The White Book

by George Shadow

  “No problem,” Ikshita agreed. “I’m beginning to like you.”

  Chapter 30: Japan

  RACHEL blinked twice and opened her eyes. At first, she couldn’t place her environment, and then she remembered the helicopter, as well as what happened inside it.

  Her eyes focused on her present space and she marveled at her surroundings, which looked like a large mall with massive supporting pillars jutting up to form a gigantic roof of many arches above her tiny figure. Many people thronged the mall, laughing and talking as they carried on with their lively interactions while ignoring the little girl lying on the floor in the middle of the vast hall.

  Rachel got up and noticed the white book lying on the floor near her right foot. She picked it up and looked around again.

  “Looking for me?”

  “Aiden! What happened to you?”

  “I should be asking you the same question. Took me time to find you. Where are we?”

  “I really don’t know,” Rachel confessed. “Place looks like a mall or something.”

  “We can only find out if we ask somebody,” Aiden said. “C’mon.”

  “Is that a coat?”

  “What?”

  “What are you wearing?” Rachel asked him.

  Aiden couldn’t appreciate what he had on. “I need a mirror,” he said, searching the hall for one.

  Rachel brought out a smartphone from her pocket and turned on the front camera. Her friend gaped at his figure.

  Aiden wore a black jacket unlike any he’d ever seen, with buttons lining up the sides. An insignia he couldn’t place graced the right side of his chest. One for a boating club or some similar venture. “Well, what matters if I’m wearing a nice jacket?” he wondered. “That doesn’t help us know where we are, does it?”

  “We’ll remember soon enough,” Rachel said, studying the hall. “Where’s Kim?”

  “Haven’t seen her,” Aiden said. “I wonder what happened to her. What do we do now?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel said. “We might as well continue without her.”

  “Or we find her by writing her name in the book?” Aiden proposed.

  “We’ll do that if we don’t find her here,” Rachel said. “Right now, we have to focus on finding the Bookmaker I brought here before the Booklords arrive here. I know Samuel will help us.”

  “Okay.” Aiden felt ashamed of the fact that he had a little satisfaction in the news that Kimberley had lost her way in the course of their timely travel. Probably due to the way he held her hand during Rachel’s mysterious transportation across time and space. Did he intentionally do that? After all, he could never forget how she tortured him by blaming him for his mother’s death back in Brazil. Of course, Rachel was worried about the sergeant’s whereabouts. It showed on her face and shaking hands. “We’ll find her,” Aiden assured.

  “Did you feel that?”Rachel asked her traveling partner.

  “Feel what?”

  “It moved,” the Jewess said. “The hall just moved under my feet.”

  “Are you saying we’re on a spaceship?” Aiden’s confusion knew no bounds.

  “Nope,” Rachel said. “More like a boat?”

  “Does that explain why a boat symbol is on my jacket?” Aiden asked her.

  “Maybe…” Rachel’s voice faltered. Maybe not.

  “Hey, Greg, keep up the good work!”

  The man’s voice shattered their thoughts and they stared as this fellow walked up to them and shook Aiden’s left shoulder. He looked Asian and wore a jacket with the same insignia on Aiden’s jacket.

  “But now, we need you close to the east end, Greg,” he said. “Clients are confused over there.”

  “Sure thing,” Aiden said as the man walked away.

  “Touch someone.”

  “What?”

  “Touch someone,” Rachel repeated. “That way, you’ll know who you are in this time and place.”

  Aiden helped a little boy pick up a fallen toy and instantly realized himself when he touched the boy’s hand while handing over the retrieved toy. “We’re in a shopping mall on FC9,” he told Rachel.

  “I know,” Rachel said, leaving the girl whose right hand she held moments ago. “FC9 means Floating City 9.”

  “A floating city. The ninth one. Wonder what Kimberley would think when she sees this. A floating city.”

  “Aiden, I’m the mayor’s daughter,” Rachel said. “You brought me here to show me something.”

