Thank you for the input, much appreciated!
Sci Fi & Fantasy / Wanderer's Awakening
He awoke and knew only cold. The metal he laid upon was icy, piercing his clothes. The air he inhaled was frigid, barely above freezing. But there was also a cold, empty feeling inside him, not a physical feeling but nothingness in his mind. He concentrated, trying to pull something, anything from his head. Like a spark in a dark room something eventually came: Julian. I am Julian, he repeated over and over again, nursing the memory and trying to kindle it into a fire of recollection. Julian. Julian Reinhardt, someone had yelled at him. He was small, and scared, and ashamed – it was his mother who was yelling the name, his name: Julian Fredrick Reinhardt.
With that firm fact rooting him in the murk, he took in his surroundings for the first time. It was dark, but not total blackness. A dim light shone from somewhere, but many objects obstructed its location from view. His resting place called a memory to the surface, of an aged man lying motionless in a wooden casket. He could not recall the man’s name, but the image was prevalent. Julian’s casket was made of metal, metal that did not absorb his body heat. The lid behind him was flat and dull.
Stretching to his left were three other caskets, attached to his own as if they were one, all open and empty. Looking about, Julian could see no one else nearby, but his heart leapt with the hope that the occupants of these three chambers might be close at hand.
With a great effort, he hoisted his legs up over the edge and swung them down to connect uneasily with the floor. His body reacted slowly and painfully, his muscles thin, and he thought he could even feel that his bones were weak. There was no telling how long he had lain in the metal box, but it felt like it must have been a very long time.
The light in the room brightened a little and there was a shuffling noise behind Julian, on the other side of some barrel-like objects stacked to the ceiling. With terror pulsing through his veins, Julian crept slowly toward the barrels, trying to peak through the cracks between, but to no avail. Who or whatever was there grunted oddly, and Julian gulped loudly. At that small noise the shuffling stopped, and quicker than an eye-blink the barrels slid aside like empty cardboard boxes.
“Ah good, you’re finally awake,” said what Julian first thought was a monster. He leapt back and scrambled against his casket, half falling over into it.
“W-w-what are you?” he stammered, still struggling to put more distance between it and him. In a corner of his mind he mused that he had no trouble remembering how to stammer.
“Don’t take that tone with me, I saved your life you know! Now get out of there, I need your assistance. Nothing too tough, don’t worry.” Without waiting for a response the creature turned and left through the door it came from.
Julian was sure that he had never felt such wild terror in his life, despite the fact that he could not remember his life at the moment. The desire for answers, however, drove him to clamber back down to the floor and shuffle over to the door, with its yellowish light beyond.
Distracting the instinct to run and hide by biting the inside of his cheek, he crossed the threshold into the corridor. It was long and lit with dim yellow lights, cold yet humid, with the occasional reflective patch on the wall suggesting water leaking down the walls. Julian thought he might be underground; he brushed his hand against the steel walls and found a brownish moss was crawling upward everywhere. At the far end, the creature opened another door and light flooded out. Julian grew a little more courageous with the increased brightness and hobbled to catch up.
Once he stepped inside, he felt like he was in a child’s version of a submarine. The walls to the left and right had two huge pistons each, thick as a man’s waist and moving unnervingly fast. All around, on boxes jutting randomly from the ceiling or covering wall panels, or on metal counters standing at varying heights on the floor of the square room were hundreds of buttons and switches, levers and lights that glowed either dull red or blue. And near one of these countertops laden with antique-looking controls was the monster, bent over and staring at a tiny, fuzzy video screen.
Julian had a good view of him now, in the clear light of that compact cabin. The striking feature was it’s arms, two thick and powerful looking arms high on its torso, and another set below, triple jointed, thin and frail, but quick. It was short, coming up to the middle of Julian’s chest, and covered in a brown hide that seemed part alligator, part golden retriever. The only clothing it wore were two strips of dullish purple cloth wrapping all the way around its body just above the short, stubby legs.
It turned after a moment to look at Julian, and he saw the face for the first time. There was no nose, but besides that it seemed human, which was more hideous than anything else. The eyes were very large, and the mouth wide and jawless, brimming with tiny pointy teeth. Its voice was craggy and raw.
“You going to stand there slacked-jawed all day, or are you going to introduce yourself properly?”
“M-my name is Julian. Reinhardt,” he replied meekly.
“I am Grube,” it said simply, before turning back to its screen.
“Are we underwater?” asked Julian as casually as he could manage. He had no clue how to speak to a monster.
“Underwater? Is that a joke? I knew you would be simple, but I didn’t think you’d be that thick.”
“Excuse me,” huffed Julian, trying to sound exceedingly offended, “I have been kidnapped, my memory’s in pieces, and now I’m stuck someplace with a rude four-armed monster that just called me stupid. Pardon me if I’m a little behind on things.” Grube looked at him again with an expression that Julian judged to be annoyance.
“You are on my vessel, in space. I didn’t kidnap you, I merely bought the hibernation unit you were sleeping in. And speaking of rude, I am not a monster.” He leaned towards Julian and lowered his voice. “You’ll find out soon enough what monsters really look like.”
