Lost Past

by Teresa McCullough

Linda remembered the bra with embarrassment. She didn’t behave well, but at nearly thirteen with her mother’s disappearance, it wasn’t surprising. “And John came?” Linda remembered John came shortly after she got her first bra.

  “He took over. He cleaned the house.” Linda made a face and Mary corrected herself, “Well, he made you and Tom clean the house, shovel the snow, and mow the lawn. He worked with you, but three people can do things pretty fast.”

  “My mother did that.”

  “But you stopped working when I came,” Mary complained.

  Linda remembered that too. It was a mute rebellion that she never discussed with her brother. Mary wasn’t a good stepmother, but Linda didn’t make it easy.

  They went to the hospital to look for John, listening to the car radio telling of the local chaos. Reporters phoned in reports using landlines. No one could find a natural explanation, but three distinct and unrelated terrorist groups took responsibility. The government was pretty certain that none of them actually were responsible, because none of them had the power.

  They found John talking to Eric in his office while Cara slept on a chair. Cara woke up, but didn’t uncurl from her sleeping position.

  “I thought you went back to school,” John said to Linda, clearly annoyed.

  “She realized I needed some comfort,” Mary said. Was this the first time that Mary ever defended her? Probably. Linda felt they bonded more that day than in the years they lived together.

  “I wanted you to go because I was concerned about your safety,” John said.

  “Safety?” Mary asked. John succinctly recapped their day’s activities and then Mary explained their discoveries.

  “I remember Dad’s absences,” Linda said. “Mom just said he was busy. Tom had his appendix out, and she didn’t call him. When he came back, he apologized to her, but she said she understood. They didn’t know I was listening. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but now I think it was odd. And you were there.” She looked at John.

  “When Arthur and your mother were talking?”

  “No. You were there every time he left. You would come and the two of you would leave. I didn’t like you then, because you were taking my father away. He didn’t spend much time with us, ever. But Mom missed him.”

  “I was under the impression I was on good terms with you,” John said uncertainly.

  “When you moved in, yes. You took Dad’s place, in a way. And Mom’s. Even though you were in medical school, you were always there for us.”

  There was a brief silence with everyone looking at John. John, who always had the answers, looked baffled.

  “Eric, Cara. I know I have been teaching you psychiatry, but what do you know that could bring my memory back? Clearly, I know something important, something more than how to do psychiatry.”

  Eric looked helpless, but Cara put her feet on the floor and said in a confident tone, “Let’s forget about psychiatry and try logic. Arthur told you some things weren’t natural about your life. What are they?”

  “Lack of sex,” John said promptly. “Apparently, I’ve been living like a monk and that doesn’t seem natural.”

  “You kissed me,” Mary said hesitantly.

  “That was less attraction than an exploration. Something seemed odd about our relationship.” He hastily started to add, “It is not that you are not attractive, but—”

  “Forget it,” said Mary. “I’m not insulted; it was so strange. I mean, you were invisible, sexually. I can’t explain it. It was just weird when you kissed me.”

  “You are attracted to Cara,” Linda said. “But not to me.”

  “No hedging,” Eric said sternly, interpreting John’s hesitation as a way to give an answer that wasn’t completely truthful. Linda felt a brief flash of satisfaction about John being ordered around.

  “Yes, to both. Linda seems more like a daughter. Cara, well, hell, who wouldn’t be attracted to her?”

  Linda caught a brief look of satisfaction on Cara’s face.

  “Anyone else?” Eric asked.

  “There was a nurse at the hospital. A woman at the bank. A patient this afternoon. I feel that about every tenth woman I meet is attractive.”

  “And Cara?”

  “It was more. With Mary and Linda, I think I successfully turned off any sexual feelings. With Cara, I just hid them.”

  Not all that well, Linda thought. I knew he was attracted to her.

  “What else?” Cara said. “Not about me, about you. What else seems odd?”

