by A. L. Mengel
Had they not been dressed completely in white, she would not have been able to tell that they hadn’t been survivors, but actually had arrived with the ship.
There was not any difference, on the forefront, when she watched them gather the people who were waiting in the sands. She saw their sense of urgency.
For the sun was quite hostile in those days.
Once they had lived underneath the grounds of dusty, abandoned equatorial cities in a network catacombs; entire populations in dwellings that reached downwards into the crust, level by level accessed via elevators and stairs that descended deeper into the ground, in a clinical, stone environment with artificial sunlight, little heat, and an overall sense of despair.
She saw the lines of people waiting in cues to board; it appeared as if the colonies all were evacuated, as if the assault of the sun weren’t so near.
The survivors were now standing, exposed, under the lightening sky and the fading stars…when they had been told, for their entire lives, to avoid the sunlight. And even though those in white raised their arms and their voices, the people were slow to move to the darkness of the unknown spacecraft that cast a gargantuan shadow across the sands; some fought those in white; some survivors ran back towards the sands, with wide eyes, falling backwards as they lost their footing.
But their loved ones looked on, their faces shifted in pain, tears streaming down their cheeks. They would call out to their son, or father, daughter or uncle, pleading with them to go in the shadow.
To get out of the sunlight.
That there was radiation and death in the harsh brightness.
And the sky continued to lighten.
Some looked over towards the giant, foreign ship as others retreated closer towards it and stood in its shadow.
The world was not what it once was.
Despite the amnesia felt by the population, of culture forgotten and economics lost, there was this one woman who watched the scene play out before her; she saw those in white act as protectors of her people.
And this one solitary leader, who had remembered a world that once was, observed what it had degraded to as they stood in line waiting to board.
Her hair, the color of crimson, blew across her face, as she brushed it aside, watched the people in white work frantically to shepherd the remaining survivors towards the ship.
Those who stood in the sands were urged to get into the safety of the ship as the guards stood at the perimeter of the throngs of survivors, their arms outstretched.
One man in white, closest to the ship, looked out towards his other warriors, his hands balled into fists and resting on his hips. His face was crinkled in concentration, as he observed his workers in white.
They all stood, their arms outstretched, containing the survivors. The others, men and women, looked towards their leader, as he looked back at them, and as the winds picked up, blowing his hair back, he barked a command as the people in white took a step forward.
Several survivors lost their footing.
One woman screamed and shortly after a baby wailed.
Two men snapped around to a man in white. “She has fallen and she is with child!” one of them said. “Look at her baby!” Other survivors swarmed around the fallen woman and crying infant, as others looked up at the ship, eyes wide, their faces shifted in concern.
The woman waiting in line pulled some strands of her red hair away from her eyes.
She watched the scene play out as the line rushed forwards. She was now leaning on the railing of the deck, with others who had already cleared the medical tables and saw the remaining survivors resist.
She took a deep breath and held it.
She looked back at the terrain, and gasped as the sun peeked over the horizon. The faint dome of light; once a harbinger of warmth and life, now something to bring death and destruction?
“Get them inside!” she called out. But her voice could not penetrate the chaos.
She looked at the others in smaller cues in a line of tables with others who sat in chairs asking the approaching survivors medical questions, entering information in scanners, as others waited near the railings.
Had the ship arrived just in time? Was this their destiny as a human race?
To enter a rescue ship, with those who looked like them, but clearly weren’t them, and trust them, implicitly and without reservation, and take the ultimate leap of faith?
And then she took a breath as a finger tapped her shoulder.
She turned around and looked behind her.
It was Jeremiah.
The light hit his face from the side, highlighting his close cropped hair, giving it a golden hue. The awkward angle of the light did nothing to age him as she felt it had to her over the years when the light would hit her face “a certain way”. When the wrinkles would stand out, and the bags under her eyes would fall into a shadow. When she stood in the full light, she appeared far more youthful; more beautiful. But for Jeremiah, he was at the age when the light did not yet matter. His cheeks were full, but not chubby, rather youthful and athletic. She had always thought he had a nice bone structure.
His eyes were vibrant and bright, and his teeth white and straight. His clothes hugged his chest. He had always been fit. She’d remembered that from Sector B. Jeremiah had been the one who would always be the first to volunteer for physically demanding tasks, and she always thought that he was younger than he actually was. She remembered watching him skip through the hallways in a half-walk-half-run, dashing towards whatever the problem was at the time. She also remembered sitting with him in the dining hall, on multiple occasions, as he laughed with his brilliant teeth, running his hands though dirty blonde hair as he shuffled from foot to foot and told her about the daily tasks and his love for botany.
He approached her and smiled a tired smile. There was a smudge of dirt on his cheek and he was unshaven.
She could smell his sweat, but it wasn’t pungent nor offensive. But he had a certain scent about him, as none of them had bathed for days.
She looked him up and down. He was still quite dirty from the journey across a dry, dusty terrain.
