Ch. 13
“Excuse me?”
What did that even mean, “a different Earth”? What was he playing at? How could I be on a different Earth, Is there more than one?
“The Technology does not fly through space, it flies through dimensions.”
“Come again?”
“I didn’t get it at first either. There is no such thing as different dimensions to the Hurdeen. One day I was in your world, watching television in a guy’s house while he was at work, and the most interesting show came on. And they described inter-dimensional travel, and that’s when I realized what I had done. That’s why everything’s so similar, that’s why the weather is similar here and there at the same time, because it is the same place.”
“Then why is everything so different?”
“I don’t know what caused it, but something thousands, or millions of years ago happened differently. It could have been something small like a rock falling off a cliff a different way, but whatever it was it changed the entire outcome of the future, creating a rift in the two worlds. And from there everything got more and more different.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, as far as I could figure.”
This was too much for me to handle. I was finally coming to terms with either being dead or on a different planet, now this. Yet at the same time I knew he was right, I’m not sure how, maybe it was his confidence in this theory. I could very well be the first Earthling in a different dimension, and it felt pretty cool. I now had an actual basis for all of my future thought in Hurdeen. Instead of trying to figure out a way to get through space, I had to now get through a dimension barrier.
“Imagine,” I said, gears whirring in my head, “if this became sort of a tourist thing. Or better yet, we could move people here. How come you kept this a secret on Earth?”
He looked at me like I had three heads. “This was for me to escape, to have a place to go when I couldn’t stand this world. The last think I wanted was for other people to use it.”
“Why did you always come back?”
“This is still my home even if I do hate it sometimes. I regret it now, of course, having been exiled here. If I could I would go and stay. Things are much farther along than they are here, much better from my point of view. I would definitely go back. That’s the whole point of the Dimitrians, they were supposed to make a lot of noise so the council would realize that they needed me back. Now they are just a bunch of weirdo’s who think that they are going to go to Earth.”
“Those people love you; they really believe everything you’ve told them.”
“It’s not my problem that they’re that gullible.”
I dropped it there; he was making clear where his opinion stood on the subject of Dimitrians. He created them, and now wanted nothing to do with them. I had wanted to ask a lot of questions, but decided better of it.
“How do your translators work? I mean I get that I can hear them, but how is it that they understand me?”
“The device was implanted into your brain, it works so that when you think about what you are about to say it changes it into our language when you say it. It’s very complicated and took years to develop.”
“Is that how you understood English?”
“No, I actually learned English by being on Earth so long, and besides, the translator was a prototype then.”
I nodded my understanding. With no questions coming to my mind I waited for some from him. He didn’t ask any; in fact he didn’t even acknowledge my presence for the next half hour or so. I sat in that chair and he wandered about, cleaning a little, carrying a chair in from out back, and then he just left for about twenty minutes. And when he came back he didn’t even say anything to me. I was beginning to feel left out, rather awkward, like he didn’t even want me there.
“Almost ready?” He asked.
“For what?”
“To go to Voratiot, I thought that was the plan.”
“When were you going to tell me this?”
“Again, I thought we had decided that.”
“No, but it doesn’t matter, I don’t have anything to pack.”
“Do you know what I think happened? I’ve been told that I ask questions in my head, and answer them there. In my head you said you were ready.”
That was weird, but whatever, we all have our strange little quirks. I have plenty, but I don’t think I really wanted to get into those at the moment. “So when are we leaving.”
“Right now.” He pushed the door open and stepped out, holding it open for me to follow.
He walked quickly, faster than I thought a man of his age would. I found it difficult to keep up, my bag weighed me down. He on the other hand only brought a small sack that he held somewhere in his sleeve. With his hood up I felt like I was being led by the grim reaper.
Within minutes we were at the end of the boardwalk. The walls of the maze, still present throughout the Forgotten Lands, lined a small straight path to a grassy field. I was getting tired of fields, but this time I knew that I had a destination and an actual goal. Though I was feeling reserved about going to a place with people known as Terror Bringers, but felt safe with Dimitrius. At least now I had someone with whom I could talk about Earth, and who knew where they were going and didn’t keep disappearing. That reminded me . . .