  “The online courses I took for my undergraduate degree. I like interacting with people. Why would I take online courses?”

  “What else?”

  “I know science better in Vigintees than in English, particularly drugs.”

  “Meaning you learned it in Vigintees?” suggested Cara. “Anything more?”

  “My apartment. Considering my financial situation, I should probably be renting something larger. But it doesn’t feel small to me, it seems luxurious. For that matter, where did my money come from? I’m worth more than a million, but with medical school, I’d expect to be broke.”

  “A million isn’t what it used to be,” Eric said.

  Linda realized with amusement that Eric was worth more than a million and didn’t consider himself rich. She knew Dad was worth more than a million, but the Nobel Prize accounted for that. In fairness, so did his frugal lifestyle. He loved traveling to conferences, but someone else paid. He owned a computer that was far more powerful than the typical consumer computer, but that was his only extravagance. His next biggest personal expense was a gym membership.

  “That makes it even odder that you lived with us,” said Mary. “I always assumed it was to save money.”

  “So did I,” Linda said. But then, she realized she never thought that, not really. John cared for her and Tom, even loved them as a parent. She never analyzed it before, because she took for granted that he was there for them. She turned to address Eric. “Did everything John taught you get out?”

  “Yes,” said Eric. “It mainly went by email, but some by phone, some by fax, and a few things by U.S. mail, FedEx, and UPS. I got confirmation from several people. It was all set up in advance. I didn’t get anyone in Antarctica, but every other continent got it at least once. Most of it came indirectly from me. People forwarded it to others. There are probably tens of thousands of copies of it.”

  “Jun faxed his notes,” Cara said. “I delivered flash drives to the Post Office, UPS, and FedEx. Pedro and Eric else also sent out emails. It’s out there. The barn door was closed well after the horse was stolen.”

  “Which means Mason died for nothing.” Agent Wilson was standing in the doorway.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Who’s Mason?” Linda asked.

  “A government psychiatrist. They found out what John was planning to do and wanted someone observing. I felt that it wouldn’t hurt to have one more listener, as long as he didn’t stop us from disseminating the information,” Eric explained.

  “It hurt Mason,” Wilson said. “Someone got to him before he reached his office. He was killed with what looks like the same kind of weapon that killed some of the passengers on the plane. Also, he was supposed to be carrying notes and a flash drive. They were missing. But I have a video of what happened on the plane. They found the camera attached to a body in a watertight bag. Let me show you.”

  They crowded around Eric’s computer as the video confirmed the audio that Linda already heard. The four men all looked enough like John to be his identical twins, except one had brown hair, not blond like John. The video showed Arthur Saunders being taken from the airplane.

  The visual recording made it more real than the audio. Linda was torn between relief in seeing her father leave the plane alive and horror at the way he was treated. Was he alive? Was he safe? Was he afraid?

  Eric pulled the flash drive out of the computer, but fumbled while returning it to Wilson. It bounced off his chair under the d
esk. He used his foot to bring it to him while the others separated, no longer crowding around the desk. Eric leaned over with his chest on his knees, to pick up the flash drive.

  Three of the four men from the video entered the room. John froze and Linda thought that was probably a good idea because they had weapons out. Wilson made his hands visible and empty. Mary was the only one who reacted with action. She started toward them in an obvious attack. “You took Arthur!” she screamed.

  Brown Hair fired his weapon, even though he wasn’t the one Mary was attacking and she collapsed. In the instant she fell, Linda’s peripheral vision caught Eric sliding off his chair onto the carpeted floor. Cara and John both rushed to Mary and knelt next to her. John started CPR while Cara breathed into her mouth. Brown Hair said something while aiming his weapon at Cara. John stood up and backed off.

  “Why are you stopping?” asked Cara between breaths.

  “He said he would shoot you unless I stopped,” John replied.

  Brown Hair kicked Cara. Everyone started, but Linda saw Eric use the distraction to hide more comfortably under his desk.

