Final Paper (Christopher Romero-Gutierrez)

Final Paper

Christopher Romero-Gutierrez

The war between the Athens and Spartans started only a few years ago after the stars began to move over our sky. Ever since then, it seemed like our world was on fire, with no escape in sight. I was first signed up for the Spartan army when I turned twenty, and little did I know that would be the last time I would see my family. Since then, I have moved up the ranks, witnessing the death of families, comrades, and government officials with destructive technology from the gods. Today, I prepare for a secret mission that will defy the orders of the gods themselves. A group of 14 other soldiers and I have been sent to infiltrate the labyrinth in Crete, in search of weaponry that will hopefully surpass that of what Athenians have acquired over the past few years.

You see, when this war started, it seemed like the gods chose sides readily. Aries instigated the war by sending signs to us to attack Attica over and over again. These signs were in the form of symbols in our crops. Then Aries, Artemis, Apollo, and Poseidon all chose to assist in this conquest, giving us their blessed weaponry. The Athenians then chose to launch their assault, seemingly assisted by the likes of Hera, Zeus, and Athena. At that point, I was only 19 years old, but life isn't merciful on the young. In an Athenian strike against the Spartans, several of my friends were put down in front of me by what seemed to be lightning bolts coming out of the cylindrical tube with nothing but a handle, trigger, and with glowing lights giving it a radiant appearance. Nothing but absolute chaos.

            Enough reminiscing. My name is Alexsanteri. My group and I are in search of Pandora's box. As the old legend goes, Pandora opened the box and released great evil into the world, leaving a speck of light inside. No one knows what this light is, if it's real, or if it can even be found in the human world. Intel from the Athenians tells us that great power lies in the labyrinth, power that even the great Theseus, the great slayer of the minotaur, was afraid of. Now a random general is spouting orders to look into the labyrinth, sending a squad of 15 people.

Frankly, I don't care to know anyone else's name since many of them will likely die in the coming years. The only person I talked to in the group Elpis, a friend that has fought by my side since I was forced to join the army. Unlike me, Elpis had hope that the future will be bright as the gods are by our side. We have been traveling on foot for about 3 days now. After a few more hours, we thought we'd be at the entrance to the labyrinth. With us are a couple trinkets of the gods: beans of Aries that, when taken regularly, increases one's strength and speed, powder of Artemis that when snorted improved strength dramatically with an extreme physical cost, 3 small suns that release a bright light and harsh sound that destroys anything in a 15-meter radius, and a pod of Poseidon that causes the earth to tremble when activated, crumbling the ground below it.

We arrived at the entrance of the entrance to this so-called labyrinth. It seems like nothing but an entrance to a regular old cave. I gave Elpis a look and sigh of disbelief as it seemed that the intel was nothing but nonsense. The men continued onward into the cave and I decided to follow. After all, orders are orders. As we took steps into the cave, it appeared that lights in the ceiling lit up, but there was no fire. They were little tubes emitting light. As I walked deeper into the cave, we saw images of gods on the wall: blue-skinned Poseidon's chasing women, Dionysus appearing as a green man driving men to drink, and Zeus as tall gray being with giant black eyes taking fire away from humankind. Other images included centaurs, minotaurs, and cyclopes taking the lives of men.

It seemed that the tunnel came into a dead end. We all began to look around awkwardly as if we expected to see anything more. One of the larger men yelled that he found something as he dusted off what seemed like a little contraption on a rock sticking out of the ground directly in front of the center of the dead-end that simply said the word "locked" on it. A smaller solider began poking and prodding at it excitedly until the same larger fellow from before shoved his sword into it. The cave began to shift, the dead-end split into two doors into a long hallway with walls even more reflective than our swords. The lights turned on one by one down a hallway that seemed almost endless. To be honest, at this point I was a little shocked. I had never seen such a device and anything shinier than gold and, even so, I had only ever seen that in small quantities. Three men began to make their way down the corridor and the rest of us followed a few steps behind, all with swords or bows at hand. We walked for about 15 minutes when the lights from the ceiling went red and we heard a loud ringing echoing down the entire corridor. We all looked frantically for a place to hide but this hallway only had its shiny walls and lighting from the ceiling. We began to hear heavy steps walk towards us. They were swift and decisive.

