"I can't believe this is happening!" my twin sister Sheta said in an agonized whisper. I couldn't help but look at her with tears in my eyes and agree. The pain we both felt twisted her delicate features in her soft teal skin and because of it the black vision band crossing from temple to temple all adult females acquired when they experienced their first heat made the tears resting in her light purple eyes shine like the redito stones our upper class wore to show their station. "I know, but we will be here for Mother and Father as long as they need us." She nodded in agreement, and we lapsed into worried silence while we waited for news of our little baby brother in the medical center.
Looking around at all the walls, I note that antiseptic smell that is only present in the medical center. I know it so well now. The walls are a reminder and tribute filled with so many different colored names painted into landscapes and symbols that mean so much to everyone here on Amitera. There are different colored names on the medical center walls for the acari who have been lost. One wall is filled with acari toys that have those names. There is another wall that is filled with the names of the males and females that have been lost in the landscape scene of the Alor Sea. The gold and red names are very eye-catching on the wall that shows the Vestis Mountains with their beautiful and deadly flame pools. The floor used to have different colored directional symbols on the White Kyter Stone to each wing of the medical center. Gold for the Palto Plains, Red for the Vestis Mountains, Calming Blue for the Alor Sea, Beige for the Center City, Green for the Mailitis Jungle and Bright Orange for the vast Wyesting Sands. Now the floor has all the colors mixed in an abstract design that really does not show any direction. Only the archways have stayed the same color to indicate each wing.
While I was looking around at the changes here, I began to review our most recent history that caused such a difference in everything. We had all recovered enough now from just five years ago when the devastating Quital virus was unleashed on our home world of Amitera by the newly discovered enemy, the Donti. The Donti happen to be creatures with pincher mouths and stubby legs all along the sides of their slag-like bodies, moving kind of a slide and clip with each of their stubby leg sections. The Donti is an intelligent race that speak with a voice that comes out like it is from underwater with an intermittent click from their pincher mouth.
I feel so Latier graced that we have survived, thinking back to that time when the Donti broadcast to the whole planet that they were our Overlords now, and we were their slaves. At the time of the broadcast, they released the Quital Virus on us, planning it to soften us for their conquest. Even though their plan may have been to incite fear and physical weakness to allow for a quick and efficient takeover of our planet's population, that is not what happened.
The Quital Virus had a delayed but devastating effect on Amitera. In the very midst of us being attacked, no one understood what was happening. We responded with full military force, defending Amitera viciously, which beat the Donti back!
Everyone celebrated that day. Until the following day.
See the Donti prefer live food, which is what we were to be to them not slaves. With the dawn of a new day and our two perfect suns rising, the Virus took its toll. So many of us died screaming from pain. It was so torturous and slow. Many said it felt as though their cells were on fire! Within the first three months, we had lost almost twenty-five percent of Amiteras population. That was millions of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and so many acari. So many.
The fact that my twin and I were only 13 years old at the time meant that there was very little that we could do to help our planet. Sheta and I were determined to do everything possible to help. But as time passed, we realized the extent of the virus' damage.
It perhaps was not what the Donti intended, but it affected one hundred percent of our population. Twenty-five percent of us died from the virus and another twenty-five percent who had recovered were tested and found to be sterilized, leaving thirty-five percent of our planet's population with fertility numbers steadily progressing to sterility and the last fifteen percent of us were left in a continuous battle with other system function deficiencies ranging from blindness, paralyzation, motor function inabilities, stokes and memory loss.
It has taken us the last five years to recover enough from the virus for our Vaulted Council to have a plan to combat our weakened fertility. The mission of the council has placed us as one of the ten exploration ships to locate a cure for the Quital Virus. Our ship's deployment is the only one delayed as I sit here in medical, and I am the assigned captain for The Venture. I joined Space Fleet Academy when I turned 15 years old. It was the soonest that the Vaulted Council would allow. Our military was so depleted, all the officers and teachers of the Academy were in a decline in their health, as were many others. We learned quickly that the Donti may have attacked us with the Quital Virus as a weapon, but now it is our ongoing enemy, and we are at war with time to save our species.
It is so much easier to think of our history than it is to wait and worry about what news we have yet to receive. Just as this thought crosses my mind, the waiting lounge door opens with the doctor walking in.
