Eyes of the Order

Original Note:

My short story focuses on the importance of necessity (similar to Ender’s Game in that regard). It takes the unknown of the final frontier and examines it in a secular humanistic manner—what kind of person does it take to explore a universe full of danger and loneliness and the like. We may often see that space is simply a collection of enemies and allies (Star Trek, Star Wars, Ender’s Game, Dune, etc.). But what happens when the Universe itself is the enemy and how can the human race tackle it through scientific endeavors?

This is my first creative story since the required writing samples in middle school. I thoroughly enjoyed writing it and I look forward to continuing the canon. The Sci-Fi CHIP was undoubtedly a bright highlight in my freshman year. Thank you!

Nathan Greene watched the proceedings of the lab from the outskirts of the room—the blue sheer from wave-form monitors, the mechanical whispers of the neural uplinks, and the young woman in the center of it all. She stood as a silent contrast to the wave of activity around her. A suppressed excitement worked on her face, as she prepared herself for the upcoming experience. All new explorers for the Order undertook the same quest. They had all gone through the same lab. They had all felt the astronomical amount of energy course through their brain, stimulating thousands of lifetimes to occur within their mind. And they had all awoken with new eyes, old with the experience of eons. Nathan made sure to notice her eyes, to note every detail of them—their color, movement, brightness. He knew that when she awoke they would no longer exist. She would have the eyes of the Order; defined by strength, sadness, and wonder.

In the early days, after the Order broke the technological barrier, and gained the ability to fly to the stars, darkness overcame its explorers. Unknown forms of life with unknowable laws represented the fears of the Order. Wars, pain, and death served to catalyze these fears. The dark days of exploration required dramatic changes within its fundamental workings. The Journey proved necessary for this change. By living out the Journey, by living out thousands of lives within the mind, and within an instant by external time, the explorers gained unprecedented degrees of intelligence, compassion, and, most importantly, understanding. This led to a decline in hostilities and a profusion of inter-life wisdom and peace. Yet we still did not know how to fight against the emptiness of space, to safeguard against the breaking of explorers over the wheel of loneliness, depression, and anguish. To live among the oceans of nebulae and fires of star groups gave poetic purpose to the Order explorer. But to live without the love of family or the warmth of the Earth took its toll on the human mind. So we introduced pain into a percentage of the Journey’s lives. The explorer would witness entire planets destroyed and set ablaze, civilizations and loved ones fall under sword and gun. They too would taste death under the shadow of tragedy. No longer did we want wise, gentle old souls for our explorers. We wanted people who had learned to face the worst of life, who had been broken and learned to overcome and persist. When one experiences the worst of the Universe, they inevitably find ways to fight against it. They grow stronger than the pain and the cold bleakness.

The woman lay down in the console, ready to uplink her consciousness into the neural augmenter. A hologram of her brain flashed above her, rotating slowly. The augmenter would soon feed the incredible amounts of microscopically-tuned energy directly into her nervous system, jumpstarting the Journey. Neural suppressors would hone the energy and keep it from burning her mind in the instant she would be under. Nathan Greene had never witnessed a neural uplink. The Order granted him this privilege as he would undertake the Journey in a weeks’ time. He felt ready, but still he had wished to see a Journey take place. The woman in the center of the lab looked strong and anxious for it to start. Suddenly the wave-form monitors grew brighter and the whispers of the neural uplinks went silent, signaling the beginning of the countdown. The one minute mark gave a quick “beep”. Then the 30 second mark with the same tone—the uplinks were building up the energy around her. Then the 15 second—Nathan’s hair stood on end, both from the energy radiance and from a juvenile worry that something would go wrong. 10 seconds, the woman closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Three seconds, one second, a high tone pierced the room. The room went black except for the brain hologram, the uplinks fired, and the hologram shone like the core of a sun, a lightning bolt through the entire lab. Nathan looked away, perspiration dancing across his face. Without warning, the lights came back on, he looked back to the center with his heart pounding. The woman lay still, eyes close, not breathing. Nathan lurched forward, glancing at the med screens, seeing that everything remain nominal. He looked back and jumped in fright. The woman looked at him with the fresh eyes of a millennia—a millennia full of wonder and pain and heartbreak and discovery and happiness and life. She cried out of sadness for the families she left behind and in happiness for the love she shared and for the bright times that balanced out the dark times. Nathan regained his balance. “They always cried at first,” he thought, “but they would always be stronger than the unknown.”