Elysium

Chapter 1: The New World

High up above scarce clouds, it seemed as if time had stopped. Prince Sen's face in the monitor of the control panel had closed eyes and appeared as if meditating. The ocean below us glittered, and my eyes scanned it, wishfully, through the large clear windows of the vessel, searching for something - another island, a ship, anything. But there was only the sea.

I saw Roland leaning his head to his hands, and I thought I heard a sound of a sniff. Max, in turn, now looked stoically calm. The boys sat next to each other in front of me, and Max took Roland under his arm, discreetly looking out at the sea below, so he wouldn't see his best friend cry.

I understood Roland. I still felt a strangling shock of all we had learned from the Naga in such a short time. Helena had married Landorf. I understood perfectly why, my rational self would always forgive it, yet it haunted my emotional self. Mir had died young - driven to suicide if I hadn't misunderstood. Before that, he had made some kind of breakthrough innovation in artificial preservation of human intelligence, apparently using himself as the test subject. Was that the reason why he had died? Twice, moreover. He had died young in the old life and even younger here in the new life.

And Mir had been Landorf's only son. That is, Roland's. I understood why he was crying.

Behind me, Brynhilde was terrified. She was pulling her knees against her chest, crouching in her seat, and barely daring to look down at the ocean. The other three of us had memories of flying - possibly both from the Old Earth and from Atlantis. Brynhilde, however, was a child of the New Earth, born and raised in Elysium. She had probably never flown before. Yet she had bravely volunteered as our guide to the New World.

"Prince Sen", I uttered, and the ghost in the machine woke up, opening his sad black eyes and looking at me. I was once again confused, as he looked exactly like in my dreams.

"Yes, senpai", he uttered, in the insecure voice I knew already.

"Do you know who killed the Grand Master? And who locked the young Mir in the passage?"

Prince Sen looked at me with desolate eyes. "The other me could have told you", he said. "He probably witnessed the last events. I was dormant when all of it transpired. My last contact with him, and with the Grand Master, was when he helped to install and hide me in the Encyclopaedia of the Temple of Knowledge."

"Hide you from whom?" I asked.

"From them."

I was not going to start an interrogation of an artificial entity over such an issue. What was it that the boy in my dreams had told me? 'I can only show you things that you already know. I cannot show you what you refuse to believe.'

"Do you know who Rasputin is?" I asked, trying another avenue.

"Grigory Rasputin, a Russian monk and mystic who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries?"

"No, not him", I said. "The Corto Maltese character."

I saw a sad little smile on the dead boy's pale face.

"Yes", he said. "The Grand Master referred to this villain."

"Do you have access to the Encyclopaedia now?" I asked.

"Not now", he said. "But take me to Sangriala and I'll give you access to the entire Tree of Knowledge."

"You sound like the serpent of the ancient story", I murmured. Roland turned his head and looked straight into my eyes, an alarm in his. Indeed, his eyes were wet and reddened, like I had thought.

"So you..." Roland said, addressing the Naga. "You used to be... my son?"

The ghost's face instantly turned emotionless. He stared at Roland with unemotional black eyes. Again, I came to think about a snake. And he hadn't answered my murmured remark. How could we trust this creature that wasn't even human, even though he was apparently human-made?