Sentilia

Surprisingly, of all the things I had seen in this place that was so new to me, this one was not disturbing at all. Well, it was in a way, but I still felt abnormally calm.

The enormous shuttle that lay there in the middle of the cave was a cool steel grey.

I stared, wide-eyed, at the beauty in front of me. Now I needed a lot of explanations. And they would start now. “K?” My tone was expectant. I blinked twice before he answered.

“Okay, so, let’s start from the beginning...Um...Well...There are some humans on this planet that aren’t really humans. What I mean is that—” I knew then what he would say, but I couldn’t find my voice to finish his sentence, “—there’s another planet similar to this one in another galaxy close to here. Well, when I say close I mean—” I turned my face towards him and the look on my face made him skip the detailed explanation, “—So, that’s where we come from. Sentilia. We look just like them, but our brain is more developed. We can do things that they can’t. Things like controlling dreams, feeling things before they happen, and...other stuff.” He looked proud, but apologetic; his voice had a hint of fear as he studied my face; his arms were half-extended, as if he was waiting for me to faint.

I took a moment to digest what he had just said.

Astoundingly, it all made sense now. A small detail in his explanation didn’t escape my notice. “You said...you keep saying ‘us’ and ‘we’ and ‘them’. You’re talking about the people on this island right? You and them, right?” And once again, I already knew the answer to that question. But I didn’t know if I was ready to hear it. I felt the cold drops of sweat pearling on my forehead.

“Max, you’re half and half. Your mother is Sentilian.” He spoke very slowly, pondering each word, letting it sink in.

I felt dizzy. I was half-alien, half-human. Was it the best of both worlds? Did the beat my heart skipped mean I had wanted to be full Sentilian? Or I just wanted to be plain human? I figured half would be enough to take in for now.

I turned around, to face the vessel. I was lost in thought. “I always knew I was different...” It all seemed to make sense now. All the chips were falling into place. The lapses, the dreams, the fact that I was so different, so obsessed with a different way of living, and the fact that my mom was acting so weird recently. She knew, she knew and she never told me about it. Why?

K came to stand beside me, and squeezed my shoulders comfortingly.

My thoughts then immediately went to William: “So, William is one too, right? Since he was in my dreams?”

Did he know about all this? Had he known all along?

“Actually, no. I was the one who projected those images in your head. William’s not a Sentilian, he wasn’t the one to project himself into your dreams; you created those parts yourself, and projected them in his head as well. You see, in one of your future paths, you’re supposed to be with him.” My heart fluttered. “But unless these predictions are in your immediate future, they often change...I could only catch glimpses of the moments you were with him, because I wasn’t the one creating the simulation. Let’s just say it’s not a perfect science.”

I continued to stare at the shuttle not knowing how to process all this information. The ship had no doors, no windows, nothing that rippled the sleek shape.

Was I supposed to be mad at my mother for keeping this from me? Probably, but I wasn’t. Was I supposed to be happy then, to be “normal” considering I was half-alien, happy to be different from most of my society, to have a valid explanation for everything going on in my life lately? I had no idea how to feel right now.

“It’s cool, you knowing now.” K smiled. “You know it’ll get even better, once you learn how to control your mind, you’ll be able to do all kinds of tricks! Unless you choose to forget about all of this. Like some people do.”

“No...I mean, I’m accepting it, but it’s—”

“I know; it’s a lot to take in. It takes some time to get used to the idea. You’re doing great, by the way. I mean, some of us...don’t handle all of this very well.” He frowned, probably remembering one of his previous revelation sessions, and did a half turn. My eyes followed his movement but I had to look down not to get overwhelmed by the ship in front of me and its significance.

“So, you were saying that some of...us decide to ignore what we are? How many are you—I mean, we—on this planet? Does everyone learn about it this late in their lives? And do you just shove it in their faces like you did to me?” I was taken aback by the inch of spite in my last question. Even after everything that had been happening to me, there was really no other way for me to believe it than to see with my own eyes.

“Um...” He frowned, but then seemed to just brush it off. “There are more than you could imagine. We started migrating here a few hundred years ago. First—”

“Wait. How did...we come here if we’re from another planet, how...even now, we can’t...” I was blurting out questions unclear in my head.

“We travel through wormholes. They’re warpatures, or doors, in space that bring two ends of space together, which normally would take forever to reach. Let’s say it’s like a shortcut. I know how it sounds; it’s a complicated concept to grasp at first, but once you’ve done it a few times, you get used to it.” He laughed, a bit smug.

