My long-brown hair stung my cheeks as gale-force winds whipped about us. Everything that wasn’t nailed down was airborne, including centuries-old dust. Forcing myself to my feet, I shouted, “Excesin!”
The winds stopped as suddenly as they had begun. A chair crashed into the wall opposite the main door, the resulting pieces clattering to the ground. Papers rained down from above, along with keyboards, monitors, and various other pieces of equipment. For a moment, nothing human could be heard.
Finally, someone moaned. That did it. Everybody who could talk did, all saying the same thing – what was that?! The noise level rose quickly as each of them tried to speak loudly enough to be heard over the others.
“That’s enough!” boomed an authoritative male voice.
I ducked my head. I hadn’t even realized that the General was in the room…
“Clear out. If you can’t walk, crawl. Starting now, this chamber is off limits.” Scowling, the General motioned MP’s into the room.
I joined the “herd” at the first opportunity. Hopefully, he wouldn’t notice me. In the chaos I could probably slip out as easily as I had slipped in. My own injuries were limited to bruises, thankfully. I was jostling my way up through a downward flow of able-bodied manpower when a hand settled on my shoulder. My heart lurched like a yacht striking a sandbar. As casually as I could, I looked around.
“You again,” said the General’s voice. “I might have known.”
I wasn’t sure what he was thinking, nor did I particularly care to. His hand still firmly clamped on my shoulder, the General turned and headed back down.
“Uh, General,” I resisted as best as I could, “we really don’t want to go back down there.” To my pleasant surprise, he stopped. Then he shoved me against the nearest wall, none too gently. Air wheezed out of me, and I coughed on the dust that rose from my clothes.
“Why don’t you want to go back?” he asked, his tone a deadly calm. “You’re an expert on so-called extra-terrestrial encounters, aren’t you?”
I couldn’t swallow. My mouth and throat were dry, but not just from the dust. For two hundred years, my family had lived in peaceful anonymity on this planet. There was barely enough of their original DNA in my cells to even prompt a recognition signal from the few remaining pieces of their equipment. I hadn’t even been sure that the machine would accept my order…
“Aren’t you?” he repeated, leaning closer, his coffee-breath curling my nose hairs.
“Really, General,” I retorted, my back literally against a wall, “there are no such things as aliens.” He was not amused. Yanking me away from the wall like I was a half-full suitcase, he marched towards the chamber.
I thought rapidly as I stumbled along beside him. If my grandmother hadn’t made up those bedtime stories, this was a lot more than an underground chamber. It was the bridge of the long-lost ship, The Connection. A hand-picked crew of fifty recruits had left the Academy, bound for the Solar System. Their orders had been to settle among the local populace, educating their children and grandchildren against the time that this world was ready to realize it was not unique in the universe.
As a child, I had been fascinated by the stories. Weeks of hypersleep during the trip here; hiding the ship after arriving... I told the stories now, to my nieces and nephews. I had even made up stories about the hero/heroine who would eventually reveal the truth to this world. They’d never been as scared as I was, though. Were the 7 billion other people on this planet ready?
The chamber was a wreck. The General paused in the entrance, staring grimly at the shattered monitors and piles of damaged equipment.
“You stopped it,” he told me, shoving me forward. “How?” Arms folded across his chest, he blocked the door. He was flanked by two MP’s, though I couldn’t remember when we’d picked them up.
“You’re crazy,” I said, trying to look scared. It wasn’t hard given that I was actually terrified. “Can we go before this place caves in?” I begged.
Just then, the MP on my right leaned forward. One eye on me, and his hand on his gun, he spoke softly to the General. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. The General’s face went from red to near purple. I couldn’t quite hear what he said as he left, but he was probably swearing. The MP’s stood in the doorway now, effectively blocking any escape.
“No dice, huh?” I asked. Seriously, where had all the MP’s come from? A spark of an idea popped into my head, and I began carefully scanning the room. I’d only been here for a few moments before someone had tripped the interstellar gate, an equipment delivery system, creating the windstorm that we’d been lucky to survive. What I hoped to find now was the Master Switch, so to speak. I wanted to believe that the sudden energy depletion, after two centuries of sitting idle, had destroyed some wiring or drained the power source…but, that was Solan thinking. I supposed I couldn’t help it, having been raised in a world of wires and exhaustible energy sources.
