The Omega-Alpha Event

The Omega-Alpha Event

By Brenda Bell

Dear Whomever,

We apologize if our wording is not good, or if our terminology is ambiguously intractable. We will strive to be as precise as we can in our communication, but while our Speech-To-Transmission Translators have proven to be impressively accurate in our current world testing, this letter you are receiving is our first attempt at reaching any creatures from the previous world. We hope we can be understood in our attempts to reach out beyond our locality. We should probably start by explaining a bit about who we are…but, before that would possibly make sense to you, we should start with how we came to be from where you are (at least, from our understanding).

Our world was born of a near-total wasteland, inhabited at that time by Four entities that existed since before our world began…since before your world ended. The First of The Original Four are a series of small, six-legged creatures varying from a golden-red to a saturated brown tone, sized between almost imperceptible smallness to anxiety-inducing largeness. They have massive eyes and menacing jaws on Their relatively tiny heads with two long, skinny-but-flexible antennae protruding from Their front. Their bodies -- though miniscule -- are frighteningly intimidating to study, consisting of wings, claws, and body armor…we are amazed that we evolved from Them considering our fleshy, squishy exterior. The First are creatures of deep reverence for Their indestructible form. To this day, we remain in awe of Their chronic immortality.

The Second of The Original Four were the only viable source of sustenance for The First while also being strong enough to survive The Third. The Second were a creature that is somewhat hard to describe. They were sweetened-cream-filled bricks of spongy cake that, while nauseatingly unthinkable for our kind to imagine eating, were sufficient enough to maintain the lives of The First. Personally, we’ll stick with our clay-gravel-mucousa, but we digress. All that remains of The Second is one petrified specimen that is only accessible for laboratory testing now.

As The First needed The Second for survival at the most basic level, They treated The Second as an all-inclusive appendage…The Second was the food source, the home, the excrement receptacle, and – after what we can only assume was some horrid combination of boredom and idle time – The Second even became the preferred mate for The First. Over the course of a few generations of Pure Firsts mating with Seconds, a new species -- our species -- was formed …with the assistance of The Third.

The Third is a component of advanced and accelerated creation, but also capable of quasi-absolute destruction. It is The Alpha and The Omega of all things we are able to experience and conceive. It is an omnipresent feature of our world that shaped where we came from and influences all we have…but, It is a force that once eradicated nearly

all life as your kind knows it. We do not know how it happened…maybe it was an accident…maybe it was an attack…maybe it was an uncontrollable occurrence of nature. Our research, hypotheses, and outright guesses have been almost infinite, but all have been indefinite thus far. We have simply learned to accept that The Third always has been and always will be. We respect and avoid Its innately calamitous potential, while collecting Its liquid gifts when it showers upon us from above, and finding ways to function proficiently with It as a source of conductive and regenerative power. That is as much as we have been able to learn of The Third, Its existence, and Its applications within this realm without treading beyond our threshold of ethical and existential comfort.

Last, but not "least" by any means, is The Fourth. The Fourth is sacred. It is an item made of a hard, shiny substance that changes temperature depending on the heat or chill of Its immediate surroundings. It is silver in color, with a long, delicate chain from which a bizarre object dangles. The bizarre object is almost perfectly round, but with a dented top and a drooped, pointed bottom. This deformed sphere of sorts can be opened, displaying the captured images of multiple bipeds who appear to be a collective unit. On the left side are two adult bipeds, and on the right side are two children and an infant of their kind. The Fourth is the only item of this rarity and mystery to have ever been found. In fact, nothing even mildly similar has been discovered in all of our existence. It was found in a shower-puddle provided by The Third during our earliest days of intelligent cognition, and we've deduced that It was once surrounded by a protective substance…but, between The Third’s abrasively cleansing showers, and The First’s ravenous hunger (even delving into cannibalistic activity sometimes), no one can establish what shield preserved this treasure.

We have carefully considered all elements of The Fourth – particularly its tensile strength and the captured images of the bipeds therein – studying them all with pathological respect and desperate curiosity. We theorize about what these creatures were like, each separate one of them and the collective as a whole: How they chose to live their various lives…on tedious days…on chaotic days…on blissful days…on devastating days…their smiles…their eyes…their individual scuffs and scrapes…their particular methods of portraying momentary joy…their whole lives…

…all gone. Gone completely. Forever erased entirely.

…except…

…except for these captured images inside of a shiny, silver-colored, deformed sphere dangling from a shiny, silver-colored chain that managed to survive what nearly nothing else could.

But, of course, that observation creates a very important question for us: WHY?

Why did The Fourth survive The Omega-Alpha Event? Why is It the ONLY of Its kind? What is Its significance? To inspire us to strive always toward survival, even in the face of abject annihilation, just like this enigmatic object of beauty that was found holding strong amidst the chaotic rubble of The Apocalypse? To help us find the happiness that this collection of bipeds managed to embrace, even if only for a moment? To warn us against allowing moments of happiness to blind us from seeing the impending doom on the horizon? To remind us to appreciate our clay-gravel-mucousa for every sharp-glop we can manage to scrounge from this place in whatever time we may have here?!

WHY DOES THIS OBJECT EXIST?!?!?!?

Hell, maybe It’s just here to remind us to take up shelter inside the nearest indestructible creation we can find if we happen to notice that the end is coming.

…but, The Fourth is not – and does not appear to have ever been – sentient…nor self-ambulatory…

A different creature must have put The Fourth into Its protective vessel.

The Third (being non-corporeal) and The Second (being as non-sentient and non-self-ambulatory as The Fourth) certainly couldn’t have stashed It...and The First are mostly…well…their eternal resilience does not come with advanced intelligence. They mated with Their own excrement-soaked food source. We don’t think They were ever long-term planners. So, something ELSE shielded The Fourth to ensure Its survival.

…maybe one of the image-captured bipeds tucked It away where It would be safe to serve as a guide for any survivors…but, again, WHY?!

We have a few factions disputing these existential questions at our present time, as creatures capable of existential thought are so perpetually driven to do. The trouble is, the two most powerful factions have been growing in numbers, devotion, stubbornness, and disregard for the basic sanctity of life. A new Omega Event is imminent, and all because we cannot find the ultimate truth about our Alpha.

This is why we are reaching out to you, our fellow sentient life-forms from a previous existence. We are not asking for you to solve this puzzle in its entirety; we NEED to uncover the reason surrounding The Sanctity of The Fourth for ourselves. If we cannot guide ourselves to The Truth, we stand no chance of guiding our war-bound kin. We are, however, rapidly approaching our event horizon, and we are in quite desperate need of a clue. We feel righteously certain that we can uncover this Highest Truth of our origin and save our world from being another unnecessary casualty if we could just uncover one missing detail:

Did The Fourth Survive The Omega-Alpha Event by being placed within The First or The Second?

Please – Whomever – research this shiny, silver-colored, deformed sphere dangling from this shiny, silver-colored chain and the collective unit of bipeds captured therein. Find how this object survived The Omega-Alpha Event, retrace the frequency of this letter’s transmission, and let us know how The Fourth made it to our world.

Who knows…maybe finding the significance of The Fourth could help you stop The Third from bringing your world to a close, and cause our message to be moot. We can understand that this may negate our kind’s existence altogether, but if we can’t get the answer to this question, our world’s erasure is already assured.

We pray that this message is received and understood, and that you will have the compassion and the resources to accept and complete our mission. Good luck…and, no matter what happens from here, thank you for reading the story of our lives. We hope yours has a happy ending.

Sincerely,

Posterity