Descend- First Steps

by David Burke

  “Whaddya mean?”

  Dang she could make even stupid questions seem cute. “No, focus.”

  “What I mean is that we need to find out if there is water, food, and shelter. Probably in that order. We also need to find out if there are any dangerous animals here.”

  The last part had all of the girls huddling closer together and then almost imperceptibly closer to him. He could get used to this.

  Ava said, “That makes sense.”

  Jay smiled back at all their expectant faces. “Well I suppose we should try to gather everyone up first.”

  Chapter 5 - Getting Organized

  It took the better part of an hour to get everyone organized. Once all heads were counted there were 3 men and 97 women. The other guys, Liam and Oliver, were both friendly at first. They all went around offering to help any of the girls who were too distraught, each trying to put on a brave face. At least that was the way that Jay perceived it. They seemed like decent guys and so as is the way of humans he attributed to them the same motivations that he had. He knew that deep down he was terrified of what had happened, but that as long as he kept moving, kept busy, that he would be able to focus on tasks and not have to think about what this might mean for him.

  There wasn’t that much that he had left behind. The only family that he had was his father, if he could be called family. Yet, Jay was afraid that if he allowed himself to go there that he would get all emotional about the very real prospect that he might never see his dad again. He had no idea where they were. When Jasmine had asked that before he knew that it was not a question he was prepared to deal with yet. Nothing about what he had seen so far precluded them from still being on Earth. It might just be a tropical island, but so far it seemed pretty barren, just beach with the occasional copse of trees. Looking towards the sea he couldn’t see anything but endless blue and if he looked inland the ground eventually rose up into a series of hills and he couldn’t see beyond them.

  Many of the girls weren’t holding it together as well, but those he left to other girls to handle. His experience with the first blonde, whose name he learned was Amelia, had taught him that he didn’t have the necessary empathy or communication skills to work with distraught girls. Some of the other girls actually drew comfort from him and he found more than one leaning against his arm or hugging him as they thanked him for rescuing them, as if he had done something special just by being there. Not that he was going to push them away. He had gotten touched by more hot girls today than he had in his entire life up to this point, and that probably included his dreams. He almost felt bad for thinking like that, almost.

  Everyone gathered around in a circle with the three guys along with Jasmine. She had become a de facto leader of sorts for her efforts in organizing everyone. Now though she was looking at him. “Jay made some good points. I bet that just like me, you all can’t stop wondering where we are, how we got here, or who is responsible. I know that we all want to go home, but first things first. First we have to figure out how to meet our basic needs here. Since we have no idea how long we will be here. I certainly don’t want to wander around until it’s dark and then learn that there are dangerous animals here.”

  Liam added, “Yeah and this sun is pretty brutal, if we don’t find some water soon people are gonna start to suffer.”

  A few people echoed with “yeahs and uh huhs” but then it was back to Jasmine again. “So how do we do this, Jay?”

  As she asked the question all eyes turned on him. “Hmm, how am I supposed to know,” was the first thought that went through Jay’s head before a quick, “Don’t screw this up.”

  “Jasmine, the logical thing to me would be to climb up those hills and see what’s on the other side. We may get some sense of where we are at while we are looking for the essentials. Like, Liam said, we need water first, then food, but also need to keep an eye out for shelter and see if we can make out any animals.”

  Jay continued, “I’m gonna go up and take a look and maybe a group of you want to go with me, but,” pausing as he looked around at all the tear-streaked faces that were just barely holding it together, “it might be better for some of you to stay here and get organized. Later it may be very important to know who we are and what skills we have amongst us.”

  That set a buzz of whispers going on amongst everyone till Jasmine said, “I will stay and help organize everyone but Jay shouldn’t go alone. Can we get three or four volunteers who are willing to go with him?”

  Eventually it was determined that Liam and three of the girls would go with him. Charlotte he recognized from those who had first been speaking with Jasmine. Huong was a petite Vietnamese girl that he had seen walking around and helping some of the more distraught. The final one surprised him though. Amelia almost immediately volunteered. She seemed much more composed than she was earlier. Jay decided not to fight it, based upon the sun it was almost noon now so half their daylight could be gone.

  Right before they headed off, Jay went over and talked to Jasmine. “One other thing that you may want to check out is what skills everyone got from their awakening.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked back.

  “Didn’t you get a notification about surviving the awakening and being able to say status to learn more?”

  “Well yeah but I just didn’t worry about it. I thought taking care of the people was more important. Besides it sounded an awful lot like some video game talk.”

  Jay wanted to face-palm himself in frustration but managed to keep it inside, at least mostly. “You are right. It does sound like a video game, but right now we have to use every resource at our disposal.”

  Even frowning didn’t make her perfect face look anything less than gorgeous as she asked, “So what do I do?”

  “Simple, just say the word ‘status’ out loud.”

  When she whispered the word, Jay started to correct her but saw the glazed-over look in her eyes, so she was obviously accessing her interface. Still he couldn't help but shake his head at how embarrassed she was to not want to be overheard saying ‘status’ by the others.

