Two men stood behind an orange rail. They both looked worried. In a huge cavernous room below them, a screaming man was forced into a chamber and locked into a chair.
Stanther wore the suit. His slim dark coat flared at the waist and hung almost to his knees. A puffy dark red tie emerged from the collar. He leaned over the rail, gripping it tightly. "He’s not going to make it. I can’t believe we’re sending him. Why should he come back?"
Hollin had the long white lab coat. He looked a little more relaxed, nervously playing with something in his pocket. "He’s the only logical course. The others had all the training in the world." His voice didn’t have the edge Stanther’s did.
Outside, a cold, hard world bustled along toward frantic profit. There was nothing left to exploit. All nature’s resources had been neatly tucked under a bed of concrete and steel. Technology was so advanced, the common consumer gave up trying to keep up and businesses couldn’t afford the cost of daily revolutions. So profit had to be found somewhere else. Both Stanther and Hollin hoped the future would lead to their wealth.
They could still hear their last hope, a paranoid, screaming in the machine that would take him there. All he had to do was bring something back, anything, from the future.
A technician looked up at Stanther, who sighed and nodded. The lever was moved. The ship shimmered.
"Into hands of fear, the future flies," Hollin whispered.
Tanden, the moment weird things started happening, gripped the arms of his seat, squeezed his eyes shut, and waited for whatever it was that was happening to stop.
When he finally opened his eyes, he looked out the window and saw the sky, as blue as icy water. And mists, silky white mists were whizzing by at an incredible speed. Something seemed wrong. Something was definitely wrong. They were going to hurt him. They had lied. But how? What were they doing to him?
Then he realized there wasn’t a ground. No ground. He couldn’t see anything but sky. That was it. Ice cold sky. He was falling. He could feel it, the plummet. And he couldn’t get free. His wrists and ankles were strapped tight to the seat. He struggled. The straps grew tighter and tighter. They were crushing his wrists. They hurt. He could feel his bones start to crack. He could smell the blood. The ship was falling and falling. He was going to die. Shattering, like people on a bridge, falling, falling, then bang, bam, he would hit the ground and shatter in a million billion pieces. He looked outside, begging the sky for help.
Suddenly, he saw the ground. Delicious green hills rolling and rolling into the horizon. Was that the ground? Where were the buildings, the cities, the bridges that fall? Was that the ground? It looked hard. Maybe it was a hallucination. That was it. They had drugged him. They had drugged him. He was going to die a thousand times before he finally hit the real one and shattered.
A jolt shuddered through the ship. It wrenched. It cracked. Tanden felt the hull rip open as if it were his own skin. Then everything stopped. He did not move. He looked out the window, his eyes bulging. Where was he? What was this? Those things standing there? Buildings? They were small for buildings, barely big enough for him to get inside and stand. Maybe they were beings. Strange beings in this strange world. They were coming for him. He could feel them watching him. They were. He knew it. They were watching him. But they had no eyes. Maybe someone was trying to trick him. Really strange beings that would torture him for information about the place he had come from. Where were they? He couldn’t see anyone, only those strange brown things with green heads that looked too big for their bodies.
Tanden couldn’t stop panting. His shirt was soaked. The straps around his wrists and ankles slithered off. He felt his wrists, and with a sigh, realized nothing was broken. His ankles weren’t hurt either. He was free, but what could he do? He didn’t have any weapons. He didn’t have a gun. How could he fight those things watching him, waiting for him to do something? They were waiting for him to leave the ship. That’s it. That’s what they wanted. Well, he simply would not do that. He would stay right where he was until the ship returned automatically, like Hollin had said it would. What if they were lying? What if they wanted to leave him here? In this place?
What if they weren’t? He couldn’t go back empty-handed. Hollin had said that he would hurt him, far worse than anything he, Tanden, could imagine. Tanden could imagine very bad things. He had to get something from this world to take back. That was part of the agreement. But what? He looked out the window for something close by, something he could just run out and get, then rush back in before any of them got him. Then he could wait for the ship to return. There wasn’t anything. Only those brown things.
