The Lonely Whelk Read online

  “Ooh, this’ll be interesting,” John said, almost gleefully. “That lady – her name is something reminiscent of Helga, but with a number of guttural sounds attached to it. She isn’t licensed to come through the Doors, but tries about once a month or so. It’s always hilarious, and never boring, and you know how I hate boring and love not boring.”

  Kaia laughed. “Can I meet her?” she asked.

  “No.” John shook his head. “You can meet her next month. No, I have something far more interesting to show you.”

  Something crashed on the other side of the room. Bright lights began to flash and an alarm sounded – EHNT! EHNT! EHNT! EHNT! Kaia clapped her hands over her ears.

  “Dammit!” John muttered. “This is not what I was going to show you!”

  “RED DOOR! RED DOOR!” someone began yelling. “RED DOOR ALERT!”

  The people in the room began to back towards the edges, nearly in a stampede to avoid whatever this RED DOOR was. John ran forward, opposite the crowd, and Kaia struggled desperately to keep up with him while simultaneously avoid being trodden upon.

  She reached the small group of scientists only seconds after John arrived. It was Kenton, Naytiri, Boris, and Olivia. John was already yelling at them.

  “Get the whatsits and attach them to the frame on the red lines. Don’t touch it, you idiot!” John reached out and pulled Boris’ hand away from the Door. Instead of looking like a blue haze, the Door glistened red, as if someone had poured red sparkles into a giant slab of clear glue, and it almost glowed. The frame started to steam a little, and then smoke.

  “Hurry!” John yelled. “Get the diodes attached so we can start the... where’s Quin?” He spun around. “Somebody get Quin!”

  Kaia looked around. She saw Quin over by the main entrance. He was trying to get through the crowd. She cupped her hands around her mouth.

  “GET OUT OF THE WAY,” her voice boomed over the chaos. The crowd quieted, and turned to look at her, stunned. “GET OUT OF THE WAY,” she roared again, and a path opened up for Quin. He sprinted through the room, and grabbed a Door-Hazard suit on his way by the primary emergency station.

  He slid up to the angry Door, while slipping the helmet over his head. “Give them here,” he mumbled through the glass. John tipped a handful of diodes into his glove. Crouching like a cat, Quin leaped into the volcanic, fiery entrance to hell.

  “What’s he doing?” Boris exclaimed. “Is he suicidal?”

  “Shut up,” John muttered as he secured the final diode. “You know these don’t work unless they’re on both sides of the Door.”

  “What if the Door implodes?” Olivia gasped.

  “Well, at best, he’ll be stuck there,” John said. “And he wouldn’t be the first. At worst, he’ll die, but so will the rest of us and it won’t be our problem anymore. Kenton, hand me the microwave emitter.”

  Kenton stuck a strange looking metal rod into John’s hand.

  “Fire up the generator,” John commanded.

  Boris reached down and pulled the string. A loud roar filled the air.

  “We’ll give him ten more seconds. Kaia, count, and make it absolutely exact.”

  Kaia imagined a second in her mind, and held it there once, twice, three times, four…

  “Ten!” she shouted.

  “Don’t try this at home,” John said, and shoved the microwave emitter into the seething Door.

  Someone in the crowd screamed. Everyone else took a collective breath – the gasp nearly echoed.

  Kaia froze, her eyes locked on the strange little instrument clasped tightly in John’s gloved hands. His other arm covered his eyes and face as he turned away from the Door. Kaia turned to look at Naytiri. She, along with Kenton, Boris, and Olivia, was staring at the Door with a horrified expression on her face.

  There was a blinding flash of light.

  When Kaia opened her eyes, the Door seemed fine. It was blue again. Quin stepped through from the other side.

  “You’re not supposed to do that until I take the diodes off,” John was saying. “You’re going to burn them out.”

  “No thanks, as usual,” Quin muttered. He stripped off the bright green Door-Hazard suit, dropped it on the floor, and stalked off. The crowd separated as he walked through. He was drenched with sweat, but a small grin fluttered around his lips.

