There was a greenish glow coming from behind us. The doorway that we had come through was just one in a line of many that curved out of sight, like we were on the outside of a large circle of them, each one showing a view of stars. Past that, across the room, was a circular wall that curved back around behind the alien beings. It was striped with black panels made of the same stuff as this floor, and in between were huge windows that—whoa.
At first, I didn’t even understand what I was seeing. Through those windows, I saw huge rings of metal, and it took me a second to realize those were part of this ship that we were on, fanning out around us, sort of like the structure of the Resolute, but so much bigger. I could see at least five or six rings, and each one was massively thick, striped with hundreds of rows of windows. And beyond that was an enormous planet. Not the planet we were stranded on, but another completely different one that looked like it might be ten times bigger than Earth, based on the moons that I could see here and there. It was dimly lit in a strange way that I didn’t quite understand, a sort of foggy haze of blue and gray clouds.
Beyond the planet was a feathery green-and-purple nebula, and then I realized something about the strange light on the planet: It wasn’t the light of a star—like, with one side brightly lit and the other in a deep shadow. This whole planet seemed to be lit evenly, and then I understood that the light was coming from all those other floating objects: They weren’t actually moons at all.
They were other huge ships like this one.
Each one had a massive blue engine firing out of the top and bottom of its core. It was the light from all these ships that was making the planet glow. And there were little lights darting between them, other smaller ships, and I mean, like, thousands.
Looking around, I realized that there was no star—Wait, there was one, but it was incredibly small, and at first I had mistaken it for another, distant ship. It was whitish blue and barely glimmering. I guessed it was a white dwarf: the dying gasp of a star that used to be like our sun.
“Will,” Penny whispered beside me. “Where are we?”
“I think it’s their home.”
“Okay… but where is it? And who are they?”
Cold fear surged through me. “I have no idea.”
The beings were talking to one another, their voices like reedy whispers punctuated now and then by clicking sounds.
One of them stepped away and came toward us. Like the others, its face was hidden in a hood, and we could see only those red-glowing goggles. I stood up, and so did Penny. As the being stopped in front of us, Penny took my hand.
Its goggles flickered and it began to speak in its windy, clicky language. I had no idea what it was saying, but after a second the words started to translate and we could understand them.
“You are right,” the being said, its words like sharp-edged whispers. “This is our home. Generations ago, we faced disaster on the surface of our planet, and so we harnessed the energy of our star and used it to build this network across the galaxy. A network that you made unauthorized use of and nearly damaged.”
“Unauthorized?” Penny snapped. “You guys left a doorway in a cave on our planet! And it turned on without us doing anything.”
The being made a sharp inhaling sound. “That is not your planet. You are not even supposed to be there.”
“Believe me,” said Penny, “we don’t want to be.”
“We’re sorry,” I said. “We didn’t mean to mess anything up. But my sister is right; we found the doorway by accident, and then it just opened up for me when I touched it. And when it showed us our old home, we just really wanted to go there again.”
“You know that planet your doorway is on is going to, like, melt pretty soon, right?” said Penny.
“Of course we do,” said the alien. “That is precisely why we use it for disposal.”
“Disposal?” said Penny.
“Those battery things,” I said. “The ones we saw in that pit.”
“Expended antimatter cells,” said the being. “They are vital to making this technology possible, but they are also highly unstable. We bring them to that planet to be incinerated, knowing they will cause no harm to any intelligent life.”
“Thanks a lot,” said Penny. “So that planet we’re on is basically your garbage dump?”
The being made a sound like a sigh and didn’t respond.
I looked again at the curling line of doorways behind us. “How many parts of the universe can you go to?”
“We have mapped six hundred and seventy-five billion light-years of the galactic. So, only a small portion.”
“Wow,” I said.
Penny flashed a glance at me and I saw her take a deep breath. “I guess, then, compared to what you guys have seen, maybe we don’t really rate as intelligent life.” She cocked her thumb at the doorway behind us. “Probably makes the most sense to just let us go back to where we came from. No harm, no foul, right?”
“Yeah,” I said, “and we’ll make sure that we leave that door alone. Hopefully, we’ll be off that planet soon anyway, and then it will all be fine.”
The being turned toward its counterparts. They whispered in their own language, and the being turned back to us. “While it is true that you are, by most accounts, insignificant, it is also true that in just your brief interaction with our technology, you have managed to cause numerous space-time inconsistencies that have threatened the dimensional integrity not only of our transit system, but also of the universe itself. As your friend put it, timeline changes spread like ripples, and the work of restoring prime causality is painstaking and dangerous, not only for us, but for every living thing in the universe.”
“You heard me talking to Hiroki?” I said. “So you are reading my mind?”
“We have had access to your brainwaves since you interacted with the doorway—a right you would have known you’d granted us, by the way, if you’d read the user agreement before accessing our system, as you are technically required to do.”
“Sorry, we didn’t see any paperwork lying around in your spooky cave,” said Penny.
