by J. K. Haugen
“What about your family Johnny?” she asked. “Won’t someone be missing you too?”
“No, not really, I lost my mom a few years ago.” he answered. “That was hard, we were really close.”
“And your dad?” she asked.
“They used to call him, boy genius too.” he said with a smile. “The most brilliant man I have ever known, he was my hero.”
“Is he gone too?” she asked, with sympathy in her voice.
“His mind is gone,” said John, “he has Alzheimer’s. It runs in our family. My dad’s dad, his brother, and then him, they all suffered from it. I am so afraid that it will be my fate as well. He’s still alive but the man that was my dad, has passed, he’s been gone a long, long time. That’s why you need to call your dad now, while you have a chance.”
“John,” Ayden’s voice came softly, “if Sarah is to call her father we need to do it quickly. My signal is almost too far out of range of the Delvin One station and I cannot reconnect at this distance. You have about three of your minutes, before we lose the signal completely.”
Sarah called out her dad’s office phone number to Ayden. She felt her heart begin to pound faster and harder with every ring.
“Hello?” she heard. It was her dad’s voice.
“Daddy?” she called out, but the voice just continued…
“…I’m Sorry, I can’t come to the phone right now. I have gone searching for my daughter who was lost with an associate and her helicopter one week ago. If you have any information about her, please leave a message and I will get back to you just as soon as I can. And…Sarah, if you hear this, I’m come’n baby…hold on. I will never give up until your found”...BEEEEEP!
She was almost speechless, “I have to leave a message?” she thought, “The last time he may ever hear my voice, and it’s on an answering machine? What do I say?”
She thought for a brief second and then began to speak. “Hi daddy, It…its Sarah. I’m ok, oh and so is Johnny. This signal won’t last long so I will tell you as much as I can. Please don’t worry, we are safe. We found’ em dad…We actually found’ em. The ones who wrote the book. They’re real, you were right.”
Her voice began to tremble as she continued. “I can’t tell you where we are right now, because I’m not really sure but we are underground heading to their lost city… I know this all sounds crazy and you must be thinking that I bumped my head a little too hard, but I don’t have enough time to explain it all right now. Dad… I know you are looking for me, you need to stop. You won’t find me, I’m too far now, but I’m coming home daddy…I’m coming home!”
Suddenly the phone clicked, as if someone was answering it. “Sarah?” her dad yelled, “Don’t hang up!”
“Dad, I’m so happy you’re there. I love you, sooo much!” she said with a joyful tone, but he could hear the fear in her voice.
“Where are you?” he asked impatiently.”
“I don’t actually know,” she said, “but I think we’re getting closer now, I can feel us slowing down.”
“What?” he asked completely confused.
“It’s amazing dad. You wouldn’t believe the wondrous things we’ve seen so far, and we’re almost to the city now. No worries daddy, we should be home soon and I will explain everything. I just wanted to tell you, how very much I love you and how none of this is your fault, and how much mom would be proud of the way you have raised me.”
“Why does it sound like your telling me goodbye?” he said.
“Well dad,” she answered softly, “just in case we don’t…”
“Sarah,” interrupted Ayden, “we will lose signal in 6 seconds…”
“Dad… I have to go now…” she said, with tears in her voice.
“No Sarah…Baby!” he said in desperation.
“I love you daddy,” he heard, just as the line went completely dead. The phone fell from his fingers and he hit his knees. With his hands on his head and his fingers gripped into his hair, he said sobbing, “I love you too!”
In his entire life, he had never felt so helpless or so broken hearted. Not even when his wife was lost to cancer. He was a brand new daddy then and not sure if he could rise to the task or not. “But she’s so strong!” he thought. He knew that if anyone could find their way home it would be Sarah. With nothing else, but sheer will-power alone, she would find her way. “You’re just like your mom.” he said. “Good luck sweetheart, I’ll leave the key under the mat for you…” he added, just like he did when she would go out with her friends, as a teenager.
“I’m sorry Sarah,” said Ayden, “The signal has been lost.”
“That’s ok Ayden, thank you for connecting us. It gave me hope and even more determination.” The tube began to change colors and they started to feel themselves get a little heavier as they slowed down again.
John's heart was beating hard in his chest with the excitement of what they would find next. “Ayden, are we getting close to the city now?” he asked with a hopeful voice.”
“I am not sure” said Ayden, “It seems that the full map to the city has been deleted from my memory.”
“By who?” Sarah asked.
“By me, I think, or at least the real me, before I left the program for you to find. I am not entirely sure why either. However, it seems the original Ayden did not want the location of the lost scrolls or the city to be found by just anyone. So he was very careful in what information he left in my cyntell core.”
“Well, we're about to find out!” said Sarah. They began to slow down rapidly, as they entered into another large chamber. Once again, they felt themselves falling as the water started to drain quickly. This time John and Sarah were able to position their legs beneath them and were placed softly at the bottom. “See Johnny, we're get'n pretty good at this,” said Sarah with a giggle.
