Jake Carroway

April 31st, 2032

The air tasted like ash. There was a sudden sound of reality kicking back into my ears. As consciousness returned so did the sounds. It wasn’t pleasant, because it came with the pain. My body ached from head to toe, I wasn’t even sure if all of my body made it to the ground.

My eyes opened to harsh sunlight and a ringing pain in my side. My fingers clutched the dirt as I strained to lift my head. The sound of fire crackling was my only companion. It crackled and suddenly it felt like all the air around me had vanished as the remnant heat forced heavy coughs out of my lungs. I spat up blood onto the ground, it looked nasty and I could only fear what my insides looked like.

Some part of me knew I had survived the accident, but until I brought my hand to my chest to feel my heart beating I didn’t believe it.

Accident? Was it just some freak accident? I tried to think back. I was talking to Jen—apologizing and then all of a sudden there was just...nothing. No, there was a sound. A...crack. I looked over to see the source of the fire—a giant heap of metal that used to be the plane I was on was now sending black smoke to the sky.

You weren’t the only passenger.

My eyes opened wide and I struggled to my feet. Pain lunged into my right arm—I looked down to see that it was broken. I had to put that aside—at least for the moment. Matt was somewhere in this wreckage and I had to see if he was okay.

I stumbled once. Twice. Finally making my way over to the bonfire. I used my good hand to shift over un-burnt piles of debris, but none of them revealed a body.

“You’re okay, that’s a relief.” I heard from behind me.

I turned and Matt was standing off in the distance. He was definitely dirty, but other than that he looked otherwise unharmed.

“Yeah, I’m alive. A little banged up, but I’ll survive,” I said. “You look like you’re one lucky S.O.B, though.”

His face darkened—definitely not the response I was expecting. “Yeah...about that...”

“What?” I asked.

“Not here. Its not an easy thing to talk about, and we need to find someplace safe.”

“Do you have any idea what happened, at least? I don’t remember anything after I stepped out.”

He shook his head. “No, you walked out and then...” he shrugged his shoulders. “Something happened—whether we were struck down or not I don’t know, but that was when I...”

“Come on,” I said, “we’ll talk about it on the way. Let’s try to find our things if they’re not charred.”

He nodded slowly. The closer I got to the main mass of metal the more my arm hurt. I held my arm close to my stomach as I saw what I feared—all of our gear was burning with the rest of it. We were lost, barely alive, and now had no supplies. Great. Why didn’t we think that there was a possibility we’d be shot out of the sky? I turned back to Matt and shook my head.

“Damn, hoped we could have at least salvaged something from the wreck.”

I sighed. “Yeah. I don’t even know where we are—much less which direction we should go.”

“Well,” Matt started. “...the plane is facing that way,” he pointed at what looked like the nose. “If we assume that we fell straight down then we can try moving in that direction.”

“What if we spun as we fell?”

“We didn’t spin.”

“You know this?”

“I do.”

“Okay, then.” I said. “We go that way.” We started walking past the burning wreck. I waited for him to start talking on whatever was bothering him, but he wasn’t so inclined. “Do you know how much longer we had in our trip?”

“No.”

“Okay...do—”

“I’m not...right.” Matt blurted out.

“Not right?”

“When I woke up in California I wasn’t right. I wasn’t like how I was before. I could do things I couldn’t before—strange things like...well...like what happened up there,” he looked up toward the sky.

“What happened up there?”

“When whatever happened happened—I still don’t know quite what did—I protected us as we fell. Created a shield I guess you could say.”

“So, it wasn’t just luck that we lived?”

He shook his head and was clutching his arms tight. “No. There was an explosion of some kind—before I knew it we were falling. I saw you in free fall—you had passed out. I created our shield as the plane fell around us. I fell faster, so when I hit I still was protected...however I lost my focus on you.”

“So that’s when I broke my arm.”

“I’m very sorry. I didn’t know how else to help.”

“No, don’t apologize. If you didn’t help I would be dead.” He acknowledged this fact, but it didn’t too much to improve his mood. “I don’t think you’re a freak, or any other thing that you must think.” I said. It was the first thing that came to my mind. “It’s not my first time meeting someone who could do something most other people can’t. I mean I know the Cresses after all.”