What could he do? What could he do?
He would simply have to leave the ship. He had to get something to take back. He pushed a button and cowered toward the front as a door slid open in the back of the ship.
The sweet scent of fresh air blew into the compartment and disturbed Tanden’s nose. He waited a moment before raising his face and looking out the door. The view outside the back was almost the same as the view out the front. A forest to the side bloomed in sing song brightness. Up ahead, a lake mirrored the sky. The lapping of waves splashed through the air with the background of hushing wind. Further off on the other side another forest grew, standing tall in its natural purity.
Tanden crept cautiously to the doorway, his hands cleansing themselves without water. He stopped in the opening. The brown things topped with green didn’t move. Nothing moved, except for the lake. He had never seen so much water in one place. And the waves, as if something pushed it from beneath. Something must be there, waiting like the brown things. Thousands of things beneath the surface waiting for him to leave his precious ship, waiting to attack. Who knows what there was that he couldn’t see in this strange world? Those white things in the sky, poisonous gas? A creature waiting for him to breathe it into his lungs, so it can inhabit his body. Tanden tried to stop breathing.
He had to leave the ship to get something, anything, so he could get back to his world, his home. There, he would be all right, because, there he would know exactly what wanted to hurt him and what didn’t. But here, anything and everything, it all seemed to want to attack him. He could almost feel the ground, it breathed hungrily, waiting to swallow him once he stepped off the ship.
"Hey," yelled a voice off in the distance.
Tanden looked, his eyes bulging from their sockets and his hands gripping themselves into being still. His heart thundered as if it were being beaten.
Three people were off in the distance, walking toward him. They were coming for him, to hurt him. One waved his hand threateningly.
Tanden was stunned, for the moment unmoving. He couldn’t think. What to do? Suddenly, he jumped from the ship. He saw ground’s green fingers reach up to grab his feet. "No!" he whined as he bolted for the lake, the lapping waves. Then he stopped --the things beneath the waters. He looked down at the emerald tendrils latching onto his shoes. He grunted, turned around, confused. Where could he go?
The three started running toward him. "Hey, what’s wrong?" one yelled. "Come back," another called. "Are you okay?" They were getting closer.
Tanden started to run again, away from them, toward the brown beings. They still didn’t move to attack. His breathing grew erratic. He was running out of places to go. Everything was yelling at him, wanting to hurt him. His head throbbed with the noise. He stumbled and fell against one of the brown things. The coarse skin scratched him. It was hard and didn’t give with him. He groaned from the impact and fell.
"Are you all right?" the strangers called, getting closer and closer. "Let us help you." "We’re not going to hurt you!"
Tanden couldn’t understand them. Without thinking, he ran into the darkness inside the crowd of brown things. He ran, stumbling and barely catching himself, time and time again. It was much darker where he was now. He couldn’t see at first. "I can’t see!" he cried in a whisper, panic choking in his lungs. Slowly, the brown things came back into sight. He ran into another one. Arms surrounded him. It was attacking him. The brown things were attacking him. He felt the others coming too. They were going to carry him away and torture him, hurt him. He struggled fighting and fighting, blindly swinging his fists, hitting and hitting the things. He broke a few of its arms, the cracks of bones splintering in his mind. Then another came at him from behind. He swung at it. Then another, and another came. They were all around him, coming and coming. How many were there? How many? He started to tire. His arms were getting heavier and heavier. Bruises throbbed all over them. The beings still came. He fought and fought, but they still came. He started crying, and exhausted, he fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. He was dimly aware of being picked up by the strange things and carried away.
Then nothing.
