The Follower

After distracting himself at his typewriter for the rest of the morning, mr. livral busied himself in the kitchen making lunch while elizabeth and sempere remained closeted in his room. To mr. livral’s relief, he heard nothing.  When he was setting the table, elizabeth came out of the room, gathered her things from the other room, thanked mr. livral for all he had done for her, resisted all mr. livral’s pleas for her to stay for lunch and left. sempere didn’t come out for lunch and mr. livral didn’t ask him, leaving the old man to eat the three person feast by himself.

After a 5 minute shower and a change of clothes at her apartment, elizabeth went straight to mobile 9 where she was greeted by a team of Assmachestani officials (while the rest of the country may have been clueless, elizabeth wasn’t fooled; she knew it was Assmachestan). She was now in direct contact with the enemy! Boredom would no longer be a problem for elizabeth. They had already seized access to all of the company’s records and demanded all the top personnel be reviewed on an individual basis. elizabeth's interrogation went until 10:15 pm and would continue the next day. While elizabeth initially met their pries with outright indignation, she quickly feigned a more docile tone. Given her role with the resistance, she had long since labyrinthed away any information that suggested that she or mobile 9 had ever even tippy-toed out of the straight and narrow. She was not overly concerned with what these investigators would find. Instead she began planning how she could use these interrogations to glean as much information about the Assmachestani regime as possible.

Engulfed in this new challenge, the days of beta phase snuck past elizabeth. The only concern she had was about andrew. Why hadn’t he contacted her? But the mobile 9 audit was too great of an opportunity to squander by worrying about silly things. She had to focus on the task at hand. After all, in her first week of the audit she had learned little more than the names of the officials assigned to her case.

Beyond the curfew and checkpoints everywhere, daily life of the average nilbmah was sliding back to normal.  The press, which had already been in Assmachestani’s pocket before the coup, was the line of continuity that eased the country into complacency. At least that was elizabeth’s view. They, the press, had been demonizing Foggistan for months before the event. That’s what the resistance desperately needed, now more than ever: a voice to the people. Like they had at the very beginning. Those myths by that guy… What was his name? winfer? elizabeth was never very good at literature. andrew, on the other hand, was great at it. He could surely help her, if he weren’t… No. She could not let her train of thought down those tracks. She couldn’t!

On the bright side, over the next several weeks, elizabeth managed to make a few cracks into the Assmachestan cloak. Just as predicted, she confirmed that landers was the nominal head of the regime. The media claimed that the regime had chosen one of nilbmah’s own to run the transient government. However, the few conversations she managed to have with the politicians allowed into the regime’s briefings suggested (they were all too scared to say it directly) that landers was way too familiar with the occupiers; he must have been their contact person leading up to the annex. And none of them had heard anything about andrew.

elizabeth had also grown a sprout of a relationship with one of the auditors , Illium. She had learned that he had two kids who weren’t in nilbmah but “he wasn’t at rank” to tell her where they were. And she learned that he hated nilbmahian food but official protocol required them to eat the local cuisine to make the locals feel more comfortable with their presence. But most importantly she had acquired the blueprints of the landers’ building.

The only thing that drew her attention away from her brother (she was now creeping into a panic about his absence) was her suspicion that she was being followed. She imagined that all her inquiries might have raised some eyebrows. So she laid low for a week but she still got the eerie sensation that she was being watched. Finally, she decided to confront the follower. Let the monster see you smile or something like that.

She went out to the market, which had only just reopened at the beginning of the week, in part because she had been dying for fresh produce but more so to draw out her follower.  Before going to the market she made a “phone call” at the corner convenience store and then waited on a bench outside the market, checking her watch constantly. At first she didn’t think that the follower had taken the bait but after buying two pounds of string beans she turned around and saw a coat flash behind a vendor’s tent. She wasn’t able to see the person’s face but she was sure it was her follower.

She finished her purchases and left the market with a small two wheeled cart full of fruits and vegetables. As she took a roundabout way back to her apartment, she made sure the follower was still on the trail. When she was nearly back home, she increased her speed and made a few quick turns. She hugged herself and her cart against the corner wall hoping the follower would rush past her. Instead her pursuer took an extremely sharp corner colliding into elizabeth and knocking her over on top of her cart. The metal grid of the cart tattooed her back and the right wheel dug into her hip but she managed to get to her feet before the follower who seemed to just be recovering from the shock. Remembering that she should be totally surprised by the accident, elizabeth hunched herself over and started groaning. Upon hearing her cries, the follower started a profuse string of apologies and pushed himself to his feet.