“Do you know a Poiye?”
“A what-ye?”
“Poiye, it’s this guy who keeps popping up and then disappearing after giving me useless information.”
“Can’t say I know anyone like that.”
“I was thinking that he might be using an invention of yours to turn invisible or to teleport.”
“I never made anything that could do those things, but now that you mention it that does sound fun.”
Now I was really lost on who Poiye was and how he could do the things he could do. I would just have to wait and hope he showed up while with Dimitrius.
We walked for a long time, occasionally we passed a house off in the fields, or saw deer about, but overall a very boring trip. I was used to it by now. We shared a sandwich that he made before leaving, it was good, but I still did not want to find out what kind of meat I was eating. The food went through me quickly; I guess I was burning more calories than I was taking in. I guess I would be pretty fit when I got home.
It got colder as we walked. I zipped up my jacket and wished I had a hood because we had off and on showers throughout the afternoon. I suppose it was a good thing, it was the closest I got to getting a real shower.
It got dark after a few more hours. An empty shack stood off the road. We took shelter there during a particularly hard rain. Hungry, wet, and cold we hunkered down and waited for better conditions. He took my jacket and boots and hung them up next to his cloak to dry. And then we waited. I listened to the patter of the rain on the metal roof. It sounded nice, calming, I was tired and the ground was soft where I sat. My eyelids grew heavy, my mind emptied, I dozed off.
The next thing I know I’m being shaken by Dimitrius. I sit up, he hands me another sandwich, not as fresh as the one the day before, but still good. The sun peeks though a broken window, it is morning.
“Why didn’t you wake me?” I asked after taking an exceptionally tough bite of meat.
“It was late; you looked like you needed the rest, and besides, the rain did not let up until well into the night. Are you ready to continue?”
“Yes, how long until we get there?”
“If you mean Voratiot, we’re already there. There is no official dividing line. I always use this old house to determine it. Your boots are still wet but your jacket is fine – good thing it’s waterproof.”
We got our things and started out. The road was muddy, puddles stood every few feet. The sun was out now, even if it didn’t provide very much heat at least it wasn’t raining.
“Now I should warn you about the city we are going to. It is mu
ch bigger than any in Hurdeen; it’s also dangerous because it is run by the military, also known as the Terror Bringers.” He said after a while.
“So I should stay with you.”
“That would be best.”
I could only imagine what big was to someone from Hurdeen, but I forgot that he had been to Earth and probably saw those big cities on T.V. I began to worry that this city might actually be bigger than any I had ever been to, not that it really mattered since I was with someone who knew his way, but it still nagged at me.
“How big are we talking?” I asked.
“Big.”
“Like New York City big?”
“Smaller.”
“Denver?”
“Never seen Denver.”
That was better than nothing; it was smaller than New York. I tried to push it from my mind, but as already demonstrated I’m not very good at that.
“But bigger than Sorm.”
“I’m bigger than Sorm.”
“Bigger than Yim?”
“It’s not subterranean, if that’s what you mean. What does it matter to you anyway?”
“Just Curious.”
“Look, just stick with me and you’ll be fine. And remember to do what I tell you to do.”
Back in silence we trudged, after a time in the mud, that’s all it could be called, with no end in sight. It was different now that I wasn’t alone. I felt like I was possibly taking up his time, a burden. By myself I knew I had to be somewhere and that was it. But now I wasn’t sure if he liked where we were going. I guess I try to be a people pleaser, to no success evidently. I could have asked him if he actually wanted to go with me, but he was the one that wanted to go. I felt a little better about it, but I could have sooner if I had just asked.
