Beauty of a Dream

I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.

--Mary Shelley (Frankenstein)

Prologue

The rain fell on the roof of the old mansion playing a peaceful lullaby for the silent visitor within. Lightening flashed across the bleak sky, momentarily setting the facade of the mansion on yellow fire. The sky cracked once more revealing the small figure that ran across the flagstones of the forgotten Nibelheim mansion. The rain pelted the black slicker which she wore. She resembled a seal dashing across the Arctic ice.

Her heels clicked furiously against the stone walkway in a flurry of movement and she finally ducked into the doorway, against the old oak door. Breathing a quick sigh of relief, the young girl slid her key into the lock and opened the door. It didn't matter anyway, if she locked the door or not. No one dared intrude on the solitude of the Shinras, even though only the ghosts of that wandered through these hallways now.

Sometimes to peasants, ghosts could be more frightening than people, but not to her. Not her, the scientist Lucrecia, a woman of logic and strength.

She flipped back her hood and sent a spray of liquid onto the frayed carpet. Blotches of darkness appeared on the dust covered floor. Lucrecia ran her fingers through her long dark hair, allowing it to collect around her shoulders and stroke her cheeks.

'The basement. He had to be in the basement.'

Lucrecia shrugged off her slicker and tossed it onto the rail of the grand staircase as she began to run up the steps. She pulled a pair of spectacles out of her pocket, wiped the lens on the sleeve of her shirt and slid it over her nose. The world came into focus as she looked out of the rain speckled lens. She was in too much of a haste to wipe them again.

Her heart was filled with reckless passion as she snatched her soiled lab coat and threw it on. She buttoned two buttons, just enough to keep it closed over her bosom, and proceeded to walk up to the hidden passageway. She placed her slender pale hand along the crevasses of the stone divide and suddenly it swung open. Taking no notice of this remarkable change, Lucrecia hastily skipped down the spiraling staircase and descended into the loins of the haunted house.

She walked down the dark hallway, sweeping a handful of cobwebs out of her hair. Her large blue eyes studied the rugged intimidating walls curiously as was natural to scientists. An inborn curiosity which sparked this eternal search for the truth. Science it was the most perfect art in the world. For only in science is there proof to back up all the story telling mythological gibberish the human mind was so fond of courting.

Lucrecia pushed open the large creaking door to the library and stepped into the laboratory. There, she saw her husband, professor Hojo busily at work at his desk. He was scribbling something madly, copying it from a piece of parchment. The books here contained secrets, enough secrets to destroy the world or to save it.

Lucrecia cleared her throat as she unsteadily walked toward her husband. He looked up for a second and then back at his papers.

"Been running around with your young turk again?" He grumbled without looking up. Lucrecia finally came up to his desk where she peered at what he was doing. He was drawing a strand of DNA and added a string of thymine nucleotides to the end. The telomere project. She thought he had given up on it.

"Why are you still working on that?" Lucrecia asked as she studied his writing. He brushed away some of the dust from his notebook and turned it around for her to see.

"Lucrecia," he whispered in a weary voice. "You know I have nothing against you young lover. I was an old man when you married me, a man better fitting to be your father than your husband. I have no qualms about your sporadic outings with this boy but our work, it's coming so close to completion, I need your presence here."

"I'm sorry," Lucrecia muttered as she traced the phosphate sugar backbone with the tip of her finger. "I thought you gave up on this idea Hojo, I thought we were going to move on."

"No," Hojo whispered as he reached over and clasped Lucrecia's arm gently. "Listen I've figured out a way to make this work. This is the key to immortality, my love. Imagine, if humans could be immortal."

"But what if it goes wrong!" Lucrecia exclaimed suddenly as she tried to comprehend his mad scribbling. Scientists, doctors, they all had horrible handwriting. "You know there is only a blurry line between immortality and the worst cancer."

"No," Hojo said with resolve. "I've perfected it. I know it will work this time, Lucrecia. This time I've found the perfect vector."

"Really?" Lucrecia asked as her eyes widened in surprise and excitement. "Tell me, tell me now."

Hojo smiled and sat back contently.

"Jenova cells."

"Jenova cells?" Lucrecia asked with uncertainty. "But we now so little about their effect on the human body. I don't know . . ."

"Listen," Hojo implored as he leaned forward and clasped his wife's arm. "It's perfect, don't you see? Jenova cells act like a virus but it's better than a virus, more through and it doesn't kill its host. If we were to give a child a treatment with Jenova cells carrying a head of telomeres we could easily prolong his life by years. He would be forever young. The cells in his body won't die and imagine what else we could do. We could change eye color, give him abnormal strength, incredible intelligence. This would be a new kind of human, a perfect human with no knowledge of suffering or disease."

"Yes," Lucrecia said as she took in his words. "But will it work? And who would be experiment on? The Shinras will not give us human children to perform these test on. Anyway, Hojo, my love, I think it will be wisest if we kept this discovery secret from the Shinras. Who knows that malignant plans they have in store for it."