“sempere?!”

A Secret in the Woods

That night, Timoteo finally had the chance to speak with Miguel and get filled in on the details of the Smeralda-Extraterrestrial agreement. “They say their home planet has been destroyed. They call themselves the Vermilionites,” said Miguel.

“Vermilionites?” said Timoteo. They were in Miguel’s room, sitting on his bed while the rest of the palace fell steadily to sleep.

“Their home planet was called Vermilion. The planet doesn’t appear on our records, though, which made mom and dad suspicious at first.”

“And?”

“Apparently their planet is beyond our scope. They’ve been traveling through space, at light speed, for centuries. So I guess it wouldn’t be surprising for us to have no record of their planet. They were able to indicate the exact location in space for us though—in the end, Hermenegildo’s suspicions were allayed. He was on edge the most, I’d say. Mom and dad seemed to be taking the Vermilionite leader’s words at face value.”

“What do you think?” Miguel was eighteen, only three years older than Timoteo, and while Timoteo didn’t look up to many people, he did look up to his brother. Though they didn’t always see eye to eye, Timoteo always wanted to know what Miguel’s opinions on matters were; more often than not, they shaped TImoteo’s opinions as well.

“I’m speaking from my gut here,” began Miguel, “but I don’t think there’s any reason to be alarmed. Klaus, the leader, seemed trustworthy enough. And, I know I’m not the best people reader out there, but he didn’t show any red flags, in my opinion. However… I do think mom and dad and the council could’ve taken a little longer coming to a decision. It all seems a little… precipitated.”

Timoteo frowned. “So what’s the agreement?”

“Well, believe it or not, he promised to teach us magic—well, not magic exactly—but something like a breed of technology far beyond anything we’ve ever imagined.”

“What’d he have to show for it?”

“At first, not much. Then he elaborated upon the whole cloaking system their ships were using, and how they only made themselves visible to Smeralda. We’d already figured that out, of course, but we had no idea how they were doing it. Then he did something really creepy—he teleported into the room.”

“What?”

“Yeah,” Miguel nodded, remembering with excitement. “He manifested himself within his hologram—I mean, one second he was just a projection—the next, he’s stepping off the HoloProjection Pad and greeting us in person. It was crazy. The guards almost shot him, they were so startled.”

“He frikkin’ teleported?” cried Timoteo, thrilled at the prospect of figuring out how that worked.

“He teleported,” said Miguel with a nod. “It was awesome. So you can only imagine what else those guys are hiding up their sleeves—not to mention, if they’ve got the technology to teleport, and to stay in space for as long as they have and sustain their entire people—well they’ve certainly got something to teach us.”

“Why’d they come here? Why Smeralda?”

“‘Apt conditions.’ He didn’t say much more than that. Apparently, Coralende caught their eye from afar—and Smeralda is the country most like their original home.”

“How many are they?”

“About five hundred. Most of them died while escaping their home planet… And ever since, they’ve kept population growth tightly restricted.”

A brief silence. Timoteo was so fascinated, he couldn’t wait to run into Lila again. She could give him the full scoop—if she didn’t run off and vanish again. “What happened to their home planet?”

Miguel shrugged. “Don’t know. They don’t seem to like talking about it.”

By now the palace had fallen into a deep silence. Timoteo could see the golden light from the hallway’s faux-flame torches flickering through the crack beneath Miguel’s door. “Well OK. I guess I should—“ A bird perched itself suddenly on Miguel’s windowsill. A yellow bird, with a dog’s tail. 

“What the…”

The bird winked, and flew away. Miguel turned to look one second too late. “What is it?” he asked.

“I thought I just saw—“ Timoteo stuttered. A winking bird? Really? “Nevermind brother.” He hopped off Miguel’s bed. “Good night.”

A minute later Timoteo was in his bedroom down the hall, peering out his own window. Why would Lila’s chimera appear to him like that—and wink? He looked out into the darkness covering the palace gardens, dimly lit by the flickering glow of faux-flame torches. He strained his eyes, hoping to see a streak of bright yellow flying around, somewhere. Was the chimera spying on him? 

A chirp.

Timoteo turned around, just to spot the chimera perched on his dresser, head cocked to the left, staring straight at him as it vigorously wagged its tail. “What’re you doing here?” Timoteo whispered, not sure whether the bird even understood what he said.

