The Off-Worlders Read online

  “Yes and no,” Michelle said. “He’s just our tour guide, but he’s been great so far.”

  Turner let out an annoyed gruff and walked away from her to the other side of the room. He stood at the mirror either staring at himself or pretending to stare at whoever was on the other side.

  “Here’s what I’m going to do,” he said. “You were trespassing, but nothing was stolen, and no damage was done. There is no evidence that any of you even touched the body. On the surface, it really does look like wrong place, wrong time. I want you to give me the number of the hotel where you’re staying.”

  “Hotel?” Michelle asked. “Oh, we only just arrived. We haven’t been to a hotel.” Turner turned to her slowly with a suspicious look.

  “You only just arrived,” Turner said, “and you have no luggage?”

  “So, we’re kind of a ‘travel by the seat of your pants’ group,” Michelle said with an awkward smile.

  “Do you any of you have a cell phone?” Turner asked.

  “I don’t think so,” Michelle said. “I left mine in my purse, I think. I’m not sure it would work here, though. My coverage area was always really limited.”

  “How do you have limited coverage when everyone is nationwide?” Turner asked.

  “Really? Everyone?” Michelle asked with an excitement uncharacteristic throughout the rest of the interview. In her time, getting coverage outside of a limited regional area was more than she could afford. She came to her senses and sat back as Turner eyeballed her again.

  “I take it that national coverage isn’t as plentiful where you’re from,” Turner said calmly.

  “Um, I guess I just have an old plan,” Michelle said sheepishly.

  “Hmm, I guess so,” Turner said. “Not that it would help you since you don’t have it with you.”

  “Yeah, no, I don’t,” Michelle said. “I always leave it at home actually. No one calls me anyway.”

  “Well, someone with such an old plan should be familiar, at least, with the concept of business cards,” Turner said. “I gave one to each of your friends, neither of whom seem to know or care what a cell phone is at all. I’m grateful at least one of you appears to have heard of it.

  “I would like for you all to call me when you get checked in somewhere and let me know how to find you. I would recommend not leaving town until cleared to do so.”

  “So am I free to go?” Michelle asked.

  “Yes,” Turner replied. “Unless there is anything else you need to tell me about where you came from or why you’re here.”

  “I don’t think so,” Michelle said.

  “Then you may go,” Turner said. “But be careful out there. This is a strange world we live in.”

  Michelle stared at him for a moment before she walked to the door and left. She was guided down a hallway until she found Blake and Perry waiting for her. They exchanged some very basic pleasantries before making their way outside.

  Once they were on the sidewalk, Michelle started to say something, but Blake stopped her.

  “I believe it would be wise to put some distance between the station and us before discussing anything,” Blake said.

  Michelle looked back, and Detective Turner stood at the top of the steps leading into the modern brick police station. He watched them carefully as they walked out of sight. Michelle found some parts of the interview a little strange in retrospect, and she wanted to talk to Blake about them to see what he thought.

  If they were headed to a hotel, as they promised that detective they would, then she would have a chance then. Until that point, they would enjoy the walk.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As they walked down the city street at night, the lights along the road illuminated their path nicely, and Michelle marveled at the modern car designs. It was only a few years into her future, and everything looked so different.

  “I wonder what I’m doing right now,” Michelle pondered out loud.

  “Walking along a street,” Perry said, “wondering where we’re going if you’re anything like me.”

  “No, I mean the ‘me’ after her time in the Maze that lives here,” Michelle clarified.

  “I wouldn’t try to look it up,” Blake said.

  “Why not?” Michelle asked.

  “Too much knowledge about one’s future is dangerous,” Blake said. “You go beyond the question of fate, especially if you learn your life is not going well.”

  “Is my life not going well?” Michelle asked.

  “I have no idea,” Blake said. “But if you learned it wasn’t, you would feel compelled to try and change that. It is possible that you will second guess every decision you make, and cause your own doom through sheer indecision.”

  “But what if I’m a millionaire?” Michelle asked. “Filthy rich and living the high life.”

  “Then you’ll wonder when that will start and waste the time in between,” Blake said. “You might be rich, but you could also wish you’d done more before getting to that point. It’s a far better to simply live your life each day not knowing what the day will bring than live it wondering when the future you know will happen begins.”

  “From a more morbid perspective,” Perry noted. “You could also be dead. Then you end up living every day knowing that you have less than twelve years to live.”

  “I get your point,” Michelle said. “Leave it alone.”

  Her mind did not want to leave it alone, and despite their warnings, she was very curious to know what happened to her after she went back. She could not see that there would be any opportunity to find that out, but she remained curious.

  “How about that detective?” Perry said. “He seemed rather cross that I didn’t know anything. How about the rest of you?”

  “He at least said our stories lined up,” Michelle said. “So that was lucky.”

  “The tourist thing works every time,” Blake said.

  “He got a little strange at the end though,” Michelle said. “He observed that I wasn’t afraid of the sight of a dead body, so I told him of my drinking episode. He also referred to it being a strange world.”

