A Step to Nowhere

by Natasha A. Salnikova

  “Just listen to me and don’t talk to people.”

  “I have no such desire, trust me.”

  “Great.”

  We reached the end of the corridor. Alex pressed the button and the door went up, hissing. We entered a gloomy, garage-like location with low ceilings. Just a few steps away stood a metal booth. I couldn’t see anyone inside it. Between the booth and the wall was a toll bar and behind it I saw five black cars of some strange design. At the far end of the place there was a gate, blocking the path to the street. They were metal and simple, too prosaic for the technical perfection of everything else in the building.

  “He can see us on the monitor,” Alex said, but not before we crossed that yellow line. So, stay here and wait for my signal. Then run to the gate, bending down.”

  Bending down, on my knees, I didn’t care. After the death bed I could do anything, just not go there anymore.

  “The gate will start opening after I get to the booth and the reader checks my prints. If something happens, run alone. Don’t panic, mix with the crowd. The corporation needs time to start chasing you. They are not ready for it. They don’t think anyone can escape the keeping level. And the only people who can go out are workers.”

  Chase? Ray, I hate you. Please, let everything go smoothly, at least here.

  Alex approached the booth, pulling something out of his top pocket. As he said, the gate started to open. He waved to me slightly, talking with somebody invisible to me. I bowed down and flattened along the wall to the exit. A few more seconds and I would be out on another planet. Alternative. Welcome to science fiction world.

  A few more steps to the gate and something unexpected happened. Well, I didn’t expect it, I couldn’t tell about Alex. A siren wailed in the building. I jumped and turned to my escort.

  “Run!” he yelled. “Run!”

  And I ran, without waiting or thinking of what would happen next.

  CHAPTER 12

  I sprinted outside and stopped. Bright sun blinded me. In spite of all desire to run further, I remembered Alex’s words. Don’t panic, don’t draw attention to yourself. I pulled the goggles off my face and blinked, trying to adjust to the light. My heart was jumping out of my throat. I was scared and didn’t know what to do. I was alone on a strange planet, running for my life.

  Yes, Alex warned me not to look around, but how was it possible? Was he kidding? There was a building behind me that was about a hundred floors tall, steel and glass. Skyscrapers were all around me. It was not like New York didn’t have any, but there were many more here and somehow they looked different. Highways crossed on a few levels. Beige colored buses, beige, gray and black cars zipped along. There were billboards on the buildings, promoting strange foods, overalls, and boots. Some of the screens presented a lottery game. “Buy Lottery!” screamed a man with gray hair from one screen. He looked painfully familiar, but I wouldn’t win “Pop Culture” questions in a “Jeopardy” game, so if he was an actor I wouldn’t remember. The screen with a lottery commercial was the only bright spot in the gray, black, and tan world. I would die here from boredom. The strangest thing of all was their clothing. They were all wearing the same style outfits, just like the one I was dressed in. The colors – death of the rainbow. Black, gray, beige. About fifty feet from me, there were two men in light green uniforms, but the same style. They stood at attention, gun holsters on their belts. Guards of order. I didn’t want them to see me at all.

  Don’t look at anyone, don’t talk to anyone.

  I found myself on another planet where people speak my tongue, but I couldn’t ask a single question.

  I don’t know anything here! Where is the bus station? Where is a frigging booth with sunglasses? Where should I go?

  He’s just crazy! He threw me like a puppy into the water. If I survived – good, if I didn’t – even better. He had done everything he could though. It wasn’t his fault. Also for Ray, the president of the corporation, for this son of a bitch, a mountain was raised of his spirits. No worries, no responsibility. I doubted though, the generosity of his care, as well as his sense of responsibility. Nature relieved him of this burden; otherwise he wouldn’t have pulled me into this craziness from the beginning. I afflicted him as much as a broken shoe sole. The most important for him were convenience and comfort. You deal with your feelings yourself, little lady. Take responsibility for your life in your own little hands.

