daynight

by Megan Thomason

  Once they’re done with the invasive interrogation, they check my eyes, ears, nose, heart, lungs, skin, and palpate my abdomen to make sure I’m not lying. Then the parasites drain my blood. I ask why, but they claim it is ‘standard procedure and will occur often,’ like I should know what their standard procedure is. Making sure my high DNT levels are still intact? The nurses then leave us be for a few minutes to confer with the doctor before returning to give both Blake and me shots ‘to help us further acclimate to our surroundings.’ The needle hurts going in and the sting lasts for several minutes after. When the nurse tells me she’ll see me tomorrow I am too upset to speak.

  To reach our training room we head out a set of double doors to a dimly lit outdoor walkway, illuminated by soft up-lights in the path and the occasional wall light. I lean over the walkway railing and it takes a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Once I do adapt to the new lighting my senses overload.

  I am indeed in an unknown place, albeit not enough different from Earth to think I’ve left it. Although it’s late evening the temperature is hotter than any record setting San Diego day, but very arid, desert-like heat. Despite it being dry, sweat immediately beads and starts to drip down my back. It won’t take long outdoors to be drenched in a sticky stench, but I try to ignore the fact my bra strap is uncomfortably soaking up all the mess and focus on what little I can see in the poor lighting.

  The walkway runs along the top edge of a very steep and deep canyon that is lit with a myriad of colors, making it look both eerie and majestic, if that’s possible. Sparse, dry, treeless vegetation in form of cacti and brush is scattered between what appears to be paved paths and a concrete floor. I look up at the sky, but the lights of the canyon obscure any view of a moon or stars. Long cables crisscross the canyons between platforms and I swear I see someone zipping across by pulley. Two enclosed ‘bridges’ are in view and from the whooshing noise emanating from them—some sort of train, perhaps?

  As we approach one of the spotlights shining into the canyon I see it is covered with a variety of large, nasty looking bugs. Beetles with long antennae, jumbo cockroaches, and fuzzy spiders. Remind me to stay away from the lights. Or maybe it’d be safer to know where and what the creatures are. I wonder what’s hiding in the brush, thinking of all the fun stuff I’d encountered or could’ve encountered on canyon hikes in San Diego. Snakes? Lizards? Scorpions? Coyotes and mountain lions? Hopefully most the wildlife has chosen to live outside the city borders.

  I screech when a cockroach at least four inches long lands on my shirt. It is no use to try to shake it off, as it has no intention of relocating without encouragement. “Please get it off me,” I say to our escort with urgency. “I hate bugs. Especially really large ones.” The escort keeps walking, but Blake plucks it off my shirt and flicks it a few feet away.

  “That was a waste of some good protein,” he jokes. The multi-colored lights and shadows make him look like a maniacal clown or an extra in a purposefully deranged music video.

  “Disgusting. The moment we’re expected to eat bugs will be the moment I head home,” I mumble, speeding up my walk to catch up with our escort. I can hear Blake laughing behind me, likely remembering my last attempt to jump ship.

  The sight of several men herding a pack of mules up the canyon, all loaded with boxes reminds me of my parents’ pictures of their trip to Santorini, Greece. My parents had ridden donkeys up a switchback trail cut into the cliffs and told us the donkeys were used to not only transport people, but supplies. I’d always envied their trips, but it’s my turn for an adventure.

  Blake appears to also be taking in the new landscape with awe, particularly when he sees a figure whooshing along one of the paths at high speeds by skateboard.

  “Suh-weet!” he says. “Can I try?” he signals to our escort.

  “Later. It’s time to move along. Your training room is up ahead on the right,” our escort says, first words spoken, in a low rumbly tone.

  “Where are all the people and the city center?” I ask. From my count, I’ve seen a few dozen people at most.

  “This is a restricted area solely used for training,” he explains. “And since you showed up off-season you won’t encounter the masses until you transfer to Garden City High.”

  “How many Recruits come during the peak season?” I ask.

  “More,” he says. Helpful.