So we could go back and forth?

“Now, as I was saying, there were only five of us at first, and we slowly grew in numbers. We were always upfront about who we were, but ever since the beginning, it’s been the humans’ wish for us to stay anonymous. We respected that, but we always end up finding our own. Some people, that discovered a bit late like you did, decide they want to continue their lives normally, completely ignoring their true nature. They suppress it within them instead of embracing it. Some of us live in your society, and nobody knows about them being Sentilians; not even their families. Of course, it happens from time to time that Sentilians never find out who they are. They spend their whole lives wondering why they can see things, predict and hear things; their parents sometimes just decide they don’t want their child to go through any of this. Once you accept it, everything just gets amplified. The emotional conflicts get worse, but I think it’s worth it. The whole point, Max, is not to ignore it, but to embrace it. And I hope from the core of my heart that you don’t, sweetie; ignore it, I mean.”

His explanation wasn’t enough. “Why me? Why did you project those images in my head, knowing I would come and look for you? Do you do that for everyone? What is this place? Why do you live so differently, and why did my mom...? I’m sorry, it’s just...”

“It’s fine, Max. It’s normal to have a lot of questions.” He hesitated before continuing: “Look, I—we—never do this for anyone, really. Sentilians usually find out by their families, or sometimes they even have dreams kind of like you do, and they come looking for us. But for half-breads, it’s more complicated. We singled you out, we did everything we could to get you down here without revealing anything about who you really are. I can’t really explain why for now, I know I’m asking for your trust once again, but you’re crucial to our survival Max.” I heard him take a deep breath before continuing. He was still by my side, but I couldn’t see his face.

I almost felt like laughing, but since he was dead serious I almost believed him for a moment. Why would I, Maxine Costa, be crucial to anyone’s survival? I let it go, partially because I didn’t believe him, and also because I already had so many questions in my head, I would take everything one step at a time.

“This island—we call it Mau Loa Island—which is ironic, because it means forever island, and we don’t live forever on this planet.” He chuckled and looked at me as if I was supposed to join in on his inside joke. But my face was a frozen frown of utter disbelief.

“Wait...what?” Did he mean to say we could live forever on Sentilia?

“We’ll come back to that.” I shook my head. “This is where Sentilians and humans co-exist in an older way of living. It’s still more or less the way we live over there; we think it’s a more natural lifestyle, healthier, we think. The planet isn’t quite the same as this one, but...” He shrugged.

“As for your mom, I think I better let someone else explain.”

My mind was going numb. I went from being the most useless, normal human on earth to being the savior of people from another planet. People I’d only met in my dreams. My wild guess was that it had something to do with my mother joining the Advisors. I remembered Elis telling me the Advisors were trying to discourage...no, abolish, living the way they did here on...Mau Loa Island.

“I’m sorry, Max. There was no way not to involve you in any of this.” He was being sincere.

“It’s okay. It’s about time I find out who I really am. And, I’ve always wanted this lifestyle. I couldn’t be happier right now; I have everything I ever wanted.” It was the truth of my own words that put a serene smile on my face. I remembered a few weeks ago I could have died of sadness knowing I could never go back in the past, knowing I’d never find true love, that all of that was out of reach and that I was bound to my boring life, forever feeling like I didn’t quite fit in.

“So...everything in the dream was real, then?” I asked.

“To a certain extend, yes.” And as if he knew where I was going with this he continued: “Everything I felt, and what you felt, was real. What happened with Elis wasn’t, although some of his stories were true.” My heart sank; I blushed. “Max,” his voice was low, “I wouldn’t have just kissed you if I didn’t have real feelings for you.”

I felt a jolt of excitement, but it left as soon as it came.

K smiled half-heartedly. “I need to take you back, now.”

“Okay.” I tried to lighten up the mood: “On the way back, can you tell me exactly what I can do with my mind?”

I started walking towards the corridor, and K caught my arm. I turned around and he pulled me towards him. I looked into his eyes and took one step closer. I was staring intently into his eyes, ready for whatever.

“You were going the wrong way, Max.”

“Oh,” I hung my head down and started walking the other way. He grabbed my arm again and I stopped walking, but didn’t go towards him again. He took one long stride, and took me into his arms. I was suddenly filled with an overwhelming sense of comfort, like I could stay there, close to him for hours. But after kissing the top of my head, he let me go and led the way.

