by Ethan Bibile
He began talking to Quinn in a slow and deep voice, which was a stark contrast to the other creatures higher pitched voices. Like the others, Quinn could not understand what he was saying in the slightest.
“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you,” Quinn said, before adding; “Your Highness,”. This seemed like the right thing to say.
The leader looked at him, clearly taken aback. He stared at Quinn for some time, perhaps wondering what he was. He broke his trance by saying something that was once against in his own language.
A creature from one of the small huts surrounding the circle came running out, something in his hands that Quinn could not see. This object was placed in between Quinn and the leader, the creature bowing politely before running off and disappearing into the hut.
The device the creature had set upon the ground was a shiny silver colour and formed a metal circle. On top of it was a red light, which was currently glowing. Apart from this, the device had nothing else on it.
“Hello,” Said the leader, slowly and deeply, which nearly startled Quinn.
“Ah, language translator,” Quinn said, nodding his head in approval. “Thank you, your highness,” Quinn had no idea if this was what you said to leaders who wore leaves and flowers behind them, but Quinn decided to continue being polite unless told otherwise.
“That is no problem. Now we can freely understand each other,” The leader said, his thin mouth forming a smile at Quinn. “My name is Lord Flendres, and these are my people, known as the Reslavi,” Lord Flendres stopped and studied Quinn, tilting his head to look at him. “What is your name?”
“My name is Quinn Fenton,” Quinn replied, his eyes flickering around Lord Flendres to the huts surrounding the circle they stood upon.
“We saw your vessel crash on the plateau. What is the status of your vessel?” Flendres asked in his deep voice.
“Not good,” Quinn said, looking away from Flendres. “Not good at all. My friend, his name’s Morgan, told me that some serious repairs will have to be undergone if my ship ever wants to fly again. I think I should have all the parts, luckily. Doesn’t look like the parts for a spaceship would be found around here,” He spoke in flat and reserved tone. His voice was void of any expression at all.
“The plateau is the property of the Reslavi,” Lord Flendres said and Quinn’s heart sank. What were these little creatures going to do, throw him into the jungle like they had thrown him off the cliff? “And due to our generosity, we will permit you to stay until your vessel has been fixed. If you require any assistance, I’m sure some of our people could help you,” Lord Flendres said, and Quinn’s heart lifted slightly. He managed to get out a small smile.
“Thank you, your highness,” Quinn said, nodding his head in thanks. “How long has my ship been crashed here for?” Quinn asked, wondering how long he’d been passed out for.
“Your vessel has only been here for a few hours. As soon as we saw it I sent some of my people up to the plateau to wait for any survivors to emerge,” Lord Flendres said.
“Only a few hours,” Quinn muttered to himself. “So, that will make today twentieth,” Quinn said more to himself than to Lord Flendres or any of the other Reslavi.
“Excuse me?” Flendres said. “What did you say?”
“Today’s date,” Quinn said. “The twentieth of October,” He repeated, turning his gaze back to Flendres.
“That is not today’s date,” Flendres said. Quinn shook his head, the Reslavi obviously having some different calendar to the one Quinn was accustomed to. “Today’s date is the third of Krisof in the galactic year eight thousand four hundred and six.”
His sentence caused Quinn to freeze, his eyes widening as he did. He stared at Lord Flendres in disbelief, not sure if he was lying.
“Eight thousand four hundred and six?” Quinn questioned, his heart beginning to beat at a faster pace. “That’s the galactic year?” Quinn demanded, desperate for confirmation.
“Yes,” Lord Flendres responded, now slightly confused at Quinn’s sudden agitation. Quinn ran a hand through his hair, lightly swearing under his breath.
“Can you get me back up to the plateau?” Quinn asked, his eyes wide, staring at Flendres. “I need to get back to my ship, please,” He begged. Lord Flendres seemed to freeze, just like he had done before. He stopped and stared at Quinn like this was the first time he had ever seen him. Suddenly he broke his trance and summoned two Reslavi, asking them to escort Quinn back to the plateau. They nodded at their leader, before turning to Quinn and gesturing for him to follow them, before running off down the wooden path.
