The summer breeze hit me the moment I stepped out of the bus. In normal circumstances, I’d not remember or notice such details, but some things we can’t choose to forget, and this is one of those.
The hometown where I grew up was as welcoming as ever -- quiet and half-abandoned. But it had one thing going, which happened to be the main reason why I was even there in the first place. My parents lived there... and it was cheap. And that was something I needed desperately. I was out of options, with too many loans on my back and barely any money left.
“Move!” a man said to me from behind, waiting for me to step away and make room for other passengers who still needed to make their exit.
“Sorry!” I murmured and started walking towards home. That bus station was too creepy anyway.
One benefit of being plagued by debts is the paranoia that walks with it. It didn’t take me very long to notice that someone was either following me or walking in the same direction. In the past, I would’ve not cared, but not in my current situation, I very much preferred to be careful and make sure that it's just paranoia. So, I walked towards the supermarket that was in the neighborhood.
In the store, I picked up some cheap noodles and some coke while peeking around to make sure that I was not followed.
And the moment our eyes met, I knew that I was. I dropped everything and sprinted towards the exit. I needed to get out of here. The third reason why I came to this town was the hope that nobody would follow me here. That hope was now shattered as well.
I pulled a cart out of its way to block my stalker near the exit and rushed outside.
"You bastard! Wait!" I could hear a shout coming from behind, stopped by the cart.
With a few extra steps outside, I couldn’t help but stop. I was standing at the center of a large plaza, people walking hurriedly past me. Too many people. Around me were tall buildings, filled with neon advertisements from bottom to the top that felt like they weren't even on a screen. Instead, they were floating.
Sweat started to gather at the end of my chin. I turned around to look at the supermarket I came from, but instead of familiar dirty doors, it was replaced with larger similar but clean doors. The man that I was looking for was nowhere to be seen either. And no cart was blocking the sliding doorway.
And after standing there for a few minutes, dumbfounded, I finally managed to mumble out a few words. “Where the fuck am I?”
My question was interrupted by someone shouting towards me “Hey, you there!”
Immediately, I started walking away from the sound, not even fully examining them. I climbed up nearby stairs, following a crowd and trying to hide in the middle of them all. It was a tactic I used many times to hide from loan sharks.
At the end of the stairway, I entered a small container. People filled it up pretty fast. It was an alien room, slightly oval, half of it filled with windows. The design itself was… futuristic. Long dynamic lines, slow curves, and generally something my eyes were not used to.
“Next stop, Rich Archway!” a female voice suddenly declared throughout the room. I also noticed a movement of the container, with exception of never feeling the movement itself. I only saw it. I’m on public transport, was my immediate thought. I had not noticed that, even though it made sense from the beginning. There was no indicator of it being tram, bus, train, or any vehicle whatsoever.
And that’s when I stared at a large alien city outside of the window. Tall buildings screaming for my attention, as alien as this vehicle. When I looked down, there was no greenery, but instead, every part of the ground was filled with some kind of technological construction or advancement, filled with people.
But over time, the scenery changed. Tall alien buildings were replaced by fields of flowers, food, and trees. But even around those beautiful fields, there was noticeable technological advancement working on them.
Eventually, even those fields came to an abrupt end, replaced by something more familiar to me… designs of old.
“Last stop, Old Road!” a voice surprised me. I had lost myself at looking at the world I had found myself in, analyzing everything that had happened to me, deep in thoughts. “We ask all passengers to please exit the transport.” The room was empty. Slowly but surely I exited the vehicle. As soon as I was outside, the door closed and the vessel began to move with some artificial noise, probably for people to notice it. As it disappeared, there was a single line below it.
“So, it was a vehicle, after all,” I murmured.
It had grown dark outside, but the streets were lit up by familiar older lamps that were slightly buzzing. I got myself seated at an empty bench near the station, looking down at the old road, cracks visible at the occasion. No, there were no cracks, but tears that were now blurring my vision as well.
And in that silence, alone, I broke, wheezing as quietly as I could, wetting the ground with my fresh tears. I still didn’t know much and I had too many questions. But it didn’t take a genius to figure out that I was no longer in the world that I knew of. Did I time travel? Was I moved to a new world?
There was a conflict in my mind. There was part of me that seemed to be relieved. I could finally forget the debt, the shit I was in, the loan sharks following me. It was a chance for a new life, a new beginning. But even though I hated the old world of mine, I couldn’t help but beg to be taken back. I had nothing here, I was nobody and I didn’t even have a roof over my head.
“Excuse me?” a gentle voice reached my ears.
I immediately began to remove my tears. I took a piece of familiar fabric from my pocket and blew my nose into it. I made a mental note -- I still possessed the things I was carrying from my old world.
