Wednesday, February 7, 2024

FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS

 How far will humans go to survive when they have nothing to lose? Flight of the Albatross is a tale about treachery and love far in our future. 

Enjoy Chapter 1. 



FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS


Chapter 1

Syn Asteroid at the edge of the Centauri System

Chenvro Salvaging Company extraction site 

 

He perished before Cali's eyelids flicked. 

The mangled rudder of the starship soared through low gravity on an intercept course, too perfect of a projection to be an accidental casting. Swathed in the glow from the mobile work-lights, he didn’t have time to turn, or to run, or to motion to Cali or her remaining crew that a hunk of their commissioned cargo now sped toward him. Its source of ejection remained unknown to her because it had emerged from behind a heap of the asteroid’s surface rock, closer to the crash site. But she felt certain he had seen who’d done it. And she speculated on the why, a conjecture she could never reveal. 

He had been Cali Bank’s fourth and she hoped final personnel loss. 

At least this time there was a body to claim, albeit just half of it.  

#

The grit on Cali’s palm tainted the white parchment gray as she crumbled the note in her hand. Another time, she might savor the paper’s texture, trace its fine grains with her calloused fingertips. But not this time. 

Lodum Maxfield, her supervisor, sat behind the dented metallic desk in front of her. He had recently shaven. Tiny nicks riddled his brown face. The shoddy oxygen generator beside him popped and grinded, a sign it was about to blow. 

“Those who own paper wield power,” Lodum said.

The tarnished grid suit Cali wore felt stifling and reeked of greasy ore dust. The life-support suit felt as though it were suctioning the moisture from her pores now that she was in a breathable atmosphere. “That’s not always true. Is it?” 

He shoved aside the array of items on the desktop and lowered his voice, as if he didn’t want anybody else in his small, pop-up office to hear him. But there were only the two of them there. “No, not always. But in this situation, I think it is.”

She squeezed the summons in her aching hand tighter. Her skin had been stripped raw. Handling and categorizing parts from old starships came with risks. Minor risks, usually, like burns or cuts or broken bones, and raw skin if field-house gloves wore through, and hers had. But the operation on the Syn Asteroid proved to increase the risk to a deadly level. 

Proceed with caution, she reminded herself. 

Cali had worked for the Chenvro Salvaging Company for nearly ten years. Before the end of her second year there, her hard work had been noticed, resulting in her promotion to chief engineer. As long as she did her job, and saw that her team of fifteen did theirs, scrounging for food and water remained a thing of the past. She didn’t want that to change just because she questioned the origin of the paper summons, or its intent. But her exit interviews were normally conducted before a holographic interface with a bot in the privacy of her sleeping cubical, not in person, nor at the request of a handwritten note, so there had to be more to her being sent to Lodum’s office. Paper was an expense the salvaging company couldn’t afford, and it couldn’t be traced: there would be no log-in trail, or virtual fingerprints proving she had debriefed. Just Lodum’s account of her being in his office.

Everything about the operation on Syn was highly unusual, from its secrecy, to the inadequate food they fed to her and her crew. 

She tossed the crushed note onto Lodum’s desk. Lodum looked down at it and sighed. He flattened it out with his palm, lit its corner with the pocket igniter he had been holding, and dropped the burning message into the metallic waste can by his feet. 

Cali flinched, the only physical evidence of her being there now gone.

“Protocol,” he said, noticing her reaction.

Lodum drummed his fingers on his desk, watching her. She wished he would get on with it. Fire her, or do something, anything to rid her mind of the guilt and heartache she felt for losing crewmembers in such unexplainable ways. 

Leaning toward her, he locked his hands together. “Look, I don’t know why you were sent to me, or who sent you the note. But this is just a debriefing, nothing more, and I can assure you the company will receive your responses through the same channel. We’re almost done here. I just need to verify a few more things before I submit my report. I’m deeply sorry about the crew member you lost.”

She held up four fingers, cringing. Her sweating caused her sleeve’s grid-glove attachment to tighten around her wrist, making hand movements painful. “I lost four of my team.”

He looked at the holo-screen beside him. “Yes, I have that right here in my report. That would be your... Fifth?” His eyes drifted up to her.

“My Third,” she corrected him, recalling her team coming through the airlock for the last time, moments before she had received the paper summons from a courier she had never seen before. As usual, they entered in the order of their ranking, tired, and somewhat unsettled. Her First, Gerof, floated through before the others, a weary smile drifting up his pale face. Then came her Second, followed by her Third, who, before the job started, had been her Fourth. The original Third had been her initial casualty. Her Third simply disappeared while nobody was watching. 

Lodum altered the report through a series of finger manipulations. “Yes, yes. Your Third. She disappeared on day 1 of the salvaging operation?” 

“That’s right.” 

He rubbed his fingers together and continued, focusing on the holo-report in the air beside him. “You also lost your Seventh, your Eighth, and your Fourteenth.” 

“Yes, that’s correct.” 

Sitting back in his seat, he exhaled loudly. “That’s an unprecedented number of casualties.”

“Yes, it is.” She struggled to lift her feet, repositioning them to ease the cramping in her calves. Her magnetic boots adhered more tightly to the metallic floor now that she was in a gravity-controlled room, or maybe her body was too tired to move.

“And the conversation between the crew at the end of each workload had been...”

Careful, now. “Not much conversation at all. Everyone slept a lot. Some talk about the food, like I already told you. We should have been given more to eat. We were famished after a day’s work.”

Lodum chuckled. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that a feast awaits you and your team before we get off this miserable asteroid.”

She forced a smile, doubting the food they offered would satisfy her, not after she ensured her remaining team ate their share first. What little remained would only tease her appetite. 

He tabbed a few more entries into the report and then stood. She staggered to her feet, clutching her helmet in her arm. 

“We’re finished here,” he said. “You’ve done good work, as usual.” He nodded once, giving her the cue to leave.

She hesitated. There was more she wanted to ask. She trusted Lodum, respected him even, and hoped the sentiments were mutual because she was counting on his honesty now. 

“Lodum. Some of the questions you asked earlier. They were… irregular.”

“I was given a script.”

“Who gave you the script?”

He tossed up his arms, letting them drop to his sides. “I don’t know. I, too, had been given a paper message… to debrief you.”

She waited, expecting more from him, but he remained silent. Her being summoned to report to Lodum meant something. She just didn’t know what. 

Turning to go, she paused at the hatchway, and looked back at Lodum. He was watching her. A sudden sense of doom clouded her thoughts. “Is anything bad going to happen to me?” 

Lodum’s droopy eyes looked sadder than usual. He rubbed his forefinger along the edge of his desk. “Not on my watch. Go eat. I’ll see you in the stasis bay.”

