The Shadow of Eudaimonia

Chapter 6: The Inheritor

"How does it feel?"

"Hm?" Lazzi murmured. He was half-asleep, his head leaning on the window of SUB [Single Unit Bus], when Creo asked him suddenly out of the blue. "Sorry Cap, what did you say?"

Creo smiled at his young sleepy student. He must be so tired, he thought. It was less than 6 hours after all when he was extracted from his week-long icy final trial. "I said how does it feel? To be the Inheritor? The next Shijian."

"I don't know? Happy? I should be happy right?"

"When the media asked you that question, you should have a better answer."

"Oh no, they're going to ask that?"

"Yeah, of course idiot! It is the first time after a century that Kepler was chosen again to have an Inheritor. You will be a legend. And also, sit-up straight, you must be sophisticated and well-mannered at all times now."

"How can I be if my mentor is you? You only look 'sophisticated' when your face is covered up"

"Lazzi, I am being serious. They will look at you like a quasar in the stark night sky."

Lazzi scoffed at Creo's cringey metaphors. "What good will it do if they look up to me? I should be down with them. Serving them. Not a celestial body that can't do anything."

Creo grinned, proud of what his pupil had become. He knew more than others, how this boy worked day and night to reach where he is now. "But you are going to be beyond celestial." Creo reasoned.

"But I am human first."

"At least just in front of the camera, please. Just behave. And tell them anything they want to hear, okay? It'll be easier for you."

"Okay, whatever you say Cap," Lazzi grinned. They were quiet for a second and only the steady humming of the SUB can be heard as they travel 100km per hour across Cassius. Lazzi continued to idly daze at the scenery outside, if anyone can call it a scenery. It was a slum, filled with hungry people of Kepler. The diminishing resources and the fairly recent 3-year world war made the place far from the utopian colony planets of Gaia or Nuvamond. "Maybe it hasn't dawned to me yet? Being the Inheritor."

Cap raised his eyebrow. "Really?"

"Yeah. It's crazy. I've been training for this my whole life and now that I became the Inheritor, I don't know how to feel."

"Maybe you'll feel it after the Transference ceremony."

"What will happen in the ceremony anyway?" Lazzi asked, his sad and tired pale blue eyes still staring outside.

"Honestly kid, I'm not sure myself. I was just a boy when I witnessed the last Transference ceremony. What I can remember is that there will be drinking of blood of the Obelisks. As I told you before, the Obelisks are transferred through—"

"DNA consumption or alternatively eating the tumor in the Obelisk's brain, I know."

Creo nudged him. "Forget the eating the tumor part. That's unethical!"

Lazzi snickered. "The last transference ceremony was when you're a kid huh? That must be ages ago then? What, a hundred years ago?" he jested.

"Hey, I'm only 75."

"Only 75? If I remember correctly you said in the old Earth, most people die at around that age, right?"

"Yes. That was before the discovery of the Obelisks. Thank goodness we'd slowed down aging."

"If only we can also figure out how to eradicate, oh I don't know, poverty and suffering, huh?"

"I know you're young and you're full of hope but you must understand that you cannot fix everything, even when you are the strongest in the Universe." Lazzi looked at him for a second then back outside the window.