Strixes

Alaric I

New York Times

May 17th, 2024

As of the beginning of 2020, coming out of a glob health crisis the likes of which haven't been seen since the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1919, the world reached an estimated population of 30 billion people. The population increase began in 1989, when an alien ship broke apart over the United States of America and the Soviet Union, splintering into two parts.

The result of a failed colonization effort on behalf of a species that we do not even know the name of. Every one of them perished in the crash. From what we have recovered and translated, this species believed the Earth was uninhabited and was planning a settlement operation.

The alien ship was over 200 years more advanced than any nation on Earth.. Not only did it jump-start the economy of the two superpowers, medical and agricultural science jumped forwards by leaps and bounds. However, a population of 30 billion people is simply unsustainable for the Earth.

In response to this global crisis, the Nations of the world have created two missions, each with thirteen separate flotillas to move fifteen billion people off the planet. Apollo Group left in 2022, and Artemis Group will depart on June 1st. Artemis Group will travel together until they reach Point Alpha, in which part each one of the flotillas will separate.

Even with the advancements made by reverse engineering the downed alien ship and the method of Faster Than Light travel gifted to us, it is estimated that it will still take the Thirteenth Group over 100 years to reach its destination-

I glared at the words on my tablet. Over a century? I knew the thirteenth flotilla's destination was much further out, but even the twelfth flotilla was only estimated to take fifty years. My flotilla would take twice that long. That was if any of these estimates were even correct. We still haven't heard anything back from the Apollo Group, and the first Apollo flotilla was only supposed to take a year to reach the new colony world.

I rolled down to the end of the article:

"Thirteenth Flotilla: 25 American ships. 10 British ships. 15 French ships. 10 Quebecois ships. 25 Japanese ships. 10 Venezuelan ships. 10 South Korean ships. 25 Soviet Union ships. 25 Chinese ships. 10 German ships."

I looked at the date on the wall clock. It was still May. Artemis Group wouldn't be leaving until June. Would I make it that long? I hoped so. I didn't want to die how I lived: in the hospital. I've always been sick, even as a child. When I was born, I suffered from complications. My immune system was compromised in laymen's terms. Some kind of autoimmune system disease. I couldn't tell you what it was called if you asked me, the word was long and probably had a Latin root.

I spent most of my free time in the hospital. As a child, I was in and out of care all the time. The only place I spent more time than the hospital was school and what a miracle that was. It was the only part of my life that felt somewhat normal and even then, I had missed so much school because of this cursed hospital.

More than once, my mother cried for me, blaming herself. She had given me this weak body and she apologized so much. It wasn't her fault. How could it be? My younger brother and sister didn't have this problem. It couldn't be my mother. I was just born unlucky was all. There was nothing to be done about it and there was no point in blaming her. I told her as much, but she always blamed herself.

Shortly after high school, I had a bad relapse and had to cancel my plans for university. I almost died and I spent weeks bedridden, miserably bedridden. I remember wishing I had died more times than I can count. That was the first time I wished I was dead, but it was far from the last.

I never fully recovered. I never got well enough to leave the hospital, but they did take me out of the ICU. I was nothing but a financial drain on my parents, forcing them to keep paying for my treatments. My family was well off, my father was part of a wealthy tech start-up and my mother had a large inheritance, so at least we could bare the costs whenever I brought this up, but I didn't like being a burden. We made enough to comfortably live in Scottsdale, even with my treatment expense. The only view I had out of my window was the beautiful city view and the desert beyond it.

Even if they could keep paying for it, how much did my medical expense cut into the family budget? Would my parents be able to send my little brother and sister to university? When was the last time anyone in my family took a vacation? I couldn't tell you.

After high school, my only escape from the world become anime and manga. You might think video games would be a good choice, but I was frail. Even video games could cause me undue stress and worsen my condition. So it was books and TV shows and movies.

From those choices, I chose anime and manga. I mean sure, I watched Game of Thrones and read Brandon Sanderson, but most of my time was spent consuming Japanese medium. Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, Tokyo Ghoul, Your Lie in April, and dozens of other popular and niche manga and anime.

My favorite genera was Isekai. I guess that wouldn't be too surprising. I had lived my life in a body that was weak and sickly. Being Isekaied was like a dream for me. The chance to escape my weak, failing body, and go to another world with a strong one? My parents wouldn't have to continue to pay my ever-growing medical bills, and I could have adventurers like the characters in anime. For years, that was all that I wanted.

