Déjà Vu (First Contact)

by Peter Cawdron

  She blushes at the attention she’s getting from me and turns away, embarrassed. I’m wondering what childhood disease has robbed her of the ability to walk. Such diseases were banished to the history books in my day.

  Several of the boys stop what they’re doing and stare at me in awe. Their faces are pockmarked and scarred like the lunar surface. Their eyes follow me with a sense of longing as the horse wanders on.

  Being on horseback provides me a convenient way to avoid interacting with friendly villagers. They wave and chat as I pass, but I have no idea what they’re saying and would be lost if I tried to reply. A smile and wave seem to suffice. One young child reaches up, offering me an apple. I lean down, wrapping my hand around the neck of the horse as I take it from him, saying, “Thanks.”

  The apple is sour but juicy. I take a couple of bites and then lean forward, reaching out and offering the rest to Seabee. She can smell the juice. She cranes her neck sideways. I can’t quite reach. The apple drops to the track, but Seabee doesn’t care about a little dirt. She leans down and snatches it up, almost sending me toppling from her back. Yeah, I won’t try that again. I can hear the kids behind me laughing.

  With the sun high overhead, I try to keep to the shade of trees lining the track. Beyond the forests and farms, the land gives way to swamp, forcing me to pick between raised gravel roads. Rather than heading straight for the rocket, I need to cut across to the coast in the hope of finding a path south. At times, the track is overgrown and barely visible as a slight depression in the long grass. Then for a few hundred yards, it’ll be as though it’s a two-lane graded gravel road. The only concrete I see is broken. Weathered concrete slabs shore up the edges of a bend like any other rock or boulder. Rust stains mark where reinforced bars once crisscrossed the worn concrete.

  The rocket doesn’t seem to get any closer, but distances can be like that. The last mile always goes quicker than the first. I’ll get there soon enough.

  As the sun sinks toward the hills, I come across a town of sorts. Rather than huts, there are houses. Kids peer out of second-story windows, fighting boredom. They wave, so I wave back. It seems everyone knows me, and suddenly I realize I haven’t seen anyone else on horseback. The only horses I’ve seen have been pulling plows or dragging carts.

  I’m royalty.

  But why?

  This town was built on several massive concrete slabs. Each one is easily fifty feet in width and linked by bridges. They’re like stepping stones, crazy flat islands forming an artificial archipelago. Barns, stores, and houses crowd the edges, with cantilevered sections hanging over the swamp. Bullrushes grow out of the water. Several of the slabs are on opposing angles, sloping in toward each other. It’s not until I reach the end and look back that I realize what I’ve just traversed. I bring the horse to a halt, peering down the length of the chaotic, strung-out town.

  “It’s a runway. Or what’s left of one.”

  I want to hop down and examine the worn concrete but I feel exposed. People are watching. They’re curious, which makes me uneasy. Besides, there’s a large gator on the bank below the bridge.

  “Come on,” I say, reaching forward and patting the horse on its neck.

  I’m getting close to the rocket. There are buildings ahead. A row of warehouses come into view beyond the trees, with cinderblock walls and steel roofs. Shadows lengthen around me, stretching across the ground. What I guess is a guard walks out, dressed in a black uniform. He raises his hand, gesturing for me to stop, but the horse comes to a halt of its own accord.

  “Year?” he asks.

  “Hey,” I say. “That’s my question. What year is this?”

  He shakes his head. “Naught. Year?”

  The pained look of confusion on my face must be a constant that’s transcended time. He clarifies, saying, “You–are–the year.”

  “You want to know when I’m from?” I ask. “My year?”

  “Naught. Naught. Not my year. Your year.”

  I never thought pronouns could be so confusing. A crowd gathers. I speak slowly, trying to provide clarity, but I know I’m only going to confuse him further.

  “I was born in the year two thousand and ninety-seven. In twenty-one-thirty-two, I launched on the Intrepid for Procyon Alpha, but something went wrong. Our craft was destroyed. I—I was killed. My brain stem was found and revived, thousands of years later on Erebus, one of the moons of Styx in the Proc.”