  Boris stared after him. “If he hadn’t been here, who would’ve had to go through?” he asked.

  “You,” John replied. “Now help me get this mess cleaned up.”

  The room around them began to get busy again. People still stayed clear of the Door, but they returned to their obligations, albeit a bit slower and less confident. The alarm turned off, and the blinking red lights quit blinking and stayed a solid red.

  “What just happened?” Kaia asked. “That was insane.”

  A cloud crossed over John’s face. “Somebody in this group took an awful risk,” he said as crossed his arms and stared at the group angrily, “and somebody is going to have to take account for their error.” He looked at the mess on the floor: a generator with wires splayed out in all directions; a microwave emitter carefully placed in its holder which sat awkwardly on the floor; two broken diodes and two working diodes strewn amid the mess; and a very bright green Door-Hazard suit. “Clean this up, and then meet me in that room.” He gestured to a regular door on the far end of the Door Room, and turned his back on the group.

  “What happened?” Kaia asked.

  He took a deep breath, and then asked, “Can they see my face?”

  “No,” she replied. “They’re working. And your back is to them.”

  His face burst into a brilliant smile. He wiggled a little. “That was amazingly fun!” he whispered excitedly. “I love it when stuff like that happens.”

  Kaia’s mouth opened. “But... but… we almost died!”

  “Nah.” John took her elbow and guided her away from the graduate students and up a short flight of stairs. “Look at all this.” He gestured towards the room filled with talking, laughing, and working people. They mingled and chatted, and occasionally appeared or disappeared through a Door. “I wouldn’t risk them like that. Now, granted, that Door could have been quite a problem, but we had about an hour to fix it. Quin and I just like to get things done quickly, and it’s always good to scare people a little bit so they don’t do stupid things, like Boris did. He used the microwave emitter to inject the Door with massive amounts of microwaves, basically causing the thing to start overheating.”

  “But you stuck the microwave emitter in the Door, too.”

  “Yes, but I reset it first so that it would neutralize the extraneous microwaves and make them disappear.”

  “Is that where the white light came from?”

  John chuckled. “No, that came from the battery-operated strobe light Quin handed me before he jumped through the Door. The jump was all for show too, by the way. We have a whole system for times like these.”

  Kaia shook her head and grinned. “Well, what did the diode things do, then? Were they for show? Or actually useful?”

  “The diodes were useful – part of Door emergency protocol actually. They basically contained the Door, so that if it decided to explode, it would just explode within the confines of the doorframe. However, in order for the diodes to really work, they have to be on both sides of the Door – which is why Quin went through.” He paused for a moment. “Imagine you have a door that is on fire. You can put out the fire on one side of the door all you want, but if you let it burn on the other side… well, the other side will burn.”

  “So if Quin hadn’t gone through, and the Door had blown up, whatever is on the other side would have also blown up?”

  “Basically.” John nodded. “But only within a certain radius – which is actually pretty large. And Quin didn’t really have to go through, he just wanted to. I could have just as easily stuck my arm though.” He grinned.

  “What about Doors without frames?”

 
“Do you see any of those in this room?”

  Kaia looked around. “No.”

  “Then they don’t exist.”

  Frowning, Kaia put her hands on her hips. “Don’t be silly. The frame is just for show, and so people don’t accidentally walk through them. It doesn’t actually do any good.”

  “Hush!” John exclaimed, putting a finger on his lips. “That counts as extreme math. We like to keep it a secret, because we don’t want people wandering off and making them wherever they feel like.”

  “How does putting a doorframe around it stop that?” Kaia asked. “It’s not like there aren’t doorframes in other places. Like… houses, for example. Or in buildings in general. Or in the home construction store.”

  “Don’t get mouthy with me!” John was grinning and his grin was so wide at this point it didn’t quite seem to fit on his face. “We put a core of titaniron through.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second! Where’d you get it, an asteroid?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes!” John said stubbornly. Then he gave in a little. “But it’s not around any of these ones... we shouldn’t be talking about this here. Let’s go wait for my little graduate students who are about to get fired.”

