A Wider Sky Ch. 04

A Wider Sky: Beyond Eclipse Series

by Talyis Bagley Ellison

Copyright first edition 2013, 2015

Chapter 4

The fresh sun rose. The street lights that had burned all night were now like heavy golden eyelids going to sleep.

Ben and I walked towards the inspection building and yet not a single soul was on the street. It being early morning still didn't convince me that the residents of this sleepy town ever came out.

Quiet Ben walked beside me with my duffle swung over his shoulder. I felt like I was sneaking away like a naughty secret from this new world.

It felt so unreal.

I moved hands from my jeans pockets to my coat pockets before settling at my sides for a moment then back into my jeans pockets. I hadn't slept the night before and now I felt like I had drank an entire gallon of caffeine.

I was going to meet aliens today. I was going to a college where I am going to surrounded by aliens Ben swore were not scary looking. I was going to be the only human on campus. I was most likely going to die today.

I shook my hands hard, but they still felt numb to me. My entire body felt numb, like I was walking in a dizzying haze. I didn't sleep well last night and I was to wired now.

Last night I tried to sleep. I even pulled the picture of my mother out of my jean jacket pocket and laid down to sleep next to it.

But I couldn't sleep. I realized it was the first time I was going to bed without my mother sharing the bed with me. She wasn't their to tuck me in and tell me she loved me. She wasn't there to hug me and remind me that she wouldn't let any aliens come and take me away. She wasn't here and I was alone.

She was far away in the colony, shivering in our cold dark apartment. I cried because I knew she was most likely feeling the same way I did, missing me. Wondering if I had been exterminated or was still alive. I knew that in that moment she was missing me as much as I her.

And now today, I was definitely going to meet my greatest fear head on, aliens. I was going to see them, live with them and even eat their food.

"Are you ready?" Ben spoke for the first time since leaving his home. He shifting my heavy bag to his other shoulder so he could look at me.

"What does Maddie do?"

Ben rolled his eyes, "You and these questions. Do me a favor. After I answer this one question. Don't ask too many questions especially once you get to college. OK?"

I nodded because he was right. My inquisitive nature was getting the best of me. It would be easy to tread on dangerous territory or be misunderstood which would result in deadly measures.

"She works for the aliens. She is a fusion meter maid."

I tried not to allow my astonishment seem like a judgement seem too visible. Why the president's daughter of the former world was a meter maid? Maddie lived in the realm, she went to the best schools in the old world that money could afford and now she was a meter maid.

"She sees them?" I asked and he raised an eyebrow warning me that I had maxed my question quota. "Ben, I am afraid of aliens," I blurted out, my time was running out. We were reaching the city limits heading towards the inspection building. Moments were ticking away for me to finish preparing for what I was going to experience within the next hour.

Ben's chuckle married his toothy charming grin, "Kiowa, you are going to be the only human at the college. I think you better get over that fear right now."

"You promise they look like humans."

"Yes, Kiowa I promise. They don't look like tall skin grey beings with big black, bottomless soulless eyes; and no, they are not green and slimy. Remember, they lived here for half a century before Eclipse, blending in with humans, living side by side with us, as they do now."

Side by Side? Were there aliens living next door to Maddie and Ben? I hadn't seen anyone in town ever; it was like a ghost town, but perhaps they were right.

"And to answer your question, no, Maddie works with humans. Don't worry Kiowa, they are expecting you - including the students - but the administrators have decided to not disclose that you are the human. They want to see how they interact with you and who can and cannot pinpoint that you are human." That actually sounds worse than little green or purple monsters. I chewed my lip because shifting my hands were not effectively calming me. "You see, nothing to worry about."

A chill ran over my body and Ben again shrugged, this time he pulled me in close and gave me a hug. He became a father figure in that short moment; I would never forget this moment. This is how I had imagined my father being like, trying to ease my fears.

"Don't talk about the Eclipse as much as possible. The Eclipse to aliens is old history, long gone. Don't talk about the colonies or how things are different and the colonies. Don't talk about aliens and humans in the same sentence as much as possible ok?"

"Or else they will exterminate me."

"Yes," he said simply, his tone was cold but he squeezed me tighter to him. "Don't worry. They look human, behave human other than they have some special powers-"

"Special powers?"

Ben shook his head and chuckled, "Girl you don't know anything about the Y'vroi do you?"

"They vaporized entire towns and people."

"Yes, they did but they wont vaporize you. They have benign powers as well. More everyday, not take-over-the-world powers. You'll see."

I sighed heavily and for a second my worries fell to the ground like flimsy shingles.

I remembered what my mother said about school integration during the Civil Rights Movement. The black students heard awful things about white people. Although, the white classmates did do awful things to the black teens, some of the white students were nice, kind and even helped - ignoring race. I just needed to have courage and find those people... aliens.

Ben stopped in front of the inspection building to gestured towards the hovercraft floating above ground a few yards away. It gearing up to take me to college or a nightmare.

He smiled, hiding his perfect mouth yet his eyes twinkled fatherly. He rubbed to top of my head. "You'll be fine kiddo. I will pick you up in time for you to miss the festivities. You'll be fine. Don't worry and don't fear." He passed my duffle bag to me and whispered in my ear. "Here comes one right now."

