by Ike Hamill
They nod in approval. The young man asks the next question. “How did you disguise your scent?”
“I didn’t make any attempt to disguise my scent. I mean, I keep myself washed in the stream, but aside from that…”
I can see that they’re all trying to resolve my experience with their own view of the world.
I use the lull to press them with my question. “What do you guys know of the guy who escaped here? The guy who lived in the in-between?”
The last word is the key. They didn’t show any recognition at all until I said “in-between.”
The young woman answers. “I remember him. He was the first man. Escape is the wrong word. He lived here and he lived elsewhere. He just chooses to live here less now and more elsewhere.”
“Where is elsewhere?”
“Back on Earth, maybe? Maldy? I don’t think there’s a word for how many possibilities there are.”
“How does he travel?”
She smiles. The young man shakes his head.
“How did you travel?” the young man asks.
“It’s not really travel,” the first woman says. “Not like walking, or running.”
The young woman seems to want to explain. “We’re in the folds. All life is in the folds.”
“I don’t know what that means. Is there someone here who knows how this guy gets from place to place? When was the last time he was seen?”
The man smiles like I’ve said something dumb. He backs away and starts engaging in conversation with a couple of muscular people who are roasting ribs. The original woman I met drifts off also. I’m left with the young woman.
She leans in close and speaks confessionally. “People here aren’t really mean, but they don’t like to talk about things that they don’t understand. It’s a survival mechanism of sorts, I think.”
“Oh?”
“We all have to be very self-reliant. If you start to question things too much, you lose your confidence. Without confidence, none of us would last long. Every day is a test of our ability to defy the odds and survive, you know? When doubt creeps in, it can cripple a person. I’ve seen it happen.”
“Why don’t people band together and lean on each other?” I ask. “Wouldn’t that make it easier for everyone to survive.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not that simple.”
“Why is that? I don’t understand—what’s preventing people from coming together into more of a community? Is there…”
My inquiry is cut off by a guy with a long beard. He’s standing on a big rock and commands everyone’s attention with a grunt. “Let’s have a speech from our our gracious host.”
All eyes turn to me. I lean towards the young woman and ask quietly, “What am I supposed to say.”
She gives me a quick answer and I head to the rock.
The bearded man steps down from the rock and grasps my shoulder briefly while giving me a big smile. His beard is shiny with grease from cooked meat. His smile is infectious. I wear it as I climb onto the rock and turn around to address my guests.
“Thank you all for coming. And thank you for helping me pay tribute to this animal,” I say. According to the young woman, these were the only two mandatory statements I needed to make. I have more to say. “I respect the way of life out here, and I respect all of you. That said, if anyone has any information on how to get back to Earth, or how to contact this man who is able to travel between here and Earth, I would love to talk with you. It seems like little to ask in return for the meal…”
Everyone is gone. As soon as I mentioned Earth, they all began to disperse. It seems that they’ve all grabbed up as much meat as they could carry as well. I’m left with scraps of meat near my pile of bone and fur. These people are fast and quiet. By the time I climb down from the rock, there’s no sign of them.
Chapter Twenty-Six
* Travel *
I ACHIEVED EVERYTHING I set out to do, and yet I’ve come up empty. While my brain works on the problem, I put my hands to work. I don’t know what to do with the big squirrel hide. I tie it up between trees, thinking that I need to dry it out. By the time I’m done, it starts to rain. I haven’t experience much rain since I’ve lived in the forest. A couple of brief showers—nothing that I couldn’t weather easily. This rain seems like it has some serious business to discuss with the trees. It settles in.
My big fire is starting to go out. I move some of the meat and the stacked wood under the skin. I think I’ve inadvertently made a little tent. With the rock at my back, I’m warm and dry as the light fades.
I take a deep breath and let it out with a sigh.
I don’t know what my next step is. I hate that feeling. I thought if I could be accepted by the tribe of people, I would get information and then be on my way back home. I’ve found out that there is no tribe, and there is no information. Thus, there is no way back home.
With those thoughts running in a loop in my brain, I drift off to sleep.
---- * ----
Even in my dream, I recognize that my brain isn’t working properly. It must be the meat. I lock onto that explanation for no reason at all, but I’m certain that it’s true. There must be some kind of chemical in the squirrel meat that makes people have crazy dreams. Maybe I ate the wrong part. Maybe I ate too much.
I’m standing on a tiny planet that is no bigger than a basketball.
If I were to reach out, I would be able to touch the dazzling star that’s hanging in the empty space in front of me. I have no doubt that it would burn through my hand. I’m as big as a solar system.
The planet starts to crumble and my feet are slipping. It makes no sense, but I’m falling away from the tiny planet. My giant feet crush the little rock to dust and I’m flying through space, untethered.
I manage to flip myself over, so at least I’m facing down and I can see what’s coming. Tiny stars and galaxies fly by me. Their light is stretched into tiny line segments as I approach the speed of their emissions. I’m on a collision course with a tiny green dot in empty blackness.
