Chapter 8: Evolution of a Tragedy
AURORA: Before I go back to the beginning, I think it would be best to explain what's going on now. You may have guessed that something is VERY wrong here in our universe, and if so you've hit the nail on the head. Things here are going downhill fast. April and I are in the middle of a vast conflict…a conflict that will ultimately decide the fate of our universe.
CINDY: Fate of your universe? Isn't that a bit melodramatic?
APRIL: It is not. Aurora speaks the absolute truth. We face a terrible foe...a man whose goal in life is to conquer everything in his path and add it to his powerful dominion. He has taken over most of the Milky Way Galaxy already, and many of the neighboring ones as well. He has remorselessly destroyed planets and annihilated whole cultures in his quest for power. Luckily, Planet Gorlock has been able to resist all his attacks. The Gorlock army, as well as many other rebel fighters, have banded together to try and stop him.
AURORA: We are part of that network of rebels. So far, we haven't been able to take out this loser, but we won't give up. We will NEVER give up.
**Aurora's arm trembles almost imperceptibly as she slowly leans forward and grabs an unopened soda can. She slowly raises her gaze, eyes throbbing with emotion**
AURORA: I will destroy him for what he's done to everyone…for what he has done to me. Someday I will get him, and when I do I won't hold anything back. I will make him pay!
**Aurora's hand begins to tighten around the soda can, her face a mask of anguished determination. SNAP! The can bursts and purple liquid fizzes down her arm, staining her clothing and spreading into a dark pool on the table. She closes her eyes and lets the can clatter to the floor. Everyone is silent for a moment, then Jimmy speaks**
JIMMY: I think I understand…so, you want our help defeating this guy? Sounds doable. I can think of at least five or six inventions off the top of my head that would easily beat whatever this guy throws out at us. I could easily recreate them given the proper chemicals…
AURORA: If it were as easy as that, do you think this guy would still be around? Please! What do you take me for? Unfortunately, the situation is a little more complicated. He is extremely dangerous.
CINDY: Feh! He can't be that strong. Where is this loser from anyway? And how did he manage to single-handedly defeat everyone? You guys are pretty pathetic if you all lost to one man!
AURORA: (smiling) In order to understand how messed up things really are, we have to go back...back 10 years to December 11th…to Libby's birthday party, when all of this really began.
LIBBY: My birthday? Uh, I already had that, and we don't have no evil dictators runnin' around.
AURORA: Not in your universe you don't. But in ours, something happened on that day that changed our lives forever.
**Aurora gives a long sigh, then glances lingeringly at Libby. A sentimental glow comes into her eyes, and for a moment she seems lost in the past**
AURORA: You and I used to have so much fun, Libby. I remember it so clearly...our trips to the Candy Bar, our sleepovers, our crazy adventures with Jimmy, Sheen, and Carl. The way you used to tell me to get over my pride issues and just talk to Jimmy…and then the way you'd turn right back around and deny your own feelings for Sheen.
**Cindy, Jimmy, Sheen, and Libby all take turns blushing at these remarks**
AURORA: And most of all, I remember your 12th birthday party. You invited Gray Star to play, and BOY were you excited. Everyone was invited. It was gonna be the party of the year. Ha ha, remember how all the presents looked the same because all the kids took that same wrapping course at the learning hut…and I alphabetized them for you?
CINDY AND LIBBY: (smiling) Ya…
AURORA: Then I'm sure you also remember what happened next. Just before the party started, Neutron, Sheen, and Carl stopped by and dropped off their presents, but they seemed all anxious to leave again. I think it was something to do with some lame new invention of Neutron's. The "chronoarch" or something. But then that STUPID Betty Quinlan showed up, and that changed their plans quicker than I could blink.
LIBBY: What? Betty Quinlan didn't come to my party!
CINDY: Ya! I wouldn't have let her in!
AURORA: Well, she came to the party in our universe. And it irritated the heck out of me, I might add. I couldn't get a word in edgewise…Jimmy spent the whole time hanging on her every move.
JIMMY: What? I did? That never happened with us. We left Libby's and went back to the lab before the party!
