by Meg Ripley
"The cube contains the information in the right concentration that any of my kind who step into it are changed. If the cube wasn't there and the portal was opened, the knowledge would flow freely. No one could be burdened with everything, or with nothing."
He touched River's face.
"Do you have to go back?" he asked.
She reached for Jordan and pulled him closer, then cupped her hand around Geming's face.
"I'm not going anywhere without you," she kissed Geming, then Jordan, "Either of you."
Jordan crossed the room and pried another of the silver bars out of the wall. He walked back to the cube and touched the tip to the wall. It slipped through just as Geming’s had. Jordan turned it to the side and tapped the wall with the side of the bar, creating a low sound as the metal hit the solid glass.
"Let's start a revolution."
Both men pulled back their bars and swung them with tremendous force into the cube, shattering it. River drew both boys close and watched as the tiny silver flakes drifted toward the walls, splashing across them and surrounding them with images.
Everything had changed in a single second, and she knew she never wanted it to go back.
THE END
Claimed By The Sacred Alien
Hava has always felt like there was something missing in her life. As she loses herself in her studies of American history, she feels drawn to something that seems just out of her reach.
This need brings to her New York, where she fulfills her life dream of exploring the Statue of Liberty, only to discover a hidden portal that takes her to a world where time and existence are elastic, and the future of the planet rests on protecting the past from the plans of the future.
Once there, she meets Makhahr, an alien who is as gorgeous as he is powerful, and realizes that he fulfills every need she has ever felt.
Together, will they be able to protect yesterday to ensure their love has a tomorrow?
Life.
"You actually have to climb up the stairs in order for you to get to the top, Jake," Hava called down the staircase.
Her voice traveled down the double helix of the stairwell and found Jake, who was leaned with his back against the wall and his eyes closed as he seemed to struggle to catch his breath.
"There are a lot more stairs than I thought there were going to be," he managed through his labored breaths.
"You do realize that the statue is more than 300 feet tall, right?"
Jake glared up at her.
"That is not helpful."
Hava grinned and skipped her way back down the stairs toward Jake. She reached out and grabbed his hand, tugging him gently.
"I promise that you are not going to die walking up that Statue of Liberty," she said as she guided him up the next few steps, "That almost never happens."
"Almost never?" Jake said in a tone that was nearly a shriek, stopping in his tracks and tugging her back toward him to force Hava to stop and turn back to him.
"I was kidding. With your ridiculous fear of heights, what possessed you to come with me on a tour of a 300-foot statue that requires walking up a tiny little spiral staircase?"
"Because you are my best friend and I want to be supportive and encouraging in your academic and professional ventures."
"Did you read that directly out of a manual or have you been formulating it for just the right situation when something like this would show up?"
"A little of both maybe," Jake said.
He sighed and started following her as she made her way back up the stairs, looking defeated as he took each step carefully and slowly. Hava felt the excitement building inside her as they continued to climb, each step bringing them further up into the iconic landmark she had been dreaming of seeing her entire life.
"Thank goodness," Josh said, straightening up from where he was leaning on the handrail as they approached, "I thought you had fallen and tumbled back down to the bottom. I hate when that happens."
Jake turned promptly and started back down the stairs, gripping the handrail like it was giving him life as he made his way away from her.
"He was kidding," Hava called after him, "Tell him you were kidding," she said, turning back to Josh.
"I was kidding," Josh called obediently.
Jake stopped, but didn't turn around to look at them. He still gripped the handrail, but his shoulders seemed to have relaxed a little since he had started his retreat.
"I swear if I hear one more thing about falling or tripping or explosions or any other general death-related things, I am going to just stop where I am and camp out for the rest of my life. I will live on pretzels, coffee, and the lost hopes and dreams that drift up from the city streets. You two will have to figure out how to integrate me into the tour."
"Oh, no. That is not my job," Hava said, grabbing Jake by the back of the shirt and pulling him back up the stairs toward her, "I am not the tour guide extraordinaire around here. I'm just the history buff."
"Nerd," Josh said.
"Buff," Hava retorted, "Besides, I don't have enough drama in me to be the tour guide."
Josh grinned at her and started up the rest of the spiral staircase toward the statue's crown. Even though when he first arrived in New York to act and had to take a position as a tour guide in order to survive when the roles weren't as plentiful as he would like them to be he complained, Hava could see that her cousin was thriving in his new position. Their tiny hometown had never been right for him, and they had spent many nights huddled up in their makeshift fort in the living room of their grandmother's home talking about his dreams of running away to New York so that he could be on Broadway.
The little off-Broadway theater that he had gotten his first role in wasn't exactly what he had had in mind, but Hava could see that Josh had absolutely made the right decision by breaking free and pursuing his dreams.
As these thoughts ran through her mind, Hava felt the smile on her face fade and a tightness form in her chest. She was still in that tiny hometown, wondering what she was supposed to be doing with her life.
