your work does not go on, the harmful rays will return to eliminate all living beings and the whole planet will die.”
“That may not be completely true. I have reasons to believe that new forms of life will be created on Samna if the existing ones ever become extinct” answered Novonos. If the muscles in his face were properly positioned, they would now form into a grimace. “But, you see, Samna has finally given birth to children who live happily on it. You do not have to live scared, hidden beneath the earth or at the bottom of lakes and seas” he said and leaned towards her again. “If I was able to cry, I’d shed oceans for the pain this planet has endured until it found some peace at last. Too long have they struggled onto a battered, corrupt world. With the Scanning's help, they can finally remain happy and free. I will not let this be lost.”
His yellow eye was watching Teftkra. She had already understood what was about to happen, but she was still hesitant to take the first step.
“You know what needs to be done, don’t you?” asked he.
Teftkra stared into the yellow eye.
“I'm ready” she said. “I'm probably lying, but this is the only way I can make the right decision, at this moment. Do what you have to do. I'm ready.”
Gentle waves of optimism and joy flooded the room. She could not explain how, but she felt that this mood was emanating from Novonos. Was it from his body? Or from his weird eye? She could not tell.
Novonos leaned towards her for one last time. His eye shined powerfully. An unknown force was compelling her to look much closer into it. She could hear something like microphone buzzing from afar, barely audible. The bright yellow eye started moving around its axis, rotating around itself. It began slowly, but it was steadily increasing its speed. The microphone buzzing grew louder in Teftkra’s ears. Rather than trying to repress it, she surrendered herself to it. Her ears were filled with a shrill frequency that would have normally destroyed her hearing. The eye was rotating at a crazy speed. And she was just standing there, with her eyes fixed on the yellow bright eye.
In an instant, the world before her eyes shined brighter than ever. The tiny sounds that came out of the neurons of her brain, as she was turning into pure energy, sounded loud and clear around her. No picture could ever capture the transformation that was taking place in that room. No mind would have been able to understand the process of eclampsia. And, once Teftkra was turned into energy, the knowledge of the Scanning passed through her as the flow of life passes through a newly conceived fetus.
“Union. Spiritual and physical, total union. The price of the Scanning” said she.
This was the inevitable horror of the Scanning. The final cost. The action that was needed to protect the planet required the involvement of both spirit and body. The spirit of the Protector and a body from Samna. Each time a part of Novonos’ essence was lost, a resident of Samna died as well. It was a sacrifice of body and spirit for duty’s sake. An unforeseen consequence, this horrific union of the two elements. The muscles that were covering Novonos were neither removed from others, nor placed on him. Novonos’ body was made with the Scanning’s victims. With each death of a Samnyan, that person's genetic information would end up at the Source. Sometimes it was a single cell, sometimes a whole limb. Their abominable formation was the price for protection. Every single time it happened, the pain was unbearable. And Samna’s Protector had endured that pain for twelve million years.
“Now you are like I was. Do not look for me in the memories of the Universe. Gods go nowhere once they die.”
Those were Novonos’ last words, a moment before he was forever erased from the world.
At the forgotten room 404, in the abandoned corridor of an ordinary hotel, Teftkra’s bright green glow filled up the entire space. The disgusting body had disappeared. The yellow eye was lost. Only Teftkra stayed behind, honored and cursed to protect the world in which she had grown up so quickly. She was no longer afflicted by the old pains. The problems of midlife were now to her as invisible as the existence of that room throughout the years. Cut off from the world, she put all her old memories to rest but not to oblivion, for their need may arise one day.
The new Protector carried on the Scanning, offering herself as a spiritual sacrifice, lasting for as many millions of years as needed.
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