[NWO airship, picture taken from the top of a refueling tower]
The crew were kept as prisoners for the remainder of Storm.
At the end of Storm season the women were escorted out of the large bunker.
At the exit of the base Anita successfully broke free of the guards. She disarmed one guard and
the others put their guns down. She demanded the other women to run free. They did so. Ava begged Anita to go with them. Anita refused.
Anita left Ava to find General Rocha. Ava and the other women ran and took shelter in rocks near the entrance to hide from gunfire.
WHEN ANITA GOT TO General Rocha’s quarters she found him in a drunken stupor. Anita confined him to a chair and held him at gunpoint.
— Editing Team
MARTIN ROCHA: RECOLLECTION:
I’d be surprised if she understood me. “This is how you repay me for letting you leave?” Something like that.
I can’t remember if I said anything else.
I wanted to provoke her, show her she didn’t frighten me. I waited for her to say something, I was ready for anything. She said nothing. She just held the gun at my head five feet or so in front of me.
After a long silence, […] I don’t know, maybe I kept insulting her. But she was silent.
Her face eventually softened, she lowered the gun, and looked at me with the same look Carson and the other ICs gave me when I tortured them: pity.
[Martin paused]
She let me live. I wanted her to pull the trigger. I was so mad — so conflicted and tortured. I had lost — and I couldn’t stand it.
She dropped the gun and left the room without a word.
Eventually, moments later, I broke free, picked up the gun, and ran after her.
I watched her pass through the front entrance, she was silhouetted by the sunlight reflecting off the white sand outside. It was blindingly bright.
I ran after her, lined up my sights and took the shot.
— Martin Rocha
BROOKLYN: RECOLLECTION:
I could’ve saved her. I just didn’t have the instruments.
It was awful.
We carried her as far as we could, walking intently toward nowhere. It’s like Shawna and Ava believed the faster they walked, the more likely Anita was to survive.
We were so lost. Lost in every way you can imagine.
I eventually got everyone to stop, I knew Anita was dying and she only had a few more moments. Although I was still young, I had already seen a lot of death. I knew when someone was going to go. I knew if we didn’t stop, everyone would miss it — miss that moment — and they’d regret it for the rest of their lives.
She had been shot through the back and stomach, and was losing a lot of blood. We set her down on a large flat gray rock.
One by one we took our moment with her. Anita had become quite compassionate since she’d had Rafael. Much more nurturing. No less practical though. Just less afraid to show her love for you.
She caressed my face, ran her fingers through my hair, held and kissed our hands.
She joked that she’d “lived through worse.”
Just before she died, she said she “wasn’t afraid to die anymore.”
— Brooklyn Elise Groves
ANITA DIED FROM HER wounds. The remaining women (Ava, Brooklyn, Shawna. Misty, Sarah, and Megan) dug a shallow grave and covered her body with rocks and sand.
— Editing Team
RECOLLECTION: MEGAN:
We hadn’t been sitting around the grave for very long when they appeared.
Our sons flew down from the skies. They had massive wings, all their feathers were back. They were alive.
It was incredible. I’d never known joy like that before.
Kenyen took my hand and his memories flashed across my mind. I saw what he saw when General Rocha opened the hatch and exposed them to the nuclear storm.
I WATCHED THE STORM carry them helplessly through the air and into the sky. Engulfed in radioactive flame their skin burned and blistered like it did in the water on Eden. I felt his pain — the kind of pain you give up fighting. A pain that leaves you feeling so helpless and shocked you can’t even cry.
They tumbled through the air and began to transform again. Their feathers returned, and bird-like wings sprouted from their back.
They gained control again, and began soaring through the storm.
When the storm subsided, they easily found their way back to the base. That’s when they found us in the mountains nearby.
— Megan Chelsea Peterson
RECOLLECTION: MISTY:
My boy was alive. Brock was okay. And he was better than ever. His beautiful brown feathers were back.
It didn’t take Rafael, Anita and Donna’s boy. long to realize what the pile of stones meant for his mother. It took us a moment to notice him standing there just looking down at her grave.
He looked so […]
[Misty paused]
Rafael looked decided.
He began moving the stones.
