A.R.: Beyond the Universe

“Over 200 years ago? Your father?”

Alex stands there as his mind refuses to believe what this beautiful young woman had just told him.

Sara looks at him as if she had just revealed some terrible, horrible secret. She knows from many past experiences that the information she has just revealed to Alex always makes her feel alienated from most people. Once they find out her history and who she is, people’s feelings toward her always seem to change. They become distant, not saying anything but not wanting to get close. She never knows if it is because they do not believe her, they believe her but do not want to or the fact that she oversees the place.

Alex looks the woman in the eyes. His voice is steady, almost concerned. “If what I just heard is true, I’d say we need to talk.”

Sara begins to wonder if it is happening all over again, if Alex is just like all the others. But the look in Alex’s eyes does not show fear or loathing. Instead, she sees compassion, even a bit of curiosity.

“Are we going to be working together on this training that I’ve been hearing about?” Alex asks firmly.

Sara hesitated to answer. His tone made her concerned that Alex might want nothing to do with her after all.

“Yes,” she answers quietly, lowering her eyes.

“If what you just said is true, then I need to know everything. Looks like it’s time for us to really talk.” Alex walks to his suite door and it slides open. He turns to Sara, who still has a very worried look on her face. He smiles and holds out his hand.

“Looks like you’re the one who’s nervous now. I suggest some wine, a lit fireplace, and some long conversation, if you want.”

Sara looks up to see a very reassuring smile on Alex’s face. The look in his eyes and the gesture of his hand makes her feel at ease, more so than she had felt in many, many years.

She raises her hand and allows Alex to wrap his hand around hers. A feeling of strength comes to Alex and he gently squeezes her hand. She takes a deep breath.

“I would very much like that,” she says.

Alex detects the sound of relief in her voice. His curiosity about her and her story increases as they walk into his suite. A fuzzy ball of fur immediately greets him at the door. It seems that while Alex and Sara were out, the pet sitter took the time to give MacGuyver a bath. The dog’s fur had fluffed up a great deal in volume, making him look twice a heavy as he normally looks.

After getting the chance to greet his master, he turns his attention to Sara. He stands there wagging his tail. She bends down and does her best to defend her face from being licked by the friendly dog.

A voice comes from the hall asking MacGuyver to come back, that she wasn’t finished brushing him. It was a young girl, maybe 15 or 16.

“Alex, this is Lilly, the one I told you about whom we got to watch MacGuyver” Sara says.

“Oh, I didn’t know you were home. I took the liberty of giving him a bath. I hope you don’t mind,” she says shyly. “Hello, Mr. Rogers, I’m Lilly.”

“Actually, I’m glad that you did. He needed one,” Alex replies.

“I need to finish brushing him or he’ll be a mess,” she tells him. With an almost apologetic look on her face, she gathers up the dog and heads back towards MacGuyver’s room.

“Tell you what, I’ll finish brushing him” he tells the girl. “I know how hard he is to control while getting it done. He’s never been very patient with anyone else when it comes to getting brushed.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. I’ve been trying for a half an hour. I can’t get him to sit still. Oh, I didn’t see you, Sara. Did you two have fun today?”

Sara looks a bit flushed and thanks her for taking care of MacGuyver. The girl catches Sara’s reaction and asks if it’s OK with Alex for her to come back tomorrow when he goes to work.

“Sure,” Alex says, looking at the girl. “It looks like he likes you enough.” He watches the dog lick the girl’s hand.

She excuses herself, goes back to the dog’s room, and retrieves some her things.

“When do you want me here tomorrow?” she asks Alex.

“Um…I have no idea.” He looks back at Sara, who says 9:00 a.m. sharp.

“I’ll be here. He really is a fun little dog to play with. I think I am going to enjoy this,” she says as she walks to the door. It slides open; she walks through the opening and to the left, but not before looking back at Sara with a grin on the girl’s face. Sara smiles back.

