Path of Ranger: Volume 1 (38 page)

“Who are you then?”

“We’re not alone! We’ve been taken by these nanofinies…” the Doc interfered.

“Nenofianies,” the mayor corrected him.

“Right! We were taken by Nenofianies, sir, right where the second ship had arrived. There are thirty-one people more with us,” Mark said with concern.

“Hold on. Did you come along with those people?” Aghastos's smile vanished.

“So you already know about them? Where are they?”

Mayor and Nea looked at each other for a brief moment.

“I’m afraid, fellows, that if you’re with them, you have an explanation to give. Because your friends have been apprehended already. They are the Immigration Service’s problem now,” the mayor took a seat in his vast armchair and invited the guests to sit along with a gesture. The table’s top expanded to make another two spots. “It’s a rare case for our city for so many unregistered persons to be caught at once. It brings out certain suspicions, don’t you agree?”

“I have no idea what’s happening…” JB said.

“Please, tell us your story,” Aghastos smiled again.

The doctor and the mutant gave each other a couple of those long looks.

“There is an island several thousands of kilometers away, a quite unusual one,” JB started. “Ten weeks ago, the plane that we were on crashed there. Some shit went down after. A day ago we found transportation means there, which we used to get off the island. And then, after we had flown away, the first civilization that we found was your city,” he explained briefly.

“So you’re saying that you have never heard about Atlantis?” the mayor wondered.

“No, we haven’t.”

“And you’re not refugees from the frontier?”

‘No! And I’m getting the impression that we have even got into the wrong era.”

“Hm… So it is interesting,” Van Deen smiled again. “Nea, please, help our guests with their temporary living situation. You need to have some rest, lads. And then you come to me in the evening for a talk. My assistant, Nea will be your guide.”

“But, sir,” Gibson addressed the mayor. “What’s it going to be with the others?”

“We’ll take care of them. Don’t you worry, just rest.”

Perhaps the mayor’s behavior seemed suspicious, especially for JB, but everything felt odd to them there. So JB and Doc decided not to rush into conclusions. Just follow the current for the time being. They indeed needed to rest and to think everything through. It was essential for them to find out about Atlantis as much as they could. Aghastos Van Deen made a first impression as a nice person. Only time could tell for sure if that was true.

The mayor walked his guests out of his office to pass them under Nea’s care. Nea didn’t seem to like that much. It was one thing to play with them for a few minutes as a short amusement that broke a daily routine. But being a nanny to such savages wasn’t a very attractive opportunity. Dealing with unregistered persons, war refugees mostly, was not the favorite part of her job. Nea looked quite busy from the moment when JB and Mark met her, they could sense a dislike of hers regarding that task. Yet, she didn’t say a thing, just took the chief’s order with the proper respect.

All three of them used a lift to get to the garage. By the time they got there, a gravimobile had been already waiting for Nea in the buffer zone. It was a bright yellow roofless sports car. Gibson loved it at the first sight, as his mech would fit perfectly in the back seat. JB fancied the vehicle too, his respect towards Nea grew a lot after he saw it.

The big guy looked at her and he felt something new. Just as if he’d seen her for the first time. She looked about eighteen, not older. Beautiful shape, lovely face, light skin. There was a mystery in her eyes, always focused, as if she was constantly thinking about something. At the same time, her look had a spark of life in it. She was seeking something, something that was missing.

Nea took a driver seat. JB get on the seat next to her and Doc went through a struggle to get the back one. Then the girl put on spectrum glasses for a city ride. The men noticed a few crystal projectors on the windshield’s perimeter, similar to the ones on her desktop. As soon as the engine started, the rays of light formed a blurry projection on the glass.

“Why is the picture so bad?” JB wondered.

“It’s a special car, the output data is encrypted,” she explained. “You need these glasses to see the image.”

“Do you have extra ones for me?”

Nea slightly turned her head, and JB noticed as her eyes rolled towards him, behind the yellow lenses. In a second she moved her hand to take another pair of glasses out of a glove compartment between the seats. When JB put those on, an entirely new view opened to him. The blurriness became a HUD with a crisp combination of figures, schematics, and markings. He didn’t get all of that at once, but there were lots of things which he could understand. In the lower part of the windshield, there was speed, clearance, distance, fuel and lots of other information. The driver’s vitals were shown to the left: the species, heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, etc. Most of the windshield was marked with various other identifications: other cars, buildings, and so on. Each object had its own parameters and shape coding.

“Fuck me, Google Glass got crazy…” JB commented on his impression.

The gravimobile went on the road. Their lane was one hundred meters above the ground, it felt very unusual to JB and Gibson, somewhat terrifying even. Nea chose a destination point and the car moved under the autopilot mode.

“Where are we heading?” JB asked.

“The hotel, ‘Earth.' A city hall has its reserves for emergency cases,” she replied.

“A case like ours?”

“It’s quite an unusual situation, to be honest,” she confessed. “But mostly, yeah.”

“What’s unusual about it?”

Nea held her look at him and smiled very lightly.

“Time travelers? Come on.”

JB smiled in return.

“Yeah, that sounds unusual,” he added. “An awesome place you have here. Are all of Earth’s cities like this one?”

“Atlantis is the only Earth city. It was the first one since its foundation in twenty-six thirty-four, and still the only one. We have a one-hundred percent recycling rate, our transport doesn't cause pollution, and our spaceships don’t harm the ozone layer.”

“Impressive,” the mutant commented in a bored manner, he wasn’t much interested in an environmental lecture. But then he backed up. “Wait, in what year?”

“In twenty-six thirty-four… Oh, right, you haven’t gone through adaptation procedure, yet,” Nea stood corrected.