  “What about the other Recruits who greeted me when I arrived yesterday?” I ask.

  “They already finished their training and are en-route to their final destination assignments.” He then rushes ahead, signaling our ‘conversation’ is over.

  Blake and I walk as slowly as allowed, until we’re pushed into a large room the size of a school gymnasium with its ceiling several stories high. The room’s walls are a sunny yellow, except for the one hundred-eighty degree curved screen directly ahead of us. We’re motioned to sit in two front-row chairs, center of a row containing what looks like massage chairs on steroids. Each row of chairs is suspended from the ceiling by heavy cables. Twenty seats per row times five rows equals a hundred seats. Do they really usually have that many Recruits?

  “This is sick,” Blake says to signify his approval of our training room, even though upon sitting down, we’re both strapped into the chairs like death row inmates. My chair is attached to Blake’s, our armrests shared. The seats are so close together I can’t help but brush my arm and shoulder against Blake’s, much like you’d experience on an airplane, though I lean away from him since I’m still irked that he called me the equivalent of a pampered princess. Why couldn’t he be a perfect gentleman like Ethan was? I sigh just thinking about Ethan and my fantasy that he carried me to my room and tucked me in upon my arrival.

  We’re each given a tablet computer device and simple instructions how to use it. Although it seems powerful, the function has been limited to serve for training purposes. We can type or record notes by voice annotation, as well as ask questions about each subject, and the answers are immediately pasted into the notes program. We’re warned, however, that we can only ask questions relevant to the subject being taught, as it is being taught. I test the claim by typing in ‘Where is Thera?’ and I get a standard response saying, ‘Please post your inquiries during training sessions relevant to the subject at hand,’ which isn’t very helpful.

  I’m less interested in the functions of the simple computer and more interested in the fact it has the now familiar ‘Industrial City’ logo on it. I haven’t met a product or device yet that didn’t have those markings—a telltale sign that capitalism isn’t alive and well here, and thus I’m betting democracy isn’t either. When I’d signed the SCI paperwork, Spud had mentioned that I’d be subject to the rules and regulations of the Institute. Well, get on with it then. I want to know what the rules are, folks. How stupid was I to sign those papers? My bet—off-the-charts.

  “Have you noticed that everything is manufactured in Industrial City?” I whisper to Blake.

  “Yeah, hard to miss the logos,” he says with a smirk. “So, are you talking to me now?” His eyes brighten. While my eyes are gold-rimmed green, his are a bright emerald color that are so pure they look manufactured.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t not talking to you. I just wasn’t talking while I dealt with some… bad memories… about the night of the explosion,” I say. Might as well be honest with him, so he realizes that he’s not to blame for my mood. He did say some things that were pretty nasty, but I decide to forgive, forget and give him my patented ‘all is right’ smile.

  “Of course,” he says. “I’m sorry, too. For the things I said. They were rude.” He maintains his gaze and I imagine him thinking, ‘but probably justified.’ What can I expect given how people perceive I was raised? My parents have money. They just choose not to spend it on or share it with their children, in an overblown effort to make sure we are anything but pampered. ‘You need to earn your own way in this world, not leech off us,’ my father always s
ays.

  I continue to stare at Blake’s eyes. The last time I saw eyes this pretty was when I met Ethan. Ethan’s sparkly sapphire eyes had blown me away. Blake’s eyes have a similar brightness and glimmer. “Do you wear contacts?” I ask. Maybe they have some new line of contacts that give cute guys an alien, jeweled feel.

  “Nope. These,” he says, pointing at his eyes, “are all natural. I’ve got perfect vision, even at night. I’m like a cat,” he jokes.

  Predatory cats come to mind. Lions, tigers, panthers, cheetahs… Blake simply does not give off the warm and fuzzy vibe of your average house cat. He radiates the bad boy vibe. Best to be wary of my flatmate. I sink back in my chair, trying to remember where the conversation started anyway. Oh yeah, Industrial City products and the implication that the democratic process doesn’t exist here.

