EPITAPH 0.002 - Cousin

by: Haziel May C. Natorilla
Volume 1: The Crystal Ephesoziel

Last time, on Rexers…

            After the little prince fled to Celestial Era 2005, the Draispans tracked him there and attacked, killing a multitude of people. Escaping to an edge of time, he met Nebuer who gave him a protoDigiRex device. He successfully transformed into one of the legendary Rexer soldiers – Black Rex. However, his fatigue undid the transformation and he fainted.

EPITAPH 0.002 – Cousin

Cosmic Age, 5990.

Saint Gabriel Hooskas.

            “So it seems that the device is a little bit unstable. Still, our theories were proven. All is well,” asserted Nebuer to himself.

            “Well, well…” begun a rough, teasing voice, “thanks for the data, little prince.”

            “How long have you been there, Sonsi?”

            Fej Sonsi’s father, the splitting image of Fej save the absence of dimples on his visage, appeared from behind a calculated gap. The gap opened from one of the Titanium-made, reinforced bookshelves covered with artificial oak layers. The wooden surface lining of every furniture piece provided the aesthetic camouflage necessary to keep their laboratory passages a secret. Sonsi’s no-nonsense attitude bore a sharp contrast with Quinoa’s calm look, a thing that often amused outsiders who saw them. That was if there were any outsiders. Still, Engle Sonsi remained an outstanding scientist in his field.

            “Since he came,” Sonsi proudly replied. “For starters, our sleeping prince needs a name and some roof.”

            Flipping an odd silver coin as he walked towards Nebuer, he continued, “The house on the hill should be fine for stray cats,” emphasizing the word ‘stray’.  “Anyway, that’s not why I’m here, Sir Quinoa.”

            “Please. Have a seat while I call in my children.”

            As soon as the word left Nebuer’s mouth, he called in his twins through the picocommunicator. Mitt arrived in the same fashion as Leizah, who was waiting outside the hallway, did earlier. Unlike Leizah who was usually clumsy, cheerful and easygoing, Mitt kept his body in top form even as he studied. Serious and strict with himself and those he care about, Mitt was more-or-less oblivious to people who admire him for his good looks and strong sense of justice.

            “Mitt!”

            Leizah, excited to show her brother the ‘alien’ that their Dad was talking to, beamed with a smile and hugged him.

           

            “Whoa! What’s the deal, Leiz?”

            “Mitt, tell Dad you’ll go with us to Neleh Palace. Super pretty pleasey.”

            “Go where?”

            “The ‘alien’ wants to see our colony’s ruler who lives there… at the Neleh Palace,” bragged Leizah, proud that she knew something she thought her twin didn’t.

            “You mean the replica? Sure. Been there before,” said Mitt confidently.

            “Cool! Dad’s been talking to it for a while. Maybe it couldn’t convince Dad,” worried Leizah, “but I bet you could.”

           

            Mitt entered the principal’s office first, followed by Leizah. Mitt was talking to their Dad when Leizah saw the ‘alien’ lying on the sofa. Rushing over by the little prince’s side, she shook in the hopes that the ‘alien’ was still alive.

            “Hmm… hmm… hmm…”

            “Leiz, weren’t you listening? Dad told us to bring our cousin home.”

            “Hmm… hmm… hmm…”

            “Leiz!”

            “Oh! Our cousin’s coming to visit? When?” wondered Leizah, still trying to wake little prince up.

            “That ‘alien’ you brought is not an alien. That’s our cousin, a member of the Am Guzden clan sent to train with us this summer,” stressing on the words ‘our cousin’.

            “What’s it’s… I mean his… his name?”

            “Dad doesn’t know which child was sent. Ask him later when he wakes up. For now, we’re going home,” ordered Mitt as he slung one arm over his shoulders and Leizah took the right arm.

            “You can use the fourth tube from here kids,” Engle added. “I’ll open it for you.”

            “Sweet! Thanks, Dr. Engle. You’re the super best!” said Leizah.

           

Quinoa Residence

            In a matter of minutes, the twins reached their house near the hills. Traveling via tube with others was a first time for Leizah. Switching their anti-gravity shoes, they went from one of the back entrances and sped towards the second floor.

            “I thought the tube can only hold one person at a time. There were three of us in there,” wondered Leizah.