“Counselor Abagail,” he said. “Look out there. Do you see that?” He pointed towards the horizon. The sky was pale, but not fully bright. The rolling sandy desert hills reflected the newborn morning light. They were nestled under the shade of the awning covering the check-in tables. But outwards, over the sandy landscape, the people scurried towards the receiving area like ants, with the people in white ushering them closer to the medical receiving tables.
As the survivors approached the hull, they fought for access to a small walkway; a ramp that was only wide enough for a single person. Counselor Abagail approached the railing and looked out at the sandscape.
Her mouth dropped open.
“What…”
“Is that from the sun?” Jeremiah asked, leaning in closer towards her, placing his hands on the metal railing.
She turned her head as she watched the rays pierce into the ground; a brilliant wall of light penetrating into the sands. The people who had stood in line scattered towards the ship. Several other officers dressed in grey uniforms rushed towards the edge of a long, black railing which boarded the edge of the receiving area.
A tall man dressed in a fitted white uniform stood at the edge of the walkway with his hands on his hips. His face was stern and shifted. “Open the gate! Get them to quarantine!” Several more officers in similar white dress approached from the northern side of the deck as a hydraulic gate opened on the far wall with a hiss and a thud.
Another officer stood at the end of a long ramp as the gates snapped open. “Go inside the hydraulic doors! Get them into the receiving chamber!” His voice boomed as the people spilled up towards the ship.
Hundreds, possibly thousands of people, who had stood in queue for hours, ran from the sandy clearing below, trampling each other. Counselor Abagail looked out at the sunray and watched it penetrate the ground and
move closer to them. She nudged Jeremiah who was fixated on the ray. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s penetrated the troposphere!” he said. “This is what happens when the sun becomes hostile! We must go with them! Now, Abby!”
She looked out at the sands as the light filtered towards the ground, exploding a wall of sand towards the ship. It rained down on the people on the walkway, who huddled down towards the floor.
“It looks like grenades are going off!” she said, as Jeremiah pulled her arm, dragging her towards the doors. Dirt shot into the air a plume of light reached the landscape. “Let’s get inside, Abby! We don’t have much time before that ray moves right over us!”
The guards rushed the sea of people inwards, through the expansive hydraulic doors. As the people filed inside, they gathered in a large receiving chamber, with a soaring ceiling. Counselor Abagail and Jeremiah stood in the masses of people. The medical personnel who had lined the exterior docks carried their tables inside as the doors hissed, lowered and closed with a deep, resonating thud.
“It’s radiation!” Someone screamed as the tables were placed against a far wall.
“It’s already too late!” Another phantom voice was heard through the bedlam. As the people huddled inside a large receiving chamber, several doors further down the chamber lowered with a hiss.
Deep thuds shook the metal floors as the guards walked the edge of the chamber. Counselor Abagail leaned against a nearby wall, closed her eyes and bent over, placing her hands on her knees, and caught her breath. “Jeremiah?”
“I’m here,” he said, stooping down next to her. She looked up and over at him, panting, and shook her head.
They could barely hear one another over the chorus of voices resonating through the crowds in the vast chamber.
“What was that Jeremiah?”
He leaned his head back on the wall. “Cosmic radiation. That’d be my guess.”
She gasped. “Have we been exposed?”
Jeremiah shook his head. “Hopefully not, but won’t know unless radiation sickness occurs.”
She remembered the news reports before the Great Shift had happened. Before the days at Sector B, when she had been standing in her tiny living room. She had held a small battery operated television in her hands, for the lights had already gone dark. Radiation reaching life threatening levels, the news anchors had warned.
“Good God…so it’s really happening. Everything that they said? What they predicted?”
“It’s already happened, Abby. The radiation is real. Back in Sector B, we never saw this, did we?”
“We were living underground.”
“Exactly,” he said.
She shook her head slowly, as she watched the scene play out before them.
Her mouth dropped open as she looked out at the people, standing in the middle of the expansive receiving chamber, some sitting on the cold, hard steel floor, others sitting on bags and backpacks. “And now we have no other solution but this?” She turned around and saw Jeremiah looking out at the people, nodding.
Jeremiah broke his stare and turned to her. “It appears so. The scout may very have been right. The troposphere is failing, Abby.”
She straightened herself and looked back over at the people. It was bedlam. People speaking over others, but nothing was discernable. Babies were wailing over the chaos. Women were disheveled and dirty; men were approaching guards and demanding answers.
Had they been the fortunate ones?
“Jeremiah, where are the rest of the people from Sector B? No one looks familiar.”
He stood up and looked out at the sea of people, huddled in the expansive receiving chamber. “I can’t see anyone directly. I’m sure they’re here, Abby.”
“But now we’re on this ship. Locked in. What if they are still outside?”
Jeremiah shook his head. “Then they are probably dead, Abby.”
She gasped.
He put his arms around her and shook his head. “No, no Abby. They boarded with us. I’m certain they have. We just need to find them. But I’m sure they boarded when we did. Don’t you remember?”
She shook her head. “I can’t remember. Everything seems hazy…everything beyond this ship. Like a blur.”
