To the Future Where I
Belong
by Carl Luft
“What am I doing?” I asked.
“Going to the future!” said my handsome yet alien companion,
as he circled the ship’s power shaft pulling levers, spinning dials, and
closing contacts.
But should I? Do I have any right to? God! But I need to
know if we humans survive,” I said, the tears beginning to flow again. “The
aliens conquered Earth, wiped out half of Mars colony, and killed my dad. I’ve
got to know if we survive. All those people can’t have died in vain.”
“It’s alright, Robin,” he said as he turned from the ship’s
controls and put an arm around me. I suppose the pompadour and antique suit
made him look ridiculous to some, but after saving us from the aliens back on
Mars, he looked like a real hero to me. “I’ve set the coordinates for about
thirty-six hundred years in your future. It looks like we’re landing right
now.”
He went to the power shaft, checked some ridiculously
anachronistic gauges, and said, “We’ve materialized on a ship.”
“I thought we were going to Earth?” I asked.
“We probably had a little miss-jump when we materialized
into normal space-time. It’s tricky business travelling through time and
space.”
“I’d better change out of this skirt.”
“Why?”
“I’m not tumbling around in zero-G with a skirt on, you
dirty young man!”
“Old man, actually.”
“You don’t look it.”
“I’m Merlin, remember? The man who ages backwards.”
“That’s just a legend,” I said. “Isn’t it?”
“Robin, I am a
legend!” said Merlin triumphantly. “You’ll be fine in a skirt. I’m reading a
one-G gravity field.”
“Gravity field?”
“Come on Robin! Let’s look around.”
We exited the monolith, and we found ourselves in a
compartment with racks of coffin-shaped containers in it.
“These are cryogenic berths,” explained Merlin. “Only one’s in
use.”
Merlin pulled out his “wand” he twisted the base and waved
it around. “There’s no one else aboard the ship. That’s odd. These cryogenic
berths don’t have automatic resuscitators on them. At least one crewman must be
awake to revive the crew.”
“The doors on these other units look like they’ve been
forced open,” I noticed.
“Get the medical kit off the wall,” commanded Merlin as he
started to key commands on the berth’s touch screen display. “I’m going to
revive this one.”
After a few minutes, Merlin threw open the door. As the
cloud of icy mist cleared, I saw a young man in a flight suit. His eyes
fluttered, and he started to shiver.
“Put the thermal blanket on him,” ordered Merlin.
While there were still ice crystals in his short, blond
hair, his eyes flickered open revealing the most remarkable green eyes I’ve
ever seen. He opened his mouth to speak, and proceeded to vomit on my shoes.
“It’s just cryosickness,” chuckled Merlin. “Think nothing of
it.”
“Yeah, think nothing of it,” I said sarcastically as I
carefully slipped my shoes off.
“I’m Merlin, and this is Robin,” said Merlin, helping the
man out of his berth.
The man was slurring his speech pretty badly, but I made out
a “Where are you from?”
“You first! I’ve told you who we are.”
“I’m Christopher Rogers from Saint Regina,” said Rogers, a
little clearer.
“Where’s that?” I asked.
“You don’t know where Saint Regina is” asked Rogers. “It’s
the sector capital.”
“Where is it from Earth?”
“Earth? You mean like dirt?”
“No, I mean the planet
Earth.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Merlin, you said you’d take me to Earth’s future. What am I
doing here?” I butted into their conversation.
“Future?”
“Yeah, we’re time travelers.”
“No, don’t say that Robin,” moaned Merlin, burying his head
in his hands.
“Time travelers?” asked Rogers. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Listen to me, Chris,” hissed Merlin. “Your crew’s missing.
You’re all that’s left. We need to find out what happened to your crew…now!”
“They’re gone?”
“Yes! That leaves you in charge. Take us to your bridge,
Captain Rogers.”
“I’m…I’m just a junior Scout.”
“You’re Captain now, Chris,” declared Marlin, gently pushing
him towards the hatch.
As Chris stumbled past the monolith, he did a double take
and asked, “What’s that?”
“Our ship,” said Merlin.
“That little cabinet?”
“That’s just a dimensional causeway to our ship, which
exists in higher dimensions. It’s just the ‘tip of the iceberg’ so to speak.”
“It looks like it’s made of ice.”
“Well, it’s not! Now, get us to the bridge.”