“It is clearly posted on the wall, but that is beside the point. We have been monitoring your actions to determine whether or not we need to intervene. Your mechanized assistant made that significantly more complicated.” The being motioned to the Robot, who still just stood there vacantly.
“Okay, well,” I said, “we’re really sorry about this. What if we promise from now on that we won’t use the doorway at all? And that we won’t tell anyone about it.” The being just stared at me. “I could have my Robot guard the cave entrance. Nobody can get past him.”
“Except for you.”
“But I swear that I wouldn’t!”
The alien crossed its arms. “We are sympathetic to your situation, but what you are saying only proves our point. Life-forms like yourselves have far too much interconnection between your thoughts and your feelings. It is almost as if you can’t tell the two apart. We have been running analysis on your brain function since the moment each of you first interacted with the doorway, and we have determined, with high confidence, that no matter what you say right now, you cannot be trusted with access to this kind of technology. It is simply too powerful for you to resist. You will turn to it again. And you will cause more damage. It is the way of your species.”
“Why does it sound like you’re not going to let us go home?” said Penny.
“We do feel that it was somewhat our error to allow you to engage with the system to begin with. We were not monitoring that planet for new life-forms, partly because of its remote location, but also because it seemed illogical that anyone would want to go there.”
“We didn’t want to go there,” I said. “We crashed.”
“Indeed… Therefore, we are willing to offer you a compromise. You two can stay here with us. We have a menagerie of curious species from around the universe, with simulated natural habitats that we feel are quite authentic. We could s
et up a similar one for you, as a courtesy. Perhaps based on your home planet.”
“That sounds like a zoo,” said Penny.
The being looked to its partners. They nodded. “As our guest, we would study you and add knowledge of your species to the great log of this universe.”
“No! We can’t stay here!” I said. “We have lives and families! Please let us go back. They won’t know what happened to us!”
The being held out its hands. “I understand that this feels like a significant concern for you. We recognize how hard it is to be so attached to your emotions and you have our sympathies. But given the danger you pose, it’s either stay here, or we can dispose of you. Those are your options.”
Dispose… I couldn’t get any words out. Had to think!
“Please let us go,” said Penny, her eyes welling up.
“Please,” I echoed, my eyes doing the same. I looked at the Robot again. Help us, I thought. He was still staring ahead, but just then his lights had started to flow toward the center. If that meant what I thought it meant… There was only one way to find out. I set my jaw and said, “Let us go, or else.”
The being cocked its head at me. Penny looked at me, too. “Excuse me?”
I clenched my fists to try to keep from shaking. “Let us go or else.”
“It is useless to speak in such a way,” said the being. “You are no threat to us here.”
“You’re right, I’m not,” I said. “But he is.” And then I thought as hard as I could: Save us now!
“Will, what are you doing?” Penny hissed.
Be… bad.
The Robot’s face lights swirled into a spiral pattern, and then all at once, they changed to red. By the time the beings had turned toward him, the plates up and down his body had begun to ripple and shift. The metal bonds around him warped and cracked, and then split. His two legs became four, and his human-shaped hands uncoiled into spiraling blades.
“Um, Will?” said Penny.
“Trust me,” I said.
The being closest to us turned to the others and hissed urgently in their language. A shrill tone began to sound through the ship, like an alarm, and the beings rushed toward the Robot. Bursts of fire erupted from his blade hands, smashing into two of the beings and sending them flying across the room.
“Undo this programming!” the being shouted at me.
“Sorry!” I said, grabbing Penny’s hand and backing toward the portal. “He’s connected to me. Guess our feelings are a bit more significant than you thought.”
“You can’t—” the being began, but then the Robot shoved him and sent him crashing into the console. The holographic screens sizzled and winked out as the console crashed over, its wires sparking. The other beings ran from the room as the Robot spun, looking for more.
“We need to go now!” I called to him. “Change back!”
The Robot turned toward me, and for just a moment, his fiery face filled me with fear—What if he didn’t remember me? What if he didn’t change back?
But then he began to morph, his face cooling to blue, his plates rearranging themselves back to his humanlike form.
“Come on,” I said to Penny. She was still staring at the Robot. I tugged her arm.
“Little brother,” she said, shaking her head, “that is still completely freaky.”
Bright flashes lit up the room and more aliens began to appear, their red-goggle eyes glowing. Unlike the ones in the robes, these figures wore black jumpsuits and were carrying large blasters that glowed with green circuitry.
“Hurry!” I shouted.
We turned back to the doorway, and I reached toward the starry view, pausing with my fingers centimeters away.
“What are you waiting for?” said Penny as the beings closed in.
“I just want to make sure I’m thinking about the moment in the cave, when you left, in the right timeline. We only get one shot at this.”
“No kidding! Let’s go!”
The Robot ran over and stood with his back to us, facing the approaching figures. He looked at me over his shoulder, and for a moment his face flashed red again, almost as if he was asking me, Should I fight these guys, too?
