"Good night, good night!

parting is such sweet sorrow,

That I shall say good night till it be morrow!"

- William Shakespeare, "Romeo and Juliet".

9 am, 10th of March, Friday. 2541. NovLondon.

"Good morning? Skylar? Professor here," an elderly man spoke outside.

"Yes, hello, it's us – come in, please!" Skylar hurried over to open the door. A man came in, a medium-sized stout man with a round pair of spectacles constantly sliding up his slightly crooked nose. He seemed as if he was raised in a strict household, and that Skylar knew was true. The professor knew how bad living with expectant parents was. Skylar was sincerely grateful that he had helped him many times along the way. It was great the way he picked him up when he had fallen off course in his studies, and encouraged him to conquer more for his name. Skylar felt glad that he'd encountered this person in his early years, at a celebration at his school. Events really helped him sometime.

"Good day, dear Skylar!" the seventy-year-old man boomed, walking inside. He let out a surprised "Oh?" when he noticed Cassitude sitting on the green sofa. He stopped. "I see someone's here before me? Will you be getting married anytime soon?"

Skylar felt embarrassed and surprised.

"Yes, yes, - no, no no no, sorry, it's just about it, I really have to explain-" He didn't dare look at Cassitude, who he thought was sure to be surprised the most.

He looked up at the professor, but saw that he was gently laughing.

"Dear Skylar, do not be embarrassed by the manifestations of love. It is such an innocent and vulnerable a thing, really. But beautiful, like one that is loved," he smiled, looking down on Skylar with kind eyes. "And Miss Viel, of course, I advise the same," he glanced at her.

He fumbled with his pockets in his light jacket.

"Anyhow, I hope that everything will be well for you at the moment, and beyond," he wished, casting a serious look upon the two. Cassitude smiled. "This gift, I hope, will be a help in these troubling times, riddled by modernity," he finally stopped fumbling with his pockets, and, drawing a light-brown labelled bottle and two chalices of, evidently, ancient and Saxon origin, put them on Skylar's desk near the window. "After all, the mission anticipation, I believe, had been pseudo-worn-out."

There was a high chance of something being there, something potent enough to discover the vastest realms of love and purity, and not filling them at all. It was as if swivelling, as if it had been lurking in the shadows for centuries until venturing close enough that it just had no choice but to be pulled by the magnetic force of the two virtues, so song and serene, so soft and mellow. The cork was removed, revealing a large volume of liquid, dark red viz. crimson blood, filled to the brim and many might have pondered: how could the sprightly professor have retrieved an artefact worthy of Dionysus and Odin?

Worn-out? It couldn't have been worn-out, prior to some secular movement in the wholeness of the system that controlled their flights. But what it could be was fear-filled, frightening to say the least, but nonetheless the magnum opus of his career, so lost and simple he had been, fearful that he was even dealt the opportunity of taking on such responsibility in the first place. He had not been exhausted. There had been only the fear, the never-ending terror of taking on something one doesn't deem oneself worthy of. Leading to drastic changes in emotion, he didn't feel exhausted. In fact, he would have agreed to take on thousands of spaceflights, only if he didn't feel so scared. Frightened. Alone in the majestic world of exploration, however hard he tried to hide it from his loved ones. Alone was his fear, his great taboo, but he never admitted it. He could do many things, but never be responsible. Most ardently, responsible alone.

"Wh-what is this?" he asked, looking at the elderly man, surprise in his eyes. "Why did you bring this antique artefact?"

"If you had lived in the 2150s, people would've laughed at you because you didn't know what wine was," the professor said, taking the bottle and pouring some of the precious liquid into the chalices. It flowed, like blood, like sin, coating such vessels of utter innocence, as if a virgin heart gifted its frivolousness and traded its life for constant pain, anxiety and worry for the well-being of its holder. It arose such ambivalent impulses that Skylar lost his ground upon hearing the professor's response. Cassitude listened closely, leaning near to Skylar while keeping her gaze on the prior's bright eyes. The professor only smiled, and began his story.

