This is my third entry for the SciFi Smackdown 5. Our genre was alternative universe, and I used pictures 1, 3, 4, 7 & 8. The story is 3,200 words long. I hope you enjoy! Happy reading. 

The Forgotten

SP Parish

(c) 2013 

There was this one time I dreamt about another world. 

Early morning fog filled my dreamscape, making for a perilous jog. It was a game of endurance and mobility as I dogged garbage cans out for their weekly pick-up and pushing myself to finish. I heard the beep of my watch signal the mile mark. Looking both ways, I crossed the street only to be stopped by construction tape pulled loosely between two barrels.

In the middle of the road? Even with their neon colors, they were still difficult to see in the thick cloud of grey propping itself on the asphalt. Shaking my head, I skirted around them as a woman rushed by me in the opposite direction.

“Watch out, there’s—“ my friendly warning was ignored as she jogged past. I turned just in time to see her run straight into the plastic tape. I went to find her, “Are you Ok?” I asked, but the question fell on open air.

Shrugging, I turned to continue my jog and was suddenly struck by an overwhelming sense of nausea. So much so, that I doubled over inside the barricade of the orange cones.

Dry heaves and a massive headache took me to the ground. The road was cold under my bare hands as moisture seeped through the knees of my running pants. I took some deep breaths, attempting to get everything back under control. Finally, I opened my eyes. Everything was brighter, as if the fog had miraculously cleared away. Looking up, I jerked back.

The fog was gone.

But so was the street. And the houses, the pesky garbage cans, the trees.

The sky.

It had transformed from the dismal grey of a spring morning in the Midwest to …purple?

I shut my eyes and shook my head. Maybe when I opened them, I would be back.

Nope.

Standing in the middle of the street, I turned a slow circle to take in my surroundings. The sky was purple, the trees sparse, the buildings many, and the moons… Moons? There were two in the clear sky. A ship zipped through the sky between them before my very eyes.

As I was trying to wrap my mind around my bright new surroundings, something zipped past my head.

I ducked, swinging my hands up for protection. There was barely time to step out of the way of two people flat out running in my direction. One was a dark-skinned man with glasses straight out of a science fiction novel. He towered over his partner, a slight woman with a round face taken dominated by large brown eyes with her ponytail flapping behind her. Only then did I notice she was the same girl I had followed into the construction zone.

“Hey!” I shouted, pointing a finger in her direction. Startled, she whipped her head in my direction, her impossibly large eyes widening further.

Cursing, she abandoned the man, who was crouching alongside the corner of a tall, white building, and headed my way. Without words, she grabbed my damp shirt above my shoulder, and with surprising strength, pulled me over to her partner.

“What’s going on?” I asked. But neither responded. Instead, they rounded the corner. Hesitantly, I followed.

“Get down,” my captor ordered. So, I did just as the air erupted with shots from an unseen enemy. Back to back, the odd couple fired in opposite directions before doing a quick sweep of the surroundings. Without any pomp, she reached down and jerked me up by my collar. “Follow us. Keep up.”

With that, they took off.

I sent up a silent thanks for my running shoes as we cut through the smooth streets of the city with the purple skies. On both sides, buildings of all makes, models, culture and style whipped past. Sadly, I had no time study them. After countless turns, cuts through strange buildings, and no looking back, we finally stopped in front of what looked like a cellar door.

The man slid a device from his pocket, waving it in front of the wooden frame.

Without hesitating, the seemingly frail door clicked and swung open in one swift motion. I followed the two down the steps without a second thought.

“That was a close one,” the man spoke to the open room. It was a plain, finished basement. Grey walls, concrete. Nothing special except for the wall of computer screens, each flashing what looked like news stations and parts of the city on some sort of loop that made no sense to me. The partners walked towards them, engrossed in whatever they were seeing. I was left behind, ignored.

“It was. Too close,” the girl responded. “They must have registered the second pass through.”