I shook my head after a second and followed him. Every time K got close to me I felt like I couldn’t help a certain sense of care and comfort. So I kept a certain distance, hoping he wouldn’t notice.

“The tide is down now, we can exit the other way. We’ll just use one of the speeders to get out of here,” he explained. As he said the word ‘tide’ I had a flashback of the day we had spent on the water in my dream. For the first time, I felt what they call nostalgia. It was a bittersweet feeling I greatly disliked.

“Good,” I said after a moment, realizing he had just spoken to me. It was a relief not to have to go through that crevice again.

I paused, and he did too. “Do you remember that day when we went on your boat, in my dream?” It felt weird saying that out loud, but he started nodding.

“Of course, how can I not?” He smiled, looking down.

“Well, I know it wasn’t real and all, but it was still the best day of my life. Just wanted you to know that.”

His smile got wider. “Now that you’re here, we can recreate it, for real this time. I just can’t guarantee that everything will pan out the way it did.” He winked and started walking again.

We’d walked only a few steps before I could see our escape route; the arched back wall of the cave created a huge window to the sea. We stopped a few paces away from what I could only imagine was a...speeder?

“What is that, K?”

“That’s another thing we do pretty well, we...innovate a lot.” When he saw that I was waiting for a more elaborate explanation, he continued talking, “when we’re working on something, our brains sort of...unite. We all share thoughts together and it’s like we’re 2 or 5 or 10 people in the same head. That way, we are more efficient.” He smiled, and gave a light tap on his temple.

“That’s part of the reason we’re still alive,” he muttered as if to himself.

I didn’t comment, mostly because I was speechless. Parts of the puzzle were falling into place. Now, these were only theories, but I was thinking that maybe the Advisors kept them here because of their innovative skills; they were like a bunch of exiled engineers, working to their benefit. Whenever they wanted new technology, they planned a trip to the island. Maybe I was pushing all of this too far, though.

The door of the speeder was just low enough for me to step in, and sit down. K followed right after me, and we lifted off.

The interior of the speeder was similar to the ones we had in California, except for one major thing: these had huge windows, allowing me to see the beautiful light-soaked beach we passed at the exit of the cave, as well as the ocean waves, slowly retreating for the night, and the white birds joining our flight, passing by us, twirling in the sky.

I looked at him and smiled. I was so glad to finally be with him, to get to know him, and to find out the truth—even if that meant being half-alien. I was really starting to like Kleio and feel comfortable with him. It wasn’t the strongest I had ever felt, but I still enjoyed being around him, and being close to him. The overwhelming feeling I had now, though, was anxiousness to start learning about all of my special abilities.

What if we could read minds? My cheeks prickled when the idea crossed mine.

“We can,” he then answered, aloud.

I froze. My heart stopped. I felt my whole face turn bright red.

Impossible. This wasn’t happening. I exhaled. How embarrassing. And then I couldn’t stop the ruckus in my head: “So he knows how you feel about him? Shut up. So he knows you like him but also selfishly love William too. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up."

He tried to muffle a laugh, and I felt like crawling to my death. But that wouldn’t fix things. At least elaborating a plan of escape took my mind off other things—embarrassing things. My hands instinctively covered my face.

“Calm down, Max. We’re used to having less intimacy than you guys do in your heads, and we think less of ‘embarrassing thoughts’ too. Just so you know, just the fact that you do like me makes me forget every other thought you could have. Unfortunately it’s hard for us to thwart our purest emotions. Anyways, humans are unable to block their thoughts, or divert them, so we can easily read them. But when I say read minds, it’s not exactly done the way it sounds. We can’t hear words really; it’s more like an overall emotion or thought. It’s hard to describe, but you’ll eventually be able to sense them too. It’s different every time. As for your thoughts, I can read some of them, but our kind if harder to read, when we don’t want to be read.”

“But, I’m...only half.”

“Yes, but the Sentilian genes are stronger than the human ones. Most half-Sentilians can do whatever we can do. Like I’ve already said, none of this is perfect science. We still have trouble explaining all of it. Scientists on our planet only started studying our differences when they got here. You know they still send humans to Sentilia sometimes to study them for a period of time. It’s on a volunteer basis, of course.” He said the last sentence with an angry spark in his eye, and his eyes seemed lost far away.

