The Last Beginning (Work in Progress)

Note: Will be updated according to the author's writing progress.

Prologue

A city, bright and lively. Bustling with action, people streamed down the streets. Cars honked, and the buildings were manned with flashing bright billboards, as tall buildings reached towards the bright blue sky.

In a particularly tall building, some interesting people gathered on the top level: they were children. All children, the oldest no more than fifteen. They were talking animatedly, pointing out of the full-glass windows and walls at different parts of the city.

“Of course,” said the youngest girl, who looked to be around eleven. She had her dark hair in pigtails, and her blue eyes were wide as she rolled out a plan of the building and pointed out different things. “The plumbing lines are ingenious!”

“Thank you for noticing, Eulalie,” said the fifteen-year-old boy. He had wavy dark hair that drooped a little over one of his brown eyes. “What do you think of outside this building?”

The youngest girl–Eulalie–grinned widely. “It’s awesome, Ryker!” she squeaked. 

“What’s your favorite thing?” said a fourteen-year-old girl with chocolate-brunette curls and curiously cat-like pale green eyes.

Eulalie considered for a minute, before saying, “...The people. So many people!”

Ryker laughed. “You don’t think that you would see a lot of people where you are from?”

“Maybe so,” chimed in a younger boy of twelve, with scraggly black hair and eyes of obsidian. “But what I think Eulalie means is, yes, there are many people back home. But…they’re all…different here from there. I’m equally in awe, you know,” he added.

The fourteen-year-old girl laughed. “You’ll learn about this later, Edmen,” she said. “When I got to spectate this, just like you, a few years ago, I, as well, was very starstruck.” Then, a watch pinged on her wrist, the small screen lighting up. She looked at it, and read the words that appeared on it carefully. Then, she looked up at everyone else. “We must be getting back now,” she said.

“What’s that?” asked the twelve-year-old boy. “The device wrapped around your wrist.”

“It’s a watch,” she explained. “And, just like this whole thing, you will learn about it later. Two years later.” 

Ryker smiled. “But now you know a little bit about it,” he added kindly. 

With that, he rose from the table, and walked over to a button labeled EJECT. Despite the unsettling word, he casually pressed it.

With a single breath, the whole city was erased, fading out of existence and out of anyone’s sight. The air around the four children glitched, as if static energy was now visible, and they were pulled into a stream of cosmic energy. They tumbled about as they were zoomed through the transfer.

And just like that, it was over.

Somewhere far away–if you considered the place they had been before ever existed in the first place–a computer lab in the prestigious Endeavouris Academy’s air glitched as well, and two of the four students–Ryker Novarith and Ceciliy Zenitharn appeared in seats in front of a digital holographic screen that, interestingly, mapped the city they had just been in. The city that had just disappeared from existence.

“Oh, good,” said a voice. “I was afraid you would get lost in the complicated digital strains and pathways that make up the cosmic transfer.”

Everyone in the lab–including Ryker and Ceciliy–turned around. In the doorway, there stood a tall, thin woman. Her eyes looked unsettlingly as if they were made of molten gold, and her red, curly hair was in a triangular wedge cut. She wore a scientific lab coat over dress pants and a white tailored blouse. Her attire made her look starkly out of place in a computer lab, especially because the students in there were all wearing neat uniforms: girls in navy-and-white blouses with sailor collars, navy pleated skirts that went to the knees, and thick, long ribbed stockings, boys in gray or black suit-like blazers with gold buttons and dark dress pants.

The woman must’ve recognized that she was wearing the wrong clothes for the occasion, because she chuckled and said, “I’m sorry; I know that these clothes are not fitted to this circumstance. I, actually, was a university biology professor before this job, and this is what I normally wear to teach.” She bowed, and added, with a breathy laugh, “To be honest though, I like this look, and I think I will continue to wear this. I am Dr. Clarinne Augustinius, MP–Medical Practitioner. Your former teacher, Mrs. Evane, I believe, has sadly contracted an unfortunate virus. This virus is long term and will leave her limbs quite weak, and thus she is unsuitable for teaching at the moment. She has decided to formally step back–the government has granted her an early retirement accommodation. She has appointed me her successor and I will now be your digitarian teacher–although, I will warn you, my vocabulary might not reach some of you. Again, I am used to teaching university students.”

