The Travelers 3

by Lee Hunnicutt

  The man put his hands palms out at chest level and said, “Everything is all right. You’re safe now.”

  She looked around to assess where she was and what it looked like. They were in a large empty sterile white room. One wall was all glass facing a well laid out beautiful garden. Birds flittered between the trees. It had a calming effect.

  He said, “CAIN, a table, two chairs, two glasses of ice water with a pitcher of ice water and a bottle of 1998 Beaujolais Villages and two wine glasses.”

  A table, two chairs, wine and water slowly materialized next to them. He gently took her hand away from her face and sat her down in one of the chairs. He said in a soft voice, “Have some water. You’ll feel better.”

  He handed her the glass of water. “Drink”.

  She drained it. He poured her another and she emptied it.

  “You’re dehydrated. Vomiting will do that.”

  “CAIN, give us two showers, soap, shampoo, towels and robes. Also give us a full bathroom and give the bathroom opaque walls.”

  He took her hand and said, “Let’s shower. We’ll both feel better”

  A rack appeared with towels and robes. Two pedestals with soap and shampoo on them. Two shower heads descended from the ceiling.

  Make the water 35 degrees Celsius. The man stepped under the shower head. Water began to shower down.

  She stood up and looked down at herself. She saw something on her left breast and decided it was part of a breakfast muffin. She could smell the sourness of her vomit on her body. She looked at him and stepped into the shower.

  Just being clean and in a robe made her feel so much better.

  They were at the table sharing a bottle of very good Beaujolais. He said, “Are you hungry?”

  “Strangely, I’m starved.”

  “Is it OK if I order?” She nodded yes.

  After a delicious meal and more wine, she was feeling relaxed and mellow. She said, “I have so many questions and you look vaguely familiar.”

  “I should. You were sitting by my death bed this afternoon.”

  At first she didn’t know what to say. She looked at him as if she didn’t understand him and then she said, “That can’t be possible. Mr. Bolton is 97 years old and you can’t be much older than 30.”

  He swept his hand around the room. “Is any of this possible? Is any of what just happened to us possible?”

  Again she was at a loss for words.

  “Just take what I said at face value and as the days go by you will come to believe and I will explain all of it to you. It’s too much to take in right now.”

  “I think it’s time for another bottle of wine”, she said. Two bottles later she was beginning to slur her words.

  “CAIN, give us two beds near the bathroom with a night light. Put light blankets and some pajamas on the beds.”

  He helped her up and navigated her to the bed. “You can change into your PJs in the bathroom.”

  She shed her robe, plopped down on the side of the bed and started to put on the pajamas backwards. “Why be modest now? You’ve seen all my goodies.”

  “You’re putting your pajama pants on backwards.”

  She stripped off the pants and handed them to him. She stuck her legs out straight in front of her. He put the pants on up past her knees where she reached down and pulled them on the rest of the way. He then helped her with the top.

  She fell over sideways onto the bed. He picked up her legs and put them on the bed and placed a blanket over her and pillow under her head.

  He stroked her head once and thought, “She’s had a rough day.”

  He lay down on his bed and pulled the cover over him. He looked over at her. “CAIN lights.” Except for the bathroom nightlight it was totally dark.

  She felt someone stroking her arm. She came out of a deep sleep. When she opened her eyes, she didn’t know where she was and she certainly didn’t know who this strange man rubbing her arm was.

  She looked up at his face and thought, “I may not know him but he sure is a hunk.”

  She smiled and in a sleepy voice said, “Hi, do I know you?”

  Looking down at her, he smiled and said, “Yeah, we met yesterday.”

  It took a few seconds for it to sink in and when it did, she jerked away from him, sat up and clutched her blanket to her chest.

  He said with a smile, “Oh, you remember. Come on. Get up. I’ve fixed breakfast.”

  With his other hand he handed her a cup of coffee. “I don’t know what you take in your coffee so I gave you two sugars.”

  She took the cup and with her other hand she pull the blanket away from her body and looked down. To her relief she saw she was wearing pajamas.

  She swung her feet onto the floor to find a pair of bunny slippers. She picked up her robe off the bed and put it on.

  “Bunny slippers? Is this for real?” She slipped her feet into the slippers and followed him to a full kitchen with a sideboard and breakfast table.

  “I had CAIN give me a kitchen and supplies and put up a sound barrier so as to not wake you up.”

  She nodded and walked to the sideboard, picked up a plate. She loaded her plate with bacon, kippers, grilled tomato halves, toast, butter and fried eggs, a pitcher of orange juice, hot coffee, sugar and cream, a proper English breakfast.

  She picked up her coffee and went to the table. He followed. She looked down at her plate and tears came to her eyes. She looked across the table at him, smiled and said, “A proper English breakfast. How thoughtful. Thank you.”

  He reached across the table for her hand and said, “You deserve it. It’s the least I could do.”

  She was ravenous and went back for seconds. After eating they took their coffees and went over to two easy chairs with a coffee table.

  “Feeling better?”

  “Yes, but I’m still confused and have so many questions.”

