The Lover's Parable Through A Seven World Journey (22 page)

“Are you sure you want to go through with this, John,” Sofia yelled, but her voice was drowned out by the intensity of the engine’s screams.

Covering their ears, the flames began to glow with a beautiful white-blue brilliance. Bursting forth from its thrusters, there was a sudden flash of blinding light. The missile took to the sky, trailed by a plume of smoke, leaving in its wake falling ash and smoldering residue.

It was with clockwork precision that the roar of the vehicle had finally made it outside the of the audible discomfort level, when the incoming vessel began to make its approach.

“There it is, girl,” John said as they watched it drawing nearer.

As the reverse thrusters began to scream, slowing its descent, Sofia could feel her heart pounding heavily within her chest. In a moment, its cloud would cover them. There was no turning back. John had set his mind to this course of operation. The responsibility would fall on him, but ultimately, the currently unseen effects, upon
them
.

The ash covering of the soil gave little, if any, cushion to the impact as Sofia hit the ground, tumbling to floor on the other side of the fence. With a loss of her awareness of the objects within her surroundings, her bearings of the physical world were wholly distorted. She stood up, blindly reaching out to John to no avail.

The bright lights of the base dispersed in the chaotic swirl of fine particles and heat. Through her squinted eyes she found it impossible to discern the direction of the fence from which she had fallen, let alone the transporter that she needed to find her way to, hidden somewhere in the dense shroud.

“John?” Sofia began to scream. Under the thundering power of the vessel’s engines her voice was inaudible, even to her own ears.

“Where are you?” she continued to shout.

The time allowance was falling away fast. Sixty seconds: that was all John said they had before the engines would cut out and the dust would start to settle. Sixty seconds, and she knew that at least thirty of them had already fallen to the past. Aimlessly taking a few steps ahead, her fingers pierced through the familiar metal links. She had found herself once again at the fence. She had gone the wrong way, and John was nowhere to be found! Twenty
seconds.

The squall of the engines had not died yet. There was still time. She had to think. The ship should be in the opposite direction of her current location. She needed to run. Ten seconds.

Releasing her grip, she pushed herself forward. The transporter was out there somewhere. John must be waiting for her. Five
seconds.

Several steps into the run, stumbling over John, she met up with him as he fell to his back with the full force of her weight upon his chest. He may have been talking, but she could not hear his voice. Then, suddenly, the engines cut.

“Where were you,” he said.

“Me? Where were you?” she asked incredulously.

Rolling over and climbing to their feet, John grabbed Sofia's hand, “I can’t believe this. We need to hurry.”

The dust was beginning to settle out. The transporter was faintly visible in silhouette form against the burning exterior lights of the base. The bay-door gears were grinding. The door was still opening.

As they reached the concrete pad, they could just barely make out the ramp as it unfolded from below the ship’s hull. The dispersed light from its interior illuminated their path.

“We’re almost there,” John panted.

Ascending the ramp, they entered into the storage bay coughing and exhausted. Cool and clear, the air was fresh in comparison to that from which they had just come, but there was little time to enjoy its refreshment.

A ladder on the wall leading to a small, circular door on the ceiling indicated that there was another area above them. With little time left before their dusty cloak of concealment was gone, John ordered Sofia to climb.

“Go faster, girl. They’re going to be here any minute,” he
ordered.

“I’m moving as fast as I can,” she said nearly losing her grasp.

The vertical ascension was vertigo inducing as the narrow rungs and handles gave Sofia an insecure feeling at best. With no time to lose, she moved, hand over hand, foot over foot, as fast as she could, with John’s head keeping close to her heels.

From over his shoulder John was able to get a good visualization of the outside environment through the airship’s threshold. The clarity in the features of the terrain was quite high. The dust had completely settled. By the sputtering of the engines of the forked machines John knew the workers were drawing near.

As they reached the final rung John climbed up beside Sofia, securing her to the ladder.

“Quickly, open the door,” he said with a panic.

With her hands able to break free without fear of falling she let go, releasing her grip and further entrusting John with her safety. Grasping the handles of the door’s central locking mechanism overhead, Sofia rotated it around, swinging the door upward. Climbing into the blackness of the room above, she rolled out of the way making room for her companion.

The first of the utility vehicles had just entered into the bay as John climbed inside. Quietly letting the door close and securing its lock, he felt around until he found Sofia standing beside him. The light of the lower compartment was drowned out. They were all alone in the dark.

The miner’s light strapped around John’s head lit up the interior of the empty room with a brightness that was aided in large part by the reflective, sterile surface of the white walls of the transporter’s hull.

“I believe this is the first storage room back home,” his voice echoed off the metal walls as he moved his light across another ladder, following its path to the ceiling.

“Then the area below us is our home?” Sofia asked.

“I think so.”

“So, what are we going to do now?”

John was not sure as to what the next move was that they should make. He had not anticipated how easily they could be spotted from within the light flooded storage area below. Knowing that they still had some time before their airship was scheduled for launch, he said, “I think we should see what’s at the top of this thing. By that time they’ll be finished reloading below. We should be able to sneak out and find a way further into the base.”

“Maybe,” she retorted. “But we’d better hurry. I don’t want to be stuck in here when it takes off.”

John knew by the muffled vibration against the wall that outside the scaffolding had just butted up against the transporter. They would have plenty of time to make it to the top and back down before lift-off, he thought.

The climb to the next threshold was equally high, but not nearly as frightful as the previous ascension from the bay below. They were free to take each step with more caution, considering there was no one that they were attempting to flee from.

