Beyond: Book Four of the State Series

by M. J. Kaestli

  Josh hadn’t noticed her absence when she slipped off at the market. He had been chatting for quite some time while gathering their items—it appeared the community was interested in talking to him if she wasn’t present. She had finished with Reuben and returned to the market before he broke away from the church.

  She had kept nothing from him as she had never had any secrets to keep. If she were to be honest with herself, she could admit she was a little concerned he wouldn't like the answers she may find if she remembered her past.

  Joshua thought she was from an evil kind of people, but he also took comfort in the fact she remembered nothing about her previous life or people. Will that change if I remember who I am? Will he still love me if he finds out I was bad? What if I do remember who I am and he realizes it's something that not even a baptism can wash away?

  Joshua rambled as he climbed into bed. She listened intently to him speak and made all the proper remarks, hoping to keep him talking as a distraction. If she had time to sort her experiences in her mind before he found out, she would have an easier time soothing any discomfort it stirred in him.

  “… I think tomorrow I'm gonna head West on the valley slope and look for—"

  Her head snapped upwards. “What did you say?”

  He looked down at her, confused by her question. “I don't know. I'm going to the Valley to hunt?”

  “No, before that.”

  He thought for a moment and then responded. “I’m going to head west on the slope?” He spoke more slowly and deliberately this time.

  She mulled his words around in her mind before she muttered “Weston.”

  “I said West on, not Weston. What’s Weston?”

  “I don't know. It just sounded familiar. But it doesn't matter because obviously I misheard you.”

  He tucked in closer to her. “That’s okay, I think I said it really fast.”

  Hope nodded and nestled further into his chest, closing her eyes. Her mind was racing a million miles a minute, but she needed privacy to collect her thoughts. She focused on slowing her breathing while he continued to talk.

  “It looks like you want to go to sleep.”

  She opened her eyes and nodded. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m so tired.”

  He gave her a soft squeeze and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll stop flapping my gums then and let you get some rest.” He gave her another little kiss and then loosened his grip on her. She continued to lay still with her eyes closed and focused on keeping her breathing slower and deeper until she heard his breathing change. Once she was confident he was asleep, she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.

  She rolled the word Weston around in her mind a few times trying to remember its meaning. When it didn’t come to her, she closed her eyes and replayed her experience that afternoon with Reuben. Her body relaxed as sleep started to cloud her mind. Her mind morphed the images from welding with Reuben in his congested workspace into welding in a large room. She was welding alongside another person, both working on the same odd shaped object. He turned off his blowtorch and lifted his helmet. He wiped a little sweat off his brow and smiled at her. She studied his face for a time, as though the image froze in her mind. Suddenly, she knew who Weston was and why he was important to her.

  The realization snapped her back to being fully awake. She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand, holding her breath to make sure Joshua was still sleeping. The realization came flooding in and she struggled to contain the tears that so desperately wanted to break through. Joshua was not her first husband. She had left a husband behind in her former life. She knew nothing about him or how they fell in love, but she knew that she loved him very much. She tried to comprehend how she could have forgotten him or left him. Was he searching for me? Was he waiting for me to return but I had foolishly wandered away and married someone else?

  She tried to focus on his face again in her memory to see if she could remember anything else. She brought the visual of them welding together and tried to observe the background of her memory. The space they were in was sterile and geometric in appearance. She thought it must be the dome and tried to remember what they were working on, or why. As she fixated on the device, she didn't understand what the item was, but she instantly understood it had caused her accident.

  There had been shredded pieces of the blue, like the suit she wore, and blood all over the place. Her body broke into a full racking sob as she realized that one of those bodies belonged to the man she loved. He wasn’t looking for her. He wasn’t missing her. And thankfully, she had not betrayed him. What she had done was lost her best friend and walked away from his body without even saying goodbye.

  A feeling of helplessness washed over her. She wanted to properly grieve her partner’s loss, yet she couldn’t remember any of the details about Weston and their lives together. How could she grieve a man she couldn’t remember?

  There were more questions spinning around in her mind. She wanted to know why they were out there to begin with. What was that object they were building and why had it killed him? Was anyone else with them? Why were they in the middle of nowhere working on that thing?

  She wished she could remember Weston better. She remembered enough to know that he was the kind of man who deserved a great deal of grieving. After she cried for a time, Joshua stirred. He rolled over and put a gentle reassuring hand on her shoulder.

  “Hope. What's wrong?”

  She shook her head back and forth, unable to speak or articulate her thoughts.

  “You’re scaring me. Aren’t you happy being married to me? You wanted to go to sleep early but you ain’t sleeping.”

