Universal Code

by William Songy

  “Didn’t you recognize the face?” Joseph asked raising his voice.

  “I saw many…all kinds of faces. I did see Tilhar? He is dead?” She was confused.

  “No, his soul lives on. He lives in the shadow world now. He will recover his energy, get stronger, and will try to find us again.”

  “You stopped him?” Sonia said.

  “I didn’t know that doing that would work. I don’t even know if I can do it again. If he was stronger, it would have been much different. He used a lot of his energy to find us. I’m not sure how hard it will be to find us again, but he will be ready next time,” Joseph was leaning against the wall.

  “Even in death he haunts me,” Sonia said as she looked up to the ceiling. “Am I…are we never going to be rid of him?”

  “For now, he is too weak to return. In the tamtu etutu it takes a long time to recover your energy. Maybe once he gets his energy up, he will try again. The good thing is that finding us will not be so easy. I ran past him when I was stopping the Imhas. I guess he was there because this is his home planet…the place where you took his body and sent him into the tamtu etutu. He hasn’t gone far,” Joseph looked to Sonia and then out of the large windows over the controls on the bridge.

  “There are many layers to the tamtu etutu. Each is different and so big that there is no way to see or know everything about them. It is much easier to get lost than to find your way.” He pointed to an image of Isfahan on a monitor that was from a camera facing the rear of the transport. It was fading into the background. “In one layer you can get from this planet to that planet. In one layer you can go to any point in time, forward to backward. So many different layers, so many different things. In some layers there is nothing but darkness. Nothing but bad things. If you were to go into space, but only go where you can see that planet, it will always be easy to return to it. You would not get lost. In the shadow world, in some layers, it is like going into the middle of the universe away from all planets and stars to a place where it all looks exactly the same. Go off in the wrong direction and you may never see another planet again. Go off into another direction, the same thing. This is what it can be like in the tamtu etutu. So many have tried to enter this shadow world and got lost. You can’t count all the ones who have tried and lost their way and their mind.

  “Your soul can never die there, only wonder forever and ever like Tilhar’s. They never rest. The madness makes most of them violent. I have heard the lost called the pulhu. They wander around forever, lost and confused and angry. What separates the gifted is the ability to get in and out…to find where you are going and return. If we get far away, maybe it will never find us again.”

  “Maybe,” Sonia said, “will it be hard to find Econ? I guess you have been there.”

  Joseph stood and moved to a chair that was mounted to the rear wall of the bridge. He pulled it down and sat. He looked at Sonia and turned away when her eyes met his, “They let you come because they want me. They want me to help in the war that is coming…that is here.”

  Sonia was a little taken back by his statement, “But you are a boy.”

  “They want me to take them into the tamtu etutu. Teach them what I know about the tamtu etutu. That is the whole reason they let you go,” he said

  “But they didn’t know that I left,” Sonia said dismayed.

  “Yes, they knew that you would want to find me one day. They planned…to have this ship available, ready, and easy for you to get away in. They watched as you left and cleared a way for you to go.”

  Sonia became angry, “Then, let’s not go there.”

  “That doesn’t matter. They can track this transport no matter where it goes. They don’t want to hurt me, or you. They hope I can help them. I have seen the coming war,” he sat in the chair with his shoulders slumped over.

  For the first time, she looked upon him as his mother. She felt something intangible but real and yet unexplainable. This was her son, which he had revealed to her prior to being on the transport. Sonia could not truly believe him without proof. But inexplicably, without any testing or further evidence, instinctively she knew it to be true. The reality hit her and she didn’t know how to accept it. What did she know about rearing a child? Joseph was hardly qualified to be considered a child. He had witnessed and experienced more horror than anyone she had known outside of herself. She was his age when the abduction occurred, when she was taken by force from her family. With no life experience as a mother and very distant memories of her own, how was she to know what to do?

  Sonia could see tears as they fell from his face and into his lap. She walked over and sat next to him while putting an arm across his shoulders. He looked up, “Are you afraid of me?”

  “No, I’m not,” she said wiping the tears from his cheeks, “what is wrong?”

  “I hate doing that. I hate hurting. I don’t want to help kill…I just want to be normal. I just want to be normal,” Joseph said looking down at the floor.

  “What would you consider to be normal?” she asked.

  “Like the kids at home. The things they do on Earth,” he said. “I have watched them. I have seen them. I want to go, but I am not sure that will ever happen.”

  “Why?” she asked trying to look him in the eyes.

  “How would the people of Earth treat me? What if they knew what I was, what I can do? I am not a Roo’kall…I am more dangerous than that. It really doesn’t matter where I go, they will be afraid of me for what I am. If they found out, they would feel threatened. They would try to hurt me, maybe even hurt you. They would be afraid of me if they knew. I don’t want to hurt anyone.” For the first time, Joseph truly sounded like a ten-year-old kid.

  She didn’t know how to respond. He was mature for being so young and although she was a kid who had hardly known anything about the world when she was taken, Sonia knew he was right. Sometimes fear caused humans to do awful things, “Well, when we get there we just won’t tell anybody.”