“How did she get in here? I thought that I was the only one that the System would let in my place?” Alex asks Sara.

“We knew we’d need someone to watch MacGuyver for you while you are training. Since this is a new place to the dog, we chose Lilly because she seems to be exceptional with animals. She was given clearance to your suite just after we left this morning.”

“I have to admit, having someone here that he likes to keep him company takes a lot off my mind while I’m out,” Alex tells her.

“That was the general idea--for you to be comfortable and not have to spend your thoughts worrying about your dog,” she responds.

” Speaking of, why was it so important to bring him? I got the idea that he had to be here.”

“A long time ago we found that people, like yourself, who rely on pets as companions rather than people, become very attached to their pets. There is a strong bond between them. Separating that bond has proven to be, in some cases, disastrous. In your case, you will have to be concentrating on your training, which begins tomorrow morning.

“Do I remember correctly, something about some wine?” she asks.

She walks to a small cabinet on the wall and opens it to reveal several bottles of wine and some wine glasses.

“When I gave orders to prep your place, I had this cabinet put in, but I never knew why.” She reaches in and selects a bottle of red wine.

“I do not drink much, but when the occasion calls for it, this is my favorite,” she says and hands the bottle to him.

He looks at it, curious as to what type of wine she likes, but sees no label. He looks back at her.

“How do I know what it is?” he asks.

She smiles at him and tilts the top of the bottle toward him. “These are bottled for me only. You can tell from the stamp on the cork.” On the top of the cork are the initials S.A.J.

He takes the bottle from her and looks at the cork. “I know what the S is for, and the J. May I ask what the A stands for?”

A sly grin on her face appears. “Alexis,” she tells him.

His eyes get a little bigger as he realizes the significance of her grin. “Let’s see if I have this straight,” he says. “Alex,” he points to himself, “Alex,” he points towards the door meaning Mr. Caldwell, “and Alex” as he points towards her.

Her grin gets a little bigger. “Yes, there are now three of us. Until Mr. Caldwell came here, everyone called me Alex. When they learned his name, they started calling me by my first name, Sara. This way when someone says ‘Alex,’ the person being referred to would know who they were talking about. When they heard what your name was Alex, Mr. Caldwell chose to go by a more proper title. We couldn’t call you Mr. Rogers - there is already a Mr. Rogers working in the lab you will be doing some of your training in. For some reason, Mr. Caldwell thought it appropriate because he will be your liaison between the Complex and you.”

She takes the bottle from him, walks back to the cabinet, and gets a corkscrew. Alex watches, as she has no problem removing the cork from the bottle. She gets two wine glasses and fills each half full. She takes a sip from one glass and hands Alex the other. He walks to the built-in fireplace and touches a button on the wall. A small set of flames emit from the set of logs on the grate. She turns toward Alex, who is looking back at her.

As he takes a sip from the glass, he looks hard at the young-looking woman. He is not sure how to get started asking about her history. But as curiosity begins to nag at him, he walks to the sofa and sits down. He looks up at her.

She walks to the sofa and sits down beside him. She takes a deep breath and begins her tale.

“My father was an explorer. Even as a young boy, he had no love for staying in one place. He never could quite understand the desire to find a single place to live in when there was a whole world full of undiscovered places to see. In 1781, at the age of 13, he left his home in Denmark to become a cabin boy on a trading ship. For years, he lived aboard various ships, gaining rank until he reached the title of Captain. In 1793, he heard of a set of massive mountains somewhere in Asia. It was said that there were mountains so high and treacherous that no man could ever climb them. That was all that my father needed in getting him started in mountain climbing. He left his ship in a port in Italy and headed for the Alps, where he would do his training. Over the next 6 years, he honed his skills at climbing various mountains until it became second nature to him. All the while, he kept asking if anyone might have information on the large Asian mountain range. Eventually, an old man from India came his way and gave him the information that he had been seeking. The mountain range was called the Himalayas. He packed everything and boarded the next ship for India. Once there, he started getting jobs, first as an assistant to the mountain people who guide caravans over the less dangerous parts of the mountains. Over the next couple of years, he learned all he could about the mountain range. He started hiring himself out as a guide and soon earned the reputation for having great skills as a guide.