            “One adult at a time, Leiz. Actually, it’s more of how heavy instead of how many,” smiled Mitt. “Up and there. Okay!”

            Mitt and Leizah placed the little prince on one of the spare beds in the guest room. As they laid him there, the prince stirred a bit. The twins had no idea of the little prince’s frightful dream, or of his past, when suddenly, he grabbed an arm. His grip on the wrist was hard and firm. Painful.

            “Ahh! That hurts!”

            “Why you! Let her go!”

            Mitt tried to pull the hand away from Leiz, but it wouldn’t budge. Taking the nearest vase, he poured water on both of them. After water soaked them, the little prince snapped out of it and immediately woke up. He was, however, still gripping Leizah’s arm tightly.

            “Ugh…” groaned Nosneb.

            “Let go of Leiz, or else…” threatened Mitt.

            “Um, Mitt, you don’t have to scare him,” interrupted Leizah. “So, what’s your name, cousin?”

            “Nosneb zi Rha Faan…” said the little prince slowly, as though in a trance and withholding his last name, Ephesoziel. In their planet, Ephesozen princes traditionally said the Ephesoziel surname first and attached their mother’s last name last. He had the sense to drop ‘Ephesoziel’ after waking up in a semi-conscious manner, following Nebuer’s warning. Still, the images from his dream looked clear as the water that drenched him that he hardly noticed the cold.

            “That’s an awfully long name, cousin. Can I call you Nosneb?” said Leizah, as she forced a smile while her arm still hurt.

            “Nosneb zi Rha Faan Am Guzden,” shrugged Mitt, “is an awfully short name compared to most of our other cousins. And… I see you were named after the ‘Rha Faan’ tribe.”

            “I wasn’t named after them. I was one of them,” corrected Nosneb in his mind. “Am Guzden? Wherever did you get that? I hand it to your quick thinking, Nebuer. Thanks,” he continued in his mind, gazing at a blank point in space.

            “Let go of my sister now, Nosneb zi Rha Faan. Let go of Leizah.” demanded Mitt in an authoritative tone.

            Nosneb, seeing that he grabbed her arm by accident while asleep, quickly released it. Leizah, smiling as she walked towards the door, said, “Gotta go, cousin. Make sure to change those clothes.”

            “Clothes are on the second drawer to the left,” said Mitt.

            “Thanks, Quinoa.”

            “It’s Mitt.”

            As Mitt walked away, Nosneb knew that he needed to make as many allies as he could if he were to fight the Draispans and restore Ephesoziel. He had best start with this lad.

            “Thanks, Mitt,” replied Nosneb.

            Surprised that he was thanked twice, he looked back. He wanted to doubt this cousin because of the way he hurt Leizah before he woke up, but because their Dad instructed them to take care this cousin, he held back.

            “No problem. Just don’t…”

            “Don’t what?”

            “It’s not important,” said Mitt as he closed the door and left.

            Nosneb took a quick shower and changed. Worried about what happened with his smartbots – Araco, Balco, Coco, Duco, Ezreco, and Fauzco, he wanted to set off and find them. He barely stepped out of the room when Leizah came running on the hallway.

            “Hello! So you’re done changing? Wanna go play at the Sonsi’s?”

            “P-Play? I’ve got other things to do than play, child.”

            “Whatever! You’re a child too. Let’s go! Let’s go!”

            “Don’t pull me. I can walk,” Nosneb asserted.

            “I know! I’m sure you can eat too. Now let’s go! Dr. Lucia’s cheesecakes are the best! I won’t miss them for the world!”

            Drawn to Leizah’s innocence and optimism like a magnet to a pole, half of the little prince wants to regain his innocence and youth, while another half needs to bring justice to his people. He found it relieving that this child treated him as ordinary as possible, even though his silvery hair and auburn eyes betrayed his origins. He thought about dyeing his hair to a different color, at least, before he went meeting other people. When they left the back door entrance, Nosneb broke the silence.

            “Child, how do we get to the Sonsi’s? Do we fly?”

            “Um… if you call me ‘child’ ever again, cousin, I’ll call you ‘alien’,” teased Leizah. “And right, we’ll fly so highey high… or not! It’s pretty near! We can float!”