John opened the hatch and they climbed out into what they both hoped would be the entrance to the city. As they stepped through the main portal the room around them began to illuminate.
“Connecting…” Ayden's voice came loudly and with a firmness that they hadn’t heard from him before.
“Connecting to what?” asked Sarah, with an uneasy voice. Just then, the wall in front of them began to glow and became clear. On the other side of it, one by one, great doors above them started to open and giant domes of light in the ceiling began to turn on with loud thumps and a soft hum.
With each step they took, more lights began to glow around them on the walls and on the floor. There were counter top control panels with all kinds of colors and lights and on the transparent wall in front of them was what seemed to be a giant full scale map.
“This must be some kind of control center or security office.” said John. As he put his hand to the screen he could slide, zoom, change and move the images just as he had done on his small tablet computer in his office. “Here, look at this.” he said to Sarah calling her over.
“Incredible, it's a big computer screen.” she said with amazement in her eyes.
“This is our main database. It has thousands of zetabytes, about a trillion of your gigabytes, worth of information about my people, our culture and our history.” said Ayden. He looked out through the transparent control panel window at the vast city below them, and proudly he said, “Welcome… to Tamarac….
Chapter 9
~What Happened to Them?~
John took the key he had found hidden in the first scroll from his pocket. “The key to the city.” he thought to himself. He looked over the main control panel. Trying to figure out where it might fit, or where exactly, the door out to the city actually was.
“How do we get into the city from here?” asked John out loud. “Where’s the door Ayden?”
“You must use the key and then enter the voice authorization code to enter the city. I will open the access panel.” answered Ayden. A hidden panel on the main console automatically opened and a shelf began to rise up from underneath the console. It had a large red button,
a small green button, a keyhole, and a hand scanner.
Ayden told John to place his hand over the hand scanner after inserting the key into the keyhole. John did what he asked and a voice came from the large screen in front of them, “Voice identity required,” it said.
“Ayden, access code 09091979” said Ayden, very loudly.
“Identity Confirmed!” the voice said. “Please turn access key now.”
Ayden told John to push the green button and turn the key. As he hit the button he could feel the key start to pull itself deeper into the machine, when it stopped, he quickly turned it to the right. “Access Granted!” said the voice.
“Okay John,” said Ayden, “press the large red button now and stand clear.” John pressed the button and it seemed that the entire place came to life. They saw red flashing lights. Symbols moving and changing on all of the screens, and the silence was broken by a very loud beeping noise and other strange sounds.
The large screen in front of them began to lose its lucidity and quickly rose up into the ceiling above their heads. John looked out over the city, he felt so incredibly small. Standing from what reminded him of one of the box seats at the Kingdome in Seattle.
When he was a boy, his dad had taken him to his first game as guests of a colleague of his, who had a regular box up in the stands. To John it might as well of been on a cloud or the top of Mount Everest. He had never felt so insignificant and vulnerable as he did looking out over the football field.
He then remembered, that he had in fact, felt that same way one other time. He remembered being in awe at the incredible view and the sheer vastness of the space below him when he had visited the Grand Canyon. And now, standing here, looking over this enormous chasm of lights and streets and buildings larger than any city he had ever seen before, those feelings began to come pouring back.
The significance of his life, that had seemed so important a week ago now felt meaningless and all together lonely, especially now, as he began to look around at the enormous metropolis below him. There was no movement, no sounds, no people, birds, or animals of any kind. Nothingness, that’s all he felt, except for the soft but silent breeze he felt on his cheek.
“What happened to all of them, Ayden?” he asked in a whisper, feeling like he was in a ghost town and may wake the dead if he spoke to loudly.
“We were forced to leave.” said Ayden in a saddened tone. “She is absolutely magnificent though, isn’t she,” he asked, “my home? It feels like I was here just yesterday, like I had never left. I can remember the people crying and rushing around, falling and being trampled in the crowds, children crying and calling out for their parents. Everyone was trying to save what they could of their belongings. Most of all, they were trying to stay together with their families, so that they would not lose a loved one in all of the madness. Everyone was praying to Agodah that they themselves would not be lost and forgotten…I can hear them… I can feel them.”
Ayden looked out now in silence. His eyes changed to a darker shade of grey. He stood next to Sarah and John with his hands outstretched as if he were reaching out to the people he saw in his memories. Both John and Sarah could tell that he felt great sadness and remorse that he could not save his people.
“It isn’t your fault,” John said, “you weren’t even really here, Ayden was.”
“Thank you John,” he answered, “but the haunted screams from my memory files are just as real and just as loud as if I had been here…You see to me…I am him.”
“I am sorry Ayden, for all the terrible memories you have been made to carry with you.” said Sarah, reaching out for Ayden’s hand as if to hold it in hers.
“Thank you both, but there are good memories in here also.” he said smiling. “We need to go now, I will take you into the city and you can get some rest in my home, Ayden’s home I mean.”