I assumed he just wanted to see her body. It reminded me of something Megan had told me Kenyen did shortly after his birth. She had found him attempting to dig up Bonnie’s grave back on Eden one night. Megan explained to Kenyen that it would be very disturbing for her if he did that. He settled for Megan sharing memories of her death with him.
But it became clear to me that what Rafael was doing here was different. This wasn’t curiosity, this wasn’t even mourning — he was intent on bringing her back.
Rafael got to Anita’s body. Seeing her is when he began to cry. He lifted her dusty body gently in his arms.
He placed his large hand on her chest, and after a moment she began to breath again.
[Misty paused]
How do you talk about these sorts of things?
People don’t believe it. They say she wasn’t dead, or some other bulls[…]. I really don’t care.
I think the part of me that expected anyone to believe anything I told them died the moment I set foot on Eden.
Either way it was now clear to us that our sons couldn't be killed — and that even our deaths were no longer an obstacle for them.
That kind of thing changes you forever.
It took me time, and I think the other women too, to realize what had changed in us — but knowing that death was no longer a problem —we needed to completely shift our perspective on life.
I mean — we no longer needed to survive.
How do you wrap your head around something like that? If death doesn’t matter, at that point, what really makes life matter? You know?
Ah s[…], I don’t know how to explain it. Ask Megan or Brooklyn or something — they’re better with words than I am.
— Misty Renae Dawson
SHORTLY AFTER ANITA’S RESTORATION, the crew decided their efforts with the CW had failed, and that they would attempt peace with the NWO.
On the backs of their children ICs, the crew flew for a few days in search of the closest NWO airship they could find.
They found the NWO airship ‘Titan Six’, under the command of current NWO President, Kurt Fismor.
— Editing Team
RECOLLECTION: ADAM:
I now find myself in the bizarre situation of addressing you, the reader, personally.
I am the director of The Madonna Mission record project. I also am a co-editor along with my colleagues Elise Johnson, and Dr. Claire Saunders — whose expertise and generosity have made this project possible.
My recollections of the following events will be written, as opposed to the traditional oral interview process I have engaged in with Martin, Misty, Megan, and Dr. Groves.
I will represent my knowledge and memories to the best of my ability — attempting both a high degree of objectivity and the emotional vulnerability I believe is a vital aspect of accurately portraying the events of The Madonna Mission.
With the assistance of Dr Saunders and Elise Johnson, my input will convey only that which is entirely necessary — to either fill narrative holes or provide interesting and relevant information and perspective.
…
THE ENTIRETY OF THE NWO citizenry lived on the same airship (‘Titan Six’). We consolidated our population after our attack on the CW (3609). We had sustained a heavy amount of casualties in the attempted take over and eventual destruction of base control.
We had run out of fuel and energy. We decommissioned the other airships and drained enough fuel and energy from them and the few remaining bays. That gave us enough enough for 5 more storm seasons. We maintained the illusion of power by hacking CW radar. There were only around 80,000 of us left — but we made it seem like all of our ships were operational housing millions of people total. In reality we had been starving and dying for several years now, only after uniting resources and population were we able to stabilize sufficiently for ground raids against the CW. Time was running out like never before.
AVA, ANITA, AND THE others arrived on our ship shortly after the end of storm season. The new year had begun and my father, Kurt Fismor, the current president of the NWO, was anxious to launch his newest premeditated strategy against the CW.
The only thing that could have stopped him was this.
We had received Anita’s message while they were in orbit just before their landing a year or so ago. We were aware of the ICs due to this and my father’s ground raids before the last storm season.
Our encounters with the ICs during our ground raids left us certain we could never be a viable threat to them. It was obvious to us that our only way forward with these creatures and Anita’s crew would be attempts at negotiation, diplomacy and peace.
My father saw the arrival of the crew and the ICs as a great opportunity to learn more about the location and vulnerabilities of General Rocha’s underground base.
I was baffled that he was only interested in the information they had about General Rocha. Beyond knowing Eden was habitable, he seemed relatively uninterested in the ICs or the crew’s experiences.
The crew were reluctant to tell my father where General Rocha was. The ICs however weren’t. Though they all advocated for a peaceful solution, Carson took my father’s hand and gave him what he wanted — showing him where the base was.