The chimera soared past him and out the window, hovered in front of him for a bit, then darted across the gardens and over the palace gates in the distance. There was no doubt about it: it wanted to be followed. 

Timoteo threw on his cloak and headed out, taking the route he always took when visiting his tree house in the woods. He crossed the grounds undetected, as usual. The air, however, was unusually cold. He wrapped his cloak tightly around his shoulders and crept through the palace gardens, found the small iron gate, rusty, hidden and forgotten behind a wall of ivy, and slipped out beyond the palace’s domain.

He was now out in the open. Up ahead, the chimera flitted back and forth, urging him to approach the forest edge. Timoteo followed, and as soon as he stepped into the thick silence of the woods, found himself surrounded by an ever-growing number of blue fireflies. It was odd, but if Timoteo hadn’t known better, he’d have believed they were attracted to him.

“Where’re you taking me?” Timoteo whispered after the chimera. He knew the creature could understand him, but it just kept on flying ahead, keeping Timoteo at a swift trot. He tripped. He stumbled. He struggled through brambles. He was dangerously far from the palace now. “Hold up!” he called after the bird. It was flying faster now.

And then Timoteo stopped. This was as far as he would go. The chimera had vanished, and Timoteo was panting. He had never ventured so far into the woods—wasn’t even sure he’d know his way back properly. “I thought you’d stop here,” said Lila.

Timoteo jumped, his heart skipping a beat. She had startled him, severely. “Lila, what the—”

“I’m sorry to call on you so late,” she said, as if wandering the depths of the woods at night was the most natural thing in the world. “But I wanted to know if you were aware of this.” She pointed her finger into the air before her. “I assume you are.”

Timoteo blinked once. Twice. Waiting for the punch line. “The… trees?”

Lila looked at him sideways. “I thought you knew these woods.”

“I never come this deep. It’s really not safe—”

“So you don’t know what this is?” Again, she pointed into empty space.

“Lila—I don’t see anything.”

She pulled him by the wrist. “Come, stand here,” she said, setting him directly next to herself. She grabbed his hand and pointed his index finger forward, “There. See it?”

Timoteo didn’t, at first. But then, after a moment’s notice, it became apparent. A sort of shiver in midair—like heat rising off the street on a sunny summer day. Timoteo’s first instinct was to look at the ground, expecting to find some sort of hole or gas pipe. There was none. “Where’s it coming from?”

“It’s not coming from anywhere. It’s just there.”

“How’d you find it? I would’ve never noticed—"

“I ran into it, completely by accident. I thought you’d be familiar with it.”

Timoteo shook his head. He approached the shiver and stretched his hand out, attempting to touch it. It was like sticking his hand into a recently cooled oven. The air was warmer around his hand, but not significantly so. It was like a warm pocket in midair. He dipped his arm in… The heat was pleasant. He got closer, dipped his face in… then walked straight through the shiver. He expected to be engulfed in warmth, then step right out back into the chilly night air. He didn’t. The entire forest was now warm. “What the…”

“Tim!” he heard Lila cry, her voice muffled, as if submerged under water. He looked around, startled. She was nowhere to be seen.

“Lila!” Tim called, suddenly, aghast. Where had she gone? Where had the shiver gone? And why had the air become so suddenly warm? Suddenly, Lila’s disembodied hand appeared, floating in midair, waving frantically.

“Tim!” came Lila’s muffled voice. “Grab my hand!” Timoteo did, and Lila pulled him back through the shiver and into his own world. “Timoteo!” she scolded. “You’re not supposed to step inside it!”

The air was cool again. “What—what just happened?” He turned back, unnerved, to look at the shiver. There it was, sort of—difficult to observe if not from precisely the right angle.

“It must be a portal. That’s my best guess.”

“A portal?”

“Yes. I had never seen one. I know they existed back in the woods from my home planet. The forest from our country was also a strange, magical place. Or so I’ve been told.”

“A portal to where?”

“An alternate universe, I assume.”

Lila spoke with such offhandedness, he couldn’t tell whether she was pulling his leg or not. “You had portals, as well, where you come from?”

Lila nodded, the sincerity in her expression removing all doubt from Tim’s mind that she was kidding. “They’re everywhere. Your people aren’t familiar with portals?”