"As you know, I've been your teacher, for your teenage years and part of your adulthood," he spoke, looking at Skylar. "But I never said a lot about myself. I am Macarius Mascar, and I have invented consumable tablets that can erase the need for nutrition completely."

Skylar gasped. Cassitude's eyes widened.

Mascar continued.

"It might've been unusual to know me simply as Jake Richards, a teacher at your school and university," he said. "I am not only so, there were a lot of other schools I taught at; speaking of which I have a school that'll soon be officialised, but, I have taught you for six years, and have never revealed myself. Please forgive me for not telling you who I was, but I have carefully inspected your place for the privacy needed for doing so. So sorry twice, in that case," the professor apologized. His tone sounded somewhat quieter, somewhat warier. Before, Skylar thought he knew him.

"So I am not Jake Richards. I am Macarius Mascar, close allies with Lenne Darren, who had been, sadly, murdered. As open as the government, in other words, the MHA, is with people, still there are things that it'll be hiding. For example, the decisions of the Minds before Lenne, such as the ones of the Jossian-Engelish Mind, may or may not have been influenced by one of the infamous advisers of Spain," he let out a tight-lipped smile.

"But sadly, this is not only the MHA that has been influenced by such advisers," he sighed, withdrawing his gaze for a moment from the distraught couple and directing it upon the sunlight. "They also made an impact on my inventions, and on my theories, and, perhaps I have been forced to change them. I have been forced to change them, and, sadly, I have been forced to change one of my latest inventions, the food tablets, according to their interests. I did research, even more than I had done in my entire life, but sadly I wasn't able to provide a compromise for the tablets, to make them, how to say, more – he made a pause – subdued. By their reasons, they said to bring them on in sale... And I did."

"You did?"

In response, Skylar was only met with a doleful look full of misery. He understood. He realized.

At first, he wanted to shame Mascar for his weakness. He couldn't believe how his teacher, whom he so loved and trusted, had done such an iniquity. He knew it was, definitely, bad; the hints had made him realize it, despite no direct word, no straightforward phrase finally putting an end to the uncertainty. He glanced at Cassitude; she wore a frown, with an unbelieving note in her expression. She was, undoubtedly, of the same opinion, though shy to admit it.

However, when he looked at Cassitude, he realized that the action had already been done. No one could control how products circulated in the market once they were produced. No one could erase them from history; even if they had more disadvantages than benefits. So any shaming would only waste time.

"I know I have sinned. Badly. But with my minutes with you, I want to do at least something that could help. This is the wine that had been made back in the early twentieth century, about six hundred years from now. Resources are scarce. I think that in the next few months, very many things will resolve. Resources, politics, cultures... Many things will change. I know I cannot give you useful things, but this, I hope, will sometimes help you in these following months. This is the wine, the beverage made to dull the sorrows of different people throughout the ages. It has been used by Jesus Christ, the starter of religion."

The minute passed in silence as Macarius Mascar reassured Skylar to take a sip; however, the latter hesitated for a while.

"What are my sorrows now?" he said. "Why should I drink it?"

"You might think that your sorrows are too unimportant. Yet that may be a general misconception."

"But why?" Cassitude stepped in the conversation. There was misunderstanding in her youthfully light eyes.

"That's a question lots will ask themselves for ages. They will seek the answer indirectly, since in their minds, they think it's a fault," he clasped his hands together. It was seen that they were wrinkled and mottled. "But the verity does hide somewhere in God's mind, since there are reasons we actually feel that emotion. There are reasons we feel guilt, shame, depression, as there are reasons we feel happiness. Everything has a reason."

"But what would that reason be?" asked Skylar.

"No one knows. We can be only sure of there existing another entity, the mind of which surpasses all our thoughts and aspirations. It is ethereal in the direct sense of the word, hence we can only believe it is real. But we can be sure of that."