Julian shivered and looked away, making the mental excuse that he was looking for a place to sit. There were a few very short metal stumps that seemed to have no buttons or switches, so he chose one and sat. For a long time he stared blankly at the floor, trying desperately to remember how he could possibly have gotten here, wherever here was. No amount of effort seemed to yield anything more than a headache.
“They didn’t even know you were inside,” said Grube. Julian looked at him, confused. The alien was sitting nearby, huge eyes fixed and unblinking. “The people I bought the sleeper from. They couldn’t open it, but I did, and revived you.”
“Um, thanks, I guess?”
It huffed mightily and turned its back on Julian. “Thanks doesn’t begin to cover the debt, Joo-leen.”
“Its Julian, actually,” he murmured back.
“You’re very lucky, not many traders have an honor code. As a rule I don’t traffic in sentients. A specimen like you though, oh yes, you would fetch a very fine price. It might even be enough to cover my trip.” Julian caught the greedy glint as the alien turned to face other controls. It passed quickly. “But I’m close enough as it is anyways.”
Deciding to change the subject, Julian cleared his throat to ask loudly, “So I’m curious, how is it you speak perfect English?”
Grube gurgled, laughing in his own way. “Silly creature, I haven’t a clue what English is. You hear what your brain wants to hear, I put a translation computer bug in your brain.” Julian absorbed this like punch in the gut, feeling around on his head and for the first time noticing how thin and wiry his hair was. He found no wound anywhere. Grube laughed again. “Relax, Joo-leen, it does no harm. And I’ll add it to your debt.”
“My debt?”
“Yes. I did you a favor, waking you and not selling you. Favor’s aren’t free from me.” There was a shrill noise near the small screen Grube had been staring at earlier. “Almost there. Behind you, press the engine cutoff when I say.” He leaned over his screen and Julian turned to stare at the panel of buttons and switches. Nothing was labeled in a way he recognized, the only possible indication of what each thing controlled were strips of color that varied minutely.
“It’s the orange square, upper left!” shouted Grube, probably sensing the man’s confusion. Julian found it eventually. “Now, press it now!” Julian pushed twice, but it didn’t move. “Push it, creature!”
“Alright!” he yelled back, and slammed his fist as hard as he could. It moved slightly, but it was enough. The pistons churning against the walls slowed a little, and that was all Julian noticed was different. Grube grunted with satisfaction.
“Thank you, creature. I could have done that from here, of course, but I thought you might appreciate feeling useful.” The short fury thing laughed his loud gurgling laugh and Julian shot him nasty glares.
“I’m not a creature, I’m a human being.”
“And I am not a monster, human. Lesson learned?” Julian scratched his forehead to hide his eyes.
“Do you remember anything?” Julian shook his head in response. “There’s nothing I can do about that, so don’t ask. But I do know a bit about what may have happened.” He stood and shuffled over, taking a stool closer to Julian. “The sleeper I found you in is not remarkable. There are millions of such units throughout the galaxy. But if you find yourself in one, it’s bad news.
“They target primitive worlds mostly, those least likely to pose a threat. They descend and bomb major population centers. They poison the air to put the population into a hibernated state, then build hundreds of space elevators to ship the inhabitants to orbit to be suspended for the trip. The planet is strip-mined for raw materials, and then they leave.”
“Who?” whispered Julian, blood pounding painfully in his head.
“The Swarm. Bugs. They sell the poor species by the billions, as slaves or food stuffs or worse.”
“Food stuffs?” gulped Julian.
“Or worse. Sorry, human, I know it’s a blow. What was your world called?”
“Earth.” The name popped into Julian’s mind effortlessly. “I come from Earth. Oh god, I think I’m going to be sick.” Grube leaned back warily.
“Just… don’t get it on the electronics.”
“My… my family, my friends? Was there anyone else in those… in the other things?” Julian tried to focus on anything to stave off the nauseating despair. Grube shook his head, an expression that might have been comical in another situation considering he had no neck.
“Just you. And judging by the worn-out nature of the sleeper, I’d say it’s been a very long time since it was built and you were put inside. Many human lifetimes, if my guess is correct.”
Julian slipped off the stumpy stool and went to his knees. A few memories did come then, a blur of them. His parents cheering him on from the stands, a girl waving at him in the pouring rain, the view from out a window of a tall building somewhere in Chicago. Each was tainted now with the knowledge that it all could be gone.
“Good news is, you made it, right? Best thing you could do is move on and make your life in the now.”
“Good news? Are you insane, everything I ever knew is…” He could not finish the sentence. “What would you know about it anyways?”
“I guess the lesson wasn’t learned, then,” said Grube coldly, again turning his back on the miserable man on the deck. The thought floated through Julian’s mind that maybe, just maybe, Grube might have experienced far more than Julian could ever understand. It was a fleeting thought.
“What now, what am I supposed to do now?”
“What do you want to do? You want to mope and cry till you expire?”
