Under the watchful eyes of a darkling sky, never before seen constellations - alien, unknowable, but clearly defined - strained to make themselves visible. Fighting to peek out over the bluish radiance of Earth, car lights, and the dull green glow the constellation jellies had taken on as the raft of translucent bodies bobbed in the waters. Some of the cars had turned on cab lights as people talked inside. If someone saw the raft of jellie from the air, it would look like a floating trailer park.
The night was strangely quite outside of the occasional moo, the thrum of engines, and the sound of muffled conversation filtered through sea air. Everyone was wrung out, the stress of the last hour had stretched them thin and the sight of a dark sky had set them up with false hope prior to the appearance of Earth overhead.
As the light of the Earth reflected on the black waters and cones of fog ushered rhythmically from his mouth, Andrew took in his surroundings and had a realization. By a strange stroke of luck, his vehicle was one of several that had been elevated more than 25 feet above the majority, like a small hill or bump in the swath of creatures. He speculated this was due to the fact that his car had landed on a patch of jellyfish with an even larger jellyfish beneath them. This jelly was nearly 40 feet in diameter and seemed to act as an anchor for many of the smaller ones - if Andrew looked closely, he could make out the shapes of many small nuclei darting around inside it. Due to how the jellies had spaced out everything they had collected, with about 10 feet between each - give or take a yard based on the size of the person or object - this meant that Andrew had the jellies to thank for his clear view of the horizon and all the information that provided him.
The raft was smaller than it had been when it was initially plucked up. Oh, it was still massive, but a nowhere near its previous size. Beforehand, the number of jellies were enough to fill the horizon in seemingly all directions. Now it extended out a good ways from Andrew's elevated position, but dropped at what Andrew guessed to be a quarter mile from his elevation at the center of the mass. Had the rest of the drivers been separated and sent elsewhere? Were they the other lights in the distance?
Andrew gathered his binoculars from the cab of his car and took a quick scan. From his seat in his car window, he saw that the half-mile diameter of cars still had over 50 vehicles - most position in front or behind him - with more than 100 people between them, what looked like 12 cows, and even a few horses that must have been in a nearby field. In the distance, the other patches of glowing jellyfish were still visible all around - no doubt other rafts separated from them or entirely new to him. Though arguably the most curious thing Andrew saw was the occasional house or motorhome that popped up in the distance, half submerged in the bed of jellies. He didn't want to think of the kind of terror it must have been to be living in those as the jellies ripped the houses from their foundations - it was a miracle that such structures hadn't been torn apart by the force or just collapsed under their own weight being carried like this.
Andrew gazed thoughtfully up to the Earth and its tiny white satellite - a lot of miracles were happening lately. It seemed a bit smaller now, like it had settled into a more comfortable distance, though is still hung much larger in the sky than the Moon ever had back home. Thoughts raced in Andrew's mind as he mulled over what moving the whole planet must have been like - in the mouth of whatever creature that planet sized eye had belonged to, no less! With his binoculars, Andrew had a clear view of Asia and Australia. It was difficult to make out through the masses of clouds, but the continents' coastal lines were still visible and seemed to retain their familiar shape - which meant the gravity of this planet had somehow not destroyed its tides, at least not yet. The Earth's moon still seemed to be in orbit with its own planet - again, somehow - and not taken away by whatever planet they were now on. Like a toy ripped from a child's arms.
Sadly, this analytical thought didn't make Andrew feel anymore comforted. What if the planet was now too close to whatever sun was illuminating the blue marble? What if it was too far away from that heat source? Had Earth been brought here just to have its atmosphere ignite as he watched helplessly on an alien sea in an unknown world as his home was burned to a crisp? Would he be fated to watch as the Earth's oceans froze over from a lack of heat until the planet was nothing more than a ball of ice hanging in the sky? This world seemed to have livable air and heat range, what if it heated the Earth just enough to melt the ice caps, flood the coasts, and wrack the globe with storms? Or cooled it just enough to cause a second ice age, with billions starving to death as cattle die and crops wilt? And what of the Earth's rotation? Would it stay locked in place until the atmosphere deteriorated? Would day and night cycles become so long that nature would be unable to adapt? Or would the Earth and Moon just collapse into eachother and end them both as a ball of molten rock as he sat helpless to stop it?
