NEEDY'S BLOG

NEEDY

The Journey
Friday, August 13, 2010

Sometimes, a story can take longer than expected to finish.
This one, I’ve been working on for quite some time. Must be couple of years, stopping and starting every now and again. I’ll work on something else but always came back to it. Mainly because I’m determined now more than ever to finish it. And it was only meant to be a short story, no more than four chapters. So much for that plan. The more I wrote, the more the story developed in my head. And as it is, its become a mystery story, spanning hundreds of years.

Originally starting life as a Firefly fanfic (or at least set in the same verse) I’ve decided that I’ll probably end up going back and removing all traces of its connection with that verse. Not only so I can possibly have it published, but also because there have been a few elements that exist in the realms of fantasy, that its probably looking a bit out of place in Joss Whedon’s Firefly verse, which tried to remain as true as possible (for a sci-fi show set 500 years in the future.)

Below is an excerpt from one of the chapters, and I’ve literally just written this moments ago so its still a bit rough and might undergo changes before the story is complete. But nonetheless, this is taken from Chapter 7 of Needy’s Destiny 2: The Legend of Fox Cipher.


Black. That was all there was to see. There were stars to gaze at, true, but after spending a lifetime with nothing but stars to look at, they had soon lost their appeal.

Back home it was different. There were blue skies and green fields. Beautiful oceans and stunning waterfalls. The planet teemed with wildlife; animals of all shapes and sizes; flowers of every colour under the sun. And what a sun it was, blazing heat enough to brown the skin and give you a healthy glow. That was life back home. At least it had been during the good times. Before it all turned to crap.

Now Fox Cipher, like the rest of his “family” on board the Gallagher, had nothing but dull corridors and a black void to look out at.

It’d been over a century since Earth’s inhabitants took their last look at their dying planet, and only a small number of the population still remembered that day, the vast majority had long since passed. But even the ones that were still breathing, they didn’t remember Earth for what it really was. They didn’t remember its beauty. As far as they were concerned, Earth had been uninhabitable for years, and images of what it had once been were nothing more than a distant memory.

But for Cipher, it wasn’t too long ago. He remembered his home in Colorado. He remembered moving from city to city, from country to country, appreciating each one’s different quirks. He remembered taking walks along the mountainside and staring out across the land. He remembered being in love with a world that was now only referred to as Earth-That-Was.

He had hopes, like the rest of them, that this new solar system would be everything they hoped for; that after the terraforming of the planets was complete, they could start again. But the truth was Fox Cipher had lived longer than most. He’d seen promises broken and dreams squashed. He knew man far too well to believe they could ever really change. He wanted to believe. He wanted to believe that this could be the fresh start everybody truly needed. Finally, he might be able to stop running. Perhaps he might even be accepted for who he is, what he is.

But he wasn’t naïve. Whilst he admired these people, the ones he currently called “family”, these that would have gone mad years ago had they not all set their hopes on a dream – he knew what they were like deep down, each and every one of them. He wouldn’t be accepted by them, not any time soon at least. The truth was he wasn’t one of them, he was better than that, better than them. And for that very reason, they would hate him, hate him for what he had – something that they could never pay money for, nor be gifted with out of kindness. It was a gift given to him and him alone. A gift he never asked for but one he would be forced to bear. The gift of life.

If he had the choice, he’d sacrifice this gift for something more. Hope. Hope for each and every one of them. He didn’t know if he believed that mankind deserved it – they’d taken so much from him. But he’d lived long enough. He hoped, for their sakes, that these new Earths would offer more than just shelter. They’d offer redemption.

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