  A minute later she said, “Okay, that would be kinda cool, but I don’t really know what most of it means.”

  “Can you tell me what you saw or wait… maybe there is an easier way. Try saying, ‘Share status’.”

  Jasmine whispered it again but this time she wrinkled her nose as she said, “Nothing happened.”

  Jay pursed his lips. “Hmm... oh I know. Try putting your hand on my shoulder or something while you say it.”

  He got another frown and based on prior life experience, he half expected to be slapped. He had learned all too often that college girls perceived almost everything as being hit on by a guy, well maybe with good reason, but no slap came. Instead she placed her hand on his shoulder and repeated, “Share status.”

  Instantly, Jay could see a pink screen similar to the blue one he had himself:

  F49311

  Level: 1 (increased from 0 as part of the consequence of awakening)

  Awareness: 4

  Empathetic Persuasion: 4 - 1%

  Durability: 1

  Elasticity: 1 - 0%

  Kinesis: 2

  Electric Arc: 2 - 0%

  Metabolism: 2

  Regeneration: 2 - 0%

  Formation: 1

  Body Modification: 1 - 0%

  Psi Pts: 60 Stamina: 40

  Shop Credits: 10

  It was a lot to take in for Jay at first. Pink vs blue screen? Could that get any cornier? Yet her number began with an F rather than an M and was much higher than his. So he had to assume that it had something to do with there being more women here than men. What was shocking was how much lower her overall scores were than his.

  Jay wanted to talk about it but decided now wasn’t the time, “Okay, so that skill Empathetic Persuasion is probably helping you organize everyone and it looks like you have used it enough to progress up 1%.”

  “Oh is that good?”r />
  “It sure seems to be working for you. But now we have to go see what’s on the other side of those hills. I just think as much as possible, you should figure out who might have what skills and how we can use them.”

  “Yeah okay,” Jasmine said half-heartedly, “but I get the sense that there is something you aren’t wanting to tell me.”

  Shifting back and forth from foot to foot, Jay weighed what he should say, when all of a sudden he got the strangest tingly sensation and instinctively lifted up his hand to deflect something thrown at him. He spun and swatted the reddish object out of the air before it could hit his back.

  “Wait was that a crab?” he thought before he yelled at Oliver, who had thrown the crab. “What the hell was that for, man?”

  Oliver’s face turned red as he replied, “Oh sorry. It flew a lot further and faster than I thought. Guess I don’t know my own strength. But seriously that was really cool. Jedi-like how you just turned and knocked it out of the air.”

  “Okay, just be careful. And why would you throw a crab in the first place?”

  “Me and Ava found them and I just wanted to show you guys. The beach has a lot of them under the sand. If we can find a way to build a fire we will at least have crab to eat,” Oliver said, his enthusiasm obvious.

  “Maybe so, but I also worry if there are too many of them. Wonder if they come out at night. Anyway, please try and help Jasmine get everyone organized while our scouting party is gone.”

  “Sure thing, man, you can trust me. The lovely ladies shall all be kept safe.” Oliver said with a grin.

  “Anyway, Jasmine, we can talk about that other stuff when I get back, okay?” Jay asked but didn’t wait for a response. He was just grateful that the flying crustacean had provided an opportunity to get away.

  Chapter 6 - Walking Around

  Jay and the others made good time to the hills, which were only about a mile away. It still took them a good thirty minutes but the entire mile was one big sandy beach. Many sighs of relief were heard as they broke free from the sand and started climbing the grassy slope of the hill. It wasn’t too steep but went up quite a ways.

  “Anyone else find it odd how it’s solid sand for like a mile and then one foot later it’s rich green grass?” Jay asked.

  He got odd looks from most of the others, but Huong said, “It definitely doesn’t make sense based on what I learned in my horticulture classes. I would have expected there to be a section of grass trying to break through the sand and then the bottom of the hill to be rather sparse grass.”

  “Right?” Jay said. “It’s almost like there is a line drawn and on one side it’s grassy hills and on the other side it’s sandy beach.”

  Huong nodded and Liam added in, “Weird.”

  “So horticulture, where were you studying that?” Jay asked, trying to get to know the people he was with.

  “Oh,” Huong mumbled as if waking from a dream, “I was a junior at the University of Colorado. I was more into the science of it rather than the landscape design. Thought maybe I would end up being a bio-scientist and work on developing new crops to solve world food shortages.”

  “That’s really cool,” Liam said before Jay could get a word in. He couldn’t help but feel like the other guy was trying to horn in on his conversation.

  “Yeah, sure is,” was the best that Jay could muster.

  “Um so what about you two, what do you do or were you still in school?”

  Liam quickly answered, “I just finished school right before covid hit. I had found a job but then lost it. Now, I just finally got back on my feet and found another job as a physical therapist.”

  “Oh that’s great. I was working on my degree in kinesiology,” Charlotte said, injecting.

  “Where at?” Jay asked. He wanted to keep the focus on learning as much about each of the people as possible.

  “U of I, I mean University of Illinois,” Charlotte replied.