  No matter how clearly I articulate each term or how slowly I speak, my words leave him bewildered.

  “Where am I?” I ask. “When is this?”

  He says, “Me, add or because?”

  What the hell? That isn’t a sentence—there’s a subject but no object. Me? Add what? Because of what?

  He reverses the order of the words, saying, “Because, add or me?”

  It takes me a moment to realize what he’s saying. It’s strange to hear entire categories of time being reduced to abstract terms, but I finally get it.

  “You mean, BC? AD? Or ME?” I ask, seeking clarification.

  He nods.

  “AD. Anno Domini,” I say. “I left for the Proc in the year two thousand one hundred and thirty-two AD.” To make it clearer, I repeat myself, holding up fingers for each number as I speak. “Two, one, three, two.”

  His eyes go wide. Several women stand back, listening intently. They whisper between themselves.

  The guard asks, “You know polo?”

  Okay, not exactly the kind of trivia I was expecting, but all right, as I’m on a horse, I’ll play along.

  “Sure,” I say, patting Seabee’s neck. “It’s like hockey, only on horseback.”

  “No, no,” he says, becoming agitated and pointing at the night sky. “Polo.”

  “You mean Apollo? The Moon program?”

  “Yes.”

  The guard grins.

  “Please,” one of the women says, stepping forward and taking charge. She gestures for me to take her hand and dismount. Reluctantly, I rock back, shifting my legs to one side and slipping to the ground.

  “Did you know him?” she asks as my feet land in the dirt beside her.

  “Who?”

  “Armstrong?”

  “Not personally,” I say, relieved to hear a familiar term. “Neil Armstrong died long before I was born. But I was stationed at Armstrong Lunar Base in the Sea of Tranquility for a few months. I saw the Eagle, well, what was left of the descent engine and legs.”

  She’s listening, but it’s the others that interest me. They’ve fallen silent, looking at me with intense focus. I feel as though I should say something more, even though I doubt they understand me.

  “Ah, we preserved Tranquility Base within a glass dome spanning a hundred yards. Some of the footprints are still visible out on the fringes. They’re not as crisp as in the photos, but they’re still there. No flag, though. That’s long gone.”

  She repeats the name, “Armstrong,” turning to the others as she points back at me.

  “Yes, Neil Armstrong,” I say, unsure why I need to continue clarifying this point. “I know about Neil Armstrong. He was the first one to walk on the Moon.”

  Several of them start clapping, but not as an audience would when a celebrity walks on stage. There’s rhythm to their motion—it’s closer to the way kids would clap along to a song. I don’t like it. It makes me feel uneasy. I hold out my hands, gesturing for them to stop. To my surprise, they look disappointed.

  “Armstrong and Aldrin,” I say, looking at each face, trying to encourage some recognition. “The Eagle has landed, right? One small step. One giant leap.”

  Their eyes light up. They’re excited but well beyond what’s warranted. I don’t think they recognized those last two references, but it doesn’t seem to matter.

  “What is this place?” I ask, pointing at the dark silhouette of the rocket rising above the trees. “Who are you?”

  “We’re part of Polo,” the woman says.

  “This is
Earth?” I ask, confused. “You’re recreating Apollo?”

  “Yes.”

  She points at the waning crescent of the Moon.

  For billions of years, the Moon has orbited Earth, calm and serene, untouched until only recently. Craters are visible in the reflected sunlight. The highlands are a blinding white, while the mares are gray. It’s the darkness, though, that takes my breath away. Threads of silk curve into the shadows. A network of lights stretches around the dark side of the Moon. There are nodes. Clusters of light glow like cities. Golden strands link sections together. They’re so fine they could have been spun by a spider. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the dark side was little more than a copper wireframe.

  “What the?” I say, standing there numb.

  “Loser,” the woman says, grinning at me, but it’s not personal. She’s stumbled into the wrong term.

  “Luna,” I say. “The Moon.”

  “Yes. Yes. Loaner. The Moan.”

