Backflow Boxed Set

by F P Adriani

  Chen suddenly woke up and raised his dark eyebrows at me as he mumbled, “What you got there?”

  He sat up, and I handed him one of the small fruits, which I had sloppily peeled. “It’s not very appetizing looking or tasting, but I licked its sour juice a little while ago and I’m not dead. Yet.”

  “Thank the universe,” Chen said.

  And, for some reason, I started laughing. Then I couldn’t stop laughing.

  Chen’s head twisted on his neck uncomfortably.

  I knew what he was thinking. “Yeah,” I said, laughter still in my voice, “I’m finally losing it.”

  “It’s the heat,” Chen said. “We probably need even more water. I wonder what happened to your golden friend.”

  “I’ve been wondering that too,” I said on a sigh, staring at the highway. “I thought I’d find it at the waterway.”

  Chen lowered his head and sniffed the red fruit. “I guess it doesn’t matter, but we’ll probably need it to warm us again tonight….”

  “Tonight—tonight! Another fucking night we’ll be stuck here. I get so upset when I think about it!” My fingers fumbled with my belt, whipped open the pocket where the stone was, and grabbed it. I glared down at its defiant fire inside my palm. “Maybe I should try throwing it again—maybe the thing will finally break and someone in the universe will hear it—who knows? Fuck you, goddammit!” I said. Then I raised my arm and flung the stone at the rocks to my right.

  Out of the corner of my left eye, I saw Chen flinch at my wild behavior, but what else was there for me to do now but rage? What if we wound up being stuck here forever? It wasn’t the worst place in the universe, and Chen was a good friend of mine. But, I had other good friends, and I missed one of them the most of all….

  The firestone didn’t come through for me. It didn’t do anything, except fall right down to the red earth as if it had no power at all.

  And now I despaired that nothing and no one would have the power to get me and Chen out of here.

  *

  The day wore on and it seemed to last forever. Chen and I alternately slept and talked about this and that and everything and nothing. I had trouble focusing on our conversation; though I had slept some, I was tired all the time now. I knew I needed more water, but I didn’t feel like walking all the way to the waterway again….

  “I’m so tired,” I said to Chen late that day.

  “It’s getting darker fast,” he replied, his voice low.

  “And then what, Chen? Where is the golden egg? Yesterday it didn’t seem to want to leave me. Did it go off me already?”

  “Maybe it’s not you,” Chen said slowly, as if he were carefully thinking about what to say. “Maybe it’s this dimension, or whatever it is. Maybe things don’t invest much in each other, like they’re just passing through, or looking for their own separate spaces here.”

  I stared at Chen. “I can’t understand living like that, can you? We’re always sharing space on the Demeter, and it feels right.”

  “I know,” he said, and there was a somber rumble to his words, which made me feel sorry that I’d mentioned our lives on the Demeter. His expression seemed about to become a sad one, and I really couldn’t bear that sadness right now.

  I turned away—and finally noticed there was a light spot moving down the darkening highway. The light was quite far away, but it looked like that special shape….

  It was that special shape, and it grew larger fast because it was moving fast; I felt my heart soar at that warm light.

  When my huge golden friend finally stopped nearby, I cried, “I’m so glad to see you!”

  The blue eyes and golden body seemed more agitated than normal, as if the being were trying to do that communicating-dancing with me, but I really had no idea if that was the reason for the egg’s agitation; for all I knew, it had bad gas.

  The only thing I was sure about now was: Chen and I needed the egg-being’s closeness and especially its warmth. It was almost completely dark, and I could feel the shockingly cold wind coming from the plain and trying to climb into the neck of my worksuit.

  I rushed forward toward the egg more, feeling Chen behind me doing the same. We stopped inside the warm area around the egg, and I couldn’t help sighing.

  “I’m so tired,” I said to the egg-being, as if it would reply to me, but, of course, it did not.

  I sighed again as I stretched out on the ground and closed my eyes….