Cali left Lodum’s chamber, her gaze roaming every which way. Sensing nothing but an empty, dim passageway, she clambered onward to the changing bay, where she would peel off her tarnished grid suit and be checked for radiation exposure. 

She rotated her shoulder. After her meal, she planned to massage the kinks in her muscles until Centauri’s suns crossed paths. Hopefully, as long as her remaining team could feign not knowing the load they salvaged differed from the specifications of the commissioned job, they would all soon be in stasis for the trip home.

#

The planet Malachite, three days earlier

Monty Du’ran regained consciousness in a dark room on a cold stone floor. He struggled to sit up, the pain in his ribs making it hard to breathe. His arms were bound behind his back, cutting off circulation to his hands, numbing them. And that was a good thing, considering his finger had been hacked off earlier. 

An iron-taste seeped into his mouth. Blood. He squinted, trying to see through the darkness. With one eye sealed shut from the swelling, the task proved difficult. 

A flame ignited, highlighting the bearded face of the interrogator sitting in the chair. Monty breathed easier realizing the interrogator was alone, that his torturer had left the room. 

Tobacco smoke struck Monty’s face as the interrogator spoke. “We can stay here another day, if you like.” 

Monty stretched his legs, seeking a more comfortable position. He had nothing more to say. It had all been beaten from him. 

The interrogator stood and faced Monty, offering him the cheroot. “Smoke?”

Expecting the hot tip to bore into his cheek, Monty shifted. But the interrogator just stood there, the cheroot dangling between two fingers. Monty leaned into it, accepting it between his lips. 

The interrogator reclaimed his seat. “There’s more to your story.”

Clutching the cheroot between his teeth, Monty said, “I told you everything.” 

With a quick shuffling of the chair, the interrogator picked up the bucket beside him and tossed ice-cold water at Monty. The cheroot flew from Monty’s mouth. Cold air blew down on him, chilling him instantly. 

“You’re a fool,” the interrogator said. “A failure of a citizen.”

Monty folded his knees beneath him and bent his torso toward the ground, trying to find warmth. Yes, and your kind made me what I am.

“The fertilizer we’ll make from your body will be unfit for our fields. We’ll have to ship it off to lesser colonies.”

A long pause, then the interrogator spoke again. “Now, tell me more about the heist.”

Monty took a deep breath, thinking about everything that had gone wrong. If he had been quicker, perhaps he wouldn’t have been caught. But he talked too long on the comm, asked too many questions, hesitated with the access codes, failed to ignore the ancient treasures basking in their crystal cases. By the time his awe faded and he found the item he had been there to steal, the alarm had been triggered. That gave him only seconds to smash the preservation case and snatch the artifact. 

Holding the ancient text had quickened his pulse. His hands had been glued to it, his eyes transfixed. Its dark cover contained no lettering. Its thick pages were filled with sleeves holding digital chips. Pictures, and encrypted text he had never seen before, covered faded pages. He stowed the text inside his preservation sac and fled the archives moments before the Elite Guardia stormed the building. 

The hovercraft had been waiting for him. He steered it away just in time. Then, as instructed, he delivered the text to the translator database, and within a short amount of time, the billions of data entries were deciphered and transcribed onto three ocular reading discs.

Monty hid the text in his home and then delivered one ocular disc to the mastermind of the heist. He placed the remaining discs in a small white bag, which he gave to an ex-colleague at Airways Station 6, where he had once been a pilot. 

The guardia arrested him outside the airways station. Perhaps they had followed him, traced his comm. Monty didn’t know.

Timing. That’s what did him in. 

If only he had been quicker.

“Did I mention that we found the book?” the interrogator said. “Your home, of all places. It was just a matter of which stone it was beneath, so we ripped out the entire floor. Don’t worry. You won’t be going back there.”

Monty shuddered. The ancient text began to disintegrate soon after he transcribed it. By the time the inspector found it, it no doubt was nothing more than crumbled parchment and oxidized metal. Unrecognizable. Gone from the world forever. He found no pleasure in knowing that. It only made his crime worse.

“When do I see my counselor?” Monty mumbled. 

“You don’t deserve a counselor.”

“But… it’s my right.”

The interrogator chuckled. “You should have thought about your rights sooner. Tell me more, before I call my assistant back.”

“Your assistant does little talking. Your cruelty--”

“--will go unnoticed. Nobody knows you’re here.”

Monty glanced over the dark room, wondering where the door was. His legs were not bound, but he couldn’t run away even if he did find the door. The bottoms of his feet had been burned with an acid.

The interrogator said, “Back to business. Give me more names.”

“I gave you the names of everyone involved.”

“Thrum scum like you and your co-conspirators couldn’t have possibly pulled this off without more help. Who gave you access codes? Or a floor plan? We tracked your movements. You knew exactly where you were going. I can kill you. Your cooperation is your only savior. Live or die, it’s your choice. We’ll find the three accomplices you already named. Let them make their own choice.”

“Give me a blanket, and I’ll tell you more.”

More shuffling of the chair, and a heavy blanket landed on top him. 

Monty sighed, relishing the sudden warmth. Then he realized it wasn’t a blanket at all, but a large, fetid animal pelt that smelled like rotting flesh.

His breath rushed from his mouth. Horror moved through him as he scrambled out from beneath it. 

“Names,” the interrogator continued, “and I’ll get you a real blanket.”

A panic rose within Monty. He had no more names to give. There were only four involved in the heist. They were to retrieve the book, translate it, deliver the optic discs, and then wait for their pay. 

He could make up a name. But whom would he implicate? And when this was over… 

No, he couldn’t rationalize that in his mind. The people he knew had it bad enough.

“There were only four of us.” Monty breathed deeply. If he were a religious man, now would be a good time to pray. But he was not.

The interrogator’s chair skidded across the floor and hit the wall. He grabbed Monty’s arm and pulled him to a stand. Monty crumbled, his legs unable to support him, his feet unwilling. A blade nicked the nape of Monty’s neck. The interrogator released him, letting him slump to the floor. 

“I was told there were five of you,” the interrogator said. “Tell me who this woman is and I will stop your bleeding.”

Pain inundated every cell in Monty’s body. He could barely think. There were no others involved, except for the mastermind, and he vowed to keep their anonymity, otherwise he and the others would never get paid, and it would all have been for nothing. 

Monty spoke. “The floor plan--”

“I’m not interested in the floor plan. I want a name. Any name. I don’t care if they were involved or not. I just need a name. And you better hurry.”

A chill ran down Monty’s spine. He couldn’t implicate an innocent person. It would be uncharacteristically cruel of him. Taking a long, painful breath, he struggled to his knees and lifted his chin, lowering his brows at the inspector. “No. I will not implicate the innocent, you fuc--”

The interrogator grabbed his arm and yanked him to a stand. A knife plunged into his back, and Monty drew in a long, painful breath.

