I felt myself sinking feet-first through the floor, my body atomizing as my consciousness was inhaled into the center of the whirling electrogravitic rings.

Part Three
Before the Beginning…

39

“There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity
was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair.
That way lays defeat and death.”

—Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

I awoke on an alien world as another person.

Avi Socha—mated to three, father of ten.

Avi Socha—born into servitude, subcitizen of the Kohenim Tribe.

Avi Socha—discredited scientist and soul-seeker, now a prisoner of the state.

Avi Socha—a forgotten man on the verge of death.

Nearly one solar year had passed since I’d been arrested in a seaside cave by the Council’s secret police. My neighbor had turned me in, hoping to acquire “loyalty credits” for the lottery, a contest in which a thousand subcitizens would be chosen to board a transport vessel that was to safely orbit our doomed world, Charon, when the Miketz struck.

The lottery turned out to be another Council lie designed to stave off civil unrest.

Weak from hunger, I remained in my sleep sack until the midday sun beat down upon me. It shone through from octagonal openings in the two-story-high ceiling of my quarantine. Using my soiled tunic as a tent, I curled beneath the fabric to shield my light-sensitive eyes.

The prison cells were occupied by the dead and dying, but our jailers were gone. They had abandoned the facility three weeks earlier, when a massive earthquake had rocked the continent, spawning a planet-wide exodus thirty-nine days ahead of the anticipated doomsday event. Once the cartel and their military capos had gone, the republic’s infrastructure collapsed, chasing the vendors who had serviced the elite into the mountains—my jailers among them.

Hundreds of ships now orbited the planet, linking together to form clusters, their pods occupied by past and present Council members and their families. The rest of us were forced to remain behind, waiting for a volcanic eruption that would wipe out all traces of life.

Left alone to die, I was surviving on the rainwater that poured in from the ceiling and a solitary green leaf a day, taken from what little remained of my four-plant garden.

Being locked away in exile is a perception-altering experience. Initially there is pain. Pain comes in a variety of forms, from the physical agony brought about by incessant hunger, to the mental anguish of being confined to a small cell, to the emotional torture of being deprived of seeing your loved ones.

The first few weeks were by far the hardest, the darkness accompanied by nightmares, birthed by the screams coming from the other prisoners. I adapted by stuffing my earholes with torn fabric from my tunic. My stomach gradually adapted to starvation by shrinking, my mind to the tediousness of endless time by creating a routine.