  …When I next opened them, it was still night, and I was caught in a dream: Upal was standing over me, flickering in and out faster than ever…but then the flickering suddenly slowed and I realized I wasn’t in a dream.

  I shot to a seated position. “Omigod—Chen!” I cried. “Upal’s here.”

  I never thought I’d be so happy to see someone so difficult to look at, but I felt ecstatic now. Behind Upal, the egg-being was standing up now, and it seemed to be staring down at the three of us….

  Suddenly there was a shift around me—no, it was in me, in my head; it was Upal. I could feel a gentle voice touch my mind.

  We Keepers are very happy we have found you. We lost you for days….

  “Days!” I thought I said out loud. But I had actually said it in my head, and I saw Chen’s head sharply turn to me: he’d heard what I said. Apparently, Upal had linked all of us together; it seemed that The Keepers didn’t have the physical ability to make sounds of communication, or at least any that humans would understand.

  Where are my friends? Where are the workers? I thought now.

  Your friends are back on your ship. Kostas is on the way from an entry point to here. We will take you back to Rintu. Upal’s strange eyes fell in Chen’s direction, and I wondered about Chen’s arm again—I couldn’t hear or feel any of his pain through the mind-link. But then maybe Upal had been blocking Chen from feeling pain….

  I lifted a hand toward my egg friend. “It helped us,” I said out loud. “It led me to water and kept us warm at night, but what’s it doing in this place?”

  As if on cue to answer my question, Kostas showed up.

  Apparently, it was later in the “night” than I had thought; the sky was lightening now, and Kostas’ tall silhouette appeared on the red plain and began moving our way fast. She held a small black device in her hands, and when she reached me, she said, “Some creatures have difficulty in other environments; when evolution makes mistakes, the creatures are brought here so they can live better lives.”

  “That’s terrible!” I cried. “This whole time I’ve been here, this is like a zoo!”

  “No,” Kostas said fast in quite a loud voice. “It is a choice of theirs. It is a sanctuary here. Some have been persecuted elsewhere. This is freedom to them. They are also free to leave. But almost none have ever chosen that. Now we—we must leave here soon.”

  Only a short time ago, I had been desperate to get out of here, but now I felt a stab of ambivalence—and a pang of sadness, mostly about the cute big-egg-being; it was still waiting there patiently, its weird blue eyes seeming to never waver from the four of us. Could it hear us? Could it understand anything—had it understood? I would never know. I would never see it again. But, as long as it and the other beings here were happy—and they seemed to be happy—that was what really mattered….

  Upal’s voice touched my mind again: Do not feel sad for the Lamren. The Lamren are the caretakers here. They are also one of the creators of this place. This Lamren, Settaly—he did not know you would be arriving here. That was an accident. There was a break in the primary dimensional stream on Rintu. We had a brief power loss just as you and Chen fell over the mountainside. It took us time to isolate the general area of your location and the stone’s location. Then we had difficulty pinpointing the exact place. Settaly had never seen a homo sapiens. We finally found you because he sent out an emergency message about two small squeaky hominids.

  I heard Chen burst into laughter behind me, and I couldn’t help flashing him a smile over my should
er.

  I turned back to Upal and Kostas, who was right beside Upal now. “Well,” I said, “I’d much rather have fallen into here under Settaly’s patient care than be dead.”

  “You would not have died anyhow,” Kostas said.

  “That’s what you told us once before, but look at Chen’s arm!”

  “I said you would not die. I did not say you couldn’t be injured,” Kostas said in her blunt way. “Chen, Upal is injecting a pain-relieving signal into your nervous system. We will give you more medical treatment when we get back.” Kostas spoke through her mind now. Upal, I’ve located the stone on my device. It has diminished in the YZ-direction, now that it fell through the dimensional rift along a YZ-path. The stone isn’t with her now though.

  Kostas stared at me, and I felt my face grow very hot beneath her glaring dark eyes. “I couldn’t help throwing it. I was angry. And I was hoping for a way out of here.”