It grows bigger as I streak towards it. I have no idea of its scale. It could be another basketball-sized planet, or it could be a world as big as Jupiter. There’s nothing I can see that gives me any clue.
It grows bigger, and bigger. As it fills my field of vision, I realize that I have no way to conceive of how enormous the thing is. This one planet, that used to be a tiny green pinprick at the edge of my vision, is a larger thing than my mind can hold.
It’s rushing towards me. When I hit the atmosphere, I burst into hot white flame.
Agony.
I splash into an ice-blue pond at the bottom of a waterfall. I claw my way back to the surface and breach to suck in warm, summer air.
It feels just as real as the rain in my forest prison. I swim to the bank and pull myself up onto the pebble beach.
A man walks up and stands above me. He puts out his hand to help me up.
He looks like he just walked out of a casual business meeting. His khakis have a crisp crease. His blue shirt is buttoned and neatly tucked.
My wet hand grabs his soft manicured fingers and he helps me to my feet.
I look around. The waterfall cascades down a cliff that’s a part of a larger mountain on one side. On the other side, the meadow is dotted with conifers and wild flowers. It’s a relief to be able to see to the horizon. Back in my forest prison, I can rarely see twenty yards because of all the trees.
“Don’t tell me,” I say to the man. “Maldy?”
He smiles. “Good deduction,” he says. I recognize his voice at once, although I’ve never seen his face before. He looks kinder than I expected. Kinder, and more sane.
“Adam,” I say. “The first man.”
His smile broadens and he gives a little laugh. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he says. “Come on—you want some coffee?”
“More than anything,” I say.
He leads me down a little path, between blueberry bushes,
and up a slope. His cabin is tucked between clumps of trees, but the face of it has an unbroken view of the field below. His front door is open, except for the screen. He holds that open and I lead the way. I feel bad, standing on his braided rug. I’m dripping everywhere.
“There are some clothes in the guest room,” he says pointing. “Why don’t you get changed while I make the coffee?”
I nod.
His place is one of those log cabins that looks rustic on the outside, but like a real house on the inside. The doors are made of thick planks that look rough-cut, but they’re hung on modern hinges that swing easily. The door handle is brushed nickel. If it were described to me, I would think that the place would look like a hodgepodge of styles, but it doesn’t. Everything seems to go together perfectly well. The living room has a vaulted ceiling and one of those chandeliers made of deer antlers. Somehow it seems perfectly natural next to the framed painting of a woman kneading dough on a stone.
The guest room is cozy and well-appointed. One window at the back of the room perfectly frames two snow-capped peaks. The colors are a little too dazzling. It looks like a Bob Ross painting.
Sure enough, I find clothes in the drawers of a pine dresser. I do my best to hang up my wet stuff, and I end up dressed like Adam. I’m wearing useless cotton. These duds wouldn’t last a day in the forest. It’s funny how quickly one’s priorities can change.
---- * ----
I find Adam out on the back porch. He offers me a glass and a chair and then pours lemonade from a tall pitcher. The combination of sweet and sour reminds me of the yellow fruit from the forest prison. Combined with the ice and the clean glass, the drink is a perfect bridge between savagery and civilization.
“I never expected you to come here,” Adam says.
“Where is here?” I ask. From the view, I would have to think Colorado, or at least some part of the Rocky Mountains. I know, of course, that’s not.
He smiles and arches his eyebrows. “There’s no good way to comprehend the distance between here and your apartment.”
“Speaking of which, There may or may not be a black bear around here somewhere. I would like to have a few words with him,” I say. Somehow, I still blame that original black bear for all my problems. Before I met him, the world made sense.
“I think he’s still causing trouble back on Earth,” Adam says.
“Is this a dream, or not?”
“Not that I know of,” Adam says.
“How did I get here?”
Adam laughs. “I was going to ask you. The bears use big technology to create their folds. I’ve gotten pretty good at riding the creases, but it takes a lot of meditation. You dropped into the lake with nothing more than your clothes and a knife. That’s an interesting accomplishment.”
I shrug. “It was just a dream as far as I was concerned. I ate too much Higg squirrel and fell asleep under my tent. Next thing I know.” I hold my hands up to indicate the world around us.
Adam frowns and shakes his head a little. “That giant squirrel meat turned me into a vegetarian. I can’t even stand the thought of it now. I suppose it’s possible that you got caught in an unintentional fold somehow. Maybe it was chance. It feels like a really unlikely coincidence though.”
“That we were neighbors on Earth and I traveled halfway across the universe to land in a pond near your cabin? Yeah, I would say that’s a pretty huge coincidence.”
“It’s not halfway across the universe,” he says. “It’s really on partway across our little galaxy. We’re on the Cygnus arm, and the sun is on…”
I hold up my hand for him to stop. “It’s just an expression. But since you’re familiar with how this all works, can you show me how to get back to Earth? I would like to put an end to my days of interstellar travel.”
He takes a deep breath and puffs his cheeks out before he exhales. “I can,” he says. “I’m not sure you would want me to, all things considered.”