At thirty-five, I hadn't even got the chance to live and the only thing keeping me alive was machines, and even those were failing. When death came for me at last, I didn't want to go. Isekai wasn't real, I wasn't going to be summoned by some far-off kingdom or be brought before a goddess. I was going to die and disappear. Everything I was, the person who I am, was just going to vanish. I didn't believe in any god or any kind of afterlife, and I knew when I died, I was going to the ground.

I didn't want to die on Earth. We were at the cusp of an age of exploration. Space travel. If I was to die, I wanted to die on Mars. Or on the soil of an alien world.

It had been the best stock of my life to win the Flotilla lottery and get a spot on one of those ships in the Artemis Group. In a perfect world, I would prefer to get a spot on the Mars Settlement, with my family. Alma was supposed to be the size of a small town now, the first human settlement on Mars. I wonder if the view of the new colony beat Scottsdale and the Sonoran desert?

This wasn't a perfect world though. I was lucky that the Artemis Group accepted me despite my condition. That seat could have gone to someone healthy.

Someone knocked on door. That was strange. I didn't get a lot of visitors to my hospital room if they weren't family. "Come in," I called.

An overweight man wearing a grey jumpsuit opened the door. It was a suit I recognized as part of the Artemis Group's official staff. I had seen more than my fill of these people since I had won the membership lottery. He had the look of superiority that those in charge of the Artemis Group often did.

"Are you Mr. Forester?"

I nodded. "Mr. Forester is my father, but yes. At your service. How many I help you?"

"There has been a change of plans, regarding your... Admittance, to Artemis."

I hated the way he said it like that. Like I wasn't worthy. I wasn't young enough to be new blood, I didn't pay my way in, I wasn't a family man, and I sure as hell wasn't smart enough to be there. I was also dying. I got lucky and we both knew it.

"What kind of change?"

He smiled. "Relax. We are merely here to change your... Seating arrangement. I have the documents here for you to look over, and then I will need you to sign them. So-"

Suddenly a light flashed that was so bright it might as well be the sun exploding, lit up the room. The grey jump-suited man became little more than a dark silhouette against the light. Then the light somehow get brighter and brighter until it was all that I could see.

Had I died? Was the light of my life leaving me? One final flash before oblivion?

"Annie, viens ici."

Huh? What was that? Where had the voice come from? I was still in the blaze of light, waiting for oblivion. Was that the voice of God? I recognized the language, I had watched Miraculous Ladybug enough in French to know the language. Did God speak French? Was God a woman?

God? No. This was my mind, playing tricks on me. That was all. What was left of my brain as it died? I wondered how long I'd have to put up with voices in my head until I face oblivion.

"Mettez l'uniformr là." It was the same feminine voice. I could hear two-foot steps walking across the floor, the sound of shuffling, and then a door closed. I tried to listen, to see if I could hear anything else, but there was no more sound. I was alone.

I was dead. So how did I have ears to listen? My vision began to change, the gold void around me slowly began to take shape, other colors blooming from the light. The void faded, morphing into a... Room?

It wasn't my hospital room. It wasn't even a hospital room. It looked too lived in a real hospital. The room was smaller than my hospital room, but it was luxurious. The whole right wall was glass, with a sliding door leading to a balcony overlooking a pool. Around the pool were palm trees, mango trees, and smaller dragon fruit trees. The crystal clear water was reflecting the sunlight from a cloudless blue sky above.

From the room I was in, it looked like this was some kind of compound. Large walls prevented me from seeing too far beyond the grounds. There were giant trees that dwarfed the walls, so I doubted I would be able to see too far anyway. My family used to vacation in the green lands of the Redwood Forests, but these trees weren't redwoods.

I had read about these trees before. In the endless, boring hours that I tried to fill during my never ending stay in the hospital, I had come across the Kapok trees. They were a kind of tropical tree that was found in... Southern Mexico, down to South America, if I was remembering right. The tree tops were full of leaves and vines, giving it a jungle look.

I could see the base of one Kapok tree from my vantage point, and it was nearly covered by xate leaves. Roots from the trees wove out around the area, making it look like a tropical rainforest. Something out of Hawaii. To someone who had grown up and lived most of his life in the desert, this place looked like a paradise. Had I died and gone to heaven?

If the afterlife was real and it was a tropical paradise, I could learn to live with that. Or be dead with that, I guess.

