Kilroy's Return

“For the first time in my life I have nothing to say,” I said. “I thought I had seen it all!”

“What do you mean?” Sam responded.

“There’s a guy out here sitting on a blanket and it’s hot as hell. It has to be more than 120 degrees and he’s sitting out here just about melting. Why isn’t he home, in the air conditioning?”

“They don’t have homes,” Sam responded.

“Had you read the reports you would know that,” Lacey reminded.

“OK Lacey.” I turned to Kathy. “Do you have anything to add?”

“Don’t try to drag me into it. It’s too hot for all that foolishness. I think we should have gone somewhere else. It’s too hot here.”

“We can always go somewhere else,” I responded. “They have flights going anywhere. Where would you like to go?”

“Any other planet,” Sam said, jumping in.

“Well I doubt that they have flights there.”

“I am certainly not impressed being here,” he continued. “First of all, all these weird people keep acting strange toward us because of our color and accents. Secondly, they’re all stupid.”

“You can’t just say that, Sam,” Lacey said.

“I’ve said it. They’re all stupid and most are bigoted.”

“Yeah. One of them glared at me for being with you three. Pigs. I want to go home.”

“You have no home for several centuries,” I said. “Suppose we can’t get back.”

“You can’t, I am getting back no matter what,” Lacey said. “I’ll build a time jump if I need to.”

“That would mess up the timeline.”

“Do I look like I’m crying, Kilroy!?

“There’s a whole world to explore,” I complained.

“It’s all just like this.”

“We could go to another country,” I said.

“No. I’m ready to go home,” Lacey replied adamantly.

“You insisted we come and you want to go home already?” Sam said. Kathy just looked at her, eyes squinted half shut.

“Okay. You got me,” Lacey said. “Where to next?”

“Hell,” said a voice behind my shoulder.” We quickly turned and saw a very tall man and woman wearing period clothing. They looked similar, like brother and sister, but something looked off. They didn’t look quite human. The man clicked his tongue.

“Out of time aren’t you?” He simply asked.

“What are you doing here? You aren’t supposed to be here,” I said.

“I was about to say the same thing.”

“We are time traveling.”

“We are exploring. We live here. You don’t,” the woman said.

“So you are from Earth.”

“No. We live here though. We’ve always lived here.” She pointed down toward the ground.

“I can’t believe that. When we studied this time period we never saw you mentioned,” Kathy said.

“Did you expect to?” The woman asked with a grin. “I’m Glenda. This is Jason. We are from…somewhere else.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“Yes. I can see that you understand in your head,” Jason sent. I just looked at him. He continued speaking out loud.

“So you are the future of humanity are you? You didn’t blow yourselves up. That’s good.”

“We tried,” I said.

“I thought you were a myth,” Kathy interjected.

“Hardly,” Glenda responded. Sam looked confused.

“Inner Earth,” Jason said, addressing him in particular. “We are the Inner Earth civilization. We come and go as necessary. Each time those on the surface decide to destroy the planet we either go under ground or out into space. We’re planning on moving now.”

“Our history records don’t show anything happening around this time period,” Sam said.

“Well. If you destroyed the world, would you put it in your history records? They're probably false like most of the surface people’s records. They tend to bend the truth to the breaking point…repeatedly,” Jason said.

“So when you gonna take us on this Inner Earth tour?” Sam asked. They looked at each other, before Jason answered.

“That would be irregular, but since you're from the future and already know about us…” he paused and looked at Glenda. She simply shrugged. “Why not?” He said. “Meet us here tonight and we’ll take you there. It really has to be hush, hush or somebody might follow you and learn about us.”

“We are just a myth right now and we want to keep it that way,” Glenda said. “Earthling paranoia can be awfully dangerous.”

“Yes. Old Earth was quite disappointing,” I added.

“Not to me,” Sam said. “If you lower your expectations you can't get that disappointed.”

“Amen to that,” Kathy said. “And in that vein, is anyone else hungry?”

