Chapter Two — A Perfect Day

It’s a perfect day. I love this place.

A family cruises by in a saloon. All very chilled, enjoying a weekend drive into town. Across on the other corner, a lady stands waiting to cross the road.

Just two days ago I was on post in Shield. A final touch over my jet and a handover to the service crew.

“Take care of my Baby, guys, and have her ready when I return after break.”

I love my job so much. Baby is my dream. I have worked so hard to be here and wouldn’t be anywhere else. Defending Bionia is what I was born for. Pretty sure I have spent a thousand lifetimes doing it. A member of the elite. This is my team.

I kissed two fingers and placed them on Baby, beautifully embroidered on the side of the cockpit. What a machine!

My quarters were white-gloved, the inspection checklist one hundred percent. “I love you guys,” I told the base inspection team. Everything in place for my return in a couple of weeks.

And there she was. Carlina smiling at me on my hub screen, just as excited to see me in a few hours. I lifted my travel pack onto my shoulder and caught a final glance in the mirror. I felt and looked great. Couldn’t wait to be home. Even though there is nothing like returning to the home planet, I love what I do and my role in the protection of Bionia.

Across the street, on the corner I’m heading for, stands a young lady in a smart dress, shopping bags in hand. Behind her, a couple of gorgeous kids are playing. The older one showing off with a skip, check and twist for his younger sister. Their mother stands at the counter inside the quaint country fashion store as the owner packs her clothing into a branded package, neat and nicely folded.

Two young bucks drive through the intersection with the roof down. Chill music playing and sunnies on, looking super cool. They both take a wide glance at some very pretty young ladies and catch the lovely smiles they were after. The driver corrects his line as he puts his attention back on the road. The music fades and echoes off the shop fronts as they continue their cruise down the street. Nice ride, I think to myself, feeling the vibration of the engine and admiring the gleam of the classic finish.

I love this town.

Carlina has been finalising the papers for our new property just out of town. Our first home. I’m heading down to have lunch with her at our favourite art café.

Tranquil Mountain sits in the distance, clearly visible down the end of Main. A conservation ground, home to the first peoples, a rainforest paradise open for all of us to share. Behind her and out of sight sits Centurion, a high-tech education city for the people of this side of the globe. Military, science, engineering and architecture. Fashion and the arts. Rural and agriculture. The best of the best, honing their talents and returning to their regions to continue the endless creation of this phenomenal civilisation.

I love being home. I was born for this. The future is endlessly beautiful and I am with the one I love the most.

The glow forms out of nothing. Above Tranquil Mountain, but more like directly above Centurion, not far behind. It sits there for a moment as it grows into what appears to be a tiny sun. Then it expands in an instant. The light blows out and engulfs everything. Moments later the entire town starts to melt before my eyes. Everything pauses as the heat pervades every molecule of everything before me. It is like nothing and everything all at once. There is no pain, no expectation. Just the sheer pervasion of ultimate heat, silence, and then the blow-out follows.

The town folk on the street vanish before me like ash wisped off a table top in a gust of wind, my body with them in an instant. I look down and perceive the last remnants of myself disappearing in the blow. The town perishes in that instant.

It erupts as if from the very core of the planet. The ground rises and fractures through the horizons of the globe, then lifts, blowing vertically and pulling me with it. A vertical Anaversion, into the infinity of space, flung outward and away from the system that has been my home.

The complete Dyad of Bionia blows in that instant.

There is no emotion. No expectancy. Careering in a storm of stone, I fade from awareness.

Bionia is no more.

Anaversion (noun): the reversal of the animating force itself; the Bionian technology, and the event, by which the life-principle sustaining matter was turned back upon its own source, causing the simultaneous internal detonation of both worlds of the Bionian Dyad.