Underland Press

By Simon Drax
July 27th, 2009

Remember to check out The Simon Drax Blog to read about Simon's wovel-writing process.

And now the fifth installment of Simon Drax's Exit Vector, in which Trista explains who and what she is...

* * *

"Long ago," Trista began, "long ago...

"Those two words aren't adequate, aren't enough: long ago. The same is true of numbers, measurements, dates. Almost meaningless, all of it. It's not your fault. You are human. I am not.

"I am Triiistaaskaasheearrn, or Trista Ska Shearn, if that is easier. And I am old. I remember when the sky was devoid of a moon, I remember a world filled with fabulous creatures and life-forms never known to humanity, almost all of which are no more, wiped away. Dust. Their bones are not in your museums, their likeness not found in any book or data file. They're just... gone. And I am one of those creatures. I am Cantaran, the last of my kind.

"Cantara. Oh, you little human saplings, with your pathetic squeaks and grunts that you call language—you have not the words to describe it. Cantara was... glory. Power. Magnificence. Ambition equaled only by its wisdom. A civilization and a people whose accomplishments would still dwarf yours even if your bumbling pathetic species continued unhindered for a million years. Cantara rose from the lava-cracked continents of the young Earth with white towers of crystal and light. Our spires pierced the sky, our minds knew all there was to know of our young and fertile planet, and we were the rulers of all we saw.

"We shared certain traits with the other emergent life-forms—traits, mind you, similarities. Not a common heritage, no. But yes, like humanity, we rose from the oceans, we crawled for a while, we were hunted, and we became hunters in order to survive. But our evolution was a lightning bolt compared to the slow-motion twitch and shudder of other species, the nightmarish—to us—and desperate dance of biological evolution via trial and error... and error and error.

"Cantarans could talk before we used tools, for example. We had a concept and philosophy of peace before we were forced to invent a word for 'war.' Vague, I know. For even then—even now! Especially now!—the words remain insufficient. Abstract. Ah, I have heard it before. Believe me. I have heard it all before.