AURORA: You certainly didn't in my universe. You were such a pathetic tongue dragger that day, Neutron. And when Gray Star played, you and Betty danced together…in fact, everyone was dancing. Except me.
**She leans forward over the table and stares him right in the eye**
AURORA: Do you know what it's like, to be the only one without somebody? To be all alone when everyone else is having fun? I swear, I could've jumped up on the stage and started spitting nickels and you still wouldn't have noticed me!
SHEEN: I would have noticed you! Especially if you were wearing the same outfit that you are now!
CARL: Ya, I would have noticed you too! I love nickels!
AURORA: Nice try you guys, but no. The point is, I wasn't exactly in a good mood by the time Libby started opening her presents. When she un-wrapped Jimmy's gift, it turned out to be a white bottle of perfume…or at least, that's what I thought. Jimmy started freaking out when he saw it. He tried to take it from Libby. He said she couldn't use it...it would ruin everything. He yelled at Carl, and said he had grabbed the wrong bottle. That he had given her Megalomanium instead of perfume.
CARL: Megalomanium? You mean that stuff that makes you mad with power?
AURORA: Exactly. But I didn't know that. I thought Jimmy was just being a jerk, and I wanted to get back at him. So I grabbed the bottle…
JIMMY: Oh no…
AURORA: Pointed it at his face…
JIMMY: No…
AURORA: And sprayed it in his eyes.
**There is a moment of choked silence as the kids absorb the full meaning of this**
LIBBY: You sprayed him in the face? What were you thinkin' girl?
AURORA: I wasn't thinking.
SHEEN: Wait a minute! Are you telling me Jimmy's the one who smelled the stuff? But I thought Libby was the one who became an evil dictator!
JIMMY: (growing pale) Not in this universe. So…it was me who was exposed to the Megalomanium? Me?
AURORA: Yes. And after that, you were never the same again. It didn't happen right away. In fact, life went on for quite a while without changing too much at all. But soon, I started noticing that something was wrong. It was subtle…the way you treated your friends, the way you flipped out over little things. The way you started to seek out power. I thought you were just having a bad week...but then the behavior continued, and soon it escalated.
JIMMY: (gulping) What did I do?
AURORA: Your manner went from immature to borderline to violent, all in a matter of weeks. At first it was impressive...your wardrobe changed, you stood up to the bullies, and you stood up to ME. You took charge of everything…and I was so dazzled by your newfound ability to wield power that I was blinded from the truth.
JIMMY: The truth?
AURORA: You started making inventions that you had never made before…inventions that could only hurt, not help. And soon it was like you were a totally different person…even Goddard had trouble recognizing you. Your parents thought you were just going through a phase or something, so nobody caught on to what was really going on. I think Carl may have suspected, but nobody really understood the extent of what would happen next.
CARL: I knew?
AURORA: Uh-huh. You knew that Jimmy had been exposed to the Megalomanium and that it was changing him. But you didn't know what to do. Jimmy was your best friend after all, and you didn't want to upset him. And by the end of March, NONE of us dared to upset him. By then, Jimmy had declared himself supreme high ruler of the entire town of Retroville. Nobody had even bothered to stand up to him. But it wasn't enough; his greed for power was insatiable. Driven by the Megalomanium, he started a mini-conquest. Town by town, state by state, Jimmy let everyone know what he intended to do. He tried to get us to help him...and Sheen and Carl did. But Libby and I drew the line. He got so angry at us…he got so angry at anyone who refused to obey him.
**She pauses, then takes a deep, shaky breath**
AURORA: He came to my house one day and confronted me. He told me that he was going to make me suffer…suffer so much that I'd wish I had never been born. I'll never forget the look in his eyes that day. It was inhuman.
**Jimmy's face pales to a sickly white**
AURORA: And he kept his promise. He resurrected an old favorite: the nanobots. You remember them, right? How they became so obsessed with human error that they deleted everyone on the planet? Well, he set them loose again. They deleted my parents first, then one by one, everyone I knew. As if that weren't enough, he sent them out after other targets, and it escalated to a terror campaign across the globe. Soon everyone was gone. Several of Jimmy’s old enemies managed to escape the onslaught, but I don’t think he really cared. By the end, the only people who were left were Carl, Sheen, Libby, and me.