Opening the door above, they found themselves inside of another room with the same dimensions as the former, and containing the same sterility, as well. Back home, in the southerly forest, this was their second storage unit.

After ascending another nearby ladder, the two of them found themselves in yet another identically sterile room with another ladder leading upward.

“How many of these are there?” Sofia asked rhetorically.

“This is so crazy,” John murmured. “What do they need all these storage compartments for if they’re not going to use them?”

The illuminated circle emitting from his flashlight moved across the floor and ceiling revealing nothing that would hint at the purpose for the three empty sections of the airship.

“We should probably keep moving,” Sofia encouraged him.

John was certain that he would find
something
if only he had the time to search. He stopped his exploring long enough to comprehend the immediacy of her statement.

“You’re right. We should probably hurry. Let’s see what’s in the next room.”

Climbing through the door’s opening, they were finally presented with a smaller, but equivalently empty area. Approximately half the size of the former three compartments, its only other dissimilarity was found in the single, white table in the middle of the room, bolted to the floor at the base of its four legs. Another ladder on the opposite end of the wall led up to a short walkway that terminated at yet another metal door. Unlike the others below it contained a circular window above the wheel of its locking
mechanism.

“If there’s going to be any answers, we’ll probably find them in there,” John said.

Not desiring to delay any longer, Sofia made the first move to the ladder and began the climb, followed closely behind by John. Pulling herself over the final rung, she ran to the door. Standing on the tips of her toes, the glass opening allowed her to see the individual chairs mounted to the walls, facing upward towards the ceiling. Beyond the fact that they were empty, there was nothing else of significance that she could determine from the limited view that the tiny window, and her short stature, would allow.

Creaking on its partially rusted hinges, the door swung open under John’s command, and he proceeded to enter first into the brightly lit compartment. A small ladder was mounted between the upward facing chairs, allowing for easier access to the oddly arranged seats. Organized in such a way so as to allow for manual control of the vessel, the chairs were situated before a down-powered, computerized control station: an array of switches, lights, screens and other mechanisms. The “ceiling” was merely the apex of the ship, composed of a single, cone-shaped, window unit that spanned the diameter of the cockpit, allowing a view to the multitudes of twinkling stars shining down from the heavens outside. There were several terminals mounted on the side of the control station, similar to the ones that the workers were accessing at the ruins, and the technicians were channeling on the exterior of the hulls.

“To think, that all this time this is what was buried in the hillside back home,” Sofia commented.

Removing the miniature computer from his pocket John knelt beside the terminals, taking a closer look at his handheld’s dangling cable.

“If everything we were looking for is stored in this little machine, I’m going to feel pretty foolish bringing us all the way over here for nothing,” he said, lining up the connectors.

The monitor in his hand lit up blue and bright as the cable made contact with its compatible slot. The control system began to power on, and John’s monitor booted up to a menu screen with six nonsensically labeled icons decorating the interface.

“What are all those?” Sofia asked, her face lit up as blue as her eyes.

“I’m not sure,” he said.

Labeled with the word
RawMat
, the first icon on the screen resembled a pickaxe with a tall plant crossing over its handle, forming the shape of an X.

“What do you think? Should I press it?” John asked.

“I don’t have the faintest clue what that’s referring to. Try it, I guess,” she said, motioning to him to be more aware of the urgency of their situation.

Tapping his finger upon the image, the screen began to fill with streams of data, scrolling through a series of numbers with no discernable relation to anything that he was aware of.

“What is all that?” Sofia asked.

“It’s just nonsense to me,” John answered.

Swiping his fingers across the
Back
button, he was brought to the main screen once again.

“Try the one that says
RePla
,” Sofia requested, pointing to an image where two rifles crossed like Xs at the barrels.

As he tapped his finger upon the icon, the same result appeared on the screen: scrolling numbers without discernable value. Returning to the main screen once again, he realized that there were two paging arrows located at the bottom corner.

“I wonder what these are for,” he said, depressing the right facing icon. As the former icons disappeared, a single image appeared in their places. It was a flame, with the word
ManLa
written below it.

“It’s probably the same thing,” Sofia said, looking back towards the door. “We really should be going now, don’t you think?”

Sofia was right. As much as he wanted to stay, John understood the immediacy of the moment. His hand grasped at the cable. He was ready to yank it out of the terminal. His hopes of finding just one piece of useful information hidden somewhere in the vessel’s computer system was about to come to an end. With that agonizing thought bearing down upon him, the sixth sense that he was about to miss something important, John released the connector, and depressed the icon.

Sofia had already walked to the entrance of the control room. Looking back, she could see by the flashing screen that John had found something of interest.

“What do you see?” she asked.

Lifting his eyes to her, he said, “I tapped the
ManLa
button. Now it just keeps flashing the words,
Stand-By
.”

With a single step in his direction, Sofia paused as the lights of their cabin suddenly died off. The pilot’s screen above John began to blink for a brief moment, until it solidified into a single blue screen.

“John. What’s happening?” Sofia asked, nervously looking around the cabin.

John was unaware of the power being supplied to the airship’s main system, as he was too involved with the changes taking place on his own screen.

“It says,
Access Override: Permission Granted
. I think we’ve got something here, girl.”

His face was aglow with a joyful glee as Sofia walked up to him. But a deep rumble from below, and the disengaging sounds of the scaffolding unhinging from the hull, immediately brought him to his feet.

“Oh, no,” Sofia stammered. “John?”

“I know. I hear it! We need to get out of here. Let’s go,” John yelled, tearing the cable from the terminal and pulling her towards the door.

A mechanical, female voice bursting out from the cockpit speakers brought them to a halt as the rumbling under their feet began to escalate.