All the men readied their stance, quivering in their bronze armor. I had heard these steps once before at the Spartan capital one night when I distinctively remember the stars were moving excitedly. We began to see a shadow looming down the hall. This creature was quite the monstrosity. It had the horns of a bull and a humanoid body but much more muscular. We could begin to make out a weapon in its left hand once it came closer, a long stick with a crater-head rather than a spearhead at the end. All the men head their stance and it stopped 5 meters in front of us. It pointed down the hall where we had come from and screeched a horrendous noise. One rather thin man began to run at it and he was grabbed swiftly. This creature's moves were all intentional and he sent the man flying across the hall going over us. I gripped my sword tightly, thinking this creature might be the end of me. Then two more moved ahead, Elpis and the larger man from earlier coordinating their attack, Elpis on the left and the other man on the right. The creature uttered a sound and the spearhead fired off a bright thin beam of light that cut the larger gentleman into two. Elpis went on and swung his sword into the creature's right arm, as it released an inhuman sound. It shoved the same antebrachium that Elpis had pierced into Elpis and thrusting him into the wall. Elpis fell, unresponsive.

The three men at the back of our formation fire arrows, graced with the fire of Apollo. They stuck to the creature and exploded. The creature was unscathed. One soldier decided to too one of the three suns that had a five second timer. We all moved back as to avoid the blast. The burst of the sun echoed across the corridor, leaving my ears ringing. Smoke filled the corridor and we heard the creature's heavy footsteps coming towards us. We couldn't see a thing through the smoke, so I ran to where I last saw Elpis. I couldn't bear to let the fool die. I found his body as I heard the screaming of my comrades behind me. He was unresponsive, so I slapped him mightily across his face. I could barely make out his face through the smoke, but his eyes were open. He struggled to rise, and even more so to move his legs. I put his arm over my shoulders and carried him. We walked slowly in the direction deeper into the labyrinth and saw 6 men running ahead. We walked forward and didn't even think to look behind us in the direction of the heart-retching screams of the young men dying. We walked forward and saw the first turn in this wretched maze: left or right. All six of the men veered right. I took Elpis to the left in hopes that the vile creature would leave us alone if it followed the group of more men.

We came across this small door and cleared into it. We stood still and waited… and waited… for the screams to stop. I was so focused on the screams of my comrades, that I had not even taken in the room. Next to the door were four keys sticking out. I left Elpis on the floor and pressed one at random when the room began to shift. It felt as if we were falling at a controlled speed. The elevator murmured an inhuman noise and opened the door. We were faced with another corridor much like the one upstairs. I dragged Elpis into the corridor and had him snort some of Artemis's powder. He regained full consciousness and eyes were wide opened. He looked well, but I knew this spell would only be momentary. I had seen men take larger quantities in the midst of battle only to fall a few minutes later, nostrils bleeding and their hands grabbing at their chests. That was when I still had some shred of hope for humanity. A time before the violence began to feel barbaric and indiscriminate. 

Something drove me to save Elpis. I don't know what it was, but it was instinctual. Even though I don't regret it, it would have been much smarter to get away on my own and leave him to be torn to shreds. There is just something about the hope in his eyes that gives my now-shallow heart something to fight for…

Now that we were deep in the labyrinthine, the corridors were not only endless, but the turns kept appearing. We would go left, right, left, left, right, and walking in the yellow-lit corridors. At one point we made 3 rights, with the same number of steps each turn, but we weren't in the same place we were when we started. Only the images of the gods on the wall served as our guides, yet they were unreliable. Either they were moving, or the halls were. We kept eating the beans of Aries to keep our strength up. Elpis seemed to be holding up fine, despite walking slower than usual. On this walk, I kept wondering if we would ever see the other men again, if we would find an exit, and what would we do if we ran into one of those great beasts again.

Finally, we came across a door with an emblem that showed a dog with three heads. The creature known as Cerberus was on display in this very labyrinthine. Could it be that such a creature would walk these halls as well? It was the only door we had come across for hours since departing that room that was falling, so we considered going in despite the image. We decided to head back to the room that brought us to this corridor instead, in hopes that it would still be there. Left, right, straight, left, left, right, and we were back in front of the door with the three-headed beast. The same blasted door shouldn't be there, we thought. Did we remember incorrectly? Was this place driving us mad? Why were all the images different?

Elpis decided that we would both go through the door since it seemed we had no other choice. We opened the door and saw a small room, no beast, no human, and no portrait in sight. We entered and the door closed behind us. We inspected the room in hopes it would have a secret key, lever, or anything that could guide us out of this cursed maze, all to no avail. We were resigned, broken, and exhausted from walking. We opened the door that we used to enter, but rather than the corridor we had left, a new room with more doors greeted us. We were sure we were losing our minds. Neither one of us could explain the events that had occurred and were sure this labyrinth was determined to break our minds before it gave us a painful demise. There were more interesting images in this room. A cross, a man hung up on it, the sky eclipsed and a strange shiny object in the sky. More wars between men, but these men were different. They wore uniforms and carried weapons I had never seen before. They had weapons with triggers, but they shot little metal pellets rather than lightning. We surmised that these were prophetic images. There was another image of a crescent moon with a star placed right next to it, with a cross hovering next to it. Another with men gathered around a glowing green light. These men did not seem like soldiers as they were wearing long white coats. Another image was showing was a mushroom-shaped smoke cloud right next to an image to these large buildings in ruins. The last image worth describing was of a minotaur rolling a cube with symbols on it in a room with Zeus, Poseidon, and the other gods. They seemed to be celebrating, competing, and having fun with what looked like a large map on the table.

