Caught Somewhere In Time

Start reading from the beginning…

Adam stepped out of the Central Works building and into the main square at the heart of Mars Colony. The Central Works included the hospital, the jail, and other public service offices, and the square beyond it was something that Adam had never imagined. There was a high ceiling over head, so high that it appeared that some wispy clouds were clinging to the inside of the apparent dome. Adam could see through both the clouds and the translucent ceiling to what looked like burning skies, a rusty reflection of the barren orange surface that surrounded the colony. He had not looked very closely at the complex, a town really, when he was escorted into the hangar. Before leaving the hangar, he had fainted, and then awoke later in the Central Works building, so this was the first time he was aware of this space.

A few people walking around in the square looked over at him as he emerged onto the red stone steps, one small person waved shyly. Adam smiled and waved back. Then looked around for his destination. The colony wasn’t very big, they said, but to him it was a larger world than he had ever known. His time with the Protectors had meant off-limits areas, no access to the sky or to windows, or to anything that the Protectors hadn’t provided. Until Adam left in the stolen ship, he had never even seen the world outside the building he had lived in.

He headed down the steps and followed a small group of people walking past Central Works to his right. The people who had been watching over him had told him which direction to go, and what he should look for. The building was called a hotel, and it was near the end of the street. If he reached the port, he had gone too far. The street looked long to his eyes, but he thought it was probably only due to perspective. Adam looked all around as he went, trying to take it all in: human civilization everywhere. He still questioned whether he had done the right thing in escaping, but as usual tried to put those ideas out of his mind. Humans were not gone, they were right here, all around him. Despite leaving the others behind, Adam had proved to himself that humanity does exist and that the Protectors had lied to him, to all of them.

Before long, he found the building he was looking for, and walked into the entrance. The inside was not very different than Central Works, except that you could bypass the front desk if you preferred. Adam walked over and asked the woman working there where he might find Admiral Chan, but really he was thinking only of seeing Audrey again. The woman used a communication device to contact the Admiral, and then she told Adam that someone would be down to retrieve him in a few moments.

“How long is a moment?” Adam asked, but the woman just encouraged him to wait near some furniture across the room, not answering him really. Adam glanced at his watch a few times while he stood next to a luxurious sofa waiting. When Audrey arrived, Adam said, “Are moments the same as minutes?”

Audrey chuckled and said, “It’s nice to see you too! Follow me; we have a conference room set up down the hall.” She started leading away, past some tall green plants, and when Adam didn’t follow immediately, she stopped and explained, “Moments are not a specific measurement, they can be a second or two, or several minutes. They refer objectively to a portion of time without noting its actual length.”

“Oh,” Adam replied. He thought about that for a moment, and as he started to follow Audrey he said, “It is nice to see you.”

When they arrived at the door halfway down the hall, Adam felt nervous somehow. He wasn’t sure he should be doing this or not. He tried to push the feeling out of his mind, but it was very powerful. He thought he should mention it to Audrey, but she was already opening the door. As the door opened, he could see inside the room a couple of people talking to Admiral Chan. Their conversation seemed to make sense to him though, even though he didn’t know there would be anyone else here.

The man was saying, “… is not any technology we have ever seen. Maybe if we could get it back to base, we could have Arthur reverse engineer it.”

The woman, as if finishing his thought, interjected, “Except I’m not even sure if I can fly that thing. We are talking about truly alien technology here, not just a different version of human stuff. This is fundamentally different.”

Adam followed Audrey into the room, hands shaking and clammy, eyes darting back and forth between all three people that were already in a conference. He wanted to run, but he knew he couldn’t. Not now, especially not in front of Audrey. Upon seeing him there, the conversation abruptly stopped, and all eyes turned to look at the new arrival. Audrey sat down at the table in a chair that was already pulled out. It seemed as though she had been here earlier and had been sent out to retrieve him. Unsure what to do, Adam cautiously reached for a chair himself, pulling it out slowly, to sit next to Audrey away from the strangers.

