Embarkment 2577 (36 page)

As a little girl, Maria was fascinated
with books. Before she could read or write, she made her mother staple papers
together to resemble books. She drew suns in them and claimed they were
“The Sun Book.” They were all about the sun. The four-year old also
claimed her existence on Earth was a mistake, a result of a horrible mix-up,
and that her real family would come to bring her home to her own planet at any
time. This didn’t happen, but her fascination with both books and other worlds
stayed with her.

Originally born in Sweden, she moved to
Florida late 2008, and today she lives in the Tampa Bay area with her husband
Mike and their rescue dogs. Her biggest interest besides writing is playing
bass, and through the years she has played in a number of Swedish rock bands.
She also enjoys photography, and volunteers at a local dog rescue.

Maria also writes screenplays, and has
won a number of awards.

For more information, visit Maria’s website: www.hammarblad.com

Patricia patted the worn, old dashboard
gently. “Hang in there, Henry, we’re almost home.”

While people in general might not admit
to talking to their cars, she thought most probably do, and when driving home
in the middle of the night she’d take the embarrassment of encouraging a
machine before being stranded any day. Besides, having someone to talk to made
life seem better, even if it was just an old Ford.

The road curved through the dark forest
and the landscape seemed surreal. The darkness and the snow made everything
turn black and white, and it reminded her of an old movie. Being home on the
sofa flipping through TV channels sounded great, and she pressed the
accelerator a little harder without even realizing it. Girls’ night out had
seemed like a wonderful idea, but next time she should probably sleep over
somewhere.

She could have sworn she didn’t take her
eyes off the deserted road for a second, not even when she reached out to
change the radio station, and the man appearing out of nowhere looked like a
mirage. He stood still, frozen in the bright headlights, and one second seemed to
last forever. Patricia thought, “He doesn’t have any warm clothes. Why
would anyone go out dressed like that in the middle of winter?” and then
her body started acting on its own.

Her foot found the brake and slammed the
pedal, but she knew she wouldn’t make it.The man was too close, and she was coming
too fast. Instinctively, she tried to steer around him, but the icy surface
provided poor traction for the tires, and she skidded all over the road. The
car passed so close to the man she thought she could hear the bumper brush past
his pants, then it rolled over the shoulder and into the woods, and everything
went black.

*****

Flashes of memory illuminated the
darkness. There was a hideously disfigured face, a light falling from the sky,
a car skidding, sliding, rolling… nothing made any sense, and Patricia wasn’t
aware enough to even try to understand it. Time ceased to exist and only these brief
glimpses of the world seemed real. Then, something stung the side of her neck.
Sudden pain screamed through her mind, and she tried to lift a hand to rub her
neck and her poor pounding head, but her arm didn’t move. The words,
“Paralyzed, you’re paralyzed,” flashed through her mind with
compelling neon letters, and she popped her eyes wide open, trying to fight
down a wave of panic.

She expected to be home, in her own
bedroom, or in an ambulance, or maybe a hospital, but when she finally managed
to focus, she found herself staring into a pair of cold and dead blue eyes. A
male voice said something in a language she couldn’t understand, “Koira
cha tinn?
Waplaho banejem cackat tor tebe? Kako ya ting ro
thrab?”

Since the words didn’t make any sense
and the eyes frightened her, she looked at the rest of the face, and
immediately wished she hadn’t. Half of it was handsome, but the other part came
from a nightmare. She had been raised not to make fun of people, to believe a person’s
looks in no way mirrors the inside, and not to stare at others’ misfortune. It
was still almost impossible not to gawk at the combination of scars and
destroyed skin that made up most of his left cheek, stretching up towards the
temple and down toward the chin. It was both deeply tragic and terrifying.

Trying to pull back from the horror in
front of her didn’t do her any good. She was in a chair with her arms tied to
the armrests, and there was nowhere to go. The man spoke again, repeating the
words from earlier, and she found herself babbling, “Who are you? Where am
I? I can’t understand a word you’re saying, please don’t hurt me.”

