Land of Nod, The Artifact

by Gary Hoover

  Then he pushed the ‘seat’ button and a blue shield appeared covering the upper lip of the bowl. Like the lid, it seemed to have formed from an energy field, but now that it was in place, it felt solid.

  I don’t know which is cooler, the flying car or this, Jeff thought, smiling to himself. I guess bacteria can’t grow on surfaces . . . that don’t actually exist.

  He instinctively looked over his shoulder, fearing for a moment that his hosts would witness his fascination with the toilet and suspect something was up, but the door was closed behind him.

  After he had figured things out satisfactorily and completed the important matters, he found Baldwin who showed him to a place at a casually set table in the kitchen.

  Knife, fork, spoon, Jeff noticed.

  How is it that some things were so similar to what I know and yet . . .

  That’s it!! Jeff thought. I must be in the future. He wasn’t sure why it took him so long to figure it out. He was thrown by the forest . . . but what about the forest? Why would there be such unusual creatures in the future? In the time it would take them to evolve . . . even under extraordinary circumstances . . . human society would have changed much more dramatically than what he was seeing . . . wouldn’t it?

  Well it was at least something to work with. Maybe I can find some more clues.

  Artimus put some steaming trays on the table and took his seat.

  Jeff sat and waited. What was the etiquette here? Would they say grace? Would Jeff be expected to do anything? He began to fidget nervously.

  “Let us give thanks,” Artimus said cheerfully.

  Jeff bowed his head, but peeked and saw that everybody else had heads up and eyes open. He kept his head somewhat bowed, but tried not to make it too obvious.

  “Lord, thank you for this hearty meal, and please guide us in best serving those who need our help . . . particularly in these difficult times.”

  That was it - short and sweet.

  Artimus handed a tray of what appeared to be meat to Baldwin who forked out a generous portion for himself before passing it to Nahima.

  “I apologize,” Artimus said, “but since Nahima and Baldwin’s mother passed away, I’m afraid I’ve been forced to fumble around in the kitchen.

  “It may not be good, but nobody has died . . . yet. . .

  “Maybe a little violent vomiting, but no deaths.” He laughed, then his face turned mock serious as he leaned over to Nahima and said, in a stage whisper: “That Peterson kid didn’t really count, did he?”

  “No . . . no . . .” Nahima said, “He was scrawny. It wasn’t because the food was that bad, but he just didn’t have enough body mass. Why I’ll bet he wasn’t much heavier than Jeff here.”

  They all looked at Jeff, and then the whole table broke out in loud, hearty laughter.

  “Don’t worry,” Nahima said. “Dad really is a great cook.”

  Jeff took a bite of some type of meat in a gravy and it really was delicious - very soft and light but with some subtle interesting flavors.

  “This is one of the best things I’ve ever tasted,” he said honestly.

  Chapter 17:

  “I hate to impose . . .” Jeff apologized.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Baldwin said with a grin. “I don’t mind. It’s sort of fun to have someone else around.”

  He picked up several books that were spread over the bed Jeff would be using. Jeff looked around, curious about what Baldwin would do with the books. The room was a mess and there didn’t seem to be much empty space.

  As if in answer to Jeff’s unspoken question, Baldwin dropped them loudly and sloppily on the floor. “Besides, Dad’s a little easier to get along with when we have a guest.”

  “Really? He seemed like he was relaxed and easy-going to me,” Jeff said a bit surprised.

  “Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great guy . . . he just expects a lot. Sometimes I feel like I’ll never be as smart as he is, and I worry I’ll let him down . . .”

  Jeff could relate to that. He often thought his own father was so smart that he wondered if he could ever live up to the legacy. There was a strange pressure being the son of a brilliant man. ‘Are you going to be a physicist too?’ his father’s friends would ask when they met him. ‘He’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and he’s always telling me how bright you are . . .’

  Jeff cringed as he thought of those conversations. He should have been flattered, but it always felt like too much pressure at that point in his life. He was just worried about passing algebra, and he couldn’t ever imagine doing the great things people seemed to expect of him.