When Tanden woke up, he was not getting tortured at all, not yet. But right then, he was not uncomfortable in the least. The bed on which he lay was much softer than the one he was used to in the past. He could hear voices. He opened his eyes and looked around, but did not move any major appendages whatsoever. He fought back his ever present urge to rub his hands together. His pupils bounced around in between his lids.
He was in a building of some sort. The walls were smooth, like where he lived in the lower stages of the city. Part of the walls and the roof were made of thick round tubes. They looked scarred with lines and circles. He felt a weight hanging over him, as if at any given moment, the walls would cave in and crush him. He would still be alive, but completely unable to fight. He tried not to think of what the people would do to him then. He knew of people like these --those who thrilled in other’s screams. Much too often, somebody from the streets would disappear, be dragged into the upper levels, and mutilated or dropped into a bottomless abyss. Tanden knew. He had heard the stories. He had heard about how those in the upper levels were running out of room and needed the ground levels again, and how many of the uppers didn’t want to live side by side with the downers already there. He quickly closed his eyes and listened to the voices.
"What do you mean, you couldn’t fix the ship?"
"Don’t thrash me. There wasn’t anything to fix. There weren’t any controls."
"Then how did he get here? Tell me that, Dantry."
"Quit arguing, you two, maybe he didn’t know how to control the ship. That sounds like something Hollin would do, send somebody who doesn’t know what they’re doing into the future."
"So then it would have to be on a timer, right? So he could get back, since he couldn’t do it himself."
"Brilliant, Welon," a male voice said, sarcastically.
"Go chew your cud," a female voice returned.
"I guess that would explain why he freaked out earlier."
"I bet you freaked out pretty bad too. We all did when we first got here."
"I didn’t freak out. I was only surprised. I had, after all, seen the pictures from the unmanned run."
"You went wild, admit it. Don’t be so perfect," the one named Welon told the other.
"I didn’t start beating on the trees though."
"I wish he had been a girl," the other male said. "It sure would have things easier around here."
"Nothing’s going to be easy around here," she coldly replied.
"You’re just another pretty face, aren’t you?"
"I’m going to check on him," the other male said. Tanden wasn’t sure if it was Dantry or the unnamed one. He heard him stand up and step closer. He could hear his breathing, his heart beat, his hands swish through the air. He could hear his thoughts, Wake up, wake up, so we can hurt you.
"Hey, Welon, he’s shaking. Come over here, look at his hands."
Good, now we can have some fun, Tanden heard her thoughts dance through her mind, haunting him. She almost seemed to know he could hear them.
Suddenly, someone touched him. He jumped, scampered to the opposite wall, crouching, his eyes glaring. How did they do that? They know. They know I can hear their thoughts. They tricked me. She distracted me, while the other touched me. How did they know? How? Can they read my thoughts?
"It’s okay," she soothed, leaning closer. "We’re not going to hurt you. I promise." Lies, all lies, and he knew it.
"What’s wrong with him?" one of the men behind her asked.
"Looks like he’s scared."
"Of what, we’re one of him. We’re human."
"Get me something to drink, Dantry." She never took her eyes off the frightened bug of a man. "Are you thirsty? Would you like something to drink?"
Tanden’s eyes darted from person to person and around the room. They were trying to poison him. They were trying to paralyze him. Then they could do anything they wanted, and he wouldn’t be able to fight back. His hands rubbed each other. The only door was the one behind them. How was he going to get out?
"Here you go?" she said, now holding a cup of poison inches away from him. "It’s okay, you can drink it." She was coming closer.
Tanden looked in horror at the drink, at her, at them, at the door. She came closer still. He tried to watch everything at once, everything. He remembered when they had tricked him. They had touched him. They might try again. He wouldn’t let them. He would be ready, ready for anything. Still, he couldn’t keep his eyes on everything, but he was trying.
"It won’t hurt you. Drink it."
Suddenly, he knocked the poison from her hand, splashing it on her. He ran towards a side wall to go around them.
"Get him!"