  “It is a strange world,” Perry said.

  “I’m sure he was just trying to scare you,” Blake said. “As for us, we need to get ourselves a hotel room, so I’m glad I brought this.” Blake pulled out the card he had retrieved just before their departure.

  “Ok, so explain how your futuristic credit card is supposed to get us anything,” Michelle said skeptically.

  “It’s sort of a hack in the magnetic strip,” Blake said. “We have records on how money is transferred across multiple worlds in multiple eras, and when we go somewhere, I get one of these, sort of, unlimited money cards. We didn’t have one on that world with Carburast because we didn’t know how their system worked. I was able to scan one of their money discs there, so we’ll have one if we ever go back.

  “Basically, all a credit card does is authorize a money transfer from one bank to another. The strip tells the system that the money exists, who will send it, and when. It creates a confirmation of the transfer and deposits the expected funds into the target account. If someone tries to audit the transaction, there will be proof of its existence and the transfer, so everything seems to be on the up and up. We only use it if we need it, so the economic impact of our presence is minimal. If we tried to make large purchases with it, it would work, but it would also throw up some red flags and possibly disrupt the economy. So we stick to items like food, lodging, clothing, and that sort of thing.”

  “So we get to the hotel, and then what?” Perry asked.

  “We investigate what happened to that man,” Michelle said.

  “Precisely,” Blake said. “We'll assume for the moment that he is the reason we’re here, so something related to him will be what we’re looking for.”

  “We’re not here to solve his murder?” Michelle asked in surprise. She felt that would be an obvious reason.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Blake
said. “Sometimes the obvious answer isn’t the right one. One thing I noticed about that man (who I did touch regardless of what the detective thought. He said it. I didn’t argue) was that his clothing was not Terran in origin.”

  “Terran?” Michelle asked.

  “From Earth,” Blake clarified. “You ever notice how the word, Earth, doesn’t lend itself to being very useful as anything except the planet’s name? How do you have a one-word description of ‘from Earth’? Earthian? Earthish? In the 26th century, most people who deal with off-worlders refer to it by its Latin name of Terra. That’s where you get the term extraterrestrial. In fact, extraterrestrials who visited Earth through the centuries before we were accepted into the galactic community as a peer also preferred Terra over Earth primarily because of its easy adaptation into other parts of speech and that it translated into other languages much, much easier than Earth. Most species can easily pronounce Terra in their own tongue. Not everyone in the universe likes to stick their tongue out to utter ‘Earth.’”

  And to make his point, he left his tongue out as he exaggerated the “th” sound in the word.

  “As a result,” Blake continued, “as you travel more, and we run into species outside of our home world, you’ll hear ‘Terra’ used more than ‘Earth.’ In fact, when you say the word ‘Earth’ and the Maze has to translate into whatever the local language is, it will almost always render it as ‘Terra.’”

  “That’s a little strange but interesting,” Michelle said.

  “Shouldn’t be too strange,” Blake said. “The peoples of this world have referred to it as Terra for far, far longer than they ever called it Earth. Earth is dirt. Terra is where we live. And then there are those that have their own name for our home star, and they just tack a number onto it. The people of Malclosia call it Hoklok Three no matter how many times we try to correct them. There’s just no pleasing some people.”

  “You distracted him and got him off onto a tangent,” Perry said. “I wish that were harder to do sometimes.”

  “Right, the dead man,” Blake said.

  “That was what we were trying to talk about,” Perry noted.

  “Due to his non-Terran-”

  “As in ‘not from Earth,’” Michelle noted.

  “Yes,” Blake said, “his non-Terran garments, he’s not from around here. I wish I had been able to scan him.”

  “He looked human though,” Michelle said. “I think he had five fingers.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he was human,” Blake said. “Somehow, humans are one of the most abundant species in the galaxy. It is my hope to sort out how that happened someday. You have plenty of examples of humans that are, in fact, not Terran in origin. In the future, humans might be colonizing from Earth, but how does one explain those in this period? The answer has to be out there somewhere.”

  “How could you tell the fabric of his clothing wasn’t from Earth?” Michelle asked.

  “It just didn’t feel right,” Blake said. “Hard to describe. You expect clothes to feel a certain way on a certain planet, and his felt wrong. What I’d like to do is go back to the warehouse and see what’s around there, but I’ll wager the police will be there for quite some time.”

  “That’s another thing though,” Perry said. “Why were the cops even there? They busted in the place like they knew what they were going to find.”

  “Like someone called it in,” Michelle said.

  “I just need to scan for alien tech,” Blake said. “Anything out of place will give us a start.”

  “Anything like what?” Michelle asked.

  “Just anything not native to the planet is enough,” Blake said. “Could be a bit of metal, a piece of cloth, some kind of weapon residue. We won’t know till we get there.”

  He pulled his scanner (a device about the size of a smartphone) out of his pocket and turned it on. He tapped some buttons on the screen.

  “I just need to isolate whatever isn’t from this-” Blake stopped walking and looked at the screen. Michelle and Perry had taken a few extra steps before they realized he had come to a complete stop as he stared at his scanner.