  One of the blonds spoke in English. “Come with us.”

  “I assume you just mean me,” John said.

  “All of you.”

  One at a time, the men fixed their hands behind them. It wasn’t quite handcuffs, but the principle was the same. Wilson’s weapon was ignored.

  They went up the stairs to the roof, Brown Hair in the lead, leaving Mary’s body on the floor and Eric hiding under the desk. Brown Hair shot someone who stood in the way. There was a gaping hole where a locked door had been. In the helicopter landing spot, there was something that wasn’t a helicopter guarded by the fourth man. Two bodies were on the ground near the vehicle. The ship had stubby wings, no visible wheels, and was roughly the size of a school bus. They entered awkwardly without using their hands. Before they were seated, the vehicle took off. There was no motion inside in spite of the rapid ascent. It took less than twenty minutes for them to go from seeing city lights to seeing Earth half in daylight, half in night. Cara, Wilson and Linda crowded around a rear-facing window as they watched Earth recede. Soon, the Earth-moon pair became smaller and smaller. Stars were visible in the background.

  John argued with their captors in a language Linda didn’t understand. Linda could feel he didn’t have any hope of winning the argument, but felt obligated to try.

  Wilson leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Can you get my gun out of its holster? It has to be unsnapped.”

  “I think so,” she said as she maneuvered next to him.

  “No, first, let me unzip your purse.” Her shoulder bag rested on her left hip with its strap on her right shoulder and across her chest. She turned to let Wilson crouch to unzip the purse. She retrieved the gun. It was a bit awkward, but she had it in her hand. She handed it to Wilson, who put it in her purse and zipped it. They then separated and took opposite sides of the window, just in time for a distant view of Earth before the Earth, the sun and the stars disappeared.

  There was no space. It wasn’t darkness; it was nothing, which was somehow different from darkness. Linda surveyed her fellow captives after John joined them in back of the ship. She felt John’s frustration, but neither fear nor wonder at their being taken from Earth. Cara lowered herself to the floor with surprising grace, considering her hands were bound behind her back. She curled up and fell asleep. Linda was amazed she could.

  Wilson asked John, “Do you remember anything now?” When John shook his head, he said, “I don’t suppose you’d like to report on the conversation you just had.”

  “They won’t release us and they won’t tell me why we were taken. They enjoy that I don’t know what’s going on.” After looking at Cara and Linda, John turned his face toward the window to look at the nothingness.

  Wilson looked at their captors, with no expression on his face. Linda wondered if she were the only one who was amazed and afraid. There was a certain irony to it, since she now had the gun. When the stars reappeared, Linda wished she knew enough to recognize if they were in the same configuration as they were from Earth.

  The rear-facing window was no longer interesting, but they could see a bit from the front. One of their captors pulled a weapon when they started toward the front of the ship. Linda could see they were headed toward a planet that didn’t look like Earth. They flew over an ocean, headed toward a continent, but landed instead at an island that was a few miles off the continent. The ship landed on a spot just big enough for it, surrounded by a field of strawberries. After they exited the ship, they saw a machine was passing through the neat rows, picking ripe strawberries. The machine dumped the strawberries into a bin that appeared to be on a track that led below the ground. The bin filled with strawberries moved away.

  A few yards from the ship, there was a small building that looked like a subway entrance for one person. It was little larger than an old-fashioned telephone booth. One of the blond men entered, closing the door after him. About two minutes later, a light turned blue above the doorway. Cara was shoved toward the doorway and told to go down the stairs. Linda felt her hesitation was more due to confusion than disobedience, but one of the blond men hit her and shoved her through the door, telling her to go down the stairs and wait for the door to open.

  Before the door closed, John said, “Don’t worry. It’s just decontamination. It’s harmless.” Linda wondered how he knew, then realized he must have been here before.