            “O-Okay. If you mean something like this…”

            Nosneb activated his ATP-powered spaceskates to glide in the usual manner. Like a boy proud of his toys, Nosneb smiled as he soared in those freestyle moves he used to do on gaseous surface. This gaseous surface was not exactly air like from the old days, but a clean version of it devoid of contaminants like Argon.

            “H-h-hey! Let me on that thingy!” Leizah shouted. “I wanna try that! Nosneb!”

            The little prince didn’t want ‘the child’ to shout his name out in the open that he sped his way down. He was still floating when Leizah climbed on his back.

            “W-w-what are you doing??” said a puzzled Nosneb.

            “Piggyback ride. Now let’s go! Let’s go! Straight to the east!” Leizah answered excitedly.

            “E-e-asier said than done,” said Nosneb as he lifted the two of them to the air. “And quit moving!” he ordered.

            Unfortunately for Nosneb, Leizah had no sense of direction and barely paid attention to landmarks, let alone coordinates. Nosneb’s GPS watch worked quite normally in this world that it puzzled him a little. While airborne, Nosneb noticed a small crater and wanted to check it out. As he descended, Leizah finally remembered something.

            “That’s it! See that white chimney? It’s Fej’s place!”

            “I was looking at the crater,” Nosneb replied blankly.

            With all that fidgeting around and Leizah’s crazy direction-telling as they glided, it took them two hours to get to the Sonsi’s, when it was a mere thirty-minute walk. Fej saw Leizah from the window, so he rushed out to greet them.

            “Hey! Leizah! Glad you could make it!” shouted Fej, his voice echoing through the hills. “Over here,” he waved.

            “Oopsie. I was gonna surprise Fej, but… the window’s fine too,” Leizah shrugged. “To the window!” she rallied.

            “It’s not proper to enter from the window, but… I can live with that,” Nosneb thought as they flew to the window.

            Nosneb and Leizah entered smoothly through the life-sized, colored glass windows panes. Fej’s windows used a special type of strong glass, reinforced to withstand a variety of weather and pressure. Occasionally, Dr. Engle and Dr. Lucia used those panes to serve like classroom H-boards whenever they taught Fej. Since the Sonsi’s were usually immersed with their research, they had a full-scale, operational laboratory at their residential area, complete with assistant robots. Whenever Fej wasn’t playing with the Quinoas or with his other playmates, it was almost too sure that he’d be somewhere in one of the household laboratories. This time, however, since it was four in the afternoon, Fej was bored doing his afternoon summer homework when he happened to saw Leizah coming. That woke him up from routine.

           

            “Great! You brought your pet robo too. This’ll be fun!”

            “He’s not my pet robo, Fej,” corrected Leizah, “He’s my alien cousin. Sorry. Didn’t tell you earlier.”

            “Cousin? No way!” replied Fej, as he stared back at Nosneb again. “He doesn’t look like a Quinoa to me. As far as I recall, all of you are black-haired and black-eyed. Had a DNA shift?” wondered Fej.

            “A what???” asked Nosneb, completely lost with whatever Fej was saying. In the previous edge of time where Nosneb was, elementary students never studied the word ‘DNA’. He had no clue what Fej was talking about and he hated not to know something.

            “A DNA shift means that your DNA shifts or moves towards expressing something which your DNA does not normally have towards something it now artificially has. It could also be something that your genes normally have that is turned OFF that was switched ON because of the shift,” explained Fej. “For example, when a certain amount of light hits your hair and eyes, it turns black because of the shift. Whenever light is not enough, your hair and eyes goes back to its original color.”

            “Fej, you’re talking strange again,” grunted Leizah. “Did you memorize that from Dr. Lucia’s notes?”

            “Not telling,” answered Fej. “Well, so was it a shift?”

            “It’s… uh… dyed,” Nosneb reacted in a hurry.

            “Dyed?! Didn’t think your alien cousin would be old fashioned, Leizah. Some hobby.”

            “Don’t say that.” Leizah defended. “So Fej… where’s that thing you were gonna show me?”

            “In the lab. Found it outside the house near the cave. You’d be surprised.”

            “Really? Is it pirate’s treasure! Gimme! Gimme!”

            “Nope. It’s even better… an ancient robot!”