  “Eh…right. I am employed at the mall as a mall boy, but….” Aiden turned to the receding figure of his senior colleague. He frowned.

  “But what?” Rachel urged.

  “Something’s not right here, Rachel,” Aiden said. “That guy wants me out of the way when…”

  “When what?” Rachel demanded.

  “When…uh…” Aiden tried to remember, frowning in the process.

  “Does that have to do with me lying on the floor?” Rachel proposed.

  “No. You were just watching the mall’s ceiling.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes!” Aiden exclaimed. “They’re going to blow up FC9, Rachel!”

  “Really?” a skeptic Rachel asked him. “And remind me how you got to know about this?”

  “I heard them reciting their plans in the staff lounge when I went looking for Sam.”

  “Who?”

  “Sam…. He’s my best friend here. I went looking for him and hid when these guys came in.”

  “These guys? Sam? Aiden, Sam could be the person we’re looking for.”

  “No time to explain or find out, Rachel,” Aiden said, pulling his fellow traveler along. “I’ll do that later, but first, we have to stop them.”

  “What if we find Samuel and get out of here?”

  “What if the place blows up before we find Samuel?”

  Reluctantly, Rachel followed him past the crowd at the Café Center and down a flight of busy stairs leading to a lower deck. The breathtaking beauty of the floating city became obvious when they stepped out onto a terrace looking out at the ocean and saw the other floating cities dotted across the place.

  “Wow, cool,” Aiden exclaimed. “Never seen anything like this.”

  The buoyant super structures had three to four massive buildings jutting out from a behemoth floating base shaped like a cylindrical iceberg. Transparent tube-like bridges traversed the curvy housing structures of each floating city at various levels and Aiden could see peculiar transport vehicles moving back and forth within these tubes.

  “We’re in Japan,” Rachel began.

  “Yes,” Aiden said. “That guy back there was speaking Japanese.”

  “We’re speaking Japanese now.”

  “Okay?” Aiden looked around him at the busy terrace and saw few Asian faces amidst a sea of tourists. He didn’t blame them. Who wouldn’t want to see the beautiful scenery out there over and over again? “What’s today’s date?”

  “X26.04.02?” Rachel said, looking at her smartphone. “Weird.”

  “That’s crazy,” Aiden said. “A different format. This must be the future.”

  “Of course,” Rachel said. “The world has been using a new calendar dating system for like twenty years now. I now remember this from History class in school…I think.”

  “Thought I told you to stay at the east end, Greg?” a man standing behind them asked in Japanese.

  Aiden turned to see the mall staff who earlier commended his work inside the mall. “Yeah, I…uh,” the boy stumbled in the same language.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Go there already,” the man snapped and stumped off, going down a flight of spiraling stairs devoid of human traffic.

  Aiden followed him, pulling Rachel along.

  “Aiden, what if he has a gun?” Rachel whispered.

  “He won’t see us.”

  The steps descended into a dark corridor. Aiden stopped at the edge of the lowest step in confusion.

  “Why are you followi
ng me, Greg?” his target asked in the darkness, putting on a rechargeable lamp. “Thought I told you to…”

  “I wanted to show Miss Dewy what the other floating cities looked like from the lower terrace here, Hiroki,” Aiden lied, pulling Rachel past the man. “We won’t waste time.”

  “Okay then,” Hiroki said. “Be quick about that.”

  Aiden hoped he was right about a lower terrace. The sound of waves crashing on the floating city’s hull and the dim evening light basking the edge of the dark passage ahead encouraged him.

  The children went round a corner and another terrace rewarded their blind effort. This lonely platform lay closer to the water surface and the view from here was breathtaking.

  Hiroki joined the two kids here. “What a beautiful sight,” he said.

  “Are you trying to blow up FC9?” Rachel asked him.

  “And why would you ask him that?” Aiden blurted out.

  “And why won’t we damage it?” Hiroki stunned the kids with.

  “Why should you?” Aiden demanded.

