Travelers

The first thing I became aware of out of the depths of my subconscious was a slight rolling sensation. Not quite like being on a boat, more rhythmic, and not much like being in a car, smoother, the rolling gently swayed me awake and eventually forced me to open my eyes.

All I could see through my blurred vision was whiteness, emptiness, nothingness. Slowly I turned my head to the left, there the empty whiteness was interrupted by a row of black orbs. I shifted my head to the right and there was another row of orbs and below it a pile of long dark hair.

I started when I saw the hair and went to sit up but my muscles in my stomach ached so badly that It was a false start and I fell back onto whatever soft surface I was lying on. I pulled my fingers apart which had been laced on my stomach and reached to the back of my head, there I felt a pillow.

As my eyes adjusted to the room And the whiteness, I looked down to my feet, I could barely make out the edge of the bed I was lying on and, in the slightest gradation of shadow, that I was in a room. The black orbs on either side were actually inset into the walls like windows.

I felt the urge to get away from that dark hair and whatever was attached to it and I grimaced when each muscle stabbed like a knife as I brought my legs to the side of the bed and sat up. As I did I heard a groan. I turned to face the lady just as her head turned towards me and her eyes started to open.

I’d never seen this woman before. For a moment we were stone still and looked at each other, I could see a realization pass over her face and when it set in her eyes went wide and her body convulsed. She let out a gasp and a scream as she pushed herself backwards and fell over her side of the bed, her long black hair flowing behind her. I was so shocked by her sudden movement I went to stand up but my legs couldn’t support me and I fell onto the floor on my side of the bed.

I could hear the woman screaming while trying, and failing to stand up.

“Somebody help!” She screamed, her voice was hoarse and cracked.

“I’ve been kidnapped! Help me!” Her wavering voice managed to shriek.

I felt almost embarrassed, like I was present for a private moment I shouldn’t be witnessing, then I realized she was talking about me.

“Hey.” I said in the calmest voice I could muster, which was also wavering and hoarse.

My throat felt like sandpaper and I involuntarily brought a hand up to it.

“HELP!” The woman screamed and I could just see her hand reach up toward one of the windows and pound on the wall.

“Hey!” I said a little louder and she went totally silent.

The air in the room was thick and a palpable sense of tension pervaded the atmosphere.

“Do you… do you know where we are?” I managed to stammer.

The atmosphere lightened a fraction, maybe when the woman realized the possibility that I wasn’t her captor.

“No” she said after a long pause. “Who are you?”

Her voice was forceful and direct.

“My name’s Richard” I told her. “I live in Seattle.”

She processed this for a moment, probably gauging whether there was any truth in my voice and whether or not she could trust it.

“I’m Sam.” She said. “You don’t know where we are?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

A long silence followed, I brought my legs around beneath me and started massaging the ache out of the calves. A white T shirt and boxer briefs was all I had on and suddenly I was relieved that Sam was out of sight on the other side of the bed. I wondered how long it had been since we’d last used our voices.

“Oh, they’re windows…” I heard her voice say softly, almost to herself.

“Yes, there are six on either side of the room.”

A beat went by as she surely counted them.

“Yes… Can you stand up?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.” I said and continued massaging my legs.

“Yeah, I don’t think I can either. My muscles are totally fatigued, we must have been lying in that bed for a long time.”

“ I think so yeah, my throat hurts when I speak.”

“Mine too,” She said. “My head is so foggy, I can’t remember much.”

After a long silence while we both stretched and massaged our limbs and reoriented ourselves to our bodies Sam told me what she remembered. She was a wilderness guide in Alaska. Her family ran the business and from a young age her parents had taught her to live off the land. They all lived together in a cabin they built themselves off-grid. They would bring people from all over the world and take them all across the Alaskan wilderness.

The way Sam spoke was very pleasant, she wove the story of her family deftly into the air between us. The thought of Sam and her family warmed me up a little in the very cold isolating environment we found ourselves in. But there was always the panic beneath all my thoughts, just below the surface my mind writhed against the steel jaws of not knowing where we were or how we had come there.

As my legs improved I tried once more to stand, but they weren’t quite ready to. I told Sam what I could remember of my life, but my storytelling skills weren’t as good as hers and I jumped around and halted a lot, my mind being unable to focus on anything other than the details of the room. I lived in capitol hill in Seattle and had just recently become a tenured professor of psychology at the University of Washington.