Timoteo shook his head. “Nooo,” he said, an inevitable pinch of sarcasm in his voice. “No portals. No alternate universes… We’ve never even considered the possibility—”

“How odd. All planets have portals, in some place or other. My people have never seen one because we’ve been on spaceships all our lives, but we’ve been taught about them. They’re extremely rare to come across, but they exist in a number of different spots.”

Timoteo stared hard at the shiver in midair. Little by little, everything he thought he knew about the world seemed to have been turning on its head since the Vermilionites arrived. Magic… teleportation… chimeras… alternate universes…

“So what happens if… you know…”

“Walk through them?” Lila asked. “Well from what I’ve learned from my physical sciences teacher, you’re not supposed to. She says portals are ruptures in the fabric of space-time. They’re not supposed to exist, and their existence, as of yet, is unexplained. But I know that back in my home planet, tampering with them was forbidden. Every portal, once discovered, was strictly watched and forever off bounds.”

“Why?”

Lila shrugged. “Something about the butterfly effect and the balance between universes. How any slight alteration of events on either side could cause a massive ripple… And so on and so on.” Timoteo was fascinated. He wished he could speak with Lila for hours on end, just to satisfy his curiosity regarding all those things which, while to her seemed so mundane, to him were so incredibly intriguing. Lila caught the wonder in his eyes.

“I can lend you a book on the subject, if you like.”

Timoteo nodded. “That would be great.”

Lila turned to look at the portal. “So… what do we do about the portal?”

Timoteo found the possibility of such an extraordinary discovery becoming off limits. He needed to explore it further—or at least have the option of exploring it further, once he read about portals and alternate universes in Lila’s book.

He looked sideways at Lila, a sly smile on his face. “Can you keep a secret?”

The Morning

The first full day of house arrest was torture for elizabeth. By 11:35 am her leg started twitching. She itched to leave the coffin of an apartment. Since she woke up, at 4:30, she had been waiting for something, anything to happen. Of course nothing did happen – at least not on her radar. Plenty of things did happen.

mr. livral, forgetting, or neglecting, the fact that elizabeth was their only guest, made a breakfast buffet fit for the star hotel. He was not in the least bit offended when no one, not even himself, had much appetite that morning. He carefully rationed out all the leftovers into portions that would last them the next six meals.

sempere busied himself down in the bookstore searching through the magazine archive for stories about prior mass disasters. Whenever he found an article, he scanned it onto his tablet. After scouring the archives, he planned to create a collage, employing the lessons of the social contagions class he was taking. He would post the final product on his blog, which cataloged all the emergencies he had gone on as part of his paramedic training.

elizabeth paced sempere’s room that had been hurriedly tidied for her.

After rationing food for the week, mr. livral began scrounging together end-of-the-world disaster kits with combinatory plans for every possible arrangement of every possible situation. Once he had revised the plans three times he typed them up on the typewriter center-staged on the desk in his room.

sempere found that his blog as well as the rest of the internet was in a state of “temporary control” and no activity would occur until further notice. So his disaster collage would have to wait. Wait, that is, until after he researched internet hacking. After two hours or so back in the magazine archives (you are now probably wondering why he didn’t just find a book about computer hacking but the bookstore, as all bookstores in nilbmah, was more of a magazine store; nilbmahians had insatiable appetites for magazines past and present but liked books as much as raw garlic.) So after searching the archives, sempere found lots of interesting things about hacking but nothing that would quite help him with the current project. But, in his opinion, it was time well spent. He put his collage project on hold and then started creating a disaster playlist on his tablet.

elizabeth had almost managed to tolerate the muffled typewriter tapping, when sempere started playing the beginnings and endings of songs over and over again. Within 36 seconds, she lost it. She started pounding her head against the wall.

Before all this, she had read the letter from jacob but that did little at all to calm her nerves. Quite the opposite. All it said was:

I regret leaving you this way, but now you know.

Yours,

JM

OHMYGOODNESSGRACIOUSANDAWHOLEBUNCHOFCURSEWORDSTOO!!!!

Everything had to be so annoying. Bang. What was she supposed to make of that? His spider thin handwriting wasn’t rushed so how could he have known he would leave like that? What did she know? And yours? Bang. Oh my goodness, yours? It was so creepy. Bang. elizabeth couldn’t think about it anymore but she did. Over and over again. Bang. Bang. Bang. She couldn’t even distract herself by walking the city. She was trapped in an 800 square foot cage that smelled too heavily of earl grey. Bang. And the worst of it was she had the key to leave. But she would only save her sanity to lose the resistance. Catch 22. Bang. Bang. Bang! BANG!