I looked back at the rest of the room and though it looked small, it was cozy. There was a clean, freshly made bed, the walls were bare and orange, there was an empty dresser, and a bathroom that connected to this room was empty... Okay, maybe the room wasn't so lived in, but it still felt more lived in than the hospital room I occupied for years.

So was this the afterlife? Does everyone get their own little room in the garden of tropical heaven? I guess I could have done worse. At least I hadn't ended up in hell. I wonder what hell would look like. An industrial wasteland, something out of turn-of-the-century England? Hopefully not fire and brimstone and lakes of lava.

Hanging on the wall were the only articles of clothing in the room: brown dress shoes hung at the bottom, just below a pair of black pants. There was a blue dress shirt with green cuffs and a gold crest emblazoned over where the heart would be. A red blazer was hung below the shirt, with the same crest over the heart. The tie hung above the dress shirt, striped red, blue, and black.

I was looking at a high school uniform out of some Japanese anime. It was way too small for me. My gut would rip those buttons off if I tried to put the clothes on. Then again, I was dead, wasn't I? I never got the chance to exercise in life, but maybe heaven put you at your ideal body type?

I walked to the uniform and caught sight of myself in the mirror in the corner of my eye. I turned and started at a young boy half my age. He was a teenager, no older than fifteen or sixteen years old. He was incredibly in shape, his body had a freaking sixth pack! He was toned and looked like a freaking bodybuilder. He was a redhead with a face full of freckles and bottle-green eyes. Around his neck was a red pendant with a strange circular design impressed on the front with a blue gem.

I touched my face and the boy followed my movements. This wasn't some other boy staring at me, it was my reflection in the mirror. Maybe I was right, and the dead had ideal body types. Only I've never been a redhead and I wasn't a teenager anymore.

I was also naked. And I looked pretty good, I wasn't going to lie. Even my equipment was bigger, which was a bonus I guess. Would I need a dick in heaven? Or nirvana or Elysium or where ever I ended up but a gold void. I heard a door close. The others, whoever they were, must be outside.

I should go and see what was up. Then my eyes drifted back to my naked body. Maybe I should put on the uniform? I had wanted to be isekaied for so long, maybe God or Zeus or whoever ran this place knew that and gave me a high school uniform? I would have preferred to be reincarnated...

Reincarnated? I sucked in a breath. What if I wasn't dead? What if I had been isekaied? School uniform, the body of a sixteen-year-old kid?

The door cracked open and a woman in her late thirties appeared. She was wearing a French maid uniform, which at first I thought was some kind of cosplay, but the uniform was too elaborate to be some mass-produced costume. She was carrying a pile of clothes in her arms, but she froze in the doorway, staring at the empty bed. "Master Alaric?"

The maid spoke her English with a thick French accent. And she knew my name. Maybe she was an angel or a Buddha. But why was she calling me master? Maybe she was one of the seven French whores everyone got when they died? That would be a wild afterlife.

"Master Lightwood?"

Lightwood? I was Alaric Forester, not Lightwood. Maybe she was looking for someone else? Then I looked back at my reflection. Maybe this kid was named Alaric Lightwood?

She threw the clothes on the bed and pulled her watch up. Only the thing on her wrist wasn't a watch, but some kind of metallic device. She pushed the edge with her thumb and pointer finger. The top of the device lit up and produced a freaking hologram. An honest to gods hologram.

She began typing on the holo screen when her eyes shifted over to me. She froze. I was still naked, so this was going to be awkward. I waved. "Uh. Hello?"

Relief washed over her and she pressed the device again, the holoscreen flickering out of existence. "Master Lightwood, you are awake. You worried me."

I rubbed the back of my head. "Uh. Yeah, sorry about that."

"When I call for you, please answer me."

"Right."

"It is good to see that you have awakened. After the attack, we weren't sure when you'd wake up."

Attack? What attack? This guy had been attacked? Had he died? Was I put in his body after death? Wasn't that a bit cliche?

"I will contact Mireille immediately. She will want to know you are awake. She is out tracking down your attack." The maid suddenly looked back at me. "Are you thirsty, Master Lightwood?"

I didn't feel thirsty, but I was a bit peckish. "If you have some soda, I wouldn't turn it down. I'm feeling a little bit hungry."

The maid laughed. "You are making a joke. If you feel well enough to joke, then I'm sure you are alright. Mistress Mireille will be pleased."

***

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