  “What is it?” Perry asked.

  “Positive alien tech,” Blake said softly. “Behind us.”

  Michelle subtly glanced behind them, but the only thing that was on the sidewalk behind them was a man who was looking elsewhere. He was actually looking suspiciously elsewhere entirely avoiding a look at them.

  “I do think we’re being followed,” Michelle said as she turned her gaze forward again.

  “Let’s keep walking,” Blake said as he kept the scanner in his hand. “I think we should start with that hotel check-in. That way we are in a public place with lots of bystanders. We’ll see if our follower continues following.”

  Michelle lowered her head and glanced behind them out of the corner of her eye. He was not close, but the person she saw a moment ago was definitely behind them.

  “So he isn’t with the local police then?” Michelle asked.

  “Unless they are suddenly sporting men’s wear from Torlets, I doubt it,” Blake said. “Something as simple as a garment from another planet can give you away so easily if someone decides to pay attention.”

  “So what’s the plan then?” Perry asked.

  “We reach the hotel, check in, and go to our rooms,” Blake said. “Nothing out of place. Nothing suspicious. Once there, we meet up and go from there depending on what this guy wants.”

  “Because he’ll make contact at the hotel,” Perry said.

  “Almost certainly,” Blake confirmed.

  They never left the public streets, so they were never out of sight of the world as they walked toward a busy town center with a large hotel. Michelle and Perry spared a few more glances behind them as they walked and their follower never left them. Blake pointed to a particular hotel called The East End, and they figured that once settled, they would be able to learn more about what this off-worlder wanted from them.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The East End Hotel was a relatively charming establishment with a wide open lobby, a business area off to the right with desks and other private areas with ethernet ports for computers, a fancy restaurant and bar to their left, and an elegant desk where customers checked in and out. The trio walked to the counter, and Blake spoke for all of them.

  “We need three rooms,” Blake said, “but I will be paying for all of them. I would also like to have them all together, if possible.”

  “Yes sir, that is possible,” the clerk said. “I can put all three of you on the third-floor side by side if that is all right.”

  “Yes, that's perfect, thank you,” Blake said.

  Michelle looked behind them as Blake was paying for the rooms with his card, and she saw the person following them walk into the hotel. She tried to be subtle when she was watching him, but she was not sure she had been able to do so since she thought she met his eyes a couple of times.

  “He is still following us,” Michelle said softly to the other two.

  “Doesn't surprise me,” Perry said. “Guys like that are unshakeable.”

  “What are we going to do?” Michelle asked.

  “Just play it casual for now,” Blake said. “We will deal with this in a moment.”

  Blake took his card back, and the clerk worked on getting the room keys together. As Blake received each key from the clerk, he handed one to Michelle and another to Perry. Michelle was surprised to find he had handed her what looked like a credit card instead of a traditional metal key.

  “Are these are keys?” Michelle asked.

  “I guess,” said Perry. “I've learned to just go with it.”

  The clerk picked up on their confusion and decided to answer.

  “Been awhile since you traveled has it?” the clerk asked.

  “Just haven't stayed in a hotel for a while,” Perry said.

  “Well, these have only been around for a couple of years now,” the clerk explained. “You just sli
p the card into the slot on the door. When the light turns green, you turn the handle, and you can go inside. If it doesn’t work, bring it back up, and we’ll try again.”

  “Thank you,” Blake said and then turned to the others. “Let's go.”

  As they walked towards the elevator, Blake said, “I'm rather glad he explained the keys. By the time you hit the 26th century, they just hand you a proximity detector that opens the door when you get next to it. They tried biometric door locks for awhile, which were exceptionally secure, but people freaked out over privacy concerns. Something about not wanting their biometric information all up in the system.”

  They pressed the button for the elevator, and the person who had been following them walked up behind them and waited as well. They glanced at each other furtively but paid no attention to him. When the elevator doors opened, they walked inside, and he walked inside with them and stood at the back. Blake pressed the button for floor three and then turned to him.

  “Which floor?” Blake asked.

  “The same,” the man said.

  The elevator quietly moved to the third floor. Michelle could not help but notice that this regular elevator was genuinely quieter than the Maze’s elevator when it moved to a different planet. Not that the Maze elevator was incredibly loud, it just struck her how quiet this one was in comparison. Obviously, it just takes a lot more to travel the universe than to traverse a few floors.

  The elevator reached the third floor, and all of them got off. They walked down the hall until they got close to their respective rooms.

  “Do you need something from us?” Blake said, finally turning to face their follower.

  “Yes,” the man said frankly.

  “Well?” Blake asked.

  “Can we go into one of your rooms to talk?” he asked.

  Blake walked to his room, put his card in the door, and opened it for Perry, Michelle, and the stranger. He closed the door behind him and engaged the lock to ensure they were not disturbed by anyone. Perry and Michele sat side by side on one of the beds. The stranger stood in the open space at the foot of the beds in the middle of the room.