He slammed into the wall and bounced towards the door. By that time, one of the guys had gotten hold of him around the waist and was dragging him down. They were coming for him. They were going to hurt him, kill him, have fun with him. He scrambled desperately, fighting, waving his arms, scratching, clawing, fighting blindly. Somehow, the grip around his waist loosened and he broke free. He ran for the door and into the broken city.
"Let him go," the woman said, watching him from the doorway. "We can’t keep him here if he doesn’t want to stay."
"But we can’t let him get back through time."
Tanden didn’t hear, his thoughts so focussed on freedom and his eyes towards the city like broken bridges.
A wiry man crept through a city in ruins. The buildings all around him were in every stage of destruction --from early stages amounting to little more than empty windows with interiors hidden in darkness to those that were simply rubble. His back was hunched over. His hands rubbed together. His eyes darted every which way at once. At times, he would stop and look around, then hurry faster from some invisible pursuer.
Something’s going to get me, Tanden thought. There, that hill. Something’s behind it. I can sense it, its size, its hunger. I can hear each heavy breath. No, no, it’s not behind it. It’s underneath it. It’s waiting to rise of from all those rocks and attack me.
He moved a little further to the opposite side of the street, then he noticed a pile of rubble on that side too. He returned to the middle, his eyes ever-darting.
What’s that sound? Something’s coming. Those brown things are coming for him. He could hear them, their feet hitting the ground. Millions of them were coming for him.
A sound behind him clattered through his thoughts. He whipped his head around. His body followed suit, still walking in the same direction but now backwards.
Something had happened. Someone was there. Who was it? What was it? He couldn’t see anything. Nothing. Buildings. Those hills, still unmoved, still waiting. He could feel something watching him, its eyes burning through him.
His senses screamed a cacophony inside his head. His hands tugged at each other. He sucked at his tongue. Then he saw it. Why didn’t he see it before? So simple. A rock. He had never seen it before. He had walked right by there, and it hadn’t been there then. It must have jumped off one of the hills. It must be following him.
For a brief moment, Tanden smiled. His paranoia was satisfied. But not for long.
Why don’t you run? You’re an easy target. Hide. Run. Get away. It’ll hurt you. It’s coming. Can’t you see it? It’s moving.
The thought triggered action in his legs. He turned and ran straight for a building and its dark interior.
Dantry was not too far away, hiding his large shape behind a wall. He had heard the sound too. He had even seen what had made it --a medium-sized rock had fallen from a mountain of debris. He had watched it, a few meters away from mid-fall to stop. Then he looked back up where it had fallen from. There wasn’t anything, or anyone. He waited, his muscles taut with expectations, scanning the debris.
When Dantry looked back towards him, the down was not where he had been. Dantry had seen a few downers back in the past of his proper present. He remembered as child in the second grade, his class had taken a trip all the way down to the fifth floor. They had walked out on a balcony and watched the downers scamper on their way. He laughed at them then. Both he had his friends had. The downers scampered had run from them.
Dantry decided to check behind the hill. He and the others had been there in the future for a few months and had not seen anyone or anything similar to humans. Nothing that walked across the land at all. Only plants. The rock’s fall might have been caused by someone. He needed to know. He was starting to fell claustrophobic in this world of natural purity.
Besides, Dantry knew he would probably find the downer later, trying to beat up a wall or something just as harmless.
Tanden froze. He was inside a building. Four walls surrounded him. In the grey light, he could barely see. Layers were peeling from their surfaces. Objects littered the floor. Nothing he could understand. Then he saw the rocks.
They’re here too. They’re everywhere. Maybe all this stuff is alive. Maybe it all wants to hurt me. He could feel everything around him crowd him, piling up around his legs. They were trying to bury him in themselves, imprison him.
He started moving. They couldn’t do anything, if he kept moving. His steps were awkward, sliding his feet across the ground instead of picking them up. He was far more afraid at the moment of stepping on one of those things, that he was of the things themselves. The chilling expectation tingled under his foot till he could almost feel something there --his body weight crushing it, and it writhing to be free.