  “Oh, Illini. I was or am or well maybe it’s was now, a Redbird, so just down I-74 from you,” Jay said, grinning as he thought he had found some common ground. Charlotte just smiled back so he turned towards Amelia. “What about you? Were you in school somewhere? What were you studying?”

  Tossing her blonde curls, she looked at Jay. “I was getting a Master’s Degree in Nunya beeswax.”

  “Chill, he was just trying to be polite,” Charlotte said.

  “Chill yourself, I’m not sharing anything I don’t have to with any of you. For all I know some of you were involved with whatever got me stuck here.” Amelia’s tone was cold as ice and if looks could kill, Jay and Charlotte would probably be in the ground now.

  No one seemed to know what to say at that point so everyone got really busy observing their surroundings. Looking back Jay could see that the beach was wider than he had thought but that after a stretch of maybe a few miles in each direction there were rocky cliffs that broke up the beach. As he climbed higher up the hill he could see that there were other sections of beach on the far side of each of those rocks. Surrounding it all was a crystal-blue ocean that didn’t seem to ever end.

  The hills themselves were not that steep but one would roll into the next and they were always working to find the best path which always seemed to lead higher. Looking to each side the hills seemed to go on quite a ways but it appeared that they might be a ring for there seemed to be a curve to them. It was just too hazy that far in the distance to tell for sure.

  After about an hour and half of brisk hiking with no one else speaking again, other than some mumbling by Amelia about being thirsty, they reached the highest part of the hills. From there, looking down they could see that the hills descended about the same distance that they had climbed to get to this point. At the foot of the hills were mostly grassy plains although there were what looked like beach bungalows spotted from place to place and in the very center of the area was the only stone construction they had seen. It looked like an ancient ziggurat and based upon its apparent size was probably at least five miles away.

  So far they didn’t see any people or large animals so Jay asked, “Do we go explore what those little house things are down there?”

  “I think so, right now we don’t have much of anything to report back yet. We need to find out if there is a safe place for everyone to go to,” Liam said.

  Jay, Charlotte, and Huong nodded in agreement while Amelia was busy looking off at something in the distance. They all tried to follow her line of sight.

  “Whatcha looking at?” Jay finally just asked.

  “Do you see that little white obelisk down there at the base of the hills?” Amelia asked without taking her eyes off whatever she saw.

  “I can’t make out anything down there, it must be two or three miles away,” Jay said and all the others chimed in.

  “Oh that must be what Eagle Eye on my status sheet means,” Amelia said more to herself than anyone else. When Liam tried to ask her what she meant she just ignored him and started down the path to the other side of the hills.

  Chapter 7 - Window Shopping

  The trip down the other side of the hills was slightly faster than the trip up. Even with uneven ground and having to find the best path it only took about an hour for the group to make it down. Amelia and Charlotte were both winded but the other three hadn’t broken a sweat. Jay hadn’t mentioned it to anyone but the longer they walked the easier it seemed to get. He wondered whether that was a result of his durability or his metabolism scores, or something entirely different that he didn’t understand.

  The closer they got to the bottom the better able they were able to see the white obelisk that Amelia had found from the top. It was eight feet tall and about two feet wide in the shape of a pointed stone column of the purest white marble. It sorta looked like the Washington Monument before the protestors had blown it up, just much smaller.

  When they finally reached it, they could tell that the ground around it was pure white paver bricks fitted perfectly together
in a circle with a radius of around ten feet. In the very center was the obelisk and on each side of it was a sunken human handprint large enough to have belonged to an NBA star.

  “So what do you suppose that is?” Huong asked.

  “I’m guessing it is the terminal that was mentioned in the message after we had the awakening thingie,” Jay answered.

  “Terminal?” echoed Charlotte and Huong.

  “Jeeze, didn’t anyone else read the messages that we got?” Jay said in shock.

  Both the confused girls got red-faced but Amelia simply said, “I did”, as she walked up and placed her hand into the deep handprint.

  “Be careful,” Liam said while Jay tried to move to intercept her but both were too slow. One side of the obelisk started to pulse with light and Amelia was very still.

  “Are you okay?” Jay asked while Charlotte cried out, “Someone help her.”

  Liam stepped towards her but as soon as he hit the white stones behind her he was thrown backwards. Charlotte rushed over to him and checked on him but it appeared that only his pride was busted up.

  “I don’t think it wants us to interfere with her. Hopefully that was just like a security measure for the store to protect her while she is shopping,” Jay said but he never took his eyes off Amelia’s form. It wasn’t really a burden though, because as unstable and standoffish as she had been, she was still quite an eyeful. The shorts she was wearing clung to her pert ass and showed off plenty of leg. “That’s right, I am definitely a freak. Here we are stranded and possibly all going to die and I can’t stop perving on a girl’s ass,” he thought to himself.

  After about two minutes, Amelia stepped away and the pulsing light stopped. Turning to face the others she said, “So that is the terminal and it gives you access to something called the shop. Not sure how useful it’s gonna be though as everything is very expensive and there are a lot of weird things in it.”