“Brian was telling you something back there,” he laughed, “Doctor Nguyen is the one who somehow got a story concocted about our demise. He might have even come up with the idea for the fake satellite images.”
“I’ll bet my dad doesn’t even know about this. He probably doesn’t even know that his friend discovered extraterrestrial life,” I said, “When we get back from New Sumter, I’ll have to show him.”
“Didn’t you listen to anything Brian told you?” he argued, “And you can’t use the excuse that we’ve got to bring him home. From what you told me, I’d say he is jealous of our lifestyle here and wants to be a part of it.”
“He told me I should explore Valhalla. That tells me that he didn’t understand my desires. I want to see cities made up of lights like that Earth city called New York. I can’t find that here,” I said, “You and I have already explored here anyway. We’ve flown to the mountains. We’ve even gone up to see the glaciers. None of that excites me.”
“Henley,” he said, reaching over and taking my hand, “I would never forgive myself if something happened to you. You are asking me to put both of our lives in danger so that you can see a world that everyone in our colony willingly escaped from. They were anxious to escape for a reason.”
“Believe me, I totally understand. And I really wouldn’t want you to get hurt either. I would never forgive myself if something happened to you,” I said, releasing a sigh, “I’m just dreaming aloud anyway. I know I should give it some more thought before I did anything.”
In truth, I’d already given it a lot of thought and I made my plan in that same moment at dinner.
Thatcher Stark
Chapter Nine
I woke up startled all of a sudden. I didn’t know if I’d heard something or if I’d just broken free from the clutches of a bad dream. I sat up in bed and looked around the dark bedroom. I could hear my dad’s snores from the other room. I listened for a moment, making sure it wasn’t something else that could have woken me.
I suddenly thought of Henley and her fantasy about seeing lit up cities beneath the night sky. Then my thoughts shifted to the satellite imagery of our small continent. I remembered all that horrible destruction and the little red dot that showed us where we were. That dot had said that we were literally sitting inside a crevasse.
Something about that dot intrigued me. As we moved, it would continually show our location. Between that blinking dot and the accurate map of the world, we could easily navigate our way to another continent. Anyone could do it.
Anyone could do it…
“And I really wouldn’t want you to get hurt either…”
The hopper!
I opened the curtain next to my bed and looked out the window for my small shuttle. I’d often parked it about twenty feet from the house and that was where I’d parked it when Henley and I returned with the grapes earlier today. It wasn’t there.
I leapt from my bed and ran through the house. I burst from the front door and out onto the lawn, looking in both directions. I wanted to verify that I’d parked it in the wrong spot and just didn’t remember. Kepler Moon Beta was in its last stages of waning, leaving only a sliver of its crescent showing. This unfortunately made the night seem even darker than usual. But the light was still sufficient enough for me to verify that my hopper was indeed parked nowhere around my house. If it were anywhere nearby, I would have seen it.
“Mom! Dad!” I cried, running into the house, “Mom! Wake up! Dad!”
Both had leapt out of bed at my tear-filled cries and were already at their bedroom door by the time I reached them. My mom wrapped me in a hug even before my father could ask me what was wrong.
“Henley! She took my hopper and I think she’s going to New Sumter!” I cried out, “I know for sure that’s where she’s going.”
“How? How do you know this?” Dad asked.
“She’d been talking about going for a while, but Brian and I keep trying to talk her out of it,” I said, “Her tablet… she can… what’s it called? Nav… she can navigate with it now. Brian installed a satellite program on it and she can use it to find her way to New Sumter. We have to stop her, Dad!”
“How?” he asked, turning on the light in his bedroom, “How are we going to find her if we don’t have the same satellite assistance that she has?”
My mother released me, and tried to wipe the tears from my face.
“Brian,” she said, “Let’s go ask him what she’s working with and if he knows what she’s going to face there.”
“Mom, it’s a full-size Earth world over there,” I said, “She showed me everything. It’s the same as the images of Earth on her tablet.”
“This isn’t good,” Dad said, struggling with a pair of pants.
“She’s all I want, Dad,” I found myself crying again, “She’s all I have in this world.”
“We’ll find her,” Mom assured me, though I could see evidence of doubt in her expression, “Let’s start with Brian.”
I rushed to my bedroom and got dressed while my parents did the same. By the time I returned to the hallway, my mother ordered me to go to Henley’s house and wake her parents. She insisted that I stop crying first, however. I tried to obey her and failed.
Chapter Ten
By the time I arrived in the hospital with Rigel and Renata, Brian was seated upright in his bed and moving rapidly through some screens on an electronic tablet. My parents were standing next to the bed, watching him expectantly.
