. They had deduced that the best way to figure out who is or is not in on this plan was to go to the teacher's dorm and look for clues immediately after classes. The teachers would be busy with paperwork so they'd mostly not be there, and they'd be able to hide themselves from anyone who was by using Taylor's keen sixth sense. If they were quick about it, and lucky, they'd find something useful before they got caught. Clifton's Instinct could help with that.

They'd have to get through the day first though.

The last class for today was science, taught by Headmistresses Eliza herself. Mr. Lepus took to sitting on Kaitlyn's desk and eagerly watching what was going on, which definitely caught her attention, but she let him go about his business for now.

"And so that is our solar system," Eliza concluded the lecture on the Kuiper Belt Objects. "You know now everything you need to know about our own home in the cosmos."

"Our home?" Asked Afton with a bit of wonder.

"Yes," she said, "do not be so arrogant as to believe that we are the only living things in this universe."

Eliza opened her palm, and a projection in her inky smoke black glow filled the room. It was the solar system. Kaitlyn could barely see the Earth; it was so tiny in comparison to the sun. She began to zoom the projection out at impossible speeds, and soon the sun was just another dot in a sea of dots.

"It's just pure maths. Let's say the chance of a planet forming life is one in a billion."

The projection finally finished zooming, and an entire galaxy of stars filled the room. It slowly spun around its center, fading off star by star so that no absolute line could be drawn to define its edges. It was amazing to Kaitlyn how the black of the projection could spark with such white, bright light. When she focused closer she could even see that the star light wasn't just white. Blues, yellows, red and even purples all shimmered against the void of Eliza's power, which did actually look a bit like space.

"There are a hundred billion stars in this galaxy alone. That's at least a 100 civilizations all living, thinking, breathing and feeling across the vast infinity. And that's a low estimate - we know organic compounds are so eager to form that we've found them on meteors. It's possible that once life forms it is destined to spread and evolve all over the galaxy."

Her eyes started to sparkle with awe as one of the stars turned a glowing green, and launched random lights that occasionally, rarely, hit other stars, which then also turned green and started spitting out their own lights.

"Who can say if Earth is our true cradle? Perhaps we were born billions of years before that in a crucible of a distant world, and eventually our primordial ancestors found their way here. This universe is littered with mysteries, and that, dear children is what Science is all about. Solving these mysteries."

She zoomed back down to a seemingly random star, a grin on her face as she continued.

"But these distances between stars, they're so vast. You can't even begin to comprehend it, the only way to measure it is in the years it takes light to travel between them and that can still be thousands of years. Any species that could travel between these distances..."

Kaitlyn realized the star system they were visiting was not theirs when the point of light split into two. A large blue one, a much smaller yellow one. Orbiting this pair of giants were several planets, most so small they were hard to see but one was as big as Jupiter. Kaitlyn noticed that between this large planet and the smaller ones, there was an asteroid belt, but it looked much larger and more dense than the one she was familiar with.