2240 return to planet ea.., p.4
2240: Return to Planet Earth, page 4
We prepared to leave with the ship to get to our new home, The Tower. It sounds like an easy task to land on top of a giant building, but The Tower was not the tallest one in the area, and was surrounded by plenty of other structures. Spaceships don’t have propellers like helicopters, but this was the fastest way to bring 57 people at the same time to downtown Los Angeles. I was so focused on getting the spaceship to the top of a high rise like it was a helicopter, Gabriela even convinced me it was a good idea to set up a killer drone, a flying weapon with twenty-four bullet chambers and that could therefore kill twenty-four people at the same time. Unsurprisingly, the technology was created in World War III. At the time these drones were huge, and it was the first and only large-scale war to ever be fought with robots. All other wars had been fought with biological weapons until World War IV in 2120, in which a global pandemic was started due to a miscalculation with one of the launched viruses. In the 23rd century, we used these small killing devices mostly to fight crime. I had no idea why Gabriela wanted to bring it to an empty downtown. But Gabriela is a unique person and I couldn’t talk her out of it even if I had tried.
We all entered the spaceship, everyone buckled up, and I started the engine, ready to fly my spaceship into a group of skyscrapers.
CHAPTER V
BLAKE: THE ARRIVAL
It took us of hours of back and forth between Cora, Harry and me to see how we would approach the astronauts. The idea was to first contact them with the holophone and explain what happened with the world after they disappeared, tell them how we survived, and invite them to our civilization. This way was probably smarter than flying there and knocking on their door. They could see our hologram and we could have a discussion as if we were in the same room without the possibility of alarming them or creating unnecessary chaos.
Harry had the holophone ready to start the call while I was looking at The Hills with my binoculars. The communication tone started but no one would pick up. A few seconds later, I saw the door of the base opening and numerous people walking out. This time, they were not wearing suits and it looked like they realized there’s no more invisible radiation.
“I don’t understand. They’re at the deck; that’s why no one’s picking up. They’re leaving the base with all these people.” I left the binoculars on the desk of my uncle and sat down on a chair. My uncle grabbed the binoculars to check out the base while I was already lamenting my lost chance of reuniting humankind. The most crucial thing was that they were taking all the Space Force people of Project SURVIVE that we’d been waiting twenty years to wake up. They might be going back to space or anywhere in the world, where it would be incredibly complicated to contact them.
“How did they open the chambers? We tried so many times...” Uncle Harry started talking but I stopped listening, since my frustration didn’t let me concentrate. I was just looking at the concrete ceiling and then his words caught my attention again. “They’re up in the sky, but they’re going too slow towards the ocean. This isn’t how you fly out of Los Angeles to space. Where are you going, pilot?”
As soon as he pronounced these words, I looked out the window and saw them slowly heading to downtown. When I saw the scene, I ran to my uncle’s shelf, took out two drones and ran to the elevators. I was going to try to capture their attention any way I could. This drone was military, and I could send a large red flare into the sky. Uncle Harry followed me into the elevator, and we went to the top floor of The Tower where I could have a better view of the ship and launch the drones.
When we got there and looked out the windows, we didn’t see anything in any direction, but I could slightly hear the hydrogen cell engine in the sky. “Launch the drones,” my uncle told me. I launched them into the sky and elevated them above the roof of our building. When the drones reached the top of The Tower, I saw the most unexpected thing of all.
“That pilot’s crazy; she just landed a spaceship on our building,” I said while watching the ship park on our roof. The door opened down, creating a ramp to the roof of the building. The pilot, Mia Bennet, walked down, followed by the rest of the Space Force members. She was tall with long light brown hair. The bright sun shone in her white pale skin, and her smile showed how happy she was to be there. But as soon as she looked up in the sky towards the ocean, she saw the drones and her beautiful perfect smile went away. All our intentions to not cause fear were for naught.
“Why are there military drones up on our head? Are those killer drones?” she asked, afraid.
