We walked on one of the pedestrian catwalks with safety rails on both sides, and I glanced down, behind the rail. There were so many layers of catwalks below me. I could not see the ground floor; it disappeared in the lingering fog. Multiple elevators and pathways elaborately connected various pedestrian routes, creating a mindboggling maze.
“How big is this place?” I asked in complete awe.
“Six million humans live here.”
That’s a whole army! I thought to myself.
And they are just sitting around here, prisoners in another galaxy? Another question was when and how all these people got here in the first place. “What have you done to all of these people? Are they brainwashed?”
“Not any more than you by your own government.”
“Unkari are not their government!”
“It’s just a matter of semantics. For all practical purposes, the Unkari govern this place, and they do an admirable job, if you ask me.” She was unfazed.
We kept walking as more and more quirky features grabbed my attention. It was strangely familiar, and yet, very foreign, as if someone had taken my memories of human civilization, spread them out, and gone through them with big-ass scissors, randomly replacing pieces with something else. Street vendors sold big pretzel-shaped bagels sprinkled with poppy and sesame seeds, except they did not sit in the booths, but drove buggy-type vehicles that were propelled with oars! These buggies had dolly-like compartments upfront where all for-sale goodies were proudly displayed. The wheel less buggies hovered twenty centimeters above the ground.
She and I walked on the green crystalline cobblestone sidewalk, with two silent guards a few steps behind us. We came to a cross-walk and waited for the streetlight to display a “go,” but instead of the green light, a spray of green powder spewed in the air from the hovering streetlight box. Across the street I noticed a couple of young men dressed in eccentric outfits, which I can’t begin to describe because my attention was diverted to a pet monkey that they walked on a leash. The monkey properly heeled and waited for the command to continue walking. Once I noticed one pet monkey, I realized that they were everywhere. All kinds of primates actually: baboons, snow monkeys, chimpanzees, and others that were not like any monkeys I had seen on Earth, probably a result of selective breeding. Monkey-friendly signs were displayed at every restaurant, with water bowls and fruit baskets outside the entrances.
We crossed the busy intersection and continued walking down the pedestrian packed street. The city was enormous. It reminded me of Lagos: overcrowded and bustling with smells, sounds, and activity. Occasionally I saw people walking through the walls; other times I saw people leaping from the top floors to the ground, but instead of splattering, they slowed down and gracefully continued walking as if they merely stepped off the escalator in the mall. Not that the place was unfathomable. In fact, nothing here was out of the realm of possibility. But the probability of all these things assembled in one place was so remote, and the sights were so unique, that I had to triple-take for it to properly register in my brain.
I noticed that both men and women wore similar outfits. At least there was no apparent gender difference. Upon closer scrutiny, the outfits consisted of loose pants and short tunics. This basic outfit was decorated with vibrant scarves and strands of artificial flowers.
I noticed that people intently scrutinized us when we passed by. The more I tried to understand what they thought of me, the more I felt assured that they were in fact less concerned with me, and more concerned about She and the trailing entourage. Indeed, whenever my eyes met with anyone there, I didn’t see disapproval or amusement like back on Earth Prime. Are they used to different appearances? Don’t they care? One thing they clearly cared about was She. I don’t know what her function was in this society, but I could tell that whatever it was people knew better than to cross her path.
“They are scared of you!” I realized.
“Mind your business, Mazula,” She cut me off. “By the way, we’ve already arrived.”
We came to a place with an elevator attached to the side of the building. The elevator door faded away, and we stepped in. The inside walls were completely transparent, including a barely opaque floor. I have no fear of heights. I really don’t. But the Unkari messed with my senses too much lately, so my brain was justified in expecting to be dropped to the ground at any point.
This mission was making me twitch, and I didn’t like it.
The elevator went up twenty-seven floors and stopped. The door faded away for the second time, and we entered a dimly lit room that looked like a large high-tech cave: uneven walls had the appeal of ruggedness, and yet they were clearly purposefully designed this way.
“Hello, Desiree. It is good to finally meet you.”
I heard the voice, coming seemingly from everywhere.
“Who’s here?”
“I am Otis Solarin,” said the voice, and manifested as a hologram in front of us.
The old man’s eyes beamed with excitement.
“Desiree, my girl, it is an honor to meet one of my descendants. Look at you! So…strong!”
I glanced at She, who stood beside me. “Tell your bosses to adjust the sensitivity settings of this simulation,” I said, disregarding the hologram. But the hologram refused to be disregarded.
“Forgive me, dear, I am not a simulation. I am… I was about to say ‘flesh and blood,’ but there is no flesh and no blood in me, as you can see. I am confusing you. I am Otis Solarin, your great-great-grandfather.”
“Ok, so you are a simulation of my great-great-grandpa,” I said in a mocking tone. “So what!”
“She, tell her.”
“Desiree, this is a sentient hologram. And more accurately, this is your relative’s consciousness projected on a neuro-photonic matrix. Dr. Solarin is as sentient as you and me.”
