Chapter 33: Chapter Thirty-One

The taxi had been commuting for about three hours through many neighbourhoods that Aris had never been to before. He was tracking his trajectory via the GPS app on his access pod and was growing evermore curious as the taxi approached the city limits. Beyond the city was nothing but forest.

The taxi eventually slowed down and came to a complete stop on the edge of the city. Aris got out and was now looking at a wall of trees and a dense overgrowth of shrubbery. Despite double checking the coordinates to make sure he was reading them correctly, he still thought, This can’t be right?

Although he was having serious reservations about the adventure he was about to embark on, he proceeded anyway, giving his secret messenger the benefit of the doubt.

The moon barely provided enough light for him to see as he forced his way through some bushes and into the forest. From his duffle bag, he pulled out a large LED flashlight that was much stronger than the light on his access pod. With his light bouncing around in all directions, Aris pushed his way through the dense forest. The sounds of small branches and twigs snapping beneath his feet combined with his heavy breathing. It was the first time in Aris’ life where he was exposed to such a rural landscape. Having spent his whole life in a hyper-advanced society, he had never been in a forest before.

It was the middle of the night and he was trudging through the forest on a wild-goose chase. It was certainly not the way he envisioned his night turning out.

Struggling to maintain his footing on the wet forest bed, Aris ploughed through the unforgiving terrain, handling each obstacle that came up. Spider webs and low hanging branches dangled in his face, but were shoved aside, only to be replaced by some undetermined insect that he frantically swatted away. Of all the potential hazards nature doled out, the one thing to cause him to lose his footing was a slick metal surface. Without warning, Aris’ feet slipped out from under him and he went down hard. His flashlight fumbled out of his hand and turned off. He moaned in agony and grimaced in pain. Now laying on the forest floor in utter darkness, he nervously felt around for his flashlight. Upon finding it, he turned it back on and returned to his feet.

What the heck did I step on? he thought. Shining his light at the ground, he was surprised to see a reflective metal surface glowing brightly. A stop sign? he said to himself. What’s a stop sign doing in the middle of the forest?

When he looked around again, he acquired a different perspective. Although he couldn’t see much, he could sense an unusual pattern in the growth of the forest. He shone his light around him and spotted an old fire hydrant, a sewer cap, and a streetlight – all of which were covered in living organisms and hardly recognizable.

Continuing on his way, he followed the GPS on his access pod. After a few more minutes, the forest became easier to navigate. As he pressed on, he discovered a pathway – the second indication he was on the right track. The path eventually led him to the forest’s edge, where he stood on a precipice overlooking the remnants of an old neighbourhood.

The moon cast a golden glow on the old buildings, highlighting the tops of the grand structures that poked through the tree canopy. The remains of a once prosperous civilization now lay in waste. As with most abandoned parts of the city, it was losing a battle against Mother Nature.

An eerie feeling consumed him, almost as if he was in a lucid dream. Aris looked at his GPS. It was no longer functioning, which made him increasingly nervous.

Descending down the slope, Aris emerged from the forest and entered the abandoned district. Now strolling through the dark street that separated the vacant buildings, he felt he was making progress. Surely whoever beckoned him would reveal themselves to him. Shining his flashlight left and right, Aris took notice of the crumbling buildings. They told a tale of what had happened not too long before, giving him a different kind of history lesson than the ones he received in school. By his rough estimates, the neighbourhood was over 200-years old and hardly resembled the city he had grown up in.

As he walked aimlessly, he eventually saw the silhouettes of three dark figures emerge from an abandoned subway entrance. He recognized Alex and Milo immediately and inferred who the other woman was.

When Alex reached the street level, she looked around in awe. It was the first time she had seen the old part of town herself. Weeds had replaced much of the pavement, disguising it from satellite images. Then she saw Aris.

“Aris, you made it!” Alex called out ecstatically.

“How’d you know I was here?” he asked.

“Security system.”

“Hi, I’m Mara,” Mara said as she bowed.

“It’s nice to finally meet you. I’m Aris.”

“I’ve heard a lot of good things about you,” Mara said.

Aris smiled at the thought of Alex talking about him to her mother. Milo recognized that as well and became even more jealous of him.

“Can you please tell me what’s going on?” he asked. “Your face is all over the news.”

