by Peter Telep
“They have names,” I say, instead of asking.
“That one is Punk, and that one is Mr. Gurdy.”
I snort. “How do you know that?”
She rolls her one eye at the question.
“You know that because you read my mind,” I say.
She shakes her head. “The grren told me. They like the names you have for them.”
“Cool.” I take a step closer. “Cypress, my grandmother told you to bring me here. Please tell me why.”
She lowers her gaze and shakes her head.
My eyes widen. “You won’t tell me.”
“Because it won’t work now.”
“Tell me why it won’t work.”
“Because you can’t take it, and I’m not going with you. I didn’t want to give it to you anyway. You’ll probably die, and then maybe she’s lost forever.”
“Tell me who is lost forever.”
“Mum.”
“Your mother.”
“No, she just looks like Mum, so I call her that. She comes from Flora.”
Cypress closes her one eye and projects a persona that very much resembles the young, dark-haired woman in the photo. She’s even wearing a similar blouse and skirt, along with those thick, horn-rimmed glasses.
“It’s your mother’s immortal,” I tell Cypress.
“No, no, no, Doke. This is not my mother, but she looks like this to make me happy.”
“If she’s not your mother, then…”
The immortal beams at me, nods, and speaks in a strong English accent. “Docherty Harrison. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I glance over at Cypress, who’s as surprised as I am. “So, yeah, she knows me...”
Cypress shrugs in disbelief.
I face the immortal, unsure if I can ask a question, so I just say, “Somehow you know me.”
“A friend told me all about you.” The immortal dissolves into the image of another woman—
Mrs. Bossley.
“Whoa, are you serious?” I glance wide-eyed at Cypress. “You’re carrying the immortal of a First One.”
“I don’t know what that means. She’s just Mum.”
“No, she’s way more than that.”
The immortal dissolves into her original form of Mum. “I was just a curator on Flora,” she explains. “A long time ago.”
“So how did you wind up here?” I ask.
“Your grandmother found me in the lab at Brandalynn. My wreath was connected to the computer and kept alive, but my immortal was lonely, so I gave it to her.”
“I saw your wreath. It was in a tube.”
“I know you did.”
“So what happened after that?”
“The curator here in Grrethos died about ten years ago, so I asked your grandmother to bring me here so I could help. She knew just the person to carry me.” Mum faces Cypress and smiles.
“I help Mum with her job here,” Cypress says.
Mum extends her hand: “Come with me, Doc.”
“Oh, no, here we go.” With a deep sigh of resignation, I accept the hand—
And now we soar over treetops blending into a thousand shades of green. Four of Halsparr’s moons dot the pink horizon.
Down below, grren sit on branches, climb between others, and run in packs along the jungle floor.
“This is Halsparr nearly a million years ago,” Mum says. “The grren were the dominant species.”
The jungle morphs into a modern city being constructed at high speed. More cities spring up all around the planet as we pull back, higher and higher.
And then come blinding flashes, mushroom clouds, walls of fire, falling ash that turns to snow, to winter, and, finally, to darkness spreading across the planet.
“What happened?”
“Everything that shouldn’t.”
“I don’t believe this…”
“You should. This is what fear does to a species… fear of each other… and of the unknown. But afterward, we curators got to work. And gradually, life returned.”
The sky clears and the jungle spreads rapidly through the melted cities until they’re barely recognizable. Many are so deeply buried in growth that they vanish altogether.
“During the next thousand years the Halsparrans who survived reestablished the six realms: Grrethos, Barsaliff, Yandra, Hornryth, Estenia, and Thonotasaka. They were all very different but had one thing in common—an intense desire to ban all technology. That’s why Cypress believes questions are rude and illegal. The grren taught her that, and they learned it from the Halsparrans.”
“How can questions be illegal?”
“Because a questioning mind leads to invention. Change and progress are what destroyed this world in the first place. The survivors wanted to rebuild their relationship with nature and with the grren. They returned to a way of life that ensures stability and punishes change. The grren supported those ideas because they believe in the same thing—living a simple life in harmony with nature.”
“You tried to save the grren. You brought some to Flora.”
“They’re special creatures, and we couldn’t risk losing them all. But they managed to survive here, and now they thrive on Flora, although they’ve made some remarkable adaptations there, some for the better, some for the worse…”
“Cypress told me the people are sick here.”
We fly down to the planet and through the city where Cypress and I fled from the assassins. We land on the very same building and stand beside the broken window we used to escape.
“For the past two hundred years a virus has been killing Halsparrans. The population is less than ten thousand across the planet. The virus only affects humans, not the grren or any other beings here.”
“What about me?”
“You’re safe because you’re in your persona, but had you traveled here in your body, and remained for more than a few days, you’d probably contract the virus and die.”
“That’s weird. It’s as if someone knew that and made sure I’d wind up here in my persona.”
“Maybe so, Doc.”