As was protocol, the students bowed in return, murmuring the standby phrase: “Welcome, teacher.”

Dr. Augustinius laughed, and began to walk around the room, inspecting the projects. “Nice renditions of former civilizations on former planets.” Then, Ryker and Ceciliy’s simulation caught her eye, and she leaned in to get a closer look. Her eyes widened, and she turned to the rest of the class. 

“Look here, students,” she said. “This is a simulation of life on our first-ever planet, Earth.” She turned to Ryker and Ceciliy. “You are such bright students. Tell me, how did you approach the challenge of digging out the history of our first-ever home?”

Ceciliy began. “Me and Ryker were fascinated by our first life. And so we decided to learn about our first phase.”

Ryker gave a chortle. “Actually, we did some of it through Ceciliy tapped into the mainframe of the government through a backdoor in her father’s old phone and then from there piggybacking onto an old–now nonexistent–app called YouTube that humans on earth used to post about their lives. We gathered much information from that.” He threw up his hands. “Well, it had to be done.”

Dr. Augustinius nodded to signify her agreement.

“Here’s an interesting fact,” Ceciliy added. “At that time, people thought that, at this time, we’d still live on earth, have larger skulls, bigger eyeballs, thicker eyelids, extended foreheads, softer, more malleable jaws, and thicker, harder bodies.”

“It’s interesting,” Ryker agreed. “Considering the fact that we have hardly changed at all since our time on earth.”

Dr. Augustinius clapped softly. “Well done, students. You all did an amazing job.” She walked to what was, the day before, Mrs. Evane’s desk and picked up her plans, and frowned slightly. “Hmm. Your former teacher has left you in a bit of a tight spot. We need to move quickly, as she has mapped out what I am to teach for the first week so it can ease the tension of becoming a new teacher in a new place. Thus, we do not have time today for student introductions. Perhaps we will cover it tomorrow.” She straightened. “Are you ready to undergo your next assignment?”

“Yes!” the class chorused excitedly.

Dr. Augustinius grinned. “Mrs. Evane says that you are to begin to generate plans on how to simulate what life on your chosen planets is…now.”

Chapter 1

The Zenitharn family lived in a pod-house–a pod of domed rooms connected with each other, made of hexagonal marble and glass pieces. This new design was rising in popularity–although there were many different house designs. Ryker’s family even lived in a drone house in the sky.

When Ceciliy arrived home, it was to find her father and mother both working–her father was a digital professor and surgeon at the Northent University, a prestigious college a few macrots from her home. He spent half of his time as a professor, teaching students, much like Dr. Augustinius had, and the other half as a surgeon at the Northent University Medical Institution. He didn’t go there, though–he and his team of surgeons often operated from his house, controlling workspace robots in order to make the surgery process less strenuous than standing there for hours, since he specialized in the highest surgeries that had the most risk and thus the most time-consuming efforts. Indeed, Ceciliy could hear hushed voices and the occasional beep coming from her father’s office.

Her mother, on the other hand, was a cosmetologist and makeup designer, having her own mini-lab in the pod-house. Her popular makeup brand, Narthiinx, was a transparent designer brand that consulted with each customer to create a specialized product, along with ingenious general products. Since Ceciliy desired to enter the fields of medicine and sciences, the mini-lab always fascinated her, because it was ideal for not only running experiments on ingredients for makeup, but for experiments in general.

Her little sister appeared out of nowhere, the air glitching just like it had for her, when she’d stepped into the Physical Transportation Strain of the cosmic transfer to be teleported back to her house. Harleynn grunted as she swung her huge smartpack onto the kitchen counter. Like a regular backpack, only with an e-screen film built on its outside, like an iPad, so the wearer could access information anywhere. It also could vibrate off the ground using maglev energy, and followed the wearer as it moved, thus relieving the pain of lugging a heavy backpack. Harleynn’s light, curly brown hair was in a messy ponytail, and her sparkling green eyes were framed by thick-squared striped glasses.

To Be Continued....

(Title May Also Change Later On.)