Harmony

Pixie was woken by her own scream. It was mostly dark, and she was on the plain but comfortable couch in the strange house she had arrived in the day before. The early morning light had illuminated enough of the room she was in such that she recognised it from the day before. Thankfully, she had only been experiencing a lengthy and vivid dream. Her life was once again peaceful, and she had no bodily pain. Her actual waking reality was here in this unusual world, and the prison life was simply a passing trick that the dream state had played on her mind.

Calmness came over her in waves much greater than before. It washed away all of the residue of panic, physical pain and despair. The only thing left was memory fragments, including the nagging, lingering notion she’d been there before. These were only thoughts to be puzzled through rather than anything distressing. The waves of peace had taken over and she was caring less and less about the dream as the moments passed.

Nonetheless, she wanted to try to understand the dream, if not now then some time later. Writing down some details might help. She got up off the couch and searched around the house for some paper and a pen. Nothing at all in the kitchen, nor the front bedroom. It was then that she discovered that the room in the back-left corner of the house was not actually a bedroom, but some sort of study. It was furnished with a desk, a red and green patterned swivel chair, a two-seater couch, some empty shelving and a side table. She found paper and pens in one of the drawers of the desk. She sat down on the swivel chair and began to write.

The paper was soft and gentle, with a firmness to it, and the pencil she had picked up was vastly different to pencils in her knowledge bank, like pretty much everything else in this unusual place. It wasn’t made of wood, but of some sort of firm plastic with a soft grip that enabled her to hold it easily. The writing point might be lead but probably not; it seemed much stronger. She marvelled once again at the advanced world she had found herself in. Then her thoughts returned to why she wanted the pen and paper in the first place. Recalling the details of the dream wasn’t much fun, though.

Having it fully register on her consciousness again made her shudder at its dark and depressing imagery. The dirty and sparse prison cell, her aches and pains, the attitudes and appearance of the other prisoners, the strange outdoor market, the lack of walls around the prison, and finally the terrifying guards. She didn’t think she had the capacity to effectively analyse her dream, but if she could find someone somewhere, somehow, maybe they could help her understand it.

When she’d finished writing, she left the notes on the desk. She yawned and felt like laying down again for more sleep. The dream had woken her too early. However, slipping back into that horrible environment was not something she wanted to risk. Although it had been a dream, it was a vivid one and it still puzzled her. How could people voluntarily allow themselves to be imprisoned? It made no sense, but then she thought it might be symbolic of something. Was it perhaps a repressed memory? It did seem very much real to her when it was occurring.

Time to move on. She was hungry again, and breakfast was on her mind. She could now go back and enjoy finding something nice to eat on the menus in the food machine. The image of perusing the meal options and having the machine craft something delicious for her considerably brightened her mood.

The first thing she made was a cappuccino. It was wonderfully frothy and had the perfect amount of powdered chocolate on top. She then created a plate of scrambled eggs on sourdough toast. The meal was immensely satisfying, and she was so grateful for the machine’s ability to create seemingly anything she wanted. All troublesome thoughts from her dream had faded and she was looking forward to the day.

However, she had a small problem: what to do with the dishes and silver cutlery items that were beginning to pile up in the sink. The plates and cups created by the food machine were green and appeared as if they’d been constructed from plant material. They could probably be composted, although she didn’t know how. The cutlery was made of metal, though, and would have to be washed. The previous night and this morning, distracted by the food machine, she had not properly examined the kitchen. There must be a way to deal with her dishes. Especially in a house so advanced as to have a machine that created food out of nothing.

She looked around at the main kitchen bench, finding a few more buttons built into the bench that weren’t immediately obvious. One had pictures of plates and cups on it, the other pictures of cutlery. She really liked the cartoon-like imagery on these buttons. They were drawn by the same artist who designed the food machine images. The cute artwork and the simplicity of the button designs delighted her.

