Redemption Installment 6

*this is long overdue...I know. my apologies...*

*going back a bit...the council meeting...*

The next day, Joanne lost what she had been so sure of. Clad in a black robe with a deep blue sash, she seated herself between Teka and the dark woman whom she had been told to call “Giaga”, which Joanne assumed to be the equivalent to “queen” or “empress”, or something of very high status. The council meeting was taking place in a private ship quite similar to the one she had seen Giaga exit from the day before. The entrance to the ship was the entrance to the meeting room, which was the ship. Plush seats lined the curved walls and already a couple hundred people of various shades of blue were seated. A floating council, Joanne thought as more people entered and took their places. She wondered if they would actually be flying during the meeting.
As the meeting began, Joanne lost all confidence in herself and began to shake in her seat. She hadn’t felt this way since high school speech class. The immense size of the room and the huge number of people, Myantides, occupying it frightened her in a way she couldn’t explain. She soothed herself with thoughts of her friends and family, and all that she knew that was good in her life. Maybe it wasn’t spectacular, but it was something worth fighting for. Wasn’t it?
Giaga rose regally after a pale blue man had led the group in a series of clicks she assumed was the standard beginning to every meeting. Giaga’s voice filled the room with ease. Joanne sat amazed at the power this woman had over her audience. Every eye in the room was focused on her, and though she couldn’t understand anything that was being said, Joanne too found herself mesmerized. After a few urgent clicks from Giaga, Joanne found herself caught up in a great silence. Slowly it dawned on her, Giaga was done speaking. And every eye was now on her. Joanne blushed profusely, looking from Giaga to Teka for an explanation.
“You are expected to speak now,” Teka said flatly as if this should have been completely obvious to her. Dazed, she rose from her seat and made the mistake of looking into a million pairs of eyes. Heart racing, her palms filling with sweat, Joanne turned wide eyed to Giaga. The woman gazed back with placid eyes and took her seat, pushing something on the side of Joanne’s armrest as she did. Almost simultaneously, an invisible force field seemed to take hold of her. At first it was if her lungs were being squished underneath a steam roller, but gradually the pressure lifted, though Joanne could still feel some eerie, supernatural presence about her.
Joanne cleared her throat, jumping as the sound echoed all around her. Nothing moved. She looked down at Giaga with wide eyes, but the woman’s attention was focused somewhere in front of her. Joanne swallowed hard, and tried to think of how to begin. “Um-” her voice came back to her a million times louder than it needed to be. What in the world is going on? She thought, feeling her heart race a mile a minute. “I think-I think you are making a mistake destroying Earth,” brilliant, Joanne scoffed. Now what? Empty silence hung over the whole ship. Joanne felt herself blush and was thankful for her dark skin tone. Smiling sheepishly, she went on. “There’s so much you don’t know about us, I’m sure you really don’t want to just blow us up!” She laughed half heartedly, her voice echoing back feebly. “What I mean is; there’s really no good reason to get rid of us forever. I’m sure things aren’t as bad as you think they are.”
From across the dome, a figure rose slowly and bowed gracefully in her direction. A strong female voice rang out in a series of clicks. Teka tugged on her robe. “She asks for your permission to speak.” Joanne was startled that someone needed her permission to speak. She nodded, and then realized the woman probably couldn’t see that small movement. “You-you may speak,” Joanne stammered, lowering herself back into her chair. Teka immediately pushed her back up though. “You must stay risen,” he murmured.
The woman across the room, who was a slight shade lighter than Giaga but darker than Teka, was gesturing wildly with her arms and clicking rapidly. Joanne wondered why she had to stand and why this woman couldn’t speak English if she was trying to communicate with her. Finally, she did. “Miss Mitchell,” Joanne jumped at the mention of her name. “If I may, I have evidence supporting our cause.” Joanne nodded. “Go on,”
Slowly; the room became darker, except for in the very center of the arena, where a huge glowing cube materialized. Joanne watched in fascination as the cube rose from the ground to dangle in the exact center of the dome and rotated as if suspended on a single axis. Images began appearing on the cube, moving pictures that covered the four sides of the cube exposed to the audience. It was like a huge revolving television screen. Joanne stood awkwardly as she saw people going about their daily lives before her. A woman pushed a shopping cart with a crying baby, an old man struggled down the street as cars honked their horns at him in frustration. At first the clips were short and random, but then a clicking narration began and Teka whispered from below her as it went on.
“The humans began as a culture not so different from ours,” Joanne watched as an African woman gathered berries with a child strapped to her back. “But as their intelligence and awareness increased, so did their violence,” now a small child was being beat up on the playground. “For years we have studied these beings and taken into account that their brutish behavior was due to a different evolutionary course than ours,” now a Myantide city showed. The buildings were tall and regal looking, shimmering in the light of the Myantide sun. People of various colors walked back and forth, purposely ignoring one another on the streets. Then Joanne saw a row of black children sitting on a platform as green, red, and blue adults danced around them and clothed them in extravagant garments. “Not only did the humans become violent, they became self destructive,” a cross on a lawn appeared as five figures clad in white hoods and robes shouted and lit it with torches. Joanne flinched. “It is no longer in their best interest, or ours as scientists and a just race, to let them continue their way of life. They are poisoning their bodies,” a group of teenagers was shown, smoking and drinking in a club. Many of the Myantides began to fidget in discomfort. “And their minds. Even their young ones are becoming corrupt,” two young boys were playing a violent video game and laughing and cursing. Joanne frowned, not understanding where this was going. “The humans are a destructive race and need our help to be controlled and start anew,” Joanne’s heart beat rapidly and her stomach began to lurch as the Myantides around her clicked and hissed in displeasure at the new images being presented.
A mother held her small child and shook it violently; a man hit a woman forcefully, throwing her against a wall; a man with a gun shot at a woman and young child in the middle of a busy street, and then turned the gun on himself; bombs exploded in a residential area, and the image zoomed in on the charred body of a small boy. Tears came to Joanne’s eyes as the images continued to grow worse and worse. Some of them were even familiar things she had seen on the news, things she had ignored as common place, but now saw to be the true, horrible, destructive nature of her kind. Sinking into her seat, Joanne wept quietly to herself. Now helpless people ran back and forth, a starving child picked at scabs on his body, and Joanne covered her eyes in shame. She couldn’t think of one good thing about Earth now. Everyone she knew had somehow been affected by senseless violence, whether physical or emotional, and she started to feel that maybe these Myantides were right, maybe humans shouldn’t be allowed to continue on this way.
Light once more illuminated the dome, and the giant cube mysteriously disappeared. Almost gently, Teka’s hand pressed on her back, urging her up from her seat. In the following silence, all eyes shifted back to Joanne’s now shaky figure. She stifled her cries as pain raced through her veins. A million thoughts, emotions, and memories, coursed through her, eerie remnants of the strange “film” she had just seen. Calmly, as if nothing had just happened, the woman across the dome asked, “Do you have anything to say in defense for your people, Miss Mitchell?”
Silence hung in the air like a thick fog, smothering her lungs and clouding her mind. Slowly, Joanne tried to push away the cobwebs that had covered her mind, but she still could not speak. Nothing seemed to make sense any more. She was disgusted by her own people, confused and ashamed, but most of all, broken from the harsh reality that the images and narration had been right, humans were a self-destructive and vile race.
Giaga rose regally to stand beside her. Joanne swallowed hard, searching for something to say, but Giaga came to her rescue. Of course, Joanne could hardly know this. The clicks and whistles escaping Giaga’s lips meant next to nothing to her. She waited in anticipation as the swarm of Myantides around her clicked back and forth, finally quieting down, leaving only Giaga and the blue woman who had spoken before clicking to each other from opposite ends of the dome. Abruptly, the paler blue woman sat down, her lips spread into a thin smirk. Giaga turned to Joanne who listened eagerly. “We have agreed to allow you two weeks in which to find something worth keeping your people alive. If in that time you cannot persuade the council to show mercy on your people, Earth will be destroyed. However,” Giaga smiled gently at her. “If you come up with ample proof that yours is a race worthy of life, we will return you and your comrades to your homes.”
Joanne smiled stiffly and nodded her thanks to Giaga. The council meeting seemed to end then, Myantides rose and exited all around her, but Joanne hardly noticed. She could only think of one thing, how impossible it would be to find one thing to forgo Earth’s destruction, and in two weeks.