It didn’t take Quinn long to catch up to the two creatures. Soon he was ahead of them and turning around, begging them to hurry up their pace.
Soon the three of them reached the lake where Quinn and the Reslavi had landed after their plummet from the plateau, which was high above them.
“So, how do I get up,” Quinn urgently asked, spinning around to ask the two Reslavi. They stared up at him inquisitively, one tilting its oval-shaped head in confusion. Of course. They couldn’t understand him. The language translator had been left with Lord Flendres.
Luckily for Quinn, the two Reslavi knew what their orders were from their leader. They quickly made their way over to the other side of the body of water, trampling over plants and through the thick jungle. Quinn followed them quickly.
They led him to where the waterfall came crashing down and met the body of water, gallons of water pumping down towards the ground as Quinn looked up.
“What do I do, go up the waterfall?” Quinn asked sarcastically, yet more as a rhetorical question. He turned to the little creatures and saw one pointing to the waterfall and then pointing up. “Your joking,” Quinn said, shaking his head. “The waterfall can’t go up…”
Or could it. Quinn slowly looked up and realised that the waterfall did go up. It was only his pre-conceived ideas about waterfalls which had told his mind they went downwards. Quinn slowly stepped closer to the waterfall and put his hands into the cool water. He felt the water pushing up against the bottom of his hand. The Reslavi were right. It did go up.
Quinn took a deep breath and shut his eyes. He tried to pretend he was simply going up and elevator, that what he was about to do was an everyday occurrence.
So, he stepped into the waterfall.
Quinn shot up like a cork out of a bottle, flying up through the air towards the hovering plateau. He pushed his head out of the waterfall and was met with a wind that swept through his hair, whipping across his face. He looked down at the ground, which was becoming smaller and smaller by the second. No longer could he make out the Reslavi, everything was simply a green blur.
Quinn’s mind was nearly going into panic mode. It couldn’t possibly be the year eight thousand four hundred and six. There was no way possible that that could happen. No way at all. Quinn tried to calm himself down, telling himself that Lord Flendres and the Reslavi simply went by a different galactic calendar than the one Quinn knew.
When Quinn reached the top of the waterfall he shot out into the air, momentarily free from gravity, before he came tumbling down onto the ground of the plateau.
Quinn stood up, quickly brushing his clothes off as he did. He frantically looked around, finding the Audion to his left, exactly where he had left it upon being pushed off the plateau.
Quinn ignored the beautiful view of the lush, jungle mountains, and the orchestra of wildlife that came from below him. He ran to the cargo door at the back of the Audion, being careful not to fall off the plateau and plummet to his death.
He scanned his fingerprint against the metal plate on the Audion and then once he had been authorized, the cargo door began to descend. It clanged to the ground, the edge of the door just hanging over the edge of the plateau. Quinn climbed over the side of the cargo door, taking extra care not to let gravity get the best of him and slide down the cargo door. He made his way inside the cargo room, pressing a button on the wall to shut the
cargo door.
“Morgan!” Quinn said frantically as he burst into the lounge room.
“Ah, hello Quinn! Still in disbelief that we’re on Nespritia?” Morgan said with confidence laced throughout his voice.
“Morgan, what is the galactic date, right now, what is the exact galactic date?” Quinn said as he began to walk around the lounge nervously, hands behind his head.
“The date is…” Morgan’s voice started off sounding like it always did upon reciting a fact, confident. Yet it quickly trailed off, nerves riddling Quinn at this.
“What is it?” Quinn demanded, staring up at the ceiling of the lounge.
“Quinn, it’s the year eight thousand four hundred and six.”
Quinn almost swore, doubling over onto his knees as if someone had punched him in the stomach incredibly hard.
“In human years, that would be the fifteenth of June two thousand and sixteen,” Morgan said, worry and confusion in his voice. For the first time in his life being lost for words.