  “Close enough,” I say, engrossed by the sight of alien structures on the Moon. They’re not visible on the daylight side, but neither are cities on Earth from that distance. Thin tendrils reach from the shadows, wrapping over the rugged terrain. These structures must be huge given the surface of the Moon is similar in size to the Continental US. The central nodes may only be visible in the dark, but they’ve got to be the size of cities like New York or Atlanta.

  “Who’s up there?” I ask, pointing, realizing this is an incongruous mismatch of civilizations. Down here on Earth, apart from the rocket, all I’ve seen is pre-industrial. Up there, they’re tens of thousands of years more advanced—as they should be.

  “We go there,” she says.

  “The year?” I ask. “What year is it?”

  She shrugs, saying, “After two five four zeroes.”

  “Two five thousand?” I ask, unsure what she means. “Two and a half thousand years? Or twenty-five thousand years?”

  She shakes her head. Beside her, a young man is speaking gibberish, apparently trying to determine the correct term.

  “Not twenty-five,” she says. “Two five. And a hundred.”

  “Two five hundred?” I ask, confused.

  “And the thousand.”

  The blood drains from my head. “Two hundred and fifty thousand years???”

  “Yes. Yes,” she says, pointing at the center of my chest and grinning as though I’ve won a prize at the county fair. “After that. Long after.”

  My legs feel weak. My hands are shaking. I need to sit down.

  “How?” I ask, reaching behind myself and feeling for Seabee. My fingers touch the coarse hair on the horse’s neck. The warmth of her body and her thick mane are strangely reassuring, grounding me. I’m struggling to process how much time has transpired here on Earth since I died on Erebus. “How is this possible?”

  “They did,” the woman says, pointing at the Moon. “All this. For us.”

  “They brought me back to life?” I ask, joining her in pointing at the Moon.

  “Yes.”

  Apollo

  “Come, come,” the woman says, and we begin walking along an alley between warehouses. There’s electricity. Light bulbs glow from within nearby buildings. Seabee follows along behind me, being led on without reins. Her head bobs above my right shoulder. I reach up, touching at her cheeks, more for my reassurance than hers.

  In the distance, someone runs toward us, sprinting down the long alley. I feel as though we should step to one side and make way for him, but he pulls up short of us.

  “Is this?” he asks, out of breath, bending over and grabbing his knees as he sucks in the air around him. He’s been running for a while. He points at me, looking at the others, asking, “Her?”

  “Me?” I say, being able to speak for myself. “Yes. This is me.”

  “Old Tongue, right?”

  “Yes,” I say, delighted to hear that term pronounced correctly.

  “Oh, am I glad to see you,” he says, rushing in and hugging me. He throws his hands around my shoulders. I’m in shock. I’m not sure what to do other than stand there as he squeezes, checking I’m real. I am. I shrink a little, wanting to pull back. He releases me, grabbing my shoulders and peering deep into my eyes with an astonishing grin on his face. “Oh, hot damn.”

  “Who are you?” I ask.

  “Adrian Bramble. Neurologist. Born twenty-one-fourteen in Montreal, Canada. Died, twenty-one-forty-four.”

  “You?” I say, struggling with my words. “You’re like me?”

  “They told me you were on the Intrepid.”

  “Yes. Yes,” I say with tears streaming down my cheeks. I point at myself, adding, “Ah, I’m Jessica Elizabeth Rowe, astrobiologist from the Intrepid. Born twenty-ninety-seven. Died at least twice. Dunno when.”

  Adrian laughs.

  “I was eighteen when you launched,” he says, squeezing my shoulders, still unable to wipe the grin from his face. “I remember seeing your starship swing by Jupiter.”

  I laugh. “Oh, my. You? You’re real?”

  “I’m real,” he says, letting go and holding his hands out wide, putting his body on display. “Just like you.”

  “So this isn’t a simulation? I’m not in some virtual world on Erebus?”

  His eyebrows narrow. “Erebus?”

  “How?” I ask. “How is any of this possible?”