  . . . I’m letting myself get distracted. This is the perfect opportunity to find out more about where I am. I’ve got amnesia after all, so some stupid questions should be excusable.

  “Uhhhh,” he began. “This is going to sound like a stupid question, but what year is it?”

  Baldwin laughed then started to turn red. “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t laugh. It just seems . . . weird to not even know what year it is. It’s 545.”

  545? That doesn’t sound like the future . . . unless they had changed the way they count years.

  Jeff tried to think of other ways he could get information without pushing it.

  “Do you have a globe?”

  “Sure.” Baldwin slid some books aside on his desk and pushed a button. A projection of a 12” diameter globe appeared above the desk and Baldwin gave it a good spin. Even though it seemed to be a projection, it reacted to his touch. “Lights off,” Baldwin said and the lights dimmed until the only light was coming from the globe, illuminating Jeff and Baldwin’s faces with an eerie, shifting light.

  Jeff . . . slowly and a little nervously . . . reached toward it. He couldn’t feel it, but it . . . could feel him.

  It stopped spinning as soon as his hand hit what would have been its surface. He moved his hand, imagining it was a solid globe, and it moved with his hand.

  It was clearly not the Earth. The ratio of land to water was roughly the same as Earth’s, and there were two large land masses on opposite sides of the globe - similar to Earth, but the shapes were completely different.

  There seemed to be areas and regions listed, but not the sort of dense cities that one would see on a map of the United States, for example.

  Jeff wondered how much he could get away with asking before Baldwin got suspicious, but his curiosity was beginning to overwhelm his cautiousness.

  “Where . . . uhhhh, where are we?” Jeff tensed a bit, hoping Baldwin wouldn’t question if there wasn’t something more than amnesia going on.

  Baldwin just shook his head and tried to suppress a laugh. “You really are out of it, aren’t you?”

  Jeff nodded sheepishly and was beginning to feel less nervous about being discovered and more guilty for his deception.

  “Here,” Baldwin put his finger on an area labeled ‘Caesurmia’ near the eastern edge of one of the land masses.

  “Zoom in.” He said and the globe complied. The image never stretched beyond the boundaries of the original globe, but it flattened into a flat map as it zoomed in. Baldwin touched the edge of the image when it was where he wanted, and it stopped zooming.

  Jeff stared at the detailed image of a sprawling city surrounded by suburbs surrounded by farmland. Jeff could see the surrounding arid area they had flown over, and the forest beyond that. It was an amazingly detailed three-dimensional image – it didn’t look like a photograph or a map – it seemed to actually have all of the buildings, mountains etc. in relief with perfect proportions. Jeff felt like he was a giant actually looking down at a real landscape.

  “The forest,” Jeff said. “Does anyone live out there?”

  “A few people,” Baldwin said. “Most people live in Caesurmia and Doclotnury, but there are some people who live out in the forest, scattered around . . . I couldn’t imagine that . . . too dangerous.” Baldwin suppressed an involuntary shiver.

  “Yeah, I noticed,” Je
ff commented.

  “You don’t have any idea why you were out there?” Baldwin asked.

  Jeff shook his head and tried to change the subject. “Doclotnury. You mentioned Doclotnury. Where’s that?”

  “Zoom out.” Baldwin said, and the globe went back to full zoom. Baldwin turned it a quarter turn and Jeff could see ‘Doclotnury’ clearly labeled toward the western edge of the same land mass that Caesurmia was on.

  Jeff reached out and rocked the globe back and forth, getting a feel for it before rotating it around to the other land mass on the opposite side.

  “Are there people living here?” he turned the globe around and pointed to the land mass on the opposite side of the globe.

  Baldwin laughed. “No, the pheerions live over there. I don‘t think they‘d like the idea of people trying to live there.”

  “Pheerions?” Jeff wondered who . . . or what would dominate a continent so that this technologically advanced society wouldn’t consider living there.

  “You don’t even know what a pheerion is?” Baldwin grinned slightly devilishly. “Image – pheerion,” Baldwin said and the globe blurred and turned into a holographic image.