Audrey must have seen Adam turning pale, because she broke the new silence by saying, “I bet Adam could fly it, or at least show Val what to do. He has flown it already, haven’t you Adam?”

The boy started feeling hot, suddenly, wanting to run away now for a different reason. The door had clicked shut behind him though, so there was no easy escape now. Rather than speak, he just shook his head, trying not to look at the man and woman staring at him across the table.

The Admiral spoke next though, relieving Adam of the need to answer. “Why don’t you two see if that human-like technology you found meshed into everything else has any purpose beyond confusing us? I will talk to Adam a bit and see if he would be willing to help us out with this.”

The man and the woman stood up, eyes seemingly locked on Adam, and walked around the table to leave, obviously excused. Before walking out however, the woman introduced herself to Adam. “My name is Val, Adam. I hope to see you again soon.”

Adam looked up into her face. She had a kind face, with soft features. He started to feel more comfortable suddenly. “I hope so too,” he answered shyly, his voice cracking a little. With a smile, she left with the man.

When the door shut, Adam turned to look at the Admiral, who was obviously here to try to understand Adam’s experiences. The man just stared at him, the corner of his mouth turned up just a little bit in spite of the serious face he was obviously trying to achieve. He cleared his throat and said, “Shall we begin then?”

Audrey looked over at Adam and told him, “Thank you for agreeing to come talk to us. It must be nice to get out of that jail cell.” She smiled at him warmly.

“I am sorry,” the Admiral started, “that I questioned you so impatiently before. I am much more comfortable having all the answers before I ask the questions, and Ms… I mean Audrey helped me to realize that use of force might only frighten or anger you. If I have upset you, please accept my apology.”

“I accept your apology, um Admiral Chan.” Adam hadn’t fully recovered from his embarrassment, but he was regaining composure quickly. “Audrey said that you wanted to know more about me, and my experiences.” Adam saw the man lay a flat object, which he had seen many people use, down on the table and press it in a few areas, but he couldn’t tell what it was for.

The Admiral must have seen the question on his face, because he said, “This will record our conversation, so I can review it again later to help me remember what we discussed.”

Adam looked at the board, and could read words that appeared on its surface, words that the Admiral had just spoken. He watched it as he said, “It changes what we say into writing?” Sure enough, his words were recorded in text form on the board. It even added his name to the beginning.

“It records it in three ways. First, the TekBoard makes an audio recording that we can play back and hear our own voices again. Second, it translates those words into writing, using our chip implants to identify us. And third, it takes measurements of the room and our movements, making it capable of reconstructing the scene three-dimensionally later if needed.” The Admiral paused for a minute, maybe realizing that Adam didn’t fully grasp what he was saying. Then he moved the conversation back into focus. “What is the earliest thing you remember?”

“Well, I remember the preparations made for the great movement. That was when we had to move our home to a different location on Earth. The Protectors told us that it was no longer safe where we were, and that we needed to move to a safer location. All of us humans watched as the Protectors locked everything up and took everything away from us. We had to sit in a round room together, all of us humans. We were belted to the walls around the room so that we wouldn’t float away during the movement, and our whole home was moved while we were belted in. I could feel my insides moving around on their own, and I was almost sick. Egypt unbelted herself and flew around the room for a while, not stuck to the walls like the rest of us. They punished her when they found out though and she strapped herself back into her spot. We were very bored while we waited, because we just had to sit and do nothing. At last we started sticking to the ground again though, and we were allowed to move around again. Nothing had really changed, but the Protectors told us that we were in a safer part of Earth after that.” Adam stopped, letting the Admiral ask a question again.

“You were on Earth? Where were we then, the rest of the human race?”