I later learned from Carson that he also warned my father that if he went to attack it was likely he wouldn’t survive. Carson knew General Rocha well at this point — and he was right.
General Rocha had planned extensively for such an attack and my father and his troops were all killed.
I became the new president and began seeking out peaceful solutions to the conflict with the NWO.
I had been leading a peaceful counter campaign to my father’s war tactics for years now, and after hearing of the CW’s use of nuclear weaponry on the ICs most of the NWO sympathized with my cause.
The death of my father left me feeling conflicted. I was grateful I could now begin a new chapter in the NWO, but felt dreadful about how it came to be. I had always hoped I could reason with my father.
— Dr. Adam K. Fismor
AVA: JOURNAL:
It’s been a minute.
I was given a new wrist system by Adam, and he encouraged me to start journaling again.
A lot has happened, and I think this helps me most if I just talk about what’s happening now.
[Ava paused]
ADAM HAS BEEN SO good to us. After our experiences with the CW, the NWOs reception of us and our sons came as a huge shock.
I grew up believing horrible things about these people. And though I still feel extremely skeptical about working with them, the evidence is clear that we’ll get farther with them than the CW.
I knew Adam had a good heart the moment I met him. He makes me laugh. For someone so serious and important, he has no hesitation poking fun at people and mostly himself.
Some of his ideas are absolutely bonkers though. His ideas for how to attain peace, how to restore the Earth’s health, or how we should live on Eden are really far-fetched. He's not without his flaws, after hearing him talk about some of the things he thinks about I sometimes just want to pat him on the head and remind him that he doesn't know everything. But I think this is the kind of thinking we need — the kind of bizarrely grounded confidence and hope that we need to be able to move forward. I’m sure it’s people like him who made it possible for the mission to even happen.
If you give him an ear, he’ll just cut through a lot of the formalities and tell you exactly how he feels.
I’ll just listen to him talk, and am intensely fascinated by how capable he is at explaining himself and doing it in a way that makes me want to get on board. He’s just fascinating, and I can’t quite figure him out. I kind of just wonder sometimes what’s going to come out of his mouth next.
At the time the things he says always sound so reasonable. But when I try and repeat one of his ideas to someone else, I realize how crazy it sounds coming out of my mouth, and wonder why I believed him.
[Ava laughs]
It doesn’t help that he has a habit of making up random facts. And until I repeat these facts I don’t realize he was totally pulling my leg. He seems to take a tremendous amount of joy in seeing what I’ll believe.
I’d say an example, but I’m legitimately embarrassed to, because anyone who listens to this will think I’m an idiot for believing some of these things he just makes up.
I’m getting better at telling when he’s joking though.
ADAM WOULD WORRY ME more if I didn’t have a fail-safe in Carson. Carson loves Adam. And he frequently hears out the full extent of his ideas through the mental bridge.
I enjoy learning more about Adam through Carson. Adam can get really lost in his head, but it makes my heart feel even more at peace knowing Carson knows and trusts him.
I do worry though what they’re thinking up together. We all, more than anything, want to save this planet, create peace with the CW and return to Eden. But I worry sometimes the extent to which these two will go, and what they’re willing to sacrifice to achieve it.
I feel stupid for worrying when I literally watched Rafael bring Anita back from death — but I’m terrified of losing Carson. I’m terrified that Brooklyn or Misty or any of our boys or crew will get hurt or lost. And if I’m being honest, I’m terrified of losing Adam now too.
I can’t help it. The more my heart learns who these people really are — the more they change me and I lean on them — the more terrified I am of losing them.
[End of entry]
RECOLLECTION: ADAM:
Carson came into my office one day. Thankfully the ships had been built large, and the ICs could move around freely for the most part.
Carson shared with me his experiences in the CW labs. I became intimately aware of the torture he endured, and it broke my heart in a way I’ll never be able to describe.
I finally felt like I understood Martin. I’m sure this is why Carson shared those memories with me. I could see how lost the general was, how impossible diplomacy would be. I could see that nothing short of ‘winning’ would stop him from trying to fight us.