“Each tablet has a ten-digit code and hers I can remember because it had my mom’s name in the middle of it and besides, I had to enter it three times to link it to the satellite,” he said, still focusing on the screen, “And I’m good with numbers. Always have been. This is going to confuse the system a bit, but I’m going to convince this tablet that it’s the same as hers. They will have the same identification.”
“How will that help?” Rigel asked.
“Since we don’t have any access to tracking technologies here and since we can’t rely on the police or military of New Sumter, we are going to have to create our own tracking system. Lucky for us, these tablets are far outdated and easy to reprogram. If I make these two identical, I can install the same satellite program on it and it will help us to monitor the locations of both,” he said.
“But then won’t she see two spots on hers as well?” I asked.
“Yes, but common sense will tell her who the other blip is,” he replied, handing the tablet to my father, “She’s got people who love her, so she’s going to realize we’re coming for her.”
“We?” my mom asked.
“You need me and you’re going to need some knowledge of the city,” he said, scooting to the side of the bed, “We’re going to need some money, which I know you don’t have here, so we need something valuable for trade. Have you mined any valuable minerals? Silver, gold, gemstones?”
We all looked at him dumbfounded as he stood up on his exceptionally skinny legs. The man was still quite skeletal in spite of his improved demeanor.
“I didn’t think so,” he groaned, “Do you manufacture anything at all here? Do you craft any liquors or ales? Those always go over well in my world.”
“Wines,” Renata said, “We’ve got enough wine to fill a swimming pool.”
“Perfect,” he said, pointing to her, “Get me as many cases as you can spare.”
“Uh, hold up a moment,” my mom said, “We’re only taking a hopper. How many people can we take in one of those along with a bunch of wine?”
“You’re staying here,” my father pointed to my mom, then turned to me, “I’m taking Thatch, Brian, and Rigel if he wants to come. I’m sure we could fit about ten cases of wine in the hold if you can spare that much.”
“I would trade everything for Henley,” Renata stated.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said, “Do you even have ten cases is what I was asking.”
“Yes, of course!” she replied, “I can ev
en give you a variety”
“Then let’s get going,” my father stated, “According to the tablet, she hasn’t even made landfall yet.”
Henley Knight
Chapter Eleven
I still wondered if a dress was pushing it. I didn’t really know what people wore in New Sumter, but judging from what I’d seen on something called Sumter News, people dressed nice. They also painted their faces, but there was nothing I could do about my appearance in that regard. Besides, I planned to just pay them a very short visit, so my disguise would just need to conceal me for a little while. I would be gone just as quick as I arrived. With luck, I would blend in and just be another ordinary citizen.
I looked down at my tablet and noticed something odd. It was messing up and telling me that I was in two places at once. It was reporting my position to be both at home and above the ocean at the same time. It was probably just some kind of memory overlap.
I looked back out the window and watched as KMB’s crescent of remaining light bounced off the waves up ahead. It was really beautiful. I looked down at my speed and verified that I was still moving at nine-hundred and fifty miles per hour as Thatch had suggested. Kepler Moon Beta should remain perfectly still as I made my way to a nation that was just barely eleven-hundred miles from Valhalla’s beach.
I glanced back down at the tablet and realized that indeed, it was a memory glitch. The other red light was moving now and it was going along the exact same path I’d taken. The other light was over the ocean now. I was going to have to talk to Brian about this when I returned.
Thatcher Stark
Chapter Twelve
To hear Brian describe where she was headed, I worried that we’d never be able to locate her. He explained to us that if she maintained the current course, she would be headed to the vacationer’s resort district. That was a city that stretched for miles and miles of beach, whose sole purpose was to draw vacationers here from Earth and take their hard-earned ‘money’.
Brian explained the concept of money to me again even though Henley had already done that. It was just a method of trade, sort of like us bringing the cases of wine we had. Brian intended to exchange the wine for money should we need any while we were there.
“How are you feeling?” Rigel asked Brian.
“Believe me, I’m not as sickly as I must look,” he replied, “The kind doctor has been allowing me some fish and fruit in my meals now.”
“How about you, Thatcher?” he asked.
“I’ve been better, sir,” I replied, “I never suspected even once that she would take the hopper. Please know-”
“I don’t blame you,” he interrupted, “If anything, you were trying to talk her out of it.”
“Yeah, but I told no one about her constant desire to go. And you won’t like hearing this, but I was probably going to eventually take her just to quiet her down,” I said, “At least she would have had someone looking out for her anyway.”
“And then you’d both be in a load of trouble,” my father said from the seat beside me.