The deeper he went, the darker the grey light became.
Something touched his foot. Tanden kicked it, without thinking. It flew across the room, banging from the wall to the floor. He froze again, his eyes gawking at the thing. He had touched it. He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t want to know. All he knew was that it had touched him, and he didn’t even want to know that. His hands had climbed up the sides of his face to tug cruelly at his hair. He wanted to scream.
But they might hear him. Whatever else was out there. That rock. He couldn’t run outside. Those hills. Everything out there wanted to hurt him. In here, everything wanted to hurt him. Where could he run? Where? The world began to collapse, as his eyes chased each other around the room.
Then he saw another door. It was in the corner of the room. It lead into darkness. He had nowhere to go. What could be in there? He looked back the way he had come. There it was. It hadn’t made a sound this time. The rock was there, a short distance from the doorway. He could feel it watching him, staring at him blindly.
He ran, screaming. His hands outstretched as he plundered into the darkness. Something hit him below the waist, something hard and sharp. He buckled and fell, and moaning. He landed on something flat and fell off of it. He tried to push himself away, but something touched his hand. He slapped it away from him. He looked around. A muddled greyness fell through the doorway into the pitch blackness of the room and showed him his attacker. It was a table. It was coming for him, its legs working slowly. It towered over him in the light. He cowered, sliding along the floor towards nowhere.
Dantry heard a desperate scream that sounded all to familiar. He ignored it, too hopeful in his own endeavors. He was beginning to fear that his hope was borne only out of desperation and not out of something more firm, like logic or emotion. His hope was starting to seem like it was alone in an abyss of dreams and lies. He was beginning to get very scared. One of the things that frightened him most was his growing lack of control over his emotions.
Behind the rubble, he had known what he would find. He had known there was no difference from one side to the other, destroyed buildings and cobwebs of civilization. Welon, Binder, and he had searched an area of close to twenty miles. They found nothing, except ruins. His world had had a war. There were few areas that had returned to nature. They had figured that those were where the bombs had been directly used. They had only found one of those areas so far.
Dantry found nothing that could have moved that stone. He knew reasonably there wasn’t anything here. He knew they would have found it earlier if there had been anything that could have tossed a stone. But somehow he knew that there was something he was missing. He couldn’t find it whatever it was. He still looked, blinded by his fears and his hope. He had been trained to trust his instincts, which had been meticulously trained as well.
"Hello," he called out, hoping something would hear him. He wanted to scream, but he didn’t. He wanted to scream insanely and run till he was killed by exhaustion, but he didn’t. He knew it would be fruitless, senseless. He was so desperately trying to find it, the thing that had moved the rock, whatever it was. That urge itched at him, and the only way he could scratch it was to run and scream.
He kicked a stone and watched it bounced down the road till it stopped. He could hear the emptiness of the planet in the noise the stone made. It was the same emptiness he heard in the everpresent wind. Dantry was starting to hate the wind for that sound, the nuance. He wanted to hear voices --no, not even voices. He could talk to Welon or Binder any time he wanted. But even their voices had begun to echo the wind. Dantry wanted to hear the sweet sounds of life.
He searched the buildings nearby, ever-hoping. Somehow, his fear intervened. He tried to imagine someone or something in a room, waiting for him to come in and sit down to exchange words. He couldn’t. But he still felt a life around him. It was a pinprick of a feeling, but it was there. He couldn’t deny that.
His eyes squinted with the intensity of their search. His ears reached out into the room as if with hands and probed them for the slightest sounds. He heard nothing except wind, he couldn’t even see that.
Something broke in the distance. It sounded in Dantry’s head like a bomb. His ears immediately withdrew their hands. He dropped to his knees, doubled over. His hands gripped the sides of his head, trying to control the force of the sound that threatened to burst his skulls. The noise dissipated. Dantry rose and ran towards it.