  She knew she had to get control of her emotions. She needed to reassure him he was not the cause but she also didn’t feel ready to reveal that she had regained a memory of her previous life. She needed to know all the facts so she could choose carefully which information she should share, which kind of information was safe and which type of information might make him feel as though it had been a mistake to save her.

  “No, Joshua, I love you. I am very happy with you. You are so good to me. I honestly don't understand what is wrong with me. I was tired; I fell asleep for a few minutes and just woke up crying. I don’t get it.”

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her securely against him. “That is music to my ears. I don't want you to ever leave me.”

  Her head snapped up. “Leave you? How could that ever happen? Once you get married, it's forever.”

  He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly before proceeding. “I think that is the case for the people who were born here, but that’s not you. Once you get married, it’s permanent, but that doesn’t mean you can’t run off. Everyone else here has nowhere to go and wouldn’t know how to live without this community. You come from somewhere else. The place you come from might be better somehow. What if you just wake up one day and decide you like your life better before you met me?”

  She had no idea he had been holding onto this fear. She felt even stronger about her conviction of not letting him know she had regained some memories. His fear was valid. What if my life was better back in the dome? The people in this community said my people are bad, but are they? What if my memories return and I wish Josh had left me there? She pushed the thoughts from her mind. Even if this were the case, I couldn’t go back. Besides, I love Joshua; he’s worth any hardship.

  “I don’t think that is possible. I don’t know what my life was like, but I do know that I love you, and I wouldn’t leave you.”

  She felt confident in making this statement because it wasn’t truly a lie. She loved him. Now that she knew her former husband was dead, what would she possibly turn back for? All of her needs were met in this community. She had food, clothing, shelter, a purpose, and most importantly of all, she had Joshua. She couldn’t think of a single thing that her life could be missing or a good reason to turn back.

  He ran his hands gently along her bac
k to comfort her. After she settled; he asked. “Have you been feeling alright?”

  She didn’t know what to say. It was a slippery slope to pretend to have an illness when she didn’t, yet it might be the perfect cover she needed to take the time to focus on remembering what she so desperately wanted to know.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I am coming down with something. I felt a little off at the market.”

  Joshua sucked in a deep breath. “Are you pregnant?”

  Her mind went blank for a moment and she nearly stammered. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “We need to pay close attention to you. Feeling tired and getting all emotional for no reason, that’s what it sounds like to me.”

  Although she didn’t want to plant any false hopes, she decided not to squash his desires either. They said they would let the baby come when God decided it was time, and she could very well be or get pregnant soon.

  “I will. I will watch closely for my cycle and pay more attention to how I’m feeling.”

  Joshua kissed her and gave her a tight squeeze. “We will be a family. It will be perfect.”

  “Yes, it will be.”

  Joshua quickly drifted off once again, his arm still draped securely across her. She closed her eyes and took comfort in his embrace. Already in her young life she had loved and lost. She would fight to hold on to this relationship, even if she had to lie in order to do so.

  ***

  Joshua swept her hair gently off her face and kissed her head. “Just stay in bed all day and rest up. I’ll make sure Miriam knows you’re feeling under the weather.”

  She wanted more than anything to just stay in bed and be alone with her thoughts for an entire day. It also concerned her pretending to be ill when she wasn’t, or pregnant. It was as though Joshua was already convinced that her little episode last night was pregnancy induced—he would not allow her to lift a finger until that baby was safely delivered.

  “Okay, I’ll stay in bed today, but only today. Really, I feel fine. It was just some weird thing last night. I’m sure with a little extra rest today I’ll be good as new tomorrow.”

  Joshua gave her another kiss and lingered for longer this time. He kissed her until she giggled and shooed him away.

  “I will not get any rest if you keep that up.”

  He huffed and pretended to look upset. He leaned in for one last kiss before he left.

  She stayed in bed until she heard the outer door shut, then waited for a few minutes to ensure he was really gone. She got out of bed and did her morning washing. She put on a fresh nightgown to at least be clean if she were to spend an entire day in bed. She went to the kitchen area and made herself some tea and rummaged around for some breakfast. She had no idea what she was to do with herself all day. She wanted more than anything to go back and see Reuben once again. Welding had been the start to her regaining the small snippets of memories. Maybe if she spent a little more time welding, everything would come back to her.

  Hope went to their supply cupboard and retrieved the small chalkboard Miriam had given her. She wrote at the top of the board her best guess at how to both write and spell Weston. Once she recorded his name, she wrote everything she could remember about him in the confined space.

  At first, she focused on the physical. She wrote about his build, hair, eye color, how he held himself when he spoke or laughed. Soon she recorded other features such as how he was kind and deeply intelligent—like her. When she felt she had remembered everything she could about Weston, she erased the board and recorded everything she knew about welding. She continued to make lists of everything and anything she could think of.