As we walked along the ship’s corridors, I asked Chris,
“You’ve never heard of Earth? You know your planets well?”
“I’m an officer of the Regnum Interstellar Scout Service,”
he said. “Yes, I know my planets.”
“You said you were a Junior Scout.”
“Why were you frozen, Chris?” asked Merlin.
“It’s a long trip to the Oort cloud at sub-light speed,”
explained Chris, “but it’s too close for a hyperspace jump. So, half the crew
was frozen to conserve supplies.”
“Why were you going to the Oort cloud?”
“I don’t know. Its top secret,” said Chris as he opened a
hatch. “Here’s the bridge. Let’s go see where we are.”
The bridge was a small affair, with a massive viewport, from
which could be seen a massive ring of stone and steel hundreds of meters wide.
Around the structure was the starry expanse of normal space, but in the center
was nothing but darkness.
“My God, what is it?” I asked.
Chris looked at the monitor and said, “Looks like a gate.”
“But to where?” asked Merlin.
“Judging by these readings, I’d say hyperspace.”
Merlin explained, “Hyperspace is a collective term for any
reality composed of more than the four common dimensions we call normal
space-time. The interior of my ship is a hyperspace, but it’s not the same
hyperspace your hyperships skip through when they make their faster-than-light
jumps…Chris! Magnify grid delta twenty-three!”
Chris’ hands flew over the touch-screen display, and a large
monitor flickered to life. Crawling up and down one section of the gate was a
horde of many-limbed monstrosities, their crustacean-like bodies exposed
without harm to the frozen vacuum of space.
“Oh God, it’s them!” I screamed.
“What are they?” asked Chris.
“Earth’s gone and the aliens are here!” I cried. “Oh god, I
don’t belong here!”
Unexpectedly, Chris took me in his arms, and said, “Yes, you
do belong here. I don’t know who you are, or where you come from, but I need
you. There’s got to be a reason why you came here.”
I pulled away, but kept my hand in his hand and said,
“You’re right. Merlin will find a way
out.”
“Right!” shouted Merlin, his hands flying across the
controls. “What kind of reactor do you have?”
“Just a one ton hyper-reactor,” responded Chris.
“Perfect! A hyper-reactor uses hyper-spatial fields to
increase the fusion yield.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m blowing up the ship!”
“What!?” Chris and I asked.
Just then a red and black alien hit the viewport, and began
to beat upon the glass with its pincer-tipped limbs. Its feeler-covered head
twitched malevolently as cracks appeared in the viewport.
“Get back to the ship!” shouted Merlin.
“Come on, Robin,” coaxed Chris, half dragging me behind him.
As we entered the cryogenics room, a klaxon howled and a
mechanical voice boomed, “Thirty seconds to reactor overload! Hull breach on
the bridge!”
“Merlin,” I sobbed.
“Come on, Robin,” Chris demanded. “Open this thing!”
Through my tears, I found my key, touched it to the
monolith, and barreled through the door. As soon as we entered the huge
hemispherical engine room of the ship, Chris observed, “Merlin wasn’t kidding
about it having a hyper-spatial interior. God, it looks like something out of
Jules Verne. We’ve got to launch this…thing.”
“I don’t know how to fly it,” I moaned, still sobbing with
grief.
“I do!” shouted Merlin, running down the dimensional
causeway into the engine room.
“You’re alive!”
“There was a hull breach,” said Chris.
“Did I mention I’m not human?” asked Merlin as he pulled a
lever and the power shaft lit up. “Shame we can’t stay and watch the fireworks!
Point the way, Chris, and I’ll get you back to Saint Regina.”
“Are you kidding? I’m responsible for blowing up a
twenty-seven million credit ship. I can’t go back there!”
“Then welcome aboard!”
“If you’re Merlin, where’s King Arthur?”
“You don’t know about Earth, but you know about Saint
Regina, Jules Verne and King Arthur?” I asked. “Where do you think they came
from?”
“Terra, of course,” said Chris.
“Terra? That’s Earth!”
“I’ve never heard it called that.”
“Does it still exist? Is it…alright?”
“Last I heard it was.”
“So Earth does survive.”
“Because good people, like you Robin, were right where they
needed to be,” said Merlin with a smile.
“Me? You’re the one who just saved this system.”
“But I wouldn’t have been here unless you asked me to take
you here.”
THE END
McBook 
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