The interrogator pulled out the blade. “I do this not without regret.” 

“Regent Amatoson--” Monty wasn’t sure if his words came out, but he heard the interrogator gasp just before he died.

 

 

 

 

 

Monday, September 12, 2022

REVA AND THE ROGUE


During a time when lies carry more weight than honor, one woman seeks truths before she can salvage what little remains of her life.


Chapter 1

Plaster crumbled down from the ceiling, landing on the splintered wooden floor and on the once grand dining table whose legs no longer supported it. We sat along the table’s edge, pretending everything was normal: me, the house rat, and the ghosts of the people who once lived here. Molly was outside foraging. A risky undertaking for a child, but I was dead tired, and there wasn’t anybody out there who could hurt her anymore. 

Pulling my dagger from its sheath at my waist, I rose off my tattered backpack, crept around the tabletop, and neared the house rat, my mouth salivating at the prospect of eating meat. The rat retreated into the wall. 

Grumbling, I shoved my dagger back into its sheath. 

The shuffling of small feet neared. I pulled my attention away from dinner prospects and painted on a smile. Molly stopped in the archway leading into the room, her frail body bundled in layers of makeshift outerwear. She watched me for a moment, out of breath, trembling slightly. 

She reached out her hand, the holes in her knit gloves widening, exposing her small fingers. Several green sprigs lay limp across her palm. “I found food.”

I neared her, inspecting her find. “You’re amazing.” A handful of semi-frozen dandelion leaves would never sustain us. We were better off waiting for the rat to return. “You eat it.” 

She entered the decaying dining hall, rested upon our backpack, and sank her teeth into the greens as if they were savory flanks of meat. 

My eyes returned to the rat’s escape route. I was patient. That was one virtue I had retained through the years. 

“Reva?” Molly said in a quivering voice. “Are... are we gonna stay here?”

I looked back at her. “Do you want to? We could use the rest.”

Molly didn’t answer. Instead, she stared at the floor. I had recently pulled her out of her unresponsive state, and I didn’t want her to regress now. Not while we still had an undetermined amount of traveling ahead of us. 

Sensing something was wrong, I neared her. “What is it, Molly?”

She swallowed her last bite and licked her lips as if searching for food in their cracks. “It’s just that... it stinks here.”

“This entire world stinks.”

Kneeling to her level, I cradled her face in my hands. “Molly, look at me. What is it?” 

She pulled the knit hat off her head, her dark curls tumbling over her shoulders. “There’re bodies in the building next door.”

I stiffened. “You didn’t go inside, did you?”

“Uh-uh. I saw them through the window.”

“Stay here.”

I hurried through the empty hallway, slipped through the slack-hinged front door, and stepped outside. Snow spewed from the sky like thick pellets of wet fur. The chill coursed through the opening of my ragged coat as I tromped across the snow-speckled field toward the stone outbuilding. 

Oak tree branches stretched outward along my path, revealing the thick woolen threads from Molly’s coat she had tied to them, which guided me to the correct window. Breadcrumbs. It was a trick Molly often used so I could find her if she ventured too far. I would have to talk to her later about using the fibers from her clothing. It was getting colder, and my stash of scrap material for patching the holes left behind was dwindling. 

Clearing the fresh snowflakes from the glass, I leaned into the window and peered inside. Old gardening equipment lay scattered along the dirt floor. Wooden planks rested against the wall beyond that. To the left of it all, highlighted in the dim light filtering through the windows, were the badly decomposed bodies. 

I stepped away from the window. Remaining as still as possible, I looked around in all directions, wondering how long ago the brain disease struck the household. When had the last person died, or were some of them still alive, watching me, waiting to see what I’d do next?

Why hadn’t anybody burned the bodies? What would Paulo have said? “Burn them, Guerrera. Ahora!

The brain disease spread through skin contact, bodily fluids, and I suspected airborne particles from clothing of a rotting corpse. Burning was the only way to ensure it didn’t spread. One dead body could doom an entire commune. I’d seen it happen. 

I was immune to the brain disease, more commonly referred to as “the sickness.” That’s why Paulo, the egotistic, cruel man who once controlled my life, had put me in charge of the dying at Luchan, the commune from which Molly and I had recently fled. One by one I had watched my housemates slip into madness and die, and one by one I burned their bodies. Then, when the last of them were gone, we abandoned Luchan. 

Good riddance Luchan. Good riddance, Paulo!

The job left me numb, and I often had to disengage my emotions just to see it done. I was getting better now that Molly and I set out to find the safe house, the compound where she once lived, the place where I had promised her father to take her if anything should happen to him. But it was taking us longer to find than we thought. Stumbling upon this old homestead with its intact roof, sturdy walls, and the grand old wooden table we could chop up and burn for heat gave us hope that we might have a place to rest for a while. At least until the weather cleared.

But finding the bodies changed things. 

The last thing I wanted was to expose Molly to the sickness again. She might not survive it a second time. 

I hurried back to the house. It was still early morning. We had plenty of time to find another shelter before nightfall. The stars might not return for days, leaving us at a disadvantage since we relied on them to map out our journey. Regardless, we needed to move on. 

Molly expressed no objections to leaving. The thin soles of our boots would never see us through the day, so I filled them with insulation I pulled from the walls and wrapped the top of Molly’s boots with remnants of cloth to prevent the snow from falling down them. I bundled her up, covered my head with an old shirt I tied down beneath my chin, and strapped our backpack over my shoulder. And off we went. 

The old homestead drifted out of our sight as the snow encased it in a white tomb, and I couldn’t help wondering if its occupants’ final days had been as terrifying as Molly and mine had been at Luchan.

People do horrific things to each other when they know they’re going to die.

#

The snow continued to fall as we traveled through the day, and all we saw in every direction was miles of emptiness. After the Indo-Western War ended, good shelter had been hard to find, but now stumbling upon it seemed impossible. The Midwest had once been a great place to live, with its eco-friendly towns, and farms with fields laden with crops. I could always spot the incoming drones coming to deliver goods, and jet crafts and bullet trains filled the air with sounds of newly arriving visitors. Ten years had passed since the war ended, and all traces of the life I once knew were gone. 

Finding the countryside empty of good shelter stilled me, but the fact that the people were gone haunted me senseless. During the months leading up to my final days at Luchan, there had been rumors that most war survivors had been wiped out by the sickness. I suppose the rumors weren’t rumors after all. 