“It’s okay, we’re going back.…” I focused on the memory of the cave with all of us there and moved my hand forward—
The Robot caught my wrist just before I touched the doorway. “What?” I said, spinning to him.
His lights were making the spiraling shape. “Danger,” he said.
I saw that there were nearly a dozen aliens and they were closing cautiously from all sides, weapons raised. “We gotta go!”
But the Robot kept hold, and with his free hand, reached and touched his own silver finger to the doorway. As the view of space started to whirl and spiral, he let go of my wrist and grasped the metallic frame of the door. There was a flash of green light, and the Robot’s fingers began to separate in a way I’d never seen before. The metal plates spread apart, and little wires snaked out and wormed their way around and between the glowing circuitry of the doorway. The thin green tubes began to pulse, glowing brighter and brighter. A humming sound grew all around us. The entire door began to shake and glow.
“Will?” said Penny over the cycling sound.
“What are you doing?” I shouted to the Robot.
The sound was becoming deafening, and wind seemed to be coming from every direction, wrapping around us.
“Whatever it is, do it fast!” Penny looked fearfully over her shoulder.
The view zoomed in on the planet we’d crashed on, down into the trees, into a dark space—was it the cave?—but at the same time, light was pouring out of the doorway, brighter and brighter, like the entire thing was being washed out.
Except it wasn’t just the doorway; it was me, too. Everything I could see or think or feel. All of it fading away, as if I was losing touch with the world. The last thing I saw was the Robot grabbing my arm and pulling me through the doorway, into the light.
CHAPTER
For a moment there was nothing at all. I felt lost, as if I didn’t even have a body. Like my thoughts were a collection of those fireflies we’d seen once at the bio preserve on Earth, darting and scattering and blinking faintly.
And then I found myself on my hands and knees again. This time, I thought for sure I was going to throw up. My guts hitched and I was barely able to hold it down. My head was splitting with pain, my whole body tingling like I’d been shocked with a loose wire. I shivered all over with this feeling like I had just been… what?
Gone. That was what it felt like. As if I hadn’t even been for a moment. I know that sounds crazy, but I don’t know any other way to describe it.
“Where are we?” I said in almost a whisper, but as my vision cleared I saw that we were in the cave. There was a light ahead, and when I squinted I saw the opening to the outside. Sunlight, trees, and then something large moving. One of the mothasaurs, pacing on the far side of the pit.
Right, I thought, the cave. My brain was still moving slowly, my thoughts bubbling up like tar. Wait, what about—I spun around, but there was nothing behind us except for that tunnel descending into darkness, and that faint green light.
What had I been expecting? Aliens; a strange, giant ship… But all of it was so foggy. At least I knew where I was right now. “When is this?” I asked, getting to my feet.
The Robot tapped my shoulder. I turned to see him holding a stick out to me. He motioned with his head, and I saw the crisscrossing lines drawn in the dirt.
The tic-tac-toe board. Yes! We were back where we were supposed to be! Except where was Penny, and Judy for that matter?
The Robot motioned to me with the stick again.
“Okay, okay,” I said. I blinked hard, took the stick, and drew an O in the top right.
The Robot took the stick back, made an X in the bottom center, and then connected the vertical line of three that he’d made.
“Wow, you win,” I said, shaking my head. �
�To be fair, I didn’t really know what was going on.”
One of the mothasaurs roared outside. I squinted at them, my thoughts still tumbling slowly like heavy boulders, and then I got it: “You brought us back to before, didn’t you?” I glanced down the tunnel toward the green light. “We haven’t gone down there yet. This is before all of it.” But then I realized that all the memories were still there in my head: going to my old room, Penny using the doorway, the timeline without her and Dad, going back to get her and then ending up on that alien spaceship. All that had happened, I felt sure of it, except now it actually hadn’t?
“Shouldn’t there be, like, two of me here right now?” I said. Then I remembered how the Robot had not only touched the doorway, but his circuitry had intertwined with it. “Or is this something your super-advanced alien technology took care of, too?”
The Robot bent and erased our game, and drew a new grid.
I looked behind us, at that light.…
“Danger.”
I nodded. “You brought us back to this moment so we won’t do it at all,” I said. “If we never use the doorway the first time, none of the bad stuff happens. The future doesn’t change and the aliens never catch us. Everything is back to normal. No ripples in the pond at all.”
The Robot’s lights flowed faster.
A big feeling rushed through me. At first I thought it was relief, but then I realized it was also maybe sadness. “If we don’t ever use the doorway, I can’t see home one last time.”
The Robot tapped my pocket, and I realized there was something in there. My thoughts were still jumbled and I was drawing a blank, but then my fingers curled around Captain Quasar.
I looked at the little figure and smiled. “I’ll still have the memories and my videos.” And something else occurred to me as I looked at the action figure: “Wait, am I the reason I couldn’t find him when I was packing up? Is this how he got lost? Future me took him?”
The Robot didn’t answer and instead held out the stick. We played another game to a tie, and then the Robot started out of the cave.
Lost in Space Page 11
