The Oganess

It was a beautiful day when he had set out on that fateful morning. Pink and yellow skies were streaked by thin white clouds. There was just the softest gust of wind that kept him cool the way he liked it, as his walks would often warm him up and cause him to perspire.

Suen had fought the naysayers longer than most thought he had the stomach for. They told him to give up his job, his tradition, his legacy. It would mean giving up on his ancestors, but no one understood. The first male to do so, Suen was the twenty-first generation Oganess in the role, and he was the proudest.

Before he stepped out into the cold winter’s day, he dressed, a routine that hadn’t been broken for the twenty years and three days he had served in the role. Over his bodywarmers, he put on his green snow boots and green tunic. And just at the door, he would don his purple cape and purple satellite-hat, the same that had been worn by his mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. The naysayers laughed at that too, they thought that the satellite-hat belonged in a museum.

On that day, Suen took his usual route to the mountains. Making sure that his transmission was switched on, his satellite-hat beamed the signal proudly. The Oganesses believed that the signal was attuned to a receiver that their parallel-dimension selves would pick up.

The walk to the mountains was always lonely, but somehow, Suen felt comforted that day. He reached his first checkpoint and recorded it in the log. That was the last trace of him.

Sniffer dogs trailed his scent to the first checkpoint and the records confirmed it, but there was nothing from there. Suen disappeared that day and with him, the Oganesses' signal.