Far removed from the dramatic and musical talents of her favorite cousin, Hava was more the quiet and studious type who more frequently lost herself in textbooks and old volumes about American history than went out and did the types of things that people her age did. Though she was passionate about her studies and knew that she wanted to pursue something that involved the history that she loved so much, but she didn't know what that was. So many people had suggested teaching, but Hava didn't feel like her heart was in being a teacher. She wanted to do something that would take her out of her comfort zone like Josh had done and put her in a position to make a truly lasting and significant impact in her own right rather than hoping that her teaching methods would touch someone who could go on to make a difference in the world.
Now as she climbed the final few stairs into the crown of the Statue of Liberty and looked out of the glass observation window at the city beyond, she felt like it had taken her so long to get out of the little bubble she had grown up in and into the city that she didn't think she could ever go back and be the same. It was like something was waiting for her just beyond the glass. She just had to figure out what it was and go after it.
****
"Is it possible to go up into the torch?" Jake asked.
Hava looked up and saw him inching his way around the edge of the crown, his back pressed to the side so that he was unable to see through the windows. He was moving and not crying, however, so she decided to interpret that as progress.
"It used to be," she told him, "but no one has been allowed up there since 1916."
"Hey," Josh said, looking at her from his position against one of the windows, "Who's the tour guide around here?"
Hava opened her palm and gestured for him to continue.
"Be my guest. After all, you are the one who snuck us in here after hours and are putting your very job and future ability to support yourself at risk."
"Tha
nk you for the acknowledgement. Anyway, technically people do still go up there. There is a 40-foot ladder that leads up into the torch, but only the maintenance workers who keep the floodlights up there going are allowed to use it."
"Why did they stop letting people go up?" Jake asked, "Not enough interest from insane people who would actually climb up even further than we are to teeter precariously above the river in a fake flame the thickness of two pennies?"
"I'm impressed that you know how thick the copper used to build the statue is," Josh started, "but the original torch wasn't actually made entirely out of copper. It had glass panels. People used to be allowed to go up in there just like we walked up into the crown, but the Black Tom Explosion in 1916 stopped that."
Jake promptly dropped to the floor to sit cross-legged with his back against the wall.
"What are you doing?" Hava asked.
"Starting my campout. I warned you about anything involving explosions."
"This was actually a real thing, though," Josh said, "It is considered one of the biggest acts of sabotage against the United States outside of Pearl Harbor. After the explosion, they closed off the torch and no tourists have been allowed to access it since. They replaced the original with the gold-plated copper one that is there now in 1984."
"Why did they replace the glass one with a gold-plated one?" Jake asked.
"Because…America."
"Fair enough. What happened to the original?"
"Did you see the huge torch in the lobby when we first came in?"
"Not really. I was too busy asking myself why in the hell I thought it would be a good idea to come climb a big giant woman in the middle of the night to notice any of the more subtle décor choices of the lobby."
"Well, that would be it. Do you want to see it?"
"Yes," Hava said.
"No," Jake said, his voice overlapping hers.
"I just dragged my sorry acrophobic ass up a thousand and eleven stairs to get up to this woman's crown and now you want me to turn around and go right back down?"
"Ooo, acrophobic," Hava said under her breath, "good Scrabble word."
"I know," Jake murmured back, "triple word score."
"It's only a little over 350 stairs, and at least you aren't tall," Josh said, "You could have had to walk the entire thing like this."
Josh ducked his head down and scrunched his shoulders over.
"I'm glad my genetic shortfalls came in handy for something."
"Come on," Hava said, taking Jake by the sleeve, "We were going to have to go back down at some point anyway, and I would think that you would be relieved to not be all the way up here anymore."
Jake let out a deep, dramatic sigh.
"I will be. I just don't want to go down the itty bitty staircase from hell again."
Hava stepped onto the first stair, taking care to keep her feet at the widest portion rather than the tapered side so that she didn't stumble. The steps were narrow and shallow, forcing them to walk in a straight line back down. She led the way, eager to get a closer look at the original torch. The Statue of Liberty had always been a special focus of her history studies. She knew its origin story, how it was built, and all about the various restoration and preservation projects undertaken over the years to keep it safe. Though it was only a small piece of history and something easily overlooked in its significance, the statue drew her in, like there was something more behind the anonymous woman's eyes as she gazed through blank stone out over the city that had changed so much in the hundreds of years since her construction.
When they finally made it back to the lobby, Hava crossed over to the metal bars that surrounded the original torch and gazed up at the impressive piece. It seemed larger than life, and yet smaller than it should be at the same time. She leaned forward on the bars and heard Josh make a scolding sound behind her.
"Miss, please step away from the bars," he said in his most professional tour guide voice.
"I’m not supposed to touch the bars?" Hava asked, leaning on them further.