“I am,” Lacey responded. “You want some more fast food?”

“That's what I mean by lowered expectations. It all tastes the same. Like cardboard.”

“If only it was that good,” I said

***

The meat tasted like wood and the spaghetti leather, boot shoe strings. We ate it anyway because we figured we couldn’t find anything better. Afterward, we got our things together and went to a predesignated place just outside of town in the desert. It was getting dark so it was a little cooler, but not cool enough.

We were used to living under a dome on Mars with the temperature regulated. It was different here, especially since they had been heating the planet up. You never knew what to expect. It was almost 100 degrees and it was night. Like magic our two Inner Earth friends appeared out of the darkness heading in our direction. They were wearing all black so it was difficult to see them.

It was Jason and Glenda again. “So. You made it,” Jason said with a grin. “You survived the fast food.”

“Barely,” I said. “I hope you have better food.”

“Not sure about that,” Glenda said.

We turned and headed out into the desert. It was still hot to me, but not as hot as during the day. I had expected it to be cool at night in the desert. Maybe it would get cool, eventually, but it wasn’t then. We walked on in silence as it got darker and darker.

“No flashlights,” Jason said, as if reading my thoughts. “We don’t want any tourists following us, if you know what I mean. One human could ruin it for us all.” I just shrugged. “Here we are,” he said. He lifted his arm and touched a button on his wristband. The ground began to shift until a rift had opened in the sand. Glenda stepped in. We all followed. We found ourselves in a very large cavern with a high ceiling. Bright lights shown down from very high up. I looked up at the ceiling and saw a split in what looked like the sky. It was the portal we had stepped through.

Jason hit the button in his wrist again and it disappeared. I found it amazing that we had descended so far. It was a teleporter, but I had never seen one so fast and smooth.

“So, the adventure begins,” Kathy said. We turned and followed Glenda and Jason as they made their way down a long hallway to the left. The smooth cut hallway stood in contrast to the rough stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Every so often we would pass an unfinished area that seemed to be just sandstone, or granite, leading to paths that led to who knows what. We were silent, probably in shock. We had never seen a place like this, nor did we expect to find such a place on earth during the 21st century.

We passed many doorways that were very far apart, designation large spaces behind the shiny, smooth walls. “Here,” Jason said, stepping toward one of the doors. He hit a small butting to the right of the door and it swung open into a very large room that looked like a mixture of a lab and meeting room. He waved us toward some chairs around a very large table in the middle of the room as he made his way to the food processor and ordered drinks

I couldn’t believe it. It was like the things we had in the 25th century. After a few buzzes several containers filled with a clear liquid appeared. He looked over his shoulder at us and then turned back and hit a few more buttons. The drinks were teleported onto the table in front of us.

“This is amazing,” I said.

“Just normal for us,” Glenda responded. “We are a very old race, you know? We’ve been here for millions of years, on and off. We watch the young races rise up and watch them die. If a planet becomes uninhabitable we just leave for another one, or we wait. If it’s a surface problem we just stay here. If it’s worse we go to mars, or a moon base, maybe a space station, but we usually come back here because Earth is our origin planet.”

“There’s no place like home,” Jason said with a grin coming over to join us. He pulled out a chair and took a seat. He pointed to the glasses with his chin. “Try that. I think you’ll like it better than your fast food.”

“I thought it was just water,” I said. Taking a sip. When I tasted it I knew it wasn’t water. It tasted sweet and pleasant. A feeling of relaxation quickly filled my body as I exhaled completely for the first time since this adventure had started and relaxed.

He grinned. “See what I mean?”

“I see.”

“Don’t worry. It’s natural and healthy,” he said. Kathy frowned, which made him grin even more. He waited a moment before speaking. “So…how have we faired in…the future, may I ask?” We looked at each other.

“I don’t know if we can discuss that with you…in detail,” Sam said. “We don’t want to interfere with the future, do we?”