Tanden remained crushed against the wall at his back. Before him, the table moved towards him. He could barely see it in the gray light falling through the doorway into the pitch blackness of the room, but the table was there. It was coming for him. It moved with painful slowness, taunting him with frightful expectations.
Tanden, sitting on the floor and against the wall started moving again. His breath was a little more heavier the normal. He could smell it, staining his nose with its stench. He would reach his hand out to the side, pressing the wall, then his body would follow.
He had to keep moving, he kept telling himself, ‘As long as I keep moving, they can’t hurt me.’
His eyes never left the table, constantly aware of the each tiny, subtle movement it made. His hand kept probing the floor to his side. He wanted a door to get away through. He also, in vague way, wanted the table to attack him. He knew there were other things in the room with him, hidden behind the darkness. He could hear them. He could smell them. He simply wanted to see them. If the table would only attack him, then he could see the other things. But all he could see was the table. Even if he had the chance to look at one of the things in the darkness, he wouldn’t have been able to tear his eyes away from that table.
Then something bit his hand. He pulled his hand back and grabbed it with his other hand. He was bleeding. He was hurt. Blood drained down around his wrist, falling down his forearm to his elbow. He could feel the thick warm stream, too large to be guided by the grooves in his skin. He began to cry, whimpering softly to himself. Each noise he made seemed to bounce back at him from the darkness. It seemed as if the invisible minions had finally been relieved of their silence by the first noise and were now mimicking Tanden. Tears trickled down his cheek, not unlike the blood down his arm.
He looked upward. Doom was so close, the table was unimportant --the sight of it was. Tanden still held the image of it in his mind, and with each move the table made, the image in his mind moved as well. Up above, he saw light, not bright, not as dim as the gray light from the doorway. The few beams stopped just above his head, consumed by the thicker darkness. He was under a window.
Without thought, without reason, without a need for either of those two things, Tanden jumped up from where he sat. He dived for the light. The window gave but not all the way. Tanden was thrown back into the room. He landed on the table. With a yelp, he dove once again. The window broke. He fell out into the light.
The sun was bright, stinging his eyes blind. He feared losing his sight, never seeing any of the things that chased him ever again, but the world was soon revealed to him. He smiled, but only for as long as he feared blindness. Off in the distance, he saw an army of those brown beings with green heads too big for their bodies.
"Do you really want to stay?" Binder asked Welon. They were on their way to the new-comer’s ship.
"Of course, I do. Look around you, Binder." Her eyes shined. "Can you see any of this where we come from? Can you see trees? Or grass? Or lakes?"
"It is beautiful," he seemed unswayed.
"Do you want to go back? Do you really want to go back to the crowdedness, the metal, the tramsystems? I couldn’t stand the fear and the fighting." Her voice had changed from soft to vindictive. "Do you really want to go back to that?"
"I don’t know." He picked up a stick and toyed with it. "I mean, ever since I’ve been here, I’ve felt like the past, my present, has left me behind. I feel abandoned."
"Why? I feel like I’ve finally escaped."
"But the war. Or whatever it was that destroyed all the cities. I should have been there. I should have fought for my world. No, that’s not right. I just feel like I should have, at the very least, been present for the destruction. Can you understand that?"
"I’m glad I missed it," she said, "I mean, I thought it was bad when I lived there. I can’t even imagine the way it was towards the end. I don’t even want to know."
"I do," he almost yelled, "out of respect."
"How can you respect that place? How can you even dwell on it, when you have all this? Look around you. It’s gorgeous, and you want to leave."
"I don’t want to leave."
"Good," she hardened, "Because we can’t."
"I know," he gave in. "But even Dantry is changing."
"I know," Welon’s voice softened to concern.