  “Fired! Why?” Kaia asked, shocked.

  “They broke the rules.” John’s face turned serious. “Now, mind you, I’m all about breaking rules, but not when there are thousands, and possibly millions, of lives at stake.”

  “Oh.” Kaia’s eyes widened. That thought hadn’t occurred to her.

  “I do like Naytiri, though,” he muttered. “Maybe I’ll offer her a research position somewhere else. Hm.” He shrugged. “Oh well. Come along, my lovely intern.”

  Hazel was nervous. Pilgrim, Holland’s friend who had just woken up, was trying to sit up and having trouble doing so. In addition, there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of other bodies lying in these coffins. Bodies... coffins... spaceship... this day was not turning into a very good bedtime story.

  “Wait, wait,” Hazel said, holding out her hands towards Pilgrim. “Don’t you need help?” The monkey was curled around her neck, repeating her words in a robotic tone.

  “No, no,” Pilgrim replied cheerfully. “It just feels good to be awake! I mean, you have no idea. I have been asleep for a long, long time and I am just... I can’t even explain how much I want to be awake right now. You should focus on waking up the others and I’ll help as soon as I can.”

  Walking to the next coffin, Hazel tried to read the plaque, but the jewels in her ears apparently couldn’t read. A brief thought crossed her mind – hadn’t she been able to read the sign outside her shop for a minute? She brushed the thought away.

  “Who is this?”

  “That’s MacDougal. Don’t start there, start with Sammy. She’s our nurse, and she’ll be able to help us walk faster.”

  Hazel walked over to the coffin Pilgrim had pointed out and began to turn the wheel. She followed the steps Holland had shown her, and a moment later, the woman in the coffin was blinking drowsily and murmuring, “Who are you?”

  “Sammy!” Pilgrim greeted her happily.

  Sammy blinked a few more times and looked around. A slow smile spread across her face, starting with her lips and working up her cheeks and into her eyes. It was like a sunrise. “It is amazing to be awake,” she said, clearing her throat a few times.

  Pilgrim explained who Hazel was, and then the two of them began to discuss things completely unrelated to Hazel. It was all techno-gibberish – light years and rotary motors and some kind of beam. Then Sammy the Nurse began to show Pilgrim a few stretches, designed to help his disused muscles strengthen after their long sleep.

  Meanwhile, Hazel opened coffin after coffin. Every person was different. Some immediately sat up straight – those were the scariest. They claimed to have been awake for a while. Others were like cranky teenagers, still in the throes of sleep and rather unwilling to be woken up. Others were drooling, and still others talked in their sleep or whispered nonsensical words as Hazel moved by. But soon the room was abuzz with chatter, and most of the crew knew as much about her as they needed to – Holland had assigned her to help, and she was doing as she was told.

  After a while, Sammy got out of her coffin and began to assist the others. She showed them stretches, and encouraged them to drink water. Soon after her, Pilgrim followed, although he was still a bit wobbly on his feet. Hazel watched as person after person woke up and stretched; it was like a roomful of zombies, although they didn’t seem particularly interested in her brains.

  A loud beeping noise silenced the people in the room. Then Holland’s voice came out of nowhere.

  “Good morning, everyone. I hope you are feeling well and invigorated after your endless sleep.”

  A chuckle rumbled through the room.

  “If you are feeling unexpected side effects of the sleep, or you are feeling nausea, please see Sammy and she will help sort you out. Over the next few hours I will be dealing out assignments, although these may change based on necessity or health of individual team members. Right now we will need to respond to an electrical spike in Corridor 11, do maintenance on the engines and life support systems, and wake the others on the ships and sub-vessels. Medical staff, then crew, then parents and single adults, and then children.

  “In the meantime, follow Sammy’s orders so that you come to full health as quickly as possible. Oh, and Pilgrim, can you please run to the arboretum and see why the cameras aren’t working down there? Take Hazel with you – she will be your shadow from now on. Then head back to the bridge to talk to me.