It would make life easier if there were others--the foraging, the strengthening of walls, having someone to hold at the end of the day--but Molly and I had been out here a long time, and I was convinced everyone was dead. The war destroyed the country, and the sickness, it seemed, eradicated the survivors.

Maybe it was for the best. Now, there were fewer people who could harm Molly and me. Fewer people I felt compelled to kill. 

Molly started to lag behind. Pausing, I waited for her to catch up. Her wispy legs lifted and fell, breaking through the soft snow like feathers as she neared me. I handed her the old flask I kept strapped to the side of my pack and let her drink her fill. Then I finished what was left and filled the flask with snow. I studied her face, making sure she was still there, and then took her small hand in mine and trudged onward.

“Reva?” she began. “There’s nobody alive anymore, is there?”

I sighed. What do you say to an eight-year-old who had witnessed what she had witnessed? How do you justify your own life when there were no others? When do you give up? Molly displayed unwavering strength despite her fragile body, yet I knew if I said “enough,” she would drop in the snow and never get up. And I would probably join her.

“They’ve all gone looking for us.” 

“I’m sorry we lost the stars.”

“Oh, Molly, that wasn’t your fault. We’ll pick up the trail again soon, when the nights stay clear. For now, we need to find a safe place to rest.”

We trudged onward, up a gradual hill. The snow was to Molly’s knees now. She followed behind me in my tracks to alleviate the hard work needed to plow through it. We reached the top of the hill just as my insides imploded from hunger pains, and I thought about that rat and wished we had stayed at the homestead just a little while longer. 

I stopped suddenly. Molly looked outward. She lifted an arm, pointing it toward the sight in front of us.

Ahead sprawled a large weather-glazed structure. Smoke seeped from
its chimneystacks. This wasn’t the safe house we were looking for. I knew that the moment the men emerged from the front door. 

I reached for the hilt of my dagger.

Tuesday, October 29, 2019

Norma and the Fiddler of Gurg




On the last day of spring, Norma’s house burnt down.  Horrific though it seemed, Norma considered it a blessing, almost liberating, the ultimate sign that she should leave Los Angeles.  Truth be told, it wasn’t the fire that convinced her to go away, but the fact that LA had been abandoned, along with the malls, the convenience stores, the grocery markets, and the highways.  The heat had driven anyone who thought they were someone off to find a more habitable home. 
Driving north on the San Diego Freeway after most people had already fled LA, Norma adjusted the car radio, looking for a station that still broadcasted the news.  Static.  
She slapped the steering wheel with both hands.  “Damn.”  Now, there was no telling what lay ahead.  
Fires to the west of her, fires to the east of her, and with a tank filled with gas (and three spare cans in the trunk) she gunned her silver Ford coupe toward Oregon, where she looked forward to seeing a green forest.  A long way to go; she hoped she had enough fuel.
She gripped the wheel of the car and swerved, avoiding the abandoned minivan.  The highway was littered with broken-down vehicles drivers had discarded, making for a difficult exodus for cars that actually worked.  
Norma shook her head in annoyance and drove onward.  “I can’t wait to get out of this city.”  
The Getty Museum appeared ahead on the hillside, and she realized she had miles to go before LA vanished in her rearview mirror.  The structure clutched its rock foundation like dead ivy tendrils clinging to a stucco house.  She could see it slipping, tilting slightly, toward the highway.  The last earthquake had weakened the already severely eroded hill upon which it perched.  Had she not been in a hurry she might have stopped and plundered what the curators had left behind.
A convoy of Harleys sped past her, and she slowed down as they rode onward like the highway was one big fat lane.  A cloud of dust followed them.  They had just passed the Getty Museum when an earth jarring sound occurred, and there, straight ahead, the travertine marble structure plummeted down the hillside, its quake-proof steel reinforcement mingling with the treasures it held.  The wake of the cycles was but a mist compared to that created by the museum as it crashed onto the freeway.
She slammed on the brake and skidded off the road.  She didn’t remember hitting her head on the dashboard, but somehow, she blacked out.

###

Norma woke up with her face buried in a patch of sponge-like grass.  The freeway had disappeared, along with the heat, the dust, LA and her silver Ford coupe.  Instead of spandex shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt, she wore a soft, carroty-colored frock that fit like a muumuu.  Sandals, made from something that looked like tree-bark but felt like silk, laced up her ankles.
She got to her feet and turned in circles.  The meadow where she now stood stretched on forever, like an LA freeway, but instead of having buildings bordering it, clumps of trees and shrubs edged the field.  A still silence filled the air.  The sounds of a dying city were gone. 
“Hey, is anyone here?” She yelled her loudest, a sick, foreboding feeling washing through her.  “Where am I?”     
The silence broke with a flutter, and she gazed upward as a throng of birds flew overhead, sprinkling the ground and her hair with cranberry-speckled poop.  The shadow they cast nearly blocked out the light.  Pigeons, she thought.  Hundreds, maybe thousands of them.  
She waited until they had gone, then with slight caution and a feeling of dread, she moved toward the tree line.  The plants took on a bizarre, palm tree-like image as she neared, like something seen in a prehistoric exhibit.  Red orchids grew beneath them.  Beautiful orchids, prettier than any from the florist shop where she had worked at in LA.  She picked a flower and stuck its stem into her hair, the absurdity of it easing her distress for one moment.  She nearly laughed. There she was, wearing a muumuu and sticking flowers in her hair, like a dimwitted island native.  
Norma spent the day wandering through the primitive-looking forest, finding no familiarity in her surroundings.  What she had thought to be a prank masterminded by paramedics who had plucked her from the San Diego Freeway had turned into a surreal, unnerving experience that she wanted to end.  The distant howls spooked her.  Ape-like creatures scurried up trees at the sight of her.  Huge, long-billed birds screeched and scooped rodent prey from her path.  It was like being in a primeval jungle in the middle of what used to be LA.  
Suddenly it occurred to her:  she was dead and didn’t know it yet.  Or perhaps she had gone back in time.  The only way to find out was to keep walking.  If she were dead, this must be heaven because she had come from LA, so she had already lived in hell.  
Norma eventually reached the end of the grove, and there, in the center of the meadow, stood a triangular-shaped hut.  She trudged toward it.  It was constructed from the same material from which her sandals were made.  Inside she found a pad rolled like a sleeping bag and a rock trough filled with orange pellets and strips that looked like beef jerky.  A mousey-colored pony ate from the trough--a small horse, with a stiff erect mane, long ears, and a dark dorsal stripe. 
The pony glanced her way with little regard, then went back to its eating.  With a thrust of her hand, she reached into the trough and stuffed her mouth with the pellets, which tasted bitter, but she found that they were better then the jerky.  A clear liquid seeped from a spout in the wall.  She bent down and tasted it.  Water, cool and refreshing.   
Then, with a gentle shove from the pony, she landed on her butt and succumbed to exhaustion.

