A Letter to the Stars

Winter, 3871: Upper Hives, New Tokyo

Tuesday 9th May, 3871

"… the world’s demise is washed clean by the starless night sky."

The Omega Point saved the world.

When the natural world began shifting, summer was ridden with snow and the sun peaked through once every now and then. Resources become scarce when the plants and animals die out. Even the humans struggled to survive. Only fortunate ones were able to pull through and that was more than a century ago.

“A beloved’s beauty that is preferable to a summer’s day. How is that, Doc?”

The girl had a giant red bow in her strawberry blonde hair. A whirring noise echoed as she spoke. Her emerald eyes stared through the skylight windows.

For five minutes each morning, her eyes stayed at the window hoping for the sun or brightly colored bird with a gray crown, white cheeks and a black bib flies over her head. Instead, she sees an automated vehicle flying overhead and transporting a group of children to daycare as their parents and everyone else work in the WareHouses.

Next to her, Dr. Stephen is preoccupied with a lab report for his regular holographic meeting with Dr. Ino. Both gentlemen work for the Omega Point as senior principal research scientists in different district zones.

It didn’t take long for the meeting to end without straying from their main agenda. Their decades-long work on gene-altering technology is almost to completion. Afterall, they did share a strong sense of social responsibility. Soon, the Omega Point can have full control over humanity.

“Are you two in love?” She shifted her gaze from the window to the man in the white coat. “It’s an intense feeling of affection: fondness, tenderness, attachment.”

Ignoring the little girl’s question once again, Dr. Stephen continued typing on his computer. The laboratory was one of the oldest structures built by the Omega Point. They believed that the key to saving the future was a point of unification. Final point. Unity.

A hologram of their latest technology glowed in the dim room.

“A, have test subject 237 get ready.”

The little girl nodded and proceeded to her own working station, pushing the necessary buttons to reveal a human in cryosleep. “Stop going over the centuries old archives. We destroyed them for a reason. You may not understand but in this age, love is unlike the poems of old. It’s war and power.”

“What about power when there is no war?”

He stood up and walked towards the platform in the middle of the laboratory. Test subject 237 looked so peaceful. One of the many humans saved by the Omega Point.

Silence.

“Caesar 9.” The senior research scientist muttered and it was enough for the little girl.

Three years ago, a group of unknown assailants started bombing some of the Hives across the 5 continents. The state of the art securities in the WareHouses were bypassed and a huge chunk of resources were stolen. Each heist happened on the 9th of every month and they painted behind a crown in the WareHouses.

Caesar’s crown. Julius Caesar named himself a dictator and led the Roman armies in the Gallic Wars. In William Shakespeare’s play, Caesar’s crown represents power and corruption.

Dr. Stephen put on a pair of noise-canceling headphones and turned to look at A. The little girl dipped her head and smiled.

“A, it’s time.” Her smile beamed.

As expected, the room lit up and the little girl entered the code to start the test. In a few minutes, test subject 237 should soon wakeup screaming.

The lights went out and the all too familiar symbol appeared on the screen.

Caesar’s crown. Caesar’s 9.

“A, what happened? Can you bypass the system?” It was a computer virus and it shouldn’t have existed but it did. All systems in the laboratory were blinking and one by one, the beginnings of the Omega Point slowly crumbled.

“No.” The little girl shook her head.

Her name was A. A scarlet letter.

Her name was A and I met her when we were both nineteen. In our literature class. That was more than a century ago when the Omega Point took us for their experimentation. The first night her eyes opened she became the first human AI hybrid.

The Earth is dying still. The weather became unpredictable. Literature and the arts were burned down and the world lost its color.

A century ago, the Omega Point destroyed us.

We are the Rebirth. The Renaissance. Caesar Nine.

“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

—

written by Jean Kathyrine Arañez

illustrated by Eun Hae Kim

layout by Jasmine Alyanna Mangila