Selene

By Valerio Dalla Ragione

A world that underwent various reconstructions and reforms based on a social class at risk, with weak social integrity and governed by a treaty that has regulated the relationships of the City-States that survived the war: Redui and Eyodasmi. In the midst of the complex and delicate humanity of the sixth millennium, four students leave their hometown to pursue the highest level of education in the cultural capital of the time. The social tensions and ideological implications that dominate the scene influence and disrupt the lives of these four friends. Their experience will lead them to take actions that they never thought they would have to justify neither to themselves nor to the world around them. Their optimism, trust of knowledge and experience now seem illusory and the causes of the most obscene crimes or highest merits all seem to depend on the actions and dialogs of these four protagonists.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Mar 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781507175620

Book preview

Valerio Dalla Ragione 

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Selene

"Nothing surpasses not being born,

but if born,

to return where we came from

is the next best thing."

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- Sofocle, Oedipus at Colonus

Stories and fairy tales are often filled with good and evil, with conflicts between good and bad individuals and with more or less complex plots whose ending we could already foresee.

They are also full of heroes, of brave individuals you have already encountered dozens of other times in other adventures and of many acute and functional minds at the service of a negative force without even knowing why.

If this is what you are looking for, then we don't think you'll be satisfied because what you are about to read is the story of what We really lived through and experienced.

It's not easy to see deep within a man and it's often even more difficult to judge him.

For this reason, the words you'll come across in the following pages were not the result of our mere imagination, but of how the events spontaneously occurred, devoid of praise or condemnation.

Before fully diving into the reality of this narration, there are a few things you should know:

On September 2, 2778, at an unspecified time, the Earth was victim of the fury of hundreds of volcanoes that - after thousands of years of waiting - decided to show their most violent and catastrophic side throughout the planet.

Billions of human beings died within a few hours.

The ashes generated by these titanic mountains obscured the skies for decades, hovering over the remaining population and reducing it by half each year.

Little is known about what happened to our kind during that time of terror, an era that lasted for almost twelve centuries or until the birth of the esteemed Friedrich Box.

In order to allow you to better orient yourself, we could provide you with dates, even though they are not so nice to look at;

  2778: Volcanic cataclysm and the beginning of the new Middle Ages

  3500 (?): Approximate year of the founding of Redui and Eyodasmi, the only two cities-states on the Earth; twinned in the name of their mutual help.

Desperate expedition to the moon and of which no one will ever know anything.

  3911-3953: Birth and death of the physicist Friedrich Box, who'd only lived in Redui and who marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of an era of progress.

  4000-4500: Settlement of many colonies around the planet.

Man discovered his desire of conquest.

  4596: The descendants of the survivors of the lunar expedition were spotted from earth and the city of Selene was about to be built on their town.

  4612: Redui and Eyodasmi go to war, the most violent one humanity has ever known.

More than five hundred million people lost their lives, in a more or less atrocious manner, over a period of 24 years. After the war and end of the twinning, the colonies, which had depended on the union of these two powers up that time, sought protection from one of these two cities. An agreement, which lasted until today, sanctioned the terms of the new relationship between the two States.

Selene, the capital of the moon and which was much smaller than the two terrestrial giants, was led by the immortal monakhòs Lav Pat'Nab, who opted to stay neutral.

However, all of this will be explained in greater detail and liveliness further into the story.

For now, all we can say is that precisely eleven centuries after the beginning of the war, Laszlo Prathama Simmeras, a twenty-year old university student, was getting ready to leave the house. The latter was located in the Palladium District, the largest and wealthiest area of Redui. We could say it was more of an apartment than a house; practically located at one kilometer from the ground.

The street was silent, the air was still and the entire city was an immense soap bubble waiting to explode.

Redui, year 5712.

1

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Shorter, shorter thought Laszlo, but, in doing so, he made a sharp incision above his chin. Too short. He glanced out of the window that overlooked the street intersection of Kish and Lagash, while trying to find something to use on his wound. Dawn had still not arisen, but it was always best to leave in the dark than to deal with the Palladium's hellish crossroads in the morning. Traffic wasn't the only issue since a special unit of the Civilian Forces would already be setting guard at that time.

