“I’m nobody, kid, nobody at all.”

  “Don’t call me kid. A nobody doesn’t come to know things like the name of Commander Moore. So you’re either a spy for the Insurgency or a defector, maybe someone the Commander thought dead and gone. Which is it?”

  “I’m Raith, a farmer from Gaia. That’s it – there’s no juicy story here, kid – sorry to disappoint!”

  The officer moved towards me, fists balled, but stopped as the senior officer spoke up.

  “Sit down and shut up, you idiot.”

  The junior officer reluctantly complied, returning to his seat.

  I felt sorry for the kid. He wasn’t wrong. Knowing the full names of the Commander, his wife, and his child was oddly specific information. Sure, I was Raith the farmer now, but I could’ve been a defector or a spy in the past – I couldn’t remember either way.

  The door opened, and the Commander walked back into the room, holding a large syringe.

  “I asked you where you were going because you knew, and I did not.” He grabbed my arm. “Now those roles have reversed. So, ask me. Ask me where you’re going,” he sneered, rolling up my sleeve.

  “Where am I going?”

  “To Earth,” he said as he pressed the needle into my arm and emptied the syringe's contents.

  “Earth? Why Earth?” I asked as my eyes grew heavy.

  “Because the advisors will know what to do with you!”

  Chapter 7

  “You Know Me?”

  2149, Common Era – Planet Earth, Inner Rim, United Earth Republic

  I opened my eyes. The world around me didn’t register with my brain, but the way I felt did: relaxed like I’d slept soundly for the first time in years. So, this must be what peace feels like, I mused.

  As my body woke up, details of my surroundings began to check in with my thoughts.

  I was lying on a bed. It was large enough to fit at least five, maybe six people, and it was soft. I remembered my bed back on Gaia, how small and hard it’d been. This bed was on a different level though, with dark wooden posts at each corner, holding up a canopy of blood-red drapes. Bed curtains, I thought, weird.

  “Not weird – this is what luxury looks like, you peasant!”

  I breathed in deeply, suddenly aware of the scents in the air – like sweet citrus with an undertone of lavender, and yet, not quite.

  It was a beautiful smell, unlike anything I’d smelt before, a far cry from the earthen odours with which I was so familiar. As my brain continued to awaken, my memory came back online, and suddenly my thoughts were consumed by armies and insurgencies, soldiers and officers, worlds of war and planets of pleasure. I shot upright in bed, half expecting the three officers to be standing there, delighting in my panic as their mindfuck came to fruition. Instead, I was greeted by an enormous room.

  “Holy fuck!”

  I threw the blankets off and leapt out of bed, spinning around as I took in the splendour of the space. The red walls matched the bed drapes, divided up by gold accentuated marble columns. A hot tub was sunk into the polished marble floor, steam gently rising from its tempered waters. I glanced up in awe at the golden chandeliers, seemingly miles above my head.

  As I spun around, my eyes fell upon a colossal painting.

  My mouth fell open. “What … the … fuck?”

  It was me. Younger and without my scar, but unmistakably me.

  Red and gold robes hung from my body as I reclined on a lectus, a platter of fruit at my fingertips and a large apple in my hand. In the background sat a magnificent lake framed by snow-capped mountains. As I continued taking in the details of the painting, the door to the room silently swung open, and a young woman entered. She looked at me and averted her eyes downwards.

  “Your Grace, forgive me – I was sent to fetch you.”

  “Nothing to be forgiven for,” I said, no idea who she was or for whom she was fetching me, but I was ready to leave this room and hopefully get some answers. “Lead on!”

  “Um … Your Grace would perhaps like some clothing?”

  I looked down and realised I was stark naked.

  “Fuck! Please, forgive me … I – I didn’t realise I was naked!”

  “That’s okay.”

  We continued standing there in increasingly awkward silence as I hoped like hell that she’d tell me where I could find some clothing. When she remained silent, I spoke up.

  “So, here’s the thing – I don’t know where any clothing is?”

  “Oh! Over here, Your Grace,” she said, moving past me.

  Pressing on a wall panel, it popped outward, and with the slightest tug, the board glided silently to the side. It uncovered a large wardrobe within the wall, filled with clothing.

  Standing there, dumbfounded by the variety on offer, it dawned on me that a single item of clothing from here was probably worth more than what my parents would make in a year of farming.

  “What clothing would you like?”

  “I … I don’t know, sorry.”

  “Perhaps you’d like your favourite?” she asked, pulling out a sweeping red and golden robe.

  “Ah … something simpler perhaps?” I replied, thinking myself quite pompous if I were to wear the robe on offer.

  The young woman placed the robe back, rummaged around for a few moments, and pulled out a dark grey set of track pants and a hoodie lined with red velvet and gold thread. Still indulgent, but I was growing tired of covering myself.

  “That’ll do, thank you.”

  “I’ll let you get changed, Your Grace. I will wait outside.”

  ***

  True to her word, the young woman stood patiently outside the room as I exited it, donned in my new attire.

  “This way, Your Grace,” she said, leading me on.

  “What’s your name, if I may ask?”