  Jeff gaped. In his mind, he was stumbling backward and clutching his chest Fred Sanford-like, but in reality, he just stared with his mouth open.

  The image was the creature he had been seeing in his dreams.

  Chapter 18:

  Jeff was in a daze as he prepared for bed. He had been having trouble sleeping back home because he had been dreaming about a terrifying creature . . . And now he had just seen a holographic image of that creature.

  There had been moments since he arrived that he considered this whole thing could be a dream, but he kept coming back to fact that it simply wasn’t. When Jeff did dream, he sometimes couldn’t tell if he was dreaming or not . . . but when he was awake, there was no ambiguity.

  When he was awake, there was always a clear lucidity. He always knew where he was and where he had been. He could see and feel and smell everything clearly, and that’s how he felt now.

  The events of the past 10 hours had been so unbelievable, it almost seemed that it had to be a dream, but his clear perception of his surroundings left him absolutely certain that he was awake and fully aware of what was going on around him.

  Could boredom actually lead to madness? Was it possible for one’s brain to become so disinterested with the mundanity of life that it started dreaming while the person was still awake?

  “There’s no school this week, so you can hang around with me tomorrow,” Baldwin said. He seemed to be enjoying the idea of having an unexpected companion. “Dad can check at work and see if he can track down your family.”

  Artimus had taken an image of Jeff’s retina and was planning on running it through the computer the next day. Jeff realized he’d have to come clean soon, but he wanted to know as much as he could about this place before he did. He hoped Artimus wouldn’t be going to too much trouble. Artimus had assured Jeff that the task wouldn‘t be difficult, but Jeff worried he might have been being polite.

  Baldwin turned the lights off. Jeff’s eyes were open and he was staring at the ceiling. He was absolutely EXHAUSTED, but he didn’t want to have the dreams again - particularly not now that he knew a ‘pheerion’ was a real thing.

  He looked at the clock. It said 8.85. So they don’t use the same clocks as us. Base 10? Jeff wondered. A base 10 system would make a lot more sense than what Jeff was used to. Jeff’s father had told him stories that even when he was a kid they had talked about switching to metric . . . but it never really got going. Since Jeff’s father was a scientist, he often used metric units.

  Jeff watched the clock switch over to 8.86, then, after a while, 8.87. Jeff decided to try to count it out and when it switched to 8.88, Jeff started counting: “One thousand 1, one thousand 2, one thousand 3 . . .”

  By the time it switched to 8.89, Jeff had just hit “One thousand 92”.

  So he guessed there were about 90 seconds in one of their minutes. Since he was guessing they used a base 10 time system, he assumed there would be about 9000 earth seconds in one of their hours.

  . . . So 9000 Earth seconds would be 2.5 hours meaning each of their hours would be 2.5 Earth hours. Again assuming a base 10 system, that would make a 10 hour day here equal to a 25 hour day on Earth.

  Jeff was pleased with himself for thinking that through . . . but then he could hear his father’s voice in his head: “So you made a rough estimate followed by some guesses and assumptions and then used math to try to give your guesses and assumptions some credibility? You could have just as easily guessed the whole thing and been as accurate.”

  Oh well. At least it had kept him awake another 10 minutes. . . or 6.67 minutes.

  Jeff laughed at his own geekiness.

  His eyes drifted shut, then snapped open again. Within a few more minutes, they were drifting closed again, and Jeff was too tired to resist. . .

  After several hours of talking pumpkins and dancing elephants, the creature appeared.

  Jeff didn’t wake as he normally did, but had a few moments to observe the creature.

  It looked exactly like the image Baldwin had showed him. It was a lizard, a little larger than a man, but it stood upright like a man. It had the snout of a lizard, but it seemed a bit less pronounced and more expressive than an actual lizard face.

  Its clothing appeared to be a type of leather that covered its torso and upper legs. It appeared military – vaguely similar to a Roman centurion’s uniform with a sword hanging from a belt.

  . . . And this time it did something Jeff had either never noticed before or didn’t remember.

