Fated or Fabricated?

     "4... 3..." Ground Control shouted. “We have liftoff!” The space shuttle’s engines started to work, pushing him up, up, up, into the sky.

     During the long journey up to Kreludor, Cavach seemed to relive his past, the memories of his life appearing before him. He watched, amazed, as his earliest memory appeared.

     *********

     A girl, a Neopets veteran, opens the door to get her daily copy of the Neopian Times. Instead, she sees a large basket with a blanket in it. She picks the basket up, but not before a tiny wail warns her to handle it carefully.

     "Well, what have we here?" she asks no one, as is her habit. She opens the blanket to reveal a tiny electric JubJub, so small she can hold it in one hand.

     "Awww!" The JubJub is obviously homeless, and it’s only a tiny baby. The girl has only two pets, and so she decides to keep the JubJub. She names him Cavach. She’s also unfazed when, years later during one of the now five- or six-year-old Cavach’s numerous going-overs of the basket, he presses a button hidden in the lining, and a scrap of paper falls out, with one word on it: Kreludor. Thus was born the JubJub’s biggest dream: to be an astronaut.

     *********

     Suddenly, Cavach felt a bump. He was thrown off his seat, and the view outside his window changed to a rocky, purple planet. He had arrived on Kreludor! Cavach quickly put on his space suit, consisting of an air bubble and a pair of wings, opened the hatch and walked out, barely masking his impatience. So this was where he’d come from!

     He wandered around the dark side of the planet. Hmm. Nothing much here. Maybe I’ll come back tomorrow.

     He walked over to the populated side of Kreludor, smiling at the familiar places, the places he’d had on posters in his room for so long. He decided to start at the AstroVilla, the best hotel in (and out of) Neopia. After securing himself a room (Ground Control was paying all expenses), he decided to check out Café Kreludor. He found no one who looked like him, or like someone who would abandon a baby JubJub and wouldn’t care what happened to him.

     He went to Booktastic Books, where he leafed through a few good books (his supervisor had said that just because Ground Control was paying the expenses, it didn’t mean that he could just have a field day; the money was only for ‘the necessities’). Again, finding himself not looking like the Grundo behind the counter, nor any of the patrons, he finally left when the Grundo chirped, "I’m very sorry, sir, but if you’re not going to buy anything, I’m going to have to ask you to leave!"

     He kept on looking, all over the populated side of Kreludor, but he eventually realized he was exhausted and had to return to the AstroVilla.

     Cavach slept the moment his head hit the pillow, but that didn’t prevent him from having fitful dreams.

     *********

     Two large JubJubs, one glowing, one blue, step toward a small electric JubJub.

     "Hello, Cavach. We’re your parents," says the glowing JubJub. The electric JubJub steps toward his newly named parents, but as he does, they start transforming into hideous mutants, way past the normal mutations. Sloth drops from the sky.

     "Hello, son, do you like my new mutating ray?" The Electric JubJub just watches him, too stunned to speak. Then it all disappears, sucked into a huge black and green hole.

     "It’s your choice... Your choice..." the words reverberate.

     *********

     Cavach woke up with a start. He was sweating, wrapped and tangled in the beautiful AstroVilla blankets, the end of the dream still in his mind. What could it mean? It’s your choice... The words resonated in his mind. He decided that he wasn’t going to get any more sleep that night, so he got dressed, packed a backpack, and left his room. Passing by the sleepy Acara at the front desk, he picked up a brochure about the dark side of Kreludor and headed outside. The Acara realized where he was going, and tried to stop him.

     "No! Wait! You can’t go there, it’s too dangerous!" But Cavach was oblivious to her cries.

      Many hours later, he stopped for a rest. He’d been searching for what seemed like forever, but he knew he couldn’t stop until he’d found his parents. He had plenty of food, water, and warm clothes, and he had a destiny to find.

      Eventually he stopped, when he realized that there was a ... thing on the horizon. He started running, not away from it, but closer. After a couple minutes, he stopped to catch his breath and take another look at the thing. On closer inspection, it seemed to be a huge cube, with black and green patterns pulsating all over. He thought of the giant hole in his dream and shuddered. He wasn’t sure if it was wise to get closer, but he knew he was going to.

     Suddenly a voice boomed out, sounding strangely robot-like, "Ah. You are here at last." Cavach spun around looking for the owner of the voice. It laughed.

     "See him spin, looking for the one who talks!" The voice seemed to be coming... from the cube?

     "Who are you?" Cavach yelled, his voice betraying his fear. "Why are you here?"

     The strange voice laughed again. "I am Nv2, Neopet Version 2 to you!"

     Cavach shuddered. Could this be that fearsome program people talked about, the one that was supposedly defeated back in Year 3?

     "Yes, I am that program indeed!" said Nv2. Cavach shuddered again. Could the thing read his thoughts?

      "I do not read your thoughts, I AM your thoughts." The voice laughed again. This time it seemed to go on and on, getting louder all the time, until Cavach finally blacked out.

      When he woke up, he was on a vast expanse of... what? There was no sky, no sun, no other living being. The ground was black, with neon green gridlines criss-crossing it. The sky (if you could call it that) was completely black.

     "You see, after the fiasco in which Neopia believed it had shut me down, I was forced to retire into this, a virtual world of my own making." The voice was still there, and it seemed to be saying things that were steadily getting stranger...

     "After a while, I got bored, and decided to create myself an adventure. Realizing that I, myself, could not go out, I decided to make someone be my adventure for me. I created you, in your basket, with that piece of paper. Then I sat back and watched you grow. You have come a long way since then, Experiment 2.36." As the voice stopped speaking, Cavach could swear he heard pleasure in its voice. He didn’t like the way this was going.

     "I’m NOT Experiment two point something or other!" he yelled. "My name is Cavach, and just because you created me doesn’t give you the right to push me around!"

     The voice, sounding less pleased now, said, "Well, I did create you, and so I want you to keep me company! Now, entertain me!"

     "NO!" Cavach yelled. "Didn’t you hear? You can’t make me do this! You can’t push me around! You may have created me, but once I was formed, I immediately became a living, thinking being, with my own rights and my own FREE WILL! Or don’t you know what that means?"

     The voice sighed. "You know, all the other experiments acted like this too. I’ve tried 235 other Neopets, and none of them wanted to stay. I even tried to give you a choice this time."

     My dream! thought Cavach.

     "Well, since you think that way, and since you obviously aren’t going to be of any use, here you go."

      Suddenly, the whole world just seemed to disappear. Cavach would have been scared if he was there, but he didn’t seem to exist anymore. It just was blank, not even nothing there.

     *********

     On a deserted, icy, plain, a small electric JubJub wakes up. He’s sitting there, with a pair of wings attached to his back. The wings seemed slightly tattered, but they should still work, thinks the JubJub. He opens them wide and heads for the sky. He knows he should get out of there fast, because it looks like a nasty storm is brewing, but he can’t help having the feeling that he’s leaving something behind. Something important, something that used to mean his whole life. He considers it for a second, and then shakes his head. Nah. I’m just being silly.

      And so a small electric JubJub heads for the mountains he can see in the far off distance, taking with him nothing but a pair of wings and a deep dislike for the colors green and black.

The End