Andrew felt a light tug on the sleeve of his pant leg as Michael called up from inside the cab "Hey man, you need to see this".
Andrew ducked back into the cab with the flex of the seat beneath him. "Yeah, what is it?" he said, stifling a slight shudder from the night's cold.
Michael flicked on the car's heating like he had owned the car his whole life. As warm air buffeted through the cabin and softly clashed with the cool sea breeze invading from the open windows, Michael pivoted his left forearm across his chest, pointing out his passenger side window. "Something's coming out of the water."
At first, Barlow had a fear that it was another one of those dragons - or some other terror they had yet see. "What is it?" Asked Andrew, his heart sinking.
"I don't know, you're the guy with the binoculars" Said Michael with a shrug as he gently took them from Andrew's grasp and perched himself back inside the car's window.
Andrew did the same, the car's heating wafted from the open aperture and making his nighttime perch slightly more comfortable as the warm air used his body as a staging ground in its war against the night breeze. It took a bit of peering without his binoculars to aid him, but following where Michael was steering the lenses he could clearly make out a point in the water where the sea was breaking. Like a reef edging out above the water and only illuminated by the glow of Earth light playing on the waves. It didn't seem far - another half mile at most? But the fact it could be seen against the black at that distance meant it was of a decent size.
"Any ideas?" Called Andrew over the cab.
"It's a bunch of black shiny stuff" Michael answered back "It looks like, uh…" He grasped at the words as he faced Andrew "Looks like kelp… or a float of trash?"
Michael didn't sound certain as he turned back to his watch - but Andrew felt relieved by the mundanity of it. It was unlikely to be trash on this alien world - unless there were intelligent life forms on it. He looked down at the jellyfish - could these be the intelligent life forms of this planet? They had expertly brought them all here - but it that was the case, would a species that can jump through space using the digestive tracks of sky dragons really subject themselves to the manual labor of subduing and escorting a bunch of monkeys in tin cans? No. If these things were intelligent - it was an entirely different kind of intelligence from what humans possessed. Kelp seemed a more likely answer - or whatever passed for kelp on this planet.
"Hey, Andy" Said Michael, a tone of worry in his voice.
Andrew hated being called "Andy" by men. Not enough to make a fuss but enough to mildly annoy. However, the tone in Michael's voice bypassed his petty side and compelled him to ask the obvious question.
"What's wrong?"
Michael reached across the cab to give him binoculars, Andrew quickly accepted them as his new friend asked the kind of loaded question that causes men's stomachs to lurch from panic.
"Is it just me, or is that kelp getting bigger?"
Andrew whipped the binoculars to his eyes with one hand as he gripped the head rest of his leather seat with the other to stabilize himself. The rubber of the binoculars tight in hand, he peered through to get a better view of the pool of trash in the distance, a cold sweat running down his back.
The description Michael had provided was accurate. Slick black layers of something with the occasional soft edge jutting from the water did indeed give the appearance of some kind of kelp or garbage bobbing on the surface of the water. But it wasn't just on the water - in the middle of the patch was some kind of land mass that it had all gathered around and covered in its slimy refuse and was completely unmoved by the waves. Not uncommon for flotsam to hang up and pool around a landmass - but highly unusual for such a small mass of land to be out in the middle of the sea.
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Andrew wasn't too concerned about what it was for the time being - he was more worried about if it was growing like Michael purported. Andrew watched for a solid 3 minutes, never averting his gaze. And while his mind told him there was a very slow, almost imperceptible increase in the size of the pool - it would be the truth to say that Andrew never got a chance to confirm that notion before the small island and the pool of black around it decided to introduce itself in spectacular fashion.
In the time it took for Andrew to blink once, a long thin pole extended from the mass of rubbery goo without a sound. Andrew felt a "pop" in his ears - the same kind of pop you experience after a sudden change in pressure before a storm. At the same time, two masses of black triangle jutted up around the pole to form a pyramid tip.
For the third time today, familiar words floated though the air. "I think we should get back in the car" Said Michael as he ducked back inside and proceeded to roll up the window with the pathetic amount of haste the automatic windows would offer. Apparently he had been watching even more intensely than Andrew.
