Twin Earth

“Tom!” Rachel shouted, shaking my shoulders way harder than I would have expected from her. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Rachel asked with a desperate look on her face.

“I passed out, that’s what’s wrong. My head won’t stop spinning. It has been doing that ever since we started speaking to Mr Turtle over there.”

“What are you talking about? What turtle?” Rachel replied, confused.

“You know, that fucking turtle thing that turned to ashes. The creature that couldn’t get over the fact we were mammals. You know? That turtle alien thing,” I rambled, rubbing my head, which wouldn’t stop throbbing.

“What are you on about? There’s no turtle here. Are you sure your head is okay? One minute you were complaining ‘where are those bloody creators’ and then you passed out. You woke up rambling and then just passed out again. You’re freaking me out.”

“What do you mean, no turtle?” I mumbled with an uneasy feeling washing over my stomach. “We both spoke to it! We thought it was a rock. We walked over to it and then it started talking to us. Then you screamed when it turned to ashes and...”

“Tom, you’re talking nonsense,” Rachel interrupted. “There’s no-one here but us.”

“But we had a whole conversation!” I whispered, dumb founded, looking around at thankfully the same mountain beach landscape I had seen earlier. “Did I just hallucinate the whole thing?”

“You must have done because none of that happened. Tom, I need you to focus. We need to figure out what to do and I can’t do that by myself.”

“No, that did happen. That was totally real. It even got dark and I could feel his ashes blow over us. It was gross, but it was real. I did not imagine that!”

“Tom, it’s still dusk,” Rachel replied confused. “The light hasn’t changed at all and there’s nothing around us but mountains, sand and sea.”

“If that’s true, then none of this is real either. How do I know I’m not hallucinating everything that is happening right now? How do I know that even you Rachel are real? Maybe I’m stuck in some kind of Star Trek holo-deck.”

“Ugh, how is any of this helping us?” Rachel replied annoyed, but I didn’t care. I was beginning to become convinced that none of what we were experiencing was real.

“End program,” I shouted out into the wind, causing Rachel to suddenly jump back in alarm.

“What the hell are you doing?” Rachel replied in surprise.

“Computer, end program!” I shouted again.

“Tom, this is not Star Trek for god’s sake. Do you really think that is going to do something?” Rachel shouted angrily, but before she could convince me otherwise, the surrounding landscape slowly faded away to a black screen all around us.

“Holy shit,” I whispered, “it worked.”

Dumbfounded, Rachel gawped as the sand beneath our feet began to dissipate into a hard, stone-like floor and the sound of the waves echoed out into silence around us.

“I was right,” I mumbled, surprisingly gleeful considering our predicament was far from over.

“Where are we then? How is a black room any better than what we had before? Why don’t you try Computer, give me food, because that would be a hell of a lot more useful right now, don’t you think?” Rachel replied sarcastically, but just as she finished complaining, a selection of various foods from Earth materialised right in front of our feet.

“You were saying?” I blurted out finally after we stared in astonishment at the bowl of food for at least five minutes.

“How is this possible?” Rachel whispered, bending down to touch a banana.

“Computer, show us the creators,” I declared, causing Rachel to flinch, but even she didn’t stop me this time and instead looked around the dark room waiting for something to happen.

Slowly the black void around us dissipated into a clear windowed chamber that over-looked thousands, if not millions of other similarly designed chambers, spreading out in all directions further than the eye could see. Many of the chambers were empty, but just as many seemed to contain beings from other worlds, all who seemed oblivious to our presence. Instead, they were consumed by their own various activities. Some of which seemed quite normal and familiar such as sitting at a table and writing, but others were more physical and violent, thrashing around their chambers like trapped animals, but clearly none of us were prisoners because many of the beings were also walking freely in and out of their chambers along never ending passages that ran in every direction between the chambers. The creatures were also extremely varied in appearance. Many were humanoid like us, but predominantly reptilian or insect in nature and it soon became clear that mammals were not the usual visitor to whatever this place was as I couldn’t detect anyone like ourselves in any of the chambers as far as I could see. Some of the beings were especially weird, if they were even beings at all, such as a gloopy blob of what could only be described as liquid metal opposite us that seemed content on morphing into different shapes and colours of itself with no sense of direction or purpose.

“What is this place?” Rachel asked, finally dropping the banana.

“This must be where all the gateways end up,” I muttered, more to myself than anyone.

“What gateways?”

“Like the ellipse we came through. The turtle, whatever he was, said that our creators had left us many gateways, but we never came to meet them. He asked if we had used them to visit any of the other beings in our own galaxy.”

“Our own galaxy? Why, how many of us are there?” Rachel asked stunned, turning to look at me.

“That’s what you said in my hallucination as well,” I muttered, amused.

“I did?”

“Say that wasn’t a hallucination. What if it was a message for us? The turtle did say he was the guardian of Pangea.”

“Old Earth?”

“I’m beginning to get Deja-vu.”

“I said that too I presume?” Rachel replied, frowning at me once again. “So what was the message?”

“Whatever the turtle was, he wasn’t of much help put it that way. Perhaps some kind of illusion to reassure us on arrival. I don’t know. He seemed more confused with us than anything.”

“Why, what did he say?”

“Nothing to be honest. Just that he was the guardian of Earth and that he’d been waiting for thousands of years for us to arrive and that it was strange we weren’t reptiles.”

“Reptiles? Why would we be reptiles? What like, descendants of dinosaurs or something?”

“Maybe, I don’t know. I just said they got wiped out.”

“Do you think all of these creatures are from our galaxy then?” Rachel asked, looking around in astonishment.

“Probably from all over the universe. Why? You going to sit and record each and every one then?” I retorted sarcastically.

“Seriously Tom, why do you do that? Why do you take a situation as amazing as this and turn it into a joke? How did you ever get into science with such a bad attitude?”

“Wow. I was only joking.”

“Do you think this is the time to joke? Who knows where the hell we are or what is happening back on Earth at the moment. Do we even have an Earth to go back to anymore? Have you considered that whilst you’ve been sniping at me non-stop? Both of our planets could have been destroyed by now.”

As Rachel’s words filtered into my ever increasing aching head, I knew she was right. Maybe I was just using sarcasm to ignore the fact that I was just as scared as she was.

Sighing, I looked away from Rachel’s glare and tried to ignore thinking about my father and wondering whether he or anyone else we had left behind was still alive and tried to organise a plan.

“So what do we do Tom? What’s your next amazing move?” Rachel grunted, finally looking away.