“Excuse me,” I said from behind them. They looked back at me, surprised? Shocked? Annoyed? Perhaps a bit of all three registered on their faces. I stepped forward, hand out. “I’m John.”

The man’s eyebrows pinched together over his platinum glasses. He crossed his arms over his chest, causing his gun to swing slightly at his side.

The girl stepped between us, “Hi John, I‘m Clara. This is Greg.” she pointed her thumb over her shoulder at the still silent man behind her.

“Nice to meet you,” I said, looking from Clara, then to Greg. “Where am I?”

Clara shrugged, turning back to the screens, “Earth.”

I shook my head at their backs, “Oh no. I know earth. This is not earth.”

Without words, Clara pressed a sequence into a screen to her left. She grabbed at the monitor, pulling up an image. “What does it look like?”

“Earth,” I said, almost a whisper. “But…”

“Different?” she raised her eyebrows in my direction.

“Yes.” I lifted my hand to the screen, “But I can’t quite put my finger on it.” The screen was filled with the familiar hues of blue, green, brown and white that I had seen a million times in my thirty years. However, “What are these coppery parts? Why are there two moons? I don’t get it. It’s earth, but it’s not.”

“Trust us, it is earth,” Greg finally spoke.

“Listen, I know earth. I come from there. I’ve studied it. Walked it streets, swam its oceans. I look at its blue sky everyday. This,” I gestured towards the image of the planet on the screen, “is not what I know.”

Greg and Clara met eyes and laughed.

“Oh,” I started, “is this some kind of joke? Did the guys at the office set you up for this?” I looked around the room wildly in search for a camera. “Haha, guys. You’ve had your fun! Nice one!”

“John!” Clara yelled. When I stopped, she put her hand on my arm. “This is not a practical joke. You are on earth. I am sorry we laughed, but, it was funny. You wouldn’t know anything about here. You are in the Forgotten.”

I was sure the confusion was evident on my face, “The Forgotten?” Clara nodded. “What is that supposed to mean? Like this place is here, but we just forgot about it?”

“In part. But mainly that this is a place where forgotten things end up. It is a place for the neglected, the abused. The Forgotten.”

Still, I was confused. I looked at the screens, “But there are beautiful houses here.”

“Forgotten architecture,” Greg responded.

Pointing towards the screens, “It’s the Eiffel Tower, for goodness sake! Nobody forgets the Eiffel Tower!”

“Did you know there are 72 names on it?” My blank face gave my answer. “Didn’t think so.”

“Your gun?”

He patted it, a smirk stretched across his face. “A laser rifle.”

“Like in Fallout?”

“Like,” he mocked, “the AER12. Used before World War I. Couldn’t walk around here with an AK. Too many people with their hands on them back where you come from.”

I turned to him, arms wide, “Moons?”

“Remember Pluto?”

I grunted, “This is ridiculous!” Pacing across the room, I sorted through the information at hand. Clara nor Greg had moved. Finally I stopped, turning towards them, “The how did you two get here? How are there people here in the middle of all this… this… stuff?”

Clara spoke slowly, as if I could digest her words better that way. “People are forgotten, too, John. The world has a history of abuse, neglect, slavery, and worse. Don’t you think it’s possible for a few to slip through the cracks?”

“But enough to sustain a whole city?”

“Try a whole world,” she answered. I slunk to the floor.

“This doesn’t make sense.” I said.

“Not to you, maybe.” Greg answered.

Clara rolled her eyes at him, “There was no need for you to know, John. This place isn’t for you. It’s for us. It is our safe place.”

“Your safe place?” I let out a humorless laugh. “If this is your safe place,” my fingers made quotes in the stale air, “then how come we just left a shoot out?”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Greg jumped in. Suddenly, he pushed on a number of screens, causing them to go blank. Placing both hands in the middle, he pulled up one large shot of the road we started on. One minute, it was empty and the next, you could see Clara walking down it casually. She looked both ways, crossed the street, then a light popped behind her. It was me, doubled over in the middle—I did not do a goo job of being casual—and that’s when the shooting began.