“Cypress told me the Halsparrans are sick, but they never found a cure?”
“Not without technology. A few radical groups ventured into the cities. They found instruments, records, materials… and they began experimenting and searching for that cure. Their tests led to mutations.”
“You mean people like Cypress. The woven.”
She nods. “Their work was forbidden because of the technology involved, but the tests worked. The woven are resistant to the virus, but they’re still considered outcasts because they’re the product of technology. Only a thousand or so survive, and Cypress is the last here in Grrethos. Most moved back to the cities, searching for an ancient device that would allow them to escape from the planet.”
“You mean the engine. So it was developed here.”
“Not here. Our homeworld. Your father and grandmother followed our plans, just like the Halsparrans.”
“But Halsparrans had their engines way before my father built his.”
“That’s correct.”
“Did they travel to Flora and Earth? All that stuff about ancient aliens I see on the History Channel?”
“We never shared those coordinates.”
“What about Galleon?”
She sighs with regret. “They found it before we could stop them. They enslaved the indigenous population and turned themselves into monsters.”
I swear under my breath. “So we have four seed worlds. Halsparr blows itself up. Galleon gets into a war with you and gets blown apart. Flora gets blown up. So what are you saying? Earth’s next?”
“Doc, it’s the Galleons and their Armadis that’ll bring the apocalypse to Earth. But you’re wrong about something else.”
“What?”
“There aren’t just four seed worlds. There are thousands scattered throughout the galaxy.”
“And you seeded them all?”
“Then who did?”
“We don’t know who they are, only what they’ve taught us: Life is a celebration—”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that.”
“And you don’t believe it?”
I feel like gravity has doubled. It’s hard to breathe. “Why are you telling me all this? And why does it have to be me?”
“It doesn’t have to be you, Doc. You’re weren’t chosen according to some ancient prophecy.”
“Cool. Can I go home?”
“Sure, you’ll be on your way. Like I was saying, we didn’t choose you. You chose us.”
“Excuse me?”
With a tremor and a jolt that feels like electricity, I’m standing back in Cypress’s kitchen. Mum is gone.
Cypress is applying a homemade bandage of leaves and some clay-like substance to her shoulder.
“You look strange, Doke—”
“Said the girl with the crazy eye,” I finish.
Cypress reaches up and self-consciously touches the rotating ring. “It’s my eyelo. It saved your life.”
“No argument there.”
“Mum gave it to me. She taught me how to use it.”
“It changed your eye.”
“Yes, forever.”
“But you can still use it to see.”
“Oh, yes. And it keeps me safe. You should get one.”
“That’s okay. That ring just wouldn’t, and I couldn’t, and I don’t actually know what I’m saying anymore.”
She crosses to me, and her tone softens. “You look sad. Mum gave you bad news.”
“Yeah, I guess so. And confusing stuff. And I still don’t know what I’m doing here.”
She looks at me in disbelief, as though it’s obvious. “You need to get inside the labs on Flora. You need weapons to fight the masks.”
“So you know about the labs.”
“Yes. I’m supposed to give you Mum so she can get you inside, but I told your grandmother I really don’t want to, but she was very upset. And now you’re in your persona, so I can’t give her to you anyway.”
“Maybe she can just tell me how to get in.”
“Doesn’t work. She has to go with you. And it has to be her because she’s the only curator old enough to get inside.”
“Okay, so you come with me to Flora. Once my persona is in my body, I’ll take Mum, and we’ll send you home.”
“You carry other immortals.”
“I’ve got four.”
“You have to pass them on. Mum’s immortal is too heavy. You can only carry her. When you do, you can still connect, but you can’t use your persona and you can’t jump.”
“So that’s why you haven’t jumped.”
“Yes. Once I give her to you, I can jump, but I like her too much. She’s like my Mum. I can’t let her go.” Cypress starts to choke up. “She’s just… I wish...”
“Cypress, I just need to borrow her. Please…”
“No.”
“You say that because…”
“Because no.”
I tip my head toward the grren. “We can bring them, too.”
“We don’t want to go.”
“But I thought your people wanted to leave this place. That’s what Mum told me.”
“Not all of us. I like it here. Mum needs me.”
“I think you’re lying. I think there’s another reason why you won’t leave.”
A beeping alarm sounds from the other room. We race in there, and Cypress hurries around the old engine and hops in the chair at the computer terminal. “Oh, no, Doke!”
“What is it?” I holler. “I mean tell me…”
Her fingers work furiously on the touchpad, and the old engine coughs and fires up like a generator that hasn’t been started all year.
Satisfied that the contraption is running, she springs up from behind the terminal, grabs my wrist, and drags me up the stairs. The portal whines and bursts with wild light.
“Wait! Where are we going?”
But in the next second, we’re already there.
CHAPTER TWENTY
We appear inside a subterranean greenhouse dimly lit by rows of purple lights resembling globes of Jell-O rotating like planets. The lights hang from vines that coil down over a hundred feet from the cave’s ceiling.