  “I promise I’ll answer all of them. We have a long journey ahead of us and by the time we get to our destination, you’ll know everything.”

  She looked him over. He was about six foot three without an ounce of fat on him. He was all lean muscle. He was dressed in Levis and a light blue short sleeved denim shirt and of course a belt with a large ornate buckle. He was every inch the cowboy and he had the boots to prove it.

  “What would you like to wear, anything special? I find what I have on to be practical.”

  “What you have on is fine with me.”

  “CAIN give Victoria the same outfit that I have with a long sleeve western cut white shirt and the appropriate underwear. Put them on her bed.”

  “When you finish your coffee, get dressed and we’ll go. CAIN has arranged transportation for us.”

  She sipped her coffee and said, “Is Cain a man’s name like Cain and Abel?”

  “No, it stands for Computer Assisted Intelligent Network.”

  “Who made or owns CAIN?”

  “Who knows?”

  “How do you know what the acronym means.”

  “I asked him, it, years ago and it told me.”

  “You’ve been here many times before.”

  “Yes, but please, save the questions until later.”

  “OK.”

  She got up, picked up her clothes and went into the bathroom.

  When she came out, she said, “You have turned me into a West Texas barbarian.”

  “Well miss snobby, You’re the prettiest barbarian I’ve ever seen.”

  She blushed. She liked the complement which surprised her. Usually more reserved and aloof to what she considered trite, insincere compliments.

  He walked to her, took her hand and spun her like they were in a Texas honkytonk dancing to country swing.

  She smiled and said “What was that for?”

  “Someday I’ll take you to a Texas beer joint and we will dance to country music.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “CAIN, is the shuttle here yet?”

  “Yes, Pete
r, you can leave now.”

  “Shuttle? You mean like a shuttle bus?”

  “Kind of but this shuttle is to take us to our home ship in outer space.”

  “Outer space? You’re joking?”

  “Follow me and see for yourself.”

  They walked toward the wall opposite the garden. As they approached the wall a door slid open. What she saw was a beautifully landscaped panorama, trees bushes and flower beds. They followed the pathway. Everywhere she looked there were gorgeous multicolored birds flying between the trees. Their songs were like none she had ever heard, beautiful.

  “This is what paradise must look like.” She thought.

  The path began to rise up a high hill. When they crested the hill she looked down and saw the biggest ship she had ever seen. It must have been a mile long, five hundred yards wide and three hundred yards tall. It had sleek clean lines.

  “I thought you said this was a shuttle.”

  “This isn’t Star Trek. The people who designed and made these and other ships did everything on a large scale. Our home ship, Amanda, makes this ship look like a mosquito. You’ll see.”

  They walked down the hill. The path took them to a loading ramp. Once inside, the ramp closed and they walked down a long corridor. They stopped at what looked like elevator doors.

  “Let’s take the lift, shall we? I said that just to make you feel at home.”

  She smiled. “You are a true gentleman.”

  When the elevator door opened, they were in a large featureless room.

  “Hello Peter, welcome back.” said a female voice.

  “Hi, Isabel, I’m glad to be back.”

  “Who is this with you, your new main squeeze.”

  “No, she’s not my ‘new main squeeze’. She is a friend.

  Enough with the bullshit Izzy. Take us home.”

  “You know I hate it when you call me Izzy, Pete. Be nice or I will take you the long way.”

  OK, Iz, I mean Isabel. Take us home and show us a screen of the planet as we leave.”

  Victoria felt no movement. A large screen opened on the facing wall. She saw the valley they had been in was now below the ship. As the ship gained altitude, she saw the garden area they had walked through was surrounded by a moon like surface. The garden area was large but small compared to the surface of the planet they were leaving. When they had broken gravity she could only see a green dot in the middle of a waste land.

  The planet faded into nothingness all she could see was black.

  There was a small lurch and the screen went blank.

  “What’s happening now.”

  “We are jumping to Amanda. We’ll be there in about three days.”

  “How long did it take us to go from Earth to the elevated road.”

  “About a year”

  “A year?” she yelled.

  “We didn’t feel it because we were in stasis, a sort of suspended animation. Besides, it’s all relative. If you were to go back right now to the closet, it would take you a year in transit time but just a few moments Earth time. You would arrive within thirty minutes after you left and you would have aged only a few minutes.”

  “That’s……………not possible.”

  “Get used to it because it is. It’s confusing to say the least but it is possible.”

  “How come we aren’t in stasis now?”

  “When we jumped from Earth, we were in a worm hole. Now we are in FTL, Faster Than Light travel. Worm holes travel further and faster than FTL. Worm holes can take you from one side of the universe to the other in a relatively short time. FTL on most vessels can only carry you a few light years at a pop, at a much slower rate of speed than a worm hole and then they have to drop out of FTL to regenerate their drive power. Depending on how advanced the drive is, this can take as short as a few days to a month.”

  “We have the most advanced, sophisticated drives in this part of the galaxy. We can go farther, several thousand light years, and faster than anybody else and when we drop out of FTL, it only takes us a matter of hours to regenerate our drive power.

