Aftermaths

Lidia Donaldson entered the kitchen of the safe house. Safe flat, really, in an average neighborhood in Queens.

She and her daughter had to move out of their "America's Best Quality Inn", after whatever happened last week.

The place was full of feds, and they had all those questions about the girl in the lift. She was some kind of crazy drugs runner?  Awfully nice for a thug... they placed her and Molly under surveillance' so, now, they are cooped inside a rundown flat, together with a "protection detail" - three agents that take turns, to ensure their security.

They take turns, THEY - she and Molly have no such luck.  They had to stay closed there, all the time.

- "Isn't life wonderful?" 

The TV was going on, in the sitting room - the kid agent, what's her name? McAllister. She was so uptight, usually... - "So, you are finally believing me? We have no ideas who that girl was or what was she doing - this whole mess is useless. Can't we just go home, and go on about our life?"

"I agree, it was useless" - this voice was new, and it startled Linda. If the feds had brought in a new member into their protection detail, they'd have presented her. It wasn't cold, or angry, rather... whimsical? Bemused-

McAllister is on the sofa, alright, but she is out cold.

At her side, a diminutive blonde glances at Linda, with clear gray eyes just one shade of blue short of really being white. Linda turns to run away and start to scream.

She never managed to reach the door of Molly's room.

Lousy feds...

When Linda wakes up, she is naked, on a small medical bed in a white room. No sign of Molly. Maybe the blonde bitch didn't take her... sure it was hard enough to carry her body away, under the Feds nose.

Maybe... she could have accomplices, she could have entered the flat after having stun the others. Nothing was sure... but Lidia's heart wanted desperately to believe that her daughter wasn't here. That she was safe.

"I know that you are awake" - The blonde bitch's voice, again... Linda sits on the bed, and looks around herself better.

 The room is white, it is difficult to see how big it is... the trick photographers use to hide the limits of the studios, carefully homogeneous lights and curtains to hide the angles, all smoothed out - Linda remembered it from her stint as model, when she was in college.

Too ethnic and short for a serious career, but a lot of bikini shots - when she had high hopes and great illusions.These guys must have done the same... tried to give the illusion that this place was a white, infinite space.

No shadows - the light seems o come from every direction. If they built this to impress their preys - they succeeded. It was extremely upsetting.

Lidia's trying to calm herself, while the most horrible stories, urban legends mostly, that she has ever heard chase each other inside her head. Some crazy cult? Organ traffickers? People that sells women to rich foreigners? - this thought stabs Lidia at the heart as, if she is right and this is their purpose, no way that they would have left Molly out.

There is a chair, in front to the desk where the white bitch sits, reading a short book. The woman doesn't care about Lidia's nudity, no more than she cares for the rage that her body language increasingly show. Lidia picks the chair, and tries to smash it on the bitch's head.

"Nice heart, mommy" - when the hell did she moved - "but, I can't let someone resort to violence, here".
The blonde is behind her, and has taken away the chair, prying it from Lidia's hands, like it was some dangerous toy. Her speed, her strength... Lidia wasn't sure, she was no athlete, never did martial arts or anything, but this.

This did not look human - fright, Lidia feels fright, all of a sudden. Her fury has disappeared... if this is how her captors are, getting angry will accomplish nothing.

"Molly, where is Molly?" - will the bitch tell her the truth? Lidia must know.

"In another room" - the blonde looks around looking, for a small fraction of second, not as the tough as steel thug that she must necessarily be. Disconcerted, upset, worried... frightened? Why someone like that should be frightened, looking around in her own den?

Lidia set the discomforting thought aside.

"She is in another room like this" - the blonde bitch continues - "waiting to to be examined."


"Examined?" - (Oh my Fucking God ) -"What kind of exams?"

"To see if if she is useful" - the pale criminal seems uneasy, again, - "like you".

Lidia's feels like she is falling - organ traffickers! They exist, for real!

"And if she is not useful?"

"She will be discarded" - the monster grins, cold and distant, again. Lidia jumps oon the other woman, hoping to overpower her - and then? Her mind doesn't reach so long - but she fails, again. This

time, her captor knocks her out.

When she wakes up again, Lidia is already crying. The place is... odd.

Looks like an hospital, but everything feels off. A bit, not very much, but... off. Whoever they are, these guys take scenography seriously.

Another woman is waiting for her to come awake. This is a smallish, very androgynous brunette, with a perplexed expression.

"Please, beware - your body has not recuperated its full strength".

"So, have you decided that we are useful?"

"That woman, that  place, are twelve hundred and six years away from here. You have slept for a long, long time, and traveled a great distance, to be here."

"What?"

"My name is Vikar Kribsly, I am a nurse, and I am charged with helping you int these first hours. You are a very honorable guest of the second Gubernist Theocracy. Feel free to ask, I will answer as best I can."

This made no sense... "Gubernist Theocracy?" - theocracy? those were places like Iran, Siria, some of the many 'stan... but this place looked remarkably modern.

"Where, were are we?" - without giving time to the woman to answer - "where is my daughter?"

"Your daughter is alive, and well. She is coming here... we encountered some problems, reviving you. I fear that you will discover her somewhat grown up."

P-Problems? Reviving? - "Oh, my God, those maniacs froze us? Something like that? To ship us out of the country?"

"In a manner of speaking. You were 'engrammed',  around twelve hundred years ago."