The cold eyes locked in with hers, and
what she saw in them frightened her. She imagined it to be the gaze of a
mass-murderer, empty and void of the life that fills normal people. She was no
doubt selected to be his next victim. She whispered, “Oh, please no, I don’t
want to die.”

The face in front of her disappeared,
and she was relieved at first, but as she focused on her surroundings she
almost wished he’d stayed so she wouldn’t have seen it. As gruesome as his face
might be, the things surrounding her frightened her more.

The room was cold with gray metal walls,
and the chair she was sitting in was black and fairly soft, located behind two
others. There didn’t appear to be a floor underneath her.

When she turned her head to look down,
she could see the Earth hanging far below her and the moon slowly wandering its
orbit. She squeezed her eyes shut, but everything was still there when she
opened them again, and she decided it must be a movie. Normal people didn’t have
things like these underneath their feet, but he clearly wasn’t normal.

As she lifted her eyes to peek around,
she saw peculiar panels lining the walls, and three-dimensional pictures of the
Earth, the solar system and other things hovering in midair.

She had either been captured by a mad
scientist, by a secret army project, or she was in a spaceship. On the other
hand, maybe she’d hit her head when her car rolled and this was all just a
dream?

That was an appealing explanation.
Seeing things that weren’t invented yet, labeled in a language she was sure
didn’t exist anywhere on Earth, and watching her home planet grow rapidly
smaller under her feet made much more sense if it was a hallucination.

The man returned with a little machine.
He pressed it against the sides of her head, and she tried to squirm away from
it, but there was nowhere to go. She’d heard the brain notices strange things
in times of stress, and this was true. She saw that he wore a black glove on
his right hand, but the left was bare, with long strong fingers and short clean
nails. A bright light filled her mind, and when he spoke again it made sense.
It wasn’t a language she knew, or even recognized, but she understood him
perfectly well. “I’ve programmed your brain with the universal Stax.”

Her mind wanted to hear “Stax”
as “English.” Maybe it was a glitch in the translation.

“What were you doing with William?
Did he give you anything? It’s very important that you tell me his plans.”

She stared at him, dumbfounded. She
could understand him just fine now, but the sentences still didn’t make any
sense. The name “William” was just like “Stax” – it sort of
sounded like he said something else, but her brain insisted on hearing
“William.”

The man frowned and looked at the
device, and she heard a metallic voice echo from the walls. “Maybe her
brain isn’t developed enough for the programming to work?”

Patricia tensed, wondering who spoke;
she couldn’t see anyone else in the room. Was there someone behind her, or was
someone watching them?

Her warder said in an even voice,
“Shut up, computer,” and turned his attention back to her, demanding,
“Do you understand me?”

She nodded carefully, afraid to try to
say anything. She wanted to live. She didn’t want to anger him. He seemed
completely uninterested when he continued, “Good. William, the man you
were with when I landed, how did he contact you? How long have you known him?”

Still afraid to speak, Patricia shook
her head, and he continued, “There’s no use denying it, I know you know
him. I saw you together. He was helping you out of your vehicle before it
caught fire.”

Trying to formulate a coherent sentence
in this new language seemed a daunting task, but once she really tried it
wasn’t all that bad. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please let
me go!”

A memory was trying to make itself
heard. She saw her car skidding off the road, reaching a wall of snow and
rolling over on the roof. Maybe she’d had an accident and this William, whoever
he was, had tried to help her? Maybe that was the man who had appeared in the
middle of the road. The thought that this could all be a big misunderstanding, easy
to clear up, filled her with relief.

She tried to get that thought together
into a sentence, but before she could open her mouth, the man shrugged.
“Fine. Have it your way. I’ll take you back to Central. They have ways to
find out about your friends.”

The metallic voice made itself heard
again, with words that made Patricia yelp, “Commander, why don’t you just
torture her yourself?”

She started to plead with him to let her
go, promising she didn’t know anything. The man looked at her impatiently, as
if wondering why she made so much noise, brought out a brownish rod about a
foot long and an inch in diameter, touched it to her temple, and after
experiencing a brief but searing pain, she was back in darkness.

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