I watched in upmost horror and fascination as bright bursts of red collided with men dressed in black. You had to give it to Clara and Greg, they didn’t miss.

The screen went black as our mismatched group took off. My stomach lurched.

“Who were those men?” I looked at Clara, “Why were they shooting at you?”

She shook her head, “Not me, John. They were shooting at you.”

My head jerked in surprise. “Me? Why were they shooting at me?”

“Because you’re unauthorized.” Greg said as he started  punching buttons on the wall again. The screens returned to normal. He slid his hand across them, changing the picture at will until settling on one he was looking for.

Clara picked up where Greg left off, “You’re not supposed to be here. They don’t like when we bring people through the border when they’re not cleared to be here.”

My eyebrows shot up, “Is it a habit or something?”

She chuckled, “You might could say that.” She pulled the altered picture of earth back up on a far screen. “Years ago, they started shutting the boarders down. The population of Forgotten was too much. We couldn’t sustain it.”

“Or so they say,” Greg said from his side of the wall. Clara rolled her eyes.

“He’s right, in part. Anyways, the number of mach-threes shot through the roof.”

“Mach-threes?” I asked as she entered an unseen sequence. The earth lit up in tiny pinpricks of a rainbow of colors. Clara zoomed in on an area.

“We keep track of you guys from here. Well, not here, but in the Forgotten. This information comes from the sleep labs. We’re not supposed to have it.”

“Sleep laboratories?” I sounded like a parrot.

“Yeah, the Forgotten tracks the conditions of the people still on your earth. Mach-ones are your everyday people, living good lives have an at least ok family. Little to no neglect. They are the ones who would be missed.” She highlighted another part of the picture, bringing up a burst of blues. She pointed to them, “These are the mach-twos. Worse for the wear, but still teetering between one and three. They could go either way. To help them out, the sleep labs sometimes insert pieces of the Forgotten into their dreams. It’s a safe place. They wake up hopeful. Sometimes that’s all they need.”

Clara paused for a moment, letting that sink in. Even though white was the predominant color, there were more blues than was comfortable. There were almost as many reds, as well. I assumed those were mach-threes, and said as much.

Clara nodded, “You got it,” she said, a touch of sadness laced her words.

But she left it there. “But who gets a ticket to the Forgotten?” I asked.

“No one,” Greg chimed in from behind me. I turned to see him cocking his gun. “That’s the problem.” He looked to Clara, “We have to go. They’ve found the storm pit.” She cursed in response. Looking between them, I let out a woof of air as Greg slapped a gun to my stomach. “Let’s go.”

They headed up the stairs and opened the doors before I even moved. They weren’t running, so it was easy to catch up.

“Who have they caught?” I asked. But no one answered. I put my hand on Clara’s arm and she turned her wide eyes up at me. “Clara, what’s happening? Why did Greg give me this?”

She looked down at the gun in my hands and up again, never slowing her pace. “We have groups of unauthorized mach threes all over the world. One is under attack. We have to get them to safety.” She nodded at my hands, “That’s why you have that.”

We picked up the pace a little as we cut through an alley between two colonial houses painted colors I had never seen before.

“Plus,” she added, “we’re sending you home.”

I chose to skip that last comment. “Why are there unauthorized groups hanging around?”

“Because we brought them here.” Clara looked back at me before making a sharp right onto a row of samurai houses with fusuma siding. “Greg and I are part of the Resistance. The Forgotten decided a few years ago that they were closing the boarders, officially shutting out those who need to be here. Some of us think that was wrong, and a small few decided to do something about it.”

“So you bring them here illegally?”

Clara rolled her eyes, “Unauthorized, but yeah.”

“Why?” We were all out running now. A commotion was happening ahead of us.

“Because,” she said, catching her breath, “When we forget the forgotten, we become them.”

“Who’s them?”

She stopped, “You.” She cocked her gun once, “Duck.”

I did, and she aimed right over my head, taking two men with as many quick shots. “Come on, and don’t shoot anybody you’re not supposed to.”