She pressed the cutlery button. A brief warning beep, then a small, deep, rectangular box slowly emerged upwards from the bench behind the button. Next to the button a small screen turned on, adorned with more cartoon-like art. The artwork was a bit more animated, like a mini cartoon, astonishing her further. The animation indicated to her that she should put her knives, forks and spoons in the box and press the button again. She did so. The box gently lowered and the lid closed over the top. Some water ran inside the bench somewhere, then a rush of air, followed by the gentle sound of some cylinders rotating. Perhaps it was some sort of conveyance machine? Clinking metal in the vicinity of the drawer she had gotten the cutlery from confirmed this. She raced over and opened the cutlery drawer. Her knife and fork were indeed back where she got them from. The technology in this kitchen continued to delight and amaze her.

Now she moved back to the plates and cups button with the rest of her dishes and pressed it. As with the cutlery box, a short warning beep was followed by a panel opening in the bench. A good-sized box emerged gently upwards from the bench behind the button. She put all her plates and cups in it, then pressed the button as indicated on the little screen next to this button. The lid closed and then there was some crunching and whirring noises for about twenty seconds, followed by silence. The little display next to the button turned off. That was it? Of course: the machine had composted or recycled her plates and cups, as she thought it might. She marvelled at the whole kitchen. It was millennia ahead of anything in her knowledge bank. What a wonderful thing, to never have to cook or clean up afterwards in the traditional sense. No need to run a sink full of water, wash and then hand dry everything and put it all away.

Her knowledge bank held the notion that many people liked to cook and create meals. Not her. She was happy indeed to not have to cook anything. At least for now. If it were possible here to have automated meals, it might be at her home too, wherever that was.

Her next inclination was to explore the rest of the house. Upon doing so, she found a clothes washer and dryer in a small laundry at the back of the house, behind the kitchen. There was also some sort of thick glass object in the living room opposite the couch she had slept on. The glass thing was intriguing. It was a good size, and it was built into a black section that was slightly recessed into the floor. Unlike most of the other machines, it had no visible buttons on it. She was disappointed for the first time; not knowing at all what it was. Maybe it was simply a nice decoration and nothing more. She left it alone for now.

She was about to venture outside when she remembered she hadn’t showered yet. Each of the bedrooms had small bathrooms attached to each of them. She chose the front left bedroom, again feeling a little guilty about using this house without knowing who owned or managed it. She had to trust that it would all be okay when she explained herself at some later date to the first person she could find.

The bathroom was largely unremarkable in terms of its layout and appearance. It was furnished with the usual towels and toiletries that she might have expected from a hotel or resort. Brand names were strangely absent from the toiletry products, however. She could not at all work out why these items would have no product names or other information on them. Pushing these thoughts aside, she grabbed what a shampoo bottle from the bathroom sink, undressed and stepped into the shower.

It felt like a normal shower initially, but then she felt something quite unexpected. It was doing more than cleansing her body. She was gradually feeling calmer and less worried. She wasn’t aware of how much the dream had affected her until the shower began to lessen the effect of it. It wasn’t a majorly stressful event, but it had been bothersome. As she turned the water off, she felt as refreshed as when she first awakened the day before, on the grassy mountainside.

After she got out and dried herself off, she put the same clothes back on, not knowing where to get clean clothes from. Stepping outside and back into the village, or resort, she was once again struck by the beauty and simplicity of the design of it all. It was a privilege to be here. However, it wasn’t her home, she was fairly sure of that. Then again, without memories of any sort, she wasn’t sure how she could be sure of anything. Nonetheless, she would stay here until someone arrived – a construction worker or a cleaner or someone like that – and hopefully through talking to them she could figure out why she was here and how she might have gotten amnesia.

She followed the ornate stone path running through the middle of the village. Rather than go through the back door of the community centre, she took the path around to the front. The facade was quite appealing in its symmetry, with nicely placed windows and a set of double doors in the centre. There were two wings on either side, with a balcony and some outdoor furniture on the right side. A tastefully arranged garden of shrubbery surrounded it all.

The double front doors were quite inviting, designed as they were with soft corners that slotted neatly into the door frame, so she chose to enter through these, rather than finding a sneakier way in, through a side door or something. It was the polite thing to do. Like the ones on the unit or house she had slept at, the double doors were made of the same opaque crystalline glass. She pushed one of them. As expected, it opened softly and gently. She walked cautiously inside.