These images made us feel uneasy. Elpis sat on the floor looking nauseous and on the brink of collapsing. That's when we heard a silent snarl coming from one the doors and something scratching at it. Elpis rose immediately with his sword in hand. The beast busted through the door, a three-headed mutt, about 4 feet tall and with cancerous tumors all over its tough skin. It lunged at us, I evaded, but the mutt landed on Elpis, dragged him around the room with the right head sinking its teeth straight into his left arm. Elpis yelled in pain with all the energy he had left. It was weak, but it gave me shivers just listening to it. I rushed with my sword in hand and sliced off its left head. It came off easily and the beast let go of Elpis. The two other heads looked directly at me and the beast leaped onto me. I could smell its disgusting breathe as it hovered over me. I couldn't move because its body weight complete covered my arms and legs. The middle head snapped its head back, declaring its attack. At the same time, the coagulated blood from the bleeding neck of the left head was gushing onto me. Then I saw a sword cleanly and swiftly cut off the two heads left, as I felt the carcass fall heavily onto my body. Elpis lifted the mutt off me with little effort. It was clear, his time was coming to an end. He had taken as much of the powder of Artemis as he could. I chose not to discuss it any further as we both knew the consequences of this. I felt devasted. He took the powder to save me, someone that stopped caring about life or death long ago. This man would lose his life for me on this day.

He helped me rise and I thanked him quickly without making eye-contact. I couldn't bear to look at him. The fool. I quickly walked through the first door I saw to witness a horrific sight. All the men that ran away were turned to stone. I began to weep. I hadn't cried in years, but this sight of hopelessness did not let me contain my emotions. I quickly looked in all there belongs since only their skin was turned to stone. I was hoping to find a magic item that would lead us out of here, finally, I found the pod of Poseidon. With this, I could make this whole labyrinth collapse and seal away all the evil for good.

Elpis looked at me with his pupils completed dilated and nose bleeding. I stared at him, looking at all I had lost on this day. I didn't care if the others on this journey lived or died, but the one man I wanted to defend was a walking corpse. I placed the device on the ground and pressed the magic key that would be the end of it all. Elpis screamed in horror when he realized what I was doing. The ground began to shake relentlessly. The ground cracked until it became unstable. I told Elpis there was nothing left for us on this planet and we plunged into the Earth.

I awoke to debris all around me. There were many corpses of the fabled Zeus, but how could there be so many grey men. They were all lifeless as they had been crushed by rocks. I saw Elpis walking around the large room we had landed in, with moving pictures all around. It appears that these pictures were showing humans in real-time as I recognized many of the sights that were being pillaged. Elpis stood next to a large table with those cubes we had seen in the image's prior all around it. I couldn't move. My body felt numb. I was elevated enough on the debris that I could make out what was on the table. The map was Greece and the Mediterranean at the center, but that was all I could recognize. There was so much more land, expanding far and wide. I could see different pieces on the board. A man seated in a meditative stance in the far east, a cross placed just a little east of Greece (but it was hovering over and taking a slow descent). Above it, all was an object with a distinct symbol. I yellow circle with a black border, a black circle at the center, and 3 solid black objects equally spaced around it.

Elpis stared at the map and they turned to me and said he understood now. His eyes were now dripping blood and I knew it was coming to an end. He then looked in front of him at a black chest. Now a loud sound was blaring across the room and I could hear heavy footsteps coming in the direction of the room from far away and the lighting in the room became red, all except for that chest that was glowing green. Elpis ran at it, declaring it was salvation for humankind. Declaring all religions were a sham and this "Pandora's box" would prove it. He arrived at the box and immediately opened it. The green light now protruded onto his skin and it began to boil. He fell immediately afterwards, covered in blood and boils all over his skin. There was nothing I could do. I was bound by nothing but the weight of my body. It was over. This was all a sick game. I began to sob again as a horde of creatures burst into the room and two covered in yellow suits to immediately close the box.

The creatures looked at me, murmuring to one another in a language I could not understand. Then one took charge and spoke to me. "Pesky human, learn your place and stay there. The mindless violence of your species will be your undoing." I struggled to listen as I couldn't bear the loss of Elpis. I sobbed uncontrollable as it seemed all my hope was lost. "We may provide the means, but it will be your habits that cause the end." One of the minotaurs approached me and beat me with the butt of his staff, yelling "silence."