“On one trip, he was guiding a group of 9 men into the mountains to do some surveying. They got caught in an unexpected winter storm. The winds were like the hurricanes that he had experienced at sea, but this was much worse. With the winds came unbearable cold and snow so deep that it continued to bar their way. My father knew that when a storm like this comes it can last for many days. After the third day of heavy winds and snowfall, he started looking for shelter, some place that they could use to stay out of the weather until the storm passed. During his search, he saw what looked like a cave. The opening was just large enough for people to get through, so he led the surveyors and the porters into the cave.

“Upon entering the cave, they were startled when they saw lights suddenly come on, from seemingly nowhere. There were no lamps that they could see, just little round holes in the ceiling that the light was coming from. Curious, my father climbed on the back of one of the porters and reached up to touch the source of the light. When he did, it surprised him. What he touched was as smooth as glass, but not hot like the glass surrounding a lit oil lantern normally would be. There was no detectable heat to it. It was cool to the touch. He looked closely but couldn’t see the source of the light. He climbed down off the porters back and they started to look around. As my father walked towards one wall that seemed solid, part of the wall began to move, leaving an opening. With a very bad blizzard still raging outside, they decided that the further away from the bad weather they could get the better. My father lit a lantern and proceeded into the dark passageway. Upon stepping past the sliding door, more lights came on in the corridor. They found the rooms that are located along the corridor just inside the inner door.”

“Yes, I remember seeing several open heavy doors just after we walked through the opening for the second door when we came in from the outside,” Alex says.

“Before very long, my father made his way to the entrance of the chute. When he walked up to the curved wall, he had no idea that there was a door there. It surprised him to see the curved wall slide away to reveal a small round room.”

“Didn’t the big red dot on the wall make him curious?”

“At that time, the red dot did not exist. All he saw was a blank, curved wall. The red dots were not added until many, many years later. At that time, they had no other way to identify the different chutes, so they used painted dots on the walls to identify them as chutes.”

”What about using the PDAs?”

“The PDAs did not exist until about 15 years ago. It took us that long to figure out how to add programming to the System.”

“When my father stepped into the chute, the system recognized him as a passenger. Since he did not speak the language of the previous inhabitants or the original builders, it did not recognize any words he said. Remember, the system has had no one living here for several thousand years. It had no way of knowing what he was saying.”

“How does it know what we say to it now?”

“It has a built-in voice recognition system. What the rest of the world knows as voice recognition is a program that must be trained on the sounds and speech patterns of a single individual. This system does not work like that. One of the functions of the system is that it can be taught to listen for certain sounds and patterns, no matter who is speaking. We found out that it can learn any language taught to it by simply by listening to various sound patterns and analyzing them.

“Since the system had not been taught to understand my father’s language, it did what it was programmed to do. It could not go up, so it took him down. Because of the inertia dampers, he had no way of knowing that he was moving. Because he did not select a level to stop at, it took him to the lowest level, Level One. When the door slid open, he saw a corridor where the walls and floor were a different color from the one that he had just left. He also did not see any of the surveyors or porters. He had no idea he has just dropped more than 25 miles into the Earth. He spent several hours down there until he got tired of looking for the others and ended up back at the same chute. It was lucky for him that he did. If he had gotten in another chute, it would have him taken directly back to the top level of that chute, in a completely different area of the Complex. It is possible that he would have never found his way out before he died of thirst or hunger. However, upon getting in the chute, the system recognized him as the same passenger and did as it was programmed to do: it takes the passenger back to the top level of that chute if the passenger does not select a level to stop at. When my father got to the top level and the door slid open, he saw the same corridor that he had used when he got into the chute the first time. This confused him because, once again, the inertia dampers had prevented him from knowing that he had just moved vertically, much less at all.