Curled under a blanket later that night, Joanne sat up watching her sleeping “comrades”. Immediately after she returned from the council hearing, Tene, Jabari and Rosemary had bombarded her with questions, which she shrugged off saying she was tired and needed to sleep. This was partially true, she had had little sleep before the council meeting, and the haunting feeling of sadness that had been eating away at her since seeing the images of Earth was draining her of energy. Now, everyone else was resting in the cool calm of the room which was illuminated by a soft, blue light from overhead. Strange shadows played across the floor and walls as the sleepers stirred, but Joanne’s eyes remained fixed on a blank piece of wall that was unaffected by the light, a black patch amongst the fading blues and grays. A scuffing noise to her right shocked her out of her trance and she jumped as something rubbed against her lightly. Joanne’s eyes slowly adjusted to the change in light, and she sighed with relief when she saw Chinue’s timid figure beside her. Joanne smiled faintly, the girl couldn’t have been more than thirteen or fourteen, she must have been frightened beyond all belief, and not being able to communicate with anyone-
“Are they sleeping?” Joanne’s mouth hung open in disbelief as Chinue gazed at the others warily. She turned her wide eyes back to Joanne’s. “I don’t want them to hear us,” she whispered.
Joanne closed her mouth, and stared at the girl, not knowing quite what to say. “Will you speak to me?” Chinue asked, pushing herself a bit closer to Joanne.
“Um, sure, I guess,” Joanne said; only realizing how rude that sounded after the words had escaped her lips. “I mean, of course, I just didn’t realize you spoke English!”
Chinue held a finger up to her lips and peered about the room again. She looked intently at Joanne and whispered, “The others cannot know,” Joanne nodded.