On the planet of the Interdimensional Assembly, Clyella had just beaten Kidhe by a single point in a match of the Zen variant of the Sphere game. Their heartbeats were still racing from the intense physical effort inside the zero-gravity field, and the endorphins circulating in their bloodstreams made them feel light in body and mind. Alone, in the silence punctuated by discreet chirping and smoothed by the warm rustle of the breeze, they relaxed with a walk among the leafy trees of a forest near the Coral city. However, the physical well-being they felt at that moment did not manage to entirely dispel his strong concerns, nor her hidden discomforts.

At one point in the conversation, Kidhe took Clyella's hand and invited her to sit with him on the grass in the shade of a huge tree with a smooth bark. Behind them, the trunk stretched convoluted towards the towering canopy, wriggling and twisting in an irregular, gigantic spindle of glossy wood.

Kidhe caressed his friend's honey-colored curls, as if they were a treasure that slipped through his fingers. «I guess you know very well that I'm still not convinced that it's a good idea.» he said.

«What do you mean you're not convinced?» Clyella reacted, almost in a plea fueled by surprise and some anxiety. «You wouldn't go back on your decision!»

They both spoke through little more than a whisper that made its way, delicate and respectful, among the slight sounds of the forest. Kidhe pressed his lips together as a memory emerged, tugging with persistence at his heartstrings and intensifying a feeling of deep admiration. With it, the fear for Clyella's safety crept in, amplifying his doubts. He felt he would not be able to forgive himself if something bad happened to her. He was aware that this was an unreasonable insecurity, so immature as to seem grotesque for someone of his age. Yet, at that moment, he could not get rid of it.

Out of all the countless people Kidhe had met in millennia of life, out of all those he had met in the vast portion of universe where he had had occasion to travel, Clyella was she who least deserved a misfortune. Kidhe struggled to grasp how Clyella could be willing to dive back into the depths of hell, given that she had fought, risked, and sacrificed more than any of the Executives to earn the paradise they now inhabited.

«You really have no doubts about going to a planet like... Earth?» he asked her forcing himself to hold back his fears, to cage them behind a smile.

Clyella chuckled with a serenity that baffled the president of the Assembly. «I can't hide from you that the idea scares me...» she confessed. Then she sighed and half-closed her eyes. «But I have to do it for those people.»

Kidhe understood that Clyella's motivation could not be affected by anything in the universe, and echoed her with a sigh. «You always find yourself doing things like this, sacrificing yourself for others over and over and over again... it seems like your destiny. Are you sure that's what you want?»

«If I don't go, they would be doomed...» Clyella's voice came out as little more than a murmur, a soft and honeyed chirp that blended with the sounds of the forest. «I can't deny them this hope.»

More than ten thousand years ago, Kidhe had enjoyed an easy childhood, a comfortable, happy and fortunate life until a slice of hell touched him too. But that had not happened until he had already become a man. Clyella, on the other hand, had begun her life among difficulties, starting from the primitive society she was born into and the father who had accompanied her in growing up. So barbaric that he had been not only an obstacle to her personal development, but even harmful because of an archaic and discriminatory mentality, he carried the traces of a selfish and sexist patriarchy, outdated even in that same primitive civilization.

Clyella had fought with all her might to emerge from that system, gaining education and sustenance through nothing but her own effort, dedication, sacrifice, and courageous personal choices. She had fought to rebel against the authoritarianism of her own family first, then against the oppression of society. She had to dive into poverty to give herself an opportunity. One step at a time, one effort after another, she had improved herself, she had worked until she became an intellectual reference point, a successful artist. She had risen to a level of recognition where her own example could assist that very society in evolving and progressing.

Then, when she had obtained prosperity and esteem, she decided to retire to enjoy the fruits of her genius. She had bought a house in the midst of nature and would never have needed anything else. Soon after, she had found herself faced with the choice of continuing her life undisturbed or giving up everything and starting from scratch to help once again that barbaric society that had mistreated her so much. And she had chosen to sacrifice herself, to destroy the work of a whole life of hardships, to offer the security of her own life in exchange for the benefit of those who were already in debt with her.

Being accepted as a Member of the Interdimensional Assembly was an unimaginable prize at that time, but fully deserved. She was welcomed among the most evolved people in the universe to live in a perfect society. A paradise.

Reaching paradise had not made the sufferings she had gone through any less horrible, yet she felt no resentment towards the planet she came from. How could she, when she herself had given everything to make it a civilized world?

No, she felt no resentment even for that father who had scarred her so much in both body and spirit. She could not, precisely because of their being primitive, she felt no resentment for him or for them more than she could feel resentment for the virus that had caused her last flu, several millennia ago.

A virus and a human: such was, in fact, the evolutionary abyss that separated her from those who had generated her. Such was the evolutionary abyss that separated an Executive from a common sentient being of societies like that of Earth.

Clyella had decided, once again, to immerse herself in a barbaric civilization, to go to Earth risking her own safety. Kidhe looked at her, with so much admiration that he teetered on the brink of being moved to tears.

«Do you know what you are doing?» he asked her, lost in complete uncertainty.

Clyella repeated that question to herself. She was sure, yes, that it was the right thing to do, she knew what had to be done and knew she was capable of doing it but, in her own conscience, she found herself admitting that she would have to use all her abilities to improvise on the spot.

«I have a plan» she answered, fully embracing her role as an Executive. Then, she followed up with a small fib or, as Clyella preferred to think of it, an imaginative twist on reality: «I just need to iron out the final details.»