Memory Of The Future // The Mission

The notes rang high in the school auditorium ceiling as Elizabeth’s hand glided gently over the ivory keys. She played softly, a variation on Vivaldi. She let herself feel the music and found herself swaying back and forth on the bench. Before she knew it, she had carried herself away and her young tutor-student was reluctantly tapping on her shoulder. Tre had waited through a whole minute of her demonstrating the piece to him. Elizabeth let up and cleared her throat.

“Sorry.” She said, scooting over away from him so he could use the keys.

The 13-year-old gingerly tried to position himself the way Elizabeth had. He was jealous of her clear gift with the piano. But as he tried to play the piece the same way, it didn’t come. The music was on the sheet in front of him, and he knew how to read it, it just got jumbled when it went into his brain.

Elizabeth showed him the part he was having trouble with, pointing it out on the page and laying her fingers on the keys again.

“Here.”

She played it slowly so Tre could watch. Tre straightened and tried it again, failing once more.

“Again.” Elizabeth urged. “Really try to feel it. Lean in.”

Before she even realized it, Elizabeth was doing it. She put her hand on his back gently and closed her eyes, pushing the energy. A familiar buzz came to life in her spine and she could feel Tre’s nervous energy push back against it. She urged with her mind: Relax. Tre’s shoulders came down a little and his fingers began to play.

Elizabeth hummed the music piece to herself again, this time, pushing it through her hand into Tre’s back.

He played, slowly at first, but building up with confidence and accuracy. The sound echoed around the hall and over the empty chairs. Elizabeth’s focus came through her hand, instructing Tre’s subconscious and implanting the notes. The auditorium spoke back when he had triumphantly finished, a wide silence that beckoned for a glorious round of applause. But none had come.

Elizabeth opened her eyes and took her hand off her student. She really had just done that. Why did she let herself do that?

“I did it,” Tre said. “Thanks, Miss Charlotte.”

Elizabeth nodded. She couldn’t really speak. She knew what happened after she used it and cautiously tried not to move. She had a feeling that if she moved she would bring it on faster. It always hurt when it did come.

Tre gathered up his bag from beside the bench. “I think I can practice it at home, my next class is in five so I better go.”

“Alright. Remember we are on for next week too.” Elizabeth said, keeping her voice level.

Tre bounded down the stage steps and up through the rows of seats. “Bye!”

Elizabeth sat forward and breathed in slowly. She was relieved Tre was gone, but even more relieved that he hadn’t noticed what she did.

The pain wasn’t coming yet. She sat in frozen silence and waited. Finally, she felt the rush. Her head spun and she caught herself on the keys in front of her. The grand piano echoed a cacophony of dull notes as Elizabeth’s breathing came sharp and hard.

The familiar burning raced up her spine and into her head. A pounding came in her ears.

In that moment, Elizabeth knew what was next. The visions always came after the drums.

A deserted street littered with ash appeared before her eyes. A cry from a child, a call for help. Cars burned and smoke filled every corner, leaving no haven. She felt anguish and she could see she was on her knees, her hands sliced open and dripping onto the hot, dry pavement.

Elizabeth! Someone called. Run!

Gripping the ivory, Elizabeth felt the pounding in her ears again and the vision stopped.

She was left with an image of a forest burned to the ground and the unrelenting air of malice. An intentional chaos.

She caught her breath shakily as the pain receded. She stared at the music sheet in front of her, reminding herself she was at school. She closed her eyes and played a note to try and calm herself. Whatever she’d seen wasn’t going away anytime soon.

She’d seen similar things before, images of destruction and pain. This one felt like it meant something. Whatever it was, it stared her in the face.

Autumn had been defeated by several opponents in her time but none were nearly as embarrassing as a glorified spinning broom handle.

Autumn swung again and the machine dodged, slamming its artificial knuckles into her side. She cringed from the pain and stepped back to get some space. The machine whirred and spun to face her.

Its red light blinked steadily as its sensor watched Autumn’s body language. She was frustrated and ready to pummel this thing until it was scrap. Her father wouldn’t be pleased with its destruction, he had spent a long time building it for her and Peter’s training sessions.

Autumn didn’t care much at the moment. The infernal politics she’d been subject to in the last 48 hours were continually grating on her nerves and she wished several people to be deceased. She rushed the machine and faked a swing before spinning, landing a kick right in the robot’s torso. The kick threw it into the wall and Autumn heard the metal dent. The expression on the machine was a painted grimace, much like a robot from a dumb cartoon she had watched. The expression probably would have shown what it was feeling, that was if the robot was engineered to feel.

It wasn’t a complicated robot, made to simulate not much more than a drunk fighter, a spinning metal frame with wheels. Autumn had personally grown tired of the low-level fight it put up and in her father’s absence had programmed it to act more erratically. She had really just pulled a few wires and it started to act this way but it all worked out. In her mind, this made a good sparring partner to simulate a human person; wild and hard-hitting. Whether or not it made good practice was still being debated between her and Peter.

Autumn took this short time while the robot was dazed to tighten the wraps on her hands. She’d been at this for about an hour now and was about ready to quit. But she knew she shouldn’t. The more training she did, the more she was prepared. The more she overcame her want to stop, the more constitution she would build up.