“But… I have nowhere to go, I don’t even know where I am.” He looked around as though the little room might have answers hidden in dark corners.
“Find yourself a home, Joo-leen.” His voice lowered then, distant and haunting. “Everyone needs a home.”
The deck and walls groaned and quivered, a thunderous noise roaring in Julian’s ears. He shouted a question, but either Grube did not hear or ignored it. The furry being moved between controls with sure footing and unexpected quickness, touching buttons and pulling levers. After a moment the noise lessened and Julian pulled himself back onto his seat, asking the question again.
“What was that all about?”
“Atmospheric insertion. Nearly there.”
“And where is there?” Grube began flicking switches in an intricate sequence, and the counters began to shift, several dropping down and disappearing, others that weren’t there before rising up from the floor.
“Port Sammelitsents.” Julian was cut off before he could ask what that name was again. “Very busy place, good for business, relatively clean cut.”
“Not that it will mean anything to me, but what is this trip you’re saving up for?” asked Julian, suddenly curious. Grube looked bashful, if it was possible for such a furry-yet-scaly, big-eyed thing to look bashful.
“Most think it’s a silly idea, but near the galactic core there’s a device, they call it the Vortex. It’s a gateway to another galaxy, the new frontier.”
“Another galaxy? But why – “
“Its complex, human, you wouldn’t get it. Suffice it to say, this galaxy long ago lost its luster for me.” There was a reverberating clunk. “We’ve landed. Let’s go have a peek shall we?”
Grube led the way, back into the hallway they had walked down earlier, only this time Julian saw a door to the right that he would have sworn had been solid wall but a few minutes ago. A spiral stair of short and narrow steps led from it, and they descended into brightness.
The hatch opened onto a flat landing, made of something not unlike concrete. Low walls obscured all but the sky from Julian’s view, but the sky was alien enough, dull pinkish in color with great misshapen moons shining dimly above, far bigger than the moon of Earth Julian remembered. In front was a structure rising above into view and stretching to the horizon, consisting of many similar platforms at varying heights and sizes, like leaves on narrow vertical branches.
Julian stepped out to gaze at Grube’s long vessel, gawking as several smaller flying machines flew up and plucked off large metal containers like grapes. The little alien seemed pleased as he surveyed the sight, nodding and mumbling to himself. After the cargo containers disappeared from view, Grube marched back to the stairs. Julian made to follow, but was blocked.
“I’m afraid I can’t carry you any further,” said the alien flatly.
“What?” Julian hardly believed the implication.
“For one thing, you’ve got no money, and I don’t take passengers for free. I can’t afford to feed you and so on, I’ve got a budget. The universe is a cold and cruel place. But don’t you worry human, I’ll collect your debt some other time. My parting gift to you. Oh, and I do charge interest.” He smiled a gruesome smile and the hatch slammed closed right in Julian’s face.
“Wait! WAIT!” he screamed, but the ship rumbled to life, strange engines whirring and metal hull groaning. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t know what to do!” The platform began to shake as giant clamps detached themselves from Grube’s long angular craft and retracted. Slowly, as if to torture Julian, it eased upward.
“Come back!” he screamed, frantic and angry and terrified. “Come back! I don’t know what to do! I hate science fiction!” With an enormous bang and a blast of air, the ship zipped off with mind-boggling speed, shrinking to a dark speck and then to nothing at all. Julian Reinhardt was left alone, flat on his back, somewhere in the universe.
You need to log in to urbis or create an urbis account to review this writing.
Reviews
Sort Reviews by Newest | Oldest | Highest Quality | Lowest Quality | Newest Comments |
CREEPSHOW reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
THIS IS VERY GOOD SCIENCE FICTION… IT WAS VERY FAST TO READ IN A GOOD WAY… I WOULD LOVE TO READ MORE OF THIS… I WANT TO KNOW WHAT JULIAN IS GONNA DO ON THIS PLANET AND WHERE DID GRUBE GO AND WILL HE BE BACK??? THE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT IS VERY GOOD… MY FAVORITE LINE WAS… He looked around as though the little room might have answers hidden in dark corners. AND I LOVE THE END WHEN JULIAN SAYS… “Come back! I don’t know what to do! I hate science fiction!” THAT IS VERY COOL… VERY GOOD FIRST CHAPTER…
- add/view comments (1)
Rugbyguy90 reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
It was a very good chapter im real interested in seeing where this goes.
brohne reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
I really enjoyed this. While the concept of waking up with no memory is not new, you kept me interested. Julian is a sympathetic character and I had no problem identifying him.
‘wall suggesting water leaking down the walls’ this seemed a little redundant.
I found myself a little lost after Julian started survyeing his surrounding, but since he himself was confused I don’t think it’s a major problem.
I’m looking forward to reading more.
Showing 1 - 3 of 3
Review item
Add to favesCreator
Relevant Links
Item Stats
GENERAL
3 Reviews 2 Comments
Version 1
Latest Activity: 3 months ago
REVIEW QUEUE
Appeared in Queue: 21 Times
Skipped: 3 Times
Ratings & Rankings