  “How much have they told you?”

  “Well,” I say. “There’s what they’ve told me, and then there’s what I’ve understood.”

  Adrian laughs. “Yeah, I get that a lot.” He points at the others. “Look at them. We might as well be speaking French.”

  “Parlez-vous français?” I reply, still trying to take stock of what’s happening.

  “Oui. J'ai appris les bases à l'école primaire.”

  “Me? Not so much,” I admit. “But you. How did you survive all this time?”

  “My wife was an arctic researcher working for Greenpeace. We were up on Devon Island when the Constellation went nova. The blast didn’t get us, but we were cut off from civilization. Within days, the weather turned. It was summer. The last thing I remember is digging through a ten-foot deep snowdrift in a horrific arctic storm. Then I woke in a cave—”

  “Up there,” I say, pointing at the dark hills.

  Adrian laughs. “Okay. So, welcome to the future. You must be exhausted. Let’s get you a bath, a change of clothes, and something to eat.”

  “A bath?”

  “We’re not savages.”

  “But my horse,” I say as Adrian turns to walk into one of the buildings.

  He takes a quick look at the brand on its neck and says, “I’ll get one of the workers to return her.”

  “So they know?” I ask, circling my hand around. “All of them? Everyone out there?”

  He replies, “Most of the people you’ll meet around here were born in this age, but occasionally, they send someone new.”

  “They?”

  “Our alien captors,” Adrian says, pointing at the Moon.

  I’m speechless. Who the hell is up there? I hope these aren’t the aliens of Procyon Alpha.

  Adrian looks deep into my eyes, saying, “Not everyone has memories, but those of us that do, well—”

  “We’re royalty,” I say, finishing his sentence for him.

  “Something like that, but yes. Everyone knows. We’re all working toward a common goal.”

  “The Moon,” I reply, and he nods.

  An elderly man comes over to me with a set of folded clothing and some boots.

  Adrian excuses himself, leaving me with a teenaged girl. She’s shy. No one likes eye contact in this age. She leads me to a bathroom on the ground floor behind a series of bunks. As soon as I see the bath, I know why it’s not up on the next floor. A rock of solid granite has been sliced in half and hollowed out. Damn thing must weigh a ton. I brush my hands over the rim—it’s been polished smooth. The bath is big enough to be a jacuzzi. Ledges have be
en carved around the inside. It could hold eight to ten people. There’s a row of toilets running along the wall but no cubicles or privacy shields. Modesty is a relic from the past.

  I relieve myself under the watchful eye of the young woman and then slip into the bath. The water’s hot, which is soothing. Without saying a word, she gives me a bar of soap and a washcloth. I’m not sure if I’m on some kind of schedule, but I’m in no rush to get out. After spending all day on horseback, it’s soothing to relax, soaking in the warm water. There’s a knock at the door. I grab a towel as my attendant talks with someone outside. Once I’m dressed, I thank her, but she never replies. She just blushes and drops her eyes. I want to say something more to her, but I suspect I’d confuse her.

  Adrian’s waiting for me.

  “How are you feeling?” he asks.

  “Wonderful,” I say. “I feel brand new.”

  “You are,” he replies, leading me down the corridor.

  “Yeah. I guess I am.” I pause before asking, “So this. All this is real?”

  He laughs. “Of course it is.”

  “And you’re not an illusion?”

  “I sure hope not,” he says. “Come on.”

  As relieved as I am to have found Adrian, nothing about this time sets me at ease. Everything’s incongruous. The concrete floors are rough and uneven. The wooden panels lining the corridor are made from unfinished chipboard. It takes me a few seconds to realize all that’s missing. No ceiling tiles. No paint or wallpaper. No pictures on the walls. No handles on the doors. No carpet on the concrete floor.

  “I’ve got something to show you,” Adrian says.

  He opens a door, grinning, knowing that whatever’s behind the rough-hewn wood is about to blow my mind. Okay, I can go with this. I step inside, and a few techs in white lab coats turn, looking alarmed by our entrance. We’re in a secure room.