  “Think our training will cover the uh, expectations or rules of wherever the heck we are? Garden City? Thera was it? Do you really believe we’re no longer on Earth?” I ask.

  “We were in the middle of the ocean one minute,” he responds, raising his eyebrows. “And then the next, we were on solid ground. So unless they figured out how to hide a giant island behind a floating barge, I’m thinking they’re onto something about the having left Earth thing.”

  “I guess,” I grumble, his condescending tone annoying me.

  Could it really be that easy? Our government spends billions of dollars on space programs and all it really takes is a short boat ride followed by an uncomfortable stroll down the hall of an abandoned building to hit intergalactic soil? If someone had discovered a way to leave Earth so easily why wouldn’t it be publicized? People cash in on lesser exploits everyday and this one would be akin to winning the lottery a thousand times over. Forget finding new Egyptian treasure, Biblical documents, or a new species of monkey, proof of human life beyond Earth? Now that’s huge. Front-page headlines and preempt-all-your-scheduled-TV-programming kind of huge.

  As I ponder, the screen lights up and the image of the tall man who’d greeted us this morning appears.

  “Welcome to Thera, Recruits. I’m sure you have many questions, and I’m confident we’ll get them answered for you. Our first unit will describe Thera and its city and unit structure. The second will describe the rules and regulations each inhabitant need know for their assigned unit.”

  To the contrary, I doubt they’ll make a dent in my questions.

  Mandatory exercise time is enforced at 2230 hours. Wouldn’t want the Recruits going soft. I’m happy to get out of that chair, though. As comfortable as they are, especially during the periodic messages, I was going insane. At the content of the training sessions and at the proximity to Blake, who despite the strong declaration of platonic intentions couldn’t help but brush his hand and arm against mine. And also because I nodded off and woke to my head on his shoulder. He looked all too amused at my unconscious attempt to be cozy. Ugh.

  I change into standard issue workout clothes in the ladies’ changing area, and get on the treadmill, working up to a light jog. Skimpy I think, about the clothes, which consist of a ‘barely there’ tank and short shorts. Wonder what they have the guys wear?

  Any questions I’d had about Blake’s relative strength to Tristan are answered when he enters, shirtless, into the gym and gets on the treadmill next to me. He barely glances my way before doubling my speed. The boy is slender but muscular, like a marathon runner or triathlete. Stunned that his physique is not of an emaciated meth addict, I awkwardly stumble and have to catch myself on the treadmill’s sidebars, lower my speed, and start up again. If he reacts to my blunder he doesn’t show it.

  I want and need to digest the material presented this evening and the terrifyingly cool way they presented some of it, but I’m too distracted by the figure next to me. All he would have had to do at Carmel Valley High was take off that flannel, flash his smile and join the track or swim team, and he could have had the pick of most any girl in our school. But instead he chose, and that’s what intrigues me—that he chose—to become invisible, hiding beneath the façade of a delinquent board-loving loser. I scour my memories of English class, searching for a single time he spoke up to participate and can’t think of one. Most of us thought he was probably strung out, too dumb to form a coherent comment, or asleep. But instead, not only does he score top two percent of California test takers and get selected to take the Second Chance Institute Test, but he snags the coveted spot. The boy is a mystery, and apparently a genius.

  After a half hour of jogging I can’t take it anymore. I’ve been watching beads of sweat careen down his muscular back like a pinball game and the effect destabilizes me. Thankfully, his personality repels me, since his body surely doesn’t seem to. I turn off the treadmill and go practice some meditative yoga moves I learned in gym class on the mat, facing the mirror. Blake, too, leaves the treadmill and heads to the corner behind me to lift weights. Needing to concentrate, I close my eyes. I left everything behind to become an SCI Recruit and need to understand what my next year will entail. My parents’ belief that my life will always revolve around a man will only become a self-fulfilling prophecy if I let it. And I refuse to let them be right. So, I block my past and present men from my mind and focus on Thera.