The most recent memory I had was a celebration at a bar near the university. My book had just been published and my friends took me out to celebrate it. I remember feeling like my life would be different after that. The book was a sort of guide for people, a way to structure their objective thoughts amidst endless subjectivity. I remembered receiving a call from my agent telling me that it was placing on a lot of bestseller lists.

The next thing I remembered I didn’t say out loud to Sam. The morning after the celebration at the bar I had woken up to a very somber feeling. The Seattle sky outside my apartment’s window was a roiling dark gray. It wasn’t quite a hangover, at least not only a hangover. The feeling of having too many drinks like a clenched fist was there for sure, but under or maybe around it was something else, the sudden success of my book had planted something. In spite of my new success, or maybe because of it I had the desire to stop existing.

I don’t think it was a suicidal feeling, I didn’t want my life to end, really. I just needed to take a break from the infinite toil of being a conscious, thinking mind. I felt trapped, because of course you can’t just blink yourself out of existence and then back in when you feel like it, it was claustrophobic. A powerful feeling came over me that besides death there was no escape from human existence, just as I remembered feeling that way the phone next to my bed rang and my memory snapped shut to darkness, and that was it.

I had been looking down at my legs while I remembered all of it, working red marks into the flesh with my nervous massage when I heard a voice above me.

“So, a psychologist and a survivalist.” Sam said.

I looked up and met her eyes and was struck by her beauty. Her thick black hair fell onto her shoulders and framed her wide face. There was a natural smile to the way her face set. The exact opposite of how I remembered my reflection. Her deep, dark eyes scanned my body and I felt my cheeks go red a little bit. She and I were wearing the exact same thing, white jumpsuits. She brought her legs around the bed and stood, a touch shaky but confidently.

“You’re able to stand already!” I blurted out, feeling like my legs were nowhere near ready.

“Yes, I guess all that hiking paid off.” She said, “Let me help you up.”

She reached out a hand and I took it. I felt how strong she was as she lifted me off the ground, but as I thought, my legs were shaking like a baby deer. I had to crash back onto the bed, and I couldn’t catch my breath.

Sam looked at me for a moment, I could see her smile and I looked away embarrassed.

“I hike a little, but I guess not as much as you.” I said.

I heard Sam gasp and I looked up, she was standing at one of the six windows nearest my side of the bed.

“What is it?” I said and could hear the fear in my voice.

“It’s…” Sam started and stopped, looking out, “Beautiful.”

I sat up and craned my neck but the glow of the white room reflected off the round port in a way that blocked me from seeing what was outside. Sam had her hands cupped around her eyes.

“Please!” I said and she looked over at me smiling.

“Oh, sorry!” she said as she quickly came to the bedside, “C’mon”

She put her arm around my shoulder and I put mine around hers and, very shakily, we made our way off the bed and towards the window. As the shine from the white room cleared I could see out, at first it was inky blackness but then, slowly, I started to see objects moving past. As my eyes adjusted I took in a huge breath and held it, there outside the window were thousands and thousands of specks of light moving past, some went by in a blink and some floated by slowly.

“Look down there!” Sam said

I looked where Sam had gestured and squinted my eyes. It was a massive cloud of the most beautiful jade, magenta and golden yellows melted together in a pool of light. The port was just large enough for Sam and I to look out together, my eyes darted from one glowing speck to another, to the streaks that shot past so quickly and so close the pure white light would shine across both our stunned faces.

“It’s a Nebula, they’re stars!” I heard Sam whisper.

Then the room, or rather vessel we were in started to vibrate in a strange way. I pushed my face against the window and tried to see if any more of the structure was visible. At first I couldn’t see anything and then slowly a small orb of white entered the view on the left. And, like a chain one after another nine or ten more orbs came into view trailing after the first. Each had six black dots on the side and as the smallest orb arched out into space before us like a pearl necklace shining in the darkness I looked to one of the larger orbs down the line a few away from us the ports at the side were just large enough to see a shadow inside.

