2199 Extinction

Now that the elevator doors close, I slap the sleeve of my jacket to pull up the monitor. I set the time and day for the proper day and time, and then pause. What are those stupid coordinates? I think for a while and then just randomly punch a few numbers. I feel the familiar feeling of fire in my bones, I close my eyes and I prepare myself. This time, when I open my good eye, I am still standing on my feet. Well, that’s a plus. I finally got the hang of this time traveling business. I look around with my good eye, I can just make out the outline of something large.

I walk in that direction and find myself face to face with Amancia’s ship. Unfortunately, for me, it’s closed up tight. What do I do? I remember Amancia telling me the ship and her had a psychic link. So, I do the only thing I can. I place both hands on the ship and ask it to open up, in my mind of course. I step back and look. No door. Why isn’t is working? I try again and nothing. No door. No sign of life. I pull back from the ship.

“You have to open! There is a baby in there who needs my help!” I scream at the ship. Of course, that does nothing but send the small creatures, nearby, skittering into the trees and chattering angrily at me from high above the ground.

“Oh, shut up!” I yell at them. “I hate you! I hate this whole stupid planet! I hate this ship! I hate Amancia for doing this to me! I hate Amlican for dying no matter what I tried to do! I hate time travel! I hate everything!”

I put my head and hands on the ship, frustrated with everything that’s happened. “Amancia is going to die. My birth mother is going to die, and you don’t care. I’m going to die, and you don’t care about that either. All I really wanted was for you to open up so I can at least keep myself from starving to death in this jungle.”

I slide down the ship to my knees and just cry. All the emotions of the past twenty years just boil up and spill out. “And now I’m going to cry. What the heck is wrong with me? Copaie don’t cry.” But I do cry, my head still pressed against the ship.

I don’t know how long I sit there like that, before I hear a low beep and a loud whooshing sound. What the heck? I pull my head off the ship and look to my right. The door is open now. The door is open? The ship listened? We bonded? I get up off the ground, step into the ship, and place a hand on the inside of the ship.

“Thank you. I need you to shut the door and take me to the abandoned scientific city.”

The lights turn on, the door shuts, and I feel a low rumble. I leave the cargo area and turn left instead of right. I place my hand on the wall near the door and think open. The door opens and I find myself in a room filled with medical supplies. But no baby. I rummage through the supplies and find a pack of Instaclot. I tear it open, take the bandage off my eye, lean my head back, close the bad eye, and dump the stuff onto my wound, rubbing it in.

I count to ten, open my eye, and right my head. I feel a little bit of burning in the wound, as the stuff starts to work. But I can actually see out of it, now. I walk over to the mirror and examine my reflection. The cut starts a few inches above my left eye and cuts downwards at an angle, ending a few inches below it. On closer inspection, I’m really lucky my eye didn’t get cut or that I didn’t lose it. That would have really sucked. I run my hand down the cut, it looks like it was really deep.

I’ll probably have a scar there. I pry myself away from the gruesome sight and start the search for the baby. Me. I’m searching for myself, in a literal sense. That’s a strange feeling. I look around the room, opening cabinet doors, storage closets, but no sign of the baby. Where in Saltu is baby Astra? Where am I? I start pulling stuff out of the cabinets trying to see if the baby is hidden behind stuff, but no such luck. Seriously, who the heck brings a baby on a journey like this anyways? Amancia does. Ugh. She is so frustrating.

After tearing apart the small room and still not finding the baby, I just stand there staring at the mess, a moment. I’m pretty sure the baby wasn’t in the same room as us. I think I would have noticed her. But to be sure I run to the room and start tearing it apart as well. After a while, I realize how fruitless that search was as well. Where. Is. The. Baby? I let loose and scream as loud as I can until my throat hurts. Amancia is so frustrating.

She swore the baby is here, she didn’t bring her with us, so the baby still has to be here. But where? I just stand there a while trying to think, and that’s when I hear it. At first the sound is faint, but then it grows louder and louder. The baby!! Wherever she is, my screaming appears to have woken her up. I dash back towards the cargo area and stop to listen. It sounds like she’s in here. That’s a really strange place to put a baby. But it is Amancia, and nothing about her is normal, not even by Copaie standards. I stand in the mostly empty room and look around.

The only boxes in here are much too small to hold a baby. I follow the sound of the baby screaming and stop by a wall. It sounds like it’s on the other side of the wall, but I don’t see any door. I run my hands across the wall, and continuously think, Open. I eventually find the right spot because a door appears in the wall and then slides open. I step into the small room and look around.

The baby is laying, in a small wooden basket, in the center of the room. On the walls hang still photos of different landscapes; jungles, deserts, snow covered mountains, and oceans that seem to stretch into eternity. I see all sorts of baby items on shelves along the back wall. The baby continues to wail in the basket, which on closer inspection, appears to be handmade.

“Hush, sweet little Astra. I know you must be starving, but I can’t do anything for you. On second thought, cry away, that way you will draw mother to you.”

I’m still a little weary about picking her up, I don’t want the world to implode or anything like that. I end up just leaving her in the basket, but I do tuck a few blankets around her, careful not to make direct contact. I also grab a few diapers and tuck them into the basket as well.

I look around the room, trying to figure out what else I need to do. I spot a lone pen, sitting on a dresser, I pick it up. No paper anywhere, so why would Amancia have the pen? I walk over to the picture of the jungle and take it off the wall. I flip it over and then I scratch out a quick note.

To whoever finds this baby,

I ask that you please take care of her. Her mother died trying to right a terrible injustice. I know she is Copaie, but please have pity on her. She hasn’t eaten in two days, and I don’t know anything about children. Her name is Astra, she was born two months ago. Take her home and raise her as if she were your own child.

Thank you.

I fold up the picture and place it next to the baby’s fist. There we go, that should be enough to evoke a sense of pity, in mother. We have arrived. The thought seems to come from nowhere. In fact, I’m certain I didn’t even think that. I’m about to freak out, when I remember the ship and its psychic link. That must be how Amancia knew when we were on the planet. I pick up the baby and basket and walk through the ship, and back into the abandoned city.

I retrace my steps from earlier and stop outside the appropriate building. Now, where do I leave the baby, where she will be found, but I won’t get curious myself? I find a small space, between this building and the next and place the basket down, at the end of it. The baby’s cries should draw my mother down here. I wait, just out of sight, behind some crates, stacked at the end of the alleyway. I may need to wait here to make sure nothing eats me.

After a few minutes, I see Alpha and son pass by and then come back. He’s sniffing the air. “Female kill Malum.” And then he’s gone again.

I continue to crouch down, waiting. A massive Loftin approaches and sniffs at the basket. I am about to get up and chase it off when it turns and stares back in the direction it came from. It starts to growl, and then I see what I’ve been waiting for, mother. She was drawn by the cries of the baby, as I knew she would be.

“Get away from there!” She calls out. A chattering noise comes from her shoulders, where a small white furry creature sits. It chatters loudly and runs from shoulder to shoulder. Wait a minute.

I recognize that thing! That looks like Rex, only white instead of purple and teal. The large loftin starts heading in her direction, and I once again consider revealing myself. But I don’t have to. Another Loftin, this one much smaller, appears behind her and charges the larger one. I watch as they fight and then as the larger one runs off. I watch as mother cautiously approaches the basket and looks inside. She picks up the note, reads it, and then grabs the basket and leaves.

It worked! Mother has found me abandoned and will take me home and raise me. This time things will be different. No Malum means I don’t have to worry about my people. I pull up the screen on my jacket. I finally completed my mission. It’s time to go home. Back to the future, back to my own time.