            I awoke, next to a giant crater where the labyrinth was. My body was healed, but everything was gone. I immediately began to run towards Sparta. It took days without food, but I arrived, or at least what was left of me. I ran with the memory of Elpis, the one person I had left in my life that I cared about. I ran straight to the capital yelling about the plans of the so-called gods. Everyone looked at me with fear in their eyes, but was it of me or the knowledge I possess? I was stopped by soldiers and they detained me.

I was in prison for days before I was allowed to speak to my commander. He arrived at the bars of my cell and scoffed in disappointment. I explained the plan of the “so-called gods” to him, but he just left. Afterward, no one came back to my cell other than to deliver food. I was told I would never be allowed to walk the outside world again for I had lost my mind.

I stayed in that cell for ten years with my body decaying. I looked out my window every night waiting for the stars to move. Waiting for the game to end. Waiting for my end to come. But it didn’t happen then. I remember I had gotten sick and either died or fainted in my cell only to awake once again on the field next to the same crater where the maze was.

I traveled the earth in search of people that would believe and time went on, years became decades, decades became centuries, and yet I could not find answers to my prolonged life or resurrection. I died repeatedly from cancer, the flu, the plague, wars, and accidents throughout the ages, all to have no success. I could only imagine that those so-called gods wanted to strip me of my will to live by failing over again and over again in saving humankind. Over 2 millenniums passed and humankind failed to find their ways. I saw the cross become the symbol for the Christians and the violence that ensured. I saw the rise of Islam (the crescent moon and star) only for conflict to continue. Wars continued to pass by and I was helpless to stop them all. Whenever I would tell of our destiny, I would be locked up in prisons, asylums, and later psychiatric wards. I saw the same technology from before being developed. The suns of Apollo became known as grenades. Those weapons I had seen in the images far surpassed the bow and arrow and resulted in a variety of “guns.” These extra-terrestrial beings became known as “aliens” and people who believed in their existence were labelled as cooks and maniacs. The beans of Aries resembled the effects of steroids used for athletic competitions. Scientists began to wear their famous white coats, feeling esteemed when they would be used for our destruction. The first time the tool of our destruction was used was on August 6, 1945. The distinct mushroom cloud drove me insane as I knew we were coming to an end. I saw a country use it and feel powerful as they felt they were invincible. Then other countries began to manufacture the same weapon, only to have enough to end the world several times over.

Then on December 25, 2020, two countries waged war on each other using the devices that would end the world. One preached freedom, yet asserted their corporate needs over the other nations. Another was a country that challenged this country’s dominance, despite being much smaller. It started with one of these explosive devices being launch and then nuclear Armageddon was inevitable. My immortal body continued to roam the earth, never to die or be free of this, now, desolate planet. The stars never moved again in the sky above me, for, now, I was truly and completely alone.

Two paragraph comment:

            I decided to do my final project on aliens as the cause of our destruction. Aliens, in class, were frequently beings that used humans as either playthings and significantly superior to us. In this case, the beings were a variety of “bad” alien groups, much like the group that I imagined from “The Day the Earth Stood Still”, but they planned to only use the humans as toys rather than having us join their group. They pushed us to developed the technology, hence having the same radiation symbol. A lot was taken from the alien content of class, but I also wanted to incorporate the idea that the person knows the prophecy is taken as someone who has lost their mind. I chose to name the main character Alexsanteri because it is a Greek name that means defender of man. His companion is Elpis, meaning hope, dies, breaking him, and this symbolized that the search for Pandora’s box led to the stripping of one’s hope. The main character struggles with an internal apocalypse when Elpis dies because he was deeply changed during the war to be emotionless, but then he loses the one person he cares about. I took inspiration from the Greek myth of Prometheus, who wanted to defend men by bringing back fire to them when Zeus took it away. Alexsanteri’s fire is truth. Prometheus is tied to rock to die and is revived every single day, while Alexsanteri is revived by alien technology and is forced to live helplessly as the gods toy with humankind.

            I was also interested in including some of the tensions of nuclear energy from the class, so I made nuclear energy the ultimate weapon of destruction. The tensions of the big mushroom cloud, the mushroom cloud being the sign of the end, and monstrous beings from this technology (Cerberus being a product of experimentation much like Godzilla was the product of radiation as well) were all things I was excited to play with. This idea that our tendencies would be our undoing was also a very interesting concept to me, so the aliens only provided the technology rather than invading the planet like in “War of the Worlds” or “The Body Snatchers.” I also wanted to incorporate the material from the last man alive lecture. The main character, because of the aliens, would become the last human being on Earth amidst all the chaos. He ends up being the only being alive in the post-apocalyptic world. Finally, my last point would be on the current political climate. There is still a lot of fear today about nuclear technology, and I chose to directly incorporate that in the two countries that cause the end. I hope that this was a deeper commentary on what I feel is senseless violence today, a cycle that seems to have no end.