            Fej led his friends downstairs to their lab, which, for most purposes, Fej called ‘garage’. With all the glasswares and instruments safely stowed away, the lab did look more like a garage workshop than a laboratory. Scrap metals, motor oils, gears, tires, and all sorts of mechanical tools lay around. There, Nosneb wasn’t prepared when he saw one of the smartbots he was searching for that he couldn’t speak in shock. It was Fauzco, sixth of the six smartbots his second parents gave him.

            “Here it is. I can’t get it to work yet. There’s nothing on the cosmonet about ancient robots that look like this,” complained Fej. “Maybe I’ll pry it open and study it.”

            “Nah. You won’t be able to put them back if you did. You broke too many robots,” replied Leizah.

            “I’ll do anything to get this thing to work. If only I knew how.”

            “If you showed it to Dr. Engle, I’m sure he could fix it.”

            “No way! This is my loot! No grown-ups are touching it.”

            “But… it’s pretty super useless if it doesn’t run, Fej. What do you think, cousin?”

            Nosneb, who was thinking of a way to take Fauzco, finally got his thoughts together. While he was thinking of how to say it nicely, Leizah, who was getting impatient with Nosneb’s stiff silence, was shaking the little prince hard when Fej interrupted.

            “Leizah!” said Fej as he tried to restrain her, “Stop it.”

            “But…”

            “It’s impossible for this old-fashioned cousin of yours. I bet he can’t,” said an arrogant Fej.

            “That’s an interesting bet,” said Nosneb suddenly. “If you can’t do it, how could I? I can’t possibly win against you in robots even if I tried. You’re an expert.”

            “Tell you what. I’ll give you one shot. Make it work on one try,” said Fej, still smiling over Nosneb’s praise.

            “Are you sure? What if my cousin gets it to run?”

            “He can have this robot. That’s only if he could make it work,” Fej replied, highly stressing the word ‘if’.

            “But surely…” Nosneb feigned hesitation.

            “I don’t think it’s broken. At first I thought that it’s solar powered, but the panels don’t seem to work. I also checked the circuits, and they’re fine. I don’t know what’s wrong!”

            “All right,” agreed Nosneb. “Let’s go outside while the sun’s up.”

            As Fej led the way outside, Nosneb quickly deactivated the encryption code and turned the backup power cell while they weren’t looking. Fauzco’s eyes blinked once as it looked at Nosneb, waiting for instructions.

            “Hush,” Nosneb signaled. “Wait ‘til your name is called. Do it with style.”

            They headed to some open space near the crater. Nosneb opened a compartment, revealing a compact grid that could harness solar energy. He positioned the tubular-based solar panel at an angle to gain maximum exposure from the fading sunset. Evening was about to come, but with the secret technology of this smartbot at the time, thirty minutes was enough to recharge it at 50%.

            “I already tried that,” said Fej, “and it didn’t work. I exposed it to sunlight since I found it.”

            “Patience. We wait until the sun’s down to charge it. It’ll run,” answered Nosneb confidently.

            “How can you tell? You weren’t sure earlier,” asked Leizah with great curiosity.

            “How about you name the robot? Consider it my thanks,” answered Nosneb.

            “Really? I can? Hurray!” said Leizah, beaming with excitement. “I know! Can I call it Jean?”

            “Jean it is.”

            Rising from where he stood, Nosneb walked slowly towards Fauzco, the sixth of his smartbots. “Fauzco, one of the sparkling stars that protects us, people of the Celestial Era, please grant me some courage. The fated time has arrived. Awaken, and be known as Jean to Leizah Quinoa.”

            As planned, Fauzco, the smartbot who enjoyed acting much as its young master, pretended to have just been awakened. It slowly opened its eyes and walked slowly, like toy robots did in the Celestial Era. Since this era was way past that timeline, the smartbot appeared more ancient than it had to.

            “Creatures of this time who dare call forth my name without an offering, for what reason have you awoken me from my slumber?” said Fauzco.

            “The purpose is…”

            “…to play with me! C’mon Jean! Let’s go! Let’s go!” Leizah interrupted.

            “Wait!” called Nosneb as he chased them.

            Carrying the cylinder-shaped robot with her, Leizah was happily smiling as she ran when Fej stood in her way. Fej, burning with anger, took his charged whip and aimed to hit Leizah when Nosneb pushed her out of the way. In catching the weapon with his hands, the excited atoms its motion’s path created released energy. The impact rippled through the surrounding air and the little prince fell on his knees.

To be continued on EPITAPH 0.003