The self-proclaimed Solarin took me by the hand. The touch was soft, as if it was skin, but not warm. Holding my hand, he lightly tugged me towards the back of the room, where he had some unusual technology that at least in part looked organic. The corner was set up as a workstation, with a desk and a chair, and two couches arranged in an L shape in front of the desk. I followed to where I was directed and eased my weary body into the soft cradle of the couch.
Solarin was fidgeting, shifting from foot to foot as he tried to find a comfortable position for his hands. “Do you still play hoverball on Earth Prime? Who won last year’s championship?” Solarin was glowing with excitement. He looked like a child on Christmas morning, right before ripping the wrappings off a present.
“Stop the circus already!” I snapped. “What is this place? Who are all these humans?”
My tone seemed to put urgency in the matter, and Solarin began to talk.
“I am sorry, Lieutenant. I know how strange it all must appear to you.”
“Oh, you do?”
“Certainly I do. When I arrived here, three hundred years ago, I was shocked to find out that there was a population of several million people living among the Unkari.”
“Several million? And you couldn’t figure out how to escape?”
“We are not prisoners. This is our home. For this generation, anyway.”
“AAAAH… Stop talking in riddles! I need water. Do you have water?”
After a minute one of the guards brought a tall green glass. I ran a quick chem scan. It really was water - clean and safe to drink. I downed the entire glass in a few gulps. The emerging headache began to subside.
“Now, start talking. No bullshit. No riddles. Talk.”
***
“I know you have many questions, and I was told to answer them to the fullest, so we have a lot of ground to cover, and nearly not enough time. First of all, you are on Lenauri, the home planet of two Unkari dynasties: Enkri and Katu.”
“Two dynasties? That’s new.”<
br />
“Our government did not know a lot, but whatever little they knew, they did not share with the public.”
That much I already knew. Ever since the First Contact, paranoia was the only consistent characteristic in our politics. Solarin assumed a lecture mode, probably remembering his days in the university auditorium. Finally, his hands found a comfortable position, folded behind his back, and he continued.
“First of all, you need to understand something about Lenauri. This world orbits a dim star at an astonishing distance of seventy-five AUs, that is seventy-five times the distance from Sun to Earth. Lenauri orbits the star in 240.170 human years. This is one Unkari year.”
“How long do they live anyway?”
“They live on average 200 years. Unkari years, that is. If you do the math, that’s forty-eight million human years, but Unkari history has records of the longest-living member of the Katu dynasty who passed away at the ripe age of sixty-five million human years old.”
The number was impossible to wrap my head around, but at least that explained why the Unkari negotiated with humans over the property issues that were five billion years away. From their perspective, in only two or three Unkari generations, Sagittarius Dwarf would completely lose its structural integrity and be absorbed into the Milky Way. According to Dr. Solarin, Sagittarius Dwarf completed a loop around the Milky Way every one hundred million years. For an average Unkari, that was a relatively small timescale. From their perspective, they lived in a volatile dying world. That explained a lot. It was astonishing that we didn’t know about it before.
Or did we? Was the government concealing this information?
Too many questions raced through my head as I listened to Solarin’s briefing. “The Unkari evolved on this planet, and although they colonized many worlds, their entire metabolism and biochemistry is firmly tied to the conditions on Lenauri. Since their species are so long-lived, even by the universe’s standards, they did not develop flexible adaptive mechanisms like humans did during the course of evolution.”
Solarin busily gesticulated and paced back and forth.
“What I am trying to say is that the Unkari are intimately connected to the natural cycles of Lenauri. If you keep that in mind, you will understand the nature of the Enkri and Katu dynasties. Now, you already know that the Unkari year lasts 240.170 human years. How long do you think their day lasts? Don’t strain yourself, dear. Lenauri’s revolution period around its axis is 658 human years: 329 years of day, and 329 years of night. This cycle makes the basis of the Unkari life cycle. Lenauri is a large world, about three times the size of Earth. For 329 years, one part of the planet faces the star, while the other part is in the dark. The Unkari on the dark side hibernate, while the Unkari on the star-lit side take care of all businesses, down to foreign policy, economics, and defence. Hence the two dynasties that take shifts in running the Unkari civilization: Enkri and Katu.”
“Who’s in charge now?”
“Right now, it is the Enkri day. It started in 2260 and will be over very shortly, in 2589. Enkri made the official First Contact with Earth in 2275 and tried to negotiate. Enkri provided abundant information to the Earth Nations, but our leadership was not motivated to negotiate. Enkri time is running out, Desiree. And trust me, humanity does not want to meet Katu day without firmly established diplomatic relations.”
“Why?”
“Let’s put it this way. Enkri and Katu have their philosophic differences when it comes to humans. There is a lot I still do not understand myself, but suffice to say, remember the old human tales about alien abductions? If you look into the history carefully, the first records of abductions can be traced to the 1930s. Do the math. Katu day started in 1931. When they awoke, they saw that humans made tremendous advances in technology and were looking at space as the next frontier. Katu knew, within their one day, they would see dramatic changes in human technology.”