They both knew Dantry was getting restless. He was the first one here. And he had realized that he could not go back long before the others. He told each one as they came. They knew he was right. If they went back and told of the world and its beauty in the aftermath, the past would try to escape to the future. Buildings would be built. Iron would cover the world. All the beauty would be destroyed again.
Binder had suggested they go back and simply lie, talk of an ugly world. But Hollin and Stanther would have kept sending people in, further and further into the future until they had found a paradise.
Besides, none of them wanted the human race to die, which would happen if they all went back and lied and those lies worked.
No one suggested that only one person go back.
Tanden swallowed. He was suddenly aware of his running out of time. His ship may have already left for all he knew. He needed to get back.
But there in front of him, those brown and green beings stood. And rocks were all over the ground. He did not know what to do.
His hand still stung. His heart pounded. His head began to throb. His hands rubbed each other, his skin sticky with sweat and blood.
He didn’t have a choice. He knew he had to go through the rocks. He had to go through the brown things. He had to get back to his ship.
"Hey," one of the others yelled at him from the side. "Stop, right now!" The yell was too loud for the distance. It was angry.
That anger was magnified by Tanden’s ears. He panicked. His breathing raced. His eyes jerked from the large man yelling at him to the army of beings.
"Don’t even try it!" the other yelled. "You run and I’ll kill you!"
Tanden knew what he had to do. He knew he was going to have to go through those beings, whether he liked it or not. And he was going to have to outrun both the man and the rocks. He had to get back to the ship. He had to get back to his world. He started forward.
"Stop! I said ‘Stop!’" He ran faster. "I just want to talk to you!"
Tanden headed for the crowd of strange beings, running from the man. The beings had not given chase. ‘Why didn’t they chase him?’ He tried not to think. ‘Why didn’t they run?’ He did not want to think. ‘I’m running into their trap.’ He didn’t want to think about it. He did not want to know. He wanted to run.
"I said ‘Stop!’" He was gaining on him.
Tanden closed his eyes and dived into the trees. ‘Just don’t touch them,’ he thought, ‘Last time you touched one, they grabbed you.’ He opened his eyes, expecting to be crushed. ‘Don’t touch.’ He slid around one being then another. He maneuvered under branches twisting his body this way then that.
The other followed without hesitation, ignoring the trap he was running into. He wanted Tanden to stop. "Stop! Just stop!" He kept screaming over and over.
Tanden ignored him, concentrating on getting through the army. They weren’t attacking him. He wasn’t touching them, and they weren’t attacking him.
Suddenly, the trees fell behind him. He was free. The ship was up ahead. The door was open. He was going to make it. But a little further over, the other two humans were running towards him, yelling.
Two arms wrapped around his knees and brought him down. He slammed hard on the ground. It almost took the air out of him. He writhed and kicked blindly at the arms but the arms held tight. He wasn’t going to make it. He was going to get stuck in this world. He was going to get tortured here.
Still, Tanden fought. He kicked. He hit. The one holding him kept throwing him flat on his back. Not once did his captor ease the grip around his knees.
"I just want to talk to you! I just want to talk!" the captor screamed over and over.
Tanden knew what he meant. He wanted information, and he was going to hurt Tanden for it.
Tanden wasn’t giving up. He kept hitting and kicking and clawing. His hands fell around a rough pipe. He picked it up and started beating his capture with it. Finally, bloody, the grip loosened. Tanden was free.
Tanden looked at his weapon. It was an arm from the brown beings. He threw it down and scampered away towards the ship.
The others were still coming, but they were too far away. "Dantry!" the woman yelled. She ran towards the one who had tried to stop Tanden. The other one was heading for Tanden’s ship.
"No!" Tanden screamed just as he got inside.
"No!" the other man yelled, picking up a rock and throwing it at Tanden inside the ship.
The door closed.
Tanden stood in a corner, his eyes gaping at the rock. He was going to be killed when he got back, and he knew it.