  “Please collect the stone,” Kostas said. “It is about fifteen feet behind you, a foot away from that large rock with the flat face.”

  I was sighing as I trudged over the ground to the spot Kostas had described. I picked up the firestone and stuck it back into my belt, but I wasn’t so mad at it anymore: sometimes in life, you just have to do things even though doing them really stinks. This was one of those times.

  *

  A few moments later, I learned from Kostas that Settaly could speak over the Keeper mind-links, but he hadn’t spoken yet out of respect for The Keepers.

  Kostas said to me now, “He can speak to you through Upal, if you’d like.”

  “Yes, I’d like that! I want to say goodbye at least.” I looked over at Settaly, who had moved a bit closer. Can you hear me, Settaly?

  …Yes… came a soft, almost-hiss.

  I want to thank you for taking care of us—and putting out the word that we were here!

  …It is my job, but you are also funny humanoids—the way you move your limbs. It is entertaining to the Lamren. We get something pleasant from this sanctuary because there is always more to learn. We meet many kinds here and offer many more a place. If you want one here someday, you will have one….

  Thanks! May I come visit again—is that possible? I glanced between Upal and Kostas.

  “We’ll have to see,” Kostas said out loud in a dry voice.

  I turned back to Settaly. If I never see you again, I hope you have a happy life!

  …My life is most happy. Thank you for wishing me happiness….

  “Goodbye, Settaly,” I said out loud, but I wished I could kiss him. The others must have mentally heard my desire.

  Settaly can come down to ground, Upal said.

  I rushed toward my golden friend now as he lowered himself to the red earth. Then I flung my arms against him for the first time, my hands finally feeling how soft and cool his shining golden skin was. His flesh had the springiness of a big balloon, and I found the presence of that silkiness against my palms really comforting.

  “I can’t help crying,” I said out loud.

  …This place has that effect on hominids. …If I could cry, I would be crying now too… Settaly said.

  And my arms pressed around his skin tighter.

  *

  Chen finally came up to Settaly to pat him with his good hand and say goodbye too; then we walked away and turned back around, and I watched Settaly’s golden shape fade as we faded away from his dimension.

  Upal, Kostas and Chen and I were now inside some kind of strange space—I felt both its presence and its absence around us. I also felt acutely aware of the others nearby, especially Chen.

  I said inside my mind, I think the water helped keep me and Chen going. If it wasn’t for Settaly….

  The crystal water, Upal said, is high in vitamins and minerals; it is naturally available in many other dimensions. Most of our food on Rintu comes from other spaces. Rintu’s natural landscape has proven quite infertile. It will not support the growth of microorganisms the way many other soils will. We have not figured out why yet. It is not that important to us. We are never stranded in one place the way many lifeforms are, though our incessant motility can be inconvenient for us.

  Strange how, compared to humans, things were quite the opposite for The Keepers: their frustration was that they always seemed to be “stuck” into being in too many places, and the human frustration was that we always seemed to be stuck in too few places. After all, that was a big reason why we’d ventured out of our home planet….

  I wondered where the four of us were now: in my mind, I was hearing strange echoes of clanging sounds, but I couldn’t see anything—not even black because that color was still something. It felt like my eyes weren’t working….

  Chen must have been feeling the same. Where are we—I can’t see suddenly!

  We are crossing through different dimensions and dimensional streams, Kostas said. It normally takes more time, but I am trying to do it fast because we have lost so much time….

  What will happen when I get back? I asked.

  When you fell through and then into other dimensions, the stone at that point wasn’t as inert as it used to be. Fortunately, we don’t have to start the decommissioning from scratch. Beyond the first level of the mountain, with every foot we rose vertically, we opened another segment of the stone’s layers. But when the stone was exposed in the Lamren dimension, it corroded a much larger segment of the layers. We can pick up much later in the process than where we left off—quite near to the top of the mountain.

  Great, I said, intending to smile along with the word. But I found I couldn’t feel my face. Unfortunately, that dimensional sickness was suddenly rearing its ugly spinning head again.

