by G. L. Argain
“Well, alright then. I’ll start with myself. I am Juvir, Vice-President of the Alliance of Interstellar Beings, and this planet you are currently on is named Ku-an Doel. The president of this alliance is out momentarily, but he should be back in a couple of days.”
Man, Juvir really got the hang of Earth time, Andrew thought. By the way, as far as Juvir looked, he was nearly eight feet tall, with his legs making up about three-fifths of his overall height. His head had no neck beneath it, making it appear as though his head was directly attached to his torso. His eyes and lips were wide and thin, and he just had holes for ears and a nose. His hands looked similar to a human’s, but his feet looked just like his hands; each of his four “hands” had seven fingers rather than five. Finally, he had no hair at all and his skin looked like crimson leather.
“I myself,” Juvir continued, “am part of a species called the miweri, but you should note that miweri are not native to this planet. You’ll see many intelligent species spending their time here on this planet. Ku-an Doel is one of hundreds of millions of planets that supports intelligent life, and one of trillions that supports life at all. It’s a big universe, you know. The AOIB represents three hundred planets and therefore about three hundred intelligent species. And, well, on about all of the planets that intelligent life is found on, there is more civilization and urban area than natural wildlife. Ku-an Doel is under strict law to keep the amount of wildlife areas to no less than ten percent of the planet’s surface composition. That includes deserts and oceans, as well.”
Andrew was absolutely shocked by the “less than ten percent” part. If the facts were true, then this planet would just be one big city. He rashly asked Juvir to see the outside, maybe from a high place.
“We’ll use the teleporters. I’ll show you where you’ll stand at.” Juvir opened the doors for Andrew and the two of them stepped onto a pad. The coordinates were set, Juvir pressed a button, the area around them flashed with light for two seconds, and they then found themselves on top of a skyscraper. There were two teleportation caches on top of the skyscraper, and the roof was made of a porous metal. Andrew threw up from such a quick change in altitude. He looked towards the horizon, leaving his bottom jaw hanging down with some stomach acid still dripping from his mouth. The acid had suddenly disintegrated after touching the metal, but Andrew didn’t notice that. As far as he could see, there were shades of gray and not a spec of anything natural. There were vehicles both on the ground and in the sky. The atmosphere was clean and natural looking, but it was hot and heavy—as though he was in Death Valley during the summer.
Andrew, who had been longing to escape the artificiality of his society, of all the skyscrapers and concrete cramped together for miles, started to feel his hope burn away. This place looked like exactly what Andrew despised, only it covered ninety percent of the whole planet.
“This is what virtually all the planets are like. This is why we did not want to tamper with your world, because if we did, we might have influenced your people to become just like us, overwhelming the planet with artificial materials and waste for our own convenience. Even so, your world may have ended up like the rest of the universe anyway within a few thousand years or so.”
Andrew realized just how great he had it on Earth. Just the idea that he could drive his car fifty miles away and find himself in a natural, well-kept spot was a gift—a blessing. Earth’s urban areas took up only 1.5% of the world’s surface area. Compared to Ku-an Doel, Earth could be called the most preserved yet livable planet in the universe.
“The whole universe is civilized and united in this way. We all have food pills but no organic food. We all have people that we follow and respect, even if they’re not right for us. And even though there are so many species living on this planet that work together without prejudice, we still treat newly-found beings such as yourself as freaks or animals or simply less than intelligent, civilized beings.” It was as though Juvir had read Andrew’s thoughts.
Andrew was beginning to have a hard time controlling his breathing; all of this was just so heartbreaking. He was surprised to even keep up with what Juvir was saying.
“We are so different, yet so alike at the same time. Civilizations have always put technology and society over nature. They have always had people who wanted change and others who preferred traditions. They have always treated outsiders as outcasts or even as monsters. I’m sure your species has always thought of extraterrestrials as monsters, no?”
The human was trying and failing to hold back his tears at this point.
“There are two things that I shall tell you in conclusion. First, the only monsters that exist in this universe are ourselves. Secondly, you can bet that your planet is going to end up like this one here eventually.”
Andrew let out a half-bawl, half-scream that ended up sounding like, “SHUT UP!!!!! I’ve had enough already!!!” He fell down onto his hands and knees, crying uncontrollably. Juvir looked down to see the pathetic state that he had caused. Andrew’s hope for humanity had been destroyed, killed, annihilated. He missed his family, his world, even the society that he had lived with that was at least somewhat real.
Juvir said, “I suppose I’ve given you well enough information.” Then he finished with one last statement that stuck with Andrew forever: “Welcome to your future.”
Chapter 5
Andrew Lockeford was twenty-one and a half years old at the time he left Earth, and was a month older when he met Juvir. For twenty-one years, he had been living life as a journey like everyone else, searching for answers to questions such as the purpose of life as well as its many aspects. Many people think that they are special, but Andrew believed he was even more so, to the point that maybe he had a purpose in life that would impact many, many humans. Although it could always have been more than just humans.