I could feel the blood leave my face as I pondered every word he said. It was an indescribable feeling, hearing what I was supposed to be able to do. It was like someone, out of nowhere, came into your life and gave you special powers. I wouldn’t be able to lift a transporter with one hand, but reading someone’s mind was eerie enough to be hard to believe. Plus, K hadn’t told me about anything else, but he kept talking about things we could do. My stomach churned at the thought. I didn’t know why I was reacting this way. This was incredible news, but something in K’s tone seemed to put a lot of pressure on me. He kept implying that I’d learn all of these new abilities really soon and really fast.

“You have a big responsibility, Max, but you don’t need to worry about that now. I swear you’ll wonder one day how you were able to live without it. Like I said, you’ll learn to control it. It’s in your blood.” I felt like I didn’t have any privacy for my thoughts anymore. I’d have to be careful what to think around him. In any case, now I knew why we were always on the same page.

“Sorry, I’ll tune out.” He said, turning his head.

There were other questions I had, some minor details, but I couldn’t think of a better time to ask. “K? How come I was conscious during the dreams?”

He looked muddled. “Aren’t you always conscious when you dream? Humans think it wouldn’t be a restful sleep, to be conscious when you dream. But you get used to it, and really, it’s...what I’ve always known. It’s cool because you get to live sort of a double life. You do whatever you want to do, and it’s okay, because it’s not reality, unless you’re dreaming with someone else. With you and me it was different: we shared our dreams. With those it gets hard not to mix reality in. Sometimes I wake up after having a very powerful dream, and I have to remind myself that it wasn’t real. But you know, normally sharing dreams is a much more peaceful experience. The problem with ours was that we were always trying to control what happened differently. There was always a conflict.”

“Oh,” I wasn’t completely sure I liked the idea. “So, me and Elis...”

“Look, regardless if he was really there or not, it’s always been between me and him, like it is right now, when you’re awake,” he smiled at my involuntary frown, “I can read your subconscious better than you can, even without trying to, Max.” My face went blank, but I liked the fact that he was upfront with me; I felt like we could talk about everything.

“Anyway,” he continued, “your mind willed us to be friends, because that’s what you wanted us to be. But that’s not what I wanted...it created glitches, and confusion for the most part. Now, everything you’re going to feel is going to be amplified; you have to prepare for that. If you were confused in your dreams, it’ll be worst now. There was always a rivalry between him and I. I couldn’t see you when you were together, but I could chose to drop by and see you, wherever you were.” He winked. He did that a lot, I had noticed.

“And, remember I kept fainting? What was that about?” I asked.

“Oh, well, sometimes the emotions you felt were so strong and new to you that they made you wake up in real life, and faint in your dreams. Also, sometimes I had to make you wake up when I would say something stupid that would clue you in on what was going on.”

“You could make me wake up?” His answering smile was wide. He nodded.

I took a moment to process everything he had just said. I was completely blown away.

We were travelling on water, and we passed a pier. And then I remembered my voyage with William, and the curious stop we’d made at the Californian frontier.

“One last questions. Well, it probably won’t really be my last, but...”

K chuckled: “Go ahead.”

I wasn’t sure he was going to be able to answer, since this might not have had anything to do with the island, but he seemed to have an answer to everything.

“When we were—”

“The glass cube?” I disliked being interrupted. But I nodded slowly.

“Simple,” he went on, “sometimes we need to get supplies from the mainland. We have people on the ‘inside’,” I could hear the quotations in his tone, “they order what we want, and they stock it in the cube until we can go fetch it.”

“I guess it makes sense.” But it didn’t explain the keyboard.

“It’s for the password. To get in.” K read my mind again, even if he’d said he’d tune out. “If you don’t have it, the entrance will be blocked by an energy field and you won’t be able to see what’s inside. The humans just think it’s an old lighthouse of some sort.”

It felt weird for him to keep saying “humans”. That’s what I had been all my life until a few minutes ago.

“We usually call them dwellers, maybe that’ll sound better to you. As for the pier, you didn’t need to enter a password to go in because the cube detected that you’re a Sentilian.”

“But...” I barely had time to open my mouth to speak. “If William would have been alone, he couldn’t have gone in.” Were we ever going to have normal conversations again?

I silently enjoyed hearing a confirmation that William was human again. I selfishly didn’t want him to be able to do all the mind tricks I would be able to do. It would maybe make me interesting to him, I hoped.