I looked out the window at the unchanging ocean beneath us and before us. I closed my eyes, imagining a world without Henley in it. I imagined working the vineyards all by myself with no one to talk to. I imagined my afternoons alone on the beach with no one to race into the water. I imagined having no one to splash in the water. I imagined my lonely evenings with no reason to agree to babysit Haden. And then I imagined having no one to hold, no one to kiss, and no one to start a family with.
“Stop it, Thatch,” I heard my father.
I noticed just then that I’d been crying again. I wiped away those embarrassing tears and tried to focus my attention on how we could achieve an expedient rescue.
Henley Knight
Chapter Thirteen
I brought the shuttle down just above the waves, hoping to appear as a boat or a ship to anyone who might eventually see me approaching. I’d seen many images of destructive aircraft throughout my years of poring through images on my tablet. Yet I don’t ever recall seeing any boats of war in those images, so maybe people wouldn’t be fearful of a boat approaching the shore.
My blinking red dot was nearing landfall according to the map on my tablet. The other red dot glitch was drawing closer and closer to my current position. Hopefully the two would just catch up to each other and I wouldn’t have to keep seeing that past image of myself on the screen.
Suddenly, I saw lights appearing on the horizon before me. I reduced my speed, keeping the craft a mere two to three feet above the wave crests. More lights continued to appear as I approached. Moment by moment the beach grew, offering me a sea of artificial lights that spoke of life. It was like the world was rising from the sea.
While these buildings weren’t as huge as those from Earth, they still shot up much higher than anything in our village. I approached the tallest one that appeared to offer up to ten floors. These fancy structures lined the beach like they’d been parked in identical-size spaces all along the shoreline. Some were as low as three or four floors, and others reached nearly as high as the one directly before me. Lights appeared randomly in some of the windows, just like in those nighttime images from Earth.
I settled the hopper onto the sand and quickly shut off the hover coils. I felt the excitement build up inside me as I reached over and hit the switch to open the rear hatch. I just wished suddenly that I could have brought Thatcher along to see this. He would have been as amazed as me.
I unbuckled my harness, then stood and situated my dress. I grabbed my tablet and then exited the rear of the hopper. My feet sunk quickly in the thick, soft sand. I wished suddenly that I hadn’t worn my fancy sandals. I kicked the sandals off, then knelt and picked them up. I’d carry them with me until I located somewhere a little more firm to walk.
I started toward the tall building, smiling brightly. I imagined what it would be like inside such a beautiful structure. I pondered what it would look like standing at the top and looking straight down. I looked up and down the beach, taking in all the beauty of civilization at its liveliest. I continued onward, locating a set of wooden stairs directly beneath one of the light posts. I walked as fast as I could through the shifting sand, then took the stairs up to what turned out to be a wooden walkway.
I reached down and brushed the sand from my feet. Then I slipped my sandals back on. I stood and looked toward the left, verifying a walkway that went on and on forever with light posts spaced evenly about every ten yards. It didn’t matter that we had a shadow period starting sometime tomorrow because this city was as well-lit on the outside as it was on the inside. There was a man and a woman holding hands and headed toward me in the distance.
I turned my attention back toward the building that had originally been my destination. I noticed just then that the building had a name and it was written in lights on the left upper corner. It simply read “Lunar Surf” in bright blue.
The building was much more imposing from this position. I proceeded, deciding in that moment that I needed to pay a visit to the Lunar Surf.
Thatcher Stark
Chapter Fourteen
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing out the window.
Brian appeared in the cockpit between my father and me. He had been explaining to us the need for so many hotels as we approached the beach. But then I suddenly caught sight of a large shuttle hovering up ahead which caused us a moment of pause.
“That’s a police transport,” he replied, “Bank left and let’s get the heck out of here.”
“Wait! Isn’t that Thatcher’s hopper down there?” my dad argued, pointing to the sand beneath the hovering craft.
“Get out of here now!” Brian yelled, “We’ll circle back later!”
My father groaned and banked left as he’d been ordered.
“Now punch it! Hit the thrusters!” he shouted.
“She’s down there somewhere!” I argued.
“And if you want to find her, you’ll get out of
here before the police notice us! We’ll come back in a different vehicle,” he insisted, “Now punch it, Zane!”
My father growled, hitting the thrusters and sending us barreling past the buildings below. I could hear Rigel in the back shouting an obscenity.
“See that building over there?” Brian said, pointing toward a tall building on the horizon, “Go to the immediate left of it, reduce the thrusters, and then follow the lights of the street beneath you.”
“Where are we going, if you don’t mind me asking?” Rigel asked from behind, “My daughter and her shuttle is back there getting abducted.”
“She wasn’t in her shuttle according to the tracker on the tablet,” Brian argued, “It looked like she was somewhere on Oceanfront Avenue. We’re headed for my house.”
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