“We couldn’t just let her rot in prison,” Milo said in a condescending tone. “Someone had to rescue her.”

“Well, aren’t you a hero,” Aris quipped. “Alex is lucky to have you as a friend.”

The remark irritated Milo, but he did not retaliate.

They entered the abandoned subway system together and upon Aris’ arrival, dozens of people greeted him. This made him feel welcome as if he was the guest of honour.

“This is quite the set up you guys have here,” he commented, looking around in amazement.

“Thanks,” Mara replied.

“So this is where you go when you want to hide?” he asked. “Quite literally, you go underground.”

They came up to the equipment room and Aris saw a strange contraption hooked up to a series of really old monitors.

“What’s this thing?” he asked.

“It’s a dream recorder.”

“What does it do?”

“It records dreams, dumbass,” Milo said.

“Milo, be nice.”

“The device simply records a person's brain activity during REM sleep and then creates a digital copy.”

“That sounds amazing. What are you guys doing with it?”

“We recorded Mara’s dream and uploaded that digital copy into my brain. My brain reproduced that same brain activity so I was able to watch her dream in vivid detail in my head as if I was watching a movie.”

“Incredible. What was that like?”

“Well, it was a pretty interesting experience, but the system fried before I could experience the entire dream. However, it wasn’t a complete waste. We managed to obtain a partial transfer of the file so I was able to recover bits and pieces.”

“Why didn’t you just upload the dream back into Mara’s brain?”

“That’s a valid question. We thought my brain may be able to make connections hers could not. We figured since I have no emotional connection to the event, I could get a cleaner analysis of the dream, which would be objective and free from bias.”

“So what did the upload reveal?”

“It was very interesting actually. I saw Mara with Maxim Morrison, they were both quite young and from what I could tell, seemed to be very much in love with each other,” Alex began to explain. “Maxim told Mara he had a secret, but wasn’t sure how to tell her.”

“What secret?” Aris asked impatiently.

“Don’t worry, I’m getting to it. He showed her the plans for the space program. How he intends to build a ship to explore new extraterrestrial minerals, such as gold to put in the atmosphere.”

“Don’t we already have enough gold in the atmosphere?” Aris asked.

“Well, that’s where it gets a little murky.”

“Wait, how is that a secret, we already know about the plans for the ship from the schematics we found.”

“Right, here’s where the secret comes in – the mission is bogus.”

“What do you mean?”

“He has no plans on using the ship for space exploration or to mine gold. The purpose of the ship is to sustain life.”

“Why?”

“Is it okay for me to continue?” Alex asked her mother.

“Yes, it’s fine,” Mara said.

“The dream sequence was a little sporadic, but from what I could gather, he had asked her to go with him. He kept referring to Earth as a “broken planet”, and was trying to convince her to leave it behind and start a new colony somewhere else.”

“Wow, that’s heavy.”

“Wait, there’s more.”

“After that, the conversation shifted to me – their unborn baby. Maxim confessed that he had been conducting secret experiments on me without Mara’s knowledge. He told her I would be very special and would be the first of my kind – a child born with such extreme gifts, that it may be considered the beginning of a new race of humans. I was supposed to be the first of this so-called super race, but there were to be others. Together, we would all leave Earth and form a new colony elsewhere.

“Maxim Morrison had been doing secret experiments on you to make you the way you are?” Aris asked.

“Apparently.”

“Somehow that makes me feel better about myself and less of a loser.”

“I’m glad it makes you feel better, but how do you think I feel?”

“Yeah, Aris, don’t be so insensitive,” Milo scolded.

“So when Maxim told Mara the truth, she became furious and left him. I felt a lot of pain and sadness mixed with anxiety and betrayal.”

“He was no longer the man I loved,” Mara added. “He was power hungry with a malevolent agenda. I didn’t want to be associated with him anymore so I ran away and hid. Being single, young, and poor, I did not qualify for child rearing. I knew if I got back with Maxim I would be okay, but I couldn’t do it. It was the hardest choice I ever had to make. I decided to go ahead with the pregnancy and hide it from the outside world – only a few of my closest friends knew. They helped me so much by bringing me food and taking care of me, they are like my family, and that’s why many of them are still with me today.”

The group remained silent. They had all seen the video of the horrendous labour. Now with a few more details of the back story, they could infer the rest.