Ravens of Eternity

The noise from each of their conversations combined with the too-loud music filled the entire room. Patrons leaned towards each other and talked enthusiastically about their lives, their careers, that awesome new ‘Cast, the state of the Federation, everything. All while they drank the night away.

In one relatively quiet corner, Eva, Miko, Pelli, and Pio carried a lively conversation and sipped on their drinks.

Out of nowhere, Eva lifted her glass as though in celebration of something. The others quickly lifted their own drinks, and tapped each other’s glasses with resounding CLINKS.

“Cheers!” she said.

“What’re we even toasting to?” asked Pelli. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“Well, if there’s gotta be a reason... Being free, I guess.”

“To being free.”

.....

As Pelli and Eva took healthy swigs of their drinks, Pio watched as Miko took a few gulps of hers. Then she made a sour face as it went down.

“Uck,” she said. “How awful.”

“S-should you even be drinking?” asked Pio.

“Why aren’t you? It is not as though either of us will suddenly change significantly due to intoxicants.”

“I don’t even understand what that means. All I know is that the legal drinking age-”

“Does not apply to any of us,” Miko cut him off.

She glanced down at his safe fizzy cola drink, then at her own colorful, reddish cocktail. And then took another sour-faced sip of it.

“Why are you still drinking it if you don’t even like it?” Pio asked.

He was incredulous at Miko’s actions. He couldn’t understand why she kept on drinking. Or why she drank at all!

“I wanted to give it another chance,” she answered. “But it still isn’t very good.”

“Uh, coz alcohol sucks,” Pio said.

“You are wrong. I have had incredible drinks – but they were in the Empire. It all depends on your own tastes. But you won’t know what your tastes are unless you actually try.”

Miko tapped on the table and activated the menu that materialized on its screen. She pored over its contents once again, in search of something tasty. She needed something far less bitter, and tried to look for some of the fruitier, sweeter drinks.

As she scanned the various beverages, a high, happy voice came from behind them.

“Eva! Miko! You’re back!”

The two of them turned around and saw Amal standing there. She wore an infectious smile that Eva and Miko quickly picked up themselves.

“Amal!” they exclaimed.

Pelli and Pio were a little starstruck when they saw Amal. They had definitely seen her in the ‘Cast – she was one of the Seven who helped take down Nightmare and his up-and-coming gang.

“Th-that’s Azrael,” whispered Pio to Pelli. “S-so cute!”

Eva and Miko got up from their seats and hugged her tightly. After their quick emotional reunion, a round of introductions circled the table, and the two girls made room for the third to sit between them.

“What’re you even doing here?” asked Eva.

“Oh, I was just celebrating with a few academy colleagues,” Amal replied. “We were just heading out when I saw you two from the corner of my eyes and had to come on over.”

“Well, it’s really great to see you again! It’s been forever!”

“Ugh, tell me about it. Seems like an entire lifetime ago.”

“Also – the Academy, huh? Aren’t you kind of a long way from Mars? Or Jupiter?”

Amal giggled lightly and swayed slightly in her seat. She was apparently still intoxicated herself.

“Oh, no no,” she said. “I went to the medical academy here in Manhattan. The Federal Naval Academy – Greater Gaea Medical Institute. It’s a seriously long name. Like, way too long.”

Miko’s eyes went extra wide when she heard that Amal was going through medical training. She was instantly impressed, and it showed on her face.

“You went to medical school?” she exclaimed. “So smart! Does this mean you’re a doctor now? Should we call you Doctor Nasim?”

“Or would you prefer Doctor Azrael?” added Eva.

Amal laughed nervously, and shook her hands to deny both of them.

“Nonono,” she said, “I’m just a Medical Technician. So so far away from being a real physician. I can confidently do Third, Fourth, and Emergency Tier Response, but I’m a loooong way from Second. That’s gonna take years of experience.”

“I thought you were gonna help Jionna with her farm for a while,” said Eva.

Amal’s joyful face fell for just a moment, but it rose back to her happy self as she spoke.

“I was. And I did!” she said. “But a lot of them... They seemed like they needed help, needed healing. They were able to do the work, but it was like they were empty while they were doing it, you know?”

Amal looked wistfully out the huge window next to them, out towards the vast, starry sky. Then she turned her gaze towards the ground, out into the city beyond.

“I found myself patching up a few of them after a while,” she continued. “They were usually doing stuff around the farm, and ended up getting hurt for one reason or another. Like they dropped a crate on their foot, or fell off a ladder, or crashed a tractor. Something like that.

“And I realized they were doing their jobs while they thought about... well, you know. And they kinda let things slip and hurt themselves in the process. Anyway, I helped the farm doc nurse a few people as best I could. I really felt for them, you know?