One hundred and seventy-six years in the past. Somehow, they had time travelled nearly two hundred years into the past. So far from home yet right on the same planet. How had this happened? Most likely an accidental flick of a switch whilst trying to escape Nespritia.
Suddenly, another thought struck Quinn like lightning.
“Morgan,” Quinn said, breathing fast. “The Time Unit,” Quinn said, eyes wide as he frantically looked up at the roof.
The Time Unit had been destroyed, he had seen it with his very own eyes. The Time itself had spilt out of the vault, the entire thing had blown up. And just for confirmation, Morgan had informed him that it was damaged beyond repair.
“We weren’t supposed to go back more than ten years,” Quinn exclaimed. “We went back two hundred, we exploded the Time Unit!” Quinn shoved his hands into his hair, running them through the thick mess. “When was time travel invented?” Quinn frantically asked Morgan as he sat down on the couch.
“I no longer have the records, but from stored memory, it won’t be invented for another fifteen years,” Morgan said, and Quinn could hear the sorrow laced through his voice.
Quinn had never been so lost in his entire life. Within one night everything had come crashing down around him. His father was dead. His mother was dead. His little sister was dead. All his friends and family were dead too. His planet was destroyed, his home, his childhood, his hopes and dreams. And to add to that, his universe, the universe that he had grown up in, the universe that he loved so much, had been taken away from him. He was now a stranger, no home, no purpose in life, no nothing. His family weren’t even born yet. He wasn’t even born yet. Technically, he didn’t exist.
Quinn felt his eyes welling with tears, his eyeballs being stung by them. Quinn looked across to the coffee table next to the couch where there was a family portrait of Quinn and his family. His mother. His father. And Natalie. Sweet little Natalie…
“Quinn,” Morgan said in a soft, comforting, soothing voice. “What happened?”
Morgan, of all people, deserved a right to know. Morgan was the only person he had left, his only friend, his only connection to home. He had to tell Morgan, after all, they were in this together now.
“I was woken up by an explosion,” Quinn began, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to run forth. “Dad came into my room and told me we had to leave. We met Mum and Natalie in the foyer. Dad said it was going to be OK,” Quinn bit his lips at this which began to tremble violently.
“There was an explosion,” Quinn continued, not bothering to wipe away the tears which had started to flow down his cheeks. “It ripped our home apart. And Mum and Nat were killed, just like that.”
Morgan was completely silent whilst Quinn was talking, Quinn sure it was out of shock and horror and sorrow. After all, they had been his family too. He might not have known them for as long as Quinn, but he still felt some sort of love for them. Or whatever an A.I could feel towards a human.
“Dad and I ran. We didn’t get very far though,” Quinn continued. “Another explosion and a tower fell on top of Dad, killing him. He gave me this before he died,” Quinn pulled out the white gun from his back pocket, tracing the transparent blue tendrils with his index fingers, holding the last remaining piece of his father close to him.
“Then there was this man. He seemed to be the leader of them, he was leading the attack,” Quinn’s tone rose, his sorrow forming something new, something that boiled down inside Quinn, hatred being created. “I heard someone scream out his name. Agross,” Quinn almost spat out the name. “He killed them. He killed my family. He destroyed my home, killed everyone I ever knew,” Quinn said, his voice dying back down to the sorrow that pulled at his heart as if it were trying to rip it from his chest.
“Then I ran to the Audion and you know the rest. We flew. We were hit. And now, here we are, stranded nearly two hundred years in the past with no way home,” Quinn said.
And now, in the aftermath of the escape, only now knowing the full extent of the horror he was facing, he felt their deaths. It hit him, it hit him hard. He had never felt such a loss, such a pain in his entire life. Never had he experienced something like this, he didn’t even know a pain like this existed.
“All alone,” Quinn whispered, finally letting the tears overcome him. Morgan didn’t make a sound, too engulfed in his own shock and sorrow to say anything.
Quinn’s grief, however, was rather vocal, his sobs echoing throughout the Audion all night long.
ONWARDS
They weren’t much, but the Reslavi provided comfort for Quinn.