"But if there is an only reason we can feel or do anything we have the power to, then this reason should be the existence of that entity?" Cassitude suggested. "But then, how can we be sure of the existence of that entity, when it entirely surpasses our beliefs and aspirations? I mean, it's too great for us to acknowledge, so it could do anything and we wouldn't understand it. How then would we possibly know it is true?"

Mascar seemed to tense.

"In my 70 years of life, I have never come up with a question such as this. When I started my career as a scientist, the world was bustling with ideas of how the golden age of tech is now here or how one more hypothesis could change us all and that sort of things. Being fourteen I was easily inspired and have succeeded at many dreams, but for the most of that time I thought that we were on the brink of full knowledge and every sphere of living would be completely converted into a maximally possible ideal since we would understand what governed the Universe and, consequently, why we can be sure of some basic fundamentalities in our thought process, such as contradistinctions, middle grounds, awareness and conscious relativity – a coin termed by Collin Federway back in the 2460s. However, nowadays I start to understand that we will never be able to be sure of anything in the sense of how you phrase it, Cassitude. We believe – yet we aren't sure of it. I would hate to learn that in the following centuries, people will reject anything they believe and know of – except cogito ergo sum, so to speak, - and reject the idea of there being an entity. Of there being God. But yet I know that the arguments about this topic will be prolonged indefinitely, and that neither side of the conflict will completely lose. But I just know that."

"What?" Cassitude asked.

"That God is here. Always present and always within us. At times, I feel His presence beside me, right where I am working on my projects. Like He's there, watching me write, watching me do all sorts of things ranging from contemplating to writing down my ideas on paper. Whenever I wait, no matter for what, I feel His presence. And it's comforting to be in His presence. As if I have a mentor."

He stopped, surveying the sun which had already risen high up in the sky, and the tranquil flicker in his eyes suggested that he was in some place akin to an alternate reality, in tranquil oceans of wisdom. It was a strange form of enlightenment, the form which is ever-so enticing to look at, and which you can't take your eyes off of, as if benumbed, as if paralyzed. But there always existed no type of restraint between the two of you; you felt a sensation that you could just enter the simply bright abyss – and float about, venturing into your lost home. Yet it always floated back, just the shortest distance enough to keep you in your world, but still watching you from above, an imponderable surveyor to your many activities. And you turned grateful for it, accepting that you'd now to work, but subtly recalling your past inclination to know more.

But you returned.

"Take a sip," the professor said, breaking the silence with a modest smile on his features. Skylar mouthed "why" but then quickly lifted the glass to his mouth, as if remembering how much he had told him about. Yet his wrist was swiftly taken by the same man, who gently set the chalice down on the table.

"I forgot," he smiled, "you have to clink glasses first."

"Um, sorry I don't know what that means," Skylar said. "Cassitude?"

"Yes-yes, I think it's like here," she filled up her glass and touched it with Skylar's. It clinked, and a long quivering sound filled the flat.

"Only you have to hold it up, though," Mascar advised, and raising Skylar's arm, brought it to the necessary height for a toast. "To Cassitude?" his eyes sparkled with merry.

"To all of us," Cassitude said shyly, and her glass clinked with Skylar's for the second time, but it was the first time they had done a proper toast. Mascar even did a little applause gesture with his hands, and stood up as soon as they had finished their glass.

"Use in moderate amount; too much can be harmful to physical and mental health both," he instructed, picking his grey frock coat he had left by the front door. "Please have a good day, and may you spend it well."

Skylar, although shuddering due to the taste of the wine, was seized by an insistent urge to stop him. And do something that would make him happy.

Within thirty seconds he reached the front door of their flat and hugged Mascar right before the door.

Mascar tenderly embraced him before letting go with a fatherly pat on the back.

"Spend your day well."

He smiled again and quickly left the room.