###

The pony was a tarpan, she decided after weeks of recalling what she knew about horses, which she called Tarp.  Like everything around her, the tarpan was an extinct species.  Not that she was an expert on extinct species.  It was hard to remember what she had seen living in the real world, if LA could ever indeed be called the real world, but she did remember some biology she had learned at school, especially those lessons on endangered species and extinction. After all, global warming had catapulted Earth into its sixth mass extinction event, so it had been a hot topic back then. 
Norma peered out the hut, seeing not a cloud in the sky, and yet, there it was--rain.  She hadn’t strayed far from the hut’s safety since she had found it, because being caught in the downpour, which came frequently and without warning, was not her idea of fun.  The knife-like droplets stung and pierced her skin like needles.  
She put her hand on Tarp, who appeared agitated by the rodent-like creature that had scurried into the hut when the rain started.  The pony cornered the small animal in the pool beneath the drinking-water spout, where spiny-shelled snails nestled.  Everything sought the hut’s protection during the rain.  Then she got an idea. 
“Okay, Tarp,” she said, kicking an insect the size of a field mouse out of the hut.  “I miss choices and foul air and people and the prospect of better days.  Let’s get out of here.”  
She pulled off a section of the hut to shield herself from the rain.  It would not protect her from the night beasts, which emerged when the light had gone--a sudden, and absolute blackness--but it might keep her dry.  Hopefully, she would find shelter and answers to her questions before the sky darkened.
  She jumped on Tarp’s back.  Cloaked in a section of the hut, she brought Tarp to a klutz of a gallop and entered the downpour.  
They had been riding a long time--hours, maybe--when more shelters appeared.  
“Whooo, Tarp,” she said, and yanked her coarse mane until the horse stopped.
Rain dripping off her makeshift raincoat, she dismounted and neared the huts.  The pounding inside her chest increased as she peered into one.  Except for the rodents eating from the food trough, it was vacant.  The second hut had an empty trough and a horde of those spiny-shelled snails nestled in a pool beneath the water inlet.  No sign of human habitation existed.  
She collapsed and screamed.  Tears flowed from her eyes faster than the rain from the cloudless sky. 
Then it happened again:  she blacked out.

###

“Time to get up.”
Norma’s eyes popped open and she jumped to a sit, unable to breath at the sight of another human being.  An old man leaned over her, his eyes grazing her with prudent concern.  Strands of long gray hair dangled around his face.  He wore pants and a shirt the same carroty color as her muumuu.  
She was in a bedroom.  Not a very modern one, but she had seen similar items at her grandmother’s house, and in magazines with pictures of antiquities.  Among them, a clock with a bell on top, a “transistor” radio, a dresser covered with numerous doilies and small bottles, a standing lamp and a wrought-iron bed on which she sat.  Most everything was in shades of orange or green.  The room reminded her of something on late night TV.
“The name’s Harvey Daniels,”  the man said with a nervous twitch.  “But you can call me Harvey.  Last names don’t carry much weight here.  Where are you from?”
She gazed at him, then looked for a window, expecting characters from the Wizard of Oz to appear at any moment, but there were no windows.  “The land of Oz,” she said.
He laughed and waved his hand in a dismissive gesture.  “No, really.  I’m from Virginia, 1971.”
1971. Right, she almost said.  Then out came, “LA.  2021.  The name’s Norma.  Where am I?”
Harvey took a startled leap. “2021!  Holy moly.”
“What is this place?”
Harvey drew in a deep breath and backed out of the room, gesturing for her to follow him.  “Well, that’s a little complicated.” 
He led her down a flight of stairs, into the lower level. Like the bedroom, it lacked ultra-modern conveniences. There was  a couch, a chair, a wooden coffee table, an antique record player, a box-shaped item that looked like a TV.  Most everything was orange.  
She plopped upon the couch.  She had had enough.  The paramedics, or whoever had kidnapped her, had gone too far.  “How do I get back to LA?”   
“LA?  You’re on a planet called Gu-rgu-lu-op ... ” he said with a growl.  “I call it Gurg.  This is Dangig.  Some call it a zoo, but I call it a sanctuary.”
Norma almost laughed.  Almost.  “What are you talking about?”
“The Gurgians are collectors,” Harvey explained. “ They take human made artifacts and endangered species from Earth and bring ‘em to Gurg.  Everything stays in a refuge until it’s sold.  The owner of Dangig bought you, so here you are.”  He spread his arms wide.
“I’m not en—“
“Endangered.  Yes, you are.  The Gurgians extrapolate an organism’s demise based upon Earth’s condition, and they extrapolated our extinction to be somewhere about ... the year 3000.  Most organisms here are extinct by now.  How’d it happen?” 
“What?  The kidnapping?”
Giving her a nervous look, he shrugged and nodded.
Harvey was clearly nuts, but she decided to humor him.  “I was leaving LA.  Pollution and natural disasters destroyed it.  I was driving north when--“
“You blacked out.”  He pointed a finger at her, hopping and grinning like he had just won a game show.  “I was on my way to perform at a fiddler’s convention ... ”
She didn’t listen to his story.  Instead, she looked for a quick way out.  She had always known LA was doomed, but this was preposterous.  But than, she had made friends with a tarpan, had her skin pierced by rain, and had been pooped on by carrier pigeons.  Her sense of normality had been scrambled.  Who was she to say what really had happened to her.  
“... beam me up, Scotty!”  Harvey waved his arms wildly in the air.
Spotting what appeared to be a front door, Norma darted to it but stopped the moment she opened it.  A plumb, thick-billed bird stood directly before her.  The thing was nearly a meter high.  Harvey came up behind her.
“That’s a dodo,” he said.  Somehow, that didn’t surprise her.  “Cool, ain’t it.  Friendly things.  There’re two of them here.  Stupid birds keep nesting on the open ground and rodents get the eggs.  Soon they’ll be extinct on this planet as well.”
“How long have you been here?” she asked, realizing now that she wasn’t anywhere near heaven.
He rolled his eyes and tapped his fingers in the air.  “Oh, ‘bout ... 183 years, give or take a decade or two.  That’s in Earth’s time.”
“Yeah, right.”
“They really should prepare people before bringing them here,” he mumbled.  “Certainly you don’t think it’s still 2021.  It takes over a century just to travel from Earth to this planet.  Gurgians ain’t got this whole space-time continuum thing nailed yet.  You’re kept in a suspended state during that time.  Then when you get here they evaluate you, make sure you’re healthy, determine your nutritional needs, then put you in a refuge and wake you.  That could take decades, even centuries.  Everybody’s different.  I’ve been in Dangig for nearly 200 years.  But I don’t know how long I’ve been away from Earth, 'cause I don’t know how long I’d been in a suspended state, and I was in a refuse for a while before coming here.”
Norma ran out of the house and around to where she thought would be the backyard.  But there was no backyard.  Instead, a transparent wall separated the sanctuary from a copper-colored room, which surrounded the sanctuary.  
Harvey came up beside her. “That’s the viewing area. Dangig’s visitors will be here soon, and I’ve gotta warn you, they ain’t pretty.”