Lidia's front tickles, as she feels its muscles compose her "I am hugely pissed off" frown... the nurse's words keep making no sense, for her. If this woman was a nurse... could as well be some crazy sci-fi cult.

"Mom?, Mom?" - it's the voice of Molly - somewhat changed for wear, maybe.

"I am here, love. I am her..."

She is  Molly, alright... the cheeks are unmistakable. But she look grown up. Some eight years more grown up than in her  memory... Molly is a young woman, almost the size of her mother, now.

"Oh, Molly" - where the hell is my girl? This can't be her - bbut she is - but she can't.

Molly sees her mother confusion, and talks with the nurse "can we go out?"

"I wouldn't advise it, at least not before she has grown used to normal Sun light"

"Yeah, right" - why that face? Like there was something inherently unpleasant, in Sun's light  - Molly adored outdoors activities.

"How much time, before we can go for a walk?" - "The program is already running... in a couple of hours, the light will have normalized to a normal sun day".

Lidia could have sworn that light had grown dimmer and more red, instead. Like some old bulb receiving less current.

Two hours later, she was finally allowed outside... and she finally understood everything.

The Sun light was dimmer, and red. Much redder than even the sun at dusk.

Molly passed her a couple of goggles, some kind of light amplifiers that turned the image  brighters and green.

"They saw that we "expatriates" get really nervous, with the red light, so they cooked up these things."

"What, what has happened to the Sun?"

"To this Sun? Nothing, it has always been like this"

"This? THIS Sun?" - no way - "Molly, what are you saying?"

"Mom, welcome to Earth, first planet from the Sun - or, rather, using the name that we gave it on our Earth, welcome to Transsia, first planet of the Barnard Star. Our new home."

Lidia remained speechless... could it be true? No way, no way. But what other explications were there?

"Interstellar travel?" - Lidia wasn't much into science, or fiction,  but she knew it was impossible... at least, impossible in a human's lifetime. Hibernation, that was the answer!

"So, they really froze us! And sent into space! - she opened the mouth again, but no words came out. She was speechless...

"It makes no sense... what about the drug dealers? the Thugs? It's been the government? Some crazy  cospiration?"

"Mom..."

" I need to sit down for a second" - on a bench, in the park... she lowers her goggles, and then immediately regrets it.

The red, glumly light surely doesn't help at all, and the trees look positively black ( "the local plants use iron, instead of copper, to absorb energy from the sunlight... in reality, every one of them is bright red, dark red, brown red... with so few visible light, the local flora never created flowers as we know them. It is a world in red and black, really" - a few days later, Andrew, one of the other "expatriates" would explain her this, while teaching her some of  the  mysteries of the local cuisine) - decidedly, not a sight you want under your eyes, while having a panic attack.

"Mom, it was no government - nobody know who"The Sender" was, or even "what" the sender was"

"Oh, come on? Some crazy billionaire sent us? Really?"

"And, we were not frozen, mom"

"But, we are here, and what was saying that nurse?  Twelve hundred and six years?"

"That's a guess made by their experts, evaluating the ship's propulsion system and other stuff... about 1200 years of travels, to cover the six light-years of distance form Earth to here. The expression caught on... I think they like it as a joke" - a pause - "a joke on us."

"I hope they find it funny, because I don't think it really is".

"No, mom, it is not funny."

"Oh, well, we are alive - that's the important. I thought that they were going to cut us to pieces, and sell them on the market . That, or something  something else".

"They did cut us to pieces" - Molly's expression goes way, way bleaker than jsut a moment before- "though, I do not know if they sold those pieces on the market".

"What do you mean? We are here."

"Mom, hibernation... can't really cut through thousands of years in space. Even with massive . and I mean massive - radiation shielding, you'd end up absorbing so much molecular damage that, the moment you gets revived, almost all of your cells breaks down , or go cancerous, or go cancerouses and break down, or worse"

"Worse? There is worse"

"Yes, maybe... "

"The sender didn't rely on hibernation, not really"

"What? How?"

"Mom, we are... copies" - "the original me, and you, disappeared twelve hundred years ago"

"What wen into space were copies of our minds, in self adjusting, redundant solid state memories."

"No"

"Our minds, and of our DNA... almost all solid state data, plus some  molecular data that was continually verified and corrected"

"No"

"But, I  am me, mom. I am Molly, you are still my mom. Everything is going to be all right."

"No, no, no, I am alive, I  am... I am not a zombie".

"Yes, you are mom. We are"

A long silence crept between them, while Lidia tried to absorb all the novelties "So, we are... ghosts?"

"In a way, it is one of the problems with the locals"

"There are problems with the locals? really?"

"We are invading zombies from outer space, after all" - the joke makes both women laugh.

"No, mom, really... we are invading zombies from outer space. From a system they are at war with, too"

"Eh? War? But, if travel "

"Mom, these people... they are religious. Really, really religious... they are trying to reverse-engineer the tricks of the ship that brought us here. Its computers are - if I must believe them - amazing, which is the reason why they are popping us out. They'd have gladly destroyed all the data and got ridden of the nuisance, but they want the "en-gramming" tricks for themselves, so they can launch a crusade - I kid you not - a crusade against a bunch of preachers on our planet."

"What?"

"Yes, FTL travel is almost impossible, only one civilization has managed to pull it in this arm of the Galaxy, but FTL data transfer is much simpler. The problem is, using it as religious propaganda tool is a big no-no... almost all "Earths" in a radius of a thousand light years have agreed to put a lid on it. All, but this..."

"... and ours."