“Are you alright?” It belonged to a slender woman. She had dark blue eyes with shoulder-length thick, slightly greasy, chestnut brown hair. Unlike the other people who wore more suit-like clothing, she wore jeans and a t-shirt. Familiar clothing that I thought didn't exist anymore in this world.
“I don’t know,” I answered after a short silence. “I think I’m lost.”
“Well, you’re at Old Road,” she said.
“No,” I said, shaking my head and looking up to her. “I'm... extremely lost. I know nothing. Where am I? What is this place... world? What year is it? How did I get here?”
The woman was contemplating something, making me think whether I should just run once more, but instead, she came and sat next to me. “I’m Hayley.”
I stared at her, slightly stunned. I did not expect this. I would've called the police and let them handle this. If this world even had police, that is.
“Daniel.”
She pushed her hand forward, waiting for me to grab it. It seems that some formalities were still the same. I grasped it, carefully, almost as I was expecting a trap or her hand to break.
“Nice to meet you, Daniel!” she said, shaking it. “Are you a null?”
“Null?”
She snorted, reminding herself what I had just told her. “We call people who have no origin nulls. From different ships, refugees, those who escape from their past or are in hiding. Basically, someone who is not from here.”
I nodded. “I might be. Probably. Yeah.” Except I am from a completely different world altogether.
“Alright. Oh boy. Seems like we got a severe case over here. Alright. Ask me anything and I will answer your questions without judging.”
“Okay, thank you.” I took a deep breath. At that point, I still had no idea how lucky I was to meet her.
“Where am I?”
“Place? Section? Ship? The solar system?” she asked in return.
“All of them, the latest in your list first,” I said. Her questions alone gave me some terrifying ideas.
“You're in Milky Way. The ship is called Earth. We are in Edge called Old Road.”
“What year is it?”
“3084.”
“AD?”
She blinked fast twice. “AD? You mean AED?”
I was confused. “AED?”
“After Earth Destruction.”
“Right. Give me a minute,” I said looking at the ground, mind blank for a moment. That answered some questions but didn’t really remove possibilities. Time travel? Alternative universe? Different world? No, they still used Earth as a name, so it’s likely the same world but in the future. I looked at the backpack that was next to me on a bench. The Bizzare thing was that I still had everything that I had left the supermarket with.
I sighed. “You are a very weird woman,” I said.
“Look who’s talking," Hayley responded with a slight eye-roll.
“Ouch, no mercy. I’d imagine you’d be running away by now,” I said, laughing weakly. “After all, I'm a crazy man asking weird questions…”
“You’re at Edge. This place is filled with nulls, one's story stranger than the other's. If I must admit, I will say that you might take the winning prize. I do have my own theory though. You don’t seem to be high. You seem to be in shock, but you're aware of everything. Do you have some sort of amnesia?”
I hid my grin with my hand, making it look more like a shock. She gave me a genius idea. “I don't know. But maybe that's it?” I said. That was possibly my greatest solution to not seem completely crazy. “There are blank spots in my memory…”
“What is the last thing you remember?” she asked.
“I ran away from someone... who was chasing me,” I said slowly.
It was the truth. I just left out the part that this happened definitely over three centuries ago if not even more, and who knows when they started counting AED. Some questions are too weird to be asked. Maybe they have internet and Wikipedia that I could use later to educate myself.
“Probably not a good idea to take you to the police then,” she murmured, thoughtfully.
“How come?” I asked.
“Everyone knows that… or well, you might not... Police are most definitely bribed by big corporations, or anyone really who might be searching for you. There’s a reason why most nulls end up at Edge. Might be the only place where police are not active enough or do not care. Most people hate police here enough that they only come here if they really need to.”
I nodded. “Seems like I'm completely fucked.” I said.
There was a moment of silence. “Do you have a place to stay?” she asked, finally. I shook my head. “Well, you can stay at my place.”
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I’m a stranger…”
“You are. And you need help.”
Even my mom wasn’t that kind towards me. And that says a lot. I gave her a slight nod. “I'd really appreciate it.”
At least I had now a roof over my head. I couldn’t help but release a long sigh, lean back and look into the sky. And the moment I did that, I stiffened up once more. Even the sky was alien. Or well... half-alien. In there I saw two large plants, one blue and one white-grey. It was very likely that one of them was earth and the other one was its accompanying moon, with slight changes. The moon was cracked in half and Earth had this weird green haze all around its surface.
“Fuck me,” I muttered.
Two more of my questions got answered, or more like confirmed. There was a thick glass far away between me and the planets, barely visible. And now I knew why I no longer had felt any wind throughout the day. I was on a massive... massive... a very massive ship.
All of that happened a year ago.