When elizabeth finally looked up she saw mr. livral and sempere both hunched at the door whispering to each other. When they noticed she noticed them, they both muttered apologies and shuffled away. elizabeth didn’t say anything.

While this awkward moment forced perspective onto elizabeth’s outward appearance, her insides still bubbled. She came to dinner composed with a bit of make up to conceal the large red welt she now wore on her forehead. She swiftly apologized to the livral’s explaining that the whole experience was just too overwhelming for her frail composition. The livral’s in turn brushed her apology aside and told embellished stories of how they were coping with the ordeal. They all had a little more appetite than breakfast and no one seemed to mind that they were having leftover pancakes for dinner.

The next day was even worse. The livrals continued to make odd jobs for themselves while elizabeth plunged into mental entropy. She hadn’t sat around this long since she had the sertoba virus in the second grade. And even though she kept the nauseating current of thoughts and emotions bottled up, the frenzy shown in her eyes and the livrals walked on eggshells when they passed her door.

The third night elizabeth gave up trying to sleep. So unlike the rest of nilbmah, when pounding came from the door at 5 am, she sprang into action, before the livrals even woke up.

“Who is it?”

“Your presence is required in the square. Everyone must come at once.”

“Who is it?”

elizabeth's unworried persistence earned a pause before the next reply.

“You must come at once. Open the door.”

“I will only open the door if you tell me who’s there. You don’t have to make this difficult.”

Another pause.

“Everything will be explained at the square.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

The response came louder and with unmasked edge this time, “I will not ask you again.”

“That’s great. Thank you. Have a nice day?”

Now shouting, “I will break down the door in 5 seconds if you don’t open it. 5. 4. 3.”

sempere, his father two steps behind him, both in only their bathrobes came running to the door before the soldier at the other side could finish counting.

sempere offered a string of apologies for elizabeth even after being told to be quiet, while mr. livral tried to tone down elizabeth.

The soldier repeated the original demand and asked if there was anyone else in the house.

Elizabeth remained firm. “We are not going with you until you tell us who you are.”

But sempere jumped in, “Of course we are going with you. Don’t listen to her. She’s very much shaken up by all the recent hullabaloo. Do forgive us.”

While mr. livral quietly cautioned “elizabeth, can’t you see his guns. You can’t do this. Aren’t you glad to get out? Don’t make a scene.”

mr. livral’s warnings seemed marginally effect and elizabeth gave into the soldier’s demands.

At the square they found half the neighborhood already gathered in their night cloths and the street lights still the only light. A stage had been set up at one side of the square. It took only five minutes for the rest of the neighborhood to gather. Everyone was dying to talk to their neighbors but too scared to let anything out. So they all stood shivering with cold and expectation.

When the crowd seemed to grow restless, a woman in an ornate military-meets-corporate uniform took to the stage with three other soldiers.

As you already know, this woman began to tell the nilbmahians the story of how they had been saved by the generous and timely intervention of her people. Just as in all the other squares and plazas across nilbmah, she painted a Foggistan that had come inches from usurping nilbmahian rule, a Foggistan that still loomed with its massive star fleet, a Foggistan that that they needed to be protected against.

By the end of the speech, elizabeth couldn’t stand it any longer. She knew she couldn’t draw any more attention to herself. She knew she couldn’t cause a scene. She knew the resistance depended on her complacency. But she just couldn’t put up with it. She took a deep breath to project her voice across the square when sempere thrust his hand over her mouth and pulled her into his chest, pinning her. elizabeth tried to wiggle free but sempere was stronger than he looked. To prepare for lifting bodies out of wreckage as an EMT, sempere had been lifting twice a day for a month. elizabeth wasn’t going anywhere.

Of course she struggled for the rest of the speech and all the way back to the apartment. mr. livral was quite surprised by his son’s behavior but he didn’t say anything.

Once back the apartment, mr. livral noticed elizabeth had a new look in her eyes and he didn’t dare seek his son’s. He noticed that sempere took her, no longer struggling, to his room and shut the door. Then mr. livral went to his room and started typing and stopped noticing things.

And that, unfortunately dear reader, is where I must leave it. elizabeth of course refuses to answer any questions about that morning and sempere, rest his soul, closed his story long before I started mine. So mr. livral offering is all we have. The rest of the morning has been lost to the clouds.