  She stopped, still ahead of me but partially turning her head to glance behind.

  “I am Alyssa, Your Grace,” she said quietly.

  “Nice to meet you, Alyssa.”

  She nodded and kept walking, seemingly fearful of conversing with me. I’d noted her continued usage of “Your Grace” when addressing me. Paired with the painting on the wall and the fact that I had a “favourite robe”, I had a past here.

  “No … I had a past here. You have nothing!”

  Ignoring the darkness, I took to looking around the hallways as we walked, noting that the walls out here were marble, like the floors – quite a contrast to the richness of the red that adorned last night’s chambers. Every hundred metres or so, the left side of the hallway would open up into a courtyard.

  Whilst each one was slightly different from the rest, they all shared some combination of gardens, seating, and pools. Those pockets of greenery breathed life into the otherwise artificial passageways.

  “Who are you taking me to see, Alyssa?”

  “The advisors.”

  “Who are they?”

  “It is not my place to say. You will speak with them soon enough.”

  “You can tell me. I won’t let anyone know you spoke with me if that helps?”

  Alyssa quickened her step, seemingly to avoid me and any conversation. I reached forward, grabbing her wrist. She stopped and instantly brought her other arm up, covering her face as if … as if to protect it. Like this had happened before – someone grabbing her and striking her. Had that been me? Had I done these things?

  I let go of her arm. “Alyssa, I won’t hurt you. Please, I just need some answers.”

  “I cannot give you what you seek!” she whimpered, turning and running away down the hall.

  Great, I thought, now what?

  A door slowly opened to my right, oversized and heavy, and it ground against the floor as it moved. As it opened, a group of seven old men came into view, all wearing dark grey robes with elaborate red patterns. One of the men stepped forward, a slight smile upon his face.

  “Raith, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Um … yeah … yes.”

  “Come inside. All the answers you seek will be revealed in due course.”

  The men parted to allow me through, and I moved forward into a cold and dark room, where black marble replaced the white marble found elsewhere. A lack of lighting further accentuated the darkness. These elements of the room enhanced its focal point: a solid circular plinth table, atop of which was embedded a holographic projector running from edge to edge. Its projection hovered in the air, displaying a wealth of information: video feeds, documents, and graphs.

  “What is this place?”

  “This is the hub of all our sensors. Our eyes and ears from all over the Empire, providing us advisors, the brain of the Empire if you like, with the data we need to make decisions.”

  I turned to look at the speaker, the same man who’d invited me into the room.

  “And who are you?”

  “I am Zavis. And these gentlemen are Phobus, Anwir, Biff, Avid, Chunta, and Lorcan.”

  Each man nodded in turn as Zavis introduced them.

  “And you’re all the advisors? On what do you advise? Who do you advise?”

  “We provide advice on how to run the Empire. And we advise the emperor.”

  “Do you know me?”

  “Intimately,” Zavis said with a smile.

  “Who am I?”

  Zavis’s smile faded. “You … you have no idea?”

  “What I know is that I’m a farmer from Gaia. My name is Raith. I don’t know why I’m here or what you want with me.”

  “You are the missing Emperor Tynan Khidar, third ruler of the Empire.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. Your grandfather, Nicolas Frith, declared independence from the United Earth Republic after colonising Terranova. His son, your father, Khidar Nicolas, claimed additional territory, expanding into the Khidar Empire. And presently, it is the Tynan Empire, named after you.”

  “All of that means nothing to me! For all I know, that’s just a fabrication!”

  “That’s fair. How about a detail I’m sure you’ve kept under wraps – the voice inside your head.”

  How did he know about that? Only my parents, the doctor, and Amorina knew about that.

  “He knows it because he speaks the truth!”

  “How … how could you know that?”

  “Because I know what it is. I know how you got it and where it came from, and I know what you can do with it. Perhaps it seemed like magic … the way you could issue a command and be obeyed.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, before realising I didn’t know what to say.

  Zavis smiled. “As I said, I know you … intimately.”

  “What is the voice?”

  “That is better explained elsewhere. I can take you to the place where you both were created.”

  “Okay, assuming what you say is true and I am Tynan Khidar – what do you want with me?”

  “That is ultimately your choice. You have absolute power here. What you decide is fact.”

  “There must be some options though, a preferable pathway you’d like me to follow?”

  “Yes – ideally, you’d resume your mantle and become the emperor once more. Your subjects need to see you, for they’ve been losing faith. We need you to take command of what you own.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “We’ll let you go anywhere you want to.”

  No, they won’t, I thought.

  “No, they won’t!” the darkness agreed.

  “In my absence … you have all been running the Empire?”

  “Yes, of course. That is part of our duty to you, to lead if you are otherwise occupied.”

  I remembered the officer’s conversation back on Astarte, about the emperor’s son.

  “If I were absent, my son would surely rule in my place?”

  “Ichirō is currently twelve years old. He was six when you vanished. In either case, he wasn’t ready to rule. This is exactly why we have been in charge.”

  A twelve-year-old son. I rested my head in my hands, rubbing my temples as I processed everything. If I had a son, then did that mean I had a wife?

  “I presume I have a wife?”