  . . . It spoke.

  It was speaking in a croaking, wheezing voice in a language Jeff couldn’t understand.

  Jeff’s heart was pounding so loud he could hear the thumping. He tried to run, tried to get away, but he was paralyzed.

  While Jeff couldn’t understand the meaning of the words, he did have a clear sense that the words were challenging - threatening. The pheerion raised its hand as if to strike . . .

  Jeff eyes snapped open.

  Chapter 19:

  Jeff leaned back, closed his eyes, and soaked in the feeling of warm sunshine on his face.

  He hadn’t gotten much sleep after the nightmare.

  When morning finally came, Baldwin leant him some clothes and the two of them walked to a nearby park.

  Jeff was beginning to feel relaxed for the first time since he had been there. He watched the neighborhood kids run and play. There was an area that was immediately recognizable as a playground even though the equipment was unique.

  There were some ‘swings’ but they weren’t hanging from chains. They were hanging from thick, elastic bands, and they could bounce up and down as well as swing back and forth. Some parents were bouncing young children in them without swinging them at all.

  Some kids were climbing a jungle gym that had a unique design, but otherwise wasn’t that different from those on which Jeff had played when he was younger.

  Jeff’s favorite piece - and one he was hoping to try when he got a chance - was a small ‘roller-coaster’ or at least something very similar to what Jeff knew as a roller-coaster. It only had one car with seats for six kids. It wasn’t powered, but the kids could push it up the hill from a ramp that ran along-side. At the top of the hill, they locked it in place, climbed in and then let it go. It ran, reasonably fast, around a winding track before eventually coming to a stop back at the bottom of the hill - all the while making a satisfying ‘clackity-clack’ sound that brought back childhood memories of good times for Jeff.

  Damn. I’ve got to try that.

  The ground around all of the playground equipment was padded with a thick, spongy rubber foam.

  “You can go ahead and hang out with your friends,” Jeff said to Baldwin. “Don’t feel like you have to babysit me. I’m good just sitting here enjoying the sunshine.”

 
Baldwin looked around. “I’m okay.”

  Jeff had the feeling that Baldwin was kind of shy. Artimus and Nahima both seemed very outgoing, but Jeff sensed that Baldwin felt a little out of place even with his own family. Jeff wondered what their mother had been like, but he didn’t want to ask. There were a number of photos of her around the house, and based on Nahima and Baldwin’s apparent ages in the photos, Jeff thought that she had probably died just a few years before.

  “What does your father do?” Jeff asked.

  “You mean for a job?”

  “Yeah, I’m just sort of curious. He seems like an interesting guy.”

  “He’s a Bishop . . . and he’s on the governing council.”

  Jeff looked at him in surprise. “Bishop? Like with the church?”

  “Sure.” Baldwin shrugged. “What other kind of Bishop is there?”

  “That’s cool. . . I never would have guessed it though.”

  “Cool?” Baldwin looked at him with a puzzled expression.

  Damn!

  Jeff cringed. He had thought there must be words or phrases that they wouldn’t recognize here - he had heard Baldwin and Nahima use words and phrases he didn‘t know - but he had been careful and so far hadn’t got caught using anything unfamiliar.

  “. . . Uh, I mean good. When do you have to go back to school?” He changed the subject abruptly.

  “We don’t have to go this whole week. Every 2 months, we get a week off.” Baldwin had quickly picked up the habit of explaining things in great detail to Jeff.

  Jeff wondered to himself what “weeks” and “months” were, but he kept his question to himself and assumed they were similar to what he knew.

  Jeff saw an ant crawling toward his foot. As he got a better look, he realized it wasn’t actually an ant. It was similar, but had four – rather than three – body segments and two sets of legs on each of the middle two body sections for a total of eight legs rather than six.

  His foot hovered over the ‘ant’ and as the shadow passed over the bug, it stopped, and as it stopped, Jeff sensed a twinge. Jeff couldn’t relate the feeling to anything he had ever felt before, but there was just sort of a ‘tickle’ in the back of his brain at the moment the ant stopped.