"No."
"So, you wouldn't like it if I did this?"
Hava rested her stomach on the upper bar and pulled herself up so that she was balanced nearly horizontally across the metal.
"Stop it. Get down."
"You probably really wouldn't like it if I did this."
She leaned forward, causing her body to flip upside down so that she dangled on the opposite side of the bars and stared at the boys through the bars.
"Hava, you’re a grown woman, get ahold of yourself!"
Hava laughed and tried to right herself.
"See? You didn't think that through, did you? This is why twenty-something year old women do not dangle from bars like they are on the freaking playground."
Josh reached for her shirt to help right her, but the movement made her lose her balance even more and she slipped, tumbling to the floor on the opposite side of the bars.
"You can't be in there," Josh said, his voice reduced to a hiss, "That's why those bars are there."
Hava pulled herself up to her knees and started to stand.
"I know why the bars are there, Josh. And I'm perfectly fine, thank you for your concern."
She was nearly on her feet when something on the bottom of the torch caught her eye. She took a step toward it.
"No, Hava. That's the wrong direction. Come this way. This way is the way out of the forbidden area so that you don't get me fired."
"Hold on," she said, taking another step closer to the torch and crouching down to look at the bottom. "The torch is made of copper and glass, right?"
"Yes."
"And it contained electrical arcs for a while so that they could use the statue as a lighthouse?"
"Yes. Thank you for the trivia, we'll be sure to whip it out next time we are embroiled in a heated game of 'Jeopardy'. Please get out of there now."
"Would there be any reason for one of the glass panels to be open like a door?"
That question seemed to strike Josh as strange because he stopped gesturing for her to get out of the torch enclosure and stepped up a little closer to the metal bars.
"Open like a door?" he asked.
"Yeah. Open a little bit like it's on hinges. That's not how they would have maintained the electrical arcs is it?"
"I don't think so."
Hava eased forward until she was standing beneath the curve of the torch and narrowed her eyes to look more closely at the glass panels still several feet above her head. One looked like it was hanging open just slightly. Not thinking beyond the next moment, she grabbed onto the patina-covered metal base of the torch and pulled herself up so that she could climb closer to the glass and copper flame.
"Oh my god. You are going to fall and kill yourself and I'm going to have to explain it to your mother. Or worse, we're going to get caught and I'm going to have to explain it all to both of our mothers."
Hava ignored Josh and continued to climb until she was close to the glass panels. Her heart was pounding. She knew that what she was doing was not only highly illegal, but also dangerous. As she did it, though, she didn't care. She felt drawn to the torch in an intense, almost irresistible way and she needed to know why that panel seemed loose.
As she drew closer to the out-of-place looking panel she realized that it was not just one of the copper-outlined glass panels that appeared open, but two that were open in opposite directions like cabinet doors. Hava carefully balanced herself on the metal bar where she stood and reached up to touch the panels. One opened further at the touch of her fingers and she found herself staring up into the torch.
****
Liberty.
"What's going on?" Jake called up to her, but Hava was too focused on the glass doors in the torch to acknowledge him.
She reached up with her other hand and grasped the other loose panel so that she could both balance herself and open the doors. For a moment, she lost her balance and she heard Josh gasp, but she was able to rig
ht herself and turn her attention back to the inside of the torch. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears and her heart was pounding so hard it seemed to tremble in the base of her throat.
The original electrical arcs placed inside the torch more than a century before were no longer there. Instead, she saw what looked like a ball of light emanating from the center. When she held her hand in front of it, however, there was no reflection of the light off of her skin and it did not seem to be pouring out of the torch as she would expect it would.
"Do you guys see any light coming out of the torch?" she asked, not looking back at them.
"No. That thing hasn't lit up in about 100 years."
"That's what I thought, too."
Hava adjusted her hands so that she grabbed the bottom edge of the torch and jumped, pulling herself up into the torch despite the shouts from Jake and Josh below. As soon as she straightened inside the torch she saw that what she saw as a ball of light seemed more like a faintly glowing orange disc that appeared to sink down in the middle like a whirlpool. She heard Josh and Jake scrambling up the sides of the metal base of the torch, but she was so enraptured by the disc that she didn't even turn to watch them drag themselves into the space with her.
"What the hell is that?" Josh asked when they had gotten inside.
Hava looked up at him.
"You don't know?"
"No. I didn't even know you could climb through the glass and get in here."
"I don't think anybody does," Jake said, flattening his hand on one of the glass panels and pulling it away to reveal a layer of dust, "It doesn't seem like anyone has been in here for a very long time."
"What do you think it could be?" Hava asked.
Without waiting for an answer, she reached forward. She intended to place her fingertips on the edge of the disc, but instead felt like someone had grabbed her wrist and was pulling her harshly into the whirlpool center of the glow.