  “Because these floating cities pollute the planet, boy,” another man said as he emerged from a corridor leading to the terrace. “Making one inoperable will show the world how dangerous these badly designed super structures are for all of us.”

  “You guys won’t succeed,” Aiden said in English. “You’ll all be caught and locked up.”

  “No, we won’t, Greg,” a third younger man said, stepping out from the same corridor. “Our organization has been doing this for some years now and nobody has caught any of our agents yet, and as long as we think the floating cities are bad for the planet, we’ll continue doing this.”

  “That’s Sam,” Aiden told Rachel. “I never knew he was amongst the plotters.”

  “And I never knew you heard our plans, or part of it, Greg,” Sam said. His manga hairdo and young Asian face indicated a zest for daring risk most young men of his age would gladly avoid. The youngest of the three Japanese men sounded like a born leader.

  “I work here, Sam,” Greg pointed out. “Gotta protect the place, since it’s hard to get a job right now, you know.”

  “Then I suggest you find a new job,” Sam said. “We’re not backing out from this, because the world needs to see our resolve to save this planet.”

  Aiden scuffed. “Do you really think you’re saving the planet by doing this? The floating cities are one of the wonders of the modern world, you know, but I can see that you guys are not happy about that.”

  “Last time I checked, we have conquered almost all our problems through science and green technology, Greg,” his new friend said. “This is the century of sustainable development, man. Why can’t we do the same thing for our oceans by using green technology to design more sustainable floating cities? Those that don’t cause more harm to the planet like the ancient architects predicted years ago? Whatever happened to those green designs of the past? How did we get it all wrong?”

  “Yeah, how did we end up with these gas emitters and drainpipes instead?” Hiroki asked, drawing nearer.

  “What are you going to do with us now, Sam?” Rachel asked with a nervous smile, looking around for an escape route.

  “I don’t know, Miss Dewy,” Sam said. “If only your boyfriend here had stayed out of our business in the first place…. And you can only jump into the ocean from here. Your fate is sealed now. Please, hand over your possessions, including your smartphones and that…that storybook.”

  * * *

  Ikshita led the way down a flight of stairs and across a passage leading to her room. “So, what’s your story?” she asked her companion, breaking the awkward silence impeding their newfound friendship ever since they left the others.

  “Well, I…eh…” Kimberley could only blurt out. How could she forget how to form a sentence when it mattered the most?

  “I understand,” Ikshita said. “You still can’t get your head around it all. That happened to…”

  “I am a cop back at my town,” Kimberley said. “I found Rachel on a snowy road and ended up on this journey with her after I lost my boyfriend.”

  “Sad to hear,” Ikshita consoled, unlocking her room’s door. “I know a friend who’s gone through that mess and he says it’s never a good feeling.”

  “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, how come you don’t know your history?”

  “About what?” Ikshita’s voice had changed as she entered her room.

  Kimberley hesitated. “Is it true that Khan is the only Bookmaker amongst you? Ever tried to remember your past or make something spark off some kind of memory from your ‘alternate life?’”

  “Alternate life?” Ikshita appeared puzzled.

  “Previous life?” Kimberley prodded, following her new friend into the room.

  “Never had a previous life,” Ikshita said, squatting to drag out a black bag from underneath her bed. “I’m Indian by birth,” she explained. “Khan’s theories fascinated me, and still do, that’s why I’m here.”

  “Really?” Kimberley wondered whether she had made a mistake about the Indian’s real identity. After all, people could resemble other people. She touched Ikshita without giving this a second thought, and nothing happened.

  Ikshita remained squatting, holding on to her black duffel bag.

  Kimberley leaned forward to stare into the Indian’s eyes and realized that the woman’s pupils had disappeared, leaving a lost and confused expression on a beautiful face.

  Kimberley got up and turned towards the room’s door. “That settles that then,” she concluded.

  “Settles what?” a familiar voice asked her.

  “That you’re not Ikshita. Welcome back, Mariah.”