A person’s purpose in life is whatever he or she makes of it. If somebody had the potential to start a business that would become so successful it would go global, but did not have the courage nor the will to do it, deciding to just keep their mediocre lifestyle, then that person’s purpose went from world-renowned entrepreneur to your average whoever. Unfortunately, because of varying circumstances, one may not even get the chance to establish a purpose. Sometimes a toddler playing outside has its life cut short because a nearby coyote was hungry. Sometimes, a person’s purpose to live is just to live, not just exist. Everything has the ability to exist.
But Andrew truly believed he had a purpose, a meaningful destiny. He was just going to let it come to him rather than search for it himself. He would go with the flow until the time was right. He also worried that he might screw up his destiny by searching too early. But he always thought about life and the wondrous experiences that came with it.
He has many memories of metaphysical thoughts, questioning the world; some dated back to when he was just a small child. One included an instance of him staring at some drawer as his mother called to him, thinking, My name’s Andrew. That’s funny. Why is it Andrew? What if it was something else? He had never been worried about some specific monster hiding in his bedroom during the dark, probably because his parents taught him to be logical. That, or his parents never told them about monsters being in the bedroom at night. However, as a seven-year-old, after hearing about the possibility of aliens existing in outer space, he thought, Do aliens exist? I mean, it’s totally possible. Why would Earth be alone? Then there was religion—he had never gone to church, and he never really decided whether God existed or not until he was a teenager. During that time, he recognized that some Christian ideas just didn’t seem to add up, whereas some of the Atheist ideas didn’t seem to explain enough, so he decided to follow his own beliefs based on what he perceived and concluded. He was free to be open-minded and think what he wanted; he said at age thirteen that God existed, but was very doubtful that Jesus Christ was the Son of God. Being as logical and reasonable as he was, as he called it, he felt that some things just didn’t com
pute for a mortal human to have magic powers such as walking on water. Yet for some reason unknown to him until he was an adult, he felt that souls could exist, that everyone had a spirit that passed on into an afterlife when the physical body had not.
As Andrew had found out, he became very philosophical whenever he was depressed. If he came home disappointed because some girl rejected him, or that he had been bullied, or that he was just left out of something by his friends, his mind would wander to the point that some completely irrelevant ideas would pop up. Such ideas were rather strange and useless, such as “How come we’re born as humans and not fish?” Answering such questions would not help anyone much with the questions that we search for the most, such as, “What is the meaning of the universe? What is life?” The ironic thing is that we can’t seem to answer these questions for ourselves until we die.
Andrew had lived a turbulent life just like anybody else. He was diagnosed with autism as a kid, meaning that he didn’t quite pick up on social cues like other children did until he was older. He wasn’t very aware of his surroundings, especially for news. On September 11, 2001, he had no idea at all that something tragic was happening at New York on that day; he didn’t even remember whether he saw anybody that looked devastated, therefore he couldn’t tell if something was wrong. Often he would sit at the table and hear his parents having a conversation when suddenly one of them says, “Tell us what you think, Andrew,” and he would reply, “What are we talking about?”
In first-grade, Andrew could remember sitting in an isolated part of the playground eating a Pop-Tart, satisfied, regardless of what the other kids were doing. On some occasions he would ask to join a game of kickball or foursquare, but ninety percent of his recesses were spent collecting acorns under the nearby oak trees and putting them into his pocket. He would usually take the acorns out and throw them back onto the grass because he didn’t need them—the simple act of collecting them satisfied that boy more often than kickball ever did. He had one friend that he really connected with, whose name was Shaun, and even then they didn’t do much together. Shaun was most likely doing something by himself as well, not caring about anyone else. Andrew’s friend was two months older and always an inch taller; they bickered over random topics and laughed over others. When Andrew and Shaun met again after six years without contact, they were still similar, still best friends.
However, there were times when important issues had separated the two. Being repeatedly bullied by a particular kid in the fifth grade, Shaun was led to act upon a dangerous stunt. He pulled Andrew aside to show him a firecracker he had obtained somehow, which he planned to attach to the kid’s back in order to spook him. Andrew knew that this could go horribly wrong, so he stood up saying, “I’m not letting you do this, dude,” and tried grabbing the firecracker away from Shaun, but Shaun was not so likely to give it up. After a few seconds, both of them noticed a yard-duty lady looking at them—the two boys decided to stop fighting immediately. Neither of them wanted to be found with a firecracker in their hands, so Shaun hid it in his pocket and later into his backpack. The lady did nothing, and Andrew told Shaun that if he lit that firecracker, he would not be friends with him anymore. Later that day, Shaun crushed up the firecracker into bits of paper and gunpowder, throwing it away into a trashcan at the park nearby his house; no one would be likely to see it, let alone use it. Those two boys were already more ethical than some people would ever be.
He always had a tendency towards Legos and anything else that he could take apart and put back together. He didn’t care too much about reenacting someone else’s world, such as the new Spiderman toy set or whatever was on the commercials. He just wanted plenty of Legos so he could make his own world, create anything he wanted with what he had. He also enjoyed playing driving games—racing games were fun, but open-world games in which he could drive through and explore piqued his interest the most. He decided as a kid that he would do something related to making automobiles when he grew up.