She raised her head from his shoulder and looked over towards the hydraulic doors. There were small, rectangular windows a short distance from the crest of the ceiling. Faint light shined through.
“I…” she said. She closed her eyes and shook her head. “I honestly can’t remember. We boarded…and then the ray came…it was all so sudden. So chaotic.”
“But now, here we are, safe and sound on the ship.”
“I’m just having a hard time remembering...”
Jeremiah squeezed her shoulder gently. “Look up there.”
A small opening, about the size of a door, appeared as a section of the wall raised to a rectangle of darkness behind the platform. The small ledge was surrounded by a railing and extended outwards from the wall as several other officers in white dress uniform on a platform which elevated outwards above the people.
“Let’s listen,” Jeremiah said. “I think they are about to address us…”
I have called on you to be a leader. –
The Wandering Star
6
THE RED OUTPOST
COUNSELOR ABAGAIL opened her eyes. All she saw was darkness. Her vision was blurred to black, and she felt a heaviness about her.
She was wearing something.
Something heavy over her clothes. It was dark inside, and she could move about. But she was too weak to lift her limbs. And when she tried, she felt the bulky over suit.
And as her eyes adjusted, she started to see what was surrounding her and wondered where she was. Fleeting thoughts penetrated her mind. Tiny glimpses of cosmic scenes; of colorful palettes which seemed interstellar in nature, but she could not recall their origin.
She was surrounded by darkness; but there still was a degree of sight.
She moved her eyes to her left. It was too tight to move her neck very much. Whatever she was wearing seemed to be mildly constrictive.
She saw three small screens to the left of a rectangular window in the front of her vision sight, but it was clouded. She wasn’t sure what it was – it could have been a visor or faceplate. As her eyesight continued to improve, the rectangular visor appeared blurred and sandy, but some faint light filtered in; she was still unable to see through it; it was like trying to look through a layer of waxed paper. But it certainly felt as though she were wearing a heavy, dark suit.
She could hear the howl of winds; and noted that the winds did not penetrate the heavy, protective apparatus. Her mind continued to clear and she attempted to move again.
Her body felt small inside the vast space inside the suit.
Several colorful lights illuminated.
Something seemed to wake up.
The large, heavy helmet weighed on her head, which took effort to hold upwards and steady, and her vision was nearly dark save the brightly colored LED screens which displayed data of her health (heart rate, pulse, blood pressure) as well as several other names listed in a column down the opposite side (Winston, Jeremiah, Eli, Nelson) with a small rectangle to the left of each name displaying fuzzy, black and white static.
As she regained energy, she slowly reached her hand around to her visor and wiped it clear.
Dust.
Dirt, but a deep red tint.
The shadows of rocks which peppered themselves through the sand in the orange hue of the foreground, reached outwards towards the horizon.
The view from her helmet assembly was what she had expected before initial landing – a harsh, red, sandy environment; mountains and orange sands as far as the eye could see, soaring outwards towards the horizon. The relentless winds blew sand clouds with the force of a hurricane under an orange tinted sky.
Her temples pulsed as she closed her eyes, tightly, and opened them again. Th
e same blur in her vision hadn’t yet cleared. She had felt there was a twinge of something cosmic; as she closed her eyes, she could see a vast, black ocean filled with an immeasurable array of tiny, white stars, and then a burst of colorful gases, soaring past. In the midst of her mind’s vision, of her dream, or her memory. When she opened them, she saw what had been the reality before her, at least she so thought. But when she closed her eyes again, she saw the star scape paint its way across her mind.
Had there been a certain period of travel, of interstellar movement, that she could only struggle to remember? There had not been a period of amnesia, had there?
Her mind was fuzzy as she felt that she had just awoken. The fuzziness remained, like the haze blanketing the pale sky above her. There had not been a distant journey of galaxy jumping; this red surface seemed familiar. She had recognized it from the photos of her youth. She must have. She hadn’t remembered anything before the dust storm. But now it seemed the dust had cleared. There was no blowing red sand in across her helmet.
But there had been something that was indescribably different: for a habitable zone seemed foreign; the dust vastly different than snippets of windstorms that penetrated her mind.
It was not Earth.
That was something that she could remember; that she could fathom. There was a certainty about her distance from where she believed that she had originated from; but the memories were just small snippets. More tiny pictures flashing through her mind, scenes of a distant world, a place that despite its far reaches from her, it felt, somehow, familiar.
She was jolted back to the present as a whippet of dust blew on her faceplate and concealed her vision.
She brushed her hand over the thick plastic, wiping a messy vision: the winds were increasing; jolting bursts but not constant.
And she was not standing.
She was still lying on the ground.
And as she struggled to see through the blowing dust, she saw the light metal glisten through the blowing clouds.
She knew.
The thought penetrated her mind, like an arrow shot square into the center of her head. There was some familiarity to the photos she had remembered studying as a little girl; for she recognized them in a flurry of revelation: it was the angry red planet. The cousin, the neighbor.