JIMMY: No…
AURORA: Before he left, Jimmy came to see me again. I…I remember...it was so windy that day, but the air was heavy and dead. I was standing in the street, looking up at the empty city, the wind whipping the tattered ruins around me in a broken tornado. He walked up to me, and we stood looking at each other. He stared at me…just stared without saying anything at all. But he didn't need to. He knew he had won. I was broken. He had won.
**Aurora’s eyebrows knit together as she surveys their faces. Tears streak Libby's dark cheeks, and Cindy bites her lip to keep herself from crying. Carl fidgets restlessly and looks at his toes, Sheen drums his fingers nervously on the tabletop, and Jimmy is far away, lost in a daze. Aurora takes a deep breath, then continues**
AURORA: Then, something strange happened. Jimmy couldn't look me in the eye. He started to shake all over, and for a moment it seemed like he was fighting the Megalomanium. He looked up at me, and oh God…his eyes. I’ve never seen anything like them. He just stared at me…stared with a meaning that I couldn’t hope to understand. To this very day, I still don’t know what he was trying to tell me.
**Aurora bows her head, and her blonde bangs spill over her eyes, casting her face in shadow. She keeps her eyes downcast as she continues**
AURORA: Afterwards, he forced Carl, Sheen, and Libby into his rocket. And then he left. He left, just like that. I was completely alone, the sole survivor of earth, a piece of cosmic driftwood. I had nobody left and nowhere to turn.
**Nobody says anything, and the silence is deafening**
LIBBY: (almost inaudibly) What did you do?
AURORA: I didn’t do anything. In the end, it was luck that saved me.
CINDY: What do you mean?
APRIL: During the time that all this was happening on earth, I sent a series of message rocks to Jimmy. They weren’t about anything in particular…I just wanted to keep in touch. However, when he never replied to any of them, I began to get worried. So, I decided to pay Jimmy Neutron a visit.
AURORA: You can imagine my surprise when April showed up at my doorstep. I’ve never been so happy to see anyone in my whole life. It’s funny. Our past squabbles seemed so insignificant…almost like they had happened in another lifetime.
APRIL: After I found her, Aurora told me everything that happened. I was horrified, but I realized that immediate action had to be taken if we were to stop the newly evil Jimmy from destroying everything. I couldn’t just leave Aurora marooned on a ruined world, so I offered her the chance to fight back…I offered her a one-way ticket to Planet Gorlock.
AURORA: I had nothing to lose, so I went with April back to her home world. Pretty soon I learned that the strange and frightening new planet could also be a refuge…a clean slate, and a new beginning. I grew up there, in a sense. The person who I had been on Earth was gone.
APRIL: When we were only 13, Aurora and I joined the resistance movement, and we have been part of it ever since. In the eight years since then, we have dedicated our lives to the struggle. So many things have happened…
AURORA: (breaking in) Ya, ya, they don’t need to know all the details. Lord knows I wish I could forget them. All the rest aside, I think you now have a pretty clear picture of what happened, and what’s happening at the moment. Do you understand what we’re up against now?
JIMMY: Yes. It’s much worse than I ever could have imagined. I see now that we must help you…this is as much our problem as it is yours. I mean, it is OUR lives we’re talking about.
AURORA: So, we’re all agreed. I’ll give you a briefing about upcoming battle strategies soon. But in the meantime, I think you kids better get some down time. You look like you’ve all seen the Ghost of Christmas past. April, why don’t you show them to the spare rooms while I clean up after dinner?
**In choked silence, the kids leave the table and follow April down the corridor and back into the cockpit. They shuffle along as if in slow motion, each alone with their own tormented thoughts**
APRIL: This way, everyone.
**April leads them through another corridor and down a short hall. They come to a door on the right, and about five feet down there is another door leading to room right beside it**
APRIL: (pointing) OK, the first room here is for the girls. The second one that you see there is for the boys. I hope that you all get some sleep. You have been through a lot today.
**She turns without another word and
disappears down the hall. The kids listen as her footsteps fade into
an echo, and the echo fades into nothingness**
(LOL)