They might have been incredibly different to him in multiple ways yet having friends in such a time of loss really helped. Of course, not all of them seemed to quite understand his predicament. Luckily for him though, Lord Flendres had gifted him the language translator, providing him with the ability to communicate with others.
Of course, Morgan provided comfort too. At the start of Quinn and Morgan’s stay near the Reslavi Village, both of them had seriously suffered. As days went by though, Morgan had begun to recover. Quinn still didn’t.
Quinn had spent the last month and a half working away at fixing the Audion. The repairs took much longer than Quinn had anticipated. He had managed to easily re-install power to all regions of the ship, as well as fixing the damaged front window. The heat shields had been re-installed, and Quinn had done his best to re-arrange the interior of the Audion, yet some of the furniture had been destroyed beyond repair. Now all that remained for him to fix was the cockpit, which he had already begun working on.
“So,” Morgan said one day while Quinn was in the cockpit, putting a new lever where the thrust lever should have been, but had broken off during the crash. “Do you have any idea where we’ll go once we leave here?” Morgan asked for what seemed like the one-hundredth time, each time earning him the same answer.
“I don’t know Morgan,” Quinn shrugged. This was the best answer Morgan had gotten out of the teenager. “One thing is for sure, we can’t stay here forever,” Quinn answered as he screwed the lever into place. “Once we get the Audion up and running we’re off,” Quinn stopped working and sighed to himself. “You’re absolutely sure there is no way at all we can fix the Time Unit?”
“Quinn. I’m sure. You know the Time Unit was dodgy,” Morgan replied, answering this question for what seemed like the millionth time.
“There’s no way in hell we can fix it?”
“No way in hell.”
Quinn went back to work, finishing putting the lever into place. He pulled it back and forth to test it out.
“Why did this happen to us?” Quinn asked. “Of all people, why us?” Quinn burst out. “I’m only seventeen and you’re an A.I. Why us?”
“Sometimes,” Morgan began to reply, his metallic voice echoing through the cockpit and being absorbed by Quinn. “Sometimes unexpected things happen, and they just do, even if at the time we think they’re bad. Who knows,
we could both thrive from this happening.”
Quinn snorted.
“We’re stuck in the past. My family is dead, and I have no idea what is going to happen to us. Nothing great at all is going to come of this,” Quinn replied. He’d taken up a rather pessimistic outlook on life since the deaths of his family.
Quinn would venture down to the Reslavi Village upon the sun setting and join the smaller creatures for their dinner, an affair which they all enjoyed together. They would sit around a long table that was underneath a roof to prevent it from getting wet in the rains. Quinn discovered that the Reslavi race wasn't that large in number. There were only about fifty of them in total.
Lord Flendres would sit at one end of the table, whilst Quinn would sit at the other end, opposite Flendres. The rest of the Reslavi would sit on the sides and all eat generous portions.
At first, Quinn had been unsure about the food that the Reslavi offered him. It took on some weird shapes and colours and Quinn had been told by the village cook all the produce had come from the jungle, which at first didn’t comfort Quinn. However, after trying it Quinn found he rather enjoyed the food.
One night after dinner, Lord Flendres had requested that Quinn came with him for a walk down one of the many paths the Reslavi had running through the jungle. Quinn walked side by side with him, language translator in hand.
“So, Quinn,” Lord Flendres asked in his deep and thoughtful voice. “How are you fairing in these times?”
“Oh, you know,” Quinn shrugged. “I’m getting along. I’m better than I was. Especially due to your hospitality, which I thank you for, Your Highness,” Quinn said, still being ever grateful and polite for allowing him to stay.
Lord Flendres shut his eyes and smiled at Quinn, bowing his head slightly. The two stopped walking for a moment as he entered his trance. In the absence of the conversation, Quinn could quite clearly hear the noise of the jungle. He looked off into the distance, seeing the trees, plants and bushes surrounded by darkness, the orchestra of animals had died down considerably, the wildlife having most likely gone to sleep.