1000 Year Sacrifice-A Short SciFy

1000 Year Sacrifice

The room is golden like the sun, like Him, like the Sun of Blood. The sun at the center of our galaxy is our god. He is the reason I have spent ten of my seventeen years in this room. Everything in the room is gold, the bed, floors and ceilings all gleaming. I am standing in front of glossy silver surface that vibrates and ripples like an ocean of metallic liquid. My reflection distorts and settles in the moments of turmoil and calm that rake across the surface of the liquid door in front of me. I turn and take in the golden room behind me, elegant and beautiful. Ever since they found me I have lived breathed and slept in this room.

I had been taken at age seven from the world I once knew as my own. My family had been emotionless, not even attempting to resist. That was the way it happened on Cahill, the most powerful planet in the Suthern Galaxy. My people were both ancient and advanced, mentally, technologically and scientifically.

I take a step back into the golden room and sigh. For years I have lived here in this room, with the only human contact being the adventurers and pirates in my books. There they are, giant tomes and little books stacked one on top the other until there is nearly twenty towers rising like a phoenix from the floor. I have long grown sick of the golden colored floor, in stories people from ancient times would kill for even an ounce of gold. However I wish I could trade it all to sail on the Aguri Ocean. Sea spray blowing in my face and the pitch of the deck under my feet. Or maybe I would be out among the stars darting between earths and venturing into space's endless depths.

That would all be gone now, in a few moments I would emerge from this ugly room into the glorious sunlight, but not for freedom. I won't ever mingle with the crowd in Papari Plaza and listen to vendors shout out their wares and smell the amazing foods that lined the streets.

I will never be able to stand on a starcraft's deck shouting out orders to a space crew telling them our next destination in the ever expanding galaxy. I would have named my ship after some famous general perhaps, or maybe some distant star that few have ever laid eyes upon.

No this all wouldn't become my reality, my reality is to go through that shimmering doorway, and on the other side of it my story would come to a close. Seventeen years old and I would go through that door and the crowd would cheer for me, their savior, their redeemer, the one that would make them safe for another thousand years. For me though, time was out, I stand here ready to complete the most boring life story to ever be written. A girl locked in a room and then died, that was all it would say.

I turn to the door and force myself through its silver embrace. Emerging on the other side I am suddenly clothed in a yellow outfit, its entire fabric ripples and flickers like flames. For the first time in ten years sunlight beads down on me, and my pale skin is burning in the light, but it is an excruciatingly glorious pain. I wait a moment, blinking, then it all becomes both visible and clear. The crowd ahead and underneath me surges and roars with excitement. Drums are creating a beat that the crowd matches by stomping their feet.

I stand on a platform that floats over the crowd's heads. This platform is now trembling, then it begins to float forward, the crowd members closest to it reach up trying to touch it as it passes their heads. They were all here to witness it, the sacrifice. My death, my sacrifice would guarantee their future for the next thousand years. I watched them all pass underneath me, and feel the battle roaring to life. They all counted on me to sacrifice myself to god, the Sun of Blood. I look at him, a bright red ball of light that beams down on me demanding blood.

Once every thousand years he demands we turn one of our own over to him, this time I am that one, but why? What has this world, or these people ever done for me? My family doesn't care about me, and these people have kept me locked in a room. But they all are looking at me with wonder and hope. So really what choice do I have?

Just now, was that a ripple behind me? A man is here on the platform, he came through the door. I turn to him and he looks at me, and me at him. The crowd is gasping in shock, apparently this isn't supposed to happen. What is he doing here? He is starting to speak, in deep voice that is both kind and comforting.

"You don't need to do this, there is a way out, these people you see below they have become embittered and evil at their roots. They have locked you away denying you a real life, and why? Because of a God's unjust desire for human sacrifice. So I am here to offer you a chance at life. The people of Planet Cahill have done nothing for you that you need repay. Millions of years they have lived in which they have become corrupt. Come and make yourself a life."

I'm in shock, for some reason his outstretched hand came here to offer me a life, a choice! But at what cost, the millions people on Planet Cahill? He was right, I owe them nothing, but can I make that decision? If the people are truly corrupt should I leave, and condemn them to a perhaps deserved fate? What decision would you make?

(I left this story unfinished because I wanted to try and pose the question to you the reader. If you were faced with the choice of letting an ancient but corrupt civilization die, basically putting it out of its misery would you? I also didn't specify gender because I felt that it wouldn't add that much to the story. So let me know what you would chose!)

(Word Count Without Readers Note: 996)