Reluctant to dwell on his concerns for too long, he quickly went out and descended to the 11th floor. 

The stairs, which were probably the only non-automated element in the entire building, were only illuminated by an already fading lunar beam of light. Yet, to him, they felt slender, spatial, rhythmic and liberating, almost overwhelming as they conveyed a great sense of projection.

He was ecstatically filled with euphoria and completely irrational, but this sensation thrust him to go down even faster.  He descended faster and faster with every step, sometimes skipping two, three or four at once. But, then, he slipped and hit his head against a glass window.

That's enough for today, he said.

He slowly made his way to his Wohks and turned it on.

Who knows what it’s like to drive at night? At the most, the biggest difference could be the temperature in the tunnel.

He hesitated a moment longer before stepping on the accelerator; the vehicle also stumbled, barely making any sound, but then began to move. In the tunnel, the air was so cold that Laszlo was forced to seal each slit of his Wohks before speed would have prevented him from doing so.

There, dawn was coming. Since the tunnels were almost completely empty, he didn’t have to pay as much attention to his driving and his eyes were able to fully grasp the light show before him; the fog, as rarefied as the air at more than eight hundred meters from the ground, split the lunar light beam into a wide variety of colors that gleamed in-between the very tall buildings.

As expected, the tunnels were still cold. Driving at high speed wasn’t dangerous, so Laszlo accelerated to two hundred since the on site lesson would start within a few minutes. He began to slow down as soon as he saw the special Civilian Force Unit’s post, near the sign that marked the end of the Palladium District. He prepared the various forms and documents as soon as an agent motioned him to stop. It looked like a simple checkpoint that had probably been required as a result of the riots.

After having taken Laszlo's papers, the agent approached him, showing little interest in his work:

-What's your name, boy?-

-Laszlo Simmeras-

-Number?-

-Prathama-

-District?-

-Palladium, agent. Third block. I have to attend a lesson at the Dimensional Center and, if you don't mind, I'm in a bit of a hurry-

The agent smiled and returned his documents, keeping only the forms:

-We'll keep these, boy- his smile became wider - you're free to go now.-

Laszlo didn't bother to reply and immediately drove off; perhaps as a result of the nausea he'd felt as such a provocation.

He finally reached the change of district sign and could only still hope to arrive on time. Just a few blocks away from the Dimensional Center, he heard the biblical violence of the sound he was most afraid of; the demonstrations had begun.

In a last burst of anger, he pushed on the Wohks' accelerator and sped off at full speed until the next column, where he left the vehicle before running to the elevator. After having properly tied himself to safety posts, he screamed as loud as he could:

-Elevator! Floor zero, crazy. Stop.-

Needless to say that his blood had entirely gone to his head, but as soon as he was on the ground, although a bit dazed, he immediately forgot about his physical condition and only worried about running as fast as he could to the Dimensional Center, for which the antenna was his only point of reference.

The skyscrapers were much lower than the ones in the Palladium District and thus easier to recognize. There were only a few kilometers to go and Laszlo ran and hid behind the darkest alleys to avoid the crowd of protesters, with only his electronic notebook in hand.

Obviously, he didn't manage to and started pushing against a flood of posters, boards and banners, never realizing the risk he was running.

Then, after half a kilometer of pushing, elbowing and even kicking, he was seized by a strong hand that couldn't have belonged to a man. Laszlo turned around and was struck by the size of that individual who certainly didn't seem to like him. The expression on that man's face was similar to that of an animal, like that pig he had seen in a two-dimensional representation of the third millennium at the University of Palladium. Despite the imminent danger he was running, he almost wanted to laugh, even after seeing how the veins on that skull, whose hair almost seemed like a joke, were violently throbbing.

Suddenly, Laszlo realized this was less amusing than the procession that had already stopped a few seconds ago. In fact, he had managed to capture everyone's attention in that silent, cold and anxious environment. Some were calling him bourgeois or aristocrat before that silence broke out into smaller fragments of screams whose direction he couldn't pinpoint.

The pig-like man grabbed him by the hem of his jacket, almost breaking it as he pulled Laszlo towards him, when a boy with a shaved head and a very tight outfit placed himself in-between them and motioned the man to put the