  I’ll take it, don’t you worry.

  I stood a few steps away from the corporation. Alone, like a tree in a desert. People and cars passed by me. The wind blew my hair. I inhaled strange scents brought by the wind. Something sour like cheese went away and something sweet like caramel came, then it was a smell of burned rubber. On the screen, they were showing the lottery winners, as far as I could understand. The man with gray hair clapped their shoulders. Regular people, with regular features, with regular handshakes. Not green little trolls with sharp ears, reading each other’s mind from a distance. Different planet, alternative reality, same people. Until you glanced inside them and saw that there was no heart and no soul, only machinery that was feeding their egoism. Yes, this planet probably was technically more advanced than mine, but human relationships fell out of step.

  Of course, I was judging everyone based on my “lover”, who used me and then gave me away to the corporation’s workers. They killed like they were robots; they would tear me to pieces without a blink of an eye. Maybe they had been robots? Alex though was pretty human as far as I could tell. Ray sent him to help me. That was how much he cared about me. Right. What was going to happen to this Alex now? What if he had gotten caught? Did Ray care about him? I doubted that.

  Where should I go? I couldn’t stay much longer without drawing attention to myself.

  On the left side of me by the road, about an eighth of a mile from me, I saw a good crowd of people. Could they be waiting for a bus? A few steps away from the crowd was something oval and mirrored. A booth?

  I rustled the money in my pocket, turned to the building behind me, and went to the oval contraption. Alex was correct. No chase so far, even though I could still hear muffled wailing inside the building. Men that looked like police had been standing too far away to notice it. My legs were getting weak; my heart was thumping so hard that my ears were stuffed up. I ordered myself to act calm and not look at people drifting by with their eyes directed forward.

  Don’t look around.

  I was dressed like them, so no one would suspect my foreignness. I hoped.

  The oval and mirrored structure was really a selling booth with windows from the ceiling to the floor. Behind that glass was a woman of about forty, sitting on a high chair. She was dressed in a light brown outfit, her hair collected into a ponytail. Light brown eye shadow and rich brown lipstick was her makeup. Along the walls, there were magazines with people on the covers that I didn’t know. There were boxes on the counter, pens, hairclips and sunglasses. Three pairs of them and no price. An opened square in the window.

  I moved closer and pointed to some simple shades in a black frame.

  “Would you like to purchase something?”

  She does speak English indeed.

  I nodded and put my hand on my throat, coughed. One could never be too careful. Better not to talk at all than talk too much.

  The woman frowned as she didn’t understand what I was trying to explain.

  So, I coughed again, and again I pointed to my throat and it seemed to work this time.

  “You have a voice problem?”

  I smiled and nodded.

  “So sorry about that.”

  A polite one. She turned to the wall, pulled out a drawer and turned back to me with a plastic box. She opened the box, presented me with glasses, and when I nodded like a happy puppy, she told me the price.

  “Seven hundred dollars, please.”

  Holy cow! I took the heap of dollars out of my pocket and hurriedly pushed it back. There were a few thousands. Either I was re
ally rich now, or they had pretty bad default. It didn’t look like the woman noticed my confusion. Without taking my hand out of the pocket, I fingered one bill and reached it into the window.

  The woman, without looking at me, accepted my money (it was a thousand), slid it through some black device, which blinked with green, put the bill into a black, flat, laptopish looking box, and gave me the glasses plus my change.

  “Happy wearing,” she said with a sudden servility. “I hope you enjoyed my service.”

  A nod.

  “So sorry I didn’t understand you right away. I feel so bad. I’m so sorry.”

  Another nod and a smile from me. The woman smiled back, she looked relieved. I was relieved too. The first few steps of my own adventure on another planet had been successful. I moved away from the booth and closer to the road, tossing the goggles into my pocket along with the box from the new glasses. I put them on and didn’t even try to find my reflection. I didn’t care what I looked like. I wasn’t going to win a beauty contest, but save my life.

