“Asleep?” he repeated. The word didn’t make sense. He was on the shuttle, suffocating, and then the Scimitar rescued him. He felt himself drifting off, going back, but then Jane looked up and smiled. “There’s someone here to see you,” she said, waking him up again.
“The crew?” he asked, suddenly more alert. Every breath seemed to come a bit easier.
“No,” she said. “It’s not the crew.”
Panic hit him. “Are they...”
“No, Jake,” she assured him. “They’re not dead. You saved them. You saved us all.”
“Then who?”
Jane moved out of his field of vision. He tried to move his head, but then another face replaced hers. It was a face he didn’t recognize at first, an older woman with soft wrinkles around her gray eyes and nearly white hair pulled up in a loose bun. She reminded him of pictures of his grandmother. As she looked down on him, tears began to well up in her kind-looking eyes.
“Oh, my little Jacob,” she said. “I have missed you so much.”
Recognition hit like an electric shock. “Mom?”
“Yes, it’s me, Son.”
His head began to spin. “How are you here? Am I dead?”
She smiled. “You’re not dead, and neither am I.”
He looked around and saw other people in the room. When his eyes could focus, he saw crew standing in a circle around him.
“Welcome back, Sir,” AJ said.
The room began to spin again, and this time he didn’t fight it. His last thought was a clear image of his mother on the last day he saw her alive. She kissed him on the forehead and said, “I’ll see you soon.”
Several days later, Jake was able to sit up by himself, although he was still too weak to walk or even stand on his own. He had slowly grown used to the idea that he was no longer in a hypoxic dream, that he really was alive, that he and his crew really had made it, against all odds, to the lost colony he had been searching for.
However, from what he had discovered in his first few days there, it was nothing like he had imagined. For example, he was lying on a bed made of dry straw, covered by what seemed to be tattered, old clothing. The straw matched the walls and ceiling of the primitive hut in which he found himself. This was no Capitol City apartment.
Since he hadn’t yet left his hut, he asked AJ about their new home when she stopped by to check up on him. She described it as a torus, a massive curved “tube” far larger than the domed cities of Civica. She said that it contained every type of terrain imaginable, including mountains, lakes, and rivers, but no buildings whatsoever. It was also filled with animals of all kinds but no people other than his mother’s crew and the seven of them. Her description reminded Jake of the abandoned forest dome where they had found Jane, only apparently much, much larger.
His mother also stopped by several times, occasionally just sitting in a makeshift chair beside his bed and staring at him without speaking. It was probably difficult for her as well, not seeing her only child for so many years. For him, finding her alive and well, after believing she was dead for half of his life, still felt like a dream.
When he asked her about his father, she turned away. When she could bring herself to talk, she told him that fifteen years earlier, after they left Civica as members of the westbound component of the Compass Expedition, their ship had also lost power at their Rubicon point. Then, just as their life support failed, an isopod came for them as well. It picked them up and carried them for several days, then placed them gently on a bare patch of sea floor. Then they all passed out and woke up inside the torus.
“There were twenty crew members aboard my ship,” she said, “but only fifteen of us woke up inside this place.” She looked directly at him. “Your father was one of the missing five, and we never saw any of them again.”
Jake had only a few memories of his father, and most of those involved him working long hours in the city’s hydroponics section. He hadn’t thought much about him over the years, but seeing his mother alive made his absence that much more real. To change the subject, he told her his own story, of how he had watched an isopod pick up the Rogue Wave and carry it away and how it returned for him once his shuttle’s power was depleted.
“Like you, they left us alone while we had power,” she said, “but then rescued us when we needed them to.”
“Sounds a bit like angels to me,” Raines said from the doorway.
“Good morning, Norman,” his mother said with a warm smile.
Raines smiled back and then looked at Jake. “Feeling better?”
Jake nodded. “But, I’ll feel even better when I find out where my ship is.”
Raines nodded. “As would I, Captain, but I think it likely we’ll never see her again.”
That made him sit up in bed. “Why would you say that? She’s docked here somewhere, isn’t she? The shuttle too, right? How else did we get here?”
His mother then told him how she woke up one morning to find his crewmembers lying unconscious in the middle of their village. Then, several days later, Jake appeared in the exact same place. No footprints were found, and there was no sign of how they got there.
“This place has to have a dock somewhere,” he argued. “If we find it, we’ll probably find the Wave there.” Raines and his mother both exchanged glances. “What?” he asked.
“You haven’t been outside yet, dear.”
“How would seeing this place make a difference? This structure has to have a dock. We came in here through one, which means we can leave through it as well.”
His mother patted him on the arm and looked at Raines. “Most of us felt the same way when we first arrived here. There were so many who had spent their lives aboard ships, and it took a while for some of them to accept the fact that this was our new home. That this was where we belonged.” She looked at Jake. “We are no longer ‘children of the sea,’ as the poem goes.”
Jake shook his head. “Maybe oxygen deprivation has killed too many of my brain cells, but neither of you are making any sense.”
Raines walked over to him and reached out a hand. “It’s time you see for yourself, Jake.”
