‘Keep busy’ turned into my mantra following the carnage. Proctor had convinced me if I focused on the trauma, then trauma is all I would have, and I’d descend into a depression with no end.

It was the 8th of January, and there was so much to do, and where as back in the world as I knew it, I might’ve wanted to slack off work commitments, in this new world I was glad for the distractions.

We gathered as a group on an elevated ridge fifty feet beyond the cluster of trees where villagers had congregated. Already, the people of Moonlight were fanning out from the makeshift encampment tasking themselves with erecting new huts, and restarting their lives anew.

There was never a more important time to establish a security perimeter around the place. We had to act fast to get ahead of any attacks that could come at any time.

On the ridge, Proctor joined me, along with Trevor, Kestrel, and Kestrel’s eldest son, Denton.

Denton appeared to be in his late 20s, and he had a powerful build. I ‘clicked’ to check his baseball prospects.

[Tools:

Hitting 40

Power 40

Fielding 35

Running 35

Throwing 45

OFP = 39]

Pretty intriguing compared to everyone else I’d seen. I didn’t bother bringing it up with Denton, Proctor, or anyone else. I figured it was something we could talk about when the time was right. But yeah, in the moment, I was interested.

We were on the ridge on the east end of Moonlight’s village limits where we agreed it was a good place to begin tracing the path for the perimeter wall. Trevor held a spruce log which Kestrel had stripped of its bark and branches. He used it as a tool to stick into the cold ground, and drag a shallow trench along the path we’d choose as the place to raise the wall. Denton went along behind the rest of us with sticks of uniform length which he plugged into the mud at regular intervals to mark the perimeter line.

The ridge extended south a hundred yards, and the perimeter line was mostly a straight line. At the southeast corner of the village limits we conversed, we stood at different points, different perspectives, and attempted to visualize the wall once constructed. Kestrel and Denton were better at this than me. Actually, so were Proctor and Trevor. I was doing my best to give valuable input, but mostly I found myself agreeing with the others as to where to place the wall. In my impatience I just wanted the thing built already. But, painfully, I knew it would take a while.

While we surveyed along the southern edge, working our way slowly west, Trevor’s mother Mora arrived with Trevor’s cat Hammy resting on her shoulder.

We used her arrival as an excuse to take a short break.

Trevor placed a knee on the frigid ground, and bent to peck his mother with a kiss. It was sweet to see this humongous man be so lovingly gentle. And, she was so relieved and happy to see her son was alright following news of the terrible bug attack.

“I didn’t think you would come,” Trevor said. “I was going to come back home.”

“I’m going to stay a while,” Mora said. “Here, in the village.”

Trevor wasn’t sold on the idea, but his mother insisted, and you could tell in their relationship, what she said was how things would go.

She set off to the village, with Hammy clung to her, to see about finding temporary shelter, letting us get back to work mapping out the perimeter.

Kestrel, Denton, and Trevor were the leaders in this process. They pretty much went on autopilot marking Moonlight’s village line. Proctor and I followed the others, offering input here and there, but mostly just observing.

I took the opportunity to raise a question with Proctor while the others went on ahead of us, while we trailed slowly behind.

“Don’t you think the System should’ve saved Aubrey? And saved Zane… when they had the chance?” I said. “How could these alien overlords just let them die like that? What’s the purpose? Why were they here then? The more I think about it, the more it upsets me.”

“Forgive me,” Proctor said. “But, I think you have a faulty understanding of the System.”

“How do you mean?”

“It’s more indifferent than you imagine,” Proctor said. “You have special abilities others here don’t have, it’s true. You have advantages, but you are still vulnerable, just as the others who came from the modern world were vulnerable.”

“So, I’d just be replaced?” I said.

“I’d hate to articulate it in that way,” Proctor said.

But, then he articulated it in just that way.

“What about the filming? How’s it supposed to work now?” I said.

All Proctor could offer was a shrug. He stopped walking a second though, appearing to give it more thought.

“Maybe they have another way of watching us.” Proctor said. “A way we wouldn’t understand. Maybe they’re monitoring what you’re doing in a way that the people on their planet receive it as we would watching a documentary.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

Again, he shrugged. “To us, perhaps.” Proctor said.

“So, the whole stupid thing was futile,” I said. The more we talked about it, the angrier I became.

“I wish I could give you something that would reassure you,” Proctor said. “But, I think it’d be a mistake to ever view the System’s implementation as beneficial.”

“Yeah,” I said, “definitely not reassuring.”

“We can only do what we can do,” Proctor said. “You know what your mission is, you do it to the best of your ability, and you do your best to enjoy it as much as that’s ever possible. It’s the situation we’re in.”

I didn’t like what he’d said, even though I recognized he was right.

We caught up with the other three who’d progressed some fifty yards ahead of where we’d been standing. We kept along a southwesterly line, and when I looked back at the stakes Denton had stuck in the ground, I was pleased that I could then really visualize the security wall. Hundreds of yards of progress had been made, and it felt like we were starting to get somewhere.