The spacious interior was furnished with several couches, three or four side tables, a larger central table and some bushy plants with short, thick rounded leaves growing out of the floor. It looked strange to her to have plants in the floor but it seemed to work. On closer examination, there was indeed a small patch of soil recessed into the floor. It was surrounded by a neat little elevated rim and presented an ingenious method of incorporating indoor plants into this space.

In the middle of the floor was another of those strange glass objects she had seen in the house, but larger. As before, she didn’t know what it was and assumed it was a decoration and nothing more. The whole look was quite inviting, conducive for gatherings of the village or resort residents. A gathering room; that’s what she would call it.

She glanced around this gathering room a bit more. There was a set of interior double doors in front of her, and a door on each of the side walls. She chose the door on the wall to her right first. Walking past some more recessed plants, she went through the right-hand door. On the other side of it she found a large kitchen and food preparation area. Definitely a resort, then. If it was, though, where were the staff? Where were the signs, the brand names, the information for employees or guests? Where was the reception desk and, even stranger, why was there no road for cars to drive in? How did people get here?

She couldn’t figure out the answer to any of these questions, or why all these tell-tale signs were absent if it was a resort. If the lack of brand names meant it was something other than a resort, how would she know who owned it, build it, or lived here? Were there any telephones around? She hadn’t seen one in the house and there were none in sight here either. However there were several food machines in the kitchen. She left without examining them, knowing what they were capable of, and walked back into the gathering room, then through the set of interior double doors into the room behind the gathering room. It was quite large as well.

This room had a large table in the centre with about a dozen chairs, and numerous smaller tables scattered around the rest of the room. It was a conference or meeting room. There were some cabinets on some of the walls, which she presumed had meeting materials in them. She opened one and sure enough – it had paper and pens in it. Most of the other cupboards were empty, except for one that had an array of board games. That could mean anything: a resort or a village could have board games for entertainment. At the back of the room, some expansive crystalline windows provided a beautiful view back up the mountainside she had walked down the previous day. All six houses were also visible from her current position.

She scanned the mountainside she had come down the day before, trying to find her awakening point. There weren’t any obvious markers, but she guessed it was well up the mountain. It had taken her most of the day to walk down hill, and she had kept up a quite steady pace. She could now see the mountain in its entirety. It was quite majestic, with a pointed rocky summit, framed beautifully against the clear blue sky.

She couldn’t conceive of how a single human being could view this scene and not be affected by it. In fact, she hadn’t moved since she’d been taking in the whole scene. She was fixed to the spot. What a place she had found herself in! Whatever her reason for being here, it must have been worth the effort. She suspected only a small percentage of the entire world’s population would ever get to see something like this. She would not take it for granted for as long as she was here.

Turning back away from the window, she now wanted to explore more of this building she was calling the community centre. On the right-hand wall of this conference room, there was a door to the kitchen, but nothing on the opposite wall. She wanted to investigate the other rooms on the left-hand side of the community centre, so she walked around the tables and through the double doors at the front. She was back in the gathering room.

There was a door on the wall on the opposite side to the kitchen. Possibly it might be an office, with hopefully someone there she can talk to? Probably not, given the silence and desolation she’d encountered thus far, but she still held out hope. She walked through the single door. It led to a hallway. It was evident right away that there was no office here. This was a storage and supplies area. She called out anyway, just in case.

“Hello?” It was pointless. She wondered why she’d bothered.

Still, she wanted to see what was in the storage rooms. The one on her immediate right had a good number of backpacks, some boots much like her own, and some advanced raincoats, which she could not help but run her fingers across. The material was extraordinarily soft and light, and the colours were beautiful pastels of different varieties. She would borrow one of these if the weather turned cold. Now, though, it was a lovely sunny morning and quite mild in temperature. The room also had a significant amount of sports gear. This included a volleyball net and some balls, and some soccer balls. There was a set of double doors at the back of this room, supposedly so that the equipment could be easily taken outside if needed.

