New Atlantis: Heroes

They found me.

It was always only a matter of time before they tracked my research back to me. I just thought I’d have more time than this. In case these pages are separated from my journal, let me put this on record. My name is Dr Wade Rushcroft and I’m an Arcanologist. I study Magic, basically.

Six months ago I began a project to end this pointless conflict, this endless brutal War. Which war? The war against humanity.

Aeons ago, this planet Earth was ours. We were a strong and united race, with Magic as a weapon to destroy and our tool to build. But then, the Ones Without came. I still haven’t managed to trace their origins, where they came from. A race of people, clearly with a similar DNA to us, but they lacked the gift.

Instead, the beautiful spark of Magic in their minds was replaced by a lust for blood and a genius for warfare. No one’s sure what happened, but something did. Something big enough to tear a rift between us and them. Now it’s a constant fight for survival. They hunt us down, making new advancements in weaponry and brutality every day. Many of us end up strapped down on operation tables, screaming while the human monsters attempt to rip our gifts from us by force.

They don’t care how much precious blood is wasted in their quest to take back what they lost.

They don’t care how many mothers lost their daughters, how many sons lost their fathers because of...what exactly?

It was greed. Plain and simple.

A lot of us on the streets want to take the fight back to them with the full might of Magic behind us. I personally know that that will do more harm than good. The human race is young and headstrong, but full of potential. I know that they can achieve greatness one day. Wiping them out, committing genocide, should never be an answer.

Scientists are never sure of anything - the default perspective is, scientifically speaking, scepticism. But of this? I was certain.

When I realised that our options were closing down, that’s when I began working on finding a new solution. Finding a way to save my people without resorting to the pointless shedding of blood. And I found one. Or rather invented one. I call it a Dimensional Cannon. It’s a device that I designed to punch holes in the fabric of reality and catapult organisms across into parallel dimensions.

With it, we could find a new home. One to call our own.

But the High Command don’t see it that way. They think that tearing holes in the universe will ultimately lead to the entire breakdown of reality itself. They don’t understand that science is full of risks. If I can build this Cannon, I told them, I can save us. I can save us all. Nevertheless, they shut my research department down and outlawed the research of Trans-Dimensional Travel right the way across the world.

They’re right, of course. Messing with reality is not something you want to be doing. But I couldn’t stop. I didn’t swear my loyalty to the High Command government, I swore it to science. To progress. To discovery. To truth and to the pursuit of good. I had to stop. But I couldn’t stop. So on I went.

Finally, I was finished. The brand new device. Even with it’s breathtaking size and vastness, it appeared still too slight to break down the walls of the Universe itself. But I don’t have time to talk about what it looks like. They’ll be here soon.

I don’t know who snitched, but they know what I’m doing and they know where I am. They’re coming, right now. I don’t know what they’ll do. Kill me? It’s more likely they’ll erase bits of my memory to make me forget ever having this crazy idea. Even the High Command agree that I’m a genius...they can’t risk killing me. I can’t risk them sieving my memory either. This project is the only chance we have to save ourselves. That’s why I’m writing it down.

Whoever finds this...the Cannon has been placed at a hidden location. It’s the only one of it’s kind, and I need to make sure that they don’t dismantle it. Coordinates: 17-decimal-dash-sigma-38. Whoever you are, you need to find it. It’s our only hope.

Get all of our people back to the Motherland. It’s where our Magic is strongest. Back to Atlantis. Close the city down, and it should buy us some time. And by ‘us’, I mean ‘you’. I won’t be there. It’s my destiny to stay here. Because the Command are right. I need to find a way to travel across the dimensions safely. But not right now. They’re almost here.

But it’s okay. This isn’t the last that Atlantis has seen of me. I’ve just had an IDEA.