Lives Of The Unknown Book 1: The Legend of Andrew Lockeford (12 page)

“Okay, what the hell….what’re you
doing screwing with my dreams? I’m guessing that’s what you’re
doing.”

“I didn’t alter your dream at all—I
was just monitoring it. Looks like you’ve got something coming to
you in your future….something huge.”

“What—what d’you mean? It was just a
dream, it couldn’t be much more than that.” In reality, Andrew was
convinced that the guy knew what he was talking about.

“I heard you were the newcomer to this
place, so I decided to see what kind of dreams you would have.”
Aliens can be creepy enough without being seen, but this guy had
the nerve to tell what the human was dreaming about. “Vivid, yet
abstract….sounds like somebody has a deep connection to the
Realm.”

“What….the fuck.…are you talking
about? And could you at least show me your face so I’m not creeped
out as much?!”

The guy turned on a light that
detailed his face. He looked like a crossbreed between a human and
a bald squirrel while having the eyes of a cat. It was freaky, and
it just changed the eeriness to a different form. Andrew looked
disgusted, and the alien could tell.

“Hey, I was just as amazed to see you,
especially with all that hair.”

“I’m not that hairy!” Andrew
whined.

The guy held out a piece of glass, to
the looks of it, and a lighted reflection appeared. The human saw
his face and realized he did have a bit of a mustache and a beard
going, but he didn’t think that he was as hairy as a
monkey.

“I know you’re not as hairy as some
animals can be, but you still look a lot like one, especially with
the hair on your head.”

“Well, some of my
people actually
like
to have hair.”

The guy said nothing, returning to a
screen by his side.

“So what are you doing with my dreams,
anyway?”

“I told you, I’m just monitoring them
to determine your personality and your connection to the
Realm.”

“What realm?”

“The Impossible Realm. I’m part of a
group devoted to studies towards dreams and their connection to our
unknown world.”

“Um, last time I heard, it was
impossible to prove anything about the Impossible Realm—hence the
name.”

“Maybe not possible
to absolutely
prove,
but we’ve found plenty of bits and pieces that back up our
theories.” Sounds like string theory. “We believe that whenever we
have dreams, we see a part of the Realm and a hint of our lives in
our own universe.”

In a way, this made sense to Andrew.
And yet, at the same time, it just sounded like a crackpot theory.
Looks like cults aren’t limited to Earth, after all.

“So, what does this say about my dream
and my future?”

“My guess? Something big, scary, and
epic, all involving you.”

“Yeah, that’s
real
helpful.”

“Oh, so you do know
sarcasm!”

“Just get out of here! I wanna
sleep!”

“Would you at least like a Quik-Sleep
spray before I go?”

“No, I—what?”

“One spritz of this on your forehead
and you’ll fall asleep instantly. It’s totally safe!”

“How do I know you’re not just
drugging me?”

“You’re going to sleep anyway, it’s
not gonna matter much in that perspective.”

“NO! Just
go
!”

“Alright, alright!” He took his stuff
with him and walked out the door.

Andrew didn’t even know the guy’s
name.

Juvir had woken Andrew up; he was told
to follow him to the ship for departure. Andrew was indeed nervous,
partly from the uncertainty of the trip itself, but mostly from the
training he would have to do. His heart was pounding as he walked
through each hall. He realized that perhaps the technical training
would have been lighter and less scary for him, but there were
downsides to that method as well. Stick to the plan, he
supposed.

The human and the miweri walked into
the cabin, which had several robots operating some screens. These
robots weren’t like Lee—they were all clad in silvery metal and
wires, although they still had little metal plates for lips and
eyebrows. They were all concentrated on what was in front of them,
as though Andrew never entered the room at all.

Juvir took him to the front, which had
two seats for them to sit in for the ride. As they took their seats
and put on some safety harnesses—let’s be honest, they were
seatbelts—Juvir said, “All ready to go?”

None of the robots
responded.

“That means everything’s fine and
we’re ready to go,” he said. “Okay, launch!”

This was a scary
moment for Andrew. For him, if there was no answer, then something
must have gone wrong in the connections and become unable to
respond. Something could have
easily
gone wrong with the launch.
Fortunately, however, Juvir was correct and it started moving
fluently.

The ship was as tall as a one-story
house, and just as wide, too. It hovered straight up at the speed
of an average elevator for the first hundred feet, then it started
to accelerate. Eventually, it was going hundreds of miles per hour
upwards before it started to move forward as well. As the ship
moved faster forward, it moved slower upwards. For Andrew, it felt
somewhat like being in a plane, but he couldn’t describe it
further. The ship eventually stopped rising and was moving forward
at a height of ten thousand feet above sea level, but accelerating
gently past a thousand miles per hour. Andrew saw the buildings
below move past as a giant gray blur.

After a few hours, Andrew noticed the
gray blur turn into nothing but blue—the natural ocean was here. He
couldn’t see whether there were waves or not, but he soon guessed
that maybe there weren’t. Perhaps this planet had no moon—if there
was one, and it created waves like it did on Earth, how would these
people have built their cities on top of the ocean?

Andrew took this time to tell Juvir
about the incident from last night, both the dream and the
squirrel-man.

“It’s just a dream. Nothing more than
your psyche shouting out loud in order to relieve some tension. And
that tension is mostly likely from this training you’re about to
do, right?”

“Okay, but what about the guy who said
it was connected to the Impossible Realm?”

