Chapter 2: Chapter 2
I always wanted to live in a fantasy world.
Not just wanted, I needed it. I needed to live in an unknown world, to go on some adventure, to do something extraordinary.
It was a dream that I was willing to do anything to accomplish.
Now, standing on the precipice of the brutal new world, I will have to ask myself, was it worth it?
-1 DAY AGO-
I am now the last surviving member of the Trieste family.
We didn't go out with a bang or a pow, just a simple exhale and flatline.
Not that I could critique it anyhow, it really was my fault anyway. Even in her last moment, I could feel a bitter tinge in my Mother's final goodbye. It was the way she looked past me as if she was expecting someone else to be there.
Not just anyone else, but Aliyah, my younger sister. The same girl who I killed nearly 3 years ago. "It should have been you," I could hear her voice whispering in my head. She never said it outright, but each time her thousand-mile stare leveled onto me, there was nothing more to say, I knew.
Aliyah was a prodigy, incredible at most everything she put her mind to. She never came off as condescending and was always willing to use her talents to prop others up. Despite having 2 years on her, I never felt envious or spiteful, simply thankful to have someone so talented and thoughtful there to help me out.
Even when I pursued the most absurd and useless schemes, I knew I could count on her to help me out and give me the push that I needed.
It was one of those stupid projects that ended up killing her.
I've been looking back at that fateful day for the last 3 years, and each time I had just one thought. "Why her?" She had everything in life ahead of her, far more than I would be able to accomplish.
Worst of all, it wasn't even her project, it was mine. She was just caught in the crossfire.
The funeral proceedings wrapped up quickly, only 5 days after being admitted to the hospital, I watched in a daze as my mother was encased in earth. I'm sure I hugged friends and wrote something for the procession, but the details were hazy in my mind.
Each day blurred into the next. It's been like that for quite a while now. I made it to my family's home from a graveyard without so much as a thought, only to realize that I was there, standing in front of the door to our family office, a room I hadn't entered in 3 years.
I paid it no heed and went to move on to my bedroom, but surprisingly, no strength came to me. The door felt as though it was towering over me, the weight of it keeping me locked into place.
It was only then that I noticed the light emanating softly from beneath the imposing oak door. A drop of sweat ran down my brow, the only light that was still functional there should be… The light of a monitor.
Adrenaline coursed through me and I attempted to reach for the dust-covered brass doorknob. Wait, no, its dust had been cleared away, replaced with a sheen bright enough to see my own shocked features, someone was inside.
The numbing haze that clouded my brain was shoved aside and replaced with an unfamiliar urgency. Someone was in there, someone was using our machine, my mistake. Someone was about to die.
"s t o p," I tried to shout, a futile attempt to warn whoever wandered into that deathtrap.
I was surprised at the sound of my own voice, raspy and quiet, barely audible due to years of disuse and neglect. I yanked at the doorknob but found no purchase. My weakened hand twisted and pushed as hard as I could, but the door which shouldn't have been able to lock was firmly set in place.
A near-hysteria took hold of me as images from that day filled my mind. I stepped back, gathering my arms in front of me as a protective shield, and slammed into the door with all the strength I could muster.
The door instantly gave way, folding under my weight as though it was never locked, to begin with.
Unable to stop myself, I curled up as I flew through the room. A sharp pain knocked on my skull as I slammed noisily into the mostly metal-ridden equipment.
For a moment I laid there in disarray, heart pounding loudly in my ears and the slight warmth of blood dribbling down my temple.
Slowly, I opened my eyes to take account of the damage. I froze, I was laying in the exact same spot where I last saw Aliyah, 3 years ago.
Cheh. I hear the sound of an exaggerated key press.
Transfer Commencing.
My vision went black.
-15 YEARS AGO-
My name is Harper Triste.
I'm your average white American 20-something college dropout coming in at a solid 6 feet and change. Throughout my life, people have said I look "somewhat eastern European" but I think that's just because I'm skinny (now more than ever), have dark brownish-black hair, and dress reasonably well...
Well, I used to.
Growing up, I was your average dose of wasted potential, well, at least that's what most people thought about me.
If you asked me at the time, I don't think that there is a chance in hell I would agree. Where my common sense and maturity were lacking, I had the passion to make up for it in spades. The real problem was where that lack of common sense led to my passion.
I was absolutely head over heels for fantasy, a bit of a slacker who wouldn't be able to ward off the impulse for a good daydream. The formative years of my early life were spent absorbing myself in novels, friends, and the like. Rather than riding bikes in the neighborhood, my friends and I would spar in the backyard, pretending to live in a world far more interesting than our own.
I was at an age where all of that was acceptable, yet, as more and more of my friends moved on and grew up, I still found myself engrossed in worlds that were just not meant to be.
As I reached a point in my life where I couldn't simply breeze through without effort, my parents pushed me to try and channel my passion for this into a more academic hobby.
Looking back, this was surely just a ploy to help me focus on my faltering grades, but to me, this was exciting, a chance to create a fantasy world of my own, or whatever that means. Creative writing, literature, space, history… I entertained all these hobbies my parents recommended to me, but I don't think they understood what I really wanted.
It wasn't enough for me to read about some fantasy, I wanted to live my own fantasy. So I set off doing what every kid once does, I started working on a project far too big for my kid-sized breeches. I began researching and planning for my own interworld travel machine, one that I had every intention of finishing.
That was in the 6th grade. 4 Years passed and I still had nothing to show for my efforts.
Endless piles of papers and failed projects littered every corner of my bedroom, and the once endless passion I held was starting to wear thin.
It wasn't just my patience gnawing away at me, my friends and parents who once viewed my passion as a cute little project began growing more and more impatient for me to outgrow this little "phase" of mine.
At the end of my rope, only one person still supported me, my sister, Aliyah.
As a little girl, she would often sit in my room for hours as I dove into my research.
Years passed, and she started to help me out as much as she could, acting like a little research assistant. I don't know if she truly was excited about the prospects of the project as I was, but it felt nice to have someone pushing you from behind like that.
Some days I would arrive home from school to find her engrossed in her own research and have thoughts like "Well I can't let her one-up me now can I?"
Aliyah was probably the reason why I was able to keep pushing forward in the first place.
Aliyah showed early signs of a prodigy in the making. Smart, athletic, kind, and enthusiastic. Despite this, she kept helping out on the project with the same vigor that I had all the way back when it started.
As she developed, it became clear that assistant wasn't really an accurate description of her role, more so, with each passing day, it felt as though she was understanding the material better than I.
By the time my senior year was on the horizon, I often found myself smiling and nodding as she spoke at length about the extent of the project, not comprehending a word.
It was different for us, I was invested in the result, but she was engrossed in the process.
Within this newfound rhythm of ours, we pushed against expectations and began to make a surprising amount of progress. Eventually, I fell entirely into the role of supporting her the best I could, this is when her genius really started to shine.
Then miraculously, the thing that we least expected to happen came to be. In the summer of my 18th year, we finished it.
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