“Yes, I wasn’t alone there. Did you find only me there?”
Lora slightly pushed his chair to a bench down in the alley and sat.
“There was also a woman in your rescue unit. Unfortunately, she had died before we arrived.”
There was a pause and the man shook his head.
“I don’t remember her name,” he said bitterly. “I’m trying but I just can’t recall anything!”
His last words were permeated with obvious rage.
“Are you angry with yourself?” her question sounded very quietly but Derek reacted immediately.
“Wouldn’t you be?!”
Lora shook her head.
“Of course I can become angry… But rage is a tremendously destructive force that can cause a lot of harm.”
Derek’s anger immediately turned into amazement and now he was intently listening to Lora.
“We have learnt to control the self-destructive part of our personality,” she explained, seeing how much it puzzled him.
“Control? What do you mean by that? Control your temper?”
“No, we don’t actually repress fury, but we realize its futility.”
Derek still didn’t have any idea of what she was talking about.
“You are people though, aren’t you?” he tried to clarify. “Ordinary people get angry, fight, become furious…”
Lora sighed heavily, realizing that she was unable to explain her point of view to Derek without revealing to him the genuine reasons for the long voyages of ‘Solar Flotilla’.
“Derek, there is no doubt that we are human beings and that our ancestors were from Earth. But you must know something else. The doctor said that you mustn’t get stressed…”
“Please, spare me, Lora! What haven’t you told me? Do you mean about me spending 50 years in the rescue unit, and that since then the earthlings started flying into space on huge spaceships?”
“It’s much more complicated than that.”
“Even more complicated?” Derek repeated her words hesitantly.
“Our ancestors left Earth more than two hundred and fifty years ago. We think your ship was sent to look for us fifty years later. You were in stasis for two hundred years, Derek. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t know how to begin.”
There was a long pause.
“Every story has a beginning,” the young man uttered unexpectedly.
Lora nodded.
“In 2014 Andre Mendes, one of the richest men on the planet at that time, founded a society called the ‘Unity of Opposites’. Not many people believed that one day he would transform from a successful and practical businessman into a philosopher and philanthropist. Nevertheless, many different people became interested in his ideas and joined a team under his leadership. Andre thought that every human being has two opposite sides: one being a creative side, while the other a destructive side. The latter makes people desire limitless power which they use to start wars and enslave others; save up enormous fortunes at the expense of simple workers; and turn a blind eye to the hungry and terminally ill. Mendes was absolutely convinced that the expanding human ‘ego’ was to blame for the destruction of civilization. Our leader taught his followers to be aware of that destructive part, to find the line beyond which our feelings and desires become a deadly weapon against ourselves and the outside world.”