  “Oh, thanks,” Ikshita, a.k.a. Mariah, a.k.a. Oxana, said. “I feel alternate memory flooding my brain.” She got up and pressed a button on the wall to slide a hidden aperture open. Guns filled this large cupboard.

  “What do you need that for?” Kimberley wondered out loud.

  “Watch and see. Please don’t try to stop me.”

  “I’ll do that if you try to kill people.”

  “Then I have no choice, Kim, old friend,” Mariah said, turning a pistol on Kimberley as she slung a classic AR-15 over her right shoulder. “I have to lock you up here for awhile.”

  Kimberley knocked off the pistol and Mariah spun round to floor her with a vicious right-leg kick.

  “Sorry, dear. It’s just for awhile.”

  * * *

  “We can lock them up until after we damage the city, Sam,” Hiroki proposed.

  “Yes, that’s a good idea, Hiroki,” Sam said. He turned to Rachel and pointed at the book she still held in her right hand. “Hand that over as well, Miss Dewy.”

  “I already gave you my phone,” Rachel pleaded. “Is that not enough?”

  “Why do they call you Sam?” Aiden put in. “You’re Japanese, right?”

  “And what does that have to do with anything?” Hiroki wondered, coming to stand behind Aiden.

  “You don’t know why I’m called Sam, Greg?” Sam asked his friend. “Is this a joke?”

  “Well, remind me again?” Aiden pleaded in a small voice.

  Rachel hid the white book behind her. It felt a bit…cold?

  “Not so fast,” Sam told her. “Give me that storybook of yours.”

  “It’s just a storybook,” Aiden said. “You said it yourself, Sam.”

  “There could be a listening device in that book, Sam,” the other man in the group said.

  “Yes, Yoshito,” Sam agreed, glaring at Rachel. “Hand over the storybook, Miss Dewy, else we’ll take it by force.” Yoshito stopped behind the girl. He grabbed the book.

  “No, don’t!” Rachel exclaimed, but the deed had already been done. The man’s immobile figure stood behind her, his eyes boring a hole into the back of her head. The fellow must have touched her hand while taking the book. This means that he could have had a previous life under Shurabi!
Wow. “Greg, the book is getting cold,” she told Aiden.

  “What?” Aiden cried. “And we have no ankh!”

  “What are you too on about?” Sam snapped. He glanced at Yoshito, who stood behind Miss Dewy. “Yoshito,” he said, frowning at the girl standing before this co-conspirator of his. “What have you done to him?” he asked her.

  Rachel avoided the frown. “Well, eh…he…”

  “What’s happened to Yoshito?” Hiroki asked before deciding to step away from Aiden towards the corridor and take something near the passage entrance.

  Rachel sighed and said nothing.

  “What’s going on?” Yoshito demanded all of a sudden. “Where am I?” Obviously, something had happened to him.

  Rachel grabbed the white book when she noticed the man’s uncertainty as well as the dropping temperature. She pushed Aiden away. Sam lurched towards her. The book’s protective dome reappeared before the infernal windswept in from the sea and into the building’s corridor. It splattered black demons on the mystical dome as it swished past. It also went through Hiroki and he cried out before crashing to the floor, his retrieved gun skidding off from his open right hand. The wind swooshed up the spiral stairs and disappeared onto the deck above.

  “What’s going on?” Yoshito asked again, squatting inside the dome beside the girl. He could see Samuel and another boy in the bluish transparent structure. “Samuel?”

  “Glad you know his name is not Sam,” Rachel said underneath the immobile Samuel. “He just became someone else.”

  “Just like you, Yoshito,” Aiden said, trying to reach out a hand towards Rachel.

  “What?”

  Hellish hands penetrated the bluish glow protecting them, reaching out for the book before freezing off as mysterious ash. The icy strands from the white book held up. Rachel maintained her stance despite the freezing cold.

  Aiden succeeded and a resounding blast cleared the blackness all around them, the evening sky a blessing to behold once again.

  The dome disappeared.

  It all happened in seconds.

  “Where am I?” Samuel wondered, getting up to look around him. “What happened here?”