“The rest of his party had all but given up on him and were preparing to leave when one of the porters saw the door to the chute slide open and my father steps out. The others asked him where he had been. When the curved wall closed after my father stepped into it the first time, he did not come back, and they all became worried. The porters had started to think that evil spirits haunted the place and they had taken my father away.

“When my father reappeared, and told them what had happened, that he had been in a similar place that looked different, they could not tell if he was telling the truth or just deranged. My father could only convince two of the surveyors to accompany him into the chute. As before, when the chute closed and received no verbal commands, it took them back down to the lowest level. They eventually put two and two together and decided that the second corridor really was another place, similar in looks but different. It took several days to convince even one of the porters that the chute was safe to get into.

“Suspecting that this place was larger than they had originally thought, they started to do some preliminary mapping. Having surveyors with them proved to be invaluable. Starting with Level One, the surveyors would draw the maps while the rest went to explore and take notes. They found that they could survive in this strange place and decided to stay there until the spring. Food could be found by hunting in the mountains. Because the heating system was automatic, it came on when anyone entered a room based on preset temperatures. When they discovered that all the rooms had warmth to them, they knew they also had a water supply. They would go back to the first corridor, bring in snow from the outside into the first room where there was heat, the snow would melt, and they would have all the water they ever needed. By spring, they had discovered the emergency tubes. These are tubes, four feet in diameter, with ladders mounted on the walls that vertically connect each level.

“The procedure for mapping was to climb the ladder to the next level up, map it, and then get on the chute, which would take them back to the level that they had first seen. They would get out of the chute and get back in, allowing the chute to take them to the lowest level again. Then they would climb back up the access ladder, go down the corridor to the next access ladder, go up it to the next level up, and repeat the process. It would take many years of this before someone accidentally found the manual controls for the chute. They are in each chute and can be accessed by using the touch screen. Since they had no idea that the little gray square on the wall was really a way to control the chute, they never tried to do anything with it. They just thought it was a fancy little something to look at.

“One day, a porter accidentally touched the panel on the chute wall. The system illuminated it, showing a diagram the levels it is connected to. He showed it to my father, who had no idea how it worked but was sure that what he saw was a map of the thing that had been taking them from corridor to corridor. Until then, no one had any idea that the curved thing that they kept getting into was taking them straight up and down.

“It would be many more years before they would begin to determine the magnitude of the size of the place they had discovered.”

“So, when did all the technology get discovered?” asks Alex.

“That started coming in about 1810, when my father was checking out some panels he had discovered. He found that when he pressed certain combinations of little boxes on the panel, the lights in the room would dim. Press them in reverse and the lights go brighter again. What he had done was to type in the command to dim the lights by entering the command using the language of the original builders. It would be over 150 years before they would finally crack the code to allow them to begin translating what they saw on the panels.”

“Around 1830, one of the original surveyors discovers that there is a second language, completely different from the first. This leads them to believe that there have been two different groups of people living here, but they had no idea when they were here last or what had happened to them.”

“Sara, you are telling me a lot of things that happened to your father in a time that is over 150 years ago. You say that you are his daughter. How is that possible?”

“What I have been saying can all be verified and is true. I know it’s hard to believe, but it is fact. My father stayed in the Complex for the next 80 years. During that time, he barely aged. Proof of this was provided when he left the Complex to get some more help in surveying it. While away from the Complex, he visited an antique shop where he saw a painting of himself that had been created just before he left that fateful day on his way to make the discovery of a lifetime--this place. The shopkeeper saw that the man in his shop and the man in the painting looked exactly alike. He had no idea that the man he was looking at was really the same man in the painting. My father told him that the man in the painting was his grandfather and bought the painting for sentimental reasons. If you will remind me, I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

“Is there an explanation for him not aging?”