Andrew did not move at first, for a change he was the last one inside. But as he watched, the pyramid suddenly inflated into a bubble of equal height as other smaller bubbles began to crop up and spread out in a gradual fashion. Even at this distance, the binoculars picked up an odd texture as it reflected the light of Earth. It looked like a pile of squirming lines that shifted and layered over eachother. Was it some kind of oil? Was it like the jellyfish?
Andrew didn't get to watch much longer, as there was a sudden lurch which nearly shook him from his perch as Michael shouted up from the cabin. "Hey man, there's a lot of those bubbles now!"
Andrew took the goggles down - Michael was right. While Andrew had been focusing on the pyramid of bubbles in the distance, other bubbles had slowly risen up at various points around the raft. There were even parts of the raft itself that had begun to split apart as the black bubbles of something jutted up through the soft cracks. With this, Andrew hastily ducked back inside as he handed off his binoculars and rolled up his window.
"Uh honey?" Stammered Chay from the back seat - she had been entertaining the kids with guessing games until the new panic drew her attention.
"Yeah sweets?" responded Michael absently. He was preoccupied was looking out his window at the pandemonium as the few people who had been left outside during the last crisis started going back to their cars. Bobbing over the jellies as they started to give way to these strange black masses.
"The other rafts are going dark!" Chay said, eyes wide with worry.
Bessie the cow, who was still up to her neck in the jellies as all this transpired, was suddenly engulfed as one of the bubbles sprang up beneath her and spread out like floppy forearms of sludge - the masses wrapped around her as she vanished into the throng. Even the jellies seemed to be sinking into it and vanishing from sight.
The pelican man had finally managed to get himself free from the jellies and had given up trying to retrieve his gun, but his truck had been elevated, much like Andrew's, leaving him an awkward climb over the bulbous bodies to try to reach his truck. He was close to the door, when a badly placed foot caused him to stumble and fall into one of the black cracks. The black limbs whipped over him and drug him underneath.
What Chay had said was true - one by one, the lights in the distance slowly snuffed out as the black pyramid of bubbles grew in size in the distance. Well, not grew. The bubbles stayed the same size, but they seemed to ascend like a tower stacked upon itself. Rising like a monolith above the waters when suddenly the top split, strands of the black refuse falling away in rivulets and revealing a crafted structure of some strange metallic material which shone silver in the night.
Andrew and Michael watched as other smaller pyramids and walls rose from the sea only to burst. Slowly, like oil from a sharpened knife, a great structure was revealed as a great tower with all its walls and parapets rose high above them and the raft slowly split until only the cars and people on the great jellies were still visible. By this point, all other lights had gone out and a massive stretch of the water had yielded to the bubbles of black limbs - to such a degree that there now seemed to be more of it than water. Eventually, even the light of the Earth and Moon surrendered to the towering silver monolith, illuminating its back as though it had claimed authority over the sky itself.
It was then that the great jellies, with one final shudder, descended into the mire of black limbs. The limbs slapped the side of the vehicle, each limb seemingly using the next as a point of leverage to pivot itself onto. In a rapid succession of thumping arms, the black limbs engulfed the cab and blotted out all light once again as the children gasped in the back seat. Instinctively, Barlow jutted a finger towards button for the cabin light and immediately wished he hadn't.
Pressed to the window with maws like lamprey, great black slugs with ridged bodies slick with some purple substance crowded and swarmed over the car. They wriggled, pressed together, and flopped horridly in place until suddenly they squeezed close together and went totally still and a fraction of a second later, the swarm expanded outward like a balloon. There they lay, packed like an egg shell as small bubbles of purple gushed from their faces. It all happened so quickly that aside from the surprise of it, the occupants of the car didn't have enough time to be truly scared. In fact, past this point, the creatures made no motion or sound beyond the bubbling and slight gushing of the strange purple substance.
Andrew looked at some of the residue that had been left on the window. It was translucent and looked like purple soda, but seemed to be undergoing a bubbling reaction until the it's liquid nature had dissolved - leaving only a purple film like a strange pollen dust where it had been. Just at the base of the car, there was a pool of the stuff and any time it seemed to start to dry, the creatures would pump a small amount more in. Andrew also noticed that every now and then, a couple of the slugs on the wall would shudder and swell like a balloon - as though it was taking something in. Andrew couldn't help but notice that the slugs seemed to do this more the closer they were to the exhaust of the car.