  Melt into the crowd. You are only a part of this world.

  What if I had a different smell?

  Nonsense. Stop it.

  The bus had arrived at the station. I was making the right assumption about the crowd even though there was no sign of a station in my field of vision. Good luck smiled on me in my game of survival.

  I took a place that was emptied some after the bus moved away, but more people filled the place fast. They all stood, looking at the road, no one threw even a glance at others. The only people talking were a mother with a girl of about two years old. I smiled at the cute toddler and her mother noticed it, frowned with suspicion I supposed.

  I turned to the road like everyone else who looked like gophers, waiting for the sunset. Look alike clothes, dull colors. What kind of world was it? Why?

  Another bus arrived, but I didn’t see Park Street in the enumeration of the stops on the top of the window. The bus looked pretty similar to ours, but bigger, wider and with sharp edges. I kept waiting. The glasses on my nose, eyes fixed on the road, but I was checking the details.

  It would sound banal, but it seemed like I was in a movie. A science fiction movie. You couldn’t tell it from the first sight. No flying car, for example, but it was the first expression. A science fiction movie. A nation excelling mine in development. Just the machine transferring people to another detention was beyond my imagination. Actually, maybe in some secret laboratories on my earth they had invented a contraption like this, but hadn’t used it for making money as they did here. They hadn’t killed people from a parallel universe. I hadn’t been the first, it was too obvious. For liquidation of people like me, they had created the whole system.

  I had just realized the globalism and horror of the situation. They had been killing people from my planet all the time. Why? Who gave them that right?

  I was looking at the big screen with the lottery commercial playing with different colors, luring with bright promises, and wiped my tears that were running from under my sunglasses. No, I didn’t cry even though I had tears. Or maybe I did, but couldn’t understand it at that moment. My anger was flowing over the edge. Helpless anger, overpowering.

  Here they are, playing lottery, almost fainting in customer satisfaction and ruthlessly killing innocent people without even explaining to them the reason. Without even warning that they are going to be killed.

  I could say I was lucky. The big man himself signed up to be my lover and explained what this crap was about. Almost. So I would know and not feel like an idiot. So I wouldn’t think anything bad, seeing the needle. We’re just killing you girl, relax. This is your last shot. What about others? I was sure they had no idea what was happening or why. Was I special or what?

  Alex said that somebody wanted my death. Was that somebody personally interested? But who? Why? Would I find out about it? Would I see Ray again?

  I looked sideways at the man on my left. Black outfit, smooth hair. He stared forward and didn’t move, like he wasn’t a person, but a statue. What if these people could figure out who I was? What did I need sunglasses for? Was it written in my eyes that I was a naïve fool from Planet Two?

  Endless lottery advertisement on the billboard had changed to a promotion of The Corporation “A Step to Another World”. I lowered my glasses a little so I could look over them and catch all the details. There was my planet on the screen, all right. My houses, my people, young couples, kids, their grandparents. My stores, food, flowers. Could I envisage that all of that would become so far and unreachable? The way we look at pictures of exotic countries, choosing the place to travel, people on this planet were studying my planet, so they could spend millions to walk through the corridor, enter another world, and gather enough experience to last a lifetime. Probably they could even find a double of his or her dead flame and sleep with her or him. The law didn’t allow it? What a pity. Screw the law. If the traveler had gotten in trouble, the double from a parallel world would be liquidated and the problem solved. There had been too many people on Planet Two; they wouldn’t even notice. So, no worries comrades, buy tickets to Planet Two with confidence and no fear! There is no law for you; the law was made for them. Us.

  Why do they wear the same clothes? It looks like a uniform and the city is like one huge factory.