In the second of the two rooms on the right of this hallway was a great number of seeds and plant materials, including bags of compost and sand, and numerous gardening tools such as rakes, hoes, shovels and gardening gloves. She recalled the garden she had previously seen at the back of the community centre, so that’s what these were for.

She walked out into the hallway again and across to the third of the four rooms. As she went inside she had a short intake of breath, stopping in her tracks. The room was stocked with books, art supplies, writing materials and some musical instruments. This was a special resort, to have these things available for general use. She picked up some of the books on art that were on one of the shelves. It was the first time she had seen books anywhere in this village, or resort, and they were a welcome sight. She paused for quite some time to read some of them, getting lost in the beauty of the renaissance period, the magic of the impressionists, and the dazzling intellect of the surrealists. She loved art, in all of its forms and found it uplifting. She picked up a few instruments and art supplies carefully and gently, respectfully looked at everything rather than touching too many things, as she was still acutely aware that she was only a visitor here at this resort and hadn’t worked out if she was welcome or how she would pay for staying here.

She made a resolution to return later on to this enticing and captivating art and music room, which had a decent library in it as well. She had only glanced at some of the books so far, and perhaps they could provide some information on her situation. It wasn’t immediately obvious that any books here would help, though. They were targeted at leisure for the most part, but there were also informative reference materials that might be useful at a later date.

Restoring her lost memories, along with her identity, soon returned to forefront of her thoughts. The art and music room had provided only a temporary distraction for an hour or two. She needed some sort of plan, or at least some renewed urgency, as she was wasting time here and not helping herself. She took steps towards the door.

Before leaving, she looked up at the wide and expansive windows in the front of the room. They presented a clear view of the lower portion of the picturesque valley this resort was in. She paused for a moment to take it in. The stream running through the resort had deviated slightly so as to go under this art and music room, seemingly providing a focus for inspiration, although she was unsure where this notion came from.

The stream flowed on down the gentle grassy slope of the valley interrupted by copses of small trees and bushes along the way. Several forests were positioned here in there in the distance, and the valley itself was surrounded by peaks in all directions. The path she’d used to get to the village continued down the valley, disappearing into one of the forests. She wondered where it led and if it was worth pursuing at some point. Beautiful as it was, the scenery did not resonate with her. Questions resurfaced as to where on Earth she was and how she had gotten here. None of this scenery, as pretty as it was, was at all familiar.

It did look European. At least that much was obvious to her. Where exactly, she wasn’t sure. It wasn’t her home country of Holland, which she thought about for the first time. She tried to focus some more on Holland. Which city came to mind as her possible home? It was The Hague. The Gothic buildings, the moderate temperatures and the North Sea all came back strongly, more so than any other Dutch city. Thinking about it didn’t do anything for her memories, but it was nice to ground herself somewhat by concentrating on her likely origin, based on her knowledge.

She continued exploring the community centre. The next and final room fascinated her. Like the others, it was quite large, and also had a theme: clothing. Shelves and shelves of clothes, sheets, cushions, blankets and other fabrics adorned both walls, from the floor to the ceiling. In the middle of this room were some unfamiliar machines on some central tables that might be used for cutting and sewing clothing. There was also an assortment of needles, pins and other fabric decorations of varying colours on the tables with these machines. It was all neatly ordered and quite pretty. She liked this room too. It was colourful and immediately useful. Why would a resort have such a room, though? Maybe this was a self-sufficient village. It was all too hard to determine and no identifying information was presented anywhere to describe the purpose of this place. That just added to the mystery.

She perused at the clothing for quite some time, carefully taking items off the shelves and measuring for size and fit. There were men’s and women’s clothes, but nothing for children. She found this odd. It was unlikely a holiday resort would have a room such as this. Taken together, and aside from the art and music room, this wing of the community centre seemed to be more of a warehouse for a small village than part of a resort. She was once again undecided as to what exactly this entire group of buildings was meant to be for. So many questions she didn’t have answers to. At least not yet.