“No. Whoever or whatever is controlling these is close,” Marcus said. I knew who he was since my uncle would talk a lot about him. They had been good friends when they were in Space Force together.
“Just FYI, there are no humans left on Earth, so an android is controlling them,” Eliza said.
“How predictable—the end of the world androids have taken over,” Gabriela said. “Don’t worry, I got this.” She flew her killer drone in the sky and laser-targeted my drones. “Mia, just give me the order and I’ll kill these freaking machines.”
She was ready to take down my drone, and they were thinking that androids had taken over Los Angeles. The chaos and fear we wanted to prevent materialized. My uncle and I started running up the stairs to meet them on the roof and put an end to their ridiculous ideas.
As soon as we opened the door Gabriela theorized out loud, “How is this possible? I can’t believe they did full-height androids like that.”
“Gabriela, take the laser down off the drone,” Mia requested, giving my uncle and I a serious look.
“You come back to an empty world and the first thing you think is that androids took over?” I said with a friendly smile. I was mesmerized by the imagination and creativity that fear could lead you to.
“Are you human? Who are you?” Mia asked me with a calmer tone. She started slowly walking towards us and looked at me with her penetrating blue eyes. I’ve never seen eyes like that before. In the Tower we were slightly over 300 people, and none had those dark blue eyes. I quickly got distracted when I saw Marcus approaching my uncle.
“Is…is it really you, Harry?” Marcus hesitated while deeply looking at my uncle in a discerning way. My uncle and Marcus had become good friends in a Space Force mission to Mars over twenty-two years ago. Harry was now twenty years older, but it was still easy to recognize it was him. He just had silver hair and wrinkled skin.
“I thought you wouldn’t recognize me twenty years on,” my uncle told Marcus. Marcus hugged him with excitement. Melissa walked to them and hugged my uncle as well. This was a nice and unexpected reunion between old friends.
“Welcome to the Tower, the only left civilization on Earth,” Harry explained. “This is my nephew, Blake.” Harry explained. According to stories by him and my mom, Melissa and Marcus had known me since I had been born, and now I was basically a couple years younger than them. They didn’t age a day in cryosleep and I had lived twenty years of my life in the new world.
Before any of them could say anything about how surprised they were to see me, my uncle continued, “We’ve been waiting for Project SURVIVE for twenty years, but I think you have four extra friends who are equally invited to stay in The Tower. They must be great coders, otherwise you wouldn’t be here just yet. You woke up three months early. We’ll have you grouped and assigned to your apartment.”
We brought them to the lobby. There were enough apartments in The Tower for each person to have their own, but Harry encouraged people to live in groups so that we would form a community—or as he calls it, a big family. Cora was there with her daughter Katharina. After all her fears about letting them in, she was now walking around and welcoming everyone. Cora knew most of the people there, since they were all Space Force and she had been their psychiatrist.
While I was looking at Cora doing her political campaign as a leader of The Tower, I was surprised by Mia, Gabriela and Eliza who walked over to me. “Wow, she looks old,” Gabriela said with a caustic humor. “Is she the psychologist of the Tower? Please don’t sign me up.” Eliza elbowed her in the ribs.
“Don’t tell her she’s a psychologist; she’d freak out,” I responded, laughing.
Our happy moment went away when Mia stopped the banal conversation and stepped in with a zealous comment. “Now to the important point. I’m going to take a shower and then I have many questions I need you to answer.”
“You can start while I walk with you to your apartment,” I replied. “All the rest of your questions will be answered tonight at dinner. My uncle Harry will walk you through all the details.” Mia glared silently at me, but didn’t have any other option but to accept my offer.