“A crackpot. Not that he’s doing
anything wrong, just that it’s too strange and unusual to believe.
I have to respect his opinion, but it doesn’t mean that I agree
with him. Although if he was an important officer of some sort,
such as that with the AOIB, then there would be a
problem.”

Finally, Juvir pointed out a huge mass
of green and brown up ahead, which continued up above the clouds.
It was the shield volcano Erlenkeymll, stretching for hundreds of
miles both to the left and the right. In between breaks in the
clouds, Andrew could see snow going up starting near the cloud line
and up to the two-thirds mark of the mountain. Above that was just
a mass of dark gray. It was beautiful.

The ship started to slow down as it
approached the island, then it came to a stop once passing the
coastline. Andrew could see a white laboratory to his right as the
ship lowered down to the ground.

When the ship touched down and the
engines stopped, Juvir got out of his seat and told Andrew to get
up as well. When they walked out of the cabin, Andrew asked, “Why
didn’t we just teleport to the lab?”

“No reason. Just giving you a view of
this planet.”

Andrew nodded with a smile stretched
to his left. “So it’s just some ‘more than going from point A to
point B’ thing then, huh? I can relate.”

As a platform tilted down and out from
under the ship, Andrew and Juvir walked down to be greeted by the
scientists awaiting them.

“Hiya, Andrew! How’ve you been?” said
Shul.

“And yet you still have all that
hair,” retorted Anzem.

“I’m not that hairy!” shouted
Andrew.

Chapter 13

It felt like Earth.

There was the salty smell of the
ocean, the long green grass, the trees, the bushes, and all of the
land he could see that he could freely explore. In a way, this was
better than Earth. No private property to worry about trespassing
through, and no other people around to spoil it like in a national
park. The plants and the animals that he could see were unfamiliar,
but it still called to him—

“Hey,” said Anzem, “you’ll need these
to start off.”

Andrew turned around to face Anzem.
The human and the scientists were out by the laboratory, seeing him
off on his training. He saw two pills in that alien hand, both
being food pills, and shook his head while saying, “I don’t need
these.”

“What do you mean?” said Shul.
“They’re essential for your health.”

“I know that, I’m just saying that I
can get food on my own. Besides, those things are just too strong
for me.”

“You not going to find anything worth
eating for at least ten miles up the mountain,” said Anzem. These
guys learned about Andrew’s units of measurement once they received
Lee’s data, including miles. “These are more for keeping you from
weakness of starvation for a set amount of time. Plus, if you do
manage to save these for later, and you’re hunting prey or if
you’re being hunted, you can use these as a back-up.”

Andrew considered this for two
seconds, then he took the pills. “Wait, where do I put these? All I
have is this black….spandex-like body suit with no
pockets.”

Shul leaned forward
to pinch the side of his suit. As he pulled on it, a pocket formed
on the suit that ended up close to the size of a typical shirt
pocket. Andrew didn’t even
want
to ask how that was possible.

“So, just to clarify,” said Andrew,
“if the volcano erupts by some chance, or if the Selentors find me
here, you’ll teleport me off the island?”

“Indeed. Of course, there’s small lava
flows to worry about, but you can just run away from those,” said
Shul.

“You’ve still got fires to worry
about,” said Anzem.

“Oh, that’s right. Try not to get
caught in any fires.”

Andrew’s facial expression said,
“That’s not helpful!” But he quickly accepted it and said out loud,
“Alright, looks like I’m off—hey wait, why do I have to walk ten
miles up the mountain when I can just be teleported
there?”

“But that wouldn’t be training, now
would it? Just get your ass in gear already,” said
Anzem.

“Fine, fine, I’m going.” Andrew left
the scientists and started off jogging up the mountain for a good
mile. By that point, Andrew was out of sight among some
bushes.

“You know, I’m glad we found him. He
livened things up for once on this island,” said Anzem.

“He’s lucky, too,” said Shul. “He’s
the only being I’ve ever known who gets to live both in the natural
way and the modern way. Even the two of us living on this island
can only really look at this place, not live in it.”

“Well, it’s what we get working for
this job. No matter how cool a job may be, there’s always going to
be something wrong with it. Like how I can’t own a single freaking
vehicle at this place.”

“Why’d you take this job,
anyway?”

Andrew had been walking for an hour
now—he had just gained four miles at this point, and he was already
feeling hungry. He pulled out a pill from his pocket and swallowed
it; it was more bearable now, but it was still strong enough to
make him wince. The grass went up close to his knees and there were
bushes everywhere; the bushes were either small or gigantic.
However, he hadn’t seen any trees, large animals, or rivers at this
point. The island was humid, and he figured that with all the snow
higher up, the runoff should lead somewhere as rivers. Perhaps the
water sank into the ground at some point and became aquifers or
underground rivers. Either way, he decided not to go straight up.
If there were going to be any animals or rivers, they would not be
in the direct route up the mountain. He looked thirty degrees to
his left and stuck with that direction for the next six
miles.

As he approached the
three-thousand-foot elevation mark, which was also near his
ten-mile mark, he found himself in an alien rainforest. It felt
less like a tropical rainforest than it did a forest from the
Pacific Northwest Coast. There were trees and plants everywhere,
the ground was muddy, and he could hear birds all around him. It
wasn’t as hot as he expected a rainforest to be, however. One,
because the sun was setting, and secondly due to the higher
elevation. It was still humid, though, and it did nothing to
satisfy his thirst. He had already taken both of his pills, and he
didn’t know what was edible for him. All he knew was that there
should be a river or a puddle nearby—why else would these animals
be here? It couldn’t have just been from the water in their
food.