###

It took a walk along the periphery of the sanctuary, which was huge, for Norma to believe Harvey.  Past the garden of extinct plants, the viewing area separated them from another exhibit.
“Neanderthals,” said Harvey, pointing to the large-faced people dressed in orange muumuus in the exhibit across the viewing area.  A group of them stared back.  
“Are you here alone?” she asked, wondering where the other real humans were.
Harvey tapped his knuckles on the clear panel.  “Yup.  For about a year now.  Mary died shortly before that, and the last guy, that’s a story in itself.  People like us don’t fare well in captivity.  The Neanderthals are a happy bunch.  They’re too stupid to realize what’s going on.  They do better here then they had on Earth, now that they’re separated from the saber-tooth.”
“Then you and I are the only people?”
“There are many sanctuaries on Gurg, but here at Dangig, yes.”
She walked away from Harvey and headed back toward the house, the thought of spending the rest of her life in the company of an old man creating an unpleasant, hollow feeling inside her.  If she had to stay, why couldn’t it be with a hunk?
Harvey caught up to her.  “Dangig’s not that bad.  The Gurgians have a lot to learn about us, but they try to keep us happy.”
He grabbed Norma’s arm and stopped her.  “Just don’t start acting goofy.  The last guy would take off his clothes and strut around flinging his willy at the visitors.  It was funny, but the owner was bamboozled by his behavior and gave him the Gurgians version of a lobotomy.  He didn’t last long after that.”
Norma was done being scared or confused.  She was mad.  “Why me?” she asked angrily.  “Of all the people in LA, why did they take me?”
“Happenstance, I guess.  Maybe they did take others.  They’re just not here.  Consider yourself lucky.  You might have been spared an awful life had they left you on Earth.”
With a huff, she broke free from his gentle grasp and trudged onward.  
“If there’s anything you need,” he said, quickening his pace to keep up, “let me know.  I’m friends with a keeper here.  If it weren’t for him, I’d still be wearing a tent dress.”
Harvey came to an abrupt stop.  He bent over and examined the plants by his feet.  
“Hum,” he grumbled, then started walking again.  “New plants arrived.  I’ve been waiting for that cannabis for years now.  Well, will you looky here.  A horse.”
She gazed to where he looked.  There was Tarp, grazing on the garden greens.
“It’s a tarpan,” she said, happy to see the animal.  “And don’t touch her.  She’s mine.”
“A what?”
“Never mind.”
Harvey had made an understatement when he said the Gurgians weren’t pretty.  When Norma neared the house, there they were in the viewing area, their bulbous, gray bodies pressed against the glass, peering at her with huge, ghostly eyes.  They had three arms jutting from their centers, each with numerous tentacle-like fingers that slithered across the window like spider legs.  Rope-like hair, in the most bizarre shades of the rainbow, extended from the top of their head, down their back, to the floor--one heck of a mohawk.   
She screamed.
I-i-i-i-it’s show time!” said Harvey, doing a floppy-legged jig past her.