“Jionna kinda saw that, and she convinced me to come here... Said I could do some good if I learned how to do this. But also, she probably just didn’t want me to see everyone like that and sent me away. Like she didn’t want me to suffer for them, you know?”

“I’m sorry, Amal,” said Eva. “And if it means anything, I think she was right. How’re you coping?”

“It’s... I’m... still working through stuff.”

Silence filled the space between, but only for a brief moment. Amal pushed through quickly, and readopted her previous smile.

“Anyway, wanna see where the school is?” she asked.

She rose up a little off her seat, then pointed out the window. Her finger swept across a cluster of buildings by the water, towards the south.

“That’s the campus,” she said. “Spans from 6th Avenue all the way to the water, and takes up every block between East 23rd and East 34th. Tallest building we’ve got is about 1200 meters high, but most of the rest are less than half that.”

Pelli whistled in awe as Amal sat back down.

“Damn,” he said. “That’s a huge campus. How do you even keep yourself organized in a place that big? I can’t even imagine how you even get from class to class.”

“Oh, it’s madness,” she answered. “I’d say, there’s normally hundreds of thousands of people on campus at any given time. It is so seriously hectic. Imagine all of us running around trying our best to learn, when information is coming at us from every direction, at all times.”

As she spoke, Amal ordered a drink through their table’s menu. Just thinking about the stresses of school drove her to automatically go for a drink. It was almost a knee-jerk reaction.

“It’s why we were celebrating,” she continued. “We were glad we actually got through that chaos. That we actually managed to learn shit, you know?”

“Kinda sounds like you had a blast,” said Eva.

Amal turned dark and sullen, then leaned in.

“You don’t even know the half of it,” she said. “Yeah, I had a lot of fun, but there was some serious crap going on, too. You probably can’t see it because it’s dark out, but one of the campus buildings on the northeastern end was...”

She glanced up around her, as though to check to see if anyone was listening, then leaned back in and lowered her voice.

“It was attacked about a month ago,” she continued. “Literally blasted open with some kind of bomb. They didn’t do much damage, but it did shut down that building for a while. Had to move everyone’s classes elsewhere. Was such a scare. And also a pain.”

“What the hell?” said Pelli. “Why would anyone attack a medical school?

Amal shrugged at him.

“No idea,” she answered. “There’s a rumor going around though that the dean got a letter from whoever attacked. But he never made it public. Didn’t even make mention of it. Then again, it’s just a rumor, so...”

“What was the building?” asked Miko. “Perhaps that is why it was targeted?”

“Every building’s a mix of different disciplines, honestly,” answered Amal. “That specific building focused on all sorts of stuff – cutting-edge pediatrics, metabiological enhancement, genomic exploration.”

Eva sighed deeply and took a swig of her drink.

“Fuckin’ terrorrists, man,” she said. “They’re in every culture, every species, across every point in time. We had to deal with our own set of terrorists, and it was pretty devastating, too.”

“Oh, that’s right!” Amal exclaimed. “I got that note that you were a political prisoner! And then I saw an InfoCast about how you were all attacked. That sounds intense!”

“They attacked us with over two thousand people,” said Miko. “There were so many dead, on both sides.”

Amal’s brows furrowed. The amount of dead wasn’t even mentioned in the ‘Casts. In fact, there were hardly any details about the whole thing. Most simply mentioned that it happened, but not much more than that.

“The bombing at the school killed one or two, I think,” she said. “It hurt maybe a couple dozen more. I can’t even imagine seeing even a thousand people dead. It seems so... sad.”

Eva nodded solemnly. She wanted to say something, about her own guilt, about how they were used, about how it was all probably completely avoidable. But she couldn’t. She didn’t want to deepen the sadness.

“It was a waste,” she said.

“Did you record it all?” asked Amal.

“We’ll show you the footage,” Eva replied. “And... you’re still plan on joining us, right?”

“Hell yeah, I am!” said Amal. “I was just waiting until graduation to send you two a message. But now that you’re here, I may as well join up now. If that’s cool, anyway.”

“Hey, what’s with the joining thing,” Pelli complained. “Can we join? I wanna see that footage too!”

.....

“Apologies,” said Miko. “Right now we have a strictly girls-only rule. You will have to watch it when it goes live over ‘Cast.”

Both Pelli and Pio pouted a little, but they were clearly just messing with the girls.

“That’s discrimination,” argued Pio.

“Nothing stops you from being held prisoner by the Drogar and releasing your own documentary about it,” Miko retorted. “You can even have your own boys-only club to do it in.”

All of them laughed lightly at her jab and continued their drunken festivities well throughout the rest of the night.

Eva turned to Amal in the middle of it all. Her mind was an intoxicated mess, while her body was sloppy and uncoordinated and somewhat disconnected. Both of them were.

“Welcome to the Conspiracy of Ravens,” she said. “Finally!”