It broke my heart. I felt at a loss. Carson and I thought for quite some time about what we could do but were unable to come up with anything. We eventually reached out to Anita. I didn’t want to press her, but I knew she, more than anyone, could help us. She knew Martin from when they were in training, then he imprisoned her, tortured and attempted to kill her son, he let her go, she spared his life, and then he shot her in the back. If anyone knew him at this point, it was her.
I could tell she didn’t want to say what she was thinking.
“He won’t stop until he knows he can kill you both.” Anita pointed at Carson and myself. She then looked directly at Carson, “You have to let him get what he wants for him to realize he doesn’t want it.”
We knew what we needed to do.
We called it ‘The New World Sacrifice’ — the idea was to march to the CW base unarmed, and subject ourselves completely to their mercy. The ICs and all of us would have to let ourselves be killed, and hope some of us would live. This was the only thing we hadn’t tried yet. And I refused to fight anymore.
It weighed on all of our hearts and really tested our desire for peace. I always said I would die for peace, but now I wondered if I really could. I decided dying for peace was better than continuing to live in a world without it. Not only did we need the CW tech for the exodus to Eden, we needed to solve this human problem for good. Even if we somehow got to Eden in some incredible feat of diplomacy with the CW — we would do the same thing on Eden that we did on Earth. The fighting needed to stop here or we would end as a species no matter where we lived.
Carson and Anita were going to tell the crew and the other ICs before I proposed this to the rest of the NWO citizenry. They needed to all be on the same page before I attempted consensus among my people.
— Dr. Adam K. Fismor
AVA: JOURNAL:
Carson came to me and showed me Adam and Anita’s plan. I lost it on him. All I saw was our deaths. This wasn’t the way. I yelled at him and forbid him from doing anything like this.
[Ava paused]
I’ve always wanted a child. I didn’t always know this, but as soon as I knew I was pregnant I could feel this was the reason I existed — to bring him into the world. How could this be the answer?
After I calmed down a bit, Carson gently presented his hand to me. I refused at first, but eventually made the mental bridge.
Carson drew out a memory of mine from when I was a baby, it was one I was unable to fully form on my own.
IN THE MEMORY I heard my parents in the other room yelling and screaming at each other. The screaming woke me up and I had begun to cry. Over my loud crying I heard two solid thuds and shortly after watched my mom swing the door open to my dark room. She scrambled to lock the door and sat on the floor against it.
My mom got up after my dad stopped pounding on the door. She came over to me and lifted me from the crib. She began to soothe me, and it was working.
Her lip was bleeding, and when she kissed me — the blood from the wound got on my face. She wiped it off along with my tears.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. You don’t deserve this.”
I was obviously unable to understand what she was saying to me at the time, but her voice was sympathetic and soothed me anyway.
I could understand her now though. She continued to rock me and eventually began to cry too.
“I know, I know. You didn’t choose to come here. I’m so sorry. You deserve so much better than this — than me.”
CARSON THEN TOOK ME to a memory I had from when I was 11 in CW training. I had just gotten in trouble at training because my teacher was being cruel to one of my friends. I told her to stop and the teacher focused all that anger on me and sent me home for the day.
My mom had just finished telling me how I needed to keep my head down and be good. I could tell she was afraid of losing me, she was afraid that my efforts to do good would lead to me getting hurt.
At the time I thought it was stupid and I think this was the first time I labeled her as a coward. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t on my side with this. I ran to my room and slammed the door.
What hurt more than anything wasn’t how cruel she was to me. My mother was never cruel — she never hit me or insulted me — what hurt was that she was weak. She didn’t do anything about the life she had brought me into, and she just kept letting me get hurt. I was always the one who needed to change and be okay with it.
She knocked gently on the door. I was asleep by now, and it was clear to me that Carson was pulling from subconscious memories. I listened to my mom open the door, tiptoe softly across the concrete floor towards me, and sit on the bottom of my bed.
“I want you to forget everything I just said.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Please promise me that while you’re here, you try and make things better.” Hearing this shocked me. I don’t think I had ever heard her talk like this. Even though she spoke in a whisper, her voice was strong, clear and firm.