###

Harvey wasn’t as nuts as Norma had initially thought.  He had just been in Dangig too long and had run out of ways to keep himself entertained.  He might be an old man, but she appreciated his desire to please, and she envied his spunk.
“It’s all in the food,” he said, spooning what looked like beef stew into her bowl.  “Took time for the Gurgians to optimize our nutritional needs, but now that they have it down, our lives are prolonged indefinitely, maybe.  Just wish they’ll figure out this gray hair thing.”
He sat opposite her at the kitchen table and started to eat.  
Norma’s captors kept them well fed.  Food appeared four times a day in an orange box Harvey called the munchie carton, but it looked like an old microwave oven to her.  Culinary mishaps ushered into it from above through a tube that connected it to somewhere beyond the ceiling.  The stew they now ate wasn’t bad.  Like all the other food, the dish had a texture and flavor not consistent with the real thing.  
He sat his elbow on the table and flapped his spoon in the air.  “You know what I miss most?  Music.  Don’t matter how hard I explain it, they still don’t get it.  That phonograph they brought me is just a big tease.”
The phonograph, like everything else, didn’t work.  The appliances were there to make them feel at home, or, she suspected, to give Dangig’s visitors a sense of how humans lived on Earth. 
A “ding” sounded from the munchie carton.  “Ah,” said Harvey, swiveling in his seat.  “Here come the biscuits.”  He opened its door and retrieved the round, flakey-looking items.
A high-pitched scraping noise resonated through the house, and the kitchen’s back wall opened, exposing them to the visitors.  
“Here we go,” said Harvey, glancing at them.  He spooned food into his mouth and waved.  
Norma flashed them her middle finger.
It had taken weeks for Norma to get used to being on display.  Regardless of where they were, she and Harvey were revealed during all hours of the sanctuary’s operation.  There was no place to hide: the ground moved, transporting them to the edge of the exhibit if they were in the middle; The house’s back walls parted, regardless of what they were doing; stairs twisted and turned suddenly. She had never felt so violated.  The simple act of urinating became a dreadful experience.
She dropped her spoon into her bowl.  Oh, how she missed sushi. 
“What’s wrong?  Don’t like my cooking?” asked Harvey, a childlike pout on his face.
“I lost my appetite,” she replied, rising from her seat.
He furrowed his brow and gave her one of those raised-brow looks.  “You can have fun here if you try.  Fun, fun, fun.  That’s the key.  The only way I survive is to keep my sense of humor.  Make the best of it, ‘cause you’re gonna be here for a long time.  I hate to see you end up like the others.”
She headed for the front door.  “Don’t worry.”
“Where’re you going?”
“Taking Tarp for a ride.”
“I’ll save your dinner,” he yelled as she stepped outside.  “And check out the new plants. See if that cannabis arrived yet.”
Norma found Tarp grazing on the grass beside the life-sized statue of a nude male, which she nicknamed “David’s Brother.”  The statue arrived days ago, compliments of the Getty Museum, no doubt.  With Dangig’s visitors following her, like they always did, she jumped on Tarp’s back and rode toward the Neanderthal exhibit.  Watching them had become her new obsession.  She had learned more about the prehistoric primates since she’d been there than any anthropologist on Earth could learn in their lifetime.
But, oh yeah, there probably weren’t any more anthropologists on Earth, she reminded herself.  Like Harvey kept telling her, she should feel lucky and savor this experience.
The sky had turned a severe shade of orange when she and Tarp returned to the house--the Gurgian’s version of sunset, and their favorite color.  The visitors had gone, and the house’s back walls were closed.  Tarp pranced off past “David’s Brother” toward the dodos, her new friends, and Norma went inside.  
She came to a dead stop.  Seeing the blob-shaped Gurgians in the viewing area was one thing, but having one in the living room was quite a different experience.  There it stood, encased in a transparent atmosphere bubble, engrossed in an incoherent verbal exchange with Harvey.
Harvey turned and greeted her.  “Norma, you’re back.  This is Ulgug, the keeper I told you about.”  He gurgled a few undecipherable words to Ulgug, then Ulgug moved his arms, his fingers moving wildly, and garbled back.
Norma didn’t believe Harvey when he said that he had befriended a Gurgian.  She had thought it was just another of his wacky tales.  But perhaps Harvey getting things that he wanted wasn’t a coincidence after all, like she had thought.  
With a grim expression, Harvey nodded a goodbye to Ulgug, who glided out the door, its bubble swaying along with him.  Once outside, the ground reached up around Ulgug and engulfed him, and he was gone.
Harvey handed her a bundle of orange cloth.  “I got you the pants you wanted.”
“Orange,” she stated.
“They’re still working this color thing out.  Wouldn’t think it’ll be a problem, seeing as they have every known color right on top of their heads.”
At least it wasn’t a muumuu, she thought. 
“Seems there won’t be anyone joining us,” Harvey continued.  “The humans Dangig’s owner wanted to buy had a fight in their refuge and nearly died.  They could be in a suspended state for years until the Gurgians heal them and figure out what to do about their violent tendencies.  Guess they weren’t happy about being here.” 
Norma snickered.  “Can’t blame them.”
“You may not wanna be here, but you don’t hurt anyone.”
“There’s nobody to hurt.”
“Well, you’ve been nice to me.”
That was an overstatement.  Harvey had been alone for so long and yearned for companionship, and Norma rode off with Tarp every chance she got.  She could hardly call that being nice. 
“I don’t know how the Gurgians are ever gonna reseed us if they can’t keep us alive long enough to make babies,” Harvey added.
“Reseed us?” 
“Yeah.  Sometimes the Gurgians put extinct plants and animals back on Earth after their populations increase on Gurg.  I call it reseeding.  They got lucky reseeding an African frog.  Ulgug says the critters did well after a long absence.”  Harvey’s expression saddened.  “Didn’t work for the dodo though, or the Neanderthals.”
Norma’s pulse quickened.  “You’re telling me that the Gurgians put organisms back on Earth?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Will they put me back?”
Harvey looked at her like he had been stung.  “You want to go back to Earth?”
“Of course.  Don’t you?”
“I’ve lived in this sanctuary for nearly 200 years.  If I go back to Earth, I might be dead the next day.  This is my home, Norma.  I miss a lot of things from my old life, but the home I knew isn’t there anymore.  My family and friends are dead.  My home town probably ain’t even on a map no more.  What would I be going home to?”
Harvey was right.  All the people she had ever known were just memories.  If the Gurgians’ extrapolations were correct, LA may not be there either.  
But she was a survivor; she had lived in LA most of her life; she knew hardships and disappointments and pain and strangeness.  And after being on Gurg, she could deal with anything.
“Harvey, tell them I want to go home, please.  Maybe they’ll take me back.”
He stared at her open-mouthed.  Then he said, “Nobody ever made a request like that.  Would you be happier here if they brought in a younger guy?  They have this sex thing all figured out now.”
Harvey was taking this personally, and that’s the last thing Norma wanted him to do.  He had been too kind to her.
“It’s not your company, Harvey.  I think you’re great.  But if there’s a chance of me returning to Earth, I’d like to go.  I don’t care what condition it’s in.  I’ll take my chances.  I wouldn’t feel good about leaving you alone, but I want to go home.”
Harvey regarded her for many moments, a watery gleam forming in his eyes.  “I don’t know if the owner will do it.  He’ll certainly need a good reason, and I’m sure it’ll cost him.”
She clasped her hands together.  “Please talk to them, or what ever it is you do.”
“Okay.  I’ll talk to Ulgug next time he comes ‘round.”

###

Norma stuck around the house more often, visiting the Neanderthals only when Harvey immersed himself in other things.  Ulgug stopped by numerous times, delivering new goods.  They’d become the proud owners of a pink flamingo, two blue jays, a Western Electric dial telephone and numerous old books written in languages neither she nor Harvey could read.  She watched earnestly while Harvey spoke with Ulgug, and had to give the old man credit.  Learning to communicate with the Gurgians was no easy task.
But as Harvey had told her, you could learn anything given time.  And time was all they had.
“He’s still talking it over with his boss,” Harvey said to her one day after Ulgug had left.  
Ulgug had brought Harvey a fiddle, which he immediately began plucking because Ulgug didn’t bring him a bow.  Norma was brought Mickey Mouse ears, compliments of Disneyland.  
She placed the ears on her head and left the house.  What was there to talk over?  It was a simple request:  could she go home, yes or no?
Tarp waited for her on the front lawn next to the pink flamingo.  With Harvey’s fiddling music in the background, she jumped on Tarp’s back and rode off just as visitors arrived.  They followed her to the Neanderthals’ exhibit, and she barked her usual obscenities at them.
Norma had come to realize that scientists had been wrong about the Neanderthals--they weren’t stupid.  In fact, they learned quickly.  Within a few weeks, the prehistoric primates imitated all of her rude gestures, and even invented a few of their own.  Taunting Dangig’s visitors had become a sport in which she and the Neanderthals both participated. 
She arrived at the house long before the sky turned orange and found Harvey stringing thick-stemmed plants upside down to the clothesline.  He didn’t look up when she approached.
“Canada or Siberia,” he said. 
“What?” she asked, inspecting the green leafy plants.  Cannabis.
He turned toward her.  “You left before I could explain.  The Gurgians extrapolated that the only place habitable for humans if you left Gurg soon would be on the far Northern continents, somewhere in Canada and Siberia, I imagine.  You need to decide if you wanna go to an English speaking society, or if you’re willing to learn Russian.”
She couldn’t breath and stared at Harvey as he returned his focus on the plants.
“Wonder how long it’ll take these plants to dry,” he mumbled.  
“Are they taking me home?”  She could barely ask the question.
“I believe so.  Seems the owner’s glad to see you go.  What have you been teaching the Neanderthals?  The visitors keep complaining, and that’s bad for business.”
“I’m actually going home?”  She still didn’t believe it.
“Yeah, but not just yet.  There’re still details to work out.  The owner needs to find someone to transport you.  Seems you’re not worth the cost it’ll take to get you there, but when he extrapolated the cost of keeping you here, it’s ‘bout the same.”
“Canada,” she exclaimed.  “I want to see a forest.”