When I was walking towards the elevator with them, Katharina leered at me and then scrutinized the girls who were walking behind me. Katharina, probably instigated by her mother, was sure that the only way for the leadership to succeed was for us to get married so that The Tower would continue to be ruled by the same family. I always found that idea ridiculous, since I had no intention to lead this place after the death of my uncle. He did a great job keeping everyone content, and just because I’m his nephew didn’t mean I could do the same. Cora and Katharina truly believed that since my uncle saved everyone in The Tower from the invisible radiation, the inhabitants would lose faith if our family didn’t govern it. But the truth was that I didn’t like her and couldn’t tolerate her at all. She was spoiled and superficial, and I would always reject the offer of marriage no matter how old I get. Therefore, she would always act jealous whenever she would see me around other young ladies. Katharina would look down on them, as if they were unworthy of me or her attention.
On the elevator, Mia took the opportunity to start inquiring about the Tower. “So, Blake, how many are you here?”
“We are 396 with you fifty-seven who just arrived. We were expecting only fifty-three in three months, but who knew a crew from the sky would come and hack the unhackable cryosleep chambers. I heard they tried that a lot twenty years ago and nothing worked.”
“’A crew from the sky.’ Sounds like we all did it, but it was actually moi,” Gabriela said with pride and big smile. I could see now why Cora would call her a rebel. With just the two sentences I had ever heard from her, I could already tell she said all she thought, regardless of what people believed about her. And that was something new for me. I had never met someone like that in my entire life in The Tower. People are quite the opposite here.
“Don’t listen to her, she’s just bragging,” Eliza added. “But she’s right, it was all her.” Eliza and Gabriela were relaxed and grateful, while Mia was tense and even uncomfortable being there.
Mia didn’t give her joyful friends the chance to deviate the conversation. “How are you alive? We checked everything, and the invisible radiation was too high even for astronauts. Astronauts radiation tolerance wouldn’t pass to the next generation and there are kids here. Did you live in a bunker for years?”
“Questions, questions. You’ll get the full answers tonight, and you’ll learn how my uncle created this place and why we run it as if nothing ever happened. For now you only need to know that we have everything up and running here, and you are safe.” I answered in a very light way to make her feel comfortable, to make her feel safe. Before I knew it, we were already at apartment #352 on floor 115.
“Welcome to your new home,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you’ll like your apartment. Four bedrooms, plenty of space, great view of the Santa Monica islands. Settle in and join us for dinner. You’ll get all your answers then.”
Gabriela gave me a glance of thankfulness, opened the door of her apartment, entered and closed the door behind her. I just stood there looking at Mia, distracted by her beautiful eyes showing her ungrateful but cute attitude towards me. She looked back at me with confusion. She probably wasn’t happy I didn’t fully respond to her questions, but the reality was that they had to rest before taking in all the information about the world ending. They had just woken up from twenty-five years of sleep and had been bombarded with plenty of information already.
“Are you always so serious and concerned?” I asked her.
“Not always. You just have no idea how my past few days have been,” Mia responded, frustrated. “I just want answers.”
“I understand this is a lot to take in. There’s nothing to worry about. You’re safe now.”
“Again, you have no idea how my past few days have been,” she said in an insolent and even childish tone. She turned around to open the door, but then probably realized how bad she sounded, so she turned back to me again. “But thanks for trying to help.”
Right after that she entered the apartment and left me and her friend Eliza outside. I then remembered my uncle Harry talking about Mia and her being the old girlfriend of this good friend Marcus. Maybe that was why she was so upset; Marcus had another girlfriend after she disappeared in space.
“I’m sorry, Blake,” Eliza said. “You all have been great, opening the doors of your home to share with us. Mia…well, Mia’s gone through twice the bad news than the rest of us in the past days. Just give her time. She’s a pretty amazing person.” She then turned around and entered her new home.
In The Tower, I’m the nephew of the leader. Everyone looks up to me and sees me as their next leader, something I never wanted and never will. Katherina and all the other girls look at me as some sort of prize. But to Mia I was just another regular person. And that suddenly made her fascinating to me.