"Of course, of course." Hojo replied. "President Shinra he never got on my good side anyway. But just think about it, Lucrecia. We could change the genes of any human, we could wipe out genetic defects. It will be a perfect world."

Lucrecia smiled as she allowed his vision to overtake her. He was right. It would be a perfect world. They had truly made the discovery of the century, if this worked, that is.

"Hojo," Lucrecia whispered. "I could have a child and we could test this on him. It could work. It will work. I know it will. The telomere project will finally come to completion."

Hojo grinned and hugged his wife.

"No, let's not call it the telomere project anymore."

"Than what shall we call it? The Genus Hojo's Magnificent project?"

Her husband shook his head.

"The Jenova project."

*******

"You seem so busy lately," Vincent remarked as he sat beside Lucrecia beside the grand waterfall. In her lap she cradled a spiral notebook filled with her scientific language which Vincent couldn't understand in the least.

"I'm on the verge of a great discovery," Lucrecia muttered as she looked up with a mischievous gleam in her blue eyes.

Vincent shrugged as he twirled his revolved about his finger once and slid it into his hoister. He pulled out a cigarette and placed it in his mouth, flaming it with a quick flick of his shiny steel lighter. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and glanced around at the peaceful shadows of twilight in this chilly mountainous region.

"I've never met a woman more passionate about her work than yourself," Vincent remarked with good humor as peered over her narrow shoulder. His blue suit was crisp and pressed, without a single blotch anywhere. Turks, they were always spotless, like a row of waddling penguins. Clean, tight, loyal, and completely without any sort of ambition. Lucrecia did not understand how he could live the way he did.

"I love my work," Lucrecia replied softly.

"I love you." Vincent replied with the words caressing her cheeks like red silk. Lucrecia sighed at his words and smiled.

"Don't" Vincent said gently.

"What do you mean?" Lucrecia asked, slightly perturbed.

"Don't smile like that."

"Like what?"

"Don't fake it. Your smiles, Lucrecia, they don't reach your eyes."

"You want my eyes to smile? That's silly."

"That's the only way to judge a real smile," Vincent said, blushing slightly. "Don't you know a thing about psychology?" he quickly added.

"I know psychology." Lucrecia replied hastily.

"Because it's a science," Vincent said knowingly.

"Well most of it."

"Sometimes Lucrecia, I wonder what goes inside your head. You seem like you are always off in a dreamworld. You need to enjoy the world more, like the twilight for example. Why don't you put down your work for a while and watch this magnificent sunset with me, here, completely here, with me."

Lucrecia smiled once more and knew that what he asked of her was the impossible

Chapter 1 - A Promise Broken

In a city dressed in a garb of black, a jeweled pin graced the lapels of that bleak gown. In a small garden, beside a waterfall, the light still shown. Now no one knew why the sunlight was so bright here. Some speculated that it was because the plate above had been abandoned and a giant crack had formed over the ages. Others still said that the quint cottage was too far from the plates above to be caped in shadow. However, that was a mystery no one would ever figure out because as one stepped into that pool of sunlight one was too enamored by the beauty beside oneself to tear one's eyes away to look up. It was a type of never never land, one which you can't think rational thoughts in. Dreamy fairy tale, a place where Sleeping Beauty was not yet dead, where the vines had not yet covered her window in a overgrown web of twisted intentions.

The flower girl, they called her as she wandered the slums selling tulips, roses, merrygolds and carnations. However, people did not simply buy her flowers. As she came near, they relished her light, her aura of sunshine which never left her not even in the darkest of times.

A young man carrying a oversized sword appeared on the edge of her garden this may morning. He stood there dreaming a quite distant reverie, disturbed by gore and far removed from this nonexistant paradise. However he soon came to the realization that he should not have come bearing such a ridiculously huge weapon.

She was just a innocent girl, he mused to himself. It never failed to amaze him actually that there was innocence still in the world, a placed trampled over with corrupt monopolies operating under the guise of capitalism. This was a world of rot. Had he not seen living proof of innocence he would have passed it off as another fairy tale such as love, hope, destiny and faith. Even when those were gone there was still innocence and within innocence there is a momentary mirror of all these extinct species of idealism..

She looked up suddenly from her work and glanced in his direction. Feeling ashamed for spying upon her work, the man stepped into the light boldly, assuring her that there was nothing to fear. A smiled melted into her features as she caught sight of his silver hair flowing brilliantly in the sunlight. Such hair, it drank in the sun and pulsated with life.

"Sephiroth," she whispered and clapped her hands once in glee.

In a blur of ribbons and pink, he suddenly felt two soft arms clasping around his neck. He stood stiffly in her embrace, slightly embarrassed, wholly caught on surprise.

"How's Zack?" She asked as she backed away standing joyfully erect, vibrating with energy.

Home