I close my eyes. It’s all there, inside of my head. The fog following the contours of the grass. The sudden cold that bites into my face. Leaves falling down onto the concrete streets, lying there sad and lifeless. I perfectly remember every detail about the morning we found the ship, but more importantly, her.
No sooner had I finished my unusually stale cup of morning coffee than my phone rang. I quickly finish my coffee, burning my tongue, and pick up the phone.
“Hi. Lance?”
“Yes yes, I’m here, what is it?”
“Um, well...we’re having a bit of a situation here, ground G8. You need to get over here ASAP.”
“Yeah, sure, I was about to leave when you called. What’s the situation?”
“It’s kind of hard to explain, Lance.”
“Why are you being so mysterious, Olivia?”
“Just get over here, okay Lance? You’ll see when you get here.”
“All right, fine, I’m on my way.”
She abruptly hangs up the phone without having said goodbye. I’m worried. Why didn’t she say anything. She can’t just call me up every morning without any explanation and summon me to the gate. This better be serious or I will be having a chat with her later. I can’t really fire her seeing that she’s my daughter. Not that I was ever a real father to her.
I grab an apple and leave the kitchen pod. I get into the entrance zone. Only Olivia and Sam’s suits are gone, the rest of the crew is still asleep. I eat my apple as fast as I can, I know now that I’ll be hungry for the rest of the morning but eating this early in the day makes me feel sick. Having accepted the hunger to come I suit up and leave the base.
“Good morning Aseralt and welcome to the first day of the Asran fall this year. Fall 2438 was good but this year’s is predicted to be even better. The weather’s lookin’ rough folks so don’t forget those extra sweaters today! It is 7 o’clock and here’s the news with...” I turn the radio down. I still don’t get why this guy gets paid for this stupid radio station. There’s only a thousand people here, nobody cares about the century 2000 hits. Another stupid idea from the government I suppose. All of this money could be used for research but instead they spend it on making sure every single person on Aseralt hates pre-revolutionary music.
As I approach the entrance point for ground gate I slow down. Olivia’s standing next to the bench, waiting for me. I park the car and rush over to her. She seems nervous, almost scared.
“Finally”
“I came here as fast as I could Olivia. Now can you please tell me what the problem is?”
She rolls her eyes at me and starts walking. I follow her and start pondering why she hates me so much that she can’t even speak to me as a normal human being. She was born a few years before the revolution. Her dad and I had no choice but to send her to boarding school. She’s never going to forgive us for it.
Suddenly she stops and goes to the side of the path making way for me to pass her by. I continue walking and stop when I see it. My heart starts to beat faster and I am having trouble breathing.
“Pretty crazy isn’t it.”
This is amazing, mesmerizing, revolutionary. Ground G8 has always been deemed the boring one. A scientist-wannabe ground. Who would have thought that of all the places where this could have landed it would land on a boring field. This is not just any piece of metal. This is a ship. And it is most certainly not human-made. The radars probably didn’t pick up on it because of the heavy rainfall last night. It is seriously damaged, clearly this was not safely landed but chaotically crashed.
“Have you been inside?”
“No, not yet, we waited for you.”
“Well, let’s go then, what are we waiting for.”
We get out our flash lights and carefully walk towards the ship. The actual door isn’t open so we enter through a hole made by the crash. The ship has only one level with two rooms. You would think that alien ships are huge and incredibly advanced, but this one is small, compact and well used. There are strange markings on the walls and papers. We look around the rest of the ship and see nothing. It is empty; no people or signs of life. As if the ship hasn’t been entered for ages.
I go up to the little room in the middle of the circular ship. Perhaps this is the powerhouse or a storage room, there are several doors to it, each one has different markings. I open the door closest to me and upon pointing my flash light into the small room I discover that it is merely a toilet. I guess aliens need those too. I let out a small laugh and Olivia and Sam look at me. They come over and burst out in laughter. All of a sudden we hear a sound, something bumping against metal. We all stop moving. We look at the door where the noise is coming from. Having looked at each other and silently agreed that I will open the door we creep over. I put my hand on the door handle. Sam gets out his shooter. Olivia counts down with her fingers. 3, 2, 1… I open the door and see her.
Her eyes are open wide and have fear written all over them. She’s curled up in a ball, breathing heavily, bruises all over. This is human, what happened to her?
“Do you speak English?”
No answer. Olivia pushes me aside and goes near her. The girl bursts out in tears and falls into her arms. I guess it it true what they say about women. They’re easier to trust with their soft skin, gentle smiles and unconditional love for those who deserve it. I’ve never been a part of that group. Born an orphan before the revolution (Lance). Doomed because I was different from others.
“Lance!”, Sam yells, breaking my train of thought.
“Yes Sam, what is it?”
“We should inform the Asran Circle,”
“Yes, yes, of course. Um...I’ll go. Um..I’ll go do that, yeah.”, I stutter.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes Sam, I’m fine.”
I leave the ship and start walking in a slightly elevated pace towards the car. Her eyes, I can’t get them out of my mind. Never have I seen so much fear and pain in one person’s eyes. Not even during the revolution; not on any of the battlefields, not in any of the mother’s eyes when I told them, time and time again, that their son, daughter or husband didn’t make it.
I get to ground C0 and barge in through the front door. The man at the front desk looks up at me with a frown.
“What is it, Keller? You’ve proved another one of your theories?”, he chuckles.
“Very funny, Esra. And no. Olivia discovered something in the gate this morning.”
“Oh my, are you sure it’s not just an Asran tree? I can’t imagine anyone in the G section knowing the difference between a normal tree and, well, anything.”
He’s referring to the time I found an ancient tree from Earth. No one believes me and I’ve been made fun of ever since so I’m fairly used to it by now. I still stand behind what I said though. It was there, I’m sure of it; an actual Earth apple tree. I took one of the apples and took it to the lab, the results were conclusive, it was Earthian. When I took a team from section A there the next morning the tree was gone. As if it had disappeared into thin air. But the apple I took was still there. I’m trying to use it to plant a new tree. So far not much has happened but I’ve been doing research on Earthian soil and I will prove them all wrong when I finally figure out how to make it grow.
“No Esra, it’s not a tree. It’s much more important than that. A ship crashed in the gate. Coordinates are KYS-739. Go ahead, have a look with the satellites.”
He starts typing with a look on his face ready to start laughing at me. Not gonna happen Esra, not this time. He stops and stares at the screen, he refreshes the system. He picks up the phone - not taking his eyes off of the screen – and dials a number.
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