Mora returned without the cute orange kitty. She told Trevor that Hag had kindly offered to share her home with them. She’d left Hammy to sleep in Hag’s hut. Additionally, Hag spoke of a stable located adjacent to her property which still stood. It would prove an ideal shelter for Trevor. Plenty of room for him to stretch out, and sleep at night. Trevor seemed pleased by the arrangement.

Our surveying group progressed westward along the southern line. The land rose, forming another ridge behind a thicket which was to the rear of where the Moonlight Inn & Ale once stood. Looking down from the ridge through clusters of evergreen branches, we could just make out the pile of stones and straw where the inn had been. My hope was placing the wall along this higher ground meant the inn could be rebuilt at some point. Maybe that’s where our opponents would stay when they came into our village for a ball game. I was getting way ahead of myself, as was my tendency.

Making pretty good time, by midday we’d marked out half the east side perimeter line, and all of the southern line. We turned the southwest corner, and began working our way north, up the western village perimeter. This land was mostly flat, treeless, and structure-less. It was lumpy, frosty ground covered in brown grass. It didn’t sound like much, but this part of the village was where I’d pictured placing the ball park. Of course, it’d require flattening the ground, but we’d get there eventually.

Strangely, as we kept on northward, a small block we’d seen at a good distance away became larger as we progressed. The block, the rectangle, it was sticking up and stood out on the flat land.

Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

Slowly, we closed in on it. The rectangle became more defined. I would stop and squint at the thing, trying to make sense of what I was seeing. Proctor couldn’t tell what it was either. None of us ran ahead of our little group to check it out, we just kept on our perimeter survey, working our way toward whatever the thing was.

You’re not going to believe it. I couldn’t believe it either. As we drew closer to the rectangle, I could see it was an object the same shape as a refrigerator. The side facing us was black. Honestly, it looked like a fridge standing there in the middle of a field.

“What in the world?” I murmured.

I think Proctor and I were more confused than the others, mainly because the other three wouldn’t have had a frame of reference.

We’d reached within twenty yards of the object, and I could see the thing was also roughly the same height as a refrigerator. What in the heck was going on?

Crazily enough. The thing was glowing.

Only a few feet away, my jaw hung open. The freaking thing was a soda machine.

It was black on the sides and back, with a rounded front which glowed. The front of machine was a swirl of color. Pink, red, and white. Boop Soda, it said.

I’d never heard of it.

I could see Proctor’s wheels turning. Even he couldn’t make sense out of this.

The machine hummed. It hummed! Electricity coursed through the machine the way it would if you’d found it in any modern setting; a building corridor, a convenience store, a school, a hospital, airports, yada yada yada. Yet, here we were in the stone age, and this thing’s got power.

What?

Immediately, Proctor checked the back of the machine, and sure enough he found a thick black cord stuck out at the bottom a few inches where it was plugged into an outdoor plug outlet mounted on a one foot high wooden stake. The stake holding the outlet jut from the rough ground, and it had a gray plastic tube attached to it, presumably containing the wiring supplying the power… from where? Great freaking question.

“What? How is this-?” I could barely form a sentence.

Proctor shook his head, and he couldn’t take his eyes off the machine. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just… don’t know.”

Kestrel frowned at the object. He stood in front of its radiating light with his hands on hips.

“What’s this?” He said. “Boop? Soda?”

Trevor towered over the machine. I could tell he wanted to lift it up.

“Don’t,” I said to the giant. “It’s plugged in.”

“Plugged?” Trevor said.

Denton stood behind his father, his face twisted with confusion. I don’t think he could even conceive of a question.

“Shines doesn’t it?” Kestrel said. “It shines.”

This was like the apes around the monolith in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’.

I’d never heard of Boop Soda. There was a coin slot on the front. It was fairly thick, thicker than the slot you’d imagine for a normal coin like a quarter or a dime. Then there were a series of wide, plastic buttons just as you’d see on any soda machine.

“How does it have electricity?” I said.

“I have no Earthly idea,” Proctor said.

“What’s eleck… triss… it… ee?” Trevor said, forced to sound out this strange word.

“It’s a form of power,” I said, not thinking it through.

“That’s not going to help them understand,” Proctor said.

“Power?” Kestrel said, his frown engulfing his entire face if not his very being. “It seeks to control us, this… thing?”

“It has a noise,” Denton said. “Sounds like bees, doesn’t it?”

“Are there bees in there?” Trevor said. “I’m afraid of bees.”

I held out my hands reassuringly, and I touched the plastic sign on the front of the machine. “There are no bees,” I said. “It’s too cold for bees anyway.”

Although, it hadn’t been cold enough to keep away a giant house centipede.

“What’s the power then?” Kestrel said. “What’s ee… leck?”

“Electricity,” I said. “It’s uh…”

I felt like an elementary school teacher without the book containing all the quiz answers.

See? I knew I was the wrong representative of the human race from modern times to send back into this ancient world. I couldn’t even explain something as basic as electric power, this ubiquitous thing we all used to take for granted. I’d be no better explaining cars, planes, or cell phones either, and thankfully I didn’t have to, at least not yet anyway.

“Well, you see, uh… in the future, there’s going to be this way of building things,” I said.