  “That will be all.”

  The beeping noise came again, and to Hazel’s astonishment, every able person in the room turned toward the door, saluted, and then went back to whatever they had been doing before the announcement.

  “I’m so glad Holland is our Admiral – she’s so competent,” Pilgrim said, stretching his arms and doing a couple of squats. He seemed like he was strong enough to walk around, at least. “Can you imagine what would have happened if they had picked that Perkins guy instead?” Several of the crew members laughed. Then Pilgrim turned back to Hazel. “Well, Hazel, let’s get going! Hopefully we can figure out what’s up with the camera and then get back to the bridge before these loonies even get their limbs working.”

  He elbowed one of his comrades, who chuckled in reply and then punched Pilgrim in the arm.

  Hazel followed the rather stiff Pilgrim at his heels as they headed towards the arboretum.

  “So, Miss Stowaway,” Pilgrim said as they traversed the long, bare halls. “Where are you from?”

  “Earth,” Hazel replied. “And I’m not really a stowaway since I didn’t come here on purpose.”

  “Earth!?” Pilgrim asked. “I didn’t know people from Earth had space travel!”

  “You’ve heard of us?” Hazel asked. “And we went to the moon and sent out some probes, but that’s about it.”

  “Probes,” Pilgrim chuckled. “They won’t get you too far. And of course I’ve heard of Earth. I did my graduate thesis on Earth! Even got to visit. Briefly, of course. It was a two-hour visa.”

  “Why would you do a thesis on Earth?” Hazel asked, pretending she hadn’t heard the last part. She didn’t want to think about aliens showing up for two hours and then leaving again. That was a strange feeling.

  “My thesis was actually more about the importance of space travel for my own civilization,” Pilgrim continued, “but I used Earth as an example. I mean, look at you – you humans only live for one hundred years! Or less, usually, I guess.

  “So here’s what happened. Project Earth (as they called it in the old days) was developed as an experiment to watch the untouched development of civilization over a period of time. They put it in an area of space where there wouldn’t be too much risk of alien intervention, and they made sure that the number of Doors… do you know what Doors are?”

  Hazel’s eyes were wide.

 
“Wait, wait, wait,” she said, reaching up to scratch her head. “What do you mean Earth is an experiment?”

  Pilgrim tilted his head. “They haven’t told you yet? Oh. Well, my civilization built your planet.”

  The air in the tunnel seemed thin. Hazel’s head was spinning. All of the conspiracy theories on the entire planet couldn’t even come close to this. But maybe he was making it up... although, why would he?

  Pilgrim continued, oblivious to her sudden and quite painful enlightenment. “So anyway, a Door is a form of transportation which allows you to travel across great distances of space in an instant. They made sure that there weren’t very many Doors on Earth, and they put them far apart. And then they put some people in a few places on the planet and stepped back to watch.

  “You’ll never believe what happened.” Pilgrim threw his hands in the air as they rounded a corner. “You humans started desperately trying to escape. Out of your towns, out of your cities, out of your lifestyle. Then out of your countries and off of your continents – Leif Erickson is one of my favourites, to be quite honest. Columbus... not so much. And then… off the planet itself! In a matter of a few thousand years, you had nearly developed the technology not only to get off the surface of the planet, but to land on the moon!” Pilgrim was talking expansively with his hands and his face was contorting with the strangest expressions – one after another after another, like a jigsaw puzzle trying to figure itself out.

  “Escape and Explore, I called it. That’s what you all do. I predicted that in a matter of a few centuries, you would have colonies on other planets – without any help from Door technology whatsoever.”

  “We just put a science station on Mars,” Hazel said a bit awkwardly. Her mind was still reeling from the possibilities that this information implied. If they built planets, did that mean they built the people too? What about God and religion? Or were they gods? And did this mean that those who theorized that aliens had settled the planet... were right? Or wrong? “But no colonies yet.”