  Actually, FTL is a misnomer. If we accelerate to FTL all at once, it would tear us and the ship apart. The acceleration G force would be too much for us or the ship to bear. Actually, we warp space and jump from one place to another. It takes a tremendous amount of energy. We’ll feel a bump and that’s it. Even so, we do have to travel from the exit point to the entry point and that is what takes us three days.”

  “I understand what you’re saying but it is a lot to take in. How about a tour?

  If this is a shuttle, how come it is so big?”

  “I told you our home ship makes this look like a mosquito. That’s because Amanda is a population ship designed to evacuate the entire population of a planet. The shuttles are designed to carry over ten million passengers to and from Amanda. About 10,000 Earth years ago there was a terrible, vicious interplanetary war. Both sides targeted populated planets destroying them and killing billions of people at a time.

  Both warring factions built these population ships. They were mobile, very fast, heavily armed and they could hide.

  Both sides thought they would win and when they did, they could repopulate their habitable planets and those that weren’t habitable they would terraform. They would have preserved their civilization and had a large population base to rebuild.”

  They had been walking toward the ship’s stern as they talked. He stopped at a door and touched a small blue square on the wall. A door silently slid open.

  They entered a large very well appointed living room/dining room. One side of the room was all glass and ran the length of the room. It looked out onto a manicured lawn and garden with a small stream running through it.

  There was a full kitchen with a breakfast Island. A few yards away was a small dining table and two chairs.

  “For such a large room the table is so small.” she said.

  “There’s only two of us. If there were thirty of us there’d be a table and chairs to accommodate all thirty. We really don’t need a kitchen. The ship can make whatever we want but I like cooking and I like looking into a refrigerator and trying to find something to snack on.”

  They walked to the back of the room to an opened door. When they passed through the door, lights came on. The glass wall continued into the room. It was a very large bedroom. He lead her passed the large bed into the bathroom. There was a tub, a large shower. a step down hot tub and a long dual sink counter.

  “This is your bedroom and bathroom. I’ve taken the liberty to have the room next to you. You’ve been through a lot and I thought it would be a comfort knowing there is another human being close by.”

  She looked at him, touched his arm and said “It would be a comfort. Thank you.”

  ” Well, now that you have seen your new home, let’s see the rest of the ship.”

  After the tour, they ended up in the dining room for some fish and chips a pint of English bitter. “Tell me how you got here to, for lack of a better word, this alternate reality?” she said.

  Chapter 3

  West Texas 1946

  Pete came home to the ranch in March of 1946. He had participated in the New York ticker tape parade and in February resigned his commission. The war was over and all he wanted was peace and quiet.

  He took his cow pony, a pack horse and his dog Max and rode out into his family’s 460 section ranch. Ten miles out he set up camp on a spring fed creek, pulled out a bottle of good Tequila and proceeded to get roaring drunk. He stayed that way for over a week.

  He had entered the war as a first lieutenant, volunteered for airborne and made every combat jump the 82nd made. At the end of the war he was a lt. colonel, a battalion commander. He was an excellent officer but he never considered himself that. He would tell people if they asked, he had made rank through attrition. Everybody else was dead and he was lucky enough to have survived.

  Right now he didn’t consider himself lucky. He was havin
g survivor’s remorse. Most of his friends were dead, both officer and enlisted. Men he had grown to love more than family. Band of brothers was more than a cliché to him and men like him.

  He came out here to the emptiness of West Texas to be alone. During the war he had no time to mourn. This was his mourning time.

  Ten days later he woke up surrounded by empty booze bottles. He fixed breakfast for himself and Max. After breakfast, he took off his clothes. He and Max jumped into the cold waters of the creek.

  He didn’t remember much of the last ten days but he did remember eating jerky with Max. He had brought thirty pounds of jerky, five pounds of bacon, ten pounds of beans and plenty of Tabasco sauce.

  The sun was out. It felt good on his skin. Still naked, he started a fire and brewed some coffee. He and Max sat on a rock with him drinking coffee and Max being Max. They looked out over the flat expanse of West Texas, finally at peace.

  He turned around to get another cup of coffee. It was like they were caught in a dust devil. The fire started to blow into the air and the coffee pot began to rattle.

  The next thing he knew he, they, were standing in a long, warm, humid room with the only light coming from a narrow opening in the far wall. They walked toward the light. He tried to squeeze through the opening and felt the opening expand trapping him. He felt a sharp pain in both buttocks and then the wall released him.

  He stood in the room rubbing his ass looking through the opening at his dog. He wanted Max with him but he didn’t want him hurt like he had been. He couldn’t leave Max on the other side so he tried to coax him through the crack in the wall.

  “Come on boy. Come on.”

  The dog hesitated and then began to push through the opening and as with Pete, the opening squeezed in on Max’s hindquarters. Max yelped in pain and then squirted through into the room.

  Pete knelt down a began to comfort Max. “I’m sorry about that, boy but I couldn’t leave you on the other side.” He rubbed, scratched him and hugged him.

  He stood up and surveyed his surroundings. He was in a large sterile white room. One side of the room was all glass and on the other side of the glass was a green lawn and a garden.