  When she ran out of items and situations which felt familiar and triggered memories, her list changed to those experiences, items, and words which had needed clarification since she met Joshua. She made so many lists her eyes blurred and she drifted off.

  She abandoned her chalk and rested her head on her arm against the table with her right hand resting on the chalkboard. Ideas continued to come to her in her half-sleep state. Some visions made sense and some of them didn’t. She dreamt she kept trying to write all the ideas swimming through her mind until she wondered why she was writing at all. It was so much slower than typing, especially since she was new to writing.

  Hope tapped her fingers on her tablet. While she was getting some work done on her tablet, she headed to the cafeteria. She walked in and discovered there was no line to be served. She looked down at her tablet to confirm it was in fact, noon. A wave of elation washed through her. It thrilled her to not have to battle her way through a long line up.

  She walked right to the server and grabbed a tray, peering through the glass to see what was on the menu. It looked as though the meat was undercooked. As she peered closer, she lost her appetite. It was a mound of raw flesh, bone, and skin—all covered in blood. Hope looked a little closer at the meat and distinctively made out a tooth in the pile. She struggled to catch her breath as the server slopped a pile of flesh onto her plate.

  She knew she should be sick; she knew it should upset her. Those emotions were trumped by an overwhelming desire to scream. As she tried to scream, no sound would come out of her throat. She shook her head to indicate she didn’t want to take the plate, but the lunch lady just smiled brightly, her mouth stretching beyond the normal scope of how much a mouth should naturally span. The moment the plate was thrust into her hand, there were flies suddenly swarming the meat and insects crawling all over. Hope grabbed a knife, trying to scrape the maggots off her plate.

  As she moved a few pieces of flesh around, she saw a tuft of blue material sticking out from the pile. She knew instantly that it was a hazmat suit—Weston's suit. It was his body she was being served. She dropped the plate, and it shattered on the floor, sending maggots and blood spraying all around her. Hope tried to jump back to avoid getting any of the mass on her, but as she looked down, she realized she was wearing a hazmat suit herself. She looked around at the splattered chunks of red and blue when one of her classmates walked into the cafeteria.

  “What are we having for lunch today? Is it still left over Weston?”

  She tried to speak, to scream, to cry out, but she was completely hoarse. How can they eat my partner?

  He looked around at the floor and then back up to her. “Hope, what have you done? You can’t just throw perfectly good food on the ground. We are all starving because you and Weston messed up! Now we can’t go to the colony planet and it’s all your fault. After all the damage you’ve caused, you think it is okay to waste perfectly good food?” He dropped to his knees and shoveled spoonful’s of red, congealed mass into his mouth. Hope tried to turn and run but slipped and fell in a pool of blood. At the hard impact of the concrete floor, she jumped nearly out of her chair.

  The fog over her vision cleared as her home came back into focus. Her entire face was damp from a combination of tears and perspiration. She tried to get up, but her legs trembled. All she could do at that moment was to plop her head back on the table and let it out. She wept, her entire body racked with sobs until there was nothing left.

  When she had the strength, she wiped the chalkboard clean and crawled back into bed. The logical part of her mind knew she needed to analyze every single detail of her dream while it was fresh in her mind. She knew it was the right thing to do, but she also didn’t feel capable of reliving such a horrific scene.

  She focused on one simple discovery from the dream; she was inside of a mountain, not a dome. That mountain was her home. She was a part of a team commissioned to invent a device which would make colonization a reality. She wondered if her being from the mountain meant she wasn’t one of the dome people Joshua originally thought her to be. She didn’t know if those were two different civilizations or if it was one civilization in two different locations. All she knew was that she was emotionally spent. Her partner was dead. She was partially to blame for not only his death but possibly the deaths of her people. She was su
pposed to save them but failed, killing her partner in the process.

  Chapter 14

  He smiled at her pleasantly when she approached and turned off his blow torch. “I was hoping you’d make your way back here.”

  “Yeah?” She smiled bashfully. “I unexpectedly ended up with the day off. I thought I’d pop by instead of being cooped up all day.”

  “Well, I just so happen to have something I’d like you to take a look at, if you don’t mind.”

  Hope leaned in a little closer. The idea of fixing something made her more excited than anything else she had done since she moved into this sleepy community. “I’d love to take a look. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “There was this thing in the church that just got given to me,” Reuben began. “You see, it was a device used to communicate with others, it’s called a radio. It hasn’t worked for at least a generation, but maybe if you take a look at it, we might be able to get it up and running again.”