Science, Eternal Life, and a Traveling Circus |1|

Prologue (Optional)

[TRIGGER WARNING: suicide, as a martyr. The most important takeaway from this prologue is that FAUNS were an invention to restore green to the Earth; but some people in power wished to exploit them for other selfish purposes. The fauns attempted to escape, and their creator destroyed all instructions for their creation.]

The gas escaped with a sickening hiss, raising goosebumps up his arms. He choked on the bitter taste and shivered with repulsion, staring at the goading yellow nozzle in his grasp. It tempted him to be turned. His hand slid reluctantly from it, drawing to his chest. It took all his strength to leave the blasted thing on and walk away, to the window. He prodded the blinds apart and squinted through the gap.

Midday, August 15th, 2603. The clouds hung just the same as they always did over the city of Ban-Ken—low, thick, polluted, traced with colors of green and brown and grey. But, they felt much grimmer today, as if the foreboding gloom had come for Dr. Polcene himself.

Outside, he saw four figures slip through his gate and stop to wave their arms at one another. One wore the doctor's lab coat. The figure's tinted spectacles glinted in the daylight, reflecting a dancing purple flash across the windowpane.

Dr. Polcene smiled, then wept. He drew a handkerchief from his slacks, inadvertently tumbling his wallet out with it. The sturdy casing clattered on the tile and he peered down. After drying his eyes, he bent. The gas was beginning to tickle his throat.

He opened the dented Invincible™ wallet and, in a daze, rested his finger upon a photograph. He smiled again and slipped it gingerly out, then picked up the wallet, and pushed against his knee to stand. With his nose all but glued to the old photo, he walked along the lab trailer, leaving the door open as he passed into his study. A heavy sigh eased him into his desk chair, where he sunk gratefully into the leather. He set the wallet aside and held the photograph out.

The image, creased and crumpled at its edges, depicted thirty-four familiar faces, one of which belonged to him. The date was scrawled in the corner.

"Has it only been two years, here?" he whispered. "Remarkable." He coughed into the crook of his elbow, beginning to feel light-headed.

With the photograph before him, he slouched over his desk and squinted. Of course, twenty years of success had to come to an end at some point, but he wished it didn't have to be for all of them. He cursed himself for the decision he had made two years past, in taking funding from Ban-Ken's leaders. The photograph had been taken in happier, simpler times, before he had brought all thirty-two of his family, his life's work, to the city. That decision had condemned them all. Dr. Malcom Perry, the thirty-fourth in the image, had been smart enough to stay away.

Everyone was out now, running in small groups through the hostile streets, disguised with his clothing and everything they could scrounge from his linen cupboard. Thirty-two frightened beings fled for their lives.

He had created them to do good. He had created them to restore the Earth to a green state. He had raised them to believe in humanity and in nature, and to be pure in a purpose above themselves—a feat that humans simply could not accomplish. It had been so exciting when his species prototype had woken for the first time and asked him what he was.

"You are Ted. You are the first faun," Polcene had answered. In the stiff, lonely study, it was as if the spectacled being was sitting up again before him. The doctor held the handkerchief to his nose and tried to itch away the burning sensation. "One day you'll make the world a better place," he had said.

He pressed his head into his hands.

"I hope that day comes," he murmured. He hung his head back and stared at the ceiling. "Oh, by the stars." Don't let them all die.

One would have to get out. One, at least, of the thirty-two would surely escape the city, out through the stretches where its walls hadn't yet been finished, and they would serve their purpose. He had to believe it.

"And, in my passing, I dream of only one thing..." He penciled his statement onto the back of the photograph. "That while I may not be there to see it, my fauns will restore our world, and the future will be green at last."

He closed the photograph into his wallet and struck a match.