In the shadow of the stolen light. Nika Veresk
UCD on Lora’s temple buzzed softly, lighting a green colour which was indicating an incoming call. “Will you excuse me, I’ll have to take it,” she explained to the man. “Yes, Jean.”
After a short conversation she returned to the previous discussion with the guest from Earth.
“I was going to show you some of the local attractions…”
“What’s that?”
“This?” the girl touched the mini contraption with her palm. “It’s a universal communication device, UCD for short.”
“Is it a walkie-talkie?”
Lora frowned trying to remember the meaning of this word and finally answered.
“It connects people, but that’s only one of its functions.”
“Why didn’t I hear the voice of the other speaker?”
“A UCD transforms sound into an electrical pulse and transmits it onto the auditory nerve.”
“What else can this device do?”
“It provides a connection to the central computer, thanks to which any information that I may need reaches the brain through the visual nerve and visualizes as if in front of my very eyes. Again, only I can see those images.”
Without realizing it, they arrived at the teleport cabin.
“Good morning!” Initiated by the arrival of two passengers inside the spacious matte glass cabin, the local teleport system interrupted Lora’s explanations. “State your destination, please.”
“The North City Park,” decisively said Lora.
The doors closed, opening a second later.
“Welcome to the central square of the North Park!” reported the programme.
The young people went outside and Derek looked around. They were in the middle of a brightly lit hall with a colonnade, while to the right and left of them other tele-cabin doors were opening and closing. Coming out of the cabins, people were joining a moderately moving crowd following the direction indicated by the neon lines on the floor.
“We are now on the fifth level of the North Park teleport complex,” explained Lora. “The building looks like a pyramid based on a square with a side of one hundred and fifty meters long and with nine hundred cabins on its twenty levels. There’s a viewpoint at the top, on the twenty-first level, boasting an amazing view of the park. The main staircase runs along the eastern side, we’ll use it to go down to the park.”
“The North Park, the eastern side,” said the young man thoughtfully, proceeding alongside Lora. “If this is a city in space, then where do the sides of the world come from?”
“A good question,” Lora smiled. “The city territory is divided into four parts: Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Titanium. On the one hand, these are just names that have nothing to do with the real sides of the world; but on the other hand, they are the internal guidelines – simply indispensable.”
The two of them slowly joined the bright lively flow of people ascending the staircase, and they soon found themselves on a large square, with a tall white pyramid of the teleport itself towering over it. Further down stretched a real park. Short trees and bushes framed the winding paths and straight alleys, while braided stems of blooming ivy were climbing up the park pavilions. Here and there the neatly-cut lawns were decorated with rock gardens featuring blooming flowers and gurgling clear streams. Derek looked up to face the clear sky, lit by the rays of the rising sun.
“It’s hard to believe that these are not real clouds…” he noted.
“No matter how realistic they look, these are just projected images,” Lora added, feeling a bit sad.
“The park’s so huge…”
“Yes, it is. The North Park is the biggest in the city. The city fairs, our painters’ exhibitions and alien cultures’ displays are all held here.”
“Alien cultures? You actually have found traces of life on other planets?” Derek was mistrustfully looking at Lora.
“Why traces? Travelling through our galaxy we have encountered many living alien civilizations. We collaborate with some of them, exchanging technologies and resources…”
“That’s incredible!..”
“That means that at the moment of your spaceship launch, contact with other alien races hadn’t been established yet.”
“Well, this… or my memory is failing me tragically…”
“At your apartment you can gain access to the central computer in order to get an idea about all the voyages of ‘Solar Flotilla’. There you can also get descriptions of all the habitable planets we have visited…”
“That would be great…” the guest from Earth suddenly froze and his chair stopped moving.
“What’s wrong?” Lora stopped beside him looking worriedly into his face.
“My ship…”
“You mean the rescue unit?”
“Yes, I wasn’t alone there. Did you find only me there?”
Lora slightly pushed his chair to a bench down in the alley and sat.
“There was also a woman in your rescue unit. Unfortunately, she had died before we arrived.”
There was a pause and the man shook his head.
“I don’t remember her name,” he said bitterly. “I’m trying but I just can’t recall anything!”
His last words were permeated with obvious rage.
“Are you angry with yourself?” her question sounded very quietly but Derek reacted immediately.
“Wouldn’t you be?!”
Lora shook her head.
“Of course I can become angry… But rage is a tremendously destructive force that can cause a lot of harm.”
Derek’s anger immediately turned into amazement and now he was intently listening to Lora.
“We have learnt to control the self-destructive part of our personality,” she explained, seeing how much it puzzled him.
“Control? What do you mean by that? Control your temper?”
“No, we don’t actually repress fury, but we realize its futility.”
Derek still didn’t have any idea of what she was talking about.
“You are people though, aren’t you?” he tried to clarify. “Ordinary people get angry, fight, become furious…”
Lora sighed heavily, realizing that she was unable to explain her point of view to Derek without revealing to him the genuine reasons for the long voyages of ‘Solar Flotilla’.
“Derek, there is no doubt that we are human beings and that our ancestors were from Earth. But you must know something else. The doctor said that you mustn’t get stressed…”
“Please, spare me, Lora! What haven’t you told me? Do you mean about me spending 50 years in the rescue unit, and that since then the earthlings started flying into space on huge spaceships?”
“It’s much more complicated than that.”
“Even more complicated?” Derek repeated her words hesitantly.
“Our ancestors left Earth more than two hundred and fifty years ago. We think your ship was sent to look for us fifty years later. You were in stasis for two hundred years, Derek. And, to tell you the truth, I don’t know how to begin.”
There was a long pause.
“Every story has a beginning,” the young man uttered unexpectedly.
Lora nodded.
“In 2014 Andre Mendes, one of the richest men on the planet at that time, founded a society called