Like a bullet, I shot my eyes over his shoulder. Coming out of the double doors of the inspection building was a tall blonde women dress in a grey suit tailored like a slim airline stewardess. As she walked towards us my breath hitched.

On her lapel above her heart she wore a pin with an Y'vori symbol of the earth being eclipsed. I shuddered, she was definitely an alien to wear that symbol proudly.

"Ms Walker, are you ready to go?" she sounded human to my relief. The only thing odd was that she stood tall with perfect posture. I admonished myself for my quick judgement. I wasnt that odd because did Ben and Maddie also had good postures. I had disseminated poor posture was for the downtrodden of the colony ghettos.

"Thank you Ben," I held my free hand out to shake his. Ben enveloped me into a big hug. I was set aback, I had made him my surrogate father at that moment.

"Study hard kid," my grin quickly attempted to adopt his toothy grin.

I climbed into the hoover craft and the woman followed me. Again my duffle bag was placed in the middle of the circular standing section. The woman, the alien - what do I call her. She stood across from me and gave a hand signal and hovercraft floated up into the air.

Unlike the first trip, the craft ascended higher into the air until we were high above the clouds. Within seconds the craft buzzed with a high-pitched scream, tossing me hard against the wall as it wooshed into the air. We were going so fast, all I could see was bright lights zip past the window of the craft, as if it were metal grinding on stone producing sparks.

The woman kept her lips in a tight line as if she was annoyed by my fascination. I leaned away from the window to try not seem fazed by the spectacular speed we were traveling.

"We are traveling to The Realm. It's over 1,000 miles away but we shall be there shortly."

"I thought we were in The Realm?"

She snorted and rolled her eyes, "No human has ever entered The Realm, we've reserved the best land after our planet's Tectonic plates moved the continents. You were just in the former Mexico City and Osaka, your colony is due south of that new land form."

I took note that the Y'vori consider Earth their planet and stuffed the reference in a filing cabinet of my mind not to infer that earth belongs to humans.

"You will tell your classmates that you are the daughter of a fleet general. Your mother and father met before Eclipse at college in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Before Eclipse, your father was an engineer for the electrical company and your mother a nurse at Santa Fe County General.

"Everything else will be in your dossier, do not deviate from your dossier. It's for your own safety.

She handed me a tablet with a picture of my fake alien father and mother.

"You will not have roommates this year, but if you do well, and not deviate from your dossier you may have a roommate in your second year. Again, if you deviate from your dossier -"

"You will kill me?" I gulped.

The woman laughed and her eyes twinkled. Her laugh was so human, I was again stumped. "No. However, you are on your own to deal with your classmates, if and when they discover you are human."

"Can I really study anything that I want to?"

Her mouth smoothed into a hard line and she tipped her neck as if to release tension. I worried if I had asked the wrong question too soon into the game.

"You may study any of the approved majors, yes. Have you selected what you want to study?"

"I don't know?" I answered.

She huffed, "Typical human."

She took my tablet and her fingers glided over it opening documents and tabs before handing it back to me with a list of programs.

I was bummed that Astronomy was not on the list, but I can assume why it wasn't.

Give a human the opportunity to learn about other lifeforms and worlds, gives him the idea that he can aspire to take back the world taken from him, or escape the world he is enslaved in.

My options where art, human and alien languages and literature, human literature, and earthly archaeology. All were technically useless because I assumed that they wouldn't let me pick a career post college.

Even though Ben and Maddie didn't want to say it, I suspect their lives were more like life in the colony because they didn't have a choice of career. And this list of approved study programs meant that I also didn't have much choice either.

"I guess I will study Earthly Archaeology," I answered.

She stifled a smiled turned upside down in indifference.

"Good choice. There is an excellent professor who is coming back from sabbatical that will be your advisor. Professor Windsor has been studying the effects of how your people destroyed the planet and how we have saved it."

Her chin tipped up at her statement of how the aliens saved the world.

She looked over my appearance taking me in from top to bottom for the first time and I shifted nervously feeling scrutinized.

"You look like an average 20-something-year-old to my surprise. But you need a pin." Her nose crinkled and she pulled a pin out of her pocket and handed over to me. She tipped her head step-ford wives style and smiled hiding her teeth ingeniously. "Wear it with pride."

I took the pin and without second thought to read too much into it, I pinned it to my jacket and shook my long curly braids out - a habit of physically stating to myself that I've made a choice - stand by it. I rolled my shoulders back and waiting for the next test she would throw at me.

My fingers pawed my mother's picture in my jacket pocket. In retrospect, I was glad I snuck her picture in my jacket. Because, having a dossier of fake parents meant that, had my mother's picture been in my duffle, it would have definitely not been approved. The chance-opportunity to hold onto her picture made me feel confident that maybe things would indeed go my way. I would go to college, stave off being a seamstress a few more years and maybe I would learn something about myself. But I knew already, if I didn't learn anything else, I knew I was learning how to have courage.

*****

To My Dear Readers,

I am working without an editor so it may be rough in a few areas. I am solely trying to re-work the story in context to the next two books that has reached a plot point that needs momentum from the first book. So I am re-working it on your experience and feedback so I would love to hear thoughts - you are all my Betas.

Thank you for reading.

Cheers and Happy Reading,

~Talyis.