“What are you doing?” snapped the MP who had spoken with the General.
“Exploring,” I retorted. “Nothing better to do.” I wasn’t sure he’d buy it, so I toed a heap of debris, shaking my head. By now, the crowd immediately outside the doorway had dispersed, most of the people hastily heading for the nearest ambulance.
I forgot about that, though, when I noticed that a debris pile was moving. Not much, but definitely moving. A faint whirring sound caught my attention next, and I began backing away from the wall where I suspected the gate was camouflaged. I had no idea what the MP’s were doing, but I found myself wondering…suppose the last time it came on, it had been turned on all the way, like a fire hydrant? Suppose this time it was a controlled activation, more like a faucet? And who had turned it on? The whirring sound grew louder. I dropped to the floor behind the nearest desk, but couldn’t help peeking around it. The MP’s weren’t as curious. When I looked over my shoulder to see what they were doing, they were gone. A heavy metal compression door, like they use on submarines, was creaking shut, sealing me in.
“Good riddance,” I muttered, turning away. What I saw now made my jaw drop! A portion of the opposite wall had dropped its cave-wall camouflage. It was like looking through a fun-house mirror into another world, a world of the future. I jumped when a boot came slowly through the gate. It was followed by one leg, then another. On top of the two legs was a torso with two arms and one head, all encased in some sort of metal alloy. Too stunned to think properly, I stood up… The metal-person turned towards me.
The helmet opened like elevator doors, the sides folding back into what had looked like exceptionally large ear slots. I found myself staring unabashedly at a rather attractive young man.
“Hello,” he said.
I swallowed, wishing I could rinse some of the dust out of my mouth before I tried talking to him. “Hello,” I managed at last.
Smiling, he looked around the room. His smile quickly changed into a distressed expression.
“What happened here?” He asked, his English only slightly accented.
I shrugged and folded my arms. I probably looked as bad as the room. “Someone accidentally opened the gate,” I nodded at the wall he’d come through, “without activating the force field first.” His eyebrows rose, and I almost giggled. It was a relief to see how similar he was to the Solan’s I’d grown up with.
“Not, I trust, a descendant?” He was smiling again, but it took a moment for me to realize he meant me, well, us, the descendants of the original group.
“No,” I shook my head. My hair, usually kept firmly pulled back out of my face, was tickling it now. “Most of us can’t even control the machines anymore.” I bit my lip to keep from babbling on.
“You’ve got to get out of here,” I told him after a moment. “If they find you in here, I don’t know what’ll happen but it won’t be good.”
His eyebrows went up again, but he didn’t say no. I answered a couple of questions, about the status of the mission, who had discovered the bridge, etc., and then he nodded sharply.
“Time to shut it down, I’d say.” Moving swiftly, he turned back to the wall behind him. “Put your hand here,” he pointed to a spot on the wall, then removed his glove and placed his hand on a second, higher spot.
What I hadn’t been able to hear, I now felt as my hand came in contact with the wall. The machine was there, pulsing silently, waiting for orders like the perfect butler. My unique DNA permitted me to connect with it using a mental interface instead of a keyboard and monitor. Data poured into my mind – star charts, unique elements, the most famous works of the poet Arthus…
“Somnatei asque susetauret,” he ordered.
I blinked, slumped against the wall. Through a haze, I heard a creaking sound. I thought it was the compression door.
“Go,” I mumbled.
“I can’t leave you!” He knelt beside me. “Forgive me, I didn’t realize it would…”
“Get out!” I hissed, my vision clearing. “I’ll be alright, but they can’t find you here!” I don’t know how I expected him to leave a sealed room, but I had no doubt that he could manage it.
-----------------------------------
“I still don’t believe your story,” growled the General as he handed me my bag.
Geothermal forces creating a windshift storm through miniscule cracks in the cavern wall? I didn’t believe it either, but that was irrelevant. An impending audit at the military mental facility where I’d been imprisoned for almost a year was enough to make the General let me go anyway.
“Believe it or not,” I slung the bag over my shoulder, “you had no right to hold me.” Turning on my heel, I walked past the guards into the fresh, free air.
A limousine pulled up to the curb, glistening in the afternoon sunlight. The chauffer sprang from the driver’s seat and our eyes met. He was the man from the cave!
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