A small smirk crossed his face. “No, I don’t feel like a social outcast if that’s what you mean. I’m much too old to be feeling insecure about how others think of me. No, my problem lies in with myself—solely myself. Sometimes I remember things—things I cannot be sure actually happened, or are simply falsifications made to make me believe...”

“False memories? What would make you think that?”

“I told you what I believe is my past, correct?”

I nodded.

“Well, along with those memories, there is a second—separate—set of memories of those days. Almost exactly the same...but just that. Almost. There’s a sister in the second pair of memories. A sister I knew I had, but never met. A sister I whispered to through the walls, one who I told all my secrets to. But I can’t for the life of me remember her name, or face, or if she was even real. And if she’s not real—if I just made her up or someone else did, then who is to say that the rest of it isn’t the same? Who’s to say I am Matt Avery? I am not like you—my bones aren’t human and my mind can produce things—the energy that protected us. My fear is of my own existence. I could not take it if I were some android made to think like a human—my life would not be worth living for some false purpose.”

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“You seem to have thought a lot about this.”

“That’s quite the response,” he grinned, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

“Yes, it is. I understand your fear, and if I were in your shoes I would feel the same. I cannot tell you if you are some android or not. I’m not particularly good with machines, myself, but I can say you strike me as a person through and through. So whether or not your memories are real, and whether or not your sister is real, I would say that your life has worth. I believe that you’re here—and still alive—for a reason. You saved me for a reason.”

He didn’t respond, and we walked for the next few miles in silence. I thought about how much I would love just wake from this terrible dream and have none of the events of the past twenty-four hours happen. Everything would be fine and I wouldn’t have freaked out in front of Jen and we wouldn’t have had to talk about me. We could go on pretending like everything was okay. And then everything would be okay.

The ground rose and fell as we continued in the direction the plane was facing. It got rougher and soon my legs got tired of climbing up hills. Soon enough the sun set and painted the sky a bright orange.

“I think I need to take a break.”

Matt turned, “Tired?”

“Yeah, a bit. You’re not?”

He shook his head. “No, I—” He turned his head quick and stared out into the distance.

“What is it?”

He held out his hand and hushed me. “Whoever you are...show yourself!”

I tried to strain my eyes to see what he had seen, but it wasn’t a case of seeing. Behind a hill a small creature the size of a lion cub crawled out. It looked like a round rodent with brown fur and a white tummy.

“Oh, it’s just a rat,” I said, letting relief fill my body. “I thought we were about to get attacked.”

“I. Am. Not. A. Rat.” The creature howled with a surprisingly deep voice.

“Um...” I said.

“You’re sentient?” Matt asked.

“You stupid pea-brains have no clue, do you?” It scrambled over toward us like a gecko. “You’ve never seen an Ilot before?”

“Ilot? That’s what you are?” I asked.

“No, I’m a vampire. I just happened to be curious—yes of course I’m an Ilot!” It was now bouncing up and down on its spring-like tail like a kangaroo.

“No, we haven’t seen anything like you before,” Matt said. “But that’s besides the point. Do you happen to know where we might find a town—preferably one with humans in it?”

“Or a doctor?” I asked, pointing to my arm.”

“A docdoc?” the Ilot walked closer and looked at my arm, tapped it once, and chuckled when it saw me recoil in pain. “Ah! A docdoc! Yes, I think I know where you can find a docdoc. But I ain’t gonna tell ya.” It crossed its little arms defiantly.

“And why’s that?” Matt asked.

“Because you two are suspicious. You come here trying to blow up the sky and think I’m going to just tell you how to find the docdoc?” he blew raspberries in my direction. “That’s phooey I say!”

“We weren’t trying to explode...hold on. You saw what happened to us?”

“Saw what happened? I bloody heard it from my hidey-hole!” The Ilot paced in a circle, “So there I was minding my own business when boom from up in the sky. I peeked up and saw you two explode from your big metal bird! Then you two weren’t satisfied with attacking the air—the very same air that I breathe mind you—but then you had to come and smack your bodies on the ground! Hit the ground with your very bodies you did!”