There they all sat in silence for several minutes, until finally a shudder under the car shook the egg shell of slugs loose. The faint luminance of the Earth's ambient light broke through as the tower in the distance loomed oppressively and the slugs fell away and for the first time since Andrew and his party had left Earth nearly an hour ago they saw the leafy greens of foliage, and the deep browns of tree bark.
In spite of himself, Andrew stepped out of his car. He had expected some word of caution from Michael, but whatever spell had fallen over Barlow had claimed him and even the timid Chay as they exited the cab and took in their new surroundings. Even as they observed, for all the unbelievable things they had experience, they could hardly believe their eyes as they took in the sights of this new world.
As the last of the slugs pulled themselves from beneath the car and slid into the distance, the meadow they found themselves in sprang to life. From the underbrush, the sound of strange insects could be heard and overhead small wigged mammals, not unlike bats, flitted and squeaked as they broke through the air.
Michael look to his feet and saw a small cluster of mushroom - to his bafflement, the small pink morsels had cupped shaped heads and at irregular intervals made a melodic "Boo" sound, as though it was trying to start a song it couldn't quite remember.
Chay looked deep into the woods, and saw a swarm of blue dancing lights - like fireflies on the breeze, but every few yards they floated, they would suddenly stop and form vague symbols before moving on again. Every now and then, they would split off to form smaller groups that would follow a similar pattern of movement with a different set of symbols - until it looked like a show of fireworks.
Andrew however turned his back on the tower entirely and looked to where the trees were thinnest. Moving with a fast walk, Andrew passed into the trees and through the undergrowth, guided by something in him he could not place he narrowly dodged the web of a many segmented spider the length of his index finger and stalwartly ignored a gleam of six eyes from a hollow tree as he fumbled out of the brushwood and found himself atop a steep and rocky hill that was alive with a sound not unlike pipe reeds.
With the wind blowing, Andrew followed the sound to a strange cluster of poles which looked like a cross between bamboo and cattails hollowed out and fitted with holes at both the tip of the reed and the base of the plant. These cat-pipes played a series of steady notes - some high as soft like a flute, other low and hoarse like blowing on a bottle. While the cat-pipe sang, one of peculiar winged mammals Andrew had seen flit overhead dove into one of the pipes - only for the pipe to instantly retract into the bush and bunch closer together as if protecting its latest catch.
Andrew left the musically macabre plant to its meal and looked out over the forest as the cat-pipes continued to sing louder for its new guest. All around was a vast forest that extended out so far that it met the horizon. Here on the left, a range of mountains raised from the woods - black and grim in the gloom. Far to the right the woods grew taller and thicker as strange lights played in the boughs. The ocean could no longer be seen and the only sight familiar from before were the strange constellations whose shapes and names were still unknown to him.
All around, Andrew could make out faint lights in the distance breaking through the treeline. Were those the other people from the highway, or some new danger trying to bait him like the cat-pipes had the small winged mammal? Once again, shots rang out in the dark - but this time, nothing seemed to respond. No shouts. No screams. No jellies to restrain the shooter or dragon to suppress them. Wherever they were, Andrew felt sure this was their destination from the start. Why were they brought here? Who had made that choice for them? And why go through such effort just to deliver them into a wilderness of untold dangers?
Andrew took a deep breath, his lungs filled with the cold night air as his breath roiled like smoke. He turned to look to the tower of silver once more - this time, small lights like stars had run up and down the body of the tower. Wherever answers might be, whomever may have them: that tower most assuredly had something to reveal.
However, for the time being; Andrew had other responsibilities. There was a family back at his car, there were innocent people lost in the woods, and someone was in enough danger to start firing shots - he was tired, defenseless, and ignorant of all the dangers he faced in this new world. And while he had been a hapless victim in the mouth of that dragon, he resolved to be better prepared the next time he saw that monster's glowing white eyes. But for the time being, only one question was left to him: "What's my next step?"