Suddenly, and violently, the cabin leading the train jolted upwards and spiraled down, back to its path, a rippling echo of shifting metal punctuated the silence and a bolt of colored light streaked from where it had jumped. I looked over and saw Sam’s eyes shoot toward the front of the chain. Each successive orb after the first jolted upwards and, like a whip, the cabin in which I had seen the shadow jolted further than the rest. As it did, some sort of light emitted from somewhere in the space outside that cabin and the cabin attracted to it like a magnet. The sound of wrending metal grew louder and louder as the cabin was pulled towards the colored light, which swirled like water. The sound filled our room and I took in a deep breath just as that cabin touched the cloud of light and a huge explosion was emitted and rippled outward into space in bolts, I saw the cabin was ripped open where it had touched the light and standing there on the newly created edge was the unmistakable figure of a human being.

They had their arms curled up toward their face, they were a silhouette but their hands must have been covering their eyes. The cabin in front of ours jolted upwards just as I saw the silhouette of that person’s figure break apart. In quick succession our cabin violently shifted and Sam and I were knocked against the window and the room spun around me in a tornado of smeared bright white. The image of that person’s body rending apart filled my mind just before my head hit something hard, and my vision went black.

I awoke to a dimmed white cabin. Something had changed, an amber glow fell across the space. I sat up, which was still painful to do. I brought my hands up to my eyes and rubbed them and I half expected to see my apartment in Seattle when I took them away. But it was the twelve black windows that came into focus. I was on the opposite side of the room from the bed, towards the rear of the train of cabins. The humming had returned to the gentle, rhythmic pulsing as when we first woke up.

I saw Sam’s dark hair first against the dimmed light. She was sitting up in the middle of the bed, facing the wall towards the front of the cabin. Slowly I got up and walked towards her, I tried to say her name but all that came out was a whisper. I must have screamed when our room lurched and threw us head over heels, my voice was broken and my throat hurt. Halfway across the room I could hear Sam’s voice, in low murmurs over the sound of the train. It was repeating itself in a cycle of sounds, I couldn’t make out any of the words.

I tried saying her name again but another whisper came out and just before I put my hand on her shoulder I thought I heard her say the word “Lord”. I touched her shoulder as gently as I could and she jumped up to her feet on the bed and her face whipped around into mine. I almost didn’t recognize her, a mask of anger had taken the place of the beautiful face I had seen before.

“It’s just me.” I whispered, and she must have heard me because her mask softened back to its normal warmth.

We searched the cabin but all we could find were two areas with seams that were probably doors in the front and at the rear. We pounded on them and screamed as loud as we could, which still hurt. We tried everything we could to get them open but to no avail, it seemed we were fully, and completely trapped in this white orb, hurtling through space. My mind was like a buzzsaw, I paced up and down the room and I couldn’t stop hypothesizing and digging ruts into the same theories again and again. A survivalist and a psychologist, why us, why were we chosen to be here, and who had chosen us. The whiteness of the room filled my mind and I kept looking to the gap in the door, the only hope of escape.

Sam and I asked each other multiple times if we could remember anything at all before this room. I thought about that last memory, of wanting to escape reality. Has that dream become a reality? Did I somehow create this vessel and trap myself here? Was this the way out of my life? I almost started to believe I had created this reality in my mind and that’s when I knew that the roots of madness were starting to take hold.

I continued pacing as long as I could, hours later the lights faded again to that amber hue.

“Another day has passed, I guess.” I said, looking at Sam.

“We’re going to die of dehydration.” She replied dejectedly.

I sat on the bed, and awoke some hours later, the lights had shifted back to their original state. My throat throbbed, water was all I could think about. Just as I could feel my mind and existence begin a freefall the train lurched. The sound of metal wrending itself suddenly filled our room again. Sam was thrown from the bed and I to the ground. There was a loud crackling sound and we both looked up to the windows. Outside was another storm of light, but this time it was just outside our cabin. I looked at Sam but she was just staring into the light, her face glowed in a watery dapple of colored light. The image of that person’s silhouette breaking into pieces filled my mind. In unison we knew what was going to happen and we rushed to the door.

Sam was already pushing with all her might on the door. As I ran to her side I saw the front cabin of the vessel lurch upwards and each successive cabin followed. I knew when it was our room’s turn we would be magnetically gripped by that white light and torn open. I fell to the ground and shoved my back against the door just as our room lurched upwards toward the light. I pushed with all my might and I heard Sam shriek when the wall burst open and the light filled the room, it seemed to burn the wall away.