It took the efforts of both Raines and his mother to help him stand and then walk awkwardly towards the door. When the thick cloth covering was drawn back, he had to shut his eyes because of the brightness. As he was led out, he felt heat on his forehead and shoulders. Then as his eyes slowly adjusted, he saw a view that could only exist in a rec room simulation.
The sky above him was blue and curved in a tubular shape just as he had been told, but the scale was beyond anything he had imagined. There were actually wispy clouds floating along the ceiling, the sun was far too bright to look at directly, and it radiated heat so powerfully that he could feel it on the ground. To the left and right, he saw mountains rising up to meet the sides of the tube, and ahead of him was a vista that was hard to grasp. As his mother and the others had described, there were fields of crops and lakes of clear water and a river nearby with a small log bridge crossing it. And trees. Trees everywhere. Big trees, huge trees, and plants of all kinds. It was like life run amuck.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” his mother whispered.
“Overwhelming is a better word for it,” he replied.
“Does it look familiar?” Raines asked.
“Too soon,” his mother warned.
Jake looked at her. “Too soon for what?” Then he looked at Raines. “I’ve never been here. How could it look familiar?” Then it hit him. “You’re not trying to say...”
Raines smiled and then closed his eyes and faced the sun. “I’m not saying anything. I’m a scientist, and it’s not a very scientific idea.” He looked back at Jake. “But it is an interesting thought, isn’t it?”
Jake looked at the view before him, the sheer size of the place made the thought more real. A dozen domes as big as Capitol City could fit inside the tube, and it extended beyond his vision in both directions. It was possible that every man, wo
man, and child in the entire colony could fit inside this single structure and not feel crowded.
“Do you remember the group of small flashing creatures that we passed through?” Raines asked.
Jake nodded. “We all thought they looked like stars.”
“Some of the legends of our ancestor’s journey from Earth Colony claim that we traveled through a ‘sea of stars’ on their way to Civica.”
“Those same stories also said that Earth Colony’s sun moved in a circle and that there was true night and day,” his mother said. She pointed to the sun, and Jake could just make out the track it ran along. “Our new world is a circle, a torus.” She made the shape with her hands. “As the sun moves along its track, it disappears around the far curve in the late afternoon, only to reappear from the other side in the morning.”
Jake felt his knees go limp, and it wasn’t just because of his body’s weakness. He had Raines help him sit down on the moss-covered ground. He reached down, pulled up some of the moss, and massaged it in his hands. “So you think that this is Earth Colony?”
“There is no way to know for sure,” Raines said. “It was actually one of the reasons we launched the Compass Expedition, to search the ocean for humanity’s birthplace.” He sat down beside Jake. “However, I also felt quite certain that it was destroyed during the Fall of Man; why else would our ancestors have left it?”
“This place doesn’t look destroyed,” Jake replied, smelling the moss. “In fact, it looks like a giant garden.”
“Exactly,” his mother said as she sat down beside him. “Exactly what we thought when we first saw this place, which is why we have named it, Eden Colony.”
“Eden? As in the Garden of Eden from that old story?”
She nodded her head and then gently took Jake’s small piece of moss and placed it back on the ground. “If this truly is the birthplace of humanity, then it is our duty to take care of it.”
Jake nodded. “So that’s why you don’t care about docks or the whereabouts of my ship,” he said. “You have no intentions of ever leaving here, do you?”
She looked sideways at him. “To go where? Back to Civica? From what your crew told me, Civica seems to have fallen apart. What would there be to go back to?”
“You mean, besides people?”
She looked away. “We have people here, Jake. There are even children. With the addition of you seven, we will one day have many more.” She looked back at him. “This is the beginning, don’t you see? A new start for civilization. A new start for humanity. A new start for us all.”
Jake looked down at his now dirty hands. “I guess it’s just a little hard to take in all at once. I’ve spent my whole life being fairly miserable, and it’s hard to deal with the fact that things are so much better here.” He looked at Raines. “How are you dealing with all of this? I thought you hated open spaces.”
“I hated large cities,” he said, “but this is quite different. It’s like a color-blind man seeing green for the first time. Part of you wants to reject the change, just because it makes you uncomfortable.” He patted Jake on the back. “Give yourself a few days. When you are strong enough, I’ll take you on a hike down the river. You’ll see things you won’t believe. I’ve only been here a few days longer than you, and I’ve already seen enough to last me a lifetime.” He smiled. “And yet, I think if I hiked every day for a year, I would still find things to amaze me.”
He let Raines help him stand back up. “I look forward to that hike,” he said then took one more look around before hobbling back into the hut.
A week later, when he was mostly recovered, Jake sat alone on a grass-covered bluff overlooking the river valley north of the village, enjoying the late morning sunlight. His mother’s people had made up compass directions for their new world long before, calling the convex wall, or the center of the tube circle, “south” with the opposite wall, “north.” That made the sun’s motion east-to-west, which matched the layout of most of the larger cities in Civica.
“Have you ever felt a sun this hot?” AJ asked as she stepped up behind him.