Shortly after, the ship turned green, and tinkling noises roared in the air, wind swirled rocking the world outside, the ship faded into the past.
Tanden was unaware of all that. He was too frozen in fear of the rock that had somehow gotten aboard.
"Listen, Tanden, how do you expect us to believe what you just told us?" Hollin interrogated him. Stanther and someone else were in the room too.
Tanden sat in a featureless room. A few feet in front of him was a table with the rock on it. The rock had not moved. Tanden had not taken his eyes off it, since he had been put in the room.
"We’ve got pictures from our unmanned run. We’ve got pictures from your run. Your ship took pictures, and not once, did those trees move."
Tanden had told them of a darkened world where everything was alive. Where trees had attacked him. Where humans chased him. Where rocks could move. Where tables stalked him. And invisible things that bite. He told of an infinite horrors and childhood fears and none of it was anything that Hollin and Stanther could use.
"You said you saw three people," Hollin leaned down towards Tanden’s twitching face. "They were our people. How were they?"
"They tried to hurt me. They tried to poison me. The wanted information. But I got away. And then they tried to stop me from getting into the ship. I beat one till he bled. They were working for the brown things."
"The trees," Hollin told him, "Those brown things are trees."
Stanther told Hollin. "That’s what happened on the film."
"I can’t believe those people were...were brainwashed by a bunch of plants." He glowered and Stanther.
Tanden cowered from Hollin. "You know what they are. You’re working for them. You’re going to hurt me."
"That’s right, Mr. Tanden. We’re going to torture you. We’ll skin you alive, piece by piece by piece." His tone was malicious.
"I’ve told you everything," the frightened little man whispered.
Hollin stood up, stepped over to the rock and picked it up. "You expect us to believe this, a stupid rock, chased you down a road." He held it towards Tanden.
Tanden shrieked and cowered, clambering to be free of his restraints.
"Dammit!" Hollin yelled, slamming the rock on the table.
A faint scream sounded in the room as the rock cracked, and blood dripped from Hollin’s hand. They could barely hear the scream as it instantly faded, leaving them to wonder if it had really sounded at all. But the rock, it was there, cracked open to reveal the strange organs inside it. Hollin could feel it vibrate in his hand, as if its tiny life had been snuffed out to quick for its body to register.
Tanden started screaming hysterically, his wailing bouncing from the walls and scaring him even more. He could not be controlled.
Hollin held out his hand in utter disbelief. He looked at Stanther, who was still looking at the rock.
Stanther finally spoke to the guard. "Take care of Mr. Tanden, see that he is given asylum from us. Hollin, go to the laboratories."
They all left. Stanther had gone with Hollin to see if they could salvage anything from the death. They both knew it was hopeless. They also knew, finally, that the future was not the place for them.
Tanden was released at the second level. He made his was down to the ground by himself. There, he blended in with the other downers --grim clothes, dirty, and eyes ever-darting. The looked everywhere at once, but never into anyone else’s eyes. At the slightest hint of any confrontation like that, they would bow their heads and close their eyes. He was home.
He tried not to think of the other world, where everything was alive. He also tried not to think of the deal he had made with Hollin --that the uppers would not kill him like they were with the other downers. He would not be hurt when the uppers came down to the ground to live. He tried not to think of that, because he knew it wasn’t true. He would be taken like all the others. He still had to keep his eyes out. They were all that could save him now.
He tried not to think of why he had made the deal, because he did not know anymore. It didn’t make any sense to him. But he had done it. He had survived.
And now he was where he belonged, in his own paradise. Here, he knew his enemies. They were everyone, not everything. He could handle that.
"If there were one person in the world, David Rollins would not be them. He finds the thought of loneliness uneventful at best. By day, he dons his professional cowl and pretends to be a paralegal, all the while waiting till night when his true selves can emerge, father and husband. He may not be a a hero, but at least, he's happy."
E-mail: gelmon@mindspring.com
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