  Zavis gave me a confused look. “Why would you presume that?”

  “Uh, well, Ichirō’s mother … would be my wife?”

  “No, Raith. He was born to one of your concubines, just as your two daughters were.”

  “One of my … wait, I have two daughters as well?”

  “Yes: Winona and Adanna.”

  Ichirō, Winona, and Adanna; I turned their names over in my mind, letting the truth sink in: I was a father.

  “They … they all share a mother?”

  “No. Three different women mothered your children.”

  What sort of man had I been to father three children with three different women in the past?

  Then a realisation dawned upon me.

  “Alyssa – she’s one of them, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, she’s Ichirō’s mother.”

  These men knew Alyssa’s connection to me, to my past, and they’d intentionally chosen to send her to fetch me. Thinking of the gloomy picture that was slowly emerging, I imagined her at the mercy of the man it seemed I’d once been. The way she recoiled when I’d grabbed her, anticipating a strike.

  “She deserved every hit she got!” the darkness sneered.

  The words shot through my mind like a bolt of lightning and echoed like rumbling thunder. Whilst the whole puzzle remained unclear, a critical piece had just fallen into place. I was Raith – there was no denying that – just a simple farmer from Gaia, a nobody.

  But the voice that had been a permanent resident in my mind from my inception was my past self. I didn’t yet know how it had happened, or why, but I now knew who. Tynan Khidar.

  “Yeeeeeessssssss!”

  “I want to understand what happened to me. How I stopped being Tynan and started being Raith.”

  “Of course! Follow me, and I’ll take you to where it all began.”

  Chapter 8

  A Tale of Two Minds

  2149, Common Era – Planet Earth, Inner Rim, United Earth Republic

  The advisors led me back to the hallway in a protective formation – three in front and four behind. We hadn’t walked far before they stopped at a seemingly innocuous stretch of corridor. Zavis walked up to the right-side wall, placing his hand against it. A green light appeared from within the wall itself, starting from the top of his hand and moving down to the bottom, at which point, it vanished.

  A wall section moved inward and then slid to the side, revealing a descending passage.

  “What’s this?”

  “An entrance to your laboratory,” Zavis replied as he headed inside.

  “I had a laboratory? Was I like … a scientist?”

  “Not formally, but you were a knowledgeable man, and you experimented, free of oversight.”

  The other advisors and I followed suit, the doorway sliding back into place once we’d crossed the threshold. I wondered what sorts of things I had worked and experimented on. At the bottom, the stair opened into a small foyer with three diverging pathways.

  The procession led me down the left path, which in turn led to an autopsy room set up with three autopsy tables.

  “What the fuck is this!” I cried, not wanting to believe what my eyes were seeing: on each of the three tables lay a partially uncovered, mummified body.

  I scanned each corpse, noticing that each one appeared untouched except for a common injury; their skulls had been cut open in precisely the same place as my scar. I peered into the exposed head cavity of the nearest body, looking at the crusty remains of its brains, and then I glanced over at the dried blood covering the tools and probes that lay scattered on nearby workbenches.

  “What … what is this shit?”

  “This is where you made your discoveries, Raith.”

  “My … wait, what? What discoveries?”

  “You perfected artificial wombs, figured out how to triple cryosleep duration, and perhaps most importantly, you discovered that the brain could be rewritten, shaped and moulded at will.”

  “Why … why would I be trying to discover those things?”

  “Your father expanded the Empire’s reach. But your ambitions were always focused on solidifying that power, making the Empire more resilient and efficient.”

  “How are those discoveries doing that?”

  “Think about it. You can grow armies with safe artificial wombs. With improved cryosleep, you can transport soldiers further without needing to make stops.”

  “And brain rewriting?”

  “That was Plan B; when you inherited the Empire, you also inherited a growing disdain for it. The armies amassing on Ares and Astarte were and still are your Plan A solution.”

  “So this was my backup plan? My … my failsafe?”

  “Exactly!”

  “And what – I tried it on myself like some mad scientist?”

  “Heavens, no! Why do you think these poor souls are here?”

  I walked over to the nearest cadaver, a young child, and looked down at its preserved body. There was bruising around its wrists and throat. I looked over at the other two bodies; they both had the same bruising patterns. These people had been taken against their will and cuffed, but the throat bruises?

  “Choked them … cut off their air and watched them die!”

  A croak escaped my throat, and I felt tears well up in my eyes. I lifted a hand towards the body; it grew blurry as my tears continued to build. The tears fell, and everything came in to sharp focus as I placed my hand around the child's throat. It was a perfect match. I recoiled in disgust.

  “Why show me this!” I screamed.

  “So you’d understand who you are. Who you really are!”

  “Not this pathetic creature you’ve become …”

  “And these victims? Were they forced here?”

  “You command what you own. Everything in the Empire is your property; yours to control!”

  Those words echoed through my head, unfortunately all too familiar.

  “Is that … is that how I controlled the soldiers?”

  “In a way, yes. The Empire’s soldiers are trained to obey their commanders, but they are trained to obey you above all else. Your voice is drilled into their heads every day as recruits. When used with authority, you control them.”