“Seems like kind of a waste,” he replied, but he was lying; the light and heat felt good on his cold skin. Ever since he woke up there, he had felt chilled, as though he would never feel warm again. Another side effect of going so many days without clean air. “Do you think the sun in Capitol City was like this once?”
“Maybe a couple of hundred years ago,” she said as she sat down on the grass across from him. She looked at the nearby tree line and snapped her fingers. “Waiter!” she yelled. “A couple of shots of your finest for my friend and me.” When no one responded, she sighed and leaned back on her newly tanned arms. “Lousy service here.”
Friend, he thought. Since when did we drop the formalities? Aloud, he said, “So where is everyone?”
She put her feet up on a rock, and he noticed that she was barefoot. Jessie’s hatred of shoes had claimed another victim. “Well, let’s see. Dr. Wood said he was going to explore the eastern valley today, supposedly looking for medicinal plants. Jane and Jessie told me they were going to follow him, ‘discreetly’ was the word, to see what he was really up to. Norman and Vee are still trying to figure out where this place came from, who built it, and what happened to them.”
“They should have asked my mother to help them,” he said.
“Probably, but I think they enjoy doing the work themselves.”
“It is a little weird, isn’t it?” he said. “The things we feared our entire lives, the very things that kept us from leaving Civica, the Novum, ended up helping us. They carried us here but kept our ships; why?”
She shook her head. “I have no idea.”
“And this place,” he continued, “a single structure this big, this new, this perfect, just abandoned?”
“This place wasn’t abandoned,” she said.
“I know, I know,” he said. “No sign that it was ever occupied when my parents got here.” He looked at a small plant growing in the grass. “I mean, when my mother and the other survivors first came here.”
“I’m sorry, Jake,” she said. “Your mother was lucky that...” She looked down at the same plant. “The Council was responsible for sabotaging both of our ships. Someone there will pay for what happened to your father and the others.”
“No, they won’t,” he said. “Civica and its problems are more than five thousand kilometers away from here. We can never go back there, and they don’t even know this place exists.” He looked at her. “Everyone in the Council is probably dead by now anyway.”
“We’ve been gone almost two months,” she said. “Everyone we knew is probably dead by now, too.”
“All the more reason to start living in the present, I guess,” he replied. “Speaking of which, what do you plan to do for work here?”
She looked up at the sky. “This place is never too hot and never too cold, it’s filled with edible plants of every type, and the river water is drinkable. Who says I need to do anything?”
“You plan to spend the rest of your days just sitting on the grass, watching the sun go round and round?”
She raised one eyebrow. “Seems to be working for you.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
She frowned. “To be honest, I’ve been a Shipper most of my life. If there are no ships, or other cities close enough to carry supplies to, then I don’t know what I’ll do.”
He looked back at the ring of huts behind them. “This place is growing, you know? Someday it will be a thriving colony, like Civica. Maybe better. I hope better.”
“The survivors have already had more than a dozen children among them, including your stepsister,” she said then looked worried. “I’m sorry, Jake, is that a sore topic?”
It was, but he didn’t want it to be. “No, it’s okay,” he said, looking at her. “I’m glad my mom found someone else. People shouldn’t be alone.”
“I suppose that’s good advice,” she sai
d, staring back at him.
He looked at the tree line and imagined a row of buildings standing there. “You know, you could always build something. This village needs a proper Guild bar, and since you’re the only Guild member within five thousand kilometers, I think the burden falls to you.”
“Only if you agree to come and work for me,” she said with a hint of a smile on her face.
“Me? Work for you?”
“I need waiters who won’t steal from the till, and you’ve proven yourself fairly trustworthy.”
“Fairly?”
She stood suddenly. “Jake, I never got the chance—”
“Did I tell you about the song?” he asked, quickly changing the subject. “After the ‘Wave died, I heard the same song we all heard before Rubicon. That’s why I left in the shuttle; I went looking for its source. I asked my mother about it, but she had no clue where it came from. Raines thinks I just hallucinated—”
“You told me, Jake, and I’m really sorry you had to go through all of that. You almost died trying to save us. And...speaking of that, I want to—”
“Skip it,” he said. “It was my idea to come out here, so it was my job to make sure you all made it here in one piece.” An image of Ash spinning away from him filled his thoughts. “I only wish everyone would have made it.”
She stood in front of him. “You did your best, Jake, and the rest of us owe you our lives.” He started to make a joke, but she cut him off. “I’m serious, Jake. You not only took us out of a bad situation back in Civica, you discovered a completely new colony. This place is like something out of a childhood story.” She looked back at the landscape. “If this really is Earth, then it’s a place to start over again.”
“Leave the past behind?” he asked. “Is that really possible?
She pulled him to his feet with surprising ease. He expected her to give him one of her trademark, hand-on-the-chest, “thank you” speeches, but instead, she stood on her toes and kissed him gently on the cheek. “Anything is possible,” she said and then turned and walked away. Just before she disappeared over a ridge, she yelled back, “People shouldn’t be alone, Jake Stone.”
Novum Chronicles: A Dystopian Undersea Saga Page 24