“Did the asteroid hit? I had the feeling that the whole asteroid crisis wasn’t averted. Those bears seem to have a lot of confidence, but I’m not sure it’s backed up with ability,” I say.
“No, it’s not the asteroid,” Adam says.
“Then what’s the problem? Are the bears looking for me there? Are they trying to prosecute me for some absurd thing about poisoning my brother? That never even happened, by the way.”
Adam is shaking his head. “There are some pretty bad predictions for what’s going to happen on Earth. The bears have some pretty sophisticated simulations, and they all point at the same thing. Humans are going to destroy the place within the next few years. That’s why so many of the bears voted to allow the asteroid to hit. They wanted to wipe everything out and start over, like this place.”
I glance around the landscape. Aside from Adam’s cabin, there are no signs of civilization.
“How? How is Earth going to be destroyed?”
“I have an incomplete understanding,” Adam says. “I probably have some of this wrong, but I think it mostly comes down to power generation. The one thing that has kept us relatively safe is that we’re not that good at generating power. People have been looking for ways to harness natural resources. We burn things, react things, and collect things. Those three methods are all passive enough that it’s difficult to create enough power to destroy much. Even with global warming, it was taking us decades and decades to mess the place up.”
“But that’s about to change?”
He nods. “This is where I’m piecing stuff together. Obviously, the bears don’t talk about such things openly. There’s another way to generate power, and it’s like the great-great-grandfather of nuclear fusion. Imagine the power behind the Big Bang, but harnessed to move electrons. There’s a group that’s going to emerge in Australia, and they’re going to invent this technology.”
“And it’s going to go bad?” I ask.
“Very bad. For a while, we’re going to have all the free energy you could imagine. The whole planet will be lit up with it. A couple of cycles will pass quickly. First, a whole bunch of industries will rise and fall as the energy economy collapses. Lots of unrest and civil wars will break out as people fight the inevitable change. Then, a new type of business will emerge. These will be focused on harnessing the energy to reverse the damage caused by us. Imagine a huge segment of the population working in facilities designed to fix the atmosphere and refurbish the planet. Lots of other groups will use the energy to create new ways to get us off of Earth and move to Mars and the moon. Meanwhile, research will push the boundaries of how to generate even more power.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It will when we go too far. Eventually, the system will get out of control. Either Earth will be destroyed, or the whole universe will be in jeopardy. As far as we know, this is the same thing that happened thirteen billion years ago when our universe was created. That’s why the bears have such strict laws on disseminating information about this type of energy. Even amongst themselves, they’re very careful about who is allowed to learn any of that stuff.”
I’m starting to understand, or at least I have a guess.
“So people on Earth got the idea from a bear?”
Adam nods.
“Have I met this bear?”
“I think so,” Adam says. “I think they learned it from the black bear you met. I think that’s why they had him drugged and put in that zoo. They don’t know how he managed to sober up and they don’t know how he escaped. They think it was a band of extremists who want humans to return back to nature.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’ve met them. They run around naked all the time.”
Adam looks surprised.
“I know,” I say. “It seems like I run into a lot of strange people.”
After a second, he continues. “They don’t know if the black bear is willfully ignorant to the possible consequences, or if he wants people to destroy everything. Either way, he was convicted and left to live
out his life in the zoo. When the bears discovered the asteroid, they figured the whole problem of humans working on the Big Bang energy source would be wiped out by cosmic fate.”
“So why did they divert the asteroid in order to recapture the bear? Why not just let him get burned up on Earth with the rest of us?”
“Probably because of me,” Adam says. “Because they’ve never been able to figure out how I move through the folds, they were afraid that the black bear might do the same thing. If he was loose in the universe, then they would still have the threat of another Big Bang device on another planet.”
“They wanted to recapture the black bear but then they would still have the threat of humans destroying everything.”
“After they captured the black bear, they were going to do their own version of an asteroid strike, and reset Earth. The asteroid was a clean idea, but it’s not their only way to wipe out a species.”
“Ugh,” I say. “How do we stop them?”
Adam shakes his head. “I’m not sure that stopping them is such a good idea.”
“Forgive me for my human-centric viewpoint, but what’s the good of a universe if there are no people in it?”
“You would rather see a possibility of the whole universe destroyed than the certainty of Earth being cleared out?”
“Right. Wouldn’t you? Aren’t people important to you?”
“That’s a false dichotomy,” Adam says. “Earth isn’t the only place that people exist. You just came from a colony that the primates set up on Llanive, right? The bears keep some people on the moon, and they might even have some in atmospheric vessels in Venus’ atmosphere. Just because Earth is reset doesn’t mean that people will go away.”
“But human civilization will,” I argue.
“Is that a bad thing?” Adam asks. “I think that most people understand that our civilization needs correction. Why do you think there are so many portrayals of the apocalypse in human culture lately? Everyone seems to be having the same idea at the same time—we’re moving towards a post-civilization culture. There’s that group of naked people you met. They call themselves Retros. But there’s also a whole rewilding movement, where people want to cast off the shackles of being civilized.”