“What kind of things?” Kestrel said.

Proctor just stood there with his arms folded, and a hand on his cheek holding a wry grin. I could see he was getting a lot of entertainment watching me squirm trying to explain what should be a simple concept to these people.

“In the future,” I continued. “When we build things, like this… this machine. We come up with a way to make the machine work.”

I pointed at the confused men. “Like you for example,” I said, pointing at Kestrel. “You build things.”

“Darn right I do,” he said, and his chest puffed outward.

“Right, and in order to build things you have to use your body, your arms, your legs. You have to move. And, you have to think about things, you have to use your brain, to understand, and create,” I said. “In order to do all of that, you have to conjure the energy.”

“Energy?” The old man said, and he looked just as confused as ever.

“You wanna help me out here?” I said to Proctor.

“Oh, no,” he said, amused. “Please, don’t stop on my account. You’re doing quite well.”

Cretin.

“Yes, Kestrel, you have to have the energy to make an effort to build things,” I said. “And, where do you get that energy from?”

“‘Tis inside me,” Kestrel said. “It’s my will, ain’t it? That’s my power.”

“Okay,” I said. “Good. But, it’s more than that too. You have to eat food, yes? You have to drink water?”

“Well, we all have to do that,” Kestrel said. “Lest we want to perish.”

“Right,” I said. “But, what’s more is you have to take that food, and that water into your body because it gives your body the power to do all of the things you do. All the building projects. Even what we’re doing right now. It wouldn’t be possible if you didn’t eat food and drink water.”

“Okay then,” Kestrel said.

“Okay,” I said. “So, this thing in front of us. It’s a machine. It does things too. Like you.”

“This thing ain’t like me,” Kestrel said. “It’s just a brick. Look at it, it’s just sitting here.”

“I get that it doesn’t look like it’s doing anything, but trust me, it is,” I said. “And it needs food and water to do it, just like you. And its food and water is the thing we call electricity.”

It was the best I could do, and I got a bit of a nod from Proctor, which to me was a good sign.

“This thing eats food?” Denton said. “Drinks water?”

“Sort of,” I said. “It gets energy, like you do from what you eat. Its energy is called electricity. We would also call it ‘power’.”

“But, where does it come from?” Trevor asked. “The eleck thing? The food?”

“Normally, well, in the future it would come from us,” I said. “We would create it, and channel it, and feed it to machines like this. We’d get it from burning things with fire, or from the beams of sunlight, or the wind.”

Denton held out his beefy arm, pointing at the soda machine. “It eats the wind?” He said.

“Evil,” Kestrel said.

I grit my teeth, and realized we’d have to take this up another time when I’d thought more on it.

“Please do go ahead and explain nuclear reactors while you’re at it,” Proctor said.

“You’re not helping,” I said.

Fairly certain I’d gotten nowhere despite the attempt, the others didn’t really come across as seriously bothered, and seemed to lose interest after a few minutes. They were keen on getting back to the perimeter wall survey. But, I was still examining the machine.

Proctor and I let the others continue northward. We told them we’d catch up in a few minutes.

“Can you believe this?” I said.

“No,” Proctor said, “I cannot.”

Surveying the eight buttons, each a unique color, descending from the coin slot, the machine offered the following choices:

[Cola Drip

Berry Cherry

Apple Blossom

Lime-ocado

Grape ‘Splosion

Delicious Diet Discharge

Cilan-tain

Mango Blue Cheese]

“These are sodas?” I said. Just reading the flavor names caused my taste buds to recede.

“Apparently,” Proctor said.

“Pass me a gold coin would you, please?” I said.

“You think it accepts them?”

“What else would it take?” I said.

Proctor handed me a coin. I plugged it into the slot, and heard it fall, and it landed with that satisfying metal on metal rattle. The machine’s hum intensified, I felt the pressure to pick a flavor, and went with the most innocuous sounding one.

I pushed firmly on ‘Cola Drip’, and waited a few seconds as it dropped loudly to the collection tray below. The can was red, with black writing, and even colder to the touch than the frosty air around us.

Excitement pumped through me. I could feel my hand vibrate holding this can of soda.

“I’m almost afraid to try it,” I said. “What if it’s poisonous?”

“At this point,” Proctor said, “anything’s possible.”

“Very reassuring, Proctor.”

A cracked the can, and the noise caused the stone age men ahead of us to turn their heads in our direction. They were unfamiliar with that quintessentially modern sound. I could hear the faint fizziness inside the can. I gave it a sniff, and it smelled like… cola.

Holding it near my mouth, I paused for a moment. “Should I do it?” I said.

Proctor’s open mouth, and wide eyes told me maybe I shouldn’t.

“Do what you feel,” Proctor said.

I put the cold can to my bottom lip, and just as I’d tilted it to receive the liquid inside, my vision filled with text.

[WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

From the makers of Boop Soda, brought to you by Such Burger, “Much Taste!”:

This beverage contains a powerful effect. This can be overwhelming to those who do not have a plan in mind for how they might wield the magic contained herein. Proceed with caution. Rated ‘W’ for ‘Worthy’.]