Just as the light reached my leg the door cracked backwards.

“It’s open!” Sam yelled.

The door shot upwards and we fell into another room.

“Come on!” I heard Sam’s voice scream over the crackling of the light.

I felt her grab my arm and we ran as fast as we could, the last thing I saw was our entire cabin get eaten by the light and smash in on itself like an aluminum can.

We ran together through a room which was an exact copy of ours, I saw the bed but no one was inside. I looked forward and saw that the door at the head of this room had opened as well and down the line each successive door was opened when ours did. We ran as fast as we could, to get away from the light and to the only goal I could think of in my panic; the front of the train.

In the next room, the one where I had seen the person something was different. The bed was still there but the right wall which had been torn open stood intact now, but gnarled and warped, like a healed wound. I looked to the floor as we ran through and almost tripped on what looked like a dark pile of rocks. I wanted to stop, but I couldn’t bear to leave Sam and she kept running forward. Through four more identical rooms, and then one that was different, half of it had shower heads in the ceiling and the other half had several rows of cabinets built into the walls, lockers? I thought.

We rushed past into the next room and finally Sam stopped running. My legs were on fire, at first I wondered if the light had burned them but they seemed intact. I doubled over and thought I was going to vomit, my body hadn’t moved like that in a long time. When I looked up Sam was walking towards the front of the room we were in. Another closed door stood there with a sign built into the frame that, on it was the word “Bridge”.

I followed Sam up, we stood outside the door, we both looked back nervously to see if the light was chasing us, but everything seemed normal. Sam pushed on the door and looked down, there was a small crack.

“We can open it.” She said and smiled at me.

Sam turned and started looking around the room for something to push into the crack. I looked down and then did something that seemed almost ridiculous. I knocked. I waited for a moment, and pushed my ear against the door and listened for any sound.

Suddenly the door shot open. I turned my head and jumped because there before me was a woman’s face. I stood frozen, I was terrified. The woman’s face was rigid and aged slightly, her messy hair was piled onto her head, she wore a jumpsuit just like Sam and mine. Her expression quickly melted from shock to a huge smile and she lunged towards me. I yelped and tried to turn but her arms were already around me, I pushed away until I heard her voice.

“Richard!” She said, I managed to get her arms off of me and stepped back.

She looked at me again.

“I can’t believe you survived, I thought I was the only one left, after those flares, we didn’t account for phenomena like that!”

She started quickly and grabbed my arm, pulling me into the bridge. I resisted but she kept walking forwards, holding onto my arm.

“Look, something went wrong, we’ve traveled far too long. Did you see that light phenomenon, have you had any memory loss?” She asked as she led me towards the front of the room.

There was a huge window that arched all the way around the bridge and many stars were twinkling all around, reflecting off the six or seven white seats arranged at consoles in a semicircle.

“I just made it into the bridge myself, one of those flares hit the rear of the vessel and it undid the lockdown.”

“Who…” I stammered.

“Look at this!” She called.

I saw the figure of a man, slumped over the center console which was lit up and flashing red lights all over the place, he also wore a white jumpsuit.

“Someone killed Boris!”

A pool of dried blood lay under the man’s head. The woman stood next to him and looked at me quizzically.

“Richard what’s wrong, are you okay?”

“Who… who are you?! What is this!?” I managed to yell. I turned to look for Sam but she hadn’t entered the room with us, she must have gone back into one of the rooms we ran through.

“You don’t remember me?” The woman asked. “There were so many things we couldn’t predict, Richard. I’m Jess, do you remember anything?”

“No, I don't remember any of this! Who are you?” I demanded.

But as I said this the woman wasn’t looking at me, she was looking over her shoulder and her expression had changed from quizzical to horrified.

“Who are you?!” the woman screamed.

I whirled around and saw Sam standing there, she was looking at the woman.

“You shouldn’t be here!” Jess screamed. “You did this! You killed Boris and sabotaged the mission!”

I looked rapidly from Sam to Jess, her face had contorted into anger. She looked at me.

“Richard, she shouldn’t be here, she’s from that group! They tried to take control before we launched!” And at the end of this word a loud explosion rang out and my hands went to my ears. I saw a spray of blood and all expression leave the woman’s face as she collapsed onto the console. I rushed to her and looked at Sam. She stood there holding a gun.

