E.I.G.H.T

“Some girl huh?” a voice said that caught my attention and made me look around. I cocked my head trying to figure out what this thing was it looked like a primate. I remember my father had downloaded different classes of primates and this one looked like a chimpanzee but it was much larger than one, and it was wearing clothes and it was speaking.

“Where did you come from?” I asked it.

I did not have a logical answer to this, there was no way this creature could have snuck up on me the way that it did, my programming was too good, then again it was this forest and earlier I had gotten snagged by a trap that the Bear had set. Plus there was this interaction with Rae I was still trying to understand, maybe that was how this thing had snuck up on me.

“A planet called Gaia, you’ve never heard of it,” the creature said.

The creature stood about the same height as I did. He had curios clothes on: a golden vest on his chest, a golden sash on his abdomen, white pants and a great long golden cape that he had draped around his neck.

“Gaia?” I asked, scanning my logs. He was right I had never heard of it. “Why had I not heard of this place?”

“Long story,” the creature said shrugging.

When he had shrugged it was the first time I had seen what he was carrying in one hand. It was some sort of mace. It was massive, much bigger than he was and it seemed like it was made of solid gold. It looked much heavier than what this creature could have been lifting.

“So who are you what do you want?” I asked.

“You asked me to come find you when you found her again.” The primate said and I looked at him confused. It was the first time that I had ever seen this creature, and yet it was claiming this was not the first time?

“You say that as if we had met before,” I said.

“We have, it wasn’t in that form though,” he said pointing at me when he said this. I analyzed what he had said and I realized he was saying this as if I had another form before.

“You say that like I had a different form,” I said.

“Think of it that way as you may,” the primate said. “Sometimes truth is strange than fiction. Speaking of which you should find out more about what the rebellion is really doing and make your own mind up about the situation.”

I had heard somebody walking off in the distance. I thought it was Rae coming back so I turned in the direction I had heard the noise. I then turned back to look at the creature and he was gone. I scanned the area there was no sign of this being. There was not even a sign that the being had been there.

Days had passed. The camp was almost like a small city. They had made booths that were selling food and wares there were families of up to 8 or 9 people living in small shacks across the camp.

I calculated that there were 250,874 people living in this camp. This was, per the Bear, one of at least 10 different camps that was in the Rhoatian Forest. This meant that there had to be at least 2 million people staying in camps in the massive Rhoatian Forest, and those were the ones that were just in the camps, I was certain there had to be more out in the abroad areas and locations.

Common stratagem dictated that one would not have all forces compiled over in one location. Doing so would make that place vulnerable to attack. However, it was my opinion that this Rhoatian forest had to be the most heavily condensed area of the Rebellion, with at least three of the top fugitives of the empire.

After my encounter with Rae, and subsequently that strange primate I decided to investigate Zephyr more. It was only logical at this point, this was since it could be that there was more to this man named Zephyr than what I was led to believe. This was beginning to become more and more self-evident that there had to be more to this character named Zephyr Ezekiel Platinumus.

The people of the camp, upon inquiry spoke extremely highly of him.

“So ye want to know more ’bout Zephyr eh?” The Bear said one day after inquiring of the mysterious man. “Well I can tell ye that he ain’t no soldier.”

My subroutines had a hard time understanding what the Bear had said. He had given a double negative in his sentence. Both definitions of Double Negatives in my logs did not make sense in the context he used this.

“Explain,” I asked.

“Well ye see ’e is a scientist, ’e ’as been all ’is life.” The Bear said as he scratched his beard. “’e is super clever too, ’e graduated from the top of ’is class on Golordia Epsilon, at a very young age too ’e couldn’t ’ave been no older than ye when ’e went into that school, that was un’eard of.”

I of course knew all of this, one could simply look for the name Zephyr Platinumus in the logs of Golordia records and one would find exactly what the Bear was saying.

“But the boy ’as a way with ’imself that is very unique.” The Bear said, and I must have been frowning questioningly because he added, “By that I mean that ’e is extremely charismatic ’e ’as a way to just win anyone over simply by talking to ’em.”

I had heard of such attribute in a person before. The way this type of person was defined as having “inherit charisma.” This was apparently a rare attribute that came with select people. The thought that Zephyr would have such a personality made sense. How else would such a young person win over as many people as he had seemingly overnight.

“I tell ye what I’ll introduce ye to ’im.” The Bear said.

Just like that I finally found a way to execute target one “Locate Zephyr Ezekiel Platinumus”