###

 The day had come for Norma to go.  She and Harvey spent most of her waiting hours wandering through the sanctuary, eating berries from bushes that had recently been brought there.  She said good-bye to the Neanderthals, who lifted their muumuus and mooned her.  Then she and Harvey went back to the house for their last meal together, a horrid rendition of spaghetti and meatballs, and Harvey rolled her a joint for the ride.
“You’ll be in a suspended state for over a century,” said Harvey, the Mickey Mouse ears on his head.  He handed her the joint, which she put into the pocket of her orange pants.  “Don’t expect much from your new home.  Probably won’t be many humans left because you’ll arrive there within a century from our extrapolated extinction date.”
He rested his feet on the coffee table, leaned back against the sofa, pulled a joint from his pocket and lit it.  He blew smoke toward her.  
“Maybe their extrapolations are wrong,” she said.  
He inhaled and shrugged.  “Maybe.”  Then he adjusted the Mickey Mouse ears, which she had given him.  “Hope Ulgug finds me a watch to match the hat.”
A flurp and a bump announced Ulgug’s coming, and she rose from her chair, where she’d been sitting.  Harvey followed her outside, carrying the fiddle and a bow he had made with hairs from Tarp’s tail.
Ulgug stood inside his bubble speaking gibberish.  A small zebra and a gray haired woman wearing an orange muumuu, each encased in their own bubble, lay still on the ground beside him.  
Harvey mumbled something to Ulgug.  Then he popped the woman’s bubble with the tip of the bow.  He knelt and looked her over.  
“I’ll wake her after you’ve gone,” he said to Norma.  “No use making her more confused than she’ll already be.”
Harvey gave Norma an awkward hug, hitting her back with the fiddle, his face buried in her chest.  She pried herself loose.  
“Take care of yourself, Harvey.  I won’t forget you.”
“No, I reckon you won’t.  Ulgug’s going to put a bubble around you.  That way you can breath when you leave the sanctuary.”
Ulgug glided toward Norma and reached his arms around her.  An extension of his bubble began to form over her.  Harvey pulled her away before the bubble encased her. 
“Hold on,” he said.  He whistled, and Tarp galloped toward them.  “You forgot the horse.”
It never occurred to Norma to bring Tarp.  “I didn’t think I’d be allowed to bring Tarp.”
“Actually, you’re not.  But the owner’s never here, so he won’t know the two of you left.”
“Doesn’t he want me to go?”
“Not really.  The Neanderthal problem can be worked out.  Ulgug’s doing this because he likes me, and has friends who owe him favors.  The zebra and the woman were snuck out a refuge.  As long as two humans are here, the visitors won’t know the difference.  We all look alike to them.  This is a baby zebra, nearly the same size as Tarp now.  I’ll worry about the strips if it becomes an issue.”  
Norma couldn’t find the words to express her gratitude.  Compassionate acts weren’t something she was used to.  But perhaps Harvey had sensed her appreciation, because he flushed and his eyes drifted to the ground.  Then she realized they were both crying.
“Better go, now,” he said.  “If you find any Daniels in Canada, tell them I said ‘hey.’”
Ulgug’s arms surrounded her, encasing her and Tarp in a bubble that formed from his.   
She watched Harvey playing the fiddle with the Mickey Mouse ears on his head, the pink flamingo beside him, and grinned.  Then the ground reached over her, taking her out of the sanctuary, and she wondered what she would find in the green forests of Canada.  

###

Norma woke up in a forest, but the forest wasn’t real.  
  The phony vegetation barely reached her knees.  She crushed the fake pine growth as she stumbled toward a clear pane that separated her from another room.  
  A sick feeling overwhelmed her.  Was this ... a viewing area?  Her palms against the pane, her body slid downward.  "Nooo!!!" This could not be happening!
“Hey, you!”
Her head spun toward the voice.  A bald-headed man wearing a light-blue jumpsuit stood inside an opened panel at the back edge of the phony plants.  
“Get out of here,” he said.  “The museum’s about to open.” 
In shocked surprise, she rose from the ground, grabbed Tarp by her mane, and lumbered through the bogus forest.  She followed the man out of the exhibit into what looked like a large storage closet.     She couldn’t stop staring at the man, whose waxy, flawless face looked unnaturally perfect.
He scanned her with narrow eyes.  “Okay, who set you up to this?  How did you get in here with that ... donkey?”
“It’s a tarpan,” she said.  “Where am I?”
“You’re in the Manitoba Museum of Natural History.”  He laughed so hard he could barely say the words.  
“What year is it?”
“What year is it?  Are you nuts?  It’s 2933.  Take your tarpoon--“
“Tarpan.”
He studied her, his eyes roaming through her hair, her clothes, her Gurg style sandals....  With a twisted grin, he asked, “Where’d you come from?”
“LA,” she responded, suddenly realizing how ridiculous she and Tarp must look to him.
“What?  Where’s that?”
 “Southern California.”
 “You’re kidding, right?  That’s a wasteland, what’s left of it.  Get out of here, you nut-case, before I call the guards and have you taken back to whatever space asylum you’ve escaped from.” 
Hustling out of the closet with Tarp, she raced down a short flight of stairs into the viewing area, pausing before the spot where she had stood behind the glass.  Below her read, “Canadian Forest, circa 2400 CE.”  
 Ulgug had kept his word.  She and Tarp were brought to a Canadian forest, but like Harvey would’ve said, “The Gurgians haven’t got this forest thing worked out yet.”  
Nobody tried to stop Tarp and her as they walked through the museum’s crowded atrium and out the front door.  The museum’s patrons were all too stunned.  But no one was more astounded than her, because the masses she saw outside didn’t epitomize a dying species.  Quite the contrary.  There were more people within her sight--on the streets, the air-trolleys, basking on sky-rise porches--than she had ever seen before in one place.  
Harvey had often said that the Gurgians had much to learn about humans, so maybe they got their extrapolations about human extinction wrong.  What they hadn’t factored into their calculations was the fact that unlike other creatures on Earth, humans could adapt to inhospitable changes to their environment and not consequently perish.  
Wearing her orange clothes, she and Tarp walked into a busy world that neither of them recognized.  
This was going to be tough.  But she’d manage.  After all, she had outlived LA.  

The End


"Norma and the Fiddler of Gurg" was first published by Labyrinth Inhabitant Magazine in 2009.