“Adaptation procedure, what’s that? You have a particular procedure for time travelers?” JB asked skeptically.

“Sort off. It was made for the ones who recover from hibernation. There’s a brief course of history made for them, economics, art, politics information and much more.”

JB and Mark felt suspicious about such a procedure. Mostly because they didn’t know many details about it.

“Okay, look, it’s kinda freaking me out enough already, just being here. And I don’t like the idea of being a part of another experiment any time soon. So, maybe, you would get us to speed on your own?” the big guy suggested.

“Fine, but it won’t be nearly as full, as the professionals would do,” Nea said. The comrades sat quiet, waiting for a story. “Today is the eleventh of February twenty-nine sixty-five. Atlantis was founded on the twenty-second of September two thousand six hundred thirty-four point three three one years ago. The gravitational anomaly was spotted in the Pacific Ocean by Archibald Resebow, a treasure hunter. His ship ‘Corsican’ was lost for several weeks in the fog. The equipment was breaking and the crew was going insane. A part of the team tried to overthrow the captain. Then a stone fell from the sky, right between two divided groups on the ship, who were about to fight each other. The crew didn’t understand what that meant, but the captain did. He ran for the helicopter before the rebels. Resebow flew straight into the dark storm clouds. It was a miracle that the chopper didn’t crash and reached the sky. Then the captain found this plateau. After a while, he brought other people here, then Atlantis was founded. A city that gave hope to the lost ones,” Nea narrated passionately. She looked at JB and shrugged. “Everyone knows this legend here…”

“Go history! You really know your stuff, right?” JB said excitedly. “So, are you one of those?”

“One of what?”

“Nerds? Like that one?” he back nodded at Gibson behind him.

“Nerds?” the girl looked at JB arrogantly.

“Well, ‘geeks,' ‘eggheads,' ‘walking Wikis’ if you like…” even though JB handled such talks with ease, he started losing that one. “How can you be that smart?”

“I’m Lisemonian. It’s sort of my purpose – to collect knowledge,” Nea explained.

“‘Lisemonian,’ huh? Is it one of those modern subcultures that you kids have these days? Or another religious fraud?”

Of course, Nea tolerated the condition in which JB and Mark were. She wouldn’t want to be too hard on them, because of their unawareness. But JB’s arrogance was bringing to the surface a sense of contempt for them. And she didn’t do the best job hiding it.

“Lisemon is my home planet. Rigel system,” she said.

“Oh, Rigel, you say…” JB went lost in thought. “Wait a second. There is no such planet in Rigel,” the mutant turned to Gibson. “Doc, there is no Lisemon in Rigel, right?”

Being aware of JB’s stubbornness and after taking a taste of Nea’s strong personality, Mark wouldn’t want to get in the crossfire. But his genuine interest and respect for science couldn’t let him stay away.

“No, I don’t recall such planet in Rigel,” Mark confirmed the partner’s statement. And then he rushed to develop the thought further. “Or should I say, there was no knowledge of a planet with such a name in our time period.”

With no wish to escalate that pointless argument, and, moreover, being less educated than probably both of opponents, JB admitted his mistake.

“So, we’re in Rigel already, huh…” he mumbled. “And I was kinda worried about the Mars mission.”

“Don't you believe me?” Nea asked.

“It's not that. It’s just… Hard to believe that all this was built by men. I wished to see it with my own eyes, in my own time, you know?” suddenly JB realized how much he missed his ‘home Earth.’

“We were helped a lot, but humankind also did a great contribution,” the girl said. Then she glanced at the silent scientist. “Your friend isn’t very chatty.”

“He is a scientist. This future place is like a sandbox to him. While he has the toys to play with, we don’t concern him much.”

The yellow sports car arrived at the hotel. That was a middle-sized building, about seventy stories high, shaped like a shark fin. The walls weren't yellow semi-transparent structure as the most of the city but made of a gray material, a more traditional style. The gravimobile disappeared in the shadow of the garage gate.

The people went into the hotel. The inside transportation system was classic too – vertical elevators with long hallways. But the building itself wasn’t that big, so walking shouldn’t be a problem.

After getting to the room, Gibson couldn’t be happier to get out of that mech. Just as he unlocked the first lock on the windshield it came to him: the island, the monsters, the endless journey over the ocean, it all was behind. They finally were safe.

While Doc was in the other room changing, JB and Nea stayed in the lounge of that big suite. She briefed the mutant about their schedule for the day, the evening meeting with the mayor and the subjects to be discussed. Then the girl came closer to use some device on him.

“Put your thumb here, on the pad,” Nea said handing the scanner over.

The gray surface of the pad lit with white.

“What’s that?”

“Just a DNA survey,” her tone was steady and even bored, as it was a routine.

JB followed the instructions. Just his thumb touched the pad, a green ray went over it, then four arc needles came out to penetrate his skin.

“You didn’t say anything about the needles.”

The mutant never even glanced at the scanner, since he touched it, her face entirely took over his attention.

“It takes only twenty-six milliliters. You’re a big boy and  not afraid of shots, right?” Nea finally tore her sight from the device to look in his blue eyes.

The needles went back and the screen faded. Nea was still looking at him when putting down the scanner. Her expression changed, or rather, the facial muscles hadn't moved, but the look was telling a different thing.

“Who are you? Your eyes are glowing… I’ve never heard about such stimulators.”

All those unknown terms were unfolding her personality to the mutant. She was trying to look through him all the time, to explain the mysteries of his mutation. Not asking direct questions, but rather looking for answers.

“Stimulators? Never heard about those,” JB said.

“It’s amazing…” she whispered to herself. “You need to spend some time in the info directory. To find out more about our world…”

“I'm kinda not used to all these machines of yours just yet. Would you mind telling me the key points yourself?”