Little did she know, I wasn’t planning on shooting anyone. Period.

Greg was up ahead, firing around a corner as he used the bricks as a shield. Shots pinged off the walls around us. Glass rained over our heads as one took out lamps and windows above our heads.

Clara dusted off pieces quickly and carefully. “How many?”

“Five now,” Greg replied. “We have numbers, let’s take them head on. Clara, you take middle, I’ll take the far side. John, you take left.”

She shook her head, “No, John stays.”

“Without him, we don’t have numbers. It will take forever, they’ll call for back up, then we’ll all be screwed.”

Clara started to argue, but I cut her off, “I’m fine. I’ll take left. What then?”

They looked at each other for a moment before filling me in. Greg nodded once, then sprinted to the other side of the intersection. More shots rang out.

“Greg will get them to the next safe house, and I will get you home. We’re not too far from your pass through.”

“But, what if I don’t want to go?”

Clara looked up at me, “You’ll never remember you were here.”

Before I could reply, Greg gave the signal, and we were off.

We rounded the corner fast, Clara went wide as Greg and I hugged the wall, getting off shots before her. Two men, dressed head-to-toe in black combat gear, hit the ground instantly. The others were trickier.

One held a frail woman, his arm locked around her neck, gun to her head. Another was holding the darkest little boy I had ever seen—he was all bones. The sight of him stopped me dead in my tracks.

A red beam of light caught my eyes just as Clara hit me from the side. In my distracted state, I’d not looked out for the third man. He was crouched behind the others holding the hostages.

Greg hit his belly, aimed and fired. The shooter collapsed as Greg let out another shot, hitting the one holding the boy in the shin. He released his hold as he let out a scream. Clara recovered and hit him on the way down. It only took seconds for Greg to do the same with the remaining man.

And in a matter of minutes, it was all over. Five men, all gone, and two already far-gone mach-threes on the ground, shocked, arms around each other. Greg and Clara approached them both, and providing as much comfort as possible. They all stood together, the child’s dark limbs wound around the lady. Clara provided quick, assurances and sent them off with Greg. Seconds later, they disappeared with a quick burst of light.

“What was that? Was it a pass through? Where did they go?”

Clara dusted off her pants, slinging her gun over her head. “They have to cool it for a while. It’s safer for them outside of the Forgotten. Come on,” she started walking in the other direction, “we need to get you back.”

“Wait, Clara. Can’t we not… Clara, stop!” I caught up with her, but had no words. It didn’t matter.

“John you can’t stay.”

“But why not? I can help! You, Greg, the Resistance. I know things; I could really be an asset to the cause.”

She considered it for a moment, then shook her head. My hopes plummeted. “Too many people that would miss you. It would be forever. Are you ready to give that up? What about Sydney? Your job? Are you ready to say goodbye to it all?”

“How did you know about my wife?”

“I know a lot about you, John Birdsong. I know that you run two miles every morning, that you share food with the homeless man on the street on your way to work. I know that you work in the garden with Sydney, and that she brings out the best in you.” The corners of her mouth tipped up in a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes, “I know you both burn white. Bright white.” Clara raised her hand to my arm, gripping my sleeve tight. “You help keep blue from turning red. They can’t lose you. They can’t afford to.”

With that, she pulled me into her arms, wrapping them around me in a fierce hug. “We sure will miss you, though. Go, do great things.”

***

A shuffling noise woke me from my sleep. It was Sydney, “Hey you.” She laughed, white teeth bright against tanned her skin. I love that smile, I thought. Stumbling, I shuffled over to her and gathered her in my arms. She laughed again, pushing me away to arms distance. “John, are you alright? Did you sleep okay?”

I rubbed my eyes, Did I?

“I feel kind of foggy headed?”

Her brows perked up in concern, “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I think I dreamt I was in another world.”

Sydney waited a beat, then, standing on her tiptoes, planted a kiss on my cheek. “Well, I’m glad you made it back okay.”

That time we laughed together, “Yeah, me too.”

I think.