“Sam what did you do?!” I screamed as I put my hand onto the woman.

“I’m sorry, Richard.” Sam said as tears began to fall down her cheeks.

She pointed the gun at me.

“Sam…” I said and stood, putting my hands up.

“The fog cleared.” She said confidently, “I remember. They sent me to go past humanity, as far as I could go. They sent me to the end, to see what happens when time frays. But they wanted to stop too soon” she cried, motioning towards the two dead people.

“Sam, what are you talking about?” I asked nervously.

Slowly a realization crept over me. We weren’t traveling through space.”

“They sent me to see him,” Sam said, almost to herself “To see god!”

And she raised the gun and pointed it straight at my head, I saw tears streaming down her face as she started to squeeze the trigger.

“Forgive me, Lord.” She whispered

“SAM!” I cried and the vessel suddenly shifted violently beneath us.

I heard the gun fire and felt the bullet tear through my shoulder. I fell to the ground and slid a few feet towards the console. I looked up and saw Sam standing there, holding the gun at her side, she was staring forwards towards the front of the ship. I followed her gaze.

A hole had been punctured there, the bullet must have gone through my shoulder and out the front windshield. The atmosphere from outside tore in through the small hole and the cloud of light formed like a pillar. I watched it drive straight across the bridge and I heard Sam’s scream as it tore into her face.

It clawed at her like the millions of people reaching out into the cosmos desperate for an answer that would never come. I was blinded by the light which cascaded off of Sam’s body, she brought her hands up to her eyes and I saw every part of her that the light touched warp and become something else until finally her whole body was engulfed. I almost couldn’t look, I shielded my eyes as I saw Sam’s body twist apart.

I jumped up, the stream of light that had decimated her was widening, the hole in the windshield was cracking bigger and bigger, soon the whole cabin would be filled. I looked towards Jess and Boris’ bodies, both of their hands lay clutching a lever on the console. I didn’t think, I grabbed the lever and pulled it hard back towards me and suddenly everything was still and dark.

I looked around slowly, terrified that any move would be the end of me. Where Sam was standing now there was just a pile of what looked like rocks, or petrified wood. I looked at the bodies of Boris and Jess and tears started streaming from my eyes just from the overwhelmingness of everything.

I looked out of the windshield, there in the darkness, I could make out a large hangar. Plants had grown to cover large swaths of it. I slowly climbed through the hole in the windshield into the hanger. The floor was flooded and there were trees and moss everywhere. I walked down a metal staircase to a door at the edge of the large room, looking back to see the full vessel lying perfectly straight like a white snake on top of a platform in the center. There was a dead silence, I was the only thing that moved.

I opened the door, which took some effort from the foot and a half of water that filled the hanger and shielded my eyes when the sunlight streamed in. The green water stretched out from the hanger as far as I could see and a jungle of swamp and mangrove trees stretched before me. I looked to the right and saw a ladder that stretched to the top of the hanger and I started climbing. My shoulder pulsed with pain on each rung, but I had to see. A cold empty feeling suddenly overwhelmed me to the core, I might be the only person left alive. We may have traveled far past the end of humanity’s timeline.

When I got to the top I turned around and was shocked to see the mangrove forest stretch away into the distance and above it immense structures like massive skyscrapers towered. I looked for any activity there and I lost all hope when I saw that those structures were also covered in plants, they were rotting away like everything else I could see.

How far into the future had we traveled?

I sat for a long time on the roof, holding my shoulder and looking at the structures I had never seen before, their long stilt-like legs jutting down in columns like the trees below them. A chill descended over me, I was the only one left. I felt a tear run down my cheek. I stood up and walked towards the ladder when something caught my eye. I squinted in the sunlight and there was some kind of craft traveling through the mangrove forest towards the hanger I was on. I waited for a moment and when it got closer I could see that it wasn’t a boat, it was traveling above the water and casting a shadow onto the undisturbed surface.

I panicked a little, thinking what sort of creatures could have taken the earth over the hundreds, thousands, even millions of years that the vessel had traveled. And then I was filled with an overwhelming joy when I saw standing on top of the craft the unmistakable figure of a human, and they were waving to me. I jumped into the air and waved back. Suddenly I was ecstatically happy to still be on the long thundering rails of human existence.