  Oh, I moaned, I ain’t feeling too well.

  Me too, Chen said.

  We are almost there, Upal replied. I see now that two of your friends are waiting for you.

  Who… I asked, but who they were was who I should have expected them to be.

  However the four of us had traveled, we now wound up appearing in Upal’s space. I could see May and Gary standing by Upal’s big stone table.

  I had never been so happy to see Gary as I was at that moment, and he seemed to feel the same; he rushed up to me and crushed me in a huge embrace.

  Behind him, May was crying a little: her eyes were on Chen’s broken arm….

  She ran up to him just as Gary said to me in an anxious voice, “What the hell’s happened to you two—you’re a mess!”

  “Thanks for the compliment,” I said in a dry voice.

  Gary pulled back a bit. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I know—I was just teasing you. I’m honestly completely exhausted right now—too exhausted to talk about everything. But—the Demeter?” I asked fast.

  “We’ve been holding down the fort, which wasn’t easy when we were all worried sick, especially me and May.” I could see the worry on both of their faces, and it hurt me to see their discomfort piled on top of the confusing shit I’d been through. Throughout the whole ordeal, a part of me had been hoping that everything back here on Rintu had been going perfectly….

  “It’s been hard to know what to do,” Gary said to me now. “You’ve been gone for almost eight Earth days.”

  “Eight? Crap!” I said, frowning heavily. “Upal did mention something about days, but I thought only two….”

  It is the nature of traveling, Upal said. Time is often not the same across or between dimensions. It is similar to relativistic time-dilation effects.

  “I can see that,” I said out loud.

  But Gary frowned at me as if I’d uttered a non sequitur, which I apparently had uttered from his perspective.

  “I’m hooked up with Upal,” I said to Gary now, poking a forefinger against my head.

  Gary nodded slowly, before frowning over at Upal and Kostas. “They couldn’t tell us much because they didn’t know much.”

  I knew I looked a mess now, with my blue-stained suit and my dirty-with
-red-dust hair, but Gary looked even paler than I felt. And May—her head was pressed forward to Chen’s, and I could see he was trying to calm her down; going on the sad expression on her face, she was very upset.

  “May,” I said fast, “don’t worry—The Keepers will treat Chen’s arm and anything else.”

  I turned a frown onto Upal and Kostas. And Kostas said, “You actually could have made an adjustment to the other sleeve of Chen’s suit to provide emergency medical attention, but we neglected to explain how to use the sleeve-controls.”

  “No kidding!” Gary snapped in her direction. “And we asked you to show us that day up the mountain.”

  “We—The Keepers are very powerful, but we are far from perfect,” Kostas said in a dry voice. She glanced at Upal, who seemed to be fading out more than normal, including his intestines, which interrupted view I was thankful for.

  “Upal must get some rest, and we must get back to the trek now,” Kostas said in a quicker voice.

  “What?!” I said, turning to fully face her. “I only just got back. And I don’t even understand how we can continue now. You said something once about needing the moons in a certain position, but haven’t we lost that by now?”

  A sharp nod from her at me. “That’s correct. But we will instead be diverting the power from other Keeper tasks here. It is an inconvenience to the other work The Keepers must do. But the rest of the decommissioning process would go even faster if you could you make the trip up more steps on the outside again. Do you think you will be able to?”

  “Probably—after I get out of this stinking suit and get in some hours of sleep-time!”

  *

  They gave me the time, though I had to spend it sleeping on a big gray cushion in Upal’s space. But at least Gary was with me; he seemed to not want to let me out of his sight now.

  I slept with the warmth of his body and arms around me the whole time, but when I finally woke up, he’d already gotten up.

  I went to use one of the toilets and showers in the bathroom area. In a cabinet in the room, I found a long white robe and slipped it on. While I had been sleeping, the workers had cleaned my captain’s belt; I wrapped it around my waist now over the robe; then I walked into the communal washing room. Gary had been waiting for me there. He’d slept in his normal clothes, but one of the orange suits covered his body now.