  Joseph looked up and gave her a thin smile, but he knew that was not going to matter. They would know or at least know that he was not like them. Could he ever appear to be the same as the kids on Earth? He had no confidence in his ability to do so.

  “Why the name Joseph?” Sonia asked, “where did you hear it?”

  “I went to Earth visiting…watching…learning. Walked into a building they call a church. I stood in a back corner listening to them tell a story of a boy who was sold by his brothers…they hated him. He became a slave. He was put in a cell for a long time but helped the leader of the people. He became an important man and saved a lot of people. A lot of people lived because of him…not died. I was a slave in a cage. I want to help people. I can be Joseph.”

  “It’s been a long time, but I remember that from when I was a little girl. We went to church. You’re right, Joseph was a great man,” Sonia said. “Yes, you can be like Joseph. You can be a great man…every bit as great as the Joseph of the Bible. You know, you are not a slave anymore. You are not their property. Neither of us are…we are free. That is worth fighting for. Remember that no matter what happens,” she said rubbing his shoulder.

  The truth of her statement was a powerful eye-opener. He no longer needed to roam in search of his future, or perhaps a family. It was his to decide. All the places he had visited were accessed through the tamtu etutu. This time he would travel like the free people.

  No one had ever encouraged him before. Joseph didn’t know how to take it. There was never an opportunity to experience interaction or expressing himself on an emotional level with others. He reached out awkwardly and hugged her. Joseph held on for a second not certain if there was a length of time a hug was supposed to last. This was his first attempt at it. If he had not gone back and watched Sonia’s memories and saw her mother hugging her as a little girl, he wouldn’t know how to respond.

  He noticed that her face had begun to turn pink during the short conversation and didn’t think much about it at first. Her
body began to get warm and convulse mildly as the situation seemed to intensify. He pulled back to look at her and was met with a very different expression, one of confusion, concern, and pain. She looked around wide-eyed and anxious while attempting to stand but failing to do so against the manufactured gravity of the ship. Sonia was unable to stand due to the weakness of her legs. Joseph leapt off the seat and knelt over her. It was then that he noticed her hand. It was discolored and cold to the touch. He rolled up the sleeve on her shirt. The skin was pale up to the elbow. The rest of her body was getting increasingly warm as it was being taken by a fever. Her breathing became labored and beads of sweat formed on her forehead.

  “You touched Tilhar. Your arm, it’s cold,” he wanted to say that it looked dead, but he didn’t want to make her afraid. She knew of the injury and hid it while consoling him. Joseph was unsure of what to do and called out to Ann or Lindsay for help. He knew if she didn’t get to a place where she could be helped, her life was in danger.

  It was the first time anything had followed him from the tamtu etutu. Many times, he was able to hide and observe the many different beings that were lost and roaming aimlessly searching for a way back to where they originally entered or at least a place where they could exit. They called them the pulhu. Most were mumbling in madness or screaming in desperation tired of the darkness and hopelessness. At times he felt sorry for them and often considered approaching and seeing if he could help. But he knew the violent way the pulhu interacted with each other. They were lost both mentally and physically and there was no way he could have helped them. Joseph had been very successful making himself invisible to them, until this time. He was too sloppy when going after the Imhas. Driven by a desire to get Sonia to safety had resulted in more of a focus on speed than caution when moving from ship to ship manipulating their minds. It was on his return that Tilhar confronted him in the tamtu etutu. The interaction was brief and he was able to shake off the pursuer. Joseph unfortunately made a second error. Instead of stepping into another layer of the tamtu etutu and drawing the Tilhar’s spirit farther away from the transport before returning, he had simply led it to her. Now, because of his carelessness, his mother was lying on the floor injured and fighting for breath and he had no idea of the extent of her condition or how to help.

  “Dalkhu Mursu.”

  Joseph looked up to see that Lindsay had returned and was standing over them studying Sonia. “What is that?”

  “The common name for it is the ‘demon’s disease.’ It starts because of exposure to the skin then works its way inward attacking and destroying the cellular makeup of the tissues in the body or arm in this case. The blood cells and vessels collapse and cut off all circulation. The affected area usually dies. The most common treatment of an area exposed and untreated for too long is the removal of the damaged area,” Lindsay’s face revealed her concern.

  “How long until we get to where we are going?” he asked.

  “One to two weeks in celerity. Not sure,” Lindsay replied.

  Time seemed to be of the essence and the lack of ability to treat Sonia’s condition exacerbated the anxiety. Joseph didn’t want to wait even a single day. He needed to act now. The only option he saw was to get her to Econ through the shadow world. He had taken Sonia into it once before while in the ginn. The reduction in gravity and pressure did not seem to bother her, but their time had been brief and was not a good measure of the physical difficulties she might endure. Now, she was injured and sick. He wondered how the tamtu etutu would influence her condition.

