The Human Condition

Memoriam

Elizabeth Silver

232 AD to 297 AD

‘Loving Wife to a Loving Husband’

Youth, and the innocence of it, had been still fresh on the 16th of May 244 AD and it was at a simple meeting, like one of hundreds everyday, when he saw her. His best friend had introduced them, ‘I’d like you to meet Miss Silver, John. She’s helping with your project.’

He had been rushed, late and running later as the second hand slowly swept by. He really hadn’t cared less. He had looked up and stopped. Her eyes had been the deepest blue, like the colour of the darkest and deepest blue in the Cylindrical Sea. He was just falling into them, deeper and deeper and deeper. His brain had tingled like it had on very few occasions before. His father’s voice had drifted through his mind, ‘follow your heart’. Right there, in that one moment in time, in space, he had realised that any decision he made now would change his life forever, and a decision had to be made now, or the chance he had would suddenly slam shut like a heavy door flung against its frame. He had said the words that had altered the Destiny of his life and his universe’s for every moment since them. He said, ‘I’ve got a meeting about it now. Would you like to come with me?’

She had smiled. Her smile had stretched across her mouth, stretching her skin, making her exotic eyes glint in the office’s light and she too, had spoken the words that had changed the course of her Destiny. She had nodded, and added, ‘No time like the present.’

He proposed to her three hours later, and her answer had secured them both exactly 53 years of love and happiness. The joy of love, and the joy at being loved had been the most heaven sent thing in his entire life and they lived together, safe in the knowledge that they could hold each other in their arms for over 200 years and that Fate and Destiny had been conquered by medical science and love, had been forced back by the valiant charges of pale faced, and white coated scientists into a little cage where they could never cause harm to a human soul again. They had not a care in the world. They floated, together, with each other, where nothing could harm them, out of time and space itself. They could remain together forever. They were innocent.

Naïveté. Fate and Destiny made their last stand, charging out against the cage and breaking it open, unleashing their joint terror upon the Human Race. The year of 297AD was one for the history books, affecting the armada and the society structure in such a way that it was only surpassed by the ‘Notice of Departure’ given by the Sol Alliance in 100BD in terms of consequences and effects. Scientists hadn’t created a cure for everything. There was no cure for being in the vaporisation zone of a terrorist’s weapon. There was no way to stop every one of her atoms being ripped apart in a fraction of a second. There was no way you could bring her back, go back in time, or simply change anything. Fate and Destiny, the silent masters and rulers, after being toppled by the pawn, had returned to topple several in retribution. He had broken down and cried for days, until he realised there was no point. She had gone. Gone into another place, or just disappeared, her mind, body and soul vaporised in that explosion. What had happened that day was to be used and exploited for the rest of the journey.