They followed Ayden down a path in front of them to another floating escalator like the one at the mall. They rode it in silence, not saying another word, down to the city street below. As they each stepped off, one by one, an eerie feeling ran across the group.
John imagined standing in Time Square. He saw in his mind, cars driving by and people walking busily to their destinations. He saw street performers on the corners of each block and every kind of street vender, pushing carts, standing behind booths and behind tables with their wares to sell to the people as they passed by.
He imagined taxi drivers, zooming by, honking at other cars and drivers for cutting them off in all the traffic. He envisioned steam rising up from the manholes and heard the sounds of jackhammers and other construction in the background. Then he imagined all of that, just disappearing all at once, as he stood there in the streets of Tamarac, cold and silent, vast and empty.
“There must have been millions of people here. Where did they all go Ayden?” John asked. “How is it possible to evacuate that many people from such a massive city?”
“I don’t know how or where,” said Ayden. “That information was left out of my memory files. There are only images of right before the great evacuation. The panic and helplessness, and chaos that ensued here, is all I see. I am hoping that Ayden will fill in the gaps for us when we find the pages that he left for you.”
Standing on what John thought must be Main Street, he felt like the towering and immensely majestic skyscrapers on either side of them, could only be built by gods. As if he were standing in Asgard itself, home of the Norse gods like Odin and Thor, or maybe Mount Olympus home of Zeus and the twelve Greek Olympian Gods.
“Could this be where the old religions came from?” he said to Sarah. “Might they have all been based in truth?”
“Or,” she asked, “are we standing right in the middle of the lost city of Atlantis?”
“Couldn’t they all be one in the same?” asked John.
Sarah looked around in amazement. “All the ancient texts talk about a great city where their deities live, or where they come from.” She said. “Whether they call it Shangri-La or even Heaven. Even if this is the place that started all of the mythology and theology of our world, there is no doubt in my heart or my mind that right now…we are truly walking in the footsteps of the Gods.”
“We are not Gods,” said Ayden sharply, “If we were, we would not have let this happen.”
“Maybe so Ayden,” she said, “but mankind, even with today’s level of intelligence and technology, could not even come close to building such incredible and monumental structures. We wouldn’t even be able to reproduce something like the great pyramids in Egypt. To us, you are very much God like. How far is your house from here?” she asked.
“We must go towards the center of the city, close to the learning center.” he answered.
John looked ahead of them almost as far as he could see down the street that they were walking down. At the end he could barely see a large building that stretched from one side of the street to the other. He looked up towards the sky dome and there he saw the magnificent capstone at the top of the pyramid. It almost looked like it touched the top of the artificial sky. “That’s where we're going?” he asked, “Must be twenty miles from here, that’s almost a ten hour walk.”
“There is no need to walk,” said Ayden smiling, “come with me.”
They walked up to a giant glass doorway in the building next to them. As John stepped up to the door and outstretched his right hand to push it open, the great glass door disappeared and the lobby of the building lit up. There were, what seemed to be, great spirals, each of them at least a football field in diameter, ten of them in all. Each spiral towered all the way through to the top of the sky scraper.
“Place your hand here.” said Ayden, pointing at a familiar looking control panel. John had seen this panel before, in the Delvin control room that opened the door to the wishing well. As John placed his hand on the panel the first of the large spirals began to turn. Like a giant corkscrew it seemed to be moving up from the floor.
To John and Sarah�
��s surprise the spirals at the floor began to fill up with small elongated capsules. They were each completely smooth and round. They looked like they were made from dark tinted glass or acrylic about the size of a small single person ultra-light cockpit. However, they were like nothing either of them had ever seen before.
One end of the capsule came to a sharp point like the nose cone of the model rockets John and his dad built when he was a boy, but more rounded then cone shaped. The almost tear shaped capsules seemed to hover on the spiral tracks that brought them up from the floor.
“These vehicles will take us where we need to go.” said Ayden. “Just touch the capsule and you will be able to enter it.
Sarah reached out and touched the side of the first capsule. As the tips of her fingers touched the smooth sides, her fingers began to disappear into the side of it; as if pushing into a giant soap bubble. The pressure from her fingertips being pushed into the side of it, sent ripples through the glass.
“Wow, it’s a bubble, completely soft.” she said excitedly. She pushed her hand all the way through the surface. She did the same with her other hand, then her head and soon her whole body followed until she was completely consumed by the capsule.
John rolled his eyes at her, not knowing if it was courage or lack of fear or plain old stupidity, that always made her rush into everything without thinking about it first.
John reached out with both hands and slowly pushed through the side of the second one, as if diving into a swimming pool. His entire body seemed to be sucked into it. Lying on his stomach, John floated within the capsule.
He reached out in front of him and the gel like shell of the capsule began to glow and at two points in front of him, it began to change shape. The ripples all began moving together and two handles began to form. They seemed to form perfectly into John’s hands and the dark tinted shell began to illuminate and become crystal clear.