  Another bus had arrived, and this time I saw Park Street on the electronic board. I pulled a couple of hundreds from the pocket, my change from the glasses, and went to get aboard. People entering before me scanned some gray cards through a squeaking device beside the driver window, and I decided not to go. With the cash in my hand, I would draw attention. Then I saw a young woman in a brown uniform (it seemed appropriate for their outfit’s style) walking ahead of me and sticking a hundred dollar blue bill into the device. It spat some change.

  My hand was shaking when I pushed the bill into the slot and accepted the change. I stared at it in some mode of disbelief.

  “Is something wrong?”

  I raised my eyes. The driver was overweight, bold, his face covered with red spots, and his eyes were scared.

  “Everything is fine,” I said as I squeezed the change in my fist.

  Don’t talk. Why did he get so nervous? Did he suspect something?

  I went to the far end of the bus, passing people who didn’t look at me. Almost all of them were sitting on the seats that seemed uncomfortable. Only one young man was standing, gazing out the window.

  I couldn’t see well in the glasses, but the seat at the very end was empty and I fell on it when the bus moved forward, touching the shoulder of the woman by the window. I straightened up, smiled at her. She was young, cute, with two braids. Her outfit was gray and interspersed with silver threads. You could say fancy, compared to the others. She glanced at me with curiosity.

  I stared at the seat in front of me to avoid her gaze. There was nothing written on the back of the chair; nothing was as I had imagined. Everything on this bus was neat and clean. Yes, they were so neat and clean outside and full of crap inside. Maybe not of all them? Probably not, but what difference did it make? If they had an opportunity to come into my world and destroy somebody’s life just to get a few moments of pleasure without any consequences, would they say no?

  Who are we for them?

  “Sorry, do we know each other?”

  I startled, turned to the girl for a second to negatively shake my head. I even smiled again just to look natural. Shit. Shit!

  “I think I’ve seen you somewhere.”

  I shook my head again, without looking at her, even though I could see with my side view that the girl was studying me.

  “Your face is so familiar.”

  I had glasses on; who could she see in me? What did she need from me? Didn’t she notice that I wasn’t hot to talk to her? Maybe it was normal in this world to not answer a stranger’s questions. Maybe it was normal to be annoying. I wanted to talk back, but I was silent. And I was smiling.

 
“I saw you yesterday, I’m sure of it.”

  Smile and be quiet. Maybe she will think you’re nuts and leave you alone. Seriously, leave me alone.

  “I think we have even talked.”

  “I don’t know you,” I hissed. Be quiet! “Sorry.”

  The bus stopped, I jumped from the seat and ran to the exit, pushing the guy in my way. I apologized without stopping and flew onto the street.

  I stopped, gasping for air and looking around. We hadn’t gone too far and this part of the town differed from the previous one only in absence of the screen. Here, I saw much less advertising. I tried to think what area of my town it would be, but couldn’t guess. The place was strange, but at the same time familiar. Like the same scenery in a different time of the year.

  Where should I go? Should I wait for another bus, hoping there would be no nosy ladies? Jesus, what an annoying bitch she was. She had to figure out the location of our non-existent meeting. What if everyone in this world was like that? It didn’t matter. I had to get to Park Street and no strangers, thank you very much.

  I turned to the bus that was driving away from the station. I had to wait for the next one and try to look natural. Don’t panic, blah, blah.

  I froze in horror. The girl who had been sitting beside me didn’t stay on the bus as I’d assumed. She was standing close to me, by the two men in green, talking to them. All three of them were looking in my direction.

  Okay. Great. She’s complaining about me, judging by the look of things, to the local police. That’s just great! What a bitch! What should I do now?

  Turning away from them, I moved along the road. I tried not to hurry and to pretend that nothing was going on. I was just a regular citizen of Planet One, leave me alone. What did she want from me? Who did she think I was? What if I looked like some criminal? I could look like someone without being a mirror copy. I didn’t take off my glasses on the bus, which was probably suspicious. Oh, Jesus. What if she had thought I was a criminal? Now they would catch me, find out who I was and return me to the corporation. People there would be happy to cook me in the microwave like a turkey.