She wanted to borrow some clothes. She got the sense, without knowing why, that this was perfectly fine. Not a problem. However, she wasn’t quite ready to take just anything. Putting on her clothes from the day before had not been a problem other than not having fresh underwear and socks. She resolved to change only those for now. There were some nearby changing rooms, conveniently placed in the centre of each wall. Slipping into one of these changing rooms, she did so. As with everything else, this room was designed for convenience, and had laundry baskets next to a couple of machines that seemed to be for washing clothes. She would try to work out how to use those later if needed. Hopefully she wouldn’t be here that long. She placed her underwear and socks in one of the baskets, vowing to come back for them later.

Her tour of the centre had taken some time, although she had no clear idea of the precise hour and minute of the day. She hadn’t found a single clock anywhere and was not wearing a watch, but she guessed it was approaching the lunch hour. Her sudden perception of her own hunger made this guess pretty reasonable. She headed back to the expansive kitchen in the opposite wing of the centre to determine whether or not the food machines there worked the same as the one in the house.

The thought of the many possible food options once again brought a small tingle of excitement as she crossed the gathering room and entered the kitchen. Would these machines be different, with more options? There were quite a few of them. As she began to press buttons, she noted with delight that they were indeed different.

In fact, they were all different to each other. They were cuisine based. One had an assortment of Asian looking dishes. Another had South and Central American food. Yet another had European and North American food. The final one had African and Middle Eastern food. She was spending way too much time browsing through the menus. There was almost too much choice.

She eventually settled on a simple vegetarian stir fry that appealed to her, from the Asian menu. This was her third meal from one of these food machines, or whatever they were called, and the whole process still amazed her. There was no attachment to a refrigerator or other food storage device anywhere in this kitchen either. Like the one in the house, the machine was creating the food out of nothing. It still astonished her. What’s more, it tasted as if it had been made from fresh ingredients, at the best possible restaurant.

After putting away her dishes in another bench-based composting machine, she made a fruit juice drink and took it out onto the front patio. She would sit down, get comfortable and try to figure out how to find someone to help her, while taking in the view of the valley from the outside. There was a back patio too, but she chose the front one.

There were a dozen or so chairs on the balcony, of different shapes and sizes, and she picked one that was deep and comfortable. It was made of a bamboo-like material but was a great deal sturdier than similar chairs she had pictured in her knowledge bank. It had a lovely ruby coloured cushion lining, and it felt even better than it looked when she sat down in it. She put her drink down on the side table next to the chair.

At that moment, the sun was high overhead and gently warming as it was the day before. A light breeze drifted up from the valley below. She glanced around at this lusciously green valley she had somehow found herself in. Was there anywhere in her locked-away memories such a scene quite so idyllic as this? The view, along with the sunny day and her enjoyment of her meal and drink, put a temporary hold on her plans to think hard about what to do next. She was beginning to feel quite drowsy, remembering that her sleep the previous night had been interrupted. Her chair of choice was nap-inducing as well.

She allowed herself to close her eyes and gently drift off to sleep. Fortunately for her there were no dreams this time. She slept peacefully for a time, undisturbed by any loud noises, although the calls of distant birdlife penetrated her sleep state at intervals without doing enough to fully wake her.

Finally, she woke, once again remembering the idyllic location she had found herself in, albeit with a case of amnesia. As her senses returned, she had the urge to continue her exploration of the resort as far as she could, hoping to find some information somewhere, anywhere, that would help her locate other people. Maybe there was a map she could use to locate where on Earth she might be. If she could determine where this place was, this might help her figure out who she was. If was a little frustrating that, as lovely as the house and the community centre had been, there was absolutely nothing thus far that could provide answers to her situation.

Solitude was very much okay for her – even a preferred state of being. She knew this about her own character without remembering her history. Nonetheless, not finding anyone for a significant period of time might increase her anxiousness at being alone and not knowing who she was. As these thoughts threatened to overtake her, the waves of calmness and peace returned. They were still arriving, and it remained a source of wonder.

Feeling calmer and more energised, she resolved to continue with her plan to search more thoroughly. Answers were surely not far away. She stepped off the front of the patio and headed over towards the first house on the right-hand side of the resort. She hadn’t taken more than a few steps when she saw movement farther down the valley.

It was another person, walking up the hill towards the village.