Soulmates. A. J. Mitar
naked in front of my best friend, and all she does is analyze my physical attributes.
I pretended I was running away, covering my family jewels with my hands, but in a natural way. Angelica blushed, showing that she was embarrassed by that situation, and decided to cover herself as well―she put her right arm over her chest and used her left hand to try to hide her pubes. Apart from hiding our shame, we were both intrigued by the circumstances we had found ourselves in.
“Where are we? Tell me! Answer me!” Angelica could no longer fight back the tears and started sobbing. “Where the hell have we ended up? How did we get here?”
“I can't really take a wild guess as of now,” I said, looking down and thinking that we had to analyze everything first and try to gather more facts. “Can you remember anything?”
“I remember that odd object hovering over us,” she said, wiping away her tears with her left hand. “Your car went off the road, then you were carrying me… I could hear Tommy's voice! I was looking for Lorenzo… Where's my baby? What happened to him? Is he alright? Tell me! I was running toward Tommy, then this blinding light came and… Next thing I know I woke up here,” she started sobbing again.
“Listen… Let's try to arrange all these weird events in chronological order. We need to look at this clearly.”
Angelica knelled down on the sand. She had the facial expression of someone who was getting ready to listen to something unbelievable, albeit elementary.
“We were going down the road when a mysterious object got closer. I'd say it was a UFO…”
Angelica seemed to agree with me, keeping her eyes wide open and nodding, while shaking a little bit. I noticed goose bumps covered her skin, despite the pleasant temperature.
“By what I could see, it was an unknown aircraft equipped with a technology that is not compatible with what we have right now, in 2023… I've never seen anything like those rays―they were incredible, like an alien weapon. That object abducted us with those rays.”
Angelica started to look confused, as if that theory taken from a “Twilight Zone” episode sounded extremely unbelievable to her. However, I had known her long enough to admire her open-mindedness. She was trying to adapt to that out-of-the-ordinary situation and recover from my verborrhea.
“Alex, I know you as an IT Consultant who is passionate about science fiction. I trust your observations, but there's something I need to ask you: Please analyze this situation carefully, without letting it be contaminated by your fan-boy fantasies.”
I was offended for a split second, but decided to leave that debate aside for the time being. “I know it sounds like a sci-fi movie, but that's exactly what I saw with my own eyes: you evaporated when you were struck by that ray… You disappeared into thin air. I was struck too, and that's how we both ended up here,” I added.
“Are you trying to tell me that it was the ray of light that brought us here?”
“At first, when I saw you disappearing, I thought it was some sort of disintegrating weapon. I feared the worst―that you had died. Then, I was hit as well, and I had that same sensation you described: I saw a blinding white light and, then, there was only silence… I woke up here, with you, in this unknown place. Since we're not dead, I can only assume those rays were actually part of a teletransporter… All in all, we were abducted!”
She showed signs of agreement and her body languages clearly indicated that I had found a crack in her shield of skepticism. Deep down, she was an intelligent woman and, despite my fantastic explanation, it all sounded logical and probable to her.
“Well, were we teletransported by that aircraft to this place then?” she asked. “But, where are we? Why would someone bring us here?”
We had been in that unknown place for only a few minutes and had little to go by as far as finding answers to all those questions. “What do you want me to say, Angelica? We don't have any clue to create a satisfactory theory… And, there's more: all these arguments I just shared with you are nothing but conjectures. For all I know, we might as well be dead, in a limbo, waiting to go to the other side. What the hell do I know? We should just try to find someone who can help us. How about we start over there? Let's walk there and explore this area going down that path,” I said, taking her by the hand and showing her the trail through the oak grove.
She hesitated for a moment, but then agreed to follow me. Being careful not to expose our genitals too much, we followed our way towards the unknown.
That oak grove was nothing but a small group of trees that are unknown to most people living in the Po Valley area, but largely found throughout the rest of the Italian peninsula. I knew them well because I had observed the indigenous vegetation in other parts of the country during my business trips. These trees were enormous and its branches were so intertwined that they created a thick dome that was almost impenetrable to sunlight. I thought about locating ourselves geographically by looking at the sky, then I cursed myself for never having pursued a passion I had since I was a boy: Astronomy.
“Do you know anything about astronomy?” I asked.
“Do you really think this is the time and place to joke around?” she asked rhetorically.
Maybe… If I could use my rudimentary knowledge in astronomy, I'd be capable of locating us, even if it were in a generalized way… We could at least know in each hemisphere we are. If I were able to find the Northern Star, that would tell me we're in the southern hemisphere; if I found the Southern Cross, that would mean we're in the northern hemisphere―I thought, stretching my astronomy fundamentals. I made a deal with myself that I'd pay attention to the stars as soon as dark, clear skies were presented to me.
As we walked, I glanced at Angelica, her breasts bouncing with each step. She was no longer covering them, because she wanted to pay attention to the unknown path, too.
“Do you think we're… we're still in Italy?” she asked me, looking left and right, studying the landscape.
“I don't know,” I shrugged. “But the landscape is similar,” I tried to give her a more comforting answer. “The water in the lake, the vegetation, the mountains in the distance… It all points to the great lakes in northern Italy. I just don't know which one…”
Angelica was shivering and hadn't notice the margins of the lake and the mountains, but I had paid attention to every detail and thought our surroundings looked similar to those of Lake Como or Garda. However, one crucial thing was missing: the several villages along the coast. As far as I could see, there were no traces of civilization anywhere.
After we walked about a mile and a quarter down the winding path, we finally reached the edge of the grove. About fifty yards away from that corridor of trees, we found a weird welcome sign. Our jaws dropped when we saw a square green sign with a male and a female silhouette. The images were drawn side by side and had one hand up, as if they were saying hello to us. That reminded me of the messages we sent to space last century…
“What does this mean?” Angelica had stopped suddenly and her muscles were tense. “Is someone waiting for us? Dammit, what's going on?”
We had to keep going to find out. We took a few more steps out of the grove. That's when we were able to admire the futuristic, majestic building erected at the bottom of a hill. It was a very large farmhouse with an exuberant garden and bushes. I started walking faster, pulling Angelica by the hand.
Once we approached the farmhouse, we stopped to admire it. The house was white and had a post-modern look with large stained-glass windows all over the place. It looked like a “V” with a flat base. There was a terrace on the concave part of it, with a splendid wooden porch. Next to it, there was a trapeze-shaped pool and everything was surrounded by orchids arranged in a complex design.
The construction material had actually called my attention. It wasn't cement or metal, and it reflected light in a weird way―at least a way I had never seen before, because it was luminescent. Does anyone live there?―I wondered.
We followed a path around the pool, crossed the terrace, and approached the entrance, where there were two