The grass was replaced by trees, not a full on forest, but enough trees to make me feel like we were surrounded by them. I was having a good time stepping through the leaves on the ground, thinking hard about how things really could have been so different from Earth. There was so much similar, yet so much different. I couldn’t figure it out, which was alright. Some things don’t have an answer that can be judged by knowing only a small amount of data. This was a mystery; one that maybe didn’t even have an answer, and so what? Those were the best kind of mysteries in my book, the ones that could only be guessed at. It was my interpretation verses someone else’s, in this case Dimitrius, as I think he is the only person that knows anything about it. And besides, now I decided that I wanted to enjoy my last little bit in Hurdeen, before being sent back to Earth. I didn’t take the Technology into account, and how far away it was from where we were, but I was finally seeing the bright side of things, and I don’t think I would have traded that peace of mind for anything.
Everything looked a little brighter now that I had a positive attitude. The trees were sending me gifts in leaves, the sun smiled down by lighting my way. Alright that may be an exaggeration of my lifted spirit, but it seems right to say looking back at that time. It wouldn’t last too long; at least the tendency to use hyperboles wouldn’t last long. A man came from somewhere behind us, running to catch up, and asked us where we were going. Dimitrius told him that we were heading to the city. To which the man told us that the first gate was closed, and we had to go a little to the East to the second gate. We thanked him and strode off the path to the right, heading right into the early setting sun.
“There are gates?”
Dimitrius nodded, “How do you think they keep everyone in? If they didn’t have gates everyone would flee to Hurdeen.”
“Is it really that bad?”
“You said you went through Sorm?”
“Yes.”
“Did you meet anybody?”
“Yes.”
“Well their not that bad here, but remember to stay close by, unless I tell you it is safe to go by yourself.”
“Does this city have a name?”
“Impiral.”
We settled into another silent affair, walking side by side through the afternoon. The sun came down so slowly or maybe it just felt slow because I wanted it to get below the horizon before I went blind trying to go towards it. I kept my eyes down, keeping my eyes closed for almost a minute at a time, trying anything to avoid the sun. I didn’t even realize at first when we changed directions. Dimitrius put his arm out in front of me and I promptly ran into it. I opened my eyes, and was truly amazed at what I saw.
Impiral was a sprawling, crowded, overall grimy looking city below us, extending as far as the eye could see to the north. I hadn’t realized we had been going up a hill, the ascent was so gradual. The western edge was bordered by trees, and best of all, a sparkling bay to the east. It was the first large water source I had seen.
From above it looked like a dark mess, half covered in shadow from the large hill we now stood on the edge of, and partly because every building had a dark roof. There was no organization to the streets. One started going straight, curved off to the left, and then made a quick turn back on itself. This wasn’t an isolated incident, every street had this problem. And then there were the buildings with the dark roofs. They were all of different heights, lengths, and apparently architects because there wasn’t one that looked like another. I was impressed by the lack of symmetry, but turned off by the fact that every bit of this place looked like pictures I had seen of slums in India. Smoke rose up from several crudely made smokestacks in the heart of the city; apparently they had some sort of factories in this world.
Dimitrius put his hand on my shoulder, “Welcome to Impiral.”
“I think I’m ready to go back now.”
“Nonsense, we haven’t even gone in yet.”
We carefully climbed down the hill, though there was more sliding through mud then anything. By the time I was on the bottom I looked good and soiled, so I probably would fit right in. The entire outline of the city was a metal link fence, rising ten feet in the air. The gate, just an opening in the fence, was well guarded with mean looking men in black. Dimitrius went straight up to one. They talked in whispers I couldn’t here. The guard seemed to recognize him, calling him by name (the only thing I heard) and let us in without any fuss.
“You must come here a lot.” I said, once out of earshot of the guards.
“I need something to do since I can’t freely go through Hurdeen.”
“What do you do here?”
For the first time in the twenty four hours that I knew him, he looked nervous. “Oh, I don’t know, I wander around meeting people.”
This didn’t sound very convincing, but who was I to argue? We started down the first street. The buildings were even more disorganized from a street view. None of the windows going up the fronts were the same size, or had any protection from the outside. People wandered about, stopping in front of various stands placed along the side of the street, which was composed of gray gravel I couldn’t help but think was once white. The men all wore cloaks similar to the one Dimitrius wore, but much thinner and lower quality. The women wore long, dark, heavy dresses that could have been made of potato sacks for all I knew. Just as anywhere else I had been I got strange looks for my clothes. Nobody came up to ask me about them so I guess they had seen similar somewhere. I got the slightest hint of a sewage-like smell, but it was nowhere near as bad as Sorm.