CHAPTER VI
MIA: THE TOWER
When I entered my new apartment, I felt ashamed and embarrassed about my behavior, and I knew as soon as Eliza entered she would give me a well-deserved lecture. I just didn’t understand why Blake wouldn’t stop smiling the whole time. Maybe this was the normal reaction of finding more humans alive on Earth, when you thought all of them to be dead. But for me the story was very different. Within days my life had turned upside-down, and I wasn’t in the mood to be happy about humankind. My mom was dead like 99.99% of the rest of humanity; a mysterious radiation is still loose and unexplained; and my boyfriend is now dating a gorgeous girl right in front of me. As soon as Eliza entered the apartment, I didn’t even let her start, but said, “I know, I’m sorry.”
“If your mom were here, she’d be kicking you ass, Mia. That guy’s the nicest guy ever. They took us to their home, no questions asked, not even an insistence on taking our weapons. What happened to you isn’t even Marcus’s fault. I am really, really sorry, but you need to apologize to Blake tonight.”
“Besides, didn’t you see how hot he is?” Gabriela said from the couch. Eliza and I turned to her. She was laying down and smiling, taking life the Gabriela way, happy and carefree.
“I actually agree with Gabriela,” Eliza said. “He is, and you were a total hellcat.” I may be the pilot and the one of the ideas, but Eliza is the sanest one of all, and the mom to all the rest of us. She rarely loses her temper or objectivity, and the only time I’ve ever seen her scared was in space when the hydrogen tanks exploded.
I hugged Eliza strongly, tears dripping from my eyes and sliding down my white and freckled cheeks. Gabriela got up and hugged both of us. We pulled apart after a nice family hug and I cleaned my face with my sweater. “Sorry, now I’m sentimental,” I said. “I was saving it until we got to our new home, but I guess this is it. But for the record, this doesn’t mean I trust these people a hundredpercent.”
“I’ve been trying to be strong,” Gabriela said, “but I’ve been also hurting, not knowing where my sister is, and knowing she’s most likely dead. I’m making my stupid jokes more than usual so I can forget how much the uncertainty hurts. I can’t imagine how happy you were when you saw Marcus in that chamber, just to realize he’d moved on.” She smiled. “But just for my sake, don’t mistreat that cutie. I want him to come to this apartment more often.” It’s impressive how she can’t say anything serious without adding some sort of joke to it.
We didn’t even have time to laugh when the door opened next to us. It was Melissa with her backpack. “Hey, ladies,” she said. “They sent me here. They said you have a room available.”
“Don’t you have a boyfriend you can stay with?” Gabriela asked her.
“Well, Marcus and I have only been together a few months. I guess twenty years asleep doesn’t count, so it’s too soon to live together, even for the end of world.”
“Yes, there’s a spare room,” I said calmly. “We haven’t selected ours, but I guess we can do it now.” I was practically serene now, compared to how I was three minutes before to Blake. I guess this was my first step to get over the Melissa-Marcus situation. She wasn’t actually that bad, and I thought we’d probably be friends if she wasn’t dating my ex-boyfriend.
We rested a little in our new apartment and got ready for the welcome dinner. We did something that never happens in the end-of-the-world movies: we dressed up. With the help of the fabric 3D printer, there’s an almost unlimited amount of clothing you can fabricate, even after the world ended as we knew it.
At the appointed time, Gabriela, Melissa, Eliza and I went together to the terrace on floor 200. This floor isn’t at the top of the building, so it’s not called a terrace because it’s an open-air space, but rather because all the full-height malleable glass windows can fully roll up. When we entered the hall, I saw that this was the position they were in, and the cold wind from the ocean was flowing through. I felt I was back in a normal day in downtown Los Angeles. There was music, nicely decorated tables, lots of people having fun, and many androids as servers and bartenders.
As soon as we walked in, a young woman approached us. “Hello ladies,” she said excitedly. “My name is Victoria. Of course you all don’t need any introductions. I’m super excited to be your direct host.”
“What’s a direct host?” Eliza asked.
“I’ll be showing you everything in The Tower so you can fit right in,” Victoria clarified, then laughed. “I’ve never actually done this before. This is the first time we’ve ever had new people. I was assigned to you since we’re of similar age.”
