Deluded Soul

one - see no fool, trust no fool

chapter one | deluded soul

 “I guess we thought that's just what humans do.”

_____________________________________________

“The operation is simple,” the doctor begins, briefly touching the left column of his ribcage. “A small incision will be made just below the rib closest to the heart. It is there, behind the bone, where the soul lies. We coax it out, gently, and it is immediately placed inside a holding vessel until its destination is determined.”

My parents’ eyes are trained on the doctor’s face, entranced by his words full of promises; actions full of hope. Turning, he produces a smallish, flat, silver device that resembles a remote. The doctor does something to it—running his steady fingers along its sides—and the device splits in two, opening. A delicate hiss resounds.

Even my attention—something I’ve tried to keep focused elsewhere, anywhere but this Center—is nabbed and held fast. A white orb with soft edges illuminates the room, brushing all of us with its warm, quivering light. My parents are the first to acknowledge this holding vessel. My mother is awestruck; my father, staring at the device with a renewed interest.

“This is what an average holding vessel looks like,” the doctor says, “though it can vary depending on the soul.”

“That’s all it takes? One incision and a Passover?” my father asks, the first to look at this situation with logic and reason in mind.

I fight back the urge to smack my parents. As much as I love them and care for them, I know deep down inside that in six months’ time, none of the love we shared will matter anymore. Today, in this Center (what we called any form of science lab or hospital), would be just another day for them in six months. The doctors, to my parents, were the godliest of people in the human race. For they were the ones who birthed this creation.

A second race, they called it.

One thousand and five hundred years ago, when the world as we know it today was on the brink of extinction, something sparked. The human race fell to pieces at the hands of disease and war; destruction amongst themselves in every sense of the word. The planet continued to revolve as it had been for billions and billions of years before, oblivious to its lack of occupants. Some one thousand and five hundred years later, from the dust and ash arose a new beginning.

A second chance, they soon realized.

Our Phoenix, Maximus Tier, devised a nation of his own. He brought to life an entire species, meant to be its own, even though they were, in fact, our own. Counterparts, he called them. With these counterparts came a series of mapped out genetics and codes, all carefully prepared and reviewed by Maximus himself before he allowed them to be released into the hands of our very own doctors. In turn these doctors went on to build onto the foundation Maximus had created.

Each and every human is paired with his or her own counterpart at conception. This counterpart is manifested to perfectly synchronize itself with its originate. Designing and coding the counterpart is crucial, as it is done while its originate is still being created itself. Once secure coding has been achieved, the counterpart is released into a holding vessel until it’s needed again. Which, in reality, could be in one week or one millennium. Our counterparts serve to fulfill one purpose and one purpose only.

They are the key to our success. Before our time, our kind tripped and stumbled through their mistakes almost blindly. They would learn from them, of course, but they would never really value those lessons. Not even if their lives depended on those fragile yet fragmented lessons. They were careless in that way, always assuming they had tomorrow to patch things up and make them right. Tomorrow came and went, sweeping our population into one big, burning mess of death and destruction.