I stood immediately with the question bursting out of me before my sister had the chance to stand. "Are my mother and brother, okay?" The doctor's stone still face gives nothing away as he starts to speak in that low bass monotone to calm patients and families." First, Brey, I want you to know that we made every effort available to us for your brother and your mother, however we were not successful in stabilizing your brother. His lungs were just too small and underdeveloped for us to help him enough. I am so sorry. Your mother will be here for another few minutes to recover from the birth and surgery. She would like to speak with you both though. Please follow me."
We walked to her windowed door together and stopped for a view we had seen too many times already. This is the eighth occasion that we have had to be in the medical center. My heart is as heavy as every other time. My mother, Etila Nadasu Alor had bonded to my father Berikon Midansil Alor as only our people do. Through instinct. We know the moment that we meet our Siteri or Siterian. Usually, us males will know our Siteri before our Siteri recognizes us as their Siterian, but it does not take them long to know.
My father said that he knew the moment that he saw my mother rise from the Alor Sea at the end of her heat cycle. He was so nervous he hid and watched her like a miterian bug until her long flowing purple hair dried in the heat of our two suns. When he said that he had finally convinced himself to go talk to her, she already knew he was there. They said her first words to him were "Hello, Siterian. I need you." and they made love right there on the soft light purple sand of the Alor Sea.
I know that one day I may find my Siteri as well and that will be a joyous day, but the mission we are going on leaves everything in the breeze across the Palto plains. So many questions remain unanswered. Will she end up like my mother? Will she be one of those that are sterile? Will I find my Siteri somewhere out in space? Will I remain forever on mission until my species is extinct? So many questions. My main one now is, will this pain and trauma ever end for us ?
Right now, my mother lays on her left side in the spongey oval medical pallet. She has the bracer for the lower abdomen on that injects the Tiratle flower extract from the Mailitis jungle. There has only ever been one use for this extract. This is completed now in a few hours when it was a long and painful process that before the virus very few of our species ever used. Acari are a blessing for all and have always been, but I understand my mother's choice to never again grow Acari.
My twin and I had stopped ourselves at the door to the room and just watched for a few seconds. My father stands by her bedside, and I have never seen him so lost looking. He has always been a confident and joyful type of person that supported everyone with hope. Always able to make everyone happy no matter what. There have been very few times he has not had a smile on his face and that stabs me again in the heart.
When I speak to him, he says to us "I can say nothing, feel nothing. I cannot believe that this is a blessing, when I cannot shield my Siteri from the pain. This situation is breaking her heart, and I cannot help. I am concerned with how to help your mother through the loss we all have just suffered again. My Etila...I am lost son." The last was said on a choked back sob. I could tell because there were many times I would come upon him like this while in the Field Storage for our crops.
I told him "Father I know. It was just last week we all were arguing over names. Now my beautiful mother lays in a medical bed silently crying." "She has been inconsolable since she had told the Nurse to gather you both. I cannot comfort her; she will not allow me to touch her. I am uncertain why. Does she blame me? Could I have prevented this somehow?" My father shared his pain with me as it is the questions all of us have asked at one point.
I let him know he was not the only one. "We were such a mix of scared and joyful after the quital virus had past and we were one of the few families able to grow acari". My father continued our conversation with such a tone of defeat. "It appears our hope has been in vain. My youngest child has left us for Latiera. I know his soul lives now in the golden garden of the after. I described it to you both as the place that the purest and most innocent souls return to after their life term on Amitera. How do I help her?" He finished talking to me, asking me that question without me ever answering.
He then went to sit in the chair his soulmate was facing waiting for her to open her eyes and give us the chance to buoy her grief. Laying there crying I barely hear mother whisper "Dukian" over and over. She is right. Our brother fought valiantly to live. He should be named for the son of Latier, the warrior king whom legends told that his body at the time of passing brought forth Latiera, the golden garden of the after. I watch my father say a prayer that little Dukians soul be at peace and speak to my mother as he reaches out to her. "You are correct my Siteri. He is and always will be our little Dukian." When my father says his name for the first time my mother takes his hand and allows all her pain and sadness to flow between them.
It is then that I know we will be able to feel joy again. They had not been holding hands long when my father looked up at us again. I locked eyes with my father for only a moment as we entered the room just before we both were on our knees at her bedside foreheads resting on the bed to honor her and the life, she carried us into. I could hear my father's breathing relax a bit becoming deeper and steadier as we gave the tribute due our mother.