“It makes sense. From their perspective, humans could not be disregarded any more.”
“Exactly. The other thing that Katu discovered when they woke up were how violent and contemptuous humans had become, how much they had increased their sheer destructive power. Observing humans from afar was not a viable option anymore. Katu needed to understand what made humans tick, how we think, the extent of our loyalty to humanity, and where our loyalties are in general. As the result of three global wars, Katu clearly believed that human loyalty was a fictional concept, and for each individual human it meant something different.”
“So… are you saying… all these people here… were abducted?”
“This place, Istanbul, is filled with the abducted descendants of the Katu day, except it was not as nice and liveable during the Katu reign. In fact, this place had no name at all. I named it Istanbul when I arrived here in 2284. Actually, I was the first human to voluntarily go with the Unkari. When Enkri woke up, they abandoned the research carried out by Katu which relied on fresh human samples. They also tore down the barracks and built this city to give humans as close to a normal life as they could.”
“Forgive me for interrupting, but what’s up with all the monkeys?”
“Ah, monkeys. You will notice a lot of quirks in what the Unkari created here. Monkeys are just one of them. This is actually the result of the abandoned Katu experiments. Even I don’t have access to the primate research. Supposedly it has something to do with our evolution. When Enkri awoke, they abandoned the animal research as well. All these pets are descendants of lab animals. Katu had no interest in the usual human pets, so you won’t find cats or dogs here. It’s all monkeys.”
“I see.”
“The rest of the oddities here are because Enkri are huge fans of human science fiction. The Unkari don’t have anything like literature or movies, and at first they thought that humans were a race of pathological liars, because we constantly made up things that were not real. When I explained what fiction meant to us, that it derived from our drive towards excellence and achievement, all of a sudden they began reading everything they could get a hold of. Without a doubt, Enkri know our fiction better than we. That is why you will find Unkari trying to create things that exist only in our fiction. Their technological prowess made it possible for the Unkari to make these things real.”
“Sci-fi loving aliens? Ok, this may be the craziest thing I’ve heard so far.”
“I know, I know, it is a lot to stomach at once.”
“I still don’t know what happened to you. What - I mean, who - are you now?”
“Fair enough. When I arrived here, I was sick. I had a terminal tumor, and very little time left to live. That’s partly why the Unkari agreed to bring me here. They could not fix my health, but they could give me a new form of existence, a digital one. They said they were inspired by a science fiction story of a sentient hologram from an old 2-D TV series called Star Trek. I am actually a big fan of it now. But I digress. Time is of the essence. Anyway, my body died, but a digital copy of my mind lives.”
“Ok. For argument’s sake, let’s say I agree with you. What can you do, being a hologram, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I can do just about anything here.”
“What do you mean? You are made of photons!”
“Ok, I don’t know if you are ready for it. But here it goes. This whole place is a holographic projection. I - like everything else you see around you - am made of light.”
19
REPRESENTATIVE
Solarin and I had been talking for over an hour when She received some kind of a ping signal that came from an ear-plug device. She excused herself and stepped outside, while the two guards reinforced their warning pose and fixated on us with even more intensity.
I wanted to ask Solarin how to escape, but the serious big guys peered their trained eyes at us, discouraging any funny business. In less than a minute, She returned to us and insisted tha
t we cut the audience short because we were expected elsewhere.
I presumed that elsewhere meant my trial, and I was right.
The few minutes it took us to get in the elevator and outside the building, I spent recapping the situation. What was I supposed to think after talking to the hologram of my long-dead ancestor? Ok, assume there are two Unkari tribes: one of them likes us, and the other - not so much. One had attempted to establish diplomacy with us, whilst the other had abducted humans for centuries. And worst of all, the “good guys” were about to take a nap - one long 329-year nap. Within a year and change, humans would be facing the Katu Day, which just as well could be called Doom’s Day.
The more I thought about all of it, I found myself able to understand the motives of the Katu tribe. It was logical: An up-and-coming race of short-lived, ambitious, and destructive creatures was not a perfect choice for a neighbor. Aliens must serve their own interest, just like humans do. To me, the suspicious part was Enkri’s alleged affinity with humans. Could I believe in science-fiction-loving, benevolent, nearly immortal (by our standards) beings? What’s so special about us? That part made no sense; and whatever made no sense bothered me.
***
After visiting with Dr. Solarin, I was directed to the transporter, and we left the reservation. The transporter walls were transparent, and with my sight returned they gave me for the first time a glimpse of the Unkari world. The red star of Lenauri was in a position of late evening, and if I did not know that a day here lasted for centuries, I would think that the darkness was about to envelope this side of the planet.
Lenauri was a frozen world, beautiful and definitely alien. Green oceans were covered with a thick layer of exotic-looking fluorescent gasses. Green-blue mountains were made of rock-hard ice. Glowing cities nestled in the valleys, peering through the thick clouds rapidly shifting above the surface. “She, are you a hologram too?” I asked.
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