The military presence was felt right from the beginning. Men in black uniforms marched alone through the streets, glaring at everyone they saw. They wore little black caps that had two symbols in white stitched on them. We passed one of these people and he gave me a very dirty look. I returned it by looking up and down his dour uniform as if they were emitting a most foul stench. Dimitrius saw this and pulled me into an alleyway quickly while the guard yelled at me from the street. He eventually moved on.
“What do you think you are doing? Didn’t I tell you not to look at the Terror Bringers?”
“No.”
“Well don’t, they can arrest you for anything, especially for what you just did. It’s a good thing he was in a good mood.”
“I definitely view glares and screaming as being in a good mood.”
“Don’t start, just keep your eyes down and make sure to avoid eye contact with a guard.”
We went back to the main road. Up ahead there was a small crowd on the corner. I didn’t see a stand, and so became increasingly interested as we approached. Dimitrius wanted to go right past, but I stopped in the crowd and he was forced to come back to get me. There was a woman in the center of it all, she wore a long white dress and was dancing, twisting and twirling, her hands above her head, moving through the air as if through water. There was no music, no sound at all as she danced in silence.
“What is she doing?” I asked Dimitrius.
“Dancing.”
“I got that, I mean why is she dancing?”
“She’s a Voratiot.”
“Which means?”
“If a person is a Voratiot it means that they are devout in their devotion to the god Voratiot. Have you heard the story of the gods?”
“Sort of, I’m sure you could tell it better.”
“Maybe another time, just watch for now.”
I did as I was told. She moved in strange ways, from twitching, to flowing carelessly like a visible gas. It was mesmerizing, but the whole time I never lost my senses as I do while sitting through a particularly good movie or orchestra. It was almost as if she kept me aware of my surroundings, heightening my senses. I looked at the other people around her, some weren’t even looking at her, and others had their eyes closed. I gave Dimitrius a perplexed look; he leaned in close and whispered in my ear.
“They think that they can get closer to Voratiot by being close to her, they don’t care how she dances, just that she is.”
“Why don’t they dance?”
“You can’t just do any old dance to get close to Voratiot; you have to truly believe in what you are doing, it’s easier to get the energy from somebody else.”
“What is it going to do for them?”
“It shows Voratiot that they care about him enough to get into his domain after death.”
I now felt strange standing there, so we moved on. The next street was shadowed. I looked up and saw that there was a walkway about twenty feet above us; it looked like a rail line for a train, but I saw people going to it and coming down from it every block. It also helped that Dimitrius pointed up to it and said, “That’s a walkway”.
A few streets later he led me into a distinctly neat building. It was a low grade hotel, or a really nice hotel for their standards. The lobby had a few black metal chairs, I chose not to try them out; they looked uncomfortable. He checked us in, evidently they had openings. The room was on the second floor, I was scared for my life going up the stairs. They were wood and looked like they hadn’t checked on in twenty years. The room was nice, cleaner than I expected, I was beginning to have automated negative responses to anything in Impiral. There were two beds, hard, but not too bad. The best part of the whole place was the bathroom, which had a bathtub. Unfortunately I got carried away with my excitement before noticing that there were no faucets. Water was not in huge supply. There was only one pipe in the whole city; luckily it went right under the hotel. The bad part was that the hotel was near the end of the line, and so the water was mostly used up by the time it got there. Dimitrius promised that he would do his best to get a few buckets each for us to bathe, and sent me to find something to trade with so we could eat since his remaining sandwiches were no longer good.
I showed him the bronze doohickeys that Angeela gave me, as they were the only things I had worth trading. He told me that they were actually random pieces of an engine that he created for the prototype of the Technology, but it never worked right. He wasn’t sure how Angeela got them, but we figured she traded them for something before finding out how useless they were. She probably hoped that I could find someone who wanted them. They may have been useless in Hurdeen, where actual technology is frowned upon, but they would probably go for a lot in Impiral. This made me wonder why some people took them in Thurm. Dimitrius said that even though technology is not used in Hurdeen, people still want some to show to their friends.