Then came Andrew’s move to Searles, where he would enter the hell known as middle school. Back in elementary school, he was more or less the comic relief of the classroom, but he was too socially awkward to know that the things he did were generally idiotic. As he moved on into middle school, his socially awkward tendencies resulted in consequences. Many of the students guessed he was retarded in general, so they had thrown him aside and taunted him repeatedly; somebody once threw a Master lock at his head. It was in the seventh grade that he realized he had autism; he didn’t know what the symptoms were, but he knew now why his social life was so poor. He wanted to be like everyone else now, even if it meant making some sacrifice to his dreams. The worst part was that he already established the first impression for everyone else, so he believed it was too late to fix anything. He had been asked to hang out with some of the more popular kids during lunch, and although it wasn’t a joke, he had nothing interesting enough to talk about to these guys, so nothing improved in his social life.
Why did those people even take him in?
Puberty kicked into high gear during the eighth-grade and his freshman year of high school, thus he became depressed over one thing: lack of a girlfriend. Andrew felt as though everyone else was in a relationship, when it was just his mind overreacting to thoughts and exaggerating the reality. He was asking out girls out of his league, and if by some chance he did receive a “Yes,” he would mess things up quickly or unnecessarily overreact to something. We are all dumb that way when we are young.
As the tenth grade approached, he found a group of friends that he would keep for a couple of years. They weren’t exactly the best friends that he could be with, but they were much better than the people in the “popular” crowd, who left him out of everything outside from sitting at their table.
In both of the groups that he was with, he had never been pressured to smoke, drink, or go to parties—he had never been asked to. Although, he was expecting to experience it as a teenager because that’s what cultural media tells us: high school is full of people trying to fit in by whatever means necessary. Andrew didn’t care as much now about fitting in. He was becoming much more aware, both about his surroundings and about himself. No more sitting in a room with students that had social problems and mental problems while he thought to himself, I don’t belong here. I’m not like these guys.
Everything was evening out, but then his overall desire shifted to two more things: a car and a job. Andrew didn’t get a license along with a car until mid-way through his senior year, and by then he discovered how realistically hard it was to get a job. He had submitted twenty applications in one month, but he didn’t receive a single reply. His parents paid for part of the gas money, but the rest came from his savings.
During junior year, he began to read more often. He had never liked reading much, let alone English class, but things were coming to him more easily at this point. Most of it seemed easier because the teacher genuinely wanted the students to learn, but maybe it was also because Andrew’s mind was maturing a bit more. He enjoyed reading Modern books for their realistic yet interesting themes, since the Romantic novels he was familiar with made him sick of useless details and ideals; he would prefer To Kill a Mockingbird over The Scarlet Letter any day.
Andrew attended some engineering classes during his senior year—he decided that with his interest in cars and creating things, he would become an automotive engineer for his lifetime career.
It was around this time that his views on the universe changed again. A teacher told him that the Greeks treated what we called their “mythology” as their religion, and that all religions, like myths, are just explanations for supernatural events. He applied this statement towards science, thinking that science was the only explanation with concrete proof in this world, and that everything in this universe could be explained through logical, possible science; he was officially an atheist. He still felt, however, that souls could exist and that they were just not logically explainable ye
t. Perhaps all answers are held in the future. Or maybe not.
Then came the emptiness—he begun to believe that his life was so content that it was boring. He wanted nothing in particular, whether it be a thing, such as a video game, or an idea, such as watching the sunset. Whatever he did want seemed to be forever out of his reach. Even early on he was still satisfied with what he had—it was just until a series of events occurred that he really felt unsatisfied and empty. He lost most of his interest in automobiles, and he didn’t know why. He lost a lot of his friends from high school after graduation, and he stopped talking to the friends that remained, simply because he didn’t take the effort to see them face-to-face anymore. He felt pessimistic and emotionless for months. He thought that maybe he would feel better if he helped others by joining some clubs or doing some community service. Too bad he was on the sidelines so often that whatever he did hadn’t counted for shit.
He wanted a change more than ever. He just didn’t feel like he himself needed to change as much as the world needed to.
Chapter 6
On May 30, 2016, in Pomona, California, Andrew packed together his clothes for a road trip. His first year at the university was over, and a trip seemed like the best way to celebrate it using the money he saved up from work. The twenty-one-year-old told his boss that he would be taking two weeks off for vacation, both for the trip and for simply relaxing at home. He had been yearning to take a trip for years, anyway. He had already planned out where he would go on the trip and where he would stay for nights. The first stop would be Searles; although he stopped liking that town in general a couple years ago, Andrew still loved the familiar bushes and mountains that shaped many of his childhood memories, such as riding his bicycle up to the ridge of a tall hill, seeing the valley below. It was spring at the time, and the wildflowers made the entire hill look golden in comparison to the barren, salty lakebed laying at the valley floor. Perhaps he would have one more chance to see that again, he thought.