Autumn took a deep breath and readied herself as the robot righted and wheeled quickly toward her, swinging its fake arms like a helicopter.

Autumn ducked the first set of swings and blocked one with her forearm before attempting an uppercut on the machine. It swung its left arm around and nailed Autumn in the shoulder.

“Left hook!” Someone shouted to her from behind.

This distracted Autumn just enough that before she would comply with the suggestion, the machine nailed her in the chest two more times. Autumn fell back and hit the floor with a thud. She laid there and tried to catch her breath.

The machine didn’t pursue her.

She looked over and saw her brother, Peter standing near the room entrance. He held a plate of food in one hand and was watching her with a grim expression.

“Are you alright?” He inquired.

Autumn wanted to huff and yell at him but she couldn’t find the breath. The anger and confusion were there, but she wasn’t able to let it out.

Peter went over to a panel on the wall and swiped up on the screen with 2 fingers. He tapped a few more things on the screen and the robot stopped standing over Autumn, it rolled away into the other room. Peter came over and offered his hand to Autumn.

Autumn didn’t want to take it, but she did. The robot had nailed her pretty hard. Breathing hurt. Maybe she had a cracked sternum.

Her original idea with hard knuckles on the training machine instead of boxing gloves was that the extra risk of pain would cause her to act in defense faster, allowing her to practice dodging more effectively. She regretted all of that now.

“Why did you set the machine to a high setting?” Peter asked, almost in a whiny tone. He knew why, but he just wished she hadn’t.

Autumn brushed herself off and stood next to him, grumbling unintelligibly about how she wasn’t training to fight children.

Peter ignored the comment and handed her the plate of food he had been holding.

“Here,” Peter interjected. “If you have been training as long as I have been awake, you must be hungry.”

Autumn took the plate of what looked like yellow rice and nothing else. She remembered a common dish called “chicken and yellow rice” She didn’t care for that, she preferred not to eat animals. However, she gazed mournfully at the food because she had been hungry until that last throwdown with the machine. Now she was just nauseous.

Autumn was very appreciative of Peter’s gesture of kindness. She took a moment to actually look him in the eyes.

“Thank you, brother.” She said.

Peter’s eyes weren’t the same color as hers, they were an emerald green and hers bordered on a golden brown. She had previously assumed that because they were twins they would have had the same eye color, but through time and study into DNA with her father, she learned that their situation was completely normal among human twins as well. Peter and Autumn shared very similar features beyond the eyes however, their skin was more tan than most people they knew and they inherited dark brown hair from their mother.

Though they weren’t conjoined at birth, Autumn and Peter had stayed inseparable through their formative years, almost never leaving one another or confiding in someone else. Well, almost anyone else. She thought of their dear friend Blaze, a halfling. If this situation in the council got any worse, she feared Blaze's citizenship would be endangered. After all, he had done for her, she wouldn't let that happen.

"Are you doing okay?" Peter asked, completely interrupting her thought process.

She must have been staring off into space pretty hard for Peter to ask that.

"Yes." She lied, taking a glass of water from Peter's other hand, "Has dad returned my message yet?"

Peter made his way around Autumn and back to the screen on the wall, “If he has, I haven’t seen it. He seemed distracted on my call with him last night. I’m sure he’s just busy.”

“You called him?” Autumn was surprised by this, Peter wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t an important issue, and why would dad talk to Peter instead of her?

“He called me,” Peter said, but then caught Autumn’s gaze, almost reading her jealous mind. “Us. He called us, but you were in bed, I didn’t want to wake you.”

“You should have.” The indignant tone in Autumn’s voice surprised even her, and she recoiled.

“I’m sorry.” She told Peter.

Peter watched her for a long, quiet moment before responding, “You’re fine. You deserve a conversation with him just as well as I. I should have woken you, I didn’t realize how much you wanted to speak with him.”

Autumn sighed at the ridiculousness of their altercation. "I'm just worried about what’s happening up there, Pete. I think it’s part of my job to worry. I can’t imagine Queen Victoria didn’t worry about what state the British parliament was operating in before her reign."

Her brother nodded.

“What did he say?” Autumn set her plate on the nearest flat surface, it didn’t appetize her, not with the pain in her chest still hanging around.

Peter sighed, “Well, he was mostly checking up on us, things are getting rougher with Teyan, he’s not letting up. Father said he has it handled though-”

“I should go up there.” Autumn interrupted, “I’ll go first thing in the morning.”

With a determined stride, Autumn pushed past her brother into the hallway.

"No, Autumn." Peter called after her, "Father insisted that you stay here."

Autumn stopped reluctantly.

"He also asked me to stop you if you tried to leave but I won’t be so quick. I do think you need to consider the consequences of going. It could overthrow some of Father’s best efforts.”

She couldn’t rightly argue with that. Peter was right. Autumn wished he wasn’t.

By going and excusing her father’s work in the senate there, she could undo all of it. She would be going for her selfish needs at that point.

Peter came over to her. “Aeolus will always be there.”

Autumn looked in his eyes and nodded, she tried not to show it but she was ashamed of arguing her point now.

“Well,” Peter said, rounding her and walking toward the door. “Father did give us something to do. It seemed of the utmost importance.”

“What is it?” Autumn followed.

“He asked us to steal the sapphire back,” Peter called nonchalantly.