“Well we can assure you that we weren’t the ones who blew up that plane—the uh, metal bird.” Matt said, and then turned to me. “It’s possible there was a bomb stowed aboard.”

I nodded. It made the most sense with what the ilot had seen. I couldn’t imagine anyone that knew about our trip would do something like that, though.

“Well, even if I believed you two, you still hit your bodies on the ground! Hit the ground as if you didn’t care about standing on it, you did!”

“Well, we were blasted out of the sky,” I explained. “The only way we could go was down.”

“But you could have gently landed like me!” He jumped up and extended his arms out, slowly descending as I saw that from his arms to his side was webbing that acted as wings.

“No...no we couldn’t have,” I said and extended my own arm out—the one not broken. “We don’t have wings.”

The Ilot landed and scratched his hairy chin. “Hm. No wings. No wings and no wings means can’t fly which means use metal bird which means...” he looked up in sudden realization. “You hit the ground because you couldn’t fly.”

It took everything in me not to explode, I just nodded and bit my tongue.

“Yes, exactly. We’re supposed to be on our way to meet the Queen and need some directions—”

At the mention of the queen the Ilot looked at them both wide-eyed and shook his head feverishly. “Nope, no nah sorry I can’t help you with that I have to go do things that isn’t this.” He hopped off of his tail and ran as fast as his little legs could carry him.

Unfortunately, his legs were tiny and thus could not take him very far very fast. Matt caught up with him almost immediately and picked at his tail, holding him up at a distance.

“That seemed to strike a chord with you,” he said, but the Ilot couldn’t hear over his immediate burst into frantic tears. I almost felt bad for the creature if I wasn’t in constant pain from my broken arm.

“Listen, just tell us where the closest town is and we’ll leave you alone.”

“I caaaaaaan’t,” he bawled out. He sounded like a forty year old man crying like a five year old boy. “I can’t just tell you because I have to show you. And I don’t want to show you because you’re dumb and nothing like old ma’s stories were like.”

“Excuse me?” Matt asked. “You’ve heard about us?”

“Not you—humans. Ilot are fated to lead the first humans they come into contact with. It is destiny for my kind and I always heard stories of valiant adventurers who were strong and kind and nothing like the queen but you aren’t strong or kind or valiant or—”

“Slow down,” I said, pursing his lips together. “One step at a time.”

He took a deep breath and nodded. Matt let go of him and he ploinked to the ground. “Its the Ilot way to partner with humans. It is what we were created for.”

“Created?” Matt asked. I could feel the tension in his voice.

“Humans of Ing-Land created us. We come from Mother Ilot and are to serve the first humans we come to know. That is how it is supposed to be, although some Ilots ran away before they could bond with humans. That’s where I come from—the ones that ran away and started having little Ilots of their own.”

“So your...um, Mother Ilot is not the Mother Ilot?” I asked. What kind of strange world did we get dropped into?

Mother Ilot will always be Mother Ilot. Us runaway Ilots just don’t ever ever want to see her ever again.” He shook head viciously now. “No no I mustn’t. If you’re here and meeting me now that means I have to join you and go back to see Mother Ilot.” He hopped from one tiny paw to the other and was shaking terribly.

“No, you don’t.” Matt said.

All at once the Ilot stopped and stared at him.

“I...I don’t?”

He shook his head, “Through whatever irony this may be—you don’t have to do what you were created to do. You ran away. You have the choice to do whatever you want.”

“I...” his eyes opened with a glow and he was tapping his head absent-minded. “I...have the...” and then all of a sudden he was back. “I do have the choice! See you suckers! I’m getting far away from Ing-Land!” And he dashed away much faster than he ran before.

“Well, he wasn’t very helpful, now was he?” I asked, more in jest.

“Well he wasn’t hurtful, so that’s one thing. Although I can’t say I’m terribly excited to not have anymore information.”

“Well then we do as we did before,” I said. “We continue forward,” and I motioned with my good arm.

Mother Ilot, huh? Something tells me that we’re going to be running into you very shortly.