I felt her hand begin to caress my hair and face softly. “I’m so proud of you and the woman you’re becoming.”
I could hear her throat begin to tighten. “Marry better than me. Mother better than me. Be smarter than me, kinder than me, braver than me. You’re not just my baby, you're my hope for a better world.”
CARSON ENDED THE MEMORY. I looked down at my arms — they still bore the scars from his claws when I attempted to rescue him from the river on Eden during his first transformation. He had offered to heal them many times — but I wanted them.
Just before we broke the mental bridge I could feel that he was scared. He needed me to comfort him. The plan scared him. There was so much about his life and death that was still unknown to him. I could feel that he needed his mother’s encouragement. He needed me to inspire him, and I couldn’t. My fear of losing him locked me in place.
After a long pause I looked at him and placed my hands on his strong face.
“Carson. Do what you know you need to do. I can’t pretend I’m not terrified of losing you. I wish I could be brave for you.”
I then thought of my mother’s sweet encouragement. If she could be brave, so could I.
“If you stay because of me, I will never forgive myself. Son — go do what you were born to do. And I’ll be right there with you.” I hugged him as tightly as I could. His soft feathers and calm breath was all I needed.
We leave tomorrow.
[End of Entry]
RECOLLECTION: ADAM:
The crew and their sons all agreed to move forward.
I delivered my final thoughts to the citizens on the ship. It wasn’t much — things that everyone was already thinking — things that many of them taught me.
They were moved and with me. Hearing of the CWs development and use of nuclear weaponry on the ICs — we felt an even greater sense of urgency.
We all wanted it to end, we wanted the fighting and the starving to end. We wanted a new world, one with peace in it, and we knew we couldn’t have that if we just wanted to win. We needed to lose. We needed to give up our pride.
Time was short anyway. If we died, at least we died trying. If some of us lived and the CW chose compassion, then the rest of us could leave to Eden.
It all felt so unbearably naive, yet so right — as if the answer had been there the whole time, and only now were we willing to bare it.
No one who didn’t want to go were forced to go. Everyone went.
— Adam K Fismor
RECOLLECTION: MARTIN:
I saw them marching towards the base and we launched into a full attack.
The NWO were there in the thousands marching towards us across the white sand. The sun was blinding and the sky was perfectly clear.
I remember looking up at the bright foggy silhouette of their ship, wondering why they weren’t firing at us from the safety of their airship.
I saw Carson and the other ICs at the front with the crew. I was enraged to still see them alive, especially Anita. As far as I was concerned they were all ungrateful traitor’s of the CW. I pulled out a long range rifle and shot Anita straight through the neck.
I moved my army and citizens into formation, and began a march towards them.
We next concentrated our fire on the ICs, and every bullet landed. They had made their skin soft and vulnerable.
We cheered as Carson and the others crumpled to the ground. They began to fall and bleed and die.
We were killing in the thousands before we realized no one was armed. The firing died down, but we continued to run towards them. The NWO regrouped and began walking forward again. We stopped our march and began firing again.
Thousands more were killed. They regrouped and again we braced for retaliation. We marched closer and by the time we reached them it was clear they weren’t going to fight back.
My men dropped their weapons and began to sob like children. They ran up to the wounded and held them in their arms. I stood above the ICs lifeless bodies in awe.
Carson looked up at me with that same pity. He reached out his hand to me. When I connected I felt he was really dying. I felt nothing but love.
[Martin wept]
Carson took his last breath and died.
This wasn’t victory.
EVERYONE BEGAN HAULING THE wounded inside to our medics.
The horror of what I’d done settled on me as I stared into Carson’s lifeless eyes. Adam ran up to me and began to sob looking down at the bodies of the ICs, Anita, Shawna, Sarah, and Ava.
I pointed my gun at my head. Adam embraced me and pleaded, “Please no more. Please no more death. Please help me fix this.”
I dropped my gun and began to help carry people inside.
Ava, Brooklyn, Megan, and Misty survived their wounds. All the ICs, and the other women didn’t. They were gone.
I killed Anita, Shawna, Sarah, Carson, Rafael, Donavan, Brock, Kenyen, Peter, and Titus.
— Martin Rocha
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