“The Protectors told us that we were the only ones remaining. They said that the rest of the humans all died. We saw pictures of them, and read stories about them. The Protectors gave us a library where we could read about the things that happened on Earth, about what kind of people we were descended from.” Adam looked at Audrey and continued. “I thought that they were lying to us though. All of the things we read were stories about how humans fought with each other all the time. They drew pretend lines all over the Earth and got mad when other people crossed those lines. Sometimes they would fight with each other just because of how they looked or because they thought different things. The books taught us that the humans had destroyed themselves with their bombs.

“There were big explosions all over the planet, and the oceans started to boil away when the surface was broken open, letting out all the fires inside the Earth. Great clouds of steam blocked out the sunlight and made the world dark. There were winds that blew dust and rocks all over the place, wrecking everything in big storms. The Protectors told us that they couldn’t rescue any of the living humans, but that they had collected us children before any of this happened. They had visited Earth and had collected unborn humans, and hatched us when the Earth was only a wasteland.

“I didn’t believe it though. None of the humans the Protectors were helping ever did mean things like that to each other. We all looked different, well me more different than the rest, but we all were friends. Some were better friends than the others, but we didn’t fight. We didn’t make wars with each other, even when we disagreed. We all shared everything. All our food, all the books. Everything that they told us was saved from the humans before they ruined it all, we shared it all.”

Audrey interrupted him, “Why do you say that you were more different than the others?”

“Well, for one I was the only one who the Protectors couldn’t listen to. They could get inside everyone else’s heads and know what they were thinking. Sometimes they would control the other humans, and make them do what the Protectors wanted. Usually they left us alone though, but punished us or made us do things when we were not cooperating with them. They could never do that to me, so that made me different. Also, I was the only boy.”

“Excuse me?” the Admiral asked. “There were no other males, only females?”

“Yeah, well, among us humans that is. I think the Protectors had men and women, but they were very hard to tell apart from each other. It’s not obvious like it is with us.”

The Admiral looked worried almost, as if there was something wrong. He didn’t ask any other questions though. It was Audrey who spoke next, “Why else did you think the Protectors were lying to you?”

“Well, some of the books they gave us looked like there were parts missing. Some of the things in them didn’t make sense, like they were hiding some truth from us. I asked about it once, but Nanny told me that they were just protecting us from things that might scare us. To me that meant that they really were lying to us, because they changed the truth before letting us have it. Later, of course, she told me the real truth. And now that I think about it, I don’t believe we were ever on Earth to begin with.”

“What makes you say that?” The Admiral appeared captivated by the story Adam was telling.

“When I escaped from the Protectors in their special ship that Nanny told me about, I flew up, away from the surface until I could see that it was really round. She told me that was very important that the whole planet look round to me. Anyway, the planet was all red, like it is here. I pushed in the numbers that Nanny told me to into the special hidden controls, and then the planet disappeared away from me, leaving me alone in space.” Adam stared at the wall for a few moments, lost in thought. Then he snapped back into the present and continued, “But the planet was right behind me instead of in front of me. At first I thought I hadn’t gone anywhere, but I must have turned the ship around backward of something. Without anywhere else to go, I started going back down to the surface, but I bumped the ship into something floating around above the planet. That’s when the humans found me and forced me to go down into this colony.”

“That’s it? You just flew up into orbit, and then back down again?” Audrey seemed to understand, but wanted more details.

“Yes, I guess. I didn’t know where else I could go. Nanny told me the ship would take me to the humans, and I guess she was right, because here I am. Like I said though, I think it was Mars that I was on before, because it looked the same going up and coming back down. Except on the way up there were no humans trying to get me.”

“What can you tell me about your surroundings when you first left in the ship? Do you remember anything about where on the planet you were going back to?” Admiral Chan seemed to light up, like he had an idea.

“Yeah, it was deep in a canyon, at the very bottom, in a cave I think. When I first left, the ship flew itself clear of all the rocks. Even when I was far from the planet, I could see the canyon down below, when the whole planet was on my screen.”

“I wonder if that could be the Mariner Valleys?” Audrey asked.

Chan answered, “I believe there is an archaeological survey team with a base there. Maybe they know something.”

Continued on June 5, 2010