  Linda was next and she felt a tingly feeling while descending the stairway, which was steep enough to make the trip down awkward without being able to grab the railing. When she exited through a door that was opened for her, she found herself in a large room with a low ceiling. Three blond workers were processing the strawberries, but Linda found herself looking at a wall that contained a large screen showing a video of two children, who could have been John’s by their appearance, both having blue eyes and platinum blonde hair. They were obviously brother and sister. The girl had a smudge on her cheek and a healing skinned knee, visible under her short fur garment. The boy had fresh scratches on his right hand, and the berries he held showed how he got the scratches. There were berry stains on his hands and around his mouth. His face was lit with wide smile. The girl picked the berries more carefully. Although she ate the majority of them, she gave her brother about a third of what she picked.

  Off to the side of the screen, partially hidden by the trees, was something that was obviously not from Earth. It was a light bluish gray, with orange eyes. It wore clothing, including shoes over huge feet. It had some kind of equipment in its hand that appeared to be recording the scene. Linda thought it was weird that it didn’t have a mouth, although she could see tiny ear holes.

  When the full party finally collected in the room, they moved past the flat screen, somehow they were viewing the scene from a different angle, as if it were taking place in the room they were in.

  John translated a caption naming them as the Founding Foundlings who were the ancestors of every human in Vigint City. Linda thought with amusement that she was completely unrelated to these children.

  The low ceilings caused Wilson to duck at every doorway. The hallways were surprisingly narrow. The floor was a shiny white and the walls were mirrors. The ceiling was covered with lights, individually dim, but with the walls and floors, the lighting was adequate.

  They passed numerous people in the hallway, going single file, who wore identically styled pants and shirts, with features similar to John’s, which made Linda certain John came from here and was descended from the two children in moving mural. The people all stared at the party as they passed, but didn’t slow down unless there was a gap behind them. When people joined the line, they did so at a gap and moved smartly with the crowd. Cara coughed several times. She tried to cough into her shoulder, but with her hands behind her back, she had difficulty covering her mouth. Sometimes, droplets appeared on the mirrored halls.

 
An old man intercepted them at an intersection, ignoring the crowds that stopped in the narrow corridor. He said something to Brown Hair that Linda wished she understood, but John didn’t translate. It didn’t take a translation to realize the four abductors were not happy with what was said. They changed direction and went to a small room where a man was ready for them. The man had longer arms and a longer torso than Wilson, but was two inches shorter. His short legs looked odd on his body. The old man addressed him by name: Reidar.

  Under Reidar’s directions, Wilson was shoved into a chair attached to a device to secure his head. Linda and Cara were jammed into a corner of the room. Although Reidar extended the support to the greatest length, Wilson had to hunch his body to fit. The padded chair had handholds for the comfort of the occupant, but Wilson’s hands remained bound behind his back. Reidar reached for Wilson’s suit coat to pull it back to bare his shoulder. He was clearly unfamiliar with the jacket shirt and tie. John said something and Brown Hair came over and roughly pulled off Wilson’s tie, pushed down his suit jacket, and unbuttoned his shirt. Reidar stuck a device a little bigger than a vaccination needle against his shoulder. Linda heard a faint sound.

  He then went to the back of Wilson’s head and said something that caused the four kidnappers to chuckle. Wilson spoke through closed teeth to ask, “What did he say?”

  “At least he doesn’t have to worry about the hair,” John translated.

  Reidar then pulled out a device roughly the size and shape of a pistol with a large caliber barrel. He pulled something out of a drawer and carefully attached it to the end of the device. He placed it against the base of Wilson’s skull as if performing an execution. He held it there for about five seconds and then pulled the trigger. Linda started to jerk forward, but John’s calm whisper “Don’t worry” stopped her. There was a click and a disk was attached to Wilson’s skull. It was a little less than a centimeter in diameter and pale against Wilson’s dark skin. If it had been put on any of their captors’ heads, it would have blended in.