Below them, all kinds of flowers, shrubs, and trees grow from long, white troughs that stretch into infinity. Roots wander off past the troughs, with more long, green runners drawing intersecting paths between what’s left of the rows.
I wonder if this place was created before the apocalypse as a way to preserve life, something the curators used when Mum said they “got to work” here. Maybe places like this helped Grrethos and the other realms come back to life. However, this one’s been sitting here unused for a very long time, with the plants spreading aggressively throughout the cave.
Of course there’s no time for me to ask Cypress about it (without actually asking, of course). She takes off running, and I can barely keep up as we fight our way down one of the rows, smashing through leaves and branches like we’re back in the jungle.
We turn left at an intersecting aisle, and then battle our way toward a giant set of doors set right into the stone. They seem ancient, and with no visible controls, levers, locks or anything else suggesting how they open. They’re constructed of a grainy metal with seams and rivets and flecks of gold running across their surfaces.
We stand before them like ants.
Cypress projects Mum. She floats up and away from us, and then explodes in a pinwheel of light as she vanishes into the doors—
Which slowly part at the center and grind open, sending tremors through the entire cave.
So whatever this place is, it definitely belonged to the First Ones since Mum opened the doors.
We charge into the next room: another cavern too large to comprehend in a single glance.
My gaze lifts to the ceiling, where tiny shafts of sunlight appear in the rock, forming a stadium-sized circle that thickens with more shafts of light.
Something’s burrowing through…
An earthquake rumbles down, across the walls, and rips into the ground—
Just as a glowing wreath of personas cuts through the final layers of stone. They’re revolving so fast that I can’t tell if they’re people, animals, or something else. Meanwhile, the crumbling stone at the wreath’s center gets sucked up through the hole, leaving behind a perfect shaft.
To our left, suspended across the ceiling like camouflage netting, is an oblong-shaped tarp slightly bigger than the cavern’s new skylight. The thing’s made from thousands of hexagons connected to each other by blue-green wisps of energy. The hexagons throb and shimmer with golden light as they shift toward each other, overlapping like fish scales, and then pull apart, as though each one’s a life form straining to break free.
Maybe this is it—the queen robe my grandmother was talking about.
She said the Armadis came here to find one. She said if they got their hands on it and managed to grow it, we couldn’t stop them.
The wreath of personas shatters into at least a hundred Masks of Galleon who float down in their armor and then jump away, reappearing along the ceiling.
They swell into their mask forms and launch bolts from their eyes, targeting sections along the ceiling where the queen robe has attached itself and seems to grow directly from the stone.
Just then, out of nowhere, a female voice echoes up into my thoughts and calls out my name.
I’m not sure, but I think it’s the queen robe herself trying to connect with me, but the masks are interfering. Her thoughts fade into whispers… and then… they’re gone.
At the same time, Cypress extends her arms and fires two shields of hexagons that sweep across the cavern and spread to the size of parachutes, protecting part of the robe—
But her shields are still too small, and while several of the
masks’ bolts are blocked and converted into pebbles that fall in thin columns to the ground, the other masks easily bypass her obstacles…
And then strengthen their attack.
The ceiling comes alive in a golden cloud of hexagons lit from within by camera-like flashes of green and blue, with the occasional white lightning rippling in veins across the hexagons.
Just then, one of the masks turns away from the attack, jumps, and reappears not ten feet from us.
It’s still in its mask form and as tall as we are. The lifeless eyes begin to throb.
Cypress breaks her link to the shields above, stumbles backward, and fires another shield—
But the mask in front of us launches a counter attack, and its bolts stitch through Cypress’s dim hexagons, which explode, one after another, like overloaded Christmas lights.
As the shield fades and the smoke rises, I’m ready to grab her wrist and run.
But the effort’s just a reaction. And pathetic.
Because we’d never make it.
The mask’s eyes boil with energy. He’ll either kill us right there or transport us to the ship in orbit. My chest warms and tingles as he seems to lock on.
Cypress’s face turns red, like she’s summoning everything she has for a final burst.
And at that precise moment, jagged blue bolts lash out from somewhere above and sew their way across the mask’s face. Weirdly enough, the mask’s lips contort, as though he’s in pain, and then his blank eyes turn skyward for a moment before he jumps away.
Not a second after he disappears, Julie charges through his ghost in her gleaming armor. “Doc, get out of here! We can’t stop them!”
I scream and grab her shoulders and won’t let her go.
“Just leave!” she cries. “You need to get home.”
“What’s happening?” I demand.
“I can’t break free. I’ve tried. It only works for a little while. They’re just too strong.”
“Can I help?”
Her face twists in agony. “It’s too late!”
“Wait, don’t leave!”
“Doc, I love you! I’m not lying! I really do!”
And with that, she jumps away, and I find myself yanked away by Cypress.
I chance a look back as we leave the cavern.