“You don’t want to shift to a new timeline,” He corrected. “You can't change the future, you can only change your future.” He sipped his drink. “A commonly held belief is that you can change the future by interfering with something in the past. It is, however, inaccurate. You change your future. Your timeline jumps to a different timeline, but the previous one doesn’t change, mainly because the time lines are infinite.”

“How does hearing about the future from us help then?” Sam asked.

“Because you are in our timeline right now. We’ll stay here. You’ll jump…you see? Now if we jump too it won’t make a difference because in our timeline, since it will be the future, we will have been meant to jump.”

“Fascinating,” Lacey commented. I didn’t find it fascinating at all. I guess Jason saw it on my face. Glenda laughed right out.

“I don’t think you humans have changed so much. I was…we were just wondering if we survived the latest foolish actions of the humans or not.”

“I’m thinking that you know what happened,” I said. We sat in silence for a few moments. Jason sat there for a few moments. He shook his head, rolled his eyes and looked at Glenda. They made eye contact for a moment before he said, “Global warming and a nuclear war.”

“You got it,” Sam said jovially.

“It isn’t that funny Sam,” Kathy responded. I didn’t say a word. She glared at me for no reason. “I don’t think it’s funny,” she directed at me.

“What are you telling me for?”

“Because I know you have something to say.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“Yes you do.” I pursed my lips. They all looked at me, waiting.

“What? I don’t have anything to say. They were so stupid they blew themselves up even though they knew that they would. There’s really nothing to say.”

“Your silence is golden,” Sam said with a laugh.

“But your mind is saying a lot,” Glenda said.

“My mind doesn’t say anything,” I shot back.

“I always thought so,” Kathy said, “but I never thought you would admit it.”

“For a change of direction…you have any food,” Lacey asked.

“We just ate before we came here,” I complained.

“You ate. I didn’t eat that dog scrapple.”

“That was Whopper.”

“Thinking it was meat was the whopper part.”

“It takes two hands to handle it.”

“And a stomach of iron,” Sam said.

“Well we have Big Mac,” Glenda said with a smile. Jason laughed.

“I hate to tell you, but we don’t eat meat.”

“I could have guessed,” Sam said.

“We do have lab grown meat,” Glenda said. “Will that be sufficient?”

“Yes,” Lacey said. “Can’t be any worse than the other stuff we’ve had. It has been full of hormones and various antibiotics. It is a kind of lab meat.”

“Don’t ruin my meal,” I said. “I love that stuff.”

“I can’t eat another thing,” Kathy said.

“Good. That means more for the rest of us,” Sam said, jumping in. “Bring on a large steak.” Jason headed to the food processor.

“Yuk,” I said. “Close encounter meat. You don’t know where it comes from.”

“We grow it,” Glenda said. “Why does it matter? It could be from your grandmother." She gave me a wink and then busted out laughing.

“Don’t scare him,” Jason said over his shoulder, having just finished punching in the code for lab grown meat. “He’ll believe that.” He headed back to the table and took a seat. “It will take a while, of course. More work for the machine.”

We waited patiently until our food arrived and ate that fake meat in silence. I didn’t care if it was rat butt. It was really good.

We talked well into the night and ended up spending the night there before leaving bright and early, before sunrise, so as to not be seen by any of the humans. As we made our way across the desert to our rental car. We talked about all the strange things we had seen in the underground tavern the night before.

They had talked with us liberally and had shown us around without hiding anything. Why did they disclose so much to us? What did they know that we didn’t? We pondered that on the way to our vehicle knowing that we would soon be snapped back to our own time. We only had a couple of more hours and then we would be sucked into a vortex and spewed out…a little more gently than it sounded, of course, at the time station. I looked forward to it.

As we made it to our hotel Lacey was still grumbling about her watch. We opened the door. There was a sucking sound, and before we knew it we were standing in the lab. It took a few moments to refocus. She looked down on her wrist and her watch was still there. How had that happened? Later we discovered that we had returned a few moments before we left, so she hadn’t left her watch yet. What the…how did that happen? I wondered, but I didn’t say a word.

End Part 2