  There was a layer in the shadow world that had allowed him to get back and forth from Earth within seconds. In this layer were countless numbers of large black tunnels, he referred to as sitens. These led to nearly every habitable planet in the Universe. His first trip there was more than overwhelming when he observed the endless sea of spinning, tornadic tubes that disappeared into infinity. Initially, he had no intentions of stepping anywhere near, much less entering one of the sitens. But the lights and smells emanating from the openings were like an attractant in a trap and were too alluring to simply dismiss. It was the most unique place he had ever seen and was incapable of walking away. Like a vacuum, the black tunnels seemed to pull and funnel the light, sounds and smells through itself to where he was. The various hues of light were intoxicating, but it was his general curiosity more so then the smells that had initially drawn him near the one from Earth. At first, he was completely clueless as to what it was, but it seemed soothing and pleasant. So much so, that while attempting to get a better sense of it, he inadvertently got too close and was pulled in. While from his vantage point the sitens seemed to draw from the source and spit it out on his end, it possessed the uncanny ability to siphon from both directions simultaneously and his entrapment was the result of his lack of understanding of this.

  Once he entered the tunnel, Joseph found it impossible to stop and reverse direction and had no option but to ride it out to the end before being able to reenter and return. As if by fate, he was fortunate enough to have accidentally ended up on Earth. Joseph was dumped onto a seashore and realized that the aroma that had drawn him in was from the vast oceans that covered the planet’s surface.

  While sitting on the beach attempting to gain his bearings, Joseph was thinking of the memories from Sonia’s childhood. Of the house and yard where she was living at the time of her last memories of Earth. To his right, a square area of disturbed air appeared. He decided to investigate and climbed into it. The normal world was behind him once again. As if being directed by a mystical guide, he knew which way he needed to travel. Each step seemed to cover a hundred miles. Soon, he was standing in front of the old house across from a levy. After revisiting the memory, Joseph found himself wanting to take his mother there.

  Each time he made the jump in the sitens, the trip had been quick, but very disorienting to the point of causing him to experience brief nausea. This lessened with each time he traveled to Earth. Joseph wondered how Sonia would be able to handle passing through in her condition. The fact that he had never attempted to get to Econ that way was another issue. There was never really any desire to visit the planet. It was by chance that he had made it to Earth. The accidental trip almost seemed as if it was purposefully guided by some unseen force. While the sitens constantly moved and reshaped, he was always able to find it again by recalling its frequency and by its odor.

  Sonia moaned and looked up at him. The expression on her face suggested that she didn’t recognize him or understand where she was. She looked lost. Joseph was confused and the barrage of thoughts overwhelmed him to the point of inaction. He couldn’t settle on what to do. Each option had its risk, but which offered his mother the best opportunity? The options were few, but the potential consequences were darting painfully through his mind. The indecision was almost too much for him. A part of him wanted to run away and leave this decision to someone else. The temptation to do so was winning out.

  He stood and paced the area of the bridge with his hands on his head when he noticed the vertical split in the air to his left. Joseph backed up in preparation to confront whatever it was that had found him. He slid down the wall toward Sonia to get between her and whatever was about to slide out of the opening. Joseph saw the thin arm and then the body slide out as if birthed by the atmosphere in the transport. Joseph felt a huge sense of relief to see Duncan standing before him.

  “Here to help,” Duncan said struggling to forge a sentence.

  Joseph understood and asked, “To where?”

  “Econ,” he said pointing to Sonia lying on the floor.

  “I thought you were on the slave transport? How did you get there?” Joseph asked.

  The boy spoke and seemed to ramble for a few seconds then Joseph repeated his interpretation of what he believed the boy was attempting to say, “Yes, I know. They want to meet me. Never mind that. I need to help her. Can you help?”

  Duncan walked over to Sonia then said something again a
nd motioned to pick her up, “Hurry, close,” he said looking at the open portal. Joseph helped Duncan stand Sonia up and the three stepped into the tamtu etutu.

  Chapter 20

  “Cameron, don’t go in the water,” Linda shouted as she labored to carry the beach gear while pushing her feet through the sand on the beach. It seemed as difficult to walk across as quicksand. After spending the week pinned up at home and in school the kids had become anxious for the liberty offered by the beach. Unable to control their energy, they refused to concede to their mother’s agonizingly slow pace as she struggled through the soft sand. High-pitched screams drowned out the seagulls as the children ran out in front of her unable to contain their energy and enthusiasm. Cameron was the stubborn one and never wanted to follow the rules or listen to his mom. Often this resulted in injuries of various degrees and frequent visits to the doctor. In the last week alone, he fell from a tree and had received a fist full of mud in his left eye from the neighbor’s son after an altercation. While the beach didn’t have any trees to fall out of or mud to impact his eye, there was an endless abundance of sand and she wondered what he might do with that.

  Despite her instructions, the kids were standing at the edge of the incoming waves. She dropped the bag and chairs pausing to catch her breath. Linda opened a chair and pushed it down into the sand and sat down. She closed her eyes for a moment, spread her arms and stretched while soaking in the gulf breeze and trying to listen to the gentle caress of the waves which was being drowned out by the annoying noise of the seagulls that seemed to congregate around them. She had essentially grown up on Long Boat Key before moving to Kissimmee to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the year-round tourism that was drawn in by the theme parks. Despite living close, it had been years since her return. The kids were growing up and she wanted them to have some of the same experiences of her childhood, so long as Cameron didn’t require a trip to the hospital.