I left the hotel feeling braver than usual; perhaps because Dimitrius thought enough of me to let me go alone through the streets he harped about so much. There happened to be a stand across from the hotel, thus I started there. The guy was selling little strudel things with grape filling. I showed him the first of the bronze contraptions and he gaped at them. After a full minute of dancing around his stall he gave me six strudels for just the one bronze thingy. I had a feeling this was going to be a good outing.
I didn’t even bother to see what the next stall was selling, I showed them the engine piece and they flipped out, giving me two whole loaves of bread. It’s a good thing I actually looked over the next stall first before deciding to move on, because that one was selling little wood figurines. Not that they weren’t beautifully carved, but my mission was to get food. My search took me to the next street, which was filled with clothes lines above the street but below the walkway, I felt like a little kid about to cross the street for the first time. Should I really do it, or wait for Dimitrius? Oh, I’ll be fine.
There were no vendors at all on the next street, but there was an entrance to the skywalk as it was known. I couldn’t resist, it looked so cool. The steps were made of stone, but since the hotel I was keeping a close eye on where I was putting my feet. There was a great view from the top, I could see down the streets until they suddenly turned around, the hill from where we first saw the city, and an abnormally large and proportioned building that stuck up from the rest, but not too much taller. It was solid black, with a bell tower on the top. It was very nice, but also very ominous. It had to be an important building to be so tall and stand out so much. I watched it, expecting all the secrets to find my mind. I took a mental note and started for the next exit point. It wasn’t too far away; I was now on the next block over. I quickly traded the last two engine parts and went back to the hotel.
Dimitrius brought up the three promised clay buckets of water and I showed him all the food I got. He was just as excited to see that as the merchants were of seeing the engine parts. He laid down a mat we found in the room, and we were ready for dinner. I gave him one of the two jars of juice I got for trading the last part and I took the other. We split up the bread, the strudels, and the cooked meat I got when the seller threw it in with the juice. He took the bread to eat later, which was alright because we had so much left over. After a few minutes we were stuffed for the first time in days, or years for Dimitrius.
“Why were those people so eager to get the engine parts?” I inquired after finishing my last little bit of grape strudel.
“Anything that can be traded to the Terror Bringers is worth a lot.”
“What do the Terror Bringers want with them?”
“Who do you think made the water pipe?”
“So they actually do some good?” I asked, bewildered.
“Yeah, name one ruthless dictator bent on conquering that did not do at least some good.”
“I can think of several.”
“Alright, but you will admit that there are some that do good, look at Napoleon, he did so many good things for France. The Russians probably didn’t like him too much, but that’s another story.”
“Some Russians liked him; he was basically a superstar back then.”
“True, maybe he wasn’t the best example since he did so much good.”
“Yeah, wait! What else do the Terror Bringers do that’s good?”
“That’s about it actually, other than the pipe they have ravaged their own people and everyone they’ve conquered.”
“So I guess I really should be trying to stop the invasion.” I said sullenly.
“Back to that are we? Well alright, in the morning we should go see the leader of the Terror Bringers and see if we can’t talk him out of it.”
“And how are we going to manage that? They’ll probably kill us for going near the leader.”
“Not true, I go see him every now and then.”
“Why?”
He got real nervous again, “Uh . . . hey, why don’t you take a bath you stink.”
“I do not, well I guess I do, but that’s not my fault.”
“Oh, okay, sure.”
It was nice to finally get a bath; I hadn’t realized how dirty I was until I was clean. The water was freezing by that point, but I suffered through it, and it was worth it, I felt better than I had in a while. The only bad part had to be putting the same dirty clothes on. I wished the Terror Bringers would have brought in a Laundromat with the water. Dimitrius took a bath after me. I got ready for bed, wishing for pajamas and a toothbrush. It was only late evening, but I was so tired that I fell asleep almost instantly after lying down.