“It was not until the 1950s that we discovered one of the energy converters connected to a deep-core power rod was loose and leaking very minute amounts of energy. This energy is in the form of undetected waves. That loose conduit was in the same room that my father had set up as his office. The energy waves had been hitting him all that time and had slowly altered his DNA to the point that aging was being cancelled. His cell regeneration had increased to the point that his system no longer lost cells. Once, when he broke his arm, it completely healed overnight. That was the day he knew he was different. It took a long time for him to find out why.”

“Is he still here? I’d very much like to meet him.”

“No, he died 15 years ago when he was crushed by a large generator that was being moved. On the day that he died, he actually looked younger that he did when he had the painting made.”

“And you, Sara, how do you fit in all this?”

“The day he left the Complex and found his old painting, he also found something else--my mother. He had seen her walking to her father’s clothing shop, where she made shirts. From the first time that he saw her, he could not keep his eyes off her. He had to know who she was. He followed her and started asking around about her. He finally got his nerve up and went to meet her. When she turned the corner on her way home, she ran into him. As they look at each other, it was, as they say, magic. He knew that he needed to get back home and had been away from it too long, but did not want to leave her behind. Two weeks after meeting her, my father asked for her hand in marriage. But her father said no; he was not from India, he was a foreigner. My father pleaded with him, but it did no good. Sensing that things may get worse if he continued to ask, he secretly met with her that night and she decided to leave with him. He brought her back to the Complex. Love being what it is, all she cared about was being with him. I was born a year later.”

“Where is your mother now?”

“She died of old age at 87. We had no idea why my father stopped aging and she didn’t until we learned about DNA. We checked his and found an anomaly that allowed the energy from the loose conduit to stop the aging process. My mother did not have it, so she aged normally.”

“And you, do you have it like your father?” Alex asks.

“Yes, I inherited it. But mine is ever so slightly different. I do not have to be near the loose conduit. I only need to be on that level. During my earlier years, I spent most of my time in the upper levels, helping to catalog things that we would find. One day, my father decided that I was old enough to help him in his research. He let me follow him to his lab, which was on the same level as the Core, Level One. As I walked past the room with the core in it, I started feeling faint, as if I were sick. My father brought me back to my room which is 15 levels above the core. Once I left the level with the core in it, I started to feel better. I told my father that I was feeling better and that I wanted to help him with his work. He was hesitant and made me wait 2 days to make sure that I was not sick, and then he let me go back down there to work with him. As I got off the chute, I felt the same dizziness as before, but it was much milder than what it had been on my previous visit. I wanted to find out what was on that level and decided not to say anything to my father. It was more than 10 years before we discovered that, like my father, my aging had also slowed down. Neither of us had any idea that the system’s power generation system was responsible for our longevity.”

“And you don’t look a day over 100,” Alex jokes.

She smiles at him. “It’s been a long day, Alex. Tomorrow will be even longer. You should get some sleep. I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Any idea what I can expect?” he asks her.

“You’ve had some dreams that can show us what we need to see, but you can’t control them. There is a reason why you can see what you do in your dreams. We need to do find out why. We will start with asking some questions, then scans and DNA tests to see if there are any differences or anomalies. Then you will talk to some people who specialize in the subconscious and dream therapy. Either way, we need to find out what’s going on.”

“Will you be there?”

“Yes, for every minute. You’re a part of the Complex now. There is something about you that…” She stops talking, hesitates, kisses him softly, and looks at him. Alex had never seen eyes so clear and deep.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she says, as she walks briskly out the door and down the corridor.

Alex stands there in the living room, wondering what had just happened. He looks down to see MacGuyver looking up at him. “Do you want to go for a walk?” he asks the dog. It was getting late and he knew the dog would need to relieve himself soon.

MacGuyver paces back and forth, his signal for yes. Alex grabs the leash, the two IDs and heads out the door with the dog, heading for park located on the same level. After Sara’s visit and her kiss, he has some thinking to do. Her kiss was unexpected, and he was having a hard time forgetting the sad look in her eyes.