  The entire first training session focused on the planet we’d purportedly traveled to in less than five minutes time. Our host described Thera as an ‘inverse’ or ‘polar’ Earth. Due to lack of satellite technology they’ve had to explore it by ‘old-fashioned’ methods, but believe Thera is the exact size and shape of Earth. However, as our instructor described, it would be like viewing a negative in a dark room. Where land exists on Earth, there is sea on Thera; and vice versa for sea on Earth and land for Thera. That’s why we left Earth by sea and arrived on land. Even days and nights and the direction of the sun are supposedly inverted between Earth and Thera. The whole thing makes zero sense.

  How’d it work? We went through a ‘magic’ portal. Uh huh, because those exist. If I’m to drink their hopped-up Kool-Aid, Thera is largely unpopulated, with exception of SCI unit-built cities in various ‘habitable’ locations near ‘Earth’s portals.’ We entered a Pacific Ocean portal, one of a couple dozen or so access points. There are far fewer exit points than entry points, something I wanted to understand further, so I’d enquired as to the reason on my tablet computer, and found out that no one knows; that perhaps they haven’t discovered all the portals yet. Or they have no explanation because it is all a bunch of bull? We could be on a sound stage with cameras trained on us for all I know.

  I started to barrage my tablet with questions. Where’s the closest exit portal and can you please provide directions? Why does no one on Earth know about the portals? If it’s true we’re on a different planet, why’s it being kept a big secret? How many earthlings have randomly wandered into a portal and ended up on Thera? Do you feel guilty about the overpopulation problems in India and elsewhere, when you’ve found a perfectly habitable world that has plenty of room? I pounded on the worthless piece of electronic garbage when it offered up crap like, ‘only select people can pass through the portals, limiting entry numbers.’ Blake pried the device out of my hands, and refused to return it until I’d promised not to break it.

  Apparently, the Bermuda Triangle is the largest of the portals and has both entry and exit points, and is the locale of Import/Export City. They’d rattled off the names of dozens of cities too fast to write down, but I did catch Industrial City, Military City, Farm City, Food City, and Power City. I wonder why the naming conventions are so provincial. Must be that the same not-so-enterprising guy who discovered Thera and decided not to cash in named everything out of his simpleton vocabulary.

  As the session continued I got more upset, at one point demanding that they “prove it.” Particularly about the claim that on Thera the sun rises in the West, and settles in the East. I’d asked as nicely as possible, “Give me a compass then,” but neither the guy on the screen or my tablet complied wi
th the request. How can they possibly expect us to believe such extreme statements just because they claim it to be true?

  After the substandard geography lesson, we’d moved onto meteorology. Our resident expert on all things alien explained that the weather is much more extreme on Thera, and “more suitable to exchanging days and nights.” Thus, all activity on Thera happens at night with sleeping done during the day. Extreme temperature variations dictate the shift, with the high reaching upwards of 150 degrees during the day and down to eighty or ninety degrees at night. It had to have been at least a hundred, if not a hundred ten when we were out there, so I finally find something I can believe. That does explain the wacky schedule they’ve got us on with the twenty-four hour clocks, but the thought of life in darkness terrifies me, even if the artificial lights they use are beautiful. Special ‘color spectrum’ lighting is used in the canyons and all public areas. Purportedly unique to Thera, the lights stay cool and like a prism can reflect out a full rainbow’s array of colors, creating the light show we’d seen.

  Garden City dates back to ancient times and is believed to be the original city on Thera. Excavations done to build modern residences have found old murals thousands of years old, which depict small residences surrounded by lush gardens, thus the name. Hmmm, can you say global warming? Because all I saw was some serious desert landscape, certainly nothing that’d be worthy of painting. Despite the lack of greenery now, the residents of the city have continued the tradition and painted life-sized murals of gardens throughout the city’s buildings and homes.

  Thera headquarters is located in Garden City, as are all scientific studies related to the phenomenon behind Earth’s sister world. And although the ‘management’ for the SCI resides here, locally instituted ‘governing bodies’